On 13th April, after receiving news of a Spanish success in Catalonia, Grenville urged Bute to re-awaken Castilian pride by holding out the prospect of gains beyond the Pyrenees, and expressed the hope that Spain might renew her treaty with England, promising also to consider her claims to parts of the north-west of Hayti. These hopes were futile. Early in that year France and Spain began to draw close together. The more moderate Republicans, Sieyès, Boissy d'Anglas, and Cambacérès, let it be known that France would offer moderate terms. Barthélemy, the able French envoy in Switzerland, furthered these plans, which came near to fulfilment when Prussia signed with France the Treaty of Basle (5th April 1795). Charles IV was only waiting for some excuse to follow suit. As a relative of Louis XVI, he scrupled to take the lead; but he was ready to follow the lead of Prussia. The sacrifices demanded of him in March 1795 were considerable, viz., the province of Guipuzcoa and San Domingo. But Bourgoing, the special envoy to Madrid, offered a prize which far counterbalanced these losses. He held out to Godoy the bait which in the more skilful hands of Napoleon was destined to catch both him and his credulous master. Portugal was to be theirs if they made common cause with France. Acting together, the two Latin nations would overwhelm this "province of England," and together they would chase the British from the Mediterranean. That Portugal had loyally supported Spain in the monarchist cause mattered little. In place of the costly war of principle, Godoy sought to substitute an effort with limited liability, effective partnership, and enormous profits. He knew not that in entering on this broad and easy path, he assured the ruin of Spain and the ultimate loss of her colonial empire.
In this secret chaffering Pitt and Grenville were worsted as inevitably as in the similar case of the Partition of Poland. The Power that cries "hands off" to abettors of robbery needs to have overwhelming force at its back; but both here and on the banks of the Vistula England was helpless. There was no Court of Appeal. Christendom had vanished amidst the schemes of the monarchs in the East, and under the stabs of regicides in the West. Thus, while the champions of monarchy were sharing the last spoils of Poland, France succeeded in detaching Spain from the royalist league by inciting her to the plunder of Portugal.