mished grenadiers straggled into Lisbon--to find
that the royal quarry had flown.

The Prince Regent took this momentous resolve with the utmost
reluctance. For many weeks he had clung to the hope that Napoleon
would spare him; and though he accepted a convention with England,
whereby he gained the convoy of our men-of-war across the Atlantic and
the promise of aggrandizement in South America, he still continued to
temporize, and that too, when a British fleet was at hand in the Tagus
strong enough to thwart the designs of the Russian squadron there
present to prevent his departure. When the French were within two
days' march of Lisbon, Lord Strangford feared that the Portuguese
fleet would be delivered into their hands; and only after a trenchant
declaration that further vacillation would be taken as a sign of
hostility to Great Britain, did the Prince Regent resolve to seek
beyond the seas the independence which was denied to him in his own
realm.[175]

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 des