under a despotic ruler. The energy of democratic
institutions survives for a few generations, and to it are superadded
the decision and certainty which are the attributes of government when
all its powers are directed by a single mind. It is true that this
preter-natural vigor is short-lived: national corruption and debasement
gradually follow the loss of the national liberties; but there is an
interval before their workings are felt, and in that interval the most
ambitious schemes of foreign conquest are often successfully undertaken.

Philip had also the advantage of finding himself at the head of a large
standing army in a perfect state of discipline and equipment, in an age
when, except some few insignificant corps, standing armies were unknown
in Christendom. The renown of the Spanish troops was justly high, and
the infantry in particular was considered the best in the world. His
fleet, also, was far more numerous and better appointed than that of any
other European power; and both his soldiers and his sailors had the
confidence in themselves and their commanders which a long career of
successful warfare alone can create.

Besides the Spanish crown, Philip succeeded to the kingdom of Naples and
Sicily, the duchy of Milan, Franche-Comte, and the Netherlands. In
Africa he possessed Tunis, Oran, the Cape Verd and the Canary islands;
and in Asia, the Philippine and Sunda islands and a part of the
Moluccas. Beyond the Atlantic he was lord of the most splendid portions
of the New World, which Columbus found "for Castile and Leon." The
empires of Peru and Mexico, New Spain, and Chile, with their abundant
mines of the precious metals, Espanola and Cuba, and many other of the
American islands were provinces of the sovereign of Spain.

Whatever diminution the Spanish empire might have sustained in the
Netherlands seemed to be more than compensated by the acquisition of
Portugal, which Philip had completely conquered in 1580. Not only that
ancient kingdom itself, but all the fruits of the maritime enterprises
of the Portuguese, had fallen into Philip's hands. All the Portuguese
colonies in America, Africa, and the East Indies acknowledged the
sovereignty of the King of Spain, who thus not only united the whole
Iberian peninsula under his single sceptre, but had acquired a
transmarine empire little inferior in wealth and extent to that which he
had inherited at his accession. The splendid victory which his fleet, in
conjunc