consistent phalanx was opposed the Great Protestant Union, ardent and
enthusiastic in detail, but undisciplined, disobedient, and inharmonious
as a whole.

The great principle, not of religious toleration, which is a phrase of
insult, but of religious equality, which is the natural right of mankind,
was to be evolved after a lapse of, additional centuries out of the
elemental conflict which had already lasted so long. Still later was
the total divorce of State and Church to be achieved as the final
consummation of the great revolution. Meantime it was almost inevitable
that the privileged and richly endowed church, with ecclesiastical armies
and arsenals vastly superior to anything which its antagonist could
improvise, should more than hold its own.

At the outset of the epoch which now occupies our attention, Europe was
in a state of exhaustion and longing for repose. Spain had submitted to
the humiliation of a treaty of truce with its rebellious subjects which
was substantially a recognition of their independence. Nothing could be
more deplorable than the internal condition of the country which claimed
to be mistress of the world and still aspired to universal monarchy.

It had made peace because it could no longer furnish funds for the war.
The French ambassador, Barante, returning from Madrid, informed his
sovereign that he had often seen officers in the army prostrating
themselves on their knees in the streets before their sovereign as he
went to mass, and imploring him for payment of their salaries, or at
least an alms to keep them from starving, and always imploring in vain.

The King, who was less than a cipher, had neither capacity to feel
emotion, nor intelligence to comprehend the most insignificant affair of