s
embodied in the constitution of the Cortes of Castile. When Charles
became king this body was not, like other parliaments, ordinarily a
representative assembly of the three estates, but consisted merely of
deputies of eighteen Castilian cities. Only on special occasions, such
as a coronation, were nobles and clergy summoned to participate. Its
great {429} power was that of granting taxes, though somehow it never
succeeded, as did the English House of Commons, in making the redress
of grievances conditional upon a subsidy. But yet the power amounted
to something and it was one that neither Charles nor Philip commonly
ventured to violate. Under both of them meetings of the Cortes were
frequent.

Though never directly attacked, the powers of the Cortes declined
through the growth of vast interests outside their competence. The
direction of foreign policy, so absorbing under Charles, and the charge
of the enormous and growing commercial interests, was confided not to
the representatives of the people, but to the Royal Council of Castile,
an appointative body of nine lawyers, three nobles, and one bishop.
Though not absolutely, yet relatively, the functions of the Cortes
diminished until they amounted to no more than those of a provincial
council.

What reconciled the people to the concentration of new powers in the
hands of an irresponsible council was the apparently dazzling success
of Spanish policy throughout the greater part of the sixteenth century.
No banner was served like that of the Lions and Castles; no troops in
the world could stand against her famous regiments; no generals were
equal to Cortez and Alva; no statesmen abler than Parma, no admirals,
until the Armada, more daring than Magellan[1] and Don John, no
champions of the church against heretic and infidel like Loyola and
Xavier.

[Sidenote: The Spanish Empire]

That such an empire as the world had not seen since Rome should within
a single life-time rise to its zenith and, within a much shorter time,
decline to the verge of ruin, is one of the melodramas of history.
Perhaps, in reality, Spain was never quite so great as she looked, nor
was her fall quite so complete as it seemed. But {430} the phenomena,
such as they are, sufficiently call for explanation.

First of all one is struck by the fortuitous, one might almost say,
unnatural, character of the Hapsburg empire. While the union of
Castile and Aragon, bringing together neighboring peo