Elizabeth's throne. It was most natural that the Dutch republic and the
French king, the archdukes and his Catholic Majesty, should be filled
with anxiety as to the probable effect of this change of individuals upon
the fortunes of the war.

For this Dutch war of independence was the one absorbing and controlling
interest in Christendom. Upon that vast, central, and, as men thought,
baleful constellation the fates of humanity, were dependent. Around it
lesser political events were forced to gravitate, and, in accordance to
their relation to it, were bright or obscure. It was inevitable that
those whose vocation it was to ponder the aspects of the political
firmament, the sages and high-priests who assumed to direct human action
and to foretell human destiny, should now be more than ever perplexed.

Spain, since the accession of Philip III. to his father's throne,
although rapidly declining in vital energy, had not yet disclosed its
decrepitude to the world. Its boundless ambition survived as a political
tradition rather than a real passion, while contemporaries still trembled
at the vision of universal monarchy in which the successor of Charlemagne
and of Charles V. was supposed to indulge.

Meantime, no feebler nor more insignificant mortal existed on earth than
this dreaded sovereign.

Scarcely a hairdresser or lemonade-dealer in all Spain was less cognizant
of the political affairs of the kingdom than was its monarch, for
Philip's first care upon assuming the crown was virtually to abdicate
in favour of the man soon afterwards known as the Duke of Lerma.

It is therefore only by courtesy and for convenience that history