Note 1334 — Chapter VIII

Dunlop's Memoirs, vol. ii. pp. 224, 225. In 1680, Madame de Villars, the wife of the French Ambassador, writes from Madrid, that such was the state of affairs there, that her husband thought it advisable that she should return home. Lettres de Madame de Villars, Amsterdam, 1769, p. 169. A letter written by the Danish ambassador in 1677, describes every house in Madrid as regularly armed from top to bottom; ‘de haut en bas.’ Mignet, Négociations relatives à la Succession, vol. iv. p. 638, Paris, 1842, 4to. The deaths from starvation are said to have been particularly numerous in Andalusia. See Tapia, Civilizacion Española, vol. iii. p. 167. ‘En Andalucia especialmente moria mucha gente de hambre, y el consulado de Sevilla envió una diputacion para representar que aquella ciudad habia quedado reducida á la cuarta parte de la poblacion que habia tenido cincuenta años antes.’ On the state of the people generally, in 1680, compare Lettres de Villars, pp. 145, 152, 161.