Few moves have been more mean and cowardly; though the conduct of the Court of Madrid in this matter touches far deeper depths of infamy. For its present position was far from hopeless. With the help of the British fleet the progress of the French troops towards Bilbao might have been stayed. Affairs in Catalonia wore a hopeful aspect. England offered to recognize the Spanish conquests in Hayti and to press for further indemnities from France at the general peace. But all representations were in vain. Godoy brushed them aside in order to compass the ruin of the House of Braganza. On this enterprise he concentrated all his faculties. He inveighed against the invasion of Hayti by British troops. "His Britannic Majesty," he said, "ought to have abstained from any interference with the island of San Domingo, upon the whole of which His Christian Majesty had a well-founded claim; or, if any enterprize was undertaken there by Great Britain, it should have been in the way of auxiliary to Spain in order to restore to her her ancient possessions in the West Indies." On other occasions he moaned over the heavy expenses of the war, the misery of the people, and the impossibility of resisting the superior power of France. But his chief theme was Hayti, and he finally suggested that the British acquisitions in that island should be held in trust for Louis XVII. He was not a little ruffled by the reply that they belonged of right to George III, who would keep them as compensation for the expenses of the war. Another significant fact was the removal of a fine corps of French _emigres_, some 3,300 strong, from the northern provinces to Cadiz, on their way to the West Indies.