Napoleon's Wars_ An International History, 1803-1815 - Charles Esdaile [196]
Spain and France, then, were at the very brink of war, but just a week later Napoleon smashed the Prussians at Jena and Auerstädt. To say that this news came as a shock to Godoy is a considerable understatement, but he reacted with some aplomb: all he had been trying to do, he announced, had been to galvanize the populace into greater support for the war against England. With this explanation, Napoleon claimed to be satisfied, but he knew very well what Godoy had been planning. Spain’s efficacy as an ally of France also remained a severe problem. The difficulties that had been encountered in putting together a viable battle fleet; the absence of any activity in the ship-building yards (construction for the Spanish navy had effectively ceased in 1796); the failure to make any impression on the Royal Navy; the want of funds to pay the monthly tribute that had prior to the end of 1804 kept Madrid out of the war; and the hunger and lack of pay that stalked the army - all conspired to create the impression that Spain was ruled by a regime that could not give Napoleon the support he required. And yet for centuries Spain had been overflowing with bullion and could still lay claim to the greatest empire in the world. This was not something Napoleon was likely to tolerate, while Godoy’s discomfiture was further increased by Britain’s remaining deaf to his attempts to secure a separate peace. Indeed, from this point on, the views of structuralists and functionalists coincide. Whether or not the emperor had always intended to bring down the Spanish Bourbons, there now began a programme whose every action was designed to erode Spain’s independence and freedom of action, and ultimately to lay her open to the sort of manoeuvre that was to bring down the Bourbon monarchy in 1808.
For this view, there is some circumstantial evidence. Nothing, for example, could be more suggestive than the fact that at the end of Napoleon suddenly demanded amongst other things - most notably 1806 Spain’s accession to the Continental Blockade - that Madrid provide him with a corps of 14,000 infantry and cavalry for service in northern Europe. Some 6,000 of these men, it is true, came from the Spanish forces sent to garrison the Kingdom of Etruria for its Spanish princess, but even so, the corps concerned amounted to roughly one tenth of the number of soldiers Spain had under arms. There is no reason to believe that the men sent were deliberately selected as the country’s best troops, but the blow was made worse by the need to mount the five cavalry regiments involved, which was only made possible by many of the army’s other riders giving up their own horses. And then, of course, there is Napoleon’s decision to intervene in Portugal in September 1807, discussed in more detail below, which allowed him to send large numbers of troops across the Pyrenees. Certainly both Fouché and Talleyrand claimed later that the emperor explained the move to them in terms of the overthrow of the Bourbons. Indeed, Talleyrand implied that it was this revelation that led to his resignation from the post of Foreign Minister in August 1807, Napoleon having shown beyond all possible doubt that he had no intention of respecting Talleyrand’s post-Austerlitz policy.
Yet none of this is proof of anything. Napoleon and Talleyrand certainly fell out in the aftermath of Tilsit - an observer who was present at Napoleon’s headquarters in Poland talks of ‘a vague rumour floating about Warsaw that there had been a violent altercation between [Talleyrand] and the emperor’11 - but whether the subject was the need for peace is another matter. Apart from anything else, the Franco-Russian accord had been arranged behind the Foreign Minister