In thus attempting to quiet the just alarm of the people, Ferdinand’s ministers affected a security which they were far from feeling. Murat had fixed his head-quarters in Godoy’s house, within two hundred steps of the palace; not like a visitor or the representative of a friendly power, but as the general of an army with his staff, a numerous guard, and pieces of field artillery, evidently brought there rather for use than for parade. He had ten thousand men in the city, and forty thousand surrounding it, horse and foot, in perfect discipline, and provided with every thing, as if they were the next hour to take the field. Their communication with Bayonne was kept open by thirty thousand more, all of whom, if they were needed, might within a few days arrive to support the main body of the army: there was Junot with a force estimated at thirty thousand men in Portugal, ready to co-operate; while of the Spanish army the flower had been sent under Romana to the North, some were under the French orders in Italy; the rest under their power in Portugal; there remained three thousand troops in Madrid, and a single Swiss regiment in Toledo, of which the fidelity was suspected. The privy council, rather that it might be said they had made the inquiry than for any hope of profiting by it, demanded from the minister of war, Olaguer Feliu, an account of the number of troops in Spain, and their present situation. His answer was, that neither he, nor those in his department, had been permitted to meddle with these things; Godoy was the only person who knew; but that he believed, according to the general opinion, that except the scanty garrisons in the sea-ports and at S. Roque, the few troops which remained in the Peninsula were in Portugal under Junot.