Page:Vol 4 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/21

Rh the influence of the church, he protects it. He is a man of talents and culture, less statesman than manager, and believing in autocracy and unquestioning obedience. But whatever the principles held in theory, put into practice through the agency of ignorant, indolent, and corrupt officials, they fall far short of their purpose. There is hostility with England in 1779-83. In 1781-2 Spain puts down an insurrection of the inca, Tupac Amaru, in Peru, and the thousand years' war with the Mahometans is terminated by the peace of Algiers in 1786.

With the accession of Carlos IV. ends the epoch of reform. Dismal indeed are the next thirty years, during which occur the grand humiliation at the hand of Bonaparte, and the loss of nearly all the transatlantic colonies. The king is a handsome, ignorant, good-natured imbecile; and his wife, Maria Luisa, an ambitious and passionate profligate, is the true ruler of Spain. Floridablanca and Aranda are alternately removed and recalled, finally to make way for Manuel Godoy, a young officer, and the queen's favorite, impudent, incompetent, ambitious, and thoroughly immoral, sycophant or conspirator according to the tide, but always villain. If politics, war, or intrigue become tiresome, he seeks relief in dissipation.

Under these baneful influences Spain sinks lower than ever. While the rulers are revelling in luxury and licentiousness, the poor throughout the land are crying for bread. Finances are wrecked, the army is rendered weak and worthless, and education and industry are again prostrated. Galicia and other provinces revolt, and presently the French are upon them, and Spain is little better than vassal.

The peace of Basel, 1795-6—as is called the frivolous farce which pretended to free the country of the French, while in reality placing the peninsula still more in their power, besides in its results completing the ruin of the navy, and preparing the way for the general revolt of the colonies—gives Godoy the name