The foreign polity of the court remained as it had been established by
Philip II.

Its maxims were very simple. To do unto your neighbour all possible
harm, and to foster the greatness of Spain by sowing discord and
maintaining civil war in all other nations, was the fundamental precept.
To bribe and corrupt the servants of other potentates, to maintain a
regular paid bode of adherents in foreign lands, ever ready to engage in
schemes of assassination, conspiracy, sedition, and rebellion against the
legitimate authority, to make mankind miserable, so far as it was in the
power of human force or craft to produce wretchedness, were objects still
faithfully pursued.

They had not yet led to the entire destruction of other realms and their
submission to the single sceptre of Spain, nor had they developed the
resources, material or moral, of a mighty empire so thoroughly as might
have been done perhaps by a less insidious policy, but they had never
been abandoned.

It was a steady object of policy to keep such potentates of Italy as
were not already under the dominion of the Spanish crown in a state
of internecine feud with each other and of virtual dependence on the
powerful kingdom. The same policy pursued in France, of fomenting civil
war by subsidy, force, and chicane, during a long succession of years in
order to reduce that magnificent realm under the sceptre of Philip, has
been described in detail. The chronic rebellion of Ireland against the
English crown had been assisted and inflamed in every possible mode, the
system being considered as entirely justified by the aid and comfort
afforded by the queen to the Dutch rebels.