Jena he quickly tried to backtrack and even sent a Spanish army corps to
the Baltic, but the Emperor was not deceived. Charles IV was thus
compelled to hold fast to the French alliance. The Spanish were forced to
collaborate in Napoleon's schemes to bring Portugal under the umbrella
of the Continental System, even though they were sceptical of the worth
of Portuguese trade and argued that the occupation of Portugal would
simply provoke England to seize Brazil and then proceed against Spain.
Godoy went along with Napoleon's tough line towards Portugal, hoping
that his royal master could emulate Philip II and annex it. The Treaty of
Fontainebleau in October 1807, which divided the country, was therefore
a severe disappointment to him.
Despite his many mistakes in Spain, Napoleon at least read Godoy's
character correctly. Godoy, the royal favourite and the alleged lover of
the Q!Ieen was at once the Rasputin and the Franco of his time, with the
malign influence of the one and the dictatorial power of the other. He
rivalled Pitt by becoming first minister of Spain in 1792 at the age of
twenty-five, after promotion from Charles IV's bodyguard. Great things
were expected of him and it was hoped he would revitalize Spain after the
signal failure of earlier ministers, especially Floridablanca with his
hostility to the French Revolution and Aranda with his bankrupt
neutralism. Yet Godoy lacked the ability to be a statesman and perceived
international relations purely in terms of how they could be used to defeat
his enemies at court. Napoleon, who despised him and saw right through
him, was always prepared to exploit this Achilles' heel. He intrigued
against Godoy with the Infante Ferdinand, then set it up so that his
young ally was arrested for treason, giving him the pretext to intervene.
By 1 8o8 Godoy was universally unpopular and held to blame for all the
symbols of Spanish decline: the economic depression, price inflation, dear
bread, the loss of the American market, the unpopular war with Britain,
which exacerbated the economic crisis, and most of all the scandalous
disgrace of a royal family in which the Q!leen was believed to entertain
this 'low born' impostor as a lover. Passions in Spain finally boiled over at
Aranjuez on 17 March 1808. A mob of soldiers, peasants and palace
grooms forced Charles IV to dismiss Godoy, who was found hiding in a
rolled-up carpet; two days later another mob obliged the King to abdicate
in favour of his son, the Prince of Asturias, who briefly became
Ferdinand IV. Using this 'revolt' as a pretext Napoleon ordered Murat
and a large body of troops to Madrid, where they arrived on 23 March.
This so-called 'Tumult of Aranjuez' was not the work of liberal
opinion, but of a group of malcontent nobles in alliance with the court
faction of the Prince of Asturias - using as their instrument the army and
marcin
(Marcin)
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