CHAP. Italy, partook more of the character of its northern than IX. of its southern neighbours. Its soldiers, chiefly drawn from the mountains of Savoy, Liguria, or the Maritime Piedmont. Alps, were brave, docile, and enterprising, and, under 1792. 69. Victor Amadeus, had risen to the highest distinction in the commencement of the eighteenth century. The regular army amounted to thirty thousand infantry, and three thousand five hundred cavalry; but, besides this, the government could summon to its support fifteen thousand militia, who, in defending their mountain passes, rivalled the best troops in Europe. These were chiefly employed during the war in guarding the fortresses; and the number of these, joined to the natural strength of the country, and its important situation, as holding the keys of the great passes over the Alps, gave this state a degree of military importance beyond what could have been anticipated from its physical strength."1 Sunk in obscure marshes, crushed by the naval supremacy of England, and cooped up in a corner of Europe, the political importance of the Dutch republic had fallen in a great degree in the scale of Europe. Its army was still composed of forty-four thousand men, and its fortified towns and inundations gave it the same means of defence which had formerly been so gloriously exerted; but the resolution of the inhabitants was by no means at that time equal to the strength of their situation. A long period of peace had weakened the military spirit of the people, and their chief defence was placed in the wretched assistance of auxiliary troops, which never enabled the republic, during the subsequent contests, to bring thirty thousand men into the field. The world at this period was far from anticipating the glorious stand which the Dutch subsequently made, in 1832, against the hostility by land and sea of the two greatest powers in Europe. Animated by stronger passions, descended from more fiery progenitors, and inured to a more varied climate, the people of the Spanish peninsula were calculated to per IX. 1792. form a more distinguished part in the strife for European CHAP. freedom. This singular and mixed race united to the tenacity of purpose which distinguished the Gothic the fiery enterprise which characterised the Moorish blood. Centuries of almost unbroken repose had neither extinguished the one nor abated the other; and the conqueror of Europe erroneously judged the temper of her people, when he measured it by the inglorious reigns of the Bourbon dynasty. The nobles, degenerated by political nullity and long-continued intermarriage with each other, were indeed incapable of strenuous exertion, and the reigning family had none of the qualities calculated to command success. But the peasantry, bold, prosperous, and independent, presented the materials for a resolute army; and the priesthood, possessed of an unlimited sway over the minds of the lower orders, were animated by the most inextinguishable hatred at the principles of the French Revolution. The decay of its national strength, falsely ascribed by superficial writers to the drain of colonial enterprise, and the possession of the mines of America, was really owing to the barbarous banishment of the Moors and Jews, the most industrious inhabitants of the kingdom, the accumulation of estates in the hands of communities and noble families, and the predominant influence of the Catholic priesthood, which for centuries had rendered that fine kingdom little else than a cluster of convents, surrounded by a hardy peasantry. But though these causes had rendered Spain incapable of any sustained foreign enterprise, they had not in the least diminished its aptitude for internal defence; and the people, who in every age 1 Foy,ii.143, have there made common cause with the king and the 144, 151, nobles, flew to arms with unequalled enthusiasm, when Jovell. 171. Napier, i. their loyalty was awakened by the captivity of their 4, 5. sovereign, and their fanaticism roused by the efforts of their The exports of Spain to her colonies in 1790, were £15,000,000 annually; nearly as much as those of Great Britian at this time (1840) to her colonies, which amount to £16,280,000.-See HUMBOLDT, Nouvelle Espagne, iv. 153, 154. 160, 170. IX. 1792. CHAP. pastors. By a just retribution, the first great reverse of the French arms was occasioned by the spirit of religious resistance nourished by their first flagrant acts of injustice; and the disaster of Baylen would not have arisen, nor the bones of five hundred thousand French whitened the plains of Spain, but for the confiscation of the property of the French church by the Constituent Assembly. forces. 72. The nominal military strength of Spain, at the comIts military mencement of the Revolution, was one hundred and forty thousand men ; but this force was far from being effective, and in the first campaigns the cabinet of Madrid, though they reinforced their army by thirty-six battalions on the breaking out of the war, were never able to raise their force in the field to eighty thousand combatants. But on occasion of the invasion in 1808, an immense insurrectionary force sprang up in every part of the country. These undisciplined levies, however, though occasionally brave, like the Turks, in defending walls, were miserably deficient in the essential qualities of regular soldiers. They had neither the steadiness, mutual confidence, nor conduct necessary for success in the field. Accordingly, they were almost invariably routed in every encounter ; and but for the tenacity of purpose arising from their character, ignorance, and habit of boasting, which effectually concealed the extent of their disasters from all but the sufferers under them, and the continued presence of a large 1 Napier, i. English force in the field, the war would have been terJom. i. 240. minated soon after its commencement, with very little trouble to the French Emperor.1 237 et seq. 73. The Spanish soldiers have never exhibited in the wars Character of of the Revolution that firmness in the field which forthe Spanish merly distinguished their infantry at Pavia, Rocroi, and in army. the Low Countries. They have been distinguished rather by the tumultuary habits and tendency to abandon their colours on the first reverse, which belong to the troops of tropical climates, and which characterised their forefathers in the Roman wars. It would seem as if the long residence of IX. 1792. their ancestors in a warm climate had melted away the CHAP. indomitable valour which distinguished the Gothic race in the frozen realms whence they originally came. Military glory was held in little esteem; hardly four of the grandees were to be found, in 1792, in the army or naval service. But the peasantry evinced throughout the war the most obstinate and enduring spirit. Though routed on numberless occasions, they almost always rallied, as in the days of Sertorius, in more favourable circumstances; and, though 1 Jom. i. deserted by nearly all the nobility, they maintained a pro- 242, 243. longed contest with the conqueror of Northern Europe.1 land. 74. de la Suisse, Cradled in snowy mountains, tilling a sterile soil, and habituated to severe habits, the Swiss peasantry exhibited Switzerthe same features which have always rendered them so celebrated in European wars. Their lives were as simple, their courage as undaunted, their patriotism as warm, as those of their ancestors who died on the fields of Morat or Morgarten. Formidable in defence, however, their numerical strength, which did not exceed thirty-eight thousand Statistique regular soldiers, rendered them of little avail in the great 102. contests which rolled round the feet of their mountains. Occasions, indeed, were not wanting when they displayed the ancient virtue of their race: their conflicts in Berne and Underwalden, at the time of the French invasion, equalled the far-famed celebrity of their wars of independence; and, amidst the disgraceful defection of the 10th August, the Swiss guards alone remained faithful to the fortunes of Louis, and merited, by their death, the touching inscription on the graves at Thermopyla: "Go, stranger! and at Lacedæmon tell, That here, obedient to her laws, we fell." Such was the state of the principal European powers at the commencement of the French Revolution. A spirit of gentleness pervaded the political world, the effect of VOL. II. * "Dic, hospes, Sparta, nos te hìc vidisse jacentes, 2 C IX. 1792. CHAP. increasing knowledge and long - continued prosperity. Even the most despotic empires were ruled with a lenity unknown in former times, and the state prisons of all the European monarchies would probably have exhibited as few inmates as the Bastille when it was stormed in 1789. this epoch. Ever since the termination of the general war in 1763, a 75. State of so Europe at growing spirit of improvement had pervaded the European states, and repeatedly called forth the praises of the contemporary annalists. Agriculture had risen into universal esteem; kings were setting the example of cultivating the soil; and a large portion of the nobility were everywhere lending their aid to improve that first and best of human pursuits. Leopold in Tuscany and Flanders, and Louis in France, were ardently engaged in the amelioration of their dominions. Even in the regions of the north, the spirit of improvement was steadily advancing. The able exertions of Frederick had nearly doubled in a single reign the resources of his dominions; and in Poland and Russia, the example of gradually enfranchising the serfs had been set with the happiest success. The haughtiness and pride of aristocratic birth were steadily yielding to the influence of extending wants and an enlarged commerce, and in many of the European states the highest offices under government were held by persons of plebeian birth. Necker, Vergennes, and Sartines, who successively held the most important situations in France, were of this class. The Inquisition had been voluntarily abandoned in Parma, Placentia, Milan, and Modena, and toleration over all Europe had spread to a degree unknown in former times. All the remaining vestiges of that fierce spirit, which sullied with barbarism the lofty and romantic courtesy of ancient manners, were gradually softening away; and the flames of that religious zeal, which for two centuries had so often kindled the torch of civil discord, had greatly subsided. Every succeeding generation was of a character milder and gentler than the last. A diffusion of liberality was beginning to pervade the mass of mankind, |