e success of England in
her piratical attack on Denmark, resolved to add Spain to his empire,
virtually, if not in terms. He was not content with having her as one of
his most useful and submissive dependencies, whose resources were at his
command as thoroughly as were those of Belgium and Lombardy, but must
needs insist upon having her throne at his disposal. Human folly never
perpetrated a grosser blunder than this, and he established that
"Spanish ulcer" which undermined the strength of the most magnificent
empire that the world had seen for ten centuries; for, if his empire was
in some respects inferior to that of Philip II., in others it was
superior to the Castilian dominion. Out of his action in the Peninsula
grew the Peninsular War, which was to the Spain of our age what the
Succession War had been to the Spain of a century earlier. That country
was prepared by it for another revival, which came at last, but which
also came slowly. Had Ferdinand VII. been a wise and truthful man, or
had there been Spanish statesmen capable of governing both monarch and
monarchy, the days of Alberoni would have been repeated before 1820. But
there was neither an honest monarch nor a great statesman in the
kingdom, and Spain daily became weaker and more contemptible. Her
colonial empire disappeared, with a few exceptions, such as Cuba and the
Philippines. The sun ceased to shine constantly on that empire which had
been warmed by his beams through three centuries, and transferred that
honor to England. Spanish politics became the world's scorn; and a
French army, acting as the police of the Holy Alliance, crossed the
Pyrenees, and made Ferdinand VII. once more an absolute king. After his
death, a civil war raged for a long time between the Christinos and the
Carlists, parties which took their names from the Queen-Mother and from
Don Carlos, who claimed to be the legitimate King of the Spains. At
length that war was brought to an end, and the throne of Isabella II.
appears to be as well established as was that of Isabella I.

During all those unhappy years, Spain had, to use the common phrase,
been making progress. Foreign war and civil war, and political
convulsions of every kind, had been eminently useful to her. The Arachne
webs and dust of ages had been blown away by the cannon of France and
England. Old ideas were exploded. Young Spain had displaced Old Spain. A
generation had grown up who had no sympathy with the antique world.