g greatness opened on the sea. She had sprung at a bound into a
sea-power. Her fleets were spreading terror through the New World as
through the Old. When Philip by his conquest of Portugal had gathered
the two greatest navies of the world into his single hand, England had
faced him and driven his fleet from the seas. But the rise of England
was even less memorable than the fall of Spain. That Spain had fallen
few of the world's statesmen saw then. Philip thanked God that he could
easily, if he chose, "place another fleet upon the seas," and the
despatch of a second armada soon afterwards showed that his boast was a
true one. But what had vanished was his mastery of the seas. The defeat
of the Armada was the first of a series of defeats at the hands of the
English and the Dutch. The naval supremacy of Spain was lost, and with
it all was lost; for an empire so widely scattered over the world, and
whose dominions were parted by intervening nations, could only be held
together by its command of the seas. One century saw Spain stripped of
the bulk of the Netherlands, another of her possessions in Italy, a
third of her dominions in the New World. But slowly as her empire broke,
the cause of ruin was throughout the same. It was the loss of her
maritime supremacy that robbed her of all, and her maritime supremacy
was lost in the wreck of the Armada.

[Sidenote: The counter-attack on Spain.]

If Philip met the shock with a calm patience, it at once ruined his
plans in the West. France broke again from his grasp. Since the day of
the Barricades Henry the Third had been virtually a prisoner in the
hands of the Duke of Guise; but the defeat of the Armada woke him to a
new effort for the recovery of power, and at the close of 1588 Guise was
summoned to his presence and stabbed as he entered by the royal
bodyguard. The blow broke the strength of the League. The Duke of
Mayenne, a brother of the victim, called indeed the Leaguers to arms;
and made war upon the king. But Henry found help in his cousin, Henry of
Navarre, who brought a Huguenot force to his aid; and the moderate
Catholics rallied as of old round the Crown. The Leaguers called on
Philip for aid, but Philip was forced to guard against attack at home.
Elizabeth had resolved to give blow for blow. The Portuguese were
writhing under Spanish conquest; and a claimant of the crown, Don
Antonio, who had found refuge in England, promised that on his landing
the country would ris