o means the only
achievement of the Roman army of the decadence. A century and
a quarter later--when the Empire of the West had fallen and the
general decline had made further progress--Belisarius conducted
successful campaigns in Persia, in North Africa, in Sicily, and
in Italy. The mere list of countries shows that the mobility and
endurance of the Roman forces during a period in which little
creditable is generally looked for were not inferior to their
discipline and courage. Yet they met with disastrous defeat after
all, and at the hands of races which they had more than once
proved themselves capable of withstanding. It could not have been
because the later Roman equipment was inferior, the organisation
less elaborate, or the training less careful than those of their
barbarian enemies.

Though it is held by some in these days that the naval power
of Spain in the latter part of the sixteenth century was not
really formidable, that does not appear to have been the opinion
of contemporaries, whether Spaniards or otherwise. Some English
seamen of the time did, indeed, declare their conviction that
Philip the Second's navy was not so much to be feared as many
of their fellow-countrymen thought; but, in the public opinion
of the age, Spain was the greatest, or indeed the one great,
naval state. She possessed a more systematically organised navy
than any other country having the ocean for a field of action
had then, or till long afterwards. Even Genoa and Venice, whose
operations, moreover, were restricted to Mediterranean waters,
could not have been served by more finished specimens of the
naval officer and the man-of-war's man of the time than a large
proportion of the military _personnel_ of the regular Spanish
fleet. As Basques, Castilians, Catalans, or Aragonese, or all
combined, the crews of Spanish fighting ships could look back
upon a glorious past. It was no wonder that, by common consent
of those who manned it, the title of 'Invincible' was informally
conferred upon the Armada which, in 1588, sailed for the English
Channel. How it fared is a matter of common knowledge. No one
could have been more surprised at the result than the gallant
officers who led its squadrons.

Spain furnishes another instance of the unexpected overthrow of
a military body to which long cohesion and precise organisation
were believed to have secured invincibility. The Spanish was
considered the 'most redoubtable infantry in Europe'