and the maritime counties, where a landing was chiefly apprehended, were strengthened by large bodies of troops, drawn from the remote quarters of the kingdom, and every measure adopted which could either guard against a disembarkment or impede the enemy's progress and cut them off, if the landing was actually accomplished. On the 20th of May, 1588, the Spanish fleet, commanded by the Duke de Medina Sidonia, set sail from Lisbon, but were forced by stress of weather to put into Corunna, which they did not leave till the 22d of July.

This vast project was dissipated like a summer's cloud. The English met the Invincible Armada with one hundred ships of a smaller size and eighty fireships. The fire-ships attacked them in the night, which threw them into the utmost confusion; an engagement ensued in which the English were favoured by a storm, which drove the Spaniards upon the coast of Zealand; many of their vessels were taken, a great number beaten to pieces upon the rocks and sandbanks, and only fifty ships with about six thousand men of all this prodigious armament returned to Spain. When intelligence of this great national misfortune arrived at Madrid, the behaviour of Philip upon that occasion was, it must be owned, truly magnanimous. "God's holy will be done," said he: "I thought myself a match for the power of England, but I did not pretend to fight against the elements." Beautiful, just, and moral is the short reflection of Bentivoglio upon this signal catastrophe. "Such," says he, "was the fate of the memorable armada of Spain, which threatened the demolition of the power of England: few enterprises were ever more deeply weighed, few preceded by more immense preparations, and none perhaps ever attended with a more unfortunate issue. How vain and fallacious are the best-concerted schemes of man! Thus often the Divine Providence, in the wisdom of his impenetrable decrees, has determined

the fate of an enterprise quite contrary to the presumptuous expectations of human foresight."*

ous.

Philip, who had always several projects on foot at the same time (and perhaps this was the greatest error of his policy,) was meditating at once the invasion and conquest of England, the reduction of the Netherlands, and the dismemberment of the kingdom of France. We have seen the issue of the first of these projects: the second, though not equally disastrous, fell equally short of its aim; and in the last, he did no more than foment disturbances which civil discord had already excited, and which in the end procured to him no advantage whatever. Every prospect of his ambition in France was demolished by a single stroke, the conversion of Henry IV. to the catholic religion. The character of Philip II. was that of a turbulent and most ambitious spirit: his was a crafty system of policy, in which there was nothing either great or generHe was a man fitted to harass and embroil Europe, without that soundness of judgment even to turn the distresses which he occasioned to his substantial advantage. In his own kingdoms he was a cruel, a gloomy, and an inhuman tyrant; in his family, a harsh and suspicious master, a barbarous husband, and an unnatural father. In the last of these characters, he signalized himself by the murder of his queen and of his son, the unfortunate Don Carlos, whose fate, according to the common accounts, is so extraordinary as to wear the air of a romance, though the truth of the principal facts has never been disputed. There is nothing improbable in the circumstance that this unfortunate prince should conceive an involuntary passion for his mother-in-law, a beautiful princess of equal age with himself, or that she, who could have no affection for a husband of Philip's disposition, should feel a similar attachment. Popular belief does justice to these ill-fated lovers in denying that they ever had

* Bentivoglio Guerra di Fiandra, lib. iv.

a more guilty connexion. A disappointed female favourite, for whom Carlos had formerly professed a partial affection, is said, from jealousy and revenge, to have discovered to Philip their correspondence. He seized on the prince's papers, among which, it is said, were found some passionate letters from the queen, as well as a treasonable correspondence with the stadtholder to dethrone his father. As these transactions were veiled in the most profound secrecy, which none of the Spanish historians have ever attempted to penetrate, it is not known whether Don Carlos underwent a trial for his crimes, or was put to death by the royal mandate alone. It is said that he had the choice of his death, and that his veins being opened, he died in the bath, while he held in his hand the picture of his mother-in-law Elizabeth. This unhappy princess, then pregnant by her husband, to whose bed she had never been unfaithful, was soon after poisoned in a medicine which she took by the command of the tyrant himself. These atrocious facts have never, it is true, been verified by authentic evidence; but it is equally true that these accusations were brought against Philip by the prince of Orange* in the face of all Europe, and that they were never refuted.

* See Apology or Defence of the Prince of Orange against the Proscription of the King of Spain.

CHAPTER XXVII.

STATE OF FRANCE IN THE END OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY: -Religious Contentions-Conspiracy of Amboise-Death of Francis II.-Charles IX.-Massacre of St. Bartholomew -Henry III.-League of Peronne-Assassination of Henry III.-Henry of Navarre abjures the Protestant Faith, and is crowned in 1594-State of France-Character of Henry IV. His Assassination in 1610.

WHILE the Spanish monarch was possessed of so high a degree of power under Philip II. as to alarm all Europe, France was in a declining situation, divided into factions, embroiled with civil wars, and torn to pieces both by its own subjects and the ambitious designs of its neighbours. These distresses arose from religious differences, from the want of good laws, and the mal-administration of its sovereigns.

The doctrine of the reformed religion had made considerable progress in some of the provinces of France, and the persecution of the Calvinists had contributed greatly to the propagation of their opinions. The reign of Henry II., and the jealousy of his catholic clergy, had raised such a spirit of persecution, as to drive those unhappy men who would otherwise have been good subjects into an open rebellion.

The death of Henry II., and the accession of Francis II., was the era of those civil commotions which embroiled France for above thirty years, and brought that kingdom to the brink of ruin. The princes of Lorraine, or the family of the Guises, had established themselves in high credit during the two preceding reigns at the court of France. In the reign of Henry II., they had brought about the marriage of the Dauphin, now Francis II., with their niece Mary queen of Scots, whose mother was a daughter of the duke of Guise. This match gave them such an ascendancy over the young Francis, that, in fact they ruled the kingdom. In this character it may be supposed they

had powerful enemies. The two first princes of the blood, Antony of Bourbon, king of Navarre, and his brother Louis, prince of Condé, together with the constable Montmorency, were possessed of a similar ambition to that of the Guises; they were mortified by their arrogance, and were, therefore, their determined enemies. The Guises were zealots in point of religion, and intolerant catholics: the opposite party favoured the doctrines of the Reformation, which had now made considerable progress among the French. Ambition, therefore, and religion co-operating together, set the whole kingdom in a flame. A conspiracy was formed by the Huguenots, at the head of whom was the prince of Condé, with the determined purpose of wresting the government out of the hands of the duke of Guise and his family. The Huguenot conspirators agreed to meet upon a certain day at the town of Amboise, and to open the enterprise by the massacre of the Guises, and by seizing the person of the king. It was discovered by one of the conspirators almost at the moment of its execution. Fifteen thousand troops, which the duke of Guise found means to assemble, cut to pieces the forces of the conspirators as they came in detached parties to the place of rendezvous: many of them sacrificed their lives with the most desperate courage; the rest were taken and executed on scaffolds and gibbets.

The tyranny of the Guises, which increased from the demolition of this conspiracy, procured them more enemies than ever; yet so formidable was their power, that for some time it repressed all opposition. The party of the prince of Condé and the Huguenots were forced to dissemble their mortification, and to affect a placid acquiesence in the government of the Guises. The prince of Condé had the imprudence to come to court; he was immediately seized by order of the of Guise, brought to trial for his concern in the onspiracy of Amboise, and condemned to be beheaded. His life, however, was saved by the death of

ke