He became, and could not but become, a persecutor in and out of Spain; and his persecutions not only hardened the obstinacy of the Dutch, and helped to exasperate the English, but they provoked a revolt of the Moriscoes, which impoverished his kingdom.
At other points of the coast the British navy was employed in punitive expeditions against the coast towns - as for example the burning of Falmouth (now Portland, Maine) in October 1775 - which served to exasperate, rather than to weaken the enemy, or the unsuccessful attack on Charleston, S.C., in June 1776.