Lepanto was the western limit of Islam’s latest advance in Europe; after that fateful battle it receded toward the Orient. But for King Philip’s insane jealousy of his half-brother, Don John of Austria, who so bravely led the Christian hosts, the allied forces might have laid siege to Constantinople; as it was, Don John sailed across the Mediterranean with twenty thousand men and captured Tunis, on the African coast. It was soon after retaken by the Turks, and many years later the other Spanish dependencies went the same way.
On the other side of the Pyrenees, in France, an event occurred in 1572 peculiarly acceptable to Philip—the atrocious massacre of Saint Bartholomew’s night, when four thousand Huguenots were murdered in cold blood, through the treachery of the queen regent, Catherine de’ Medici, and her son Charles IX. In the provinces of France at least thirty thousand more fell victims of the hate and fury of their compatriots who differed from them in their religious belief; and they could not fly to Spain for succour, for there sat their inveterate enemy, who was only too anxious to interfere in the affairs of France. He had his hands full, with the encroaching Moslems on one side and the obstinate Netherlanders on the other; yet he found time to attend to all these things, and to manage the affairs of his vast empire in the New World also.
Two years after the recall of Alva from the Low Countries, or in 1575, Holland and Zealand were united under Philip’s bitterest enemy, William of Orange, and the next year witnessed the famous “Pacification of Ghent” between the Protestant and Catholic provinces, by which the Inquisition was declared abolished, mutual toleration agreed to in religious matters, and a united stand maintained against the Spanish soldiery. In 1578 the free states brought about a treaty with Queen Elizabeth of England, and the next year the Union of Utrecht—a stepping-stone to their great and final declaration of independence and repudiation of Spain, in 1581. As the Duke of Parma, who had succeeded Don John of Austria, advised the removal of the head and front of the opposition in the person of the noble patriot William the Silent, Philip at once declared him a miscreant and outlaw, and offered a reward of twenty-five thousand crowns to whoever would murder him. This is the reason why Philip II of Spain has been called the murderer of William the Silent, because, instigated by the proffered reward, a miserable wretch was finally successful in assassinating William, in July, 1584. Although he himself did not point the pistol which ended the life of William the Silent, yet Philip was as actually his murderer as if he had done so; likewise of his secretary, Escovedo, of his own son, Don Carlos, of the Counts Egmont and Horn, of Don John of Austria, and thousands of others who were put to the sword, beheaded, hanged, and burned to death by his commands.
Were we writing the history of the Netherlands we might find examples of Philip’s tortures, might produce evidence of his most inhuman cruelty to his brother man too revolting, too horrible for contemplation. He reminds us of nothing so much as of a vile and venomous spider intrenched in his web at Madrid, whence radiate threads of communication to the confines of his realm—to Naples and the Netherlands, to Africa and the Americas—all connecting with the capital where sits this arch-enemy of mankind, absorbing the life-blood of his innumerable victims. This human spider rioted in scenes of blood, yet rarely shed blood directly by his own hand; his foul parasites executed his commands, and burned and strangled by his orders; he was Briareus-like; no one could escape him; no life was safe if once he wanted it. So it was that, while he gratified his hideous instincts, his country became poorer and poorer; while he sucked the blood of his prey, he also sapped the land of its vitality; his armies were numerous, his wars were costly, and as he had encouraged no domestic industries—had killed rather than fostered skilled artisans—all the vast wealth brought to the shores of Spain by her flotillas of treasure galleons was absorbed by unworthy favourites, was scattered abroad on many a battlefield, or went to reward hired assassins and a mercenary soldiery. For the credit of humanity, for the credit of the cause of religion—which he pretended to champion and up-hold—we would his life were otherwise than what it was; but it has been said of him, and of his father, Charles I, that no other sovereigns with such glorious privileges, with such great opportunities for doing so much good, ever did so much harm!
The Netherlands may be considered as lost to Spain when their cause was championed by the “Virgin Queen” Elizabeth, who sent, in 1586, the Earl of Leicester to represent her with an army. It was at a skirmish attending one of the battles of this year that there fell one who has received almost immortal acclaim for his knightly courtesy: Sir Philip Sidney, who, dying, refused a cup of water that a brother soldier might be refreshed.
Though King Philip may have welcomed a war with England, as a hotbed of Protestantism and the realm over which ruled Elizabeth, whose refusal to marry him still rankled in his bosom, yet he was soon to regret it. For, in 1587, that great sea-lion, Sir Francis Drake—not then “Sir,” however, but plain Admiral—pounced upon the seaport of Cadiz, sank two hundred and fifty galleys and transports, and created consternation everywhere in Spain.
The next year, in spite of Drake’s ravages, sailed the great armada—one hundred and forty ships and thirty thousand men, with friars, inquisitors, etc.—for the conquest and conversion of England: argosies in which were centred the hopes of Spain; only to be crushed and defeated by one half its number of English ships, combined with the adverse elements, so that only a pitiful remnant returned to Spanish ports. A last expiring effort at naval supremacy was made in 1595; but this fleet also was sunk, carrying with it Spain’s prestige on the ocean wave.
And at last, in misery and torture from a loathsome disease, at the age of seventy-one, in the year 1598, Philip II departed this life; his chief legacy an impoverished kingdom, his greatest monument the Escorial, that palace, monastery, mausoleum, library, upon which he had spent thirty years of time and lavished millions of treasure.