in his view of European politics Cromwell was misled by the
conservative and unspeculative temper of his mind as well as by the
strength of his religious enthusiasm. Of the change in the world around
him he seems to have discerned nothing. He brought to the Europe of
Mazarin the hopes and ideas with which all England was thrilling in his
youth at the outbreak of the Thirty Years War. Spain was still to him
"the head of the Papal Interest," whether at home or abroad. "The
Papists in England," he said to the Parliament of 1656, "have been
accounted, ever since I was born, Spaniolized; they never regarded
France, or any other Papist state, but Spain only." The old English
hatred of Spain, the old English resentment at the shameful part which
the nation had been forced to play in the great German struggle by the
policy of James and of Charles, lived on in Cromwell, and was only
strengthened by the religious enthusiasm which the success of Puritanism
had kindled within him. "The Lord Himself," he wrote to his admirals as
they sailed to the West Indies, "hath a controversy with your enemies;
even with that Romish Babylon of which the Spaniard is the great
underpropper. In that respect we fight the Lord's battles." What Sweden
had been under Gustavus, England, Cromwell dreamed, might be now--the
head of a great Protestant League in the struggle against Catholic
aggression. "You have on your shoulders," he said to the Parliament of
1654, "the interest of all the Christian people of the world. I wish it
may be written on our hearts to be zealous for that interest." The first
step in such a struggle would necessarily be to league the Protestant
powers together, and Cromwell's earliest efforts were directed to bring
the ruinous and indecisive quarrel with Holland to an end. The
fierceness of the strife had grown with each engagement; but the hopes
of Holland fell with her admiral, Tromp, who received a mortal wound at
a moment when he had succeeded in forcing the English line; and the
skill and energy of his successor, De Ruyter, struggled in vain to
restore her waning fortunes. She was saved by the expulsion of the Long
Parliament, which had persisted in its demand for a political union of
the two countries; and the new policy of Cromwell was seen in the
conclusion of peace. The peace indeed was dearly bought. Not only did
the United Provinces recognize the supremacy of the English flag in the
British seas, and submit to the Naviga