The country of Portugal, being rich in natural products, and possessing no manufactories, had become a vast field for the commerce and industry of the English. They treated it almost like a colony, and profited by the wealth of the country without having the trouble of governing it. De facto if not de jure the country belonged to them. Napoleon had long awaited an opportunity for driving them out and ruining their commerce. After the Peace of Tilsit he thought the time was come. To complete the continental blockade he ordered Portugal to close her ports to the English. The execution of this measure was difficult, for the Portuguese nation only lived by changing its raw materials against English manufactured goods. You will see in the sequel of these Memoirs that I am far from approving Napoleon's policy throughout, but I am bound to say that from the political point of view this measure was excusable as putting a constraint on England to make her accept the general peace.

The Emperor then collected at Bayonne in September, 1807, an army of 25,000 men destined for the invasion of Portugal. But he committed two serious mistakes. The first was forming the expeditionary force of recently organised regiments; the second, giving the command of it to General Junot.

More than once Napoleon made an error in his choice of persons, because he followed his personal likings rather than the general opinion. In Junot the army saw a very brave man, but not a genuine commander. The first time that I saw him I was struck and disturbed by his haggard eyes. His end justified my apprehensions. 1The foundation of his fortune is well known. As a mere quartermaster sergeant in the Côte d'Or battalion he earned the regard of Captain Buonaparte of the artillery by a bon-mot in the trenches before Toulon. He followed him to Egypt, commanded in Paris, and became ambassador at Lisbon. His gaiety, his frank soldierly manner, his reputation for valour, his open-handedness, earned for him the friendship of great people and the affection of common people. His popularity in Portugal no doubt decided the Emperor to select him for the command of the Army of Occupation. It would, in fact, have been an advantage if Junot had shown more foresight as a general.

Spain was then in alliance with us, and was bound to supply our troops with food and lodging as they marched through. It was the commander-in-chief's duty to make sure that this promise was executed; but Junot merely entered Spain on October 17, and sent forward his columns along the roads where no preparations had been made to receive them. Our troops slept in the open air and got only half rations of food. Autumn was drawing to an end, the army was traversing the spurs of the Pyrenees, where the climate is severe, and very soon the road was covered with sick men and stragglers. The Spaniards, flocking from all sides to behold the conquerors of Marengo, Austerlitz, and Friedland, saw only wretched recruits hardly able to carry their knapsacks and their arms, and looking when assembled more like a hospital delivery than like an army marching to conquer a kingdom. This sorry spectacle gave the Spaniards a very poor impression of our troops, and produced disastrous results in the following year.

Napoleon underrated the nations of the Peninsula, and thought that he need only show French troops to obtain what he would from them, making therein a great mistake. It must also be said that not having been apprised of the difficulties in the way of their march, the Emperor kept repeating his order to advance promptly. Junot carried out the instructions badly, and his army of boy soldiers soon found itself scattered in little detachments over more than 200 leagues of road between Bayonne and Salamanca. Luckily, the Spaniards were not yet at war with France—nevertheless, to keep their hand in, they assassinated some fifty of our men.

On reaching Ciudad Rodrigo, Junot caused his leading columns to halt for several days; he had left behind more than 15,000 men. As soon as a third of them had rejoined he crossed the mountains of Penha Parda, which separated him from the valley of the Tagus, taking with him only a half ration of bread per man. These mountains, which I have crossed, are uncultivated and inhabited by a poor and barbarous population. The troops passed them with all manner of difficulties and at the cost of extreme fatigue, which compelled them to seize some flocks belonging to the inhabitants, who revenged themselves by assassinating some hundred French travellers. The army at length reached the town of Alcantara, and entered Portugal by the town of Castello Branco. It was only with much effort and after suffering every kind of hardship that they reached Abrantes with five or six thousand men, tired out and mostly barefooted. At Abrantes begins the beautiful part of the Tagus valley. The stragglers and the sick who were still among the mountains, hearing of the comfort which awaited them at Abrantes, made haste to come up, and the army gradually came together.

A general of any foresight would have given it full time to re-assemble, but Junot, under the pretext that the Emperor had ordered him to seize all goods belonging to the English, and that he must reach Lisbon quickly to prevent them from carrying them off, got together 4,000 of the least-fatigued men, and with this feeble column marched upon the capital, leaving to his generals the task of getting the rest of his army together and coming to join him. This daring attempt might have caused the loss of his army, for Lisbon contained a garrison of 12,000 to 15,000 men, and an English fleet was stationed at the mouth of the Tagus. Less than this would have been enough to repulse Junot and his 4,000 men; but so great was the magical effect produced by Napoleon's victories, that the Portuguese Government, acceding to all the Emperor's demands, hastened to declare war against England in the hope of staying Junot's march, but the advanced guard of the French general proceeded onwards and threw the capital into utter confusion. The Regent, not knowing at first what steps to take, ended by deciding to transfer the seat of government to Brazil. The insane Queen, the Regent, the Royal Family, the nobles, nine or ten thousand persons in all, embarking on board a great fleet, and taking immense treasure with them, sailed for Brazil on November 28.

On the same day Junot attacked Santarem, but his small column having had to cross the plain of Golegan through two feet of water, so large a number of the troops were seized with fever that on the morrow not more than 1,500 men were fit to go on. Junot continued his march none the less with this weak force, and boldly made his entry into Lisbon. I must do Junot the justice to admit that, when he had once got his troops together, he provided sedulously for their needs, so that in the course of December he had an effective army of 23,000 men in fairly good condition. Finding the Portuguese troops an embarrassment, Junot gave leave to the native soldiers who wished to remain at home, and formed the others into a division, which he sent to France. It did good service, and went on the Russian campaign.

[At this point we must give a glance at the state of affairs in Spain. For more than ten years past the country had practically been governed by Manuel Godoy, an adventurer, who, having come to Madrid as a soldier of the body-guard, had brought himself into notice by his guitar-playing. In this way he became known to the Queen, a woman of capacity and ambition, to whom Charles IV., a nonentity, entrusted the government. Godoy became her favourite, and presently chief minister. In this capacity he negotiated a treaty with France in 1795, so honourable to Spain that the King conferred on him the title of Prince of the Peace, and the Queen arranged a marriage between him and a princess of the blood royal. A difference with Napoleon, caused by an imprudent proclamation which Godoy had put out after Jena, had been made up by the despatch of an army corps into Germany, and the promise of aid to Junot in Portugal.

Meantime Godoy had treated Ferdinand, Prince of the Asturias, with increasing insolence, which was resented by the people at large, by whom Ferdinand was beloved. The rough copy of a letter written by the Prince to Napoleon, about the end of 1807, at a time when the King was seriously ill, proposing a marriage with a member of the Buonaparte family, fell into the King's hands, and completed the rupture between father and son. Ferdinand and his advisers were arrested on a charge of plotting against the King's life, though it appears far more probable that his own was in danger. The King of Spain communicated the matter to the other European sovereigns, including Napoleon.

It has been said, unhappily with reason, that Napoleon's ambition was his ruin. But his ambition has been for the most part misunderstood. It had reference to France. He wished to see her in his lifetime so great and so powerful that, when he was gone, she might not fear attack. To this end, first the power of England was to be broken; secondly, no state was to exist in Central and Southern Europe whose interests were not identical with those of France, whom they were to regard as their stay and whom they in turn were to support. This gigantic scheme would have demanded two reigns and two sovereigns equal to Napoleon. Over-haste ruined him, and his success at the outset blinded him. He expected to meet with no more resistance from Spain than from Holland, Westphalia, Naples, or the easily conquered Portugal.

Not knowing the hatred of Spaniards for the foreigner, he thought that the distracted kingdom would fling itself into his arms. But his conduct was of a kind to destroy the illusions even of those Spaniards, and there were such, who saw in him the regenerator of their country. Under the plea of defending the coasts against an attack from England, he poured troops into Spain. It was then thought that he meant to support the Prince of the Asturias, a course which would have been popular in the country; and Godoy decided to play the part of mediator between father and son. Meanwhile, however, came rumours from his agent at Paris that Napoleon's real purpose was to drive out both. The Queen and the Royal Family wished to follow those of Portugal to America. This would have served Napoleon's purpose well, but the King refused to go, and renewed the proposal for a matrimonial alliance. Napoleon's evil genius, however, persuaded him only to send forward more troops.]