After the French invasion of May 1823 by the Hundred Thousand Sons of Saint Louis ended the Trienio Liberal and restored the absolute rule of Ferdinand VII, there was repression of liberals who had supported the constitution of 1812. Because of this repression Goya moved to France, though to retain his position and salary as court painter he lodged a formal request for six months leave to go to the spa at Plombières-les-Bains, eventually settling in Bordeaux where he would spend the rest of his life. When Goya arrived in France he was described by a friend as 'deaf, old, slow and weak and without knowing a work of French, and so content and eager to see the world! In Bordeaux Goya no longer took commissions, but painted his friends, made a series of watercolour miniatures on ivory, continued to fill his sketchbooks and experimented with lithography. Though Goya had first experimented with the relatively new printing medium of lithography in 1819, he would make his greatest achievement in the medium in Bordeaux under the direction of the master printer, Cyprien Gaulon.