the first in the series of armed interventions for the purpose-not merely, as in 1792, of sustaining a constitutional monarchy against an aggressive and propagandist republic but-of extinguishing peaceful constitutional monarchies FREELY ACCEPTED BY THE MONARCHS !! THE CONSPIRACY OF LAYBACH AND VERONA. THE crash of thrones in Spain and Italy fell on the ears of the conspiring despots of Germany like thunder from a cloudless sky. The subterranean fire they had just stifled under their feet, seemed to roll on underground till it broke out, like the shock of an earthquake, in the two extreme peninsulas of Europe. That Spain and Italy, the chosen seats of despotism, and its sworn ally, superstition, should thus confess the power of the revolutionary mania, was of startling import to the sovereigns. It seemed to betoken the universal and ineradicable nature of the plague. It was like blows received in the house of a friend. Spain had in three centuries sunk from the freest to the most despotic country in Europe. The thunder of the French revolution failed to rouse it. It did not wake till Napoleon's assault stirred its blood and woke its ire, and the insults of a foreign despotism kindled anew the fire in the trampled and besotted spirit of its children. From 1808 till 1813 the war for independence raged with a fury else |