torture, had scarcely tended further to strengthen royal authority or
cement the union of the Spanish kingdoms; and those princes whose
domains still spread widely across the globe, had no longer to oppose
to Europe, during the long agony in which their race was perishing,
either an army, a fleet, a general, or even a statesman.

The first of the sovereigns summoned to assist in restoring this unhappy
country to its ancient grandeur was assuredly the least fitting to
accomplish such a task. But seventeen years old, when Charles II. chose
him for his successor, the Duke d'Anjou was indebted both to nature and
education for a mind rather constituted to serve than reign. Brother of
the heir to the French throne, he had been reared in studied
subordination towards the latter, and the discipline of Beauvilliers and
Fenelon, which had curbed the violence of character in the Duke of
Burgundy, had produced less beneficial effects in the melancholy
temperament of his younger brother. With a natural rectitude of thought
and a pride which at times revealed the hereditary haughtiness of his
race, Philip V. had in the same degree as his nephew Louis XV., whom he
resembled in many ways, that morbid weariness of life, that contempt for
mankind and distaste for business. He was afflicted, moreover, with that
fatal impotence of will which makes a libertine king the slave of his
mistresses, and, a faithful husband the passive instrument of a charming
queen who may happen to be prompted by the most skilful of councillors.

But nothing had as yet indicated the melancholy condition of mind which
later drove the young King to the confines of despair and insanity. On
his first entrance into his kingdom, escorted by a crowd of brilliant
nobles, Philip was radiant with youth and hope. He strode forwards
sustained by the strong arm of a people who thought to escape, by the
intervention of the most powerful sovereign in Europe, from the evils
of war, and more especially from that severance of the Spanish monarchy
more dreaded by the nation than all its other woes together. In a
capital which he was forced to quit on two several occasions, in a court
soon afterwards prostrated before his rival, and even in those provinces
of Arragon and Catalonia, the burning centres of civil war, nothing at
first was heard save shouts of joy and protestations of fidelity.
Nevertheless it did not need great sagacity to foresee the perils
reserved for the new estab