the first
information: that the first warning of the Gunpowder Plot must have
come from him; that he had as it were stood in the breach, and that
now he had been the first victim. The crimes of Ravaillac and of
Catesby had sprung from the same source.

The enterprise against Juliers was not hindered by this event. The
forces of the Union under the Prince of Anhalt, and the Dutch and
English troops under Maurice of Orange and Edward Cecil, with the
addition of a number of volunteers from such leading families in
England as those of Winchester, Somerset, Rich, Herbert, had already
made considerable progress in the siege when, at last, at the orders
of the widowed Queen, the French also arrived, but in the worst plight
and suffering severely from illness, so that they could not carry out
the intention, with which they came, of sequestrating the place in the
interests of France. When the fortress had been taken it was delivered
to the two princes, who now possessed the whole country. This was an
event of general historical importance, for by this means Brandenburg
first planted its foot on the Rhine, and came into greater prominence
in Europe on this side also. It took place, like the foundation of the
Republic of the Netherlands, with the concurrence of England and
France, and in opposition to Austria and Spain, but at the same time
by the help of the Republic itself and of those members of the Estates
of the German empire who professed the same creed.

[Sidenote: A.D. 1611.]

The times had gone by when the Spaniards had taken arms as if for the
conquest of the world; but their pretensions remained the same. It was
still their intention, in virtue of the privileges assigned them by
the Pope, to exclude all others from the colonisation of America and
from commerce with the East Indies. They laid claim to Northern Africa
because it had been tributary to the crown of Aragon, to Athens and
Neopatras because they had belonged to the Catalans, to Jerusalem
because it had belonged to the King of Naples, and even to
Constantinople because it had passed by will to Ferdinand II of Aragon
from the last of the Palaeologi. On the strength of the claims made by
the old dukes of Milan they deemed themselves to have a right to the
towns of the Venetian mainland, and to Liguria. Philip III was in
their eyes the true heir of the Maximilian branch of the German house
of Austria: according to their view the succession in Bohemia and
Hunga