The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 10

Volume X

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An Outline Narrative of the Great Events, xiii CHARLES F. HORNE

England Loses Her Last French Territory (A.D. 1558) Battle of St. Quentin, 1 CHARLES KNIGHT

Reign of Elizabeth (A.D. 1558-1603), 8 HENRY R. CLEVELAND

John Knox Heads the Scottish Reformers (A.D. 1558), 21 P. HUME BROWN THOMAS CARLYLE

Mary Stuart: Her Reign and Execution (A.D. 1561-1587), 51 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE

Founding of St. Augustine (A.D. 1565) Massacre of the Huguenots in America, 70 GEORGE R. FAIRBANKS

Revolt of the Netherlands against Spain Rise of the Gueux or Beggars (A.D. 1566), 81 FRIEDRICH VON SCHILLER

Lepanto: Destruction of the Turkish Naval Power (A.D. 1571), 100 SIR WILLIAM STIRLING-MAXWELL

Massacre of St. Bartholomew (A.D. 1572), 119 HENRY WHITE ISAAC D'ISRAELI JNO. RUDD

Heroic Age of the Netherlands (A.D. 1573) Siege of Leyden, 145 THOMAS HENRY DYER

Search for the Northwest Passage by Frobisher (A.D. 1576), 156 GEORGE BEST

Building of the First Theatre in England (A.D. 1576) 163 KARL MANTZIUS

Cossack Conquest of Siberia (A.D. 1581), 181 NIKOLAI M. KARAMZIN

First Colony of England Beyond Seas (A.D. 1583), 198 MOSES HARVEY

Assassination of William of Orange (A.D. 1584) Division of the Netherlands, 202 JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY

Naming of Virginia: First Description of the Indians The Lost Colony (A.D. 1584), 211 ARTHUR BARLOW R. R. HOWISON

Drake Captures Cartagena He "Singes the King of Spain's Beard" at Cadiz (A.D. 1586-1587), 230 JULIAN CORBETT

Defeat of the Spanish Armada (A.D. 1588), 251 SIR EDWARD SHEPHERD CREASY

Henry of Navarre Accepts Catholicism He is Acknowledged King of France (A.D. 1593), 276 MAXIMILIEN DE BÉTHUNE, DUC DE SULLY

Culmination of Dramatic Literature in Hamlet (A.D. 1601), 287 JAMES O. HALLIWELL-PHILLIPPS

Downfall of Irish Liberty "Flight of the Earls" (A.D. 1603), 299 JUSTIN M'CARTHY

The Gunpowder Plot (A.D. 1605), 310 SAMUEL R. GARDINER

Cervantes' Don Quixote Reforms Literature (A.D. 1605), 325 HENRY EDWARD WATTS

Earliest Positive Discovery of Australia (A.D. 1606), 340 LOUIS BECKE WALTER JEFFERY

Settlement of Virginia (A.D. 1607) Charter under which America was Colonized, 350 R. R. HOWISON

Founding of Quebec (A.D. 1608) Champlain Establishes French Power in Canada, 366 H. H. MILES

Universal Chronology (A.D. 1558-1608), 387 JOHN RUDD

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Volume X

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Murder of the favorite, Rizzio, at the feet of Mary Stuart, by her husband and associate conspirators (page 56), Frontispiece Painting by Eug. Siberdt.

Catharine de' Medici, accompanied by her suite, issues from the gate of the Louvre the morning after the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 142 Painting by Ed. Debat-Ponsan.

AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE

TRACING BRIEFLY THE CAUSES, CONNECTIONS, AND CONSEQUENCES

OF THE GREAT EVENTS

(AGE OF ELIZABETH AND PHILIP II)

CHARLES F. HORNE

Philip II succeeded his father Charles V on the throne of Spain. The vast extent of his domains, the absoluteness of his authority, and, above all, the enormous wealth that poured into his coffers from the Spanish conquests in America, made him the most powerful monarch of his time, the central figure of the age. It was largely because of Philip's personal character that the great religious struggle of the Reformation entered upon a new phase, became far more sinister, more black and deadly, extended over all Europe, and bathed the civilized world in blood. England stood forth as the centre of opposition against Philip, and under the unwilling leadership of Elizabeth entered on its epic period of heroism, was stimulated to that remarkable outburst of energy and intellect and power which we call the Elizabethan age.

Philip, with a tenacity of purpose from which no fortune good or bad could lure him for a moment, pursued two objects throughout his reign (1555-1598), the reëstablishment of Catholicism over all Europe, and the extension so far as might be of his own personal authority. If we consider his personal ambition, we must count his reign a failure; for at his death his country had already fallen from its foremost rank in Europe and started on that process of decay which in later centuries has become so marked. If, however, we look to Philip's religious purpose, it is undeniable that during his reign Catholicism revived. Philip II, the Jesuits, the Council of Trent--these three were the powers by means of which the Roman Church beat back its foes, saved itself from what for a time had seemed a threatened extinction, and so far reëstablished its power that for over a century it appeared not improbable that Philip's purpose of reuniting Europe might be accomplished.

Before the beginning of this reactionary wave, the North had become wholly Protestant. It has been estimated that nine-tenths of the people of Germany were of the new faith; half the population of France had adopted it; even in Italy protest and disbelief were widespread and active. Only in Spain did the Inquisition with firmest cruelty trample down each vestige of revolt.

SPAIN AND GREAT BRITAIN

The Inquisition was established in Italy, which, as we have seen, was really a Spanish possession. It was introduced into the Netherlands by Charles V (1550), but remained feebly merciful there until Philip, to whom we must at least give the credit of having been a sincere fanatic, insisted on its rigorous enforcement. Over England also Philip sought to extend his hand. There the eagerly Protestant Edward VI had died in 1553, and his Catholic sister Mary succeeded to the throne. Philip was wedded to her in 1554, even before he became King of Spain, and both he and she did their utmost to restore the kingdom to the Roman faith. So many Protestants were burned at the stake that England remembers the queen as "bloody Mary"; and so recklessly did she antagonize the spirit of her people that even her husband counselled her to a caution which she despised. He had no love for his cold, pale, embittered English wife, except as an instrument in his policy; and when he found that it was impossible for him, as her husband, to become King of England, he practically abandoned her, and returned to Spain.

When his father's abdication gave him power in 1555, Philip's first active movement was against France. He sought to avenge his father's loss of Metz, and persuaded his English wife to join him in war against young Henry II. With his splendid Spanish troops Philip won a great victory at St. Quentin. "Has he yet taken Paris?" cried his father eagerly when the news reached his secluded monastery. But Philip had not, he had erred from over-caution and given France time to recover. Two able generals, the great Protestant leader Coligny, and the dashing Catholic hero of Metz, Francis of Guise, held the Spaniards in check. Guise even seized Calais, and so snatched from England her last territory in France (1558). Its loss filled full the measure of poor Mary's unpopularity with her subjects and also of her own unhappiness. She had sacrificed everything for love of a husband who had no love for her. She died the same year. "They will find 'Calais,'" she said, "engraven on my heart."

See Battle of St. Quentin, page 1.

See England Loses Her Last French Territory, page 1.

Her Protestant sister, Elizabeth, daughter of Anne Boleyn, succeeded to the throne, and England with a cry of relief threw off the hated Spanish alliance. She was free again. Free, but in infinite danger. The Catholic Pope and Catholic Philip, remembering that the divorce under which Henry VIII married Anne Boleyn had never been admitted by the Church, declared Elizabeth illegitimate, and pointed to her cousin Mary Stuart of Scotland as the lawful ruler of England. Mary had been married to the French prince Francis II, who at this moment succeeded his father Henry II as king of France. Here was a chance indeed for Spain and France and Scotland all three to unite against Elizabeth and place a second Catholic Mary on England's throne. Many Englishmen themselves were still Catholic, and might easily have been persuaded to approve the change. That Elizabeth, by her cool and cunning diplomacy, managed to evade the threatened danger, has ever been held as little short of providential by the Protestants of the world. In truth, however, each of the powers which might have assailed Elizabeth, had religious difficulties of its own to encounter.

See Reign of Elizabeth, page 8.

In Scotland there was civil war. The Protestant faith had been slow of introduction there, but under the leadership of John Knox it had become at length supreme. The Regent, mother of the young queen, Mary Stuart, had French troops to aid her against the reformers, but had been compelled to yield to their demands. When Queen Mary herself returned to rule Scotland after the death of her French husband, King Francis, she found her path anything but easy. A sovereign of one faith and a nation of another had not yet learned to endure each other, and there were queer doings in Scotland, wild nobles running off with the Queen, wilder fanatics lecturing at her in her own court, her French favorite assassinated, a new husband, a Scotch one, sent the same dark road, more civil war, imprisonments, romantic escapes. It ended in Mary's secret flight to England. She who had so nearly marched into the land a conqueror, entered it a fugitive supplicating Elizabeth's protection. The remainder of her life she passed in an English prison, and eighteen years later was executed on an only half-proven charge of conspiring against the rival who had kept her in such dreary durance.

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