Napoleon's Wars_ An International History, 1803-1815 - Charles Esdaile [218]
Spain . . . must be French. It is for France that I have conquered Spain; it is with her blood, her arms, her gold. I am French in all my affections . . . I do not do anything except for . . . love of France. I dethroned the Bourbons for no other reason than that it was in the interest of France to assure my dynasty. I had nothing else in view except French strength and glory . . . I have the rights of conquest: call whoever governs Spain king . . . viceroy or governor general, Spain must be French.48
While there is a kernel of truth in these claims, it would be foolish to take them too far. At bottom opportunism was the key. Napoleon had been motivated neither by an altruistic desire to spread the benefits of freedom and enlightenment, nor by a gigantic strategic combination, nor by an overwhelming clan loyalty that made the creation of family courts the centrepiece of French foreign policy. Strategic, ideological and historical factors were present in his thinking, and the final factor in the decision to overthrow the Spanish Bourbons was almost certainly the changing situation in the Balkans and the eastern Mediterranean. Yet would the emperor in the end have acted otherwise in a situation in which nothing seemed to stand between him and a stroke that was more audacious than anything he had yet attempted? To this there can obviously be no certain answer, but what can be said is that the decision to invade Portugal - the bridge that led to intervention in Spain - was the product not of rational consideration but of the emperor’s constant need to demonstrate his prowess, impose his stamp upon affairs, and emphasize his contempt for diplomacy. In the end no strategic pretext was necessary for his assault on the Spanish monarchy. To quote a pamphlet that was published in insurgent Seville in 1808, ‘Napoleon . . . may be compared to the vine, a plant that if it is not pruned, throws out its branches in all directions and ends up by taking over everything. He wants peace, but at the same time wishes to dethrone kings . . . create new monarchies and destroy old republics . . . to undo the very globe, and remake it in accordance with nothing other than his own will.’49
With the emperor already casting around for new schemes of conquest - in May 1808 there emerged a truly visionary plan for an invasion of India by way of the Cape of Good Hope - war was set to continue ad infinitum. However, it did so under new circumstances for Napoleon. The details of the Bayonne affair were such as seriously to tarnish the emperor’s image. For him to have dethroned the Spanish Bourbons was unsettling enough, but for him to have done so by what appeared to be nothing more than one long process of deceit and chicanery was a shattering blow to his reputation. Even men who in other respects remained loyal admirers of the emperor to their graves later professed themselves shocked by what had happened. ‘Thus was consummated’, wrote one of Murat’s aides-de-camp, ‘the most iniquitous spoliation which modern history records . . . The conduct of Napoleon in this scandalous affair was unworthy of a great man. To offer himself as mediator between a father and son in order to draw them into a trap and then plunder them both - this was an odious atrocity.’50 Indeed, even Napoleon was a little shamefaced at what he had done: ‘However it may have been, I disdained ways that were tortuous and banal: I felt myself to be that powerful! I struck from too great a height. I wanted to act both in the fashion of that Providence which remedies the ills of mortals by means that are their equal, however violent, and in a manner unfettered by judgement. At all events I confess that I embarked on the affair in a very bad way: the immorality was too patent, the injustice too cynical, and, because I had fallen, the whole thing became utterly villainous, and presented itself to the world in a state of the most hideous nudity, stripped