Meanwhile Sir Arthur Wellesley, afterwards Duke of Wellington, at the head of the British auxiliary force, had landed at Mondego bay, and began the Peninsular war by defeating the French at Roliza and Vimiero.  In November, 1808, Napoleon, who had been preceded by Ney with 100,000 men, entered Spain and assumed the command.  For a time his armies were completely successful.  In less than a week the Spanish forces were broken through and scattered, and Joseph was returned to Madrid.  The victory was a short-lived one, however, for, in April, 1809, General Wellesley arrived in Portugal and at once commenced operations.  By dint of masterly generalship and bold enterprise he finally succeeded in driving the French from the country.  Napoleon, loth to lose his hold in the Peninsula, sent Soult, his most trusted general, to stop the ingress of the British into France, but the battles of the Pyrenees, (24th July 1st August, 1813), and of the Nivelle, Orthez, and Toulouse, in the beginning of 1814, brought to a victorious conclusion this long and obstinate contest.

Loss of American colonies.

After the convulsions it had endured, Spain required a period of firm but conciliatory government, but the ill fate of the country gave the throne at this crisis one of her worst rulers.  Ferdinand VII. had no conception of the duties of a sovereign; his public conduct was regulated by pride and superstition, and his private life was stained by the grossest dissipations.

For six years Spain groaned under a “Reign of terror,” and isolated revolts only served as the occasion for fresh cruelties.  The finances were squandered in futile expeditions to recover the South American colonies, which had taken advantage of Napoleon’s conquest of Spain to establish their independence.  In his straits for money, Ferdinand ventured to outrage national sentiment by selling Florida to the United States in 1819.  Louisiana had been ceded to France in 1803, and when Mexico gained her independence in 1822, the last of the territory under Spanish rule in North America was lost to her.

The reign of Ferdinand’s daughter, Isabella II., was disturbed by the Carlist rebellion in 1834-1839, in which England aided the Queen with an army commanded by Sir De Lacy Evans.  Spain, under Isabella II., presents a dismal picture of faction and intrigue.  Policies of state had forced her into a distasteful marriage with her cousin, Francis of Assisi, and she sought compensation in sensual indulgences, endeavoring to cover the dissoluteness of her private life by a superstitious devotion to religion.  She had to contend with continual revolts, and was finally compelled, in 1868, to abdicate the throne and fly to France for her life.