DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.47347#0024
8
HISTORICAL ESSAY ON
profound Spanish historian1 has made very just remarks on
this subject, demonstrating that this order of succession had
for its result to unite the different portions and the different
civilizations of Spain into a single realm, and at the same
time to uphold the political importance of Spain by main-
taining the relations established between Spain and the
other states of the continent. It behoved Spain, says
another still more distinguished Spanish writer2, to en-
deavour to put an end to that state of intestine division into
which it had been thrown by being parcelled out into a
number of petty kingdoms, and to secure herself from the
baneful effects of her geographical separation from the rest
of Europe. Spain, but for her common law, according to
which females have from the remotest times succeeded to
the crown, in default of direct male heirs, and but for the
great number of marriages between members of the various
petty dynasties of the Peninsula—Spain, we repeat, would
never have attained that territorial unity, which forms the
basis of her strength, and to which she owes the political
greatness of her epochs of glory. But for the renewal of
her royal family, brought about from time to time by the
marriage of her hereditary princesses with the princes of
the greatest sovereign families of Europe, Spain would have
fallen into a state of melancholy and pernicious isolation.
She would have separated herself by degrees from the great
system of the European states, to which, indeed, she is
attached merely by one point of her territory. It is, there-
fore, not saying too much to assert that, if Spain has con-
stituted herself into a great monarchy, and hitherto held an
independent rank among the civilized nations of Europe, it
1 Ferreras, Historia de Espana, Madrid, 1716; lib. ii. cap. 14.
2 Mariana, Historia de Espana, published by Doctor Sabau; Madrid, 1828,
lib. i. cap. 3.
HISTORICAL ESSAY ON
profound Spanish historian1 has made very just remarks on
this subject, demonstrating that this order of succession had
for its result to unite the different portions and the different
civilizations of Spain into a single realm, and at the same
time to uphold the political importance of Spain by main-
taining the relations established between Spain and the
other states of the continent. It behoved Spain, says
another still more distinguished Spanish writer2, to en-
deavour to put an end to that state of intestine division into
which it had been thrown by being parcelled out into a
number of petty kingdoms, and to secure herself from the
baneful effects of her geographical separation from the rest
of Europe. Spain, but for her common law, according to
which females have from the remotest times succeeded to
the crown, in default of direct male heirs, and but for the
great number of marriages between members of the various
petty dynasties of the Peninsula—Spain, we repeat, would
never have attained that territorial unity, which forms the
basis of her strength, and to which she owes the political
greatness of her epochs of glory. But for the renewal of
her royal family, brought about from time to time by the
marriage of her hereditary princesses with the princes of
the greatest sovereign families of Europe, Spain would have
fallen into a state of melancholy and pernicious isolation.
She would have separated herself by degrees from the great
system of the European states, to which, indeed, she is
attached merely by one point of her territory. It is, there-
fore, not saying too much to assert that, if Spain has con-
stituted herself into a great monarchy, and hitherto held an
independent rank among the civilized nations of Europe, it
1 Ferreras, Historia de Espana, Madrid, 1716; lib. ii. cap. 14.
2 Mariana, Historia de Espana, published by Doctor Sabau; Madrid, 1828,
lib. i. cap. 3.