was fomented from Paris until the
whole country was torn by the most serious dissensions.

When, in the previous year, Prussia declared war, and the French
legions were about to face those trained in the school of Frederick
the Great, a vigorous attempt was made by the Russian envoy in Madrid
to win the support of Spain for the coalition. England, too, at the
same moment, threatened to make the South American colonies
independent if she did not consent. Godoy was persuaded that Napoleon
had at last found his match, if not his master, and on October
fourteenth issued a manifesto couched for the most part in ambiguous
terms, but clearly announcing war as an immediate necessity. By a
strange coincidence, its date was that of the day on which was fought
the battle of Jena, and after hearing the news of that event the
Prince of the Peace hastened to make his submission in the name of the
King. Napoleon turned pale as he read the news of the contemplated
defection, which reached him at Berlin; he never forgave the
treachery, although for the time he feigned ignorance of its
existence. The renewal of Charles IV's submission gave him the
opportunity to demand that the Spanish fleet should proceed to Toulon,
that the King should send fifteen thousand men to oppose a possible
English landing at the mouth of the Elbe, and at the same time
undertake the sustenance of twenty-five thousand Prussian prisoners of
war, while thenceforward he must rigidly enforce the embargo on
English trade in all Spanish ports and markets.

These demands the weak and contemptible government could not resist.
Godoy and the Queen resumed their scandalous living, while the King
joined in a conspiracy to cut off his son Ferdinand from the
succession. The young prince had the people's sympathy; but although
he had sought Napoleon's favor, and wished to marry the Empress
Josephine's niece, there was no response, and he remained impotent
before an administration apparently supported by France. He was, in
the sequel, arrested on a charge of conspiring against his father's
life. Before the summer of 1807 closed, everything was ripe for
Napoleon's contemplated intervention to "regenerate" Spain.

Such was the harvest of Tilsit in the field of foreign relations--a
harvest which to the last the Emperor claimed that Talleyrand had
sown. As to its effect in France, Metternich, then Austrian ambassador
in Paris, declared that men sat in the cafes coldly discussing