e sacred
waters. Not a common highway of the world's commerce, but a private path
for the gratification of one human being's vanity, had thus been laid out
by the bold navigators of the sixteenth century.

It was for the Dutch rebels to try conclusions upon this point, as they
had done upon so many others, with the master of the land and sea. The
opening scenes therefore in the great career of maritime adventure and
discovery by which these republicans were to make themselves famous will
soon engage the reader's attention.

Thus the causes of what is called the greatness of Spain are not far to
seek. Spain was not a nation, but a temporary and factitious conjunction
of several nations, which it was impossible to fuse into a permanent
whole, but over whose united resources a single monarch for a time
disposed. And the very concentration of these vast and unlimited, powers,
fortuitous as it was, in this single hand, inspiring the individual, not
unnaturally, with a consciousness of superhuman grandeur; impelled him to
those frantic and puerile efforts to achieve the impossible which
resulted, in the downfall of Spain. The man who inherited so much
material greatness believed himself capable of destroying the invisible
but omnipotent spirit of religious and political liberty in the
Netherlands, of trampling out the national existence of France and of
England, and of annexing those realms to his empire: It has been my task
to relate, with much minuteness, how miserably his efforts failed.

But his resources were great. All Italy was in his hands, with the single
exception of the Venetian republic; for the Grand Duke of Florence and
the so-called republic of Genoa were little more than his vassals, the
pope was generally his other self, and the Duke of Savoy was his
son-in-law. Thus his armies, numbering usually a hundred thousand men,
were supplied from the best possible sources. The Italians were esteemed
the best soldiers for siege; assault, light skirmishing. The German heavy
troopers and arquebuseers were the most effective for open field-work,
and these were to be purchased at reasonable prices and to indefinite
amount from any of the three or four hundred petty sovereigns to whom
what was called Germany belonged. The Sicilian and Neapolitan pikemen,
the Milanese light-horse, belonged exclusively to Philip, and were used,
year after year, for more than a generation of mankind, to fight battles
in which they had no mo