Dom John, not satisfied with thus combating “French principles” at home, believed it to be a holy duty to join in the general war against France, and he therefore rejected the advice of the English ministry to remain neutral, and sent his Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Luis Pinto de Sousa Coutinho, to Madrid to beg leave to send an army to join in the invasion of France. It need hardly be said that the Spanish minister, the Count of Florida Blanca, was only too glad to accept assistance, and a treaty of alliance between the two countries was signed at Aranjuez on March 25, 1793. It was vain for the French revolutionary leaders to protest that they had not injured Portugal and to ask for neutrality; the French Ambassador, M. d’Arbaud, was ordered to leave Lisbon; a corps of five thousand men under General João Forbes-Skelater was sent to join the Spanish army in the invasion of Roussillon; and a squadron of eight ships of war under the Marquis of Niza joined the English fleet in the Mediterranean. The Portuguese contingent served gallantly in the Eastern Pyrenees from November, 1793, to 1795, and shared alike in the success of General Ricardos, and the defeats of General La Union and General Urrutia, but nevertheless the Spanish Court under the influence of the handsome but worthless guardsman, Godoy, did not hesitate to desert its ally, and made a separate treaty with the French Republic at Basle in July, 1795. Dom John began to believe that the war against the French Republic could not be holy, since the Most Catholic king had made a treaty with France, and he promptly sent Dom Diogo de Noronha to Paris to sue for peace. But the Committee of Public Safety had no idea of making terms with him; the treaties signed at Basle had been part of a deliberate policy, which was to convert Prussia and Spain into allies of the Republic, and to unite all three against Austria, England, and Portugal, which was regarded as a province of England, and the Portuguese ambassador was dismissed immediately. After the Convention ceased its long session and the Directory was appointed, Dom John made another effort for peace, and sent Antonio de Araujo de Azevedo, the head of what may be called the French party at the Court of Lisbon, to Paris. He met with no better reception than his predecessor, and when after the treaty of San Ildefonso, by which Spain declared war against England in 1796, came the news of a secret convention between the French ambassador at Madrid, General Pérignon, and Godoy, Prince of the Peace, by which Portugal was to be divided between those two powers, and Spanish troops were being massed upon the Portuguese frontier, the English party in the Portuguese ministry gained the upper hand, and urgent supplications were sent to England for help.