early
understood that no one ventured to interfere with them.

[Sidenote: Cromwell's foreign policy.]

No part of his policy is more characteristic of Cromwell's mind, whether
in its strength or in its weakness, than his management of foreign
affairs. While England had been absorbed in her long and obstinate
struggle for freedom the whole face of the world around her had changed.
The Thirty Years War was over. The victories of Gustavus, and of the
Swedish generals who followed him, had been seconded by the policy of
Richelieu and the intervention of France. Protestantism in Germany was
no longer in peril from the bigotry or ambition of the House of Austria;
and the Treaty of Westphalia had drawn a permanent line between the
territories belonging to the adherents of the old religion and the new.
There was little danger indeed now to Europe from the great Catholic
House which had threatened its freedom ever since Charles the Fifth. Its
Austrian branch was called away from dreams of aggression in the west to
a desperate struggle with the Turk for the possession of Hungary and the
security of Austria itself. Spain, from causes which it is no part of
our present story to detail, was falling into a state of strange
decrepitude. So far from aiming to be mistress of Europe, she was
rapidly sinking into the almost helpless prey of France. It was France
which had now become the dominant power in Christendom, though her
position was far from being as commanding as it was to become under
Lewis the Fourteenth. The peace and order which prevailed after the
cessation of the religious troubles throughout her compact and fertile
territory gave scope at last to the quick and industrious temper of the
French people; while her wealth and energy were placed by the
centralizing administration of Henry the Fourth, of Richelieu, and of
Mazarin, almost absolutely in the hands of the Crown. Under the three
great rulers who have just been named her ambition was steadily directed
to the same purpose of territorial aggrandizement, and though limited as
yet to the annexation of the Spanish and Imperial territories which
still parted her frontier from the Pyrenees, the Alps, and the Rhine, a
statesman of wise political genius would have discerned the beginning of
that great struggle for supremacy over Europe at large which was only
foiled by the genius of Marlborough and the victories of the Grand
Alliance.

[Sidenote: Cromwell and Spain.]

But