Their numbers overawed the population, and they advanced, unopposed, towards the capital--Junot's most eager desire being to secure the persons of the Prince Regent and the royal family.

The feeble government, meantime, having made, one by one, every degrading submission which France dictated, having expelled the British factory and the British minister, confiscated all English property, and shut the ports against all English vessels, became convinced at length that no measures of subserviency could avert the doom which Napoleon had fulminated.

A _Moniteur_, proclaiming that "the House of Braganza had ceased to reign," reached Lisbon.

The Prince Regent re-opened his communication with the English admiral off the Tagus (Sir Sydney Smith) and the lately expelled ambassador (Lord Strangford), and being assured of their protection, embarked on the 27th of November, and sailed for the Brazils on the 29th, only a few hours before Junot made his appearance at the gates of Lisbon.

The disgust with which the Portuguese people regarded his flight, the cowardly termination, as they might not unnaturally regard it, of a long course of meanness, was eminently useful to the invader.