His brother, CHARLES III. succeeded to the government of Spain. In 1761, he entered into a correspondence with the court of Versailles, which terminated in the famous FAMILY COMPACT, concluded by the four sovereigns of the house of Bourbon, against England and her allies. This compact produced mutual declarations of war by the courts of London and Madrid, and the greatest preparations were made by both for commencing hostilities with vigour and effect. The year following terminated the war, and restored peace to Europe. The year 1767 is memorable for the expulsion of the Jesuits. Spain renewed hostilities with England in the year 1779, and failed in the favourite object of the war, the recovery of Gibraltar. Peace was concluded with England in 1783, and Charles III. died, and was succeeded by his son, CHARLES IV. who is the present reigning sovereign. The indecent reception of the interference of the court of Madrid in favour of Louis XVI. and the subsequent execution of that unfortunate monarch, induced his catholic majesty to declare war against France on the 22d of March, 1793. The repeated defeats of the Spanish armies by the French, obliged his catholic majesty, in 1795, to detach himself from the confederacy. This conduct gave the greatest pleasure to the generality of the Spanish nation; France was delighted with so great a dimunition of the coalition, and a treaty of peace was concluded at Basle, in the month of July, by which his catholic majesty ceded all his part of Hispaniola, in the West-Indies; and the convention agreed to restore all their conquests in Spain. It was also agreed that Spain should recognize the French and Batavian republics. Towards the close of the year 1796, Spain was drawn into an alliance with the French republic, and persuaded to declare war against Great Britain. Spain is at present at war with Great-Britain; and so great is the influence of the emperor of the French over the king of Spain, that he dare not make peace without his permission! RELIGION.-The religion of the church of Rome is practised in Spain with the greatest scrupulosity and pomp. In no country is there more praying and ceremony, and less real christianity. The Spaniards are indeed mere slaves to the clergy, who so artfully hoodwink them, that they do not perceive the chains they wear; or, if they perceive them, bear them willingly; and, when they gall them, dare not so much as vent a sigh after freedom. Under any disappointment, either in views of avarice or ambition, the clergy have their dreadful inquisition at hand, which seizes both on honour and life; so that the most unspotted innocence esteem it a great favour to come off only with the loss of their fortune. But the power of this horrible and ty rannical tribunal is now much reduced by the interposition of the late and present kings of Spain. CHAPTER XV. PORTUGAL. Ancient Inhabitants-Discoveries of the Portuguese in the Fifteenth Century-Freed from the Spanish Yoke. The kingdom of Portugal now fills the place of the warlike country of the ancient Lusitanians, in that great peninsula at present so unequally divided between two sovereigns, and shared the fate of the other Spanish provinces in the fall of the Roman empire, being successively subject to the depredations of the Suevi, the Goths, and the Moors. It regained its liberty about the middle of the twelfth century, by the valour of Henry of Lorraine, grandson of Robert king of France. This young prince assisted Alphonso, king of Castile and Leon, so effectually against the Moors, that the Castilian monarch rewarded him with Theresa, his natural daughter, and that part of Portugal which had been recovered by the Christians from the Saracen invaders, with the title of Earl, for her fortune. His son Alphonso Henriquez succeeded as earl A. D. 1095; and having obtained a decisive victory over five Moorish kings,* July 25, 1129, his soldiers proclaimed him king, and the holy see confirmed his regal dignity. The kings of Portugal, like those of Spain, long spent their force in combating the Moors, and had no connexion with the rest of Europe. A detail of those barbarous wars would be equally void of instruction and amusement. I shall therefore only observe that the succession continued uninterrupted in the house of Alphonso, till the death of Ferdinand, in 1383, when John of Castile, who had married the infanta of Portugal, claimed the crown, as the king had left no male issue. But the states of Portugal, after an inter-regnum of eighteen months, gave it to John, natural brother of their deceased sovereign. This JOHN, surnamed the Bastard, no less politic than enterprising, proved worthy of his new dignity.— Under the direction of his son, prince Henry, a bold and enlightened genius, the Portuguese first projected discoveries in the Western Ocean. The island of Madeira A. D. 1442, the Azores, and the Cape de Verd islands, were discovered, and added to the dominions of Portugal. His great grandson, JOHN II. a prince of the most profound sagacity and extensive views, first made Lisbon a free port. The Portuguese under this reign prosecuted their discoveries with ardour and success. The river Zara, on the other side of the Line, conducted them to the kingdom of Congo, in the interior part of Africa, where they made easy conquests, and established an advantageous commerce A. D. 1484. Captain Diaz passed the extreme point of Africa, to which he On this occasion he assumed the present arms borne by the kings of Portugal; viz. five Moors' heads. + Neufville, Hist. gén de Port. gave the name of the Stormy Cape; but the king, who saw more fully the importance of that discovery, styled it the Cape of Good Hope. EMANUEL adopted the plan of his predecessors. He sent out a fleet under the command of Vasco de Gama, who encircled the eastern coast of Africa, and ranging through unknown seas, happily arrived at the city of Calicut, on the coast of Malabar, on the higher part of the western side of the great peninsula of India A. D. 1498.* Other vessels were sent out under the command of Alvarez de Cabral A. D. 1580, who discovered Brasil, &c. His son JOHN III. admitted the new-founded order of the Jesuits A. D. 1510, of which he was a member, previous to any other European prince.-He sent a multitude of missionaries to convert the eastern nations, and among the rest, the famous Francis Xavier, founder of the order. SEBASTIAN, his grandson, began to reign A. D. 1557. Smit with a passion for military glory, this prince determined to signalize himself by an expedition against the Moors in Africa, where his ancestors had acquired so much renown, in which he and his army perished. Leaving no issue, His uncle, cardinal HENRY, ascended the throne; who also dying without children, many competitors for the crown appeared; among whom were Philip II. king of Spain, nephew to Henry by the mother's side; the duke of Braganza, married to the grand-daughter of Emanuel; Don Antonio, prior of Crato, bastard of the infant Don Lewis; the duke of Savoy, the duke of Parma, Catherine of Medicis, and pope Gregory XIII. who, extraordinary as it might seem, attempted to renew the obsolete claim of the holy see to the sovereignty of Portugal. PHILIP prevailed over his rivals, and was proclaimed king of Portugal, Sept. 12, 1580. Portugal remained sixty years under the dominion of the kings of Spain. Irritated by the despotic rule of * Modern Europe. Hist. Gén. des Voyages, tom, i. their Spanish governors, they had long sought to break their chain. At length the dissatisfaction became so general, that a plot was formed in favor of the duke of Braganza, whose grandfather had been deprived of his right to the crown by Philip II. The revolt began at Lisbon, December 1, 1664. John duke of Braganza was raised to the throne under the title of JOHN IV. almost without bloodshed, and Portugal became again an independent kingdom. The recovery of Brasil, which had been conquered by the Dutch, restored it, in a great measure, to its former lustre. His son, ALPHONSO VI. succeeded in 1665, but, on account of his cruelties, was deposed, and the sceptre was transferred, A. D. 1668, to his brother, PETER II. who, by a dispensation from the pope, married the daughter of his brother Alphonso. He reigned peacefully thirty years, and left the crown to his son, JOHN V. under whose mild government the arts began to flourish. JOSEPH II. his son, filled the throne on the death of his father, A. D. 1750. In this reign Portugal was visited by a more dreadful calamity than even war itself. A violent earthquake, November 1, 1755, laid the city of Lisbon in ruins. About ten thousand persons lost their lives, and many of the survivors, deprived of their habitations, and altogether destitute of the means of subsistence, were obliged to take up their abode in the open fields. But they were not obliged to perish. The British parliament, though pressed with new demands to prosecute a war they had just entered into against France, generously voted one hundred thousand pounds sterling, for the relief of the unhappy sufferers; and this noble instance of public liberality was enhanced by the manner of conferring the benefit. A number of ships, laden with provisions and cloathing, were immediately dispatched for Lisbon, where they arrived so opportunely, as to preserve thousands from dying of hunger and cold. † † Smollet. |