ers, important differences
begin to reveal themselves. England had far more cause for complaint
against Denmark than Napoleon had against Portugal. The hostility of
the Danes to the recent coalition was notorious. To compel them to
change their policy without loss of national honour, we sent the most
powerful armada that had ever left our shores, with offers of alliance
and a demand that their fleet, the main object of Napoleon's designs,
should be delivered up to be held in deposit. The offer was refused,
and we seized the fleet. The act was brutal, but it was at least open
and above board, and the capitulation of September 7th was
scrupulously observed, even when the Danes prepared to renew
hostilities.

On the other hand, the demands of Napoleon on the Court of Lisbon were
such as no honourable prince could accept; they were relentlessly
pressed on in spite of the offer of the Prince Regent to meet him in
every particular save one; the appeals of the victim were deliberately
used by the aggressor to further his own rapacious designs; and the
enterprise fell short of ending in a massacre only because the glamour
of the French arms so dazzled the susceptible people of the south
that, for the present, they sank helplessly away at the sight of two
battalions of spectres. Finally, Portugal was partitioned--or rather
it was kept entirely by Napoleon; for, after the promises of partition
had done their work, the sleeping partners in the transaction were
quietly shelved, and it was then seen that Portugal had finally served
as the bait for ensnaring Spain. To this subject we shall return in
the next chapter.

In Italy also, the Juggernaut car of the Continental System rolled
over the small States. The Kingdom of Etruria, which in 1802 had
served as an easy means of buying the whole of Louisiana from the
Spanish Bourbons, was now wrested from that complaisant House, and in
December was annexed to the French Empire.

The Pope also passed under the yoke. For a long time the relations
between Pius VII. and Napoleon had been strained. Gentle as the
Pontiff was by nature, he had declined to exclude all British
merchandise from his States, or to accept an alliance with Eugene and
Joseph. He also angered Napoleon by persistently refusing to dissolve
the marriage of Jerome Buonaparte with Miss Paterson; and an
interesting correspondence ensued, culminating in a long diatribe
which Eugene was charged to forward to the Vatican as a