Poor Spain, as usual, was plucked of many of her gaudiest feathers; and thus, after thirteen years of warfare, she became blessed with a prince of the house of Bourbon instead of one of the house of Hapsburg; the only difference between the two being that one was French, the other Austrian, and neither with more than a trace of Spanish blood to substantiate a claim to the throne of Isabella and Ferdinand.
Woefully had Spain descended in the scale of nations, and basely had she mingled her blood with foreign elements, until she could no longer claim as a ruler one nearly allied to the proud nobles of Castile or Aragon. She only knew that a degenerate Bourbon had replaced an equally degenerate Hapsburg; but she must have loved the foreigner greatly, for a descendant of the Bourbon sits on the throne of Spain to-day.
In justice to Philip V—to give him his new title—it may be said that Spain has been less wisely ruled than she was by him. The death of his imperial grandfather, in 1715, tempted him to break his pledges at the Treaty of Utrecht and aspire to the throne of France; but England’s fleets and the “Quadruple Alliance” soon brought him to his senses, and he abandoned all thoughts of a dual empire.
Fortunately, the country was not yet entirely drained of its resources; its people had still a little vitality remaining, and after a reign of forty-six years Philip left his kingdom in rather better condition than he had found it. Having still half the world tributary to that kingdom, the colonies of America, continually pouring into the Spanish treasury the golden products of mine and soil, the country needed only peace to enable it to recuperate. This period of rest it found during the reign of Philip’s successor and son, Ferdinand VI, who entered upon the kingly state at the death of his father, in 1746.
As so frequently happens, the best king has the shortest reign, and Ferdinand lived but thirteen years after falling heir to the crown. But these were years of tranquility and progress, during which impoverished Spain deigned to take stock of her own resources and did not go abroad to rob her neighbours. Internal improvements were carried out, roads and canals built, agriculture fostered, oppressive taxes equalized, ship-building and foreign trade encouraged. The nucleus of a navy was gathered, and at the end of this reign it consisted of more than eighty frigates and ships of the line, valued at sixty million dollars.
Strange as it may seem, the Church was the greatest enemy of the people—at least, of the people’s material welfare. In the time of Ferdinand VI it had a revenue of three hundred and fifty-nine million dollars, which was greater than that of the state, and there were one hundred and eighty thousand clerical or non-producing people connected with it. The king did not interfere with its liberties, but he took steps to limit the power of the Pope, so that indiscriminate appointments were prevented; and he hindered the work of the Inquisition so much that it had but ten victims during his reign, as against one thousand during the reign of his father, and was, at last, almost starved out!
By the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1748, the War of the Austrian Succession, into which Philip V had been drawn, was brought to a close and the heroic Maria Theresa confirmed in her rights. And though there was danger of trouble with England, over the “asiento,” it was obviated by concessions from Spain to the former’s great advantage. This asiento—literally a contract—was a special agreement by which the ships of England were entitled to trade to a certain extent with Spanish colonies, those of other nations being prohibited, especially in negro slaves from Africa.
The Seven Years’ War, which broke out in 1756 between Prussia and England on one hand, and Austria, France, and Sweden on the other, was a severe strain upon Spain’s neutrality, for both sides sought her aid. Ferdinand, however, wisely abstained from war, even though Pitt, the great English minister, offered him back Gibraltar, to reconquer which Spain had fought desperately and besieged in vain, with the assistance of the French. He still remained neutral, and Gibraltar yet rears its defiant crest under the folds of Britain’s flag.
Ferdinand’s beloved consort died in 1758, and, unlike his father in similar circumstances, he did not console himself with another, but sincerely mourned the good Barbara of Portugal, and was faithful to her memory until his own demise the following year. Altogether, Ferdinand’s reign was in such beneficent contrast to others which had preceded it that we could wish it had been prolonged. It was to his able ministers, Enseñada and Carvajal, that the country was indebted for so much; but as the king would have been held accountable had they been evil counsellors, so he is entitled to credit for following their advice.
And so, when his successor and brother, Charles III, took possession of the throne, he was most agreeably surprised to find—what had not occurred before since Isabella’s time—a surplus in the treasury! To be sure, much of it, if not all, was due to the fact that the national debt had not been paid for many years; but still the credit of it belongs to the frugal Ferdinand. When Charles III came to the throne, in 1759, he brought with him an invaluable experience of a twenty-five-years’ reign as King of Naples. In the main, he followed in Ferdinand’s footsteps, yet in 1762 he joined with France in the “family compact,” by which the Bourbons engaged to support each other against all others, and this precipitated the war with England, in which, as usual, Britain came out with the lion’s share of territory. Havana in Cuba, Trinidad, Manila, and the famed Acapulco galleon with three million dollars, besides other immense booty estimated at fifteen million dollars, fell into the hands of the English. By the treaty of peace, 1763, Spain got back her principal ports only by ceding Florida to the English, and the valuable rights for cutting logwood on the Honduras coast, while France gave up Canada, the Louisiana territory east of the Mississippi, and several islands in the West Indies.