since he has already recovered his country, and drove back the Spaniards
into the bosom of France.

The condition of the other Spanish army is such, as no enemy can wish
to be aggravated by new calamities. They are shut up in a country
without provisions, or of which the inhabitants are unwilling to
supply them: on one side are neutral states, to which the law of
nations bars their entrance; on another the Mediterranean sea, which
can afford them only the melancholy prospect of hostile armaments, or
sometimes of their own ships falling into the hands of the Britons;
behind them are the troops of Austria ready to embarrass their march,
intercept their convoys, and receive those whom famine and despair
incite to change their masters, and to seek among foreign nations that
ease and safety, of which the tyranny of their own government, and the
madness of their own leaders, has deprived them. Such is their
distress, and so great their diminution, that a few months must
complete their ruin, they must be destroyed without the honour of a
battle, they must sink under the fatigue of hungry marches, by which
no enemy is overtaken or escaped, and be at length devoured, by those
diseases, which toil and penury will inevitably produce.

That the diminution of the influence of the house of Bourbon is not an
empty opinion, which we easily receive, because we wish it to be true;
that other nations, likewise, see the same events with the same
sentiments, and prognosticate the decline of that power which has so
long intimidated the universe, appears from the declaration now made
by his majesty of the conduct of the Swedish court.

That nation which was lately governed by the counsels, and glutted
with the bounties of France, which watched the nod of her mighty