Pitt and Grenville were only too glad to comply; for they regarded Portugal as affording an important base of operations in the peninsula. The House of Commons voted Portugal a subsidy of £200,000; a force of six thousand men was despatched under the command of Major-General the Honourable Sir Charles Stuart, which deterred the Spaniards from attempting an invasion, and the Prince of Waldeck, like the Count of Lippe-Buckeburg in former days, was sent to re-organize the Portuguese army. This policy caused the French Directors to hesitate, and they signed a treaty of peace with the Portuguese ambassador Antonio de Araujo de Azevedo; but to their wrath and surprise, Dom John refused to ratify the treaty, on which the Directors imprisoned the Portuguese ambassador in the Temple. In the ardour of his alliance with England, the prince for a year or two threw himself into the hands of the English party at his Court, and on the death of Martinho de Mello e Castro, he appointed Rodrigo de Sousa Coutinho, the leader of that party, to the Secretaryship of State for the Marine and Colonies. Yet the English party could not win the day entirely. The prince wavered; at his request Sir Charles Stuart and the English army were withdrawn; and he made another attempt to make peace with France through the mediation of Spain. This was the situation of affairs when Dom John formally declared himself Regent in 1799, as it became obvious that the Queen Maria Francisca would never recover the use of her faculties; and in the same year General Napoleon Bonaparte made his _coup d’état_ of the 18th Brumaire, and became ruler of France with the title of First Consul.