Meanwhile the Cubans proved their passionate affection for their mother country by refusing to acknowledge the Napoleonic supremacy, and even by openly joining the enemies of their deposed sovereigns. Every member of the Cuban National Assembly took the oath to preserve his country for his former king. Such ardent patriotism won the island the proud title of "Cuba la sempre Fiel!"--"Cuba the ever Faithful." The restoration of the Spanish monarchy, in 1814, was hailed with the utmost enthusiasm by the colonists. Nevertheless, even at this time, feuds between the Spaniards and the Cubans were frequent, the latter lampooning the former as Godas or Goths; and it is even said that when the Spanish ladies wore their hair long, the Cuban Senōras cropped theirs short--whence the name of pelonas (croppies) given them by their rivals to this day. Well would it have been for Spain had she availed herself of this outburst of loyalty in the richest corner still left to her of her once prodigious empire! But insensate counsels prevailed, and the mother country, by her ruthless abuse of Cuban confidence, gave fresh and lamentable proof of her incapacity for colonial government. It must be admitted that, whether at home or abroad, the Spaniards have never been an easily governed people. The renowned Guicciardini, Florentine ambassador to Ferdinand the Catholic, reports a very interesting conversation with that monarch concerning his subjects. "Ah!" said the father of our Katherine of Aragon, "the Spaniards were ever essentially a nation of warriors, and also most undisciplined! Everybody wants to be at the top of the tree, and nobody consents to obey. The soldiers are better than their officers. Every Spaniard knows how to fight, but none knows how to command either himself, or others." Whereupon the Florentine historian adds, by way of rider--"This, in all probability, is because discord is natural to the Spaniards,--an illustrious, but arrogant, irritable, and turbulent, though generous, race!" If they were unmanageable in the days of their grandeur, when they had all the wealth of the Indies at command, we may easily conceive what they must be now, when they have fallen from the position of the richest, to that of the poorest, nation in Europe.