The accession of Napoleon to power was of no advantage to Portugal; from the very first he showed his hatred of the little country; no amount of submission could win his friendship; he persisted in regarding Portugal, as the Convention, the Committee of Public Safety, and the Directory had done, as a province of England; and he thoroughly understood what an important base of operations it afforded to the English armies. Hardly was Napoleon firmly seated in office, when he despatched his brother Lucien Bonaparte to Madrid in the year 1800 with directions to negotiate with Portugal. He was to insist on the abandonment of the English alliance, on the opening of Portuguese ports to France and the closing of them to England, on the grant of special commercial advantages to French merchants, on the extension of French Guiana to the Amazon, on the cession of a part of Portugal to Spain until the recovery from the English of Trinidad and Minorca, and on the payment of a large sum of money, and he was authorized to offer Spain the assistance of French troops if these hard terms were rejected. The Prince Regent did reject them and declared war against Spain on February 10, 1801, and twenty-two thousand French veterans at once entered the peninsula under the command of Bonaparte’s brother-in-law, General Leclerc. The campaign was a very short one; the French soldiers never came into action, but in the month of May the Spaniards took Olivença, Juromenha, and Campo Mayor, laid siege to Elvas, and defeated the Portuguese in two engagements at Arronches and Flor da Rosa. The Portuguese sued for peace, and on June 6, 1801, a treaty was signed at Badajoz, by which Olivença and the surrounding district was ceded to Spain, followed by another at Paris, by which French Guiana was extended to the Amazon. Napoleon was very dissatisfied with the peace of Badajoz, for he aimed at nothing short of the extinction of the independence of Portugal, and it was many months before he consented to ratify the treaties. Meanwhile an English force under Colonel Henry Clinton had occupied Madeira, and a force of the English East India Company’s troops garrisoned Goa. The pride of the people of Portugal was deeply wounded by the loss of Olivença, which had been an integral part of Portugal ever since the days of Affonso Henriques, and they lost no opportunity of showing their contempt for the Prince Regent and his advisers. Their wrath was kindled against the French, and from this time forth, the mass of the people who did not care for politics, but who did understand the meaning of national disgrace, was ready to dare anything against the nation which had brought about the disintegration of the fatherland.