A System of Geography, Popular and Scientific

her dissatisfaction, and assist her imperious ally with an army of 24,000 men, which were drafted into Germany.

Revolution.] Scarcely had the peace of Tilsit put an end to the war between France, Prussia, and Russia, when a mysterious conspiracy of the prince of Asturias against his father-imputed by the Spaniards to the machinations of Godoi, the Prince de la Paz, a man completely subservient to Napoleon-furnished Napoleon with a new pretence for interfering in the affairs of the royal family of Spain. The palace of the Prince of Peace, who was known to have entered into a secret treaty with Napoleon for the partition of Portugal, was assailed in the night of the 17th of March by a furious mob, while the French troops were rapidly advancing upon the capital, and, on the 19th March, Charles IV. was compelled to abdicate the crown "in favour of his very dear son," Ferdinando Carlos. Napoleon, of course, refused to recognise the new king Ferdinand VII., but invited him to an interview at Bayonne. Meanwhile Murat entered Madrid, and a sort of military government was established in the metropolis, the French general, Grouchy, being made governor of the city, Ferdinand left Madrid on the 14th of April to meet Napoleon; and the anxiety of the people to learn the result of his interview soon rose to a ferocious height. It is well known that Napoleon having got Ferdinand into his power, compelled him to accede to the cession atrociously extorted from his father, and to renounce the rights accruing to him as Prince of Asturias. When the mockery of negotiation was at an end, the whole of the royal family were ordered to be sent into the interior of France. The 2d of May had been fixed on for the departure of the queen of Etruria and her brother for Bayonne, and it was reported among the agitated populace of Madrid, that the Infante, Don Antonia, the president of the provisional government, had been ordered by Murat to join his brother and nephew at Bayonne. Murat had recalled some troops to Madrid, and the people supposing that he intended to seize the person of the Infante, and make himself regent, rose en masse, and begun a desperate but ineffectua! struggle with the 60,000 French troops in the city. Buonaparte now summoned an assembly of the Notables, as he styled it, to be held at Bayonne on the 15th of June, and in the meantime confirmed Murat as lieutenant-general of the kingdom. On the 6th of June, he named his brother Joseph king of Spain and the Indies, and guaranteed to him the independence and integrity of his States in the four quarters of the world. Spain, however, did not so tamely submit to the insult as Holland. No sooner were the measures at Madrid and the transactions at Bayonne known, than they fled to arms over the whole peninsula. Asturias and Gallicia were the first provinces that raised the standard of freedom; Catalonia and Navarre were in the possession of the French; every where the flame burst forth, and Palafox, by his heroic defence of Saragossa, taught the people what they could achieve, and the French what they might expect from a generous nation in arms for the protection of all that was dearest to the heart of a Spaniard. The inhabitants of Seville called upon the constituted authorities to appoint a supreme board of government, and the choice fell upon men truly patriotic and enlightened, who, on the 6th of June 1808, issued a declaration of war against the emperor of France, from the palace of Alcazar, in Seville. In this instrument they protested that they would not lay down their arms till Napoleon had restored their king, Ferdinand VII., and the rest of the royal family, and manifested his resolution to respect the sacred rights of the nation which

he had violated.

One of the first measures of the junta of Asturias was to despatch two noblemen as deputies to crave the assistance of Britain, and nobly did the heart of England respond to the call! Arms, ammunition, and cloathing, were immediately despatched to the northern provinces ; the Spanish prisoners were released and sent home; and in the king's speech at the close of the session, Spain was recognised as a friend and ally. The French general Dupont was defeated by general Reding at Baylen, and surrendered to the victor; nevertheless, Joseph presented himself at Madrid, and assumed the reins of government, but was compelled to make a precipitate retreat within ten days. Napoleon having put himself at the head of the French armies in Spain, reinstated his brother in authority at Madrid on the 4th of December 1808. Sir John Moore at the head of the British troops which had been sent to Portugal, entered Spain and advanced against Soult; but the plan of the expedition was most unfortunate, and the first campaign of the British arms in Spain, closed with the hasty embarkation of our troops on the 17th of January 1809, after the fight of Corunna, in which the gallant Moore fell. Joseph's intentions were good, though in all respects he was but the tool of his imperial brother. He gave fair scope to national industry by abolishing all corporation rights and feudal immunities.

British Campaigns.] At the moment that the British army was retiring from the peninsula, a treaty was signed at London, between Great Britain and Spain, pronouncing an entire oblivion of all acts of hostility on either side in the course of the late wars, and in which his Britannic majesty engaged to continue to assist the Spanish nation in their arduous struggle against France. Fourteen thousand British troops had been left at Lisbon when the army under Sir John Moore began its march; these were subsequently reinforced, and Sir Robert Wilson had raised a body of 2,000 volunteers at Oporto. On the 22d of April 1809, Sir Arthur Wellesley landed at Lisbon and assumed the command, and, after five campaigns, distinguished by brilliant operations on the part of the allies, and persevering patriotism on the part of the Spanish nation, which our limits do not permit us to narrate, the French were, after the decisive battle of Vittoria, entirely driven from Spain, and the war tranferred to the soil of France.

Restoration of Ferdinand.] Buonaparte, finding the peninsula wrenched from his grasp, made a virtue of necessity, and released Ferdinand, who was no sooner at liberty, and the British arms removed from Spain, than he abolished, by a decree from Valencia, of the 4th of May 1814, the constitution given by the Cortes in 1812, and declared all the steps taken by that body and the regency to have been illegal. The tyranny of this wretched creature, who restored the Inquisition, excited a rebellion which broke out in certain regiments cantoned in the Island of Leon, and between Cadiz, Granada, and Seville, on the 1st of January 1820. At the head of this movement were the colonels Quiroga and Riego, the latter of whom in particular was a noble-minded man, sincerely devoted to the good of his country. The king opposed them with an army under the command of general Freyre; but numbers of his troops passed over to the rebels, and the wish for a new order of things was so vigorously evinced throughout the country, and even in Madrid itself, that the king found himself compelled, on the 7th of March 1820, to declare his willingness to swear to the constitution of the Cortes. This was done in the assembly of the Cortes on the 9th of July 1820, after which the

II.

2 11

Inquisition and torture were again abolished, the Jesuits sent out of Spain, and the press declared free. The court or Camerilla, and of course the clergy, were opposed to the new constitution, but it kept its ground in a bloody struggle with the royal guards at Madrid, on the 7th of July 1822. The Holy alliance were highly displeased with the new constitution of Spain, and their resolutions to this effect, drawn up at the Congress of Verona, were expressed to the Spanish ministry in a declaration dated the 6th of January 1823, while Great Britain, though she did not concur in those measures, did nothing to support the cause of liberty in Spain or to prevent an armed intervention. France had already placed a cordon sanitaire on the Spanish frontier, under the pretence of guarding against the introduction of the yellow fever from the latter country; but on the 7th of April 1823, a French army crossed the Bidassoa and occupied Madrid, while the king and the Cortes retired to Seville, and from thence to Cadiz. The French, experiencing very little resistance from the disunited people, advanced upon the latter city, and the Cortes seeing themselves foiled in every effort to protect the liberties of their country, dissolved themselves on the 28th of September 1823, by which step absolute power was again restored to the king, who appeared in the French head-quarters on the 1st of October, and having declared all transactions of the Cortes illegal, after his return to Madrid began to exercise his power with a cruelty which the duke of Angouleme, and the Russian ambassador, count Pozzo di Borgo, and count Guilleminot, who were at the head of the French troops, endeavoured in vain to mitigate. Several corps of Guerillas in different parts of Spain still resisted; and the gallant Riego was taken prisoner, and executed on the 7th of November 1823, under circumstances of the most atrocious cruelty. Part of the French army remained in the country to aid the restoration of order, while all liberals who were able to fly, sought refuge in France and Great Britain. A royal ordonnance issued in October 1824, named all the local magistrates throughout the kingdom, and thus annihilated the last right of the communes to elect their own magistrates. But in spite of the presence of the French troops, and the iron-hand with which the government acted against all those who dared to resist its plans, peace was far from being restored to Spain. The national debt had risen to 8,000 millions of reals; and the deficit in the revenue was, in 1824, 590 millions of reals; while, besides the liberal party in Spain, another arose which sought for a still more rigorous and absolute system than Ferdinand had power to establish, and which, headed by the most fanatical part of the priesthood, pretended to raise the Infant, Don Carlos, Ferdinand's brother, to the throne. This unhappy country still remains in a state of fermentation and misgovernment, from which it is to be feared it will not soon be released. The French troops have withdrawn from the country, and anarchy and misrule and wretchedness pervade it from one coast to the other.

Colonies.] In 1806 the Spanish American colonies began to revolt, and, with the exception of the islands of Cuba and Puerto Rico, they have since succeeded in emancipating themselves from the sway of the mother-country. The proceedings by which these new States have been established, will be more properly related when we come to the geography of America.

CHAP. II.-PHYSICAL FEATURES-CLIMATE AND PRODUCTIONS.

THE general elevation of this region is higher than that of any other European country. The appearance of Spain is in many places delightful, presenting an alternation of mountainous ridges and 'immense horizonbounded plains,' almost every where watered by considerable rivers with their smaller branches. The greater part of the country is fertile, and is covered with a luxuriant vegetation,-especially in the south, which in some places seems a garden in perpetual bloom. Indeed, with regard to external appearance, few countries equal Spain. The declination is towards the Atlantic and Mediterranean; but more towards the W. and S., than towards the N.

Mountains. Cantabrian Chain.] The mountains of Spain are regarded by German geographers as all belonging to the Pyrenean system. Upon inspecting the map, our readers will see six ridges of mountains, pervading the country in various directions, exclusive of the Pyrenean chain, dividing Spain from France, and already described in our article on the latter country. The most northern chain is an elongation of the Pyrenees. It runs in a westerly direction, separating Biscay from Navarre and Alava; and, passing to the south of the Asturias, terminates in different branches in the northern parts of Galicia. This chain goes under different appellations, as the Mountains of Biscay, the Sierra of Asturias, and the Mountains of Mondonedo. It is also known by the names of the Mountains of Santillana, or of Vindho. They were known to the Romans by the name of the Cantabrian Mountains, and the people inhabiting that lofty and rugged region were not brought under their dominion, till the time of Augustus.1 It was to this northern chain that the Goths were driven by the Moors, after the defeat and death of Roderic; and it was here, that under the brave Pelayo, they made a bold and successful stand,

'When Cava's traitor-sire first call'd the band,

That dyed Spain's mountain-streams with Gothic gore.'

Iberian Chain.] The second chain of Spanish mountains extends from near Soria on the N. E. to Portugal on the S. W. When it approaches the latter country it is distinguished by the name of Mount Gata. Pursuing its course through Portugal, it is known by the name of the Mountains of Estrella, and, dividing the province of Beira from Portuguese Estremadura, terminates a little to the N. of the mouth of the Tajo in the Cabo de Cintra. This range divides Old Castile from New Castile, and passes to the south of Salamanca, separating Leon from Spanish Estremadura. Its direction is very curvilinear. In the early part of its course it is called by the names of Guadarrama, Urbia, and Mons Carpetanus. The Sierras de Oca, de Moncago, de Molina, and de Cuenca are divisions of this ridge.

Sierra de Guadaloupe, &c.] The third range is a lateral ridge strik

If we except the Alps, Pyrenees, Apennines, and other chains in countries civilized at an early period, and in which men are found able to generalize and classify, there is perhaps not one range of mountains in the world distinguished by an uniform appellation. It may be observed here, that the term Sierra-which is peculiar to Spainmeans a chain of mountains whose successive peaks present to the view the appearance This term is also frequently used in Spanish America with reference to mountainous peaks rising in successive elevation.

of a saw.

ing off from the northern chain, at the Asturian frontiers, and running in a south-eastern direction between Old Castile and Navarre, till it arrives at the frontiers of Arragon, and changes its course to the S. W., where a fourth range, intersecting New Castile, and entering Estremadura, terminates to the north of the Guadiana near the Portuguese frontier. This range assumes different names in different parts of its progress; but is denominated, in the early part of its course, the Mountains of Toledo, or Guadaloupe. The second and third ranges-which may be justly termed the central ridges of Spain-appear to be chiefly granitic.

Sierra Morena.] As we approach the south, a low fifth range appears, called the Sierra Morena, or the Brown Mountains,' and which, in the latter times of Saracen domination, constituted the boundary between Moorish and Christian Spain. It commences to the S. W. of Cuenca in New Castile, and passing through La Mancha and part of Estremadura, terminates in Cape St Vincent, about 70 English miles to the N. W. of Seville in Andalusia. This chain is also known to geographers under the name of the Montes Mariani.

Sierra Nevada.] The sixth range commences to the eastward of the range last mentioned, and, bending in a south-western, and then in a direction almost due west, separates in its course the provinces of Granada and Murcia from Andalusia, and terminates to the north-east of Cadiz. This range is denominated the Sierra Nevada, or the Snowy ridge,' from having its lofty summits covered the whole year with snow and ice; and must be very elevated from the circumstance of its being visible, in a clear day, from the opposite coast of Africa. This chain takes consecutively the denominations of Sierra de Gador, de Nevada, de Bermeja, and de Ronda. The perpetual snow-line on the Sierra Nevada begins at the height of 3,305 varas or 9,171 English feet above the level of the sea. On the other ranges it seldom lies above a few months. Many of the Spanish mountains are entirely barren, and exhibit nothing but a naked assemblage of the most picturesque crags; others are covered with a scanty crop of grass and brushwood; but some, particularly in the Cantabrian ridge, the Sierras Morena and Nevada, and in Catalonia, Navarre, and Arragon, are clothed with magnificent forests. Firs, oaks, and cork-trees grow in the higher regions; chesnuts, tamarisks, pines, and beeches clothe the lower.

The height of the principal mountains of Spain is given in the subjoined note. 2

Height of the principal mountains of Spain.

Cumbre de Mulahacen in the Sierra Nevada of Granada,
Picacho de Venteta,

do.

Alpujarras of Granada, by Pluer,

do.

Inferior limit of perpetual snow, in the Mulahacen,