in Stade, which defied the Emperor as Elbing did the King of Poland.

Ceaseless efforts were made to find outlets for English cloth. Mention has already been made of the access to the East opened through Russia and the lands of the Turk, but English ships also sailed to Archangel in 1553, only to find that there was no passage to the East through the icy seas. No better fortune attended the daring seamen who sought a North-West passage round the American coast.

At the same time attempts were made to found colonies in North America. Though these failed, from the lessons the failures taught, the English learned the method of creating dominions oversea. Good fortune, on the other hand, attended Drake when, in September 1585, he sailed with about thirty ships from Plymouth to avenge the fall of Antwerp. Touching first at Spain, where he boldly took in fresh water and provisions, Drake sailed to the West Indies by way of the Cape Verde Islands. His progress was marked by sacked and burned Spanish towns and ships, and he returned with sixty thousand pounds taken from the Spaniards. It was evident that nothing but a direct attack could subdue England, and preparations for it were now made.

XX

THE ARMADA. ENGLISH AND DUTCH OBTAIN

CONTROL OF THE SEA

1585-1601

BEFORE his abdication in 1555 Charles V. had learned that it was beyond the power of one man simultaneously to unite the German Empire and Western Europe in a cosmopolitan brotherhood. But it was not clear that the cosmopolitan scheme would not succeed if one member of his family attacked the problem in Germany and another in Western Europe. If Germany and Western Europe were welded into two federations, both in subjection to Rome, intermarriage between the Spanish and Austrian Habsburgs would sooner or later blend the two federations into one cosmopolitan Empire. Hence Charles' brother became the Emperor Ferdinand, and Charles' son became. Philip II. of Spain and of Spain's dominions in Europe and beyond the sea.

This great scheme failed not because the Habsburgs wavered in their loyalty to cosmopolitanism but because the peoples over whom they ruled took arms to support their nationality. Ferdinand's son and heir, afterwards Maximilian II., was married in 1548 to his cousin, Maria, daughter of Charles V. In spite of his Spanish wife and the Spanish influences which

surrounded him, Maximilian, before his accession in 1564 to the Empire of Germany, showed strong leanings towards Protestantism and German nationalism. He received, however, a plain intimation that, if he declined to fall in with the cosmopolitan scheme he would have to abandon all hope of becoming Emperor, and he yielded to the pressure. Maximilian and his son, Rudolf II., Emperor from 1576 to 1612, maintained intimate relations with Spain, whilst they avoided making a direct attack on Protestantism. The absence of protection for German workers, peasants, and artisans weakened Protestantism and German nationality. The wealth of Germany passed into the hands of her international merchants, who could invest their capital in foreign lands and favoured a close connection with Spain. The Jesuits, who were labouring to bring Europe back to Catholicism, met with great success in Germany. Time appeared to be on the side of cosmopolitanism in the German Empire.

But in Western Europe Philip II. had a more difficult task. The people of the Netherlands had partially succeeded in throwing off the yoke of Spain. Amsterdam and the North had won freedom, whilst Antwerp and the South had bought peace by rejoining the Spanish Empire, when the murder of William of Orange in 1584 left the Dutch without a leader. Spain's agents were at work in every land. The Catholics of England and Ireland were being taught that their religion demanded rebellion against Elizabeth, and there were grave fears that the Queen would share the fate of William of Orange. The British Isles were to become dependencies of Spain under

Mary Stewart. Even James of Scotland, alarmed by the strength and zeal of the Scotch Catholics, pursued a hesitating and doubtful policy.

Nor could Elizabeth turn to France for aid. Since the peace of Cateau-Cambrésis in 1660 there had been no open war between France and Spain, but the religious wars in France had ended in the formation of a Catholic League led by Henry, Duke of Guise, and a Huguenot opposition whose chief was Henry of Navarre. The French King, Henry III., had failed to reconcile his subjects in 1576 owing to the opposition of the League. In 1585 a definite alliance was formed between the League and Philip of Spain, and Henry III. was forced to submit to the authority of Henry of Guise and his brother the Cardinal.

Threatened on all sides, Elizabeth was forced to abandon her policy of masterly inactivity, and in 1585 the Queen's favourite, Leicester, landed in Flushing with 5000 foot and 1000 horse to fill the place which the murder of William of Orange had left vacant. This post was one which an Englishman was ill-qualified to fill. Englishmen still talk of the Dutch Republic, although not long after the final severance from Spain de Witt pointed out that the English should talk of what is now the kingdom of Holland as the Federated Republics. Leicester, accustomed to the ways of a united kingdom, was called upon to guide the fortunes of seven provinces which had never been really united and had now joined in a federation so loose that each province, and almost each town, was practically an independent State. The name republic serves only to conceal the fact that the Dutch had no political

freedom. Towns were governed by councils of burghers which co-opted fresh members when vacancies occurred and elected deputies to the States-General. The Dutch were governed by merchants whose right to rule was based on their wealth, and chief amongst these were the merchants of Amsterdam.

The people of Holland closely resembled the English. In Holland, as in England, the people were fighting to preserve their nationality; in both lands there were more Catholics than Protestants, but difference of religion did not affect their zeal for the national cause. Here, however, the likeness ceased. In England the Queen was as ardent a nationalist as her subjects. In Holland the mercantile governing body fought Spain in order to carry to and from the East and West. They were, many of them, Jews who had been driven from Spain and Portugal, or foreigners who had migrated from Antwerp. Such men could have little sympathy with the patriotic hopes and fears of the Dutch. Leicester began his rule by forbidding all commercial intercourse between the Dutch and Philip's dominions. He had no wish to supply the enemies of England with food and clothing when they could be starved into submission. But the merchants claimed the right of trading freely, and gladly supplied the Spaniards with all they were ready to pay for, even with powder and shot to be used against the Dutch and their English allies. After wasting his fortune in a hopeless struggle with the merchants, Leicester returned to England in August 1587 a poor but wiser man. Then Maurice, a younger son of William of Orange, at the age of twenty commanded