CHAPTER VI
THE GROWING POWER OF FRANCE
The event of chief importance in the story of the second half of the seventeenth century is the gradual shifting of the power in Europe from the hand of Spain into the hand of France. It was indeed in the earlier half that Spain had begun to fail. We have noticed more than once how, with all the far-flung possessions of her great ruling family of Habsburg—possessions in Italy, in Austria, in the Netherlands—she held France surrounded and hemmed in. On the other hand, France had all the advantage which, as is well known, belongs to the "central position." She could throw her whole force into the struggle on this side or on that far more easily than Spain could mass her force on any one point. And the very fact that Spain had so many possessions to defend proved in the end her weakness. She spent her vast strength in the struggle. Moreover, she had inflicted on herself a great loss by driving out of the country the converted Jews and the converted Mahommedans. The last of the latter were expelled in the tenth year of the seventeenth century, and the Jews had gone long before. Both were intelligent and industrious people, and Spain thus lost a most valuable section of her population.
She had immense wealth coming to her from America, but the transport of this wealth made a heavy demand on her fleet. When Elizabeth was on the throne of England, English seamen, by their constant attacks, drained much of the life-blood of the Spanish fleet. Under the vacillating rule of the Stuarts, English attacks on the Spanish treasure ships grew inconsiderable, but another formidable menace to Spain had arisen in the sea-power of the Dutch.
The naval power of Holland had been necessary to her during the war of religion in which Spain had tried to crush out the Protestant spirit. As early as 1607 the Dutch fleet had practically destroyed the principal fleet of Spain off Gibraltar. The Dutch, as we have seen, had taken the supremacy which the Portuguese had held in the Malay Archipelago; and since Portugal till 1640 had been for sixty years under the King of Spain, it was nearly equivalent to taking that supremacy from Spain herself. The victory which really was decisive was won by the great Dutch admiral, Van Tromp, in 1639. It made Holland, so lately a mere province of Spain, the strongest sea-power in the world.
Cromwell as dictator
And at this point, that is to say, in 1651, Cromwell, in his masterful manner, passed the law called the Navigation Act which directly challenged the naval power of Holland. It provided that ships trading to England should carry no other goods than those produced in the country to which the ship belonged; and this was a direct challenge to the Dutch because they had a great carrying trade, and their ships brought to England the goods produced in many other countries besides their own. Moreover, the English claimed that the ships of all other nations meeting English ships in the Channel, should salute them by lowering their flags. The English admiral, Blake, meeting the Dutch fleet under Van Tromp in the Channel, demanded that he should lower the Dutch flag accordingly, and Van Tromp's reply was a broadside from his guns.
As always, the English seamen fought with astonishing skill and courage. Probably in the whole course of this Greatest Story only one other nation, and that the Dutch, has rivalled them in their genius for the battle at sea. After several actions the issue was still open. Van Tromp swept the Channel for a while, after an English defeat, splicing a broom, by way of derision, to his masthead. But the English fleet was strengthened; Blake came forth again from the Thames and harried Van Tromp successfully. While Cromwell was Protector neither side had the decisive mastery. The day of England's humiliation was to come later, when a Dutch fleet sailed up the Thames and burned English ships at Chatham; but that was not until again a weak Stuart was on the throne.
What Cromwell and his Puritans did was amazing. He had Ireland in rebellion on his hands. He put down that rising with an iron severity. Rulers of England before him had established those colonies of Scottish and other immigrants which are the source of the present division of Ireland into the Free State in the south and the Northern Ireland which is still directly under the English Government. Cromwell's plan to break up the centres of rebellion was to shift sections of the Irish people themselves out of their homes and plant them down in other parts of the same country. It was a policy that left a hatred of English rule which still lives in the hearts of the descendants of the people so mistreated. But for the moment it brought a forced peace.
Also on his hands was a Scottish rising, of the Church party which was opposed equally to English Puritans and to Scottish Covenanters. That too he dealt with masterfully and severely. He was a virtual dictator.