From beginning to end the transfer of the Spanish crown from Bourbon to Bonaparte was dishonorable and unjustifiable. It is true that the government of Spain was corrupt. No greater mismanagement could be conceived, no more scandalous court. Unquestionably the country would have been far better off under Napoleonic institutions. But to despoil Spain was to be false to an ally which had served him for years with fidelity, and at an awful cost to herself. It is true that her service had been through fear, not love. It is true that at one critical moment (when Napoleon was in Poland, in 1807) she had tried to escape; but, nevertheless, it remained a fact that for France Spain had lost colonies, sacrificed men and money, and had seen her fleet go down at Trafalgar. In taking her throne, Napoleon had none of the excuses which had justified him in interfering in Italy, in Germany, in Holland, in Switzerland. This was not a conquest of war, not confiscation on account of the perfidy of an ally, not an attempt to answer the prayers of a people for a more liberal government. If Spain had submitted to the change, she would have been purchasing good government at the price of national honor. But Spain did not submit. She, as well as all disinterested lookers-on in Europe, was revolted by the baseness of the deed. No one has ever explained better the feeling which the intrigues over the Spanish throne caused than Napoleon himself: “I confess I embarked badly in the affair [he told Las Cases at St. Helena]. The immorality of it was too patent, the injustice far too cynical, and the whole thing too villainous; hence I failed. The attempt is seen now only in its hideous nudity, stripped of all that is grand, of all the numerous benefits which I intended. Posterity would have extolled it, however, if I had succeeded, and rightly, perhaps, because of its great and happy results.” It was the Spanish people themselves, not the ruling house, who resented the transfer from Bourbon to Bonaparte.