Albert Frederick Calvert

Southern Spain Albert Frederick Calvert

Yet it was this bloated, purse-proud city, strangely enough, that proved the ark of refuge for Spain when the innumerable hosts of Napoleon swarmed over the land. Here were preserved the insignia of national independence, and here, amid the thunder of guns and in the lap of the ocean, was born the New and Free Spain. Cadiz proved a second Covadonga. The focus of the constitutional movement, she was savagely assailed by the Absolutists and their French allies. The defence of Trocadero, on the other side of the bay, against the forces of the Duc d'Angoulême popularized the name of the place throughout Europe. The pages of Balzac abound in allusions to that mischievous and futile attempt of the Government of the Restoration to rivet on Spaniards fetters that no Frenchman would wear. Then came a French invasion of another sort, of the Romanticists-of De Musset and Gautier, and the long-haired followers of Byron.