mies, in order to invade our territory,
and to become a sharer in the plots of our enemies.

The detention of Ferdinand ceased to be an odious breach of faith. It
resulted necessarily from his duplicity, his parricidal projects, and
his English connexions. The nomination of Joseph as King of Spain and
the Indies, had been universally attributed to the excessive vanity of
Napoleon, who, as it was supposed, was determined to drop a crown upon
the head of every member of the imperial family. But now opinion
changed. King Joseph's promotion was felt to have been caused by the
necessity of placing Spain for ever out of the reach of English
influence. Had not Napoleon allowed the Cortes of Spain to elect their
monarch of their own uncontrolled authority? Had he not said to them
in public, "Dispose of the throne. Little do I care whether the king
of Spain is called Ferdinand, or whether he is called Joseph; let him
only be the ally of France, and the enemy of England[20]?"

[Footnote 20: The Emperor thus addressed the
Spanish Cortes; when assembled at Bayonne.]

It was still more easy to justify the Russian war. A Quixotic love of
the marvellous was no longer supposed to be the passion which excited
it. In making war against Russia, he was actuated by the desire of
avenging the injuries which that power had occasioned to France, at
the moment when the Russian government again opened its ports to the
English, thus snatching from the nation the reward of the sacrifices
which we had made for the establishment and consolidation of the
continental blockade,--of that universal barrier which made England
and her thousand vessels tremble!

The invasion of Germany was no longer the effect of Napoleon's
insatiate thirst of power and glory[21]. It was seen, that there was
no other sure method, by which the English, the irreconcilable
enemies of France, could be deprived of their fatal continental
influence, by which they could be compelled to abandon the empire of
the seas. In short, Napoleon was only inflicting a salutary and
equitable punishment, deserved by those sovereigns of all sizes. After
having implored or obtained the alliance of Napoleon, and after having
ratified the bond by engagements and promises upon which he generously
relied, they compelled him to take up arms, in order to prevent them
from receiving the agents of England into their cabinets, and her
merchandizes into their port