Was the emperor taxed with boundless ambition? Were the calamities of Spain and Russia laid to his charge?--his indefatigable apologists found a ready answer.--The Spanish war, instead of being an unjust aggression, was an enterprise guided by the soundest political talent. It had been provoked by the wavering treachery of that allied government, which, in spite of its engagements, was secretly negociating with the English; and which, yielding to their instigations, had endeavoured to take advantage of our difficulties and of the absence of our armies, in order to invade our territory, and to become a sharer in the plots of our enemies. The detention of Ferdinand ceased to be an odious breach of faith. It resulted necessarily from his duplicity, his parricidal projects, and his English connexions. The nomination of Joseph as King of Spain and the Indies, had been universally attributed to the excessive vanity of Napoleon, who, as it was supposed, was determined to drop a crown upon the head of every member of the imperial family. But now opinion changed. King Joseph's promotion was felt to have been caused by the necessity of placing Spain for ever out of the reach of English influence. Had not Napoleon allowed the Cortes of Spain to elect their monarch of their own uncontrolled authority? Had he not said to them in public, "Dispose of the throne. Little do I care whether the king of Spain is called Ferdinand, or whether he is called Joseph; let him only be the ally of France, and the enemy of England[20]?" [Footnote 20: The Emperor thus addressed the Spanish Cortes; when assembled at Bayonne.] It was still more easy to justify the Russian war. A Quixotic love of the marvellous was no longer supposed to be the passion which excited it. In making war against Russia, he was actuated by the desire of avenging the injuries which that power had occasioned to France, at the moment when the Russian government again opened its ports to the English, thus snatching from the nation the reward of the sacrifices which we had made for the establishment and consolidation of the continental blockade,--of that universal barrier which made England and her thousand vessels tremble!