More serious disturbances occurred at Villa Nova de Foz-Coa, arising from the same popular intolerance and love of rapine. That town, one of the most flourishing in Beira Alta, owed in great part its prosperity to its position at the confluence of the Coa with the Douro. A considerable trade in silk, and in rice, salt-fish, and other articles of foreign importation, brought thither by the river from Porto, was carried on with the adjacent country, and with the Spaniards of the border. This trade was mostly in the hands of persons who, because they were of Jewish extraction, were believed by the vulgar to be still attached in heart to the Mosaic law. The cry of Down with the French, was coupled here with Kill the Jews; ... their houses were attacked, their goods plundered, their persons abused, their lives threatened and seriously endangered, and more than twenty of the wealthiest families in that country reduced to utter ruin by the complete destruction of their property. Some of these unhappy persons effected their escape to Moncorvo; and, because they were protected there, and the Junta of that town endeavoured to restore order at Villa Nova, hostilities ensued between the two townships. The evil spread; and if the Junta of Moncorvo had not arrested during the night some movers of sedition in their town, and seized also some of the ringleaders from Villa Nova, who had crossed the Douro, the province of Tras os Montes would soon have suffered all the evils of civil war, exasperated by a spirit of fanaticism, such as existed in the worst ages of superstition and ignorance. The New-Christians were accused of assisting the French with money, blaspheming God, cursing the Prince, ♦NEVES, IV. 245–263.♦ defiling the crucifix, and finally, of Manicheism! When a judicial inquiry was afterwards instituted concerning the riots, depositions to this effect were made against them upon oath! ♦TROUBLES AT VISEU.♦