remarked that ‘many other European sovereigns, who had received much harder measure, did not make nearly so much noise about it as the King of Spain[276].’ Almenara reached Madrid about a week later to report an equally characteristic interview with Napoleon. He had been directed to inform his master that he should be given one more chance. Let him open negotiations with the Cortes at Cadiz, making them the offer that if they would recognize him as King of Spain, he would recognize them as lawful representatives of the nation, and rule them according to the constitution drawn up at Bayonne. Cadiz and the other fortresses held by the troops of the Regency must open their gates, and Napoleon would then promise to make no annexations of Spanish soil; he would even guarantee the integrity of the kingdom. If the Cortes refused to treat, the Emperor would regard himself as free from any previous engagements made with his brother or the Spanish nation. The provinces beyond the Ebro would become part of France. He added that if affairs in Portugal went badly, it would not be wise to open negotiations with Cadiz at all, for fear that the Spaniards might take the mere fact that proposals had been made to them as a token of growing fear and depression on the part of Joseph. [275] See vol. iii. pp. 506-7. [276] See Miot’s _Mémoires_, iii. 160, for the discouraging results of this embassy. The King and his ministers knew well the impracticability of making any offer to the government of Cadiz, which (with all its faults and internal dissensions) was determined to fight to the death, and had never shown the least intention of recognizing Napoleon’s nominee as King of Spain. They looked upon the scheme as merely a preliminary to the publication of the edict for the annexation of the provinces beyond the Ebro. King Joseph was to be made to demonstrate his own futility, since he would receive an angry and contemptuous reply, or no reply at all, and it would then be open to his brother to declare that the attempt to govern a united Spain by a king had failed, and that it was necessary to dismember it--perhaps to cut it up into a number of French military governments. This seems to have been Joseph’s own impression; in the council at which the Emperor’s proposal was discussed, he broke out into violent reproaches and bitter complaints against his brother, and explained with tears to his ministers that he and they were betrayed. He was now for abdicating, and this would have been the most dignified course to take. He talked of buying an estate in France, and settling down, far from Paris, as a private person. He had indeed charged his wife’s nephew, Marius Clary, to cross the Pyrenees, and purchase a castle and lands for him in Touraine or the South, where he might hide his disgrace and disappointment.