The rupture with Spain is an event of prime importance. Because her fleet was disastrously beaten by Jervis off Cape St. Vincent in February 1797, it has too often been assumed that she counted for little in the war. An examination of the British Records reveals the error of that assumption. The evacuation of Corsica and of the Mediterranean by the British forces resulted solely from the Spanish offensive. Though weak in herself, Spain held so strong a position in Europe and the West Indies as to endanger British enterprises at many points, besides threatening the coasts of Ireland. In truth, but for Spanish support in the Mediterranean, Bonaparte could never have ventured upon his Eastern expedition. Thus the defection of the Court of Madrid changed the character of the war. Thenceforth it revolved more and more around colonial questions, to the weakening of the royalist and republican motives which had worked so potently in its early stages. The oriental adventure of the young Corsican was to emphasize the contrast between the years 1793 and 1798; but the scene-shifting began with the intrigues of Godoy. In a sense Pitt himself helped on the transformation. He did not regard the struggle against France as one of political principle. He aimed solely at curbing the aggression of the Jacobins upon Holland; and the obvious device of weakening France by expeditions to the West Indies further helped to bring events back into the arena of eighteenth-century strife. Now that Spain, the protagonist of the French Bourbons, deserted their cause and attacked the Power in which they most trusted, all pretence of a war of principle vanished. The importance of the change was not perceived at the time, though signs of it were not wanting. Both in France and England democratic enthusiasm speedily died down, and the discontent, which now and again flared forth in both lands, was but a feeble sputter compared with the devouring flame of 1789.