It is of interest to note that this discovery of Muscovy, as Russia for a long while was called in England, was made by sailors in search of a very different land, namely, China. For there was an idea in the minds of the men of the fifteenth century that a way to China, and all its riches, might be found by sea round the top of Scandinavia and so eastward until China was reached.
And so, in fact, some sort of a way was ultimately found through Behring's Straits—the narrow sea-way between the extreme north-east of Asia and the extreme north-west of America. But it is a way so blocked by the ice for so large a part of the year as to be of no practical use, and the discovery of the south-west passage round the Cape took all the interest and zest out of the search for what was called the North-West Passage. Portuguese trading vessels had reached China and Japan before the middle of the century and missionaries of the Order of Jesus, or Jesuits, had introduced Christianity into Japan as they had already brought it to India. Spanish missionaries of the same great monastic order had carried Christianity westward into the New World. Thousands of Indians in Mexico and Peru and other countries conquered by the Spaniards were baptised as Christians. Churches and cathedrals built by the labour of the natives, which cost the Spaniards nothing, began to rise on the sites of the pagan temples.
Cross and Crescent
Thus both eastward and westward the Cross, the Christian emblem, travelled with the conquering sword of those who went by sea; but on land, and in the Mediterranean itself, the Mahommedan Crescent was carried far by the scimitar, or curved blade, of the Moslem.
The Moslem Turks fought their way, as we have seen, so far, in Europe, as Vienna, which they nearly, but not quite, captured. On the other side they had subdued Persia, and established themselves at Bagdad. Up to the year 1571 and the heavy defeat of their fleet at Lepanto, they continued to be the strongest naval force in the Mediterranean. It was in the first half of the century that they touched the highest point of their power and extended their sway most widely. In further course of the story we shall find them for the most part on the defensive, striving, especially against the growing might of Russia, to retain what they had won.
Towards the latter part of his reign that great king and emperor, Charles V., had trouble in the most northern section of his wide domain—in the Netherlands. He put down, with severity, a rising of the great city of Ghent, formidable, within its walls, because of the privileges that had been granted to its burghers, because of the wealth and of the numbers of its inhabitants and their independent spirit. This little trouble in the Netherlands might have sounded in his ears, if they had been able to appreciate its meaning, as the first note of an immense trouble that was to follow, for in the years to come we shall find unrest and fighting over almost the whole stage, which has become world-wide, of our story; and we may trace the origin of it all back to what now happened in that comparatively small corner which was called the Netherlands.
CHAPTER IV
THE WANING POWER OF SPAIN
Charles V. resigning the Crown of Spain, gave it over to his son Philip II., who married Mary, Queen of England. He had already ceded to him the kingdom of Naples. With the Crown of Spain went the Netherlands; and Charles would have wished his son to receive the Imperial title also. The Electors of Germany, however, refused to elect Philip and, with the assent of Charles, Ferdinand, Charles's younger brother, became the new Emperor.