He was always complaining to the emperor that the niggardly allowances from France, the exactions of the generals, and the misery of the country left him no means of existence as a monarch; and during the greatest part of 1810 and the beginning of 1811, Santa Fé, Almenara, and Orquijo, succeeding each other as ambassadors at Paris, were in angry negotiations, with Napoleon’s ministers, relating to this subject, and to a project for ceding the provinces of the Ebro in exchange for Portugal. Against this project Joseph protested, on the grounds that it was contrary to the constitution of Bayonne, that it would alienate the Spaniards, was degrading to himself, and unjust as a bargain; seeing that Portugal, was neither so rich, so industrious, so pleasant, nor so well affected to him as the provinces to be taken away, and the well-known hatred between the Spaniards and Portuguese would never allow the latter to be quiet subjects. [Sidenote: 1811. January.] [Sidenote: Joseph’s papers captured at Vittoria, MSS.] [Sidenote: Ibid.] To these complaints, Napoleon answered with his usual force and clearness of judgment. He insisted that the cost of the war had drained the French exchequer; that he had employed nearly four hundred thousand men for the king’s interest, and that rather than increase the expenses he would withdraw some of the troops. He reproached Joseph with the feebleness of his operations, the waste and luxury of his court, his ill-judged schemes of conciliation, his extravagant rewards, his too great generosity to the opposite party, and his raising, contrary to the opinion of the marshals, a Spanish army which would desert on the first reverse. The constitution of Bayonne, he said, was rendered null by the war, nevertheless he had not taken a single village from Spain, and he had no wish to seize the provinces of the Ebro, unless the state of the contest obliged him to do so. He required indeed a guarantee for the repayment of the money France had expended for the Spanish crown, yet the real wishes of the people were to be ascertained before any cession of territory could take place, and to talk of Portugal before it was conquered was folly. As this last observation was Joseph’s own argument, an explanation ensued, when it appeared that Almenara, thinking the seizure of the Ebro provinces a settled plan, had, of his own accord, asked for Portugal as an indemnification; a fact that marks the character of the Spanish cabinet.