It was in this way that Napoleon treated Spain. He played with it as a cat plays with a mouse, and when the proper time came pounced upon it and gathered it in. Charles IV., the Spanish king of Napoleon’s time, was one of the feeblest of his weak line,—an imbecile whom the emperor of France counted no more than a feather in his path. He sought to deal with him as he had done with the equally effeminate king of Portugal. When a French army invaded Portugal in 1807, its weak monarch cut the knot of the difficulty by taking ship and crossing the ocean to Brazil, abandoning his old kingdom and setting up a new one in the New World. When Spain was in its turn invaded, its king proposed to do the same thing,—to carry the royal court of Spain to America, and leave a kingdom without a head to Napoleon. Such an act would have exactly suited the purposes of the astute conqueror, but the people rose in riot, and Charles IV. remained at home. The real ruler of Spain at that time was a licentious and insolent favorite of the king and queen, Emanuel Godoy by name, who began life as a soldier, was made Duke of Alcudia by his royal patrons, and was appointed prime minister in 1792. In 1795, having made peace with France after a disastrous war, he received the title of "Prince of the Peace." His administration was very corrupt, and he won the hatred of the nobles, the people, and the heir to the throne. But his influence over the imbecile king and the licentious queen was unbounded, and he could afford to laugh in the face of his foes. But favorites are apt to have a short period of power, and, though Godoy remained long in office, his downfall at length came. Napoleon had marched his armies through Spain to the conquest of Portugal, no one in Spain having the courage to object. It was stipulated that a second French army should not cross the Pyrenees, but in defiance of this Napoleon filled the north of Spain with his troops in 1808, and sent a third army across the mountains without pretence of their being needed in Portugal. No protest was made against this invasion of a neutral nation. The court of Madrid was helpless with terror, and, with the hope of propitiating Napoleon, admitted his legions into all the cities of Catalonia, Biscay, and Navarre. Only one thing more was needed to make the French masters of the whole country. They held the towns, but the citadels were in possession of Spanish troops. These could not be expelled by violence while a show of peace was kept up. But Napoleon wanted them, and employed stratagem to get them into his hands.