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 Manuel Godoy, “Prince of the Peace,” raised, by her guilty love, from the station of a private guardsman, to precedence above all the grandees of Spain, a matrimonial connection with the royal house, and the supreme conduct of affairs.  She, her paramour, and the degraded King, were held in contempt and hatred by a powerful party, at the head of whom were the Canon Escoiquiz, the Duke del Infantado, and Ferdinand, Prince of Asturias, heir of the throne.  The scenes of dissension which filled the palace and court were scandalous beyond all contemporary example:  and, the strength of the two parties vibrating in the scale, according as corrupt calculators looked to the extent of Godoy’s present power, or to the probability of Ferdinand’s accession, the eyes of both were turned to the hazardous facility of striking a balance by calling in support from the Tuileries.  Napoleon, on his part, regarding the rival factions with equal scorn, flattered himself that, in their common fears and baseness, he should find the means of ultimately reducing the whole Peninsula to complete submission under his own yoke.

The secret history of the intrigues of 1807, between the French Court and the rival parties in Spain, has not yet been clearly exposed; nor is it likely to be so while most of the chief agents survive.  According to Napoleon the first proposal for conquering Portugal by the united arms of France and Spain, and dividing that monarchy into three separate prizes, of which one should fall to the disposition of France, a second to the Spanish King, and a third reward the personal exertions of Godoy, came not from him, but from the Spanish minister.  It was unlikely that Napoleon should have given any other account of the matter.  The suggestion has been attributed, by every Spanish authority, to the Emperor; and it is difficult to doubt that such was the fact.  The treaty, in which the unprincipled design took complete form, was ratified at Fontainebleau on the 29th October, 1807, and accompanied by a convention, which provided for the immediate invasion of Portugal by a force of 28,000 French soldiers, under the orders of Junot, and of 27,000 Spaniards; while a reserve of 40,000 French troops were to be assembled at Bayonne, ready to take the field by the end of November, in case England should land an army for the defence of Portugal, or the people of that devoted country presume to meet Junot by a national insurrection.