on the Honduras coast, while France gave up Canada, the Louisiana territory east of the Mississippi, and several islands in the West Indies.

Charles had able ministers in the persons of Squilaci, Grimaldi, Campomanes, and the Count de Aranda, under the last of whom was consummated the expulsion of the Jesuits from Spain, in March, 1767. Their order was suppressed by Pope Clement XIV, in 1773. Succeeding Aranda came Don José Moñino, afterward Count of Floridablanca, as prime minister. He was in power when the American colonies of Great Britain declared their independence, and, like France, sided with the colonies-not because of love for them or sympathy with their aims, but because of an apparent opportunity offering for striking a blow at England through her colonial possessions.

An insurrection in Peru, guided by the Inca, Tupac Amaru, had to be crushed, but Spain joined with France in a desperate attempt to retake Gibraltar, and in naval demonstrations, with the customary results that they were repulsed from the Great Rock, and their fleets destroyed or scattered, particularly in the West Indies. In 1783, at the Peace of Versailles, at which the independence of the United States was established, Florida

and Minorca were restored to Spain, but the loss her navy had sustained was irreparable.

In 1786 a peace was declared between Spain and Algiers, by which thousands of Spanish captives were released from slavery, and the piratical incursions from which the coast country had long suffered were ended. Two years later Charles III passed away, at the age of seventy-three, having done much. to earn the gratitude of his country.

WHEN, at the age of forty, in 1789, Charles IV ascended the throne of Spain, he for a while retained in power his father's great prime minister, Floridablanca; but soon, it seems, his wisdom failed him. After dallying awhile with this faithful servant, who was succeeded by Count Cabarrus, then by the patriot Jovellanos, Charles gave up all attempts to rule wisely, and abandoned himself utterly to the guidance of his wife, who was as capricious and depraved as any of her sex who had ever before ruled over a Spanish king. In 1792 the queen managed to install her own favourite, Manuel Godoy, a young man of low birth, in the seat of the statesman Aranda, and had him raised to the rank of a Spanish grandee, as Duke of Alcudia. Henceforth, for many years, poor Spain was to witness the

humiliating spectacle of a good-natured but weak sovereign, ruled by his vicious wife and her creature, and to become familiar with family scandals which were a disgrace to the nation.

Perhaps Charles would have made mistakes enough if he had been left to himself, for early in his reign the world was amazed at the horrible cruelties of the French Revolution, and he, as a Bourbon allied to the family of Louis XVI, was placed in a most embarrassing position when the excesses of the revolutionists culminated in the execution of the king. All Spain rose in protest against this barbarous act, and urged King Charles to declare for vengeance; but he sat supinely in his palace, and did nothing more than to send a feeble protest and a feebler army against the regicides. The new-born republic did not wait, however, for him to declare war, but sent a force into Spain, which quickly invaded the frontier and soon defeated the allied Spanish and Portuguese in several battles. The triumphant republicans were only checked when they held the peninsula at their mercy, for, as history has told us, they were at the outset invincible. They snatched victories from defeats, turned defeats into victories: these desperate outlaws, battling against the rights of kings and the oppres

sions of a decadent nobility. They were equally victorious over the allied armies in the Netherlands also, and soon we have the edifying spectacle of this Bourbon King of Spain entering into treaty with the red-handed murderers of his royal kinsman. This was in 1795, at the Treaty of Basel, arranged by the vainglorious Godoy, who won thereby great rewards in lands and honours, and also the title of the "Prince of Peace." Further, by the Treaty of Ildefonso, in 1796, distracted Spain turned completely around and entered into an offensive and defensive alliance with France against England. Retribution was swift and sure, for the next year her fleet was shattered at the naval fight of Cape St. Vincent, Cadiz was attacked by the English, and she lost the island of Trinidad in the West Indies, besides having her merchant marine ruined and her colonial trade all but destroyed.

At the instigation of Napoleon, who was now foremost in the affairs of France, Spain declared war against her sister kingdom, Portugal, though sorely against her will, as -if for no other reason-the queen's favourite daughter, Carlota, was the wife of the Prince Regent of Portugal. But in 1801 that kingdom was overrun by an army composed of seventy-five thousand men, fifteen thousand of which were French and sixty thousand