Note 1329 — Chapter VIII

In the Clarendon State Papers, vol. i. p. 275, Oxford, 1767, folio, I find a letter written by Hopton to Secretary Windebank, dated Madrid, 31st May, 1635. The author of this official communication gives an account of the Spanish troops just raised, and says, ‘I have observed these levies, and I find the horses are so weak, as the most of them will never be able to go to the rendezvous, and those very hardly gotten, the infantry so unwilling to serve, as they are carried like galley-slaves, in chains, which serves not the turn, and so far short of the number that was proposed, as they come not to one of three.’ This was eight years before the battle of Rocroy; after it, matters became rapidly worse. A letter from Sir Edward Hyde to Secretary Nicholas, dated Madrid, 18th March, 1649–50, states, that Spanish ‘affairs are really in huge disorder, and capable of being rendered almost desperate;’ and another letter, on 14th April, 1650, ‘if some miracle do not preserve them, this crown must be speedily destroyed,’ Clarendon State Papers, vol. iii. pp. 13, 17, Oxford, 1786. An official Report on the Netherlands, presented to Louis XIV. in 1665, declares that the Dutch ‘considered Spain so weakened, as to be out of condition to renew the war within the next one hundred years.’ Raumer's History of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, illustrated by Original Documents, London, 1835, vol. i. p. 237. See also Mignet, Négociations relatives à la Succession d'Espagne, Paris, 1835–1842, 4to. vol. i. pp. 37, 38, 314, 315, vol. iii. p. 684, vol. iv. p. 218; and L'Estat de l'Espagne, Genève, 1681, pp. 83, 271. ‘L'Espagne faisant en nos jours plus de pitié que de peur à ceux qu'elle a tenus long-tems dans une crainte perpétuelle, et dans une respectueuse vénération.’ … ‘Aussi peut-on dire que les Espagnols qui étoient autrefois des lions, ou des véritables hommes et incomparables en valeur, sont maintenant des cerfs, ou des femmes, et enfin des personnes peu propres à la guerre.’ And finally, the Spanish explanation of all this in Yañez, Memorias, Prologo, pp. 148, 149, Madrid, 1723. ‘La Monarquia de España, cuya decadencia la avia yá Dios decretado desde el año de 1621,’ &c.; blasphemously ascribing to the Almighty, what was the result of their own folly, and obstinately shutting their eyes to the real cause of their ruin.