the Emperor. The Queen acted as Regent, and, child as she was,
seems to have been quite as competent to govern the kingdom as
her husband or any of his ministers.

In August 1702, an armament, under the command of the Duke of
Ormond, appeared off Cadiz. The Spanish authorities had no funds
and no regular troops. The national spirit, however, supplied, in
some degree, what was wanting. The nobles and farmers advanced
money. The peasantry were formed into what the Spanish writers
call bands of heroic patriots, and what General Stanhope calls "a
rascally foot militia." If the invaders had acted with vigour and
judgment, Cadiz would probably have fallen. But the chiefs of the
expedition were divided by national and professional feelings,
Dutch against English, and land against sea. Sparre, the Dutch
general, was sulky and perverse. Bellasys, the English general,
embezzled the stores. Lord Mahon imputes the ill-temper of Sparre
to the influence of the republican institutions of Holland. By
parity of reason, we suppose that he would impute the peculations
of Bellasys to the influence of the monarchical and
aristocratical institutions of England. The Duke of Ormond, who
had the command of the whole expedition, proved on this occasion,
as on every other, destitute of the qualities which great
emergencies require. No discipline was kept; the soldiers were
suffered to rob and insult those whom it was most desirable to
conciliate. Churches were robbed, images were pulled down; nuns
were violated. The officers shared the spoil instead of punishing
the spoilers; and at last the armament, loaded, to use the words
of Stanhope, "with a great deal of plunder and infamy," quitted
the scene of Essex's glory, leaving the only Spaniard of note who
had declared for them to be hanged by his countrymen. The fleet