oleon with Spain--Treaty of Fontainebleau--Junot
marches to Portugal--Flight of the Braganzas to Brazil--French
troops proceed into Spain--Dissensions in the Court--Both parties
appeal to Napoleon--Murat occupies Madrid--Charles and Ferdinand
abdicate at Bayonne--Joseph Buonaparte crowned King of Spain.

After the ratification of the treaty of Tilsit, Napoleon, returning as
we have seen to Paris, devoted all his energies to the perfect
establishment of "the continental system." Something has already been
said as to the difficulties which this attempt involved: in truth it was
a contest between the despotic will of Buonaparte, and the interests and
habits, not only of every sovereign in his alliance, but of every
private individual on the continent; and it was therefore actually
impossible that the imperial policy should not be baffled. The Russian
government was never, probably, friendly to a system which, from the
nature of the national produce and resources, must, if persisted in for
any considerable time, have inflicted irreparable injury on the finances
of the landholders, reduced the public establishments, and sunk the
effective power of the state. In that quarter, therefore, Napoleon soon
found that, notwithstanding all the professions of personal devotion
which the young Czar continued, perhaps sincerely, to make, his
favourite scheme was systematically violated: but the distance and
strength of Russia prevented him from, for the present, pushing his
complaints to extremity. The Spanish peninsula lay nearer him, and the
vast extent to which the prohibited manufactures and colonial produce of
England found their way into every district of that country, and
especially of Portugal, and thence through the hands of whole legions of
audacious smugglers, into France itself, ere long fixed his attention
and resentment. In truth, a proclamation, issued at Madrid shortly
before the battle of Jena, and suddenly recalled on the intelligence of
that great victory, had prepared the Emperor to regard with keen
suspicion the conduct of the Spanish Court, and to trace every
violation of his system to its deliberate and hostile connivance.

The court presented in itself the lively image of a divided and degraded
nation. The King, old and almost incredibly imbecile, was ruled
absolutely by his Queen, a woman audaciously unprincipled, whose strong
and wicked passions again were entirely under the influence of M