Never did any event arouse the patriotic resentment of a people, as Spain’s was aroused, by the ignominy of witnessing her lawful King deposed, to enable an adventurer to assume his crown. The French Emperor marched army after army into the country, to establish the new dynasty by overawing the people into submission. But army corps led by marshals, whose names had theretofore been the synonyms of victory, only intensified the spirit of resistance. As one man, from the shore of the Mediterranean to the Bay of Biscay, the population flew to arms. Mountain and plain, hill and valley, rang with their battle cry as they hastened to their cities, towns, and villages, to be organized into military commands. The patriotic passion that fired every heart in the Kingdom, was shared by Spaniards in every quarter of the globe. Of the sympathy of Pensacola with the great patriotic movement in the mother country, there exists memorials in the names of some of its streets, and its chief public square. It was in the fervor of that sympathy that the square received the name of the exiled monarch; a token of loyalty, of which, however, he proved himself unworthy by his conduct after his restoration to the throne. Never had a monarch a better opportunity of making his reign happy and illustrious, and never did one under such conditions make it a source of greater shame to himself, and misery to his people. He was not by nature a cruel, or a bad man; but he was neither firm nor truthful; two weaknesses in a ruler which may prove as fruitful a source of political crimes as a natural inclination to evil actions. In his first proclamation after re-ascending the throne, amid the enthusiastic joy of his people, he said, “I detest, I abhor despotism;” yet he, afterwards, lent himself to schemes which deprived Spain of constitutional government, restored the inquisition, and led to proscriptions involving the lives of some of the patriots who had contributed so largely to the restoration of his crown. The cruel and despotic policy of his advisers, at length, drove the liberal party into a widespread revolt, which would have resulted in his permanent dethronement, but for the intervention of the French, who, in 1823, enabled him by their arms to keep on his head the crown they had snatched from it in 1808. But, if in the chief square of the town there be a reminder of a perfidious monarch, there are in some of its streets memorials of Spanish glory. The English names of those streets were changed to the names they bear, at the time when the events with which the latter are associated occurred, and were designed to be commemorative monuments of the glory shed upon old Spain by the illustrious deeds of her sons. Upon their being monumental, must rest the apology for a slight retracing of their legends, which would otherwise be out of place in this book.