The Duke of Abrantes himself thoroughly enjoyed his Viceroyalty, and still deluded himself into believing that he might yet prove a popular ruler in Portugal: perhaps he even dreamed of becoming some day one of Bonaparte’s vassal-kings. He persisted in the farce of issuing benevolent proclamations, and expressing his affection for the noble Portuguese people, till his master at last grew angry. ‘Why,’ he wrote by the hand of his minister Clarke, ‘do you go on making promises which you have no authority to carry out? Of course, there is no end more laudable than that of winning the affection and confidence of the inhabitants of Portugal. But do not forget that the safety of the French army is the first thing. Disarm the Portuguese: keep an eye on the disbanded soldiers, lest reckless leaders should get hold of them and make them into the nucleus of rebel bands.... Lisbon is an inconveniently large place: it is too populous, and its people cannot help being hostile to you. Keep your troops outside it, in cantonments along the sea-front’: and so forth[167]. Meanwhile financial exactions were heaped on the unfortunate kingdom to contribute to the huge fine which the Emperor had laid upon it: but there was evidently no chance that such a large sum could be raised, however tightly the screw of taxation might be twisted. Junot accepted, as contributions towards the £2,000,000 that he was told to raise, much confiscated English merchandise, church plate, and private property of the royal house, but his extortions did little more than pay for his army and the expenses of government. Portugal indeed was in a dismal state: her ports were blocked and her wines could not be sold to her old customers in England, nor her manufactures to her Brazilian colonists. The working classes in Lisbon were thrown out of employment, and starved, or migrated in bands into the interior. Foy and other good witnesses from the French side speak of the capital as ‘looking like a desert, with no vehicles, and hardly a foot-passenger in the streets, save 20,000 persons reduced to beggary and trying vainly to live on alms[168].’ The only activity visible was in the arsenal and dockyards, where Junot had 10,000 men at work restoring the neglected material of the artillery, and fitting out that portion of the fleet which had been in too bad order to sail for Brazil in the previous November. [167] Compare _Nap. Corresp._, 13,608 and 13,620. [168] Foy, iv. 273-4.