CHAPTER II

 CEVALLOS AND MONROE REOPEN THE
 DISPUTE, 1815-1816
 Arna TH WAR
 SSUCH A COMPLEX PFOBLEM of territorial sovereignty and
 such vicissitudes of frontier rivalry as have been outlined
 many hours of study and conference were to be spent. In-
numerable exchanges of notes resulted. Officials of 'Spain, the
United States, England, and France went through a procedure
which one writer has rather impatiently described as "tiresome
reiteration," and as higglingg and splitting of hairs, partaking too
much of the child's method of quarrelling."1
 Even with the prodigious system of reports in vogue in the Span-
ish colonial system, the differences along the North American fron-
tier were a bit remote from the grandiose court of Madrid. The
wonder may well be, not that so little accurate knowledge was
possessed there, but that the negotiations were handled by the
Spanish ministers with as much intelligent understanding of the
situation as they were. The misfortune is that the men competent
in American affairs were frequently not in control.
 Certainly the two Spaniards who were most prominent in the
direction of the affair at Madrid in 1815-1816 had no keen under-
standing of the American scene-King Ferdinand VII and his
foreign minister, the same Cevallos who had dealt with Monroe
and Pinckney years before.
 Ferdinand, restored to his throne following the expulsion of the
French troops from Spain, was doomed to a troubled and inglo-
rious reign both because of the controversy over his reetablish-
ment, and because of his habit of intrigue behind the backs of his
responsible ministers. Shortly before Napoleon's defeat early in
1814, the Emperor and Ferdinand, the latter still captive, nego-
tiated a treaty at Valengay which would have provided for the
restoration of Ferdinand on condition of the removal from Spain
of both the French and the English troops. The Cortes, which had
been governing in Ferdinand's absence with the support of English
forces, refused to sanction this agreement. But Ferdinand's old-
 SFor note to elhp. fii, se pp. 69-70.
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