Bonaparte’s evident inclination toward a new war with England greatly distressed King Charles IV. Treaty stipulations bound Spain either to take part with France in the war, or to pay a heavy annual subsidy; and Spain was so weak that either alternative seemed fatal. The Prince of Peace would have liked to join England or Austria in a coalition against Bonaparte; but he knew that to this last desperate measure King Charles would never assent until Bonaparte’s hand was actually on his crown; for no one could reasonably doubt that within a year after Spain should declare an unsuccessful war on France, the whole picturesque Spanish court--not only Don Carlos IV. himself and Queen Luisa, but also the Prince of Peace, Don Pedro Cevallos, the Infant Don Ferdinand, and the train of courtiers who thronged La Granja and the Escorial--would be wandering in exile or wearing out their lives in captivity. To increase the complication, the young King of Etruria died May 27, 1803, leaving an infant seated upon the frail throne which was sure soon to disappear at the bidding of some military order countersigned by Berthier. In the midst of such anxieties, Godoy heard a public rumor that Bonaparte had sold Louisiana to the United States; and he felt it as the death-knell of the Spanish empire. Between the energy of the American democracy and the violence of Napoleon whom no oath bound, Spain could hope for no escape. From New Orleans to Vera Cruz was but a step; from Bayonne to Cadiz a winter campaign of some five or six hundred miles. Yet Godoy would probably have risked everything, and would have thrown Spain into England’s hands, had he been able to control the King and Queen, over whom Bonaparte exercised the influence of a master. On learning the sale of Louisiana, the Spanish government used language almost equivalent to a rupture with France. The Spanish minister at Paris was ordered to remonstrate in the strongest terms against the step which the First Consul had taken behind the back of the King his ally.[51] “This alienation,” wrote the Chevalier d’Azara to Talleyrand, “not only deranges from top to bottom the whole colonial system of Spain, and even of Europe, but is directly opposed to the compacts and formal stipulations agreed upon between France and Spain, and to the terms of the cession in the treaty of Tuscany; and the King my master brought himself to give up the colony only on condition that it should at no time, under no pretext, and in no manner, be alienated or ceded to any other Power.” Then, after reciting the words of Gouvion St.-Cyr’s pledge, the note continued:--