The world of Manuel Godoy was the age of the French Revolution and Napoleon, of Goethe and Beethoven; a world of changing ideas and reevaluations, of early industrialization, scientific experimentation, and radical political thought. Above all, it was a time of military, social, and economic movement. Spain of the late 18th century was still a major power whose possessions reached from Italy to the two continents of the New World, and as far as the Philippines. Under the rule of the Bourbons, the country had benefited from an economic and military resurgence. Godoy, a twenty-five-year-old...