While the court was waiting in the most anxious incertitude the result of its submission, the agitation of the Lisbonians was increased by the appearance of a Russian squadron in the Tagus. Admiral Siniavin with nine ships of the line and two frigates had been acting in the Archipelago against the Turks, in alliance with England; and now on his way home to act against England in conformity with the plans of Buonaparte, he found that he could not possibly reach the Baltic before it would be frozen. He would have put into Cadiz to winter there, but the British admiral who commanded upon that station would not permit him, rightly judging that as the disposition of the Russian government was now known to be unfriendly towards England, it was not proper that these Russian ships should be allowed to enter an enemy’s port, and thus effect a junction with an enemy’s fleet. Siniavin therefore proceeded to the Tagus; his unexpected arrival at such a juncture was naturally supposed to be part of the tyrant’s gigantic plans, and it was not doubted now that Buonaparte meant to make Lisbon one of the ports from which the British dominions were to be invaded. The circumstance was in reality accidental, but at such a moment it appeared like design, and the blockade was therefore more rigorously enforced. ♦BUONAPARTE ENDEAVOURS TO SEIZE THE ROYAL FAMILY.♦ If Buonaparte’s only object had been to force the Prince into hostilities with England, he would now have been satisfied. A courier had been immediately dispatched to inform him that all his demands were complied with, and the Marquis de Marialva speedily set out after the courier with the title of Embassador Extraordinary; ... while he was on his way the French troops had entered Portugal. The tyrant thought to entrap the royal family; but disdaining in the wantonness of power to observe even the appearances of justice or common decorum toward a country which he so entirely despised, the success of his villany was frustrated by his own precipitation. From the commencement of these discussions the Prince had declared that if a French army set foot within his territories he would remove the seat of government to Brazil. The French expected that the rupture with England would deter him from pursuing this resolution; should it prove otherwise they thought to prevent it by their intrigues and their celerity: and such was the treachery with which the Prince was surrounded, and the want of vigilance in every branch of his inert administration, that Junot was within an hundred miles of Lisbon before any official advices were received that he had passed the frontiers! Even private letters which communicated intelligence of the enemy’s movements and the rapidity and disorder of the march, were detained upon the road. ♦NEVES, I. 160.♦