HISTORY OF EUROPE. 



67 



nictated by a policy peculiarly re- 

 quisite in a country so wedded to 

 its religious opinions as Spain. 

 It was chiefly the violent appre- 

 hensions of the natives that the 

 French would deprive them of the 

 freedom of their worship, that had 

 excited their enmity and aversion 

 to that people. This induced 

 them at first to take r.p arms, under 

 a persuasion that Heaven would 

 assert its own cause, and not per- 

 mit the French to triumph over 

 those who were fighting for it. 

 But when the course of events had 

 shewn that, however hostile to 

 kingly government, the French 

 were indifferent to speculative opi- 

 nions on spiritual manners, and 

 left every man's conscience at 

 liberty, they no longer considered 

 them with the same abhorrence ; 

 and began to view the war in the 

 light of a political contest between 

 the French on the one side, and 

 the European princes on the other, 

 both parties contending with equal 

 obstinacy ; the former for the re- 

 pubhcan system they had adopted, 

 the latter for the restoration of 

 monarchy. 



Nor should it pass unnoticed, 

 that the general disposition of the 

 people in Spain had undergone a 

 remarkable chany-e since the (jreat 

 alterations that had happened in 

 France. The inhabitants of the 

 northern provinces of the former,- 

 and these of th? sou-h-rn in the 

 latter country, have so many mo- 

 tives and methods to preserve a 

 communication with each other, 

 that all the precautions taken by 

 the Spanish court to prevent it, 

 had not been sufliciently effectual 

 for the piirpo&c chiefly intended ; 

 which was to x)bviate an inter- 

 course of idfa« and opinions o« the 



transactions of th? times. Many 

 of thf." pohtical maxims adopted by 

 the French, had been introduced 

 among the Spaniards, and met with 

 abettors ; and the impropriety of 

 blending religion with pohtics was 

 clearly understood. Hence num- 

 bers of people of all classes, espe- 

 cially the middlini'- and industriou*', 

 began to wish for a limitation 6f 

 the regal authority, the weight of 

 which was experimentally found 

 too heavy for commerce and in- 

 dustry. But the only means of re- 

 ducing that excessive authority 

 within bounds, was to humble it by 

 distress ; and no instrument of such 

 humiliation appearing so ready and 

 efficient as a successful attack oh 

 the part of the French, those who 

 secretly wished for a diminution of 

 the power hitherto exercised by 

 the court, were gladof the opportu- 

 nity offered them by the succesfles 

 of the French; and omitted no oc- 

 casion to throw a damp on the 

 spirits of the Spanish mihtarr, and 

 to discourage that pertinacity of 

 resistance for v/iiich the Spaniards 

 had always been so remarkable in 

 their hostilities with France. 



Thus the reduction of the places 

 that had fallen into the hands of the 

 French, was not a little owing to a 

 changeofsentimentsamongthe Spa- 

 niards. Such pains were now taken, 

 tho' in an indirect and imperceptible 

 maimer, to magnify the prowess of 

 the French, that the opposition to 

 them was weakened in the most 

 visible d.^gree, and the whole coun- 

 try submitted to them that lay be- 

 tween the places that had already 

 surrendered and the city of To- 

 losa. 



The Spanish commanders, ala-m- 



ed at the readiness to admit ths 



French, which appeared daily to 



■'' 2! gaia 



