control the wealth of Latin America too. On the Latin American front he
was seriously misinformed, for the great days of bullion cargoes and
galleons groaning with precious metals were long gone; moreover, a Latin
America theoretically controlled by Napoleon would be easy prey for the
Royal Navy.
Secondly, the occupation of Spain answered Napoleon's grand
strategic design, which was supposed to drive England out of all its
overseas possessions and bottle her up in her island home. The early
months of 1808 saw Napoleon battling with a Promethean, some would
say fantastic, plan. A joint Russo-French army would take Constantino
ple and cut the British lifeline to India while a French fleet carried the
war to the Cape of Good Hope and the East Indies. Then there was
Sicily. On 24 January 1808 Napoleon sent Joseph a detailed plan for the
invasion of Sicily. Two years before, when the deposed Neapolitan
Bourbons (Ferdinand IV and Maria Carolina) fled there, it had been
Napoleon's intention to send French armies after them, but the British
intervention in Calabria and subsequent revolt had aborted that plan.
Now the time was ripe. Finally, a Spanish army was to march through
Spain, take Gibraltar, defeat the Barbary kingdoms and thus seal the
Mediterranean for ever against the British. England would thus be
excluded from the Mediterranean, Africa, the Levant, the East and Latin
America in addition to continental Europe.
Once again Napoleon's insights were confined to the surface. Had he
studied Spain more closely, he would have seen some ominous pointers.
On paper Spain had been France's loyal ally since 1796 and had even sent
armies into Portugal to forestall British intervention. But Napoleon's
policies, which involved war and more war, worked against Spanish
interests, as he might have inferred from the joy with which the Latin
American traders of Cadiz had greeted the peace of Amiens. The long
interruption of colonial trade had brought them close to ruin, impover
ished the Spanish state and led to a 70% depreciation of the paper
money. When war was resumed in 1803, Manuel Godoy tried to stay out
of it, but Napoleon bullied Charles IV into joining in; one of the first
fruits was the destruction of the Spanish fleet at Trafalgar.
Godoy was always fundamentally antagonistic to Napoleon and on
news of Trafalgar, thinking luck had deserted the French Emperor, he
mobilized the Spanish army to deal with an unknown enemy (obviously
the French). Austerlitz changed everything, but Napoleon was aware of
Godoy's proposed treachery and stored it in his capacious memory as a
salient fact. Godoy again revealed his hand in 18o6, making it clear that
he was hostile and expected the Prussians to win the war that year. After
marcin
(Marcin)
#1