Brooks: Diplomay and the Borderleads 59
crawling of a Courtier; experience has taught him how most meanly to conde-
seend; he never presumes to have an opinion in opposition to his master
though in matters of his own routine of thirty years.-withal he has great
difficulty in keeping his post. Hi blunders strike even the King from time to
time, and he has eonstantly to eneounter eabals formed for his ruin; this in-
deed must be the ease with any man in his situation under the present system.
Who else has to do with the government I have not yet learnt and who they will
get to replace Coeallos better than him, bad as he is, I am wholly at a lose to
eoneeive.'
 Cevallos had a sample of his King's vacillation in January, 1816,
when he was suddenly removed-then reinstated the next day.
Nevertheless he managed to hold office for nearly two years. And
if United States affairs received little of his attention, there was
some excuse for that faction the number of problems facing him.
The relations of Spain with other European Powers in the complex
postwar settlements were evidently hopelessly engrossing for those
who were trying to promote the interests of Ferdinand.
 At the Congress of Vienna, the Spanish ambassador, Pedro
 G6mez Labrador, was almost completely helpless. Cevallos had
 instructed him to limit his activities to demands for observance of
 the Treaty of San Idefonso of 1800. In other words, Labrador was
 to ask for the fulfillment of Ferdinand's great desire that the king-
 dom of Etruria be returned to his sister, the queen of that realm;
 or that Louisiana, which in 1800Spain had traded for the Etruscan
 crown, be returned; or that the fifteen million dollars which France
 received for Louisiana in 1803, and the ships and money furnished
 by Charles IV to Napoleon, be returned to Ferdinand.
 Ignorant of the accord between Spain's natural allies, England,
 France, and Austria, Spain turned for assistance to Russia, whose
 minister in Madrid, Dmitri Pavlovitch Tatistcheff, was gradually
 gaining influence over Ferdinand. "But when the Congress began
 to treat of Italian affairs," says the historian of Labrador's mis-
 sion, "the bad faith of Tatisteheff, the credulity of the King, and
 the stupidity of Labrador made themselves evident. The isolation
 of Spain and of her representative was complete....'" Labrador
 signed none of the treaties drawn up, because Spain's desires in
 Italy were not met, and, incidentally, because the Powers failed to
 support his demand for the return of Louisiana. Spain in 1817
 finally adhered to the Vienna treaties of 1814 and to the Paris
 agreements of the following year, gaining some measure of satis-