His combative disposition led him into numerous personal difficulties.
Nevertheless, even the combative Wallqvist was appalled when on the 16th of February 1789 the king privately informed him that he meant on the following day soundly to trounce the Estate of Nobles in the presence of the three other estates and bend them to his royal will.
It is in its essence, and it is a main condition of its success, to kindle into fierce exercise among great masses of men the destructive and combative passions - passions as fierce and as malevolent as that with which the hound hunts the fox to its death or the tiger springs upon its prey.
The historical bent thus given to the drama was continued by the versatile Mendes Leal, by Gomes da Amorim and by Pinheiro Chagas, who all however succumbed more or less to the atmosphere and machinery of ultra-Romanticism, while the plays of Antonio Ennes deal with questions of the day in a spirit of combative liberalism.
He was aggressive, combative, sudden of quarrel, and he often seemed unnecessarily bitter of speech.
