Few scenes are more pathetic than the departure of the House of Braganza from the cradle of its birth.  Love for the Prince Regent as a man, mingled with pity for the demented Queen, held the populace of Lisbon in tearful silence as the royal family and courtiers filed along the quays, followed by agonized groups of those who had decided to share their trials.  But silence gave way to wails of despair as the exiles embarked on the heaving estuary and severed the last links with Europe.  Slowly the fleet began to beat down the river in the teeth of an Atlantic gale.  Near the mouth the refugees were received with a royal salute by the British fleet, and under its convoy they breasted the waves of the ocean and the perils of the future.

The conduct of England towards Denmark and that of Napoleon towards Portugal call for a brief comparison.  Those small kingdoms were the victims of two powerful States whose real or fancied interests prompted them to the domination of the land and of the sea.  But when we compare the actions of the two Great Powers, 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.