THE WANING POWER OF SPAIN
Charles V. resigning the Crown of Spain, gave it over to his son
Philip II., who married Mary, Queen of England. He had already ceded
to him the kingdom of Naples. With the Crown of Spain went the
Netherlands; and Charles would have wished his son to receive the
Imperial title also. The Electors of Germany, however, refused to
elect Philip and, with the assent of Charles, Ferdinand, Charles's
younger brother, became the new Emperor.
Charles, although a firm supporter of the authority of the Church of
Rome, had done his best, by the publication of that "Interim"
mentioned in the last chapter, and by a merciful treatment of the
defeated Protestants, to bring the two parties together again. He
failed; but he had made the effort. The character of Philip did not
dispose him to follow his father in any attempts at peace-making. He
was ardently jealous for the ecclesiastical authority of Rome and
appears to have had much of the tyrant's spirit: he was very
impatient of opposition, and showed no favour to any who differed
from him in opinion. Heresy was, in his view, a sin against the
Church, which it was his duty to put down by the most effective means
in his power, wherever he might find it among his subjects. Wherever
it was even so much as suspected, the strictest search should be made
for its unmasking.
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And to him, being in this mood, there was a machine ready to his
hand--an institution of the Church known as the Inquisition.
Inquisition means inquiry; and the particular object for which the
Inquisition was instituted was to inquire into alleged instances of
heresy--that is to say, of doctrines and practices of which the
Church did not approve--and also into instances of the practice of
magic and sorcery, which were deemed to be miracles performed by men
with the aid of the devil.
The first institution of "Inquisitors," or officials appointed for
such inquiry, dated back to the early centuries of the Church's
existence, and in those early centuries the punishment which the
Inquisitors were allowed to impose on persons convicted of heresy
were very mild in comparison with later penalties. They were not
allowed to inflict death, nor to use torture in order to extract
confession.
In the time of Philip II., the Inquisition in Spain, under the name
of the Holy Office, became largely independent of the Church of Rome.
It actually brought before its Courts bishops of the Church. And it
shrank from no cruelty of torture inflicted on suspected persons, in
order to make them confess: it even tortured witnesses, to extract
from them the testimony, true or false, which the Inquisitors
desired. Convicted persons were publicly burnt. There was no appeal
from its decisions. An accused person had scarcely a chance of
escaping conviction. And the religious zeal of the Inquisitors was
quickened by the circumstance that the estates of the convicted were
confiscated and distributed to the Church, or partly to the Church
and partly to the Crown.
[Sidenote: Netherlands in revolt]
It is no more than fair to the Church of Rome to say that though the
severity and injustice of the Inquisition under the Church's direct
authority were harsh enough, they were far less cruel than under {57}
the Holy Office of Spain, which became a veritable terror. The
Netherlanders had largely accepted reformed doctrines. They had
become Protestant, that is to say heretics, in the eyes of Philip.
He had been their sovereign only a few years when he sent his
Inquisitors among them to root the heresy out by torture,
confiscation of estates, and by burning at the stake. The natives
were brave and stubborn. They resisted with armed force.
It had all the aspect of a vain, even a ridiculous resistance--bound
to fail, certain to be punished with relentless cruelty. To enforce
obedience and to carry out measures of punishment, Philip sent an
army under command of a general notorious for his harsh severity, the
Duke of Alva. In such an outlined sketch as this the details cannot
be given of the extraordinary struggle which the Netherlands, under
that very great leader and statesman, William of Orange, surnamed the
Silent, finally brought to a successful end against all the might of
Spain. Again and again their endurance seemed on the point of being
overcome. Once, at least, they were saved only by the desperate
expedient of breaking chasms in the raised dykes which protect that
low-lying land from the sea, and allowing the water to flood the
country. They had a small naval force before this struggle began.
Dutch ships had helped Charles in that attempt which he made to put
down the Mahommedan pirates of the north coast of Africa. Now, as
the fight with Spain went on, they added to their fleet. With but a
few ships, they gained a victory, which meant much to them, over a
far larger Spanish fleet. Some of the Spanish ships captured in that
battle helped to increase their own naval forces.
England, under Mary, whom Philip had married in 1554, naturally would
give Holland no help. She had, besides, her own religious troubles,
for Mary, {58} under her husband's direction, was doing all that she
dared to bring England back under the authority of Rome. No tribunal
with the name of Inquisition or of Holy Office was established, but
the persecution of Protestants, with torture and burning, went
forward almost as briskly as if there had been. A small force came
to Holland's help from Germany, at one moment of the long struggle,
but little could be expected from that country, in which the states
were divided in their sympathies between Rome and the Reformation.
The attitude of France was uncertain and varied. Her natural action
would have been to oppose Spain, as in the days of Francis and
Charles, but she was a Roman Catholic country. She was distracted,
too, by her own troubles with her own Protestants, called Huguenots.
The form of Protestantism which had made its way in France was
somewhat different from that taught by Luther. It inclined to the
doctrines taught by Calvin. But Calvin was a reformer as earnest and
even more bitter than Luther himself in opposition to Rome. It was
what has been called, after him, the Calvinistic form of
Protestantism which prevailed in the Netherlands also, and, with some
modification, in England and Scotland. The details of the difference
we need not consider. The main feature which they had in common and
which so affected this Greatest Story was their resistance to Rome.
[Sidenote: The Huguenots]
The origin of that name Huguenot, by which the Protestants in France
were known, is doubtful, nor does it greatly matter. Beginning in
the reign of Francis, the reformed party in France grew stronger
during the reign of several succeeding kings. There were two great
families in France at this time, the Bourbons and the Guises. The
former became leaders of the Protestants and the latter of the
Catholics. Civil war broke out in 1562. Elizabeth of England {59}
sent troops to help the Huguenots, but the fortune of the war went
against them. A Catholic League was formed for their extermination.
A general massacre of Huguenots on St. Bartholomew's Day, in 1572,
has made that day lamentable in the reformed Church ever since.
Still the Protestants held on, in the far west of France, under the
leadership of that Henry of Navarre who became King of France in
1589. To bring peace to his country he formally declared himself a
Catholic, but he so favoured the cause of reform that two years
before the end of the century he passed a famous measure, the Edict
of Nantes, by which the French Protestants were granted freedom to
think and act as they pleased in all religious matters, without
penalty of any kind.
Such being the divisions in France during the struggle of the
Netherlands against Spain, it was not likely that she would give much
assistance to either side. Elizabeth sent a small army, which
effected little. She might perhaps have been more liberal with her
help, but England had her full share of troubles too. There was
still a large English party sympathising with Rome. The change in
the State religion which Elizabeth effected as soon as she succeeded
her half-sister Mary--the Catholic and the wife of the King of
Spain--was not easy. She found herself with a French war on her
hands, a war into which Philip had persuaded Mary towards the end of
her reign. Almost its only result had been that Calais, England's
last possession in France, had been lost to her.
Elizabeth quickly made peace with France; and that peace included
Scotland also. We have seen, and we shall see again, how ready
France always was to embarrass England by taking the side of Scotland
in the constant Scottish and English wars. Elizabeth {60} made peace
with France; but since at this moment there really were two parties
dividing France, it was not easy to be at peace with both.
Elizabeth, as we also have seen, so far helped the Bourbons, the
Huguenots, as to send some troops to their aid; and for that aid
Havre, with its fine harbour at the mouth of the Seine, was handed
over to England. But the Huguenots were defeated. Havre was English
only for a very short time.
And Catholic France was now again helping Scotland, favouring the
cause of Mary, Queen of Scots, who married a short-lived French king.
In Scotland the reformed religion, of Calvin's type, had taken a hold
which was destined to grow firmer as time went on; but for the
present the Catholics were in strength there too. Their queen was
Catholic. She was hardly more than in name a queen, for she was but
a child when she came to the throne, and spent years of her short
life as Elizabeth's prisoner. Finally she was executed, most
probably by Elizabeth's order, although it was an order which
Elizabeth denied.
It was almost wholly by their own stout courage that the United
Provinces, as they were called, of the Netherlands did at length gain
their freedom, and not only freedom to serve God as they saw fit, but
also freedom from the sovereignty of Spain. It was a freedom which
was not formally acknowledged till many years later; but it was
practically won in 1579. These United Provinces were seven in
number, of which one was called Holland: and this Holland came, after
a while, to be the name for the whole. The seven lay in the north,
and were united as a federation under the rule of William of Orange.
The southern provinces remained for a while longer under the power of
Spain.
Into this new and free State came many of the reformed religion
flying from persecution in their {61} own countries. Holland became
populous. Her industries developed. Her foreign trade increased.
She had a large trading fleet. It ventured into those waters round
the Cape of Good Hope which the Portuguese claimed as their own. It
disputed with them the trade of the islands in the Malay Archipelago.
And even here the fighting took on something of a religious
character, for the battle was between ships of Protestant Holland and
of Catholic Portugal.
Exactly the same character pertained to certain encounters of ships
which began to take place more and more frequently westward of the
line which the Pope's Bull had marked out to divide the sphere of
Portugal from that of Spain--encounters between the ships of
Elizabeth and of Philip of Spain. By the year 1581 that line lost
what importance it ever had, because Philip made good, by force of
arms, his rather doubtful claim to the throne of Portugal. For three
reigns, lasting over sixty years, the King of Spain was King of
Portugal also, although the smaller kingdom never lost her national
identity.
[Sidenote: England's Navy]
England had begun to have a considerable fleet. She had long had
necessity for ships of war to protect her exports, principally of
wool, to the Continent. She was under the necessity of making her
fleet stronger and stronger by reason of the growing strength, just
noted, of the Dutch fleet, which came from all the ports across the
Channel. And especially she had need to strengthen it since Philip,
whose proposal of marriage Elizabeth had declined, threatened her
with his Armadas. Hostility to England had become a religious duty
in his sight. Elizabeth had been excommunicated. The Act of
Supremacy, by virtue of which her father had been declared head of
the Church in England, had been passed again in her favour, in order
to wipe out the measures of reaction {62} towards Rome which had
marked the reign of Mary. Ireland had risen in revolt in 1560, and a
joint expedition of Spaniards and Italians landed to aid the rebels.
They were overwhelmed and destroyed by one, Raleigh, whom Elizabeth
knighted as Sir Walter.
And so, on the English side, and on the side of all the princes of
Europe who professed the reformed religion, the war against Spain
became a religious war. To waylay the Spanish treasure-ships from
the Indies was an adventure which appealed to the sailors of England.
It gratified them to get these treasures for their own and for their
Queen and country, and moreover it was this wealth, thus robbed from
the conquered Indies, with which the enemies of the reformed Church
built and equipped their ships of war. So we have Drake and
Frobisher and other heroes adventuring into the Pacific and even
sailing round the world in vessels which seem to us almost
ridiculously small for such great enterprise. They attacked any
Spanish ship they met, they landed and sacked Spanish settlements in
South America, they even ventured into the very harbours of Spain
herself, to "singe the King of Spain's beard," as they put it.
The King of Spain could not for ever endure these "singeings" so
insulting to his dignity. In 1588 he launched, for the destruction
of England, the largest naval force ever seen. It was that force
known to history as the Great Armada.
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[Illustration: SIR FRANCIS DRAKE.]
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Our country was saved assuredly more by the storms of heaven than by
the valour of even such splendid fighting seamen as the troublous
times had produced. Survivors of the vast fleet of Spain, after a
severe hammering by Drake in the Channel, completely circumnavigated
our islands, going eastward and northward through the Straits of
Dover and so round the north coasts of Scotland and down along {64}
the western shores, everywhere losing ships on the way. Even now, in
such lonely places as some of the small islands lying to the north of
Scotland, are found evidences of the Spaniards' wreckage. Only a
very small number of that Grand Armada sailed their crippled way back
into the harbours of Spain.
In the years that followed, England then being allied with Henry IV.
of France, her ships were seen more than once attacking the shipping
in the very harbours of proud Spain.
It is obvious, from the position as official head of the reformed
Church in which the Act of Supremacy had first placed our Henry
VIII., and had then confirmed, in a position of scarcely less
authority, his daughter Elizabeth, that the form which Protestantism
took in England, as the State religion, differed from its forms
elsewhere. On the Continent, none of the rulers of the States that
had adopted the doctrines of Luther or of Calvin had thought of
claiming such a position. In England under Henry and under Elizabeth
it must have seemed that, while protesting against the authority of
the Pope over the Church, Englishmen acquiesced in a like authority
vested in the Crown. It was a transfer of allegiance. But Luther,
and yet more so Calvin, would have bitterly resented that the Church
should be under any authority except that of her own choosing.
Moreover, the English Protestants retained many of the ceremonies and
services, and performed many of the rites, of the Church of Rome.
Calvin's ideal of worship was that it should consist in the simplest
and most direct communication of man with God, with no aids of
beautiful music and rich colour and other appeal to the emotions,
such as the Romans used. All this he specially hated. The rules of
life among pious followers of Calvin were extremely strict. Austere
behaviour and a serious expression of countenance were rigidly {65}
demanded of them. They regarded even the most innocent amusement as
contrary to the spirit of their religion.
This is perhaps a difference which it would be out of place, in a
story sketched in mere outlines, to mention even at such short length
as this, were it not that it was a difference which had serious
consequences in the reigns of those Scottish kings who succeeded
Elizabeth on the throne of England. How that came about was thus:
[Sidenote: The Puritans]
In the reign of Mary, the Roman Catholic queen, very many English
Protestants had fled abroad. They had gone to lands where the
Calvinistic doctrines were followed. Under Elizabeth they ventured
back into their native land; and the form of Protestantism that they
found there was a shock to them. They could not range themselves as
members of a Church that had practices which they detested. They
formed themselves into a separate sect under the name of Puritans.
At once they found themselves in opposition to, not in conformity
with (and were therefore sometimes spoken of as Non-conformists), the
national Church. They were subjected to persecution even by a
Protestant Government. From denying the authority of the Crown as
head of the Church, it was not a very long step to denying the
authority of the Crown in other, less spiritual, matters. And it was
this denial that led to Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth, to the
cutting off of Charles I.'s head, to the sailing of the Pilgrim
Fathers to America, and all that was to follow therefrom. Surely we
are justified in finding a space to note a difference of opinion in
which such astonishing things had their beginning.
During Elizabeth's reign our country was reduced to its insular
boundaries, and yet never before does there seem to have been a time
when England was {66} so aware of her greatness as she was under
Elizabeth. Never, moreover, was there such a splendour of English
literary achievement, from the plays of Shakespeare downward.
The truth is that she really was doing a very great work, though
probably Englishmen of that day only dimly realised what that work
was. She, with the Dutch and other Protestant States, was gradually
wearing down the greatness of Spain, and all that Spain stood for.
What Spain stood for was despotic power in Church and State. Our
Henry and Elizabeth were despotic in both, but the Stuart kings who
succeeded them were not made of the right human stuff for despots,
and both Church and State won freedom under them. Spain's power
suffered a gradual but constant diminution. She was fighting on all
sides--constantly struggling with France or Italy.
And Elizabeth's seamen kept harrying her in every quarter of the
Atlantic and even in the far Pacific, The English Colony of
Newfoundland was established. Elizabeth had relations as far east
and south as Persia, as far east and north as Muscovy, where Russia
was gradually consolidating herself.
Russia gained an important victory over the Turks in 1569. Moscow,
her capital, was indeed burnt by invading Mongols as late as 1571,
but in the year following the conquerors were themselves defeated.
The other Slav State, Poland, gained a great accession of strength by
absorbing the large territories of Livonia and Lithuania. During the
sixteenth century we do not find the Scandinavian nations taking much
direct part in the big story, but in 1587 the King of Sweden was King
of Poland also. The general tendency of affairs in that part of the
world's stage, however, was for those two, Poland and Russia, to be
forming themselves into two strong nations of Slav people, {67} on
the eastern border of the Teutonic people of Germany. That is an
element in the story to be borne in mind.
[Sidenote: Affairs in the East]
Farther eastward again, Russia was extending her power in Siberia and
working out towards that China of which there is still little story
to tell, because, of all nations of the world, she has ever changed
least and most slowly. The day had not yet come for Russia's
reaching southward towards Constantinople on the one side or towards
India on the other. The Turk was as yet so strong that she had to
fight hard to keep him out of her own borders. She was still on the
defensive in that south-western corner of her empire.
But India had to suffer invasion nevertheless in this sixteenth
century by a people coming down from Afghanistan and the north. They
were Mongols, usually given the name of Moguls. They were a
Mahommedan people, and under the reign of the Grand Mogul, Akbar,
which covered nearly all the latter half of the century, they were
continually extending their rule over the Hindus. It is in this
Mahommedan invasion that we see the real beginning of that division
and opposition in India of Hindus and Mahommedans which has played a
large part in the story of that country ever since, and which is a
principal cause of her troubles even to-day. There were Moslems in
India before the coming of the so-called Moguls, but not in anything
like the same force or number.
On the eastern side of Afghanistan lay Persia, and beyond Persia, to
the west again, began the Turkish Empire. Between the Persians and
these Ottoman Turks--Mahommedans both, but belonging to different
sects--fighting went on with little pause, and with no result of any
long duration. Persia's position was difficult, for on the eastern
border she was always {68} subject to attack from the Moguls. That
she kept her independence is due in part doubtless to the valour of
her soldiers, but also, in large part, to the engagements of the
Moguls with India and of the Turks with their European neighbours on
land and sea. Even the heavy defeat of the Turkish navy at Lepanto
by no means put an end to their activities in the Mediterranean. In
1573, two years after that battle, they lost Tunis; but were still
strong enough to regain that valuable port the very next year.
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