way to
make himself more particularly hated. He rather, by an apparent
consideration for a few points of political interest and individual
privilege, and particularly by the revocation of some of the edicts
against heretics, removed the suspicions his earlier conduct
had excited; and his intended victims did not perceive that the
despot sought to lull them to sleep, in the hopes of making them
an easier prey.

Philip knew well that force alone was insufficient to reduce
such a people to slavery. He succeeded in persuading the states
to grant him considerable subsidies, some of which were to be paid
by instalments during a period of nine years. That was gaining
a great step toward his designs, as it superseded the necessity
of a yearly application to the three orders, the guardians of
the public liberty. At the same time he sent secret agents to
Rome, to obtain the approbation of the pope to his insidious
but most effective plan for placing the whole of the clergy in
dependence upon the crown. He also kept up the army of Spaniards
and Germans which his father had formed on the frontiers of France;
and although he did not remove from their employments the
functionaries already in place, he took care to make no new
appointments to office among the natives of the Netherlands.

In the midst of these cunning preparations for tyranny, Philip
was suddenly attacked in two quarters at once; by Henry II. of
France, and by Pope Paul IV. A prince less obstinate than Philip
would in such circumstances have renounced, or at least postponed,
his designs against the liberties of so important a part of his
dominions, as those to which he was obliged to have recourse
for aid in support of this double war. But he seemed to make
every foreign consideration subservient to the object of domestic
aggression which he had so much at heart.

He, however, promptly met the threatened dangers from abroad. He
turned his first attention toward his contest with the pope; and
he extricated himself from it with an adroitness that proved the
whole force and cunning of his character. Having first publicly
obtained the opinion of several doctors of theology, that he
was justified in taking arms against the pontiff (a point on
which there was really no doubt), he prosecuted the war with
the utmost vigor, by the means of the afterward notorious duke
of Alva, at that time viceroy of his Italian dominions. Paul soon
yielded to superior skill and force, an