could he, at a moment when he was so
closely united with the Pope, and could reckon on the millions heaped
up in the castle of St. Angelo for his enterprise, so completely
deviate from the strictness of exclusive belief. He thought he was
within his right when he refused any religious concession, seeing that
every other sovereign issued laws prescribing the religion of his own
territories.[268]

If the war was to be continued, Alexander of Parma would have wished
that all his efforts should be first directed against Vliessingen,
where there was an English garrison; from the harbour there England
itself could be attacked far more easily and safely. But it was
replied in Spain that this enterprise was likewise very extensive and
costly, while it would bring about no decisive result. And yet
Alexander himself too held an invasion of England to be absolutely
necessary; his reports largely contributed to strengthen the King in
this idea; Philip decided to proceed without further delay to the
enterprise that was needful at the moment and opened world-wide
prospects for the future.

He took into consideration that the monarchy at this moment had
nothing to fear from the Ottomans who were fully occupied with a
Persian war, and above all that France was prevented from interfering
by the civil strife that had broken out. This has been designated as
the chief aim of Philip's alliance with the Guises, and it certainly
may have formed one reason for it. Left alone, with only herself to
rely on (so the Spaniards further judged), the Queen of England would
no longer be an object of fear: she had no more than forty ships; once
in an engagement off the Azores, in the Portuguese war, the English
had been seen to give way for the first time: if it came to a
sea-fight, the vastly superior Spanish Armada would without doubt
prove victorious. But for a war on land also she was not prepared, she
had no more than six thousand real soldiers in the country, with whom
she could neither meet nor resist the veteran troops of Spain in the
open field. They had only to march straight on London; seldom was a
great city, which had remained long free from attack, able to hold out
against a sudden assault: the Queen would either be forced to make a
peace honourable to Spain, or would by a long resistance give the King
an opportunity of forming out of the Spanish nobility, which would
otherwise degenerate in indolence at home, a young troop of brave
war