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[51] could soothe Florida Blanca no more. His well-
Chap. I.} 1778.
grounded sensitiveness was inflamed, till it became a continual state of morbid irritability; and, from the time when the court of France resolved to treat with the Americans, his prophetic fears could never for a moment be lulled to rest.

Portugal, which in the seven years war, with the aid of England, escaped absorption by Spain, seemed necessarily about to become an ally of the British king. Its harbors, during the last year of the ministry of Pombal, were shut against the vessels of the United States; and congress, on the thirtieth of

1776. Dec. 30.
December, 1776, resenting the insult, was willing to incur its enmity, as the price of the active friendship of Spain.1 But when, two months later, on the
1777. Feb. 24.
twenty-fourth of February, 1777, the weak-minded, superstitious Maria the First succeeded to the throne, Pombal retired before reactionary imbecility. Portugal, in exchange for a tract of land conterminous to Brazil, withdrew from the La Plata, and was scarcely heard of again during the war.

In the south-east of Europe, the chief political

1778.
interest for the United States centred in the joint rulers of the Austrian empire. The Danube, first of rivers of the old world, rolled through their dominions between valleys of exuberant fertility towards the great inland sea which drains a larger surface of Europe than the Mediterranean. Yet the culture and commerce of the eastern lands of the crown, by which alone their house could become great, were set aside as secondary objects, so that the mighty stream flowed almost in silence towards the Euxine.

1 Secret Journals of Congress, II. 40-44.

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