The Decline of Spain.--Lack of Progress.--In this advance and progress Spain did not share. The empire of Napoleon was never established in the Peninsula. In 1811 the Spaniards, with, the assistance of the English under the great general, Wellington, repulsed the armies of the French. This victory, so gratifying to national pride, was perhaps a real loss to Spain, for the reforms which prevailed in other parts of Europe were never carried out in Spain, and she remains even yet unliberated from aristocratic and clerical power. A liberal constitutional government was, however, set up in Spain in 1812 by the Cortes; but in 1814 King Ferdinand, aided by the Spanish aristocracy and clergy, was able to overthrow this representative government and with tyrannical power to cast reforms aside. Fifty thousand people were imprisoned for their liberal opinions, the Inquisition was restored, the Cortes abolished, and its acts nullified. The effect of these acts upon the Philippines will be noticed presently. Separation of the Philippines from Mexico.--The events of these years served to separate the Philippines from their long dependency on Mexico. In 1813 the Cortes decreed the suppression of the subsidized Acapulco galleon. The Mexican trade had long been waning and voyages had become less profitable. The last of the galleons left Manila in 1811 and returned from Acapulco in 1815, never again to attempt this classical voyage. The cessation of these voyages only briefly preceded the complete separation from America. From the first period of settlement, the Philippines had in many respects been a sub-dependency of New Spain. Mexico had until late afforded the only means of communication with the mother-country, the only land of foreign trade. Mexican officials frequently administered the government of the Islands, and Mexican Indians formed the larger part of the small standing army of the Philippines, including the "Regiment of the King." As we have seen, a large subsidy, the situado, was annually drawn from the Mexican treasury to support the deficient revenues of the Philippines. Rebellion of the South American Countries.--But the grievances of the Spanish American colonists were very great and very real. The revolution which had successively stirred North America and Europe now passed back again to the Spanish countries of the New World, and between 1810 and 1825 they fought themselves free of Spain. The last of the colonies from which the Spaniards were forced to retire was Peru. Mexico achieved her separation in 1820. Spain lost every possession upon the mainland of both Americas, and the only vestiges of her once vast American empire were the rich islands of the Greater Antilles--Cuba and Porto Rico.