of striving only to be conquered, looked but for the security of
peace, and only sought to put aside all questions which would call for
efforts of which they felt themselves incapable. Divided and
enervated, the house of Austria had even less ambition than power, and
except when absolutely forced, a pompous inertia became the policy of
the successors of Charles V." (2)

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2. Republique d'Angleterre.
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Such was the Spain of that day. That part of the Spanish dominions
which was then known as the Low Countries, or the Roman Catholic
Netherlands (our modern Belgium), was about to be a fruitful source of
variance between France and her natural ally, the Dutch Republic. This
State, whose political name was the United Provinces, had now reached
the summit of its influence and power,--a power based, as has already
been explained, wholly upon the sea, and upon the use of that element
made by the great maritime and commercial genius of the Dutch people.
A recent French author thus describes the commercial and colonial
conditions, at the accession of Louis XIV., of this people, which
beyond any other in modern times, save only England, has shown how the
harvest of the sea can lift up to wealth and power a country
intrinsically weak and without resources:--

"Holland had become the Phoenicia of modern times. Mistresses of the
Scheldt, the United Provinces closed the outlets of Antwerp to the
sea, and inherited the commercial power of that rich city, which an
ambassador of Venice in the fifteenth century had compared to Venice
herself. They received besides in their principal cities the