V.

Spain, enervated by the reign of Philip III. and Ferdinand VI., had recovered some degree of internal vitality and external dignity during the long reign of Charles III.; Campomanes, Florida Blanca, the Comte d’Aranda, his ministers, had struggled against superstition, that second nature of the Spaniards.  A coup d’etat, meditated in silence, and executed like a conspiracy by the court, had driven out of the kingdom the Jesuits, who reigned under the name of the kings.  The family agreement between Louis XV. and Charles III., in 1761, had guaranteed the thrones, and all the possessions of the different branches of the house of Bourbon.  But this political compact had been unable to guarantee this many-branched dynasty against the decay of its root, and that degeneracy that gives effeminate and weak princes as successors to mighty kings.  The Bourbons became satraps at Naples, and in Spain crowned monks, and the very palace of the Escurial had assumed the appearance and the gloom of a monastery.

The monacal system devoured Spain, and yet this unfortunate country adored the evil that destroyed it.  After having been subject to the caliphs, Spain became the conquest of the popes; and their authority reigned paramount there under every costume; whilst theocracy made its last efforts there.  Never had the sacerdotal system more completely swayed a nation, and never had a nation been reduced to a more abject state of degradation.  The Inquisition was its government,—­the auto-da-fes its triumphs,—­bull-fights and processions its only diversions.  Had the inquisitorial reign lasted a few years more, this people would have been no longer reckoned amongst the civilised inhabitants of Europe.

Charles III. had trembled at each new effort he made to emancipate his government; his good intentions had all been frustrated and checked, and he had been forced to sacrifice his ministers to the vengeance of superstition.  Florida Blanca and d’Aranda died in exile, to which they had been condemned for the crime of having served their country.  The weak Charles IV. had mounted the throne and reigned for several years, guided by a faithless wife, a confessor, and a favourite.  The loves of Godoy and the queen formed the whole of the Spanish policy, and to the fortune of the favourite all the rest of the empire was sacrificed.  What mattered it that the fleet rotted in the unfinished ports of Charles III.—­that Spanish America asserted its independence—­that Italy bent beneath the yoke of Austria—­that the house of Bourbon combated in vain in France the progress of a new system—­that the Inquisition and the monks cast a gloom over and devoured the whole of the peninsula,—­all this was nothing to the court, provided the queen were but loved and Godoy great.  The palace of Aranjuez was like the walled tomb of Spain, into which the active spirit that now agitated Europe could no longer penetrate.