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Popular distrust of the regime was fuelled by court politics. One problem that Godoy was never able to escape was that of his origins. A scion of the provincial nobility who had first come to the court in as a trooper in the royal bodyguard, he had owed his meteoric rise - by the end of 1793, he was not only chief minister but also a Captain General (field marshal) and a grandee of the first rank - entirely to royal patronage. Seeing so lowly a figure reach so exalted a position was hardly likely to please titled aristocrats whose pedigree went back for hundreds of years and who were already much upset by the grant of titles to a large number of bureaucrats of quite modest origins. Godoy therefore became identified with the Bourbon monarchy’s hostility to the privileges of the nobility, and this in turn meant that it was not long before a clique of aristocrats was conspiring to bring down the favourite or, at the very least, frustrate his plans. With this group, meanwhile, there lined up the more traditionalist elements of the clergy, and between the two of them there emerged a devastating campaign of black propaganda. Nobles such as the Duque del Infantado and the Conde de Montijo sent servants out into the streets and taverns to spread stories of Godoy’s lasciviousness and venality, while conservative churchmen blamed the ills that were afflicting Spain on the judgement of Heaven. There was, perhaps, little that the favourite could do about this, but he certainly did himself no favours. The constant claim that he was the lover of the Spanish queen - a staple of the stories spread by his opponents - is almost certainly untrue, but he did take endless bribes, exploit his position to secure a constant supply of sexual favours, and enjoy a lifestyle that was opulent in the extreme. As such, he repelled the one party in the state - the outright supporters of Enlightenment - that might have been expected to back him unreservedly. Setting aside his assumption of the role of grand voluptuary, this group soon found that his ability to advance their aims and offer them protection was extremely limited. The crucial moment here came in 1801 when Charles IV, a timid monarch who lacked the courage and energy necessary to stay loyal to the enlightened absolutism of his predecessor, Charles III, dismissed the highly reformist ministry headed by Mariano Luis de Urquijo. As Godoy was himself temporarily out of favour at the time, this was not his fault, but the assault on progressive thinking continued even after he was brought back a few months later. The result, of course, was that the favourite was stripped of all credibility. ‘Not only is he without a party or an adherent,’ wrote Lady Holland, ‘but he has no friend on whom he can rely.’7

Provided that he had been guaranteed the support of the king and queen, Godoy’s isolation might not have mattered so much. But, as events repeatedly showed, even at the best of times this could very easily be withdrawn. In 1798 French suspicions of Godoy’s reformism had led to such pressure on the king and queen that he had in effect been removed from the position of chief minister. Far worse, Charles IV was now an elderly man subject to bouts of serious illness: on several occasions, indeed, he had seemed on the point of death. And not only was this the case, but the heir to the throne, Prince Ferdinand, hated the favourite for the manner in which he had, in his eyes at least, usurped the affections of his parents. Around the prince there gathered a coterie of conspirators who all in one way or another felt that they had been particularly slighted or ill used by Godoy, amongst the most important being the prince’s erstwhile tutor, Canon Juan de Escoíquiz, and the senior guards officers, the Duque del Infantado and the Conde de Montijo. Nor did it help that the king’s first wife, Maria Antonia of Naples, was a ferocious critic of the French alliance and when she died after only a short period of marriage, it was therefore easy for Escoíquiz and his