possessions this remorseless policy was crowned with success. Fire and sword extirpated the principles of the Reformation; and after a dreadful contest, marked by frightful atrocities, the Moorish population in the south of Spain were either reduced to submission or driven to seek refuge in Africa. But the attempt of Philip to destroy the reformed faith, and establish the Spanish inquisition in the Netherlands, met with a very different result. Unlike his father, Philip was really and thoroughly a Spaniard, in faith, manners, tastes, and habits. Spain was his favourite residence, and Spaniards alone were summoned to his councils or admitted to his confidence. He had no sympathy with the Flemings, and the predilection they showed for the protestant religion still farther alienated from them the regard of their bigoted and narrow-minded sovereign. When he inaugurated in person the government of the duchess of Parma, and held the last chapter of the renowned order of the fleece that ever was assembled, the theme on which he descanted before the magnificent assembly, was the growing evil of various new reprobate and damnable sects; and he enjoined the strict enforcement of all the existing edicts and decrees for the extirpation of heresy. Then began that mighty contest between an absolute king and an intolerant church—on one side religious freedom, and the ancient constitutions of the country on the other—which was protracted for many long and weary years and through seven successive administrations, and terminated in the entire alienation of those magnificent provinces from the Spanish monarchy. From the beginning to the end of the struggle Philip kept one end in view, with unswerving pertinacity. The rule and standard of his policy was, the extirpation of heresy. For this purpose he kindled the strife of civil war in his hereditary dominions, and devastated them by fire and sword; gave up their towns to be sacked and burned by his blood-thirsty mercenaries, whose cruelties caused a shudder of horror throughout Europe; supported the inquisition in its most hateful practices; shed the blood of his noblest subjects in torrents, sometimes on the scaffold with a show and mockery of law, at other times secretly in the dungeons into which they had been entrapped; offered rewards for the life of his great antagonist; employed unblushing falsehoods, frauds, forgeries, assassinations, and every species of wickedness; in a word, resolutely carried out his favourite maxim that it were better not to reign at all, than to reign over heretics.—(See Alva, Egmont, and William of Orange.) His foreign policy was conducted throughout on the same principle. He instructed the duke of Alva to tell the queen-mother that "a prince can do nothing more scandalous or more injurious to his interests, than to allow his people to live according to their conscience; that it was necessary before all things by severe remedies, and without sparing steel or fire to extirpate this evil to the root; that if the queen was wanting in this her so just duty, his catholic majesty had resolved to sacrifice everything and even his life to stop the course of a plague which he considered alike menacing to France and Spain." With this view he ardently fomented civil war in France; sometimes combined with the court, sometimes with the fanatic popish malcontents; frantically applauded the massacre of St. Bartholomew; supported the Ligue and the Guises in their most factious plots, to such an extent that even the pope, and that pope Sixtus V., repudiated and denounced his policy; and conspired with them to obtain the crown of France for himself or some of his descendants. His project for the conquest of England and its subjection again to the sway of Rome, was avowed more openly, prosecuted more perseveringly, and met with a more direct and terrible defeat. He took part in all the plots of Mary Stuart and the English Romanists against the life and authority of Elizabeth, proposed sometimes to marry the Scottish queen to the Infant Don Carlos, sometimes to deliver her from captivity, and to place her on the throne of England, "whether Queen Elizabeth died a natural death or by any other kind of chance." By a tissue of falsehood and dissimulation probably unparalleled even in the annals of diplomacy, he contrived to lull the suspicions of the English sovereign and her ministers, until he had prepared and actually sent out against their country the most powerful armament which had ever sailed from the ports of Spain. It is unnecessary to repeat here the spirit-stirring story of the defeat and dispersion of the Great Armada by the blasts of the tempest and the valour of English seamen. But the manner in which Philip received the news of this overwhelming disaster, displayed some greatness of mind as well as religious resignation.
The reign of Philip was still farther darkened by a mysterious domestic tragedy, which has given rise to endless suspicions and conjectures. His eldest son, Don Carlos, was a young man of a haughty and violent temper, and gave many proofs of a disordered mind. His father suspected him of heretical tendencies. He had expressed a lively interest in the wrongs and resistance of the Low Countries, and had more than once spoken in terms of bitterness and hostility against the inquisition. He was at length arrested at midnight on the 18th of January, 1568, and condemned to an imprisonment from which Philip indicated there was to be no release, and in which he was to be treated with the utmost rigour. The whole affair was studiously wrapped in mystery. Philip refused to explain the reasons of his harsh treatment of his son, merely stating that it was dictated by his "duty to God and to his kingdom as becomes a christian prince." But the unhappy prince was released from his sufferings by death, 24th July, 1568, after a period of six months spent in alternate paroxysms of frenzy and depression.
As the reign of Philip drew near a close, increasing disasters, the fruits of his cruel and wicked policy, gathered round his decaying monarchy. The Low Countries were completely lost to him. Seven of these provinces had entirely emancipated themselves from his yoke, and had become free and independent. The remaining provinces of Flanders he had been obliged to hand over to his daughter Isabella and her husband, the Archduke Albert, and thus to separate them altogether from the Spanish crown. The acquisition of Portugal, which fell into his hands on the death of his uncle in 1580, might indeed be regarded as some compensation for the loss of the Netherlands; but in every other quarter his ambitious and unprincipled designs were completely foiled. One of his last public acts was to conclude a treaty of peace, 2nd May, 1598, with Henry IV., which secured that monarch's undisturbed possession of the throne of France; and it was with manifest repugnance, and only on the solicitation of the French king, that Elizabeth consented to join in the peace of Vervins, a peace far less necessary to himself than to the Spanish monarch, who, notwithstanding the enormous revenues and resources of his kingdom, died insolvent. Philip died on the 13th September following, after protracted and excruciating sufferings, in the seventy-second year of his age and forty-third of his reign. He was four times married; but two daughters by his third wife, Elizabeth of France, and Philip, his son and successor, by his fourth wife Anne, daughter of the Emperor Maximilian IV., were the only legitimate issue which he left. Philip was possessed of considerable ability, and skill in the selection and use of instruments, with remarkable devotion to business, patient industry, constancy of purpose, and resignation under calamity. He was fond of work, and was especially addicted to the writing of letters and despatches. But he was sparing of speech, slow and secret, consulted few counsellors, had no friends, was fond of seclusion, averse to journeys and changes of every kind, and disliked all intercourse with the people. He was haughty in his disposition, morose in his temper, ill-educated and ill-informed, false, treacherous, cruel, and vindictive; a narrow-minded bigot, utterly regardless of the rights of others, or of the plainest principles of morality. He recognized but one duty—his obligation to maintain the Romish faith, and to extirpate heresy. His private life was as depraved, as his public policy was wicked. He indulged without hesitation, and apparently without the slightest misgiving, in every sort of vicious and atrocious actions, under the conviction "that his religion permitted and pardoned every thing, provided every thing was sacrificed to his religion."—J. T.
Philip III., surnamed the Pious, born 14th April, 1578, succeeded his father Philip II. in 1598, being then not twenty-one years of age. As bigoted as his father, he lacked the energy which made the latter powerful; and, almost from the first, dismissing the old counsellors of Philip II., he resigned the entire management of affairs into the hands of his favourite the duke of Lerma, who ruled the kingdom for twenty years. The chief events of his administration were the acknowledgment of the independence of the revolted provinces of the Low Countries—an event which indicated the decline of Spanish power since the days of Ferdinand and Isabella; and the expulsion of the Moors from Valencia, and subsequently from all Spain. By this act—foreign to the disposition of Philip and his minister, but forced upon them by the ecclesiastics—a million of the most industrious and skilful subjects of Spain were driven into exile, or murdered
