READING HALL

THE DOORS OF WISDOM

A HISTORY OF MODERN EUROPE : A.D. 1453-1900

CHAPTER XXVIII.

RELIGION AND COMMERCE

AT the peace of Vervins a century had elapsed since the French, by their incursions into Italy, had inaugurated the modern European system, and the result up to this time had been entirely in favour of their Spanish rivals. Spain had succeeded in seizing and retaining the two Sicilies and the Duchy of Milan, and, in spite of a wretched system of administration and the revolt of her provinces in the Netherlands, was still incontestably the leading Power of Europe. The Spanish infantry continued to retain their prestige; the conquest of Portugal helped to support the declining power and reputation of Spain; and we have beheld Philip II, towards the close of his long reign, aspiring, with perhaps even a better chance of success than his father, Charles V, to universal monarchy, by the conquest of England, and the reduction of France under his dominion by placing his daughter on the throne. These successes, however, were due, not to the strength of Spain, but to the weakness of her adversary. Torn by her religious wars and the anarchy of the League, France was unable to compete with a rival in which those disturbing causes were absent; and as soon as they ceased to operate she rapidly rose to her true position. The question of religion was also the mainspring of action in England and the Netherlands. Thus the Reformation forms the key to the political state of Europe at this period, and as its effects were to continue another half century, namely, down to the peace of Westphalia, it will be proper here to take a view of its progress, and the changes which it had effected.

About the middle of the sixteenth century Protestantism had established itself in the greater part of Europe. The doctrinesof Luther had become the national religion of the Scandinavian kingdoms, of East Prussia, Livonia, and the northern parts of Germany. In Bavaria a large majority of the nobles had embraced them, and the same creed had made still greater progress in Austria, where it was computed that only one-thirtieth part of the population remained faithful to the Roman Church. In 1558 a Venetian ambassador reckoned that only one-tenth part of the whole German people were Roman Catholics. In Poland, although the King himself was a Roman Catholic, many of his subjects had adopted the reformed doctrines. These also prevailed very extensively in Hungary, where, in 1554, a Lutheran had been elected Palatine. In Bohemia the large Hussite party already established could not but derive additional strength from the religious movement in Germany. Calvinism, still more inimical to Rome than were the docrines of Luther, had from Geneva, its centre and stronghold, spread itself in all directions in Western Europe. In the neighbouring parts of Germany it had in a great degree supplanted Lutheranism, and had even penetrated into Hungary and Poland; it was predominant in Scotland, and had leavened the doctrines of the English Church. In France it had divided the population into two hostile camps. The Venetian ambassador Micheli relates that, immediately after the death of Francis II in 1560, fifty preachers had issued from Geneva and settled themselves in various French towns. When Micheli paid a visit to that metropolis of Calvinism he was struck with astonishment at the veneration in which the great French reformer was held, and at the vast sums of money which he received in aid of the thousands who had taken refuge at Geneva. In the Netherlands the doctrines of Calvin supplanted those of Luther. Tiepolo, another Venetian ambassador, says that all the Pope could reckon upon as sound and secure was Spain and Italy, with a few islands and the Venetian possessions in Dalmatia and Greece.

Counter-Reformation

The proceedings of the Council of Trent drew an insuperable line of demarcation between Catholics and Protestants; all idea of conciliation was abandoned, and the hostility of the two parties stood out in bolder relief. The violent and impolitic conduct of Pope Paul IV also tended to widen the breach. From his antipathy to the House of Austria, Paul broke with the Imperial party and drove the Emperor Ferdinand to cultivate the friendship of the Protestants. He acted in the same inconsiderate manner towards England. Instead of endeavouring to conciliate Queen Elizabeth and the English nation, Paul repulsed her ambassadors by his haughty demands, deprived Cardinal Pole of his legateship, endeavoured to re-establish Peter's pence, and annulled every alienation that had been made of Church property; nay, so blind was he to his own interests that he was even hostile to Philip II, the great prop of the Roman Catholic cause. But soon after his pontificate a reaction began in favour of the Roman Church. Shaken to her very centre by the Reformation, Rome found means to reclaim vast numbers of apostates, and to recover a large share of her former influence and power. As this Counter-Reformation is the most striking feature in the history of the latter half of the sixteenth century, and lay at the root of the Thirty Years' War, it may be worth while to inquire into the causes of so remarkable a reaction.

Among these causes we may note the reform effected in the Roman Curia itself. The first part of the sixteenth century had been characterized by a general relaxation of the discipline and authority of the Church; profane studies, literature and art, had usurped the place of religion; and Rome herself seemed to have forgotten her hierarchical character. But the conduct of Pius V, and of several exemplary Pontiffs who succeeded him, had a great influence in amending the lives of the Roman prelates. At the beginning of the century the Cardinals levied war on the Pope, or hatched conspiracies against him; while the Pope himself did not scruple to gird on the sword and to lead his armies to battle like any temporal Prince. But towards the close of the same era everything was done in the name of religion; a ceremonious behaviour began to prevail in the Roman Court, and the outward forms at least of piety and virtue were strictly observed. A similar reformation took place in other Roman Catholic countries. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the ancient monastic orders, the Benedictines, Dominicans, and Franciscans were vigorously reformed in France; and to such a degree were austerities carried among some of the religious communities of women, that fourteen Feuillantines are said to have died in one week. The celebrated Cistercian nunnery of Port-Royal was distinguished by its nocturnal vigils, its unbroken silence, and perpetual adoration of the Eucharist. This was also the period of the reforms and labours of St. Francis de Sales in Savoy and of St. Theresa in Spain. At the same time the belief in miracles was revived and grew owing to the spread of marvellous tales At San Silvestro an image of the Virgin spoke, and the desolate region which surrounded her shrine, such was the attraction of the miracle, was soon occupied with houses. Similar portents became frequent, and spread from Italy into other countries. By these and the like acts did the clergy recover their reputation, and with it a large share of their former power.

But the chief instrument of Catholic reaction was the Society of Jesuits, to whose foundation we have already adverted. The use that might be made of that body in retrieving the fortunes of the Church was quickly perceived; and Pope Julius III, soon after his accession, in 1550, conferred upon them vast privileges which roused the jealousy of the regular orders. They were empowered to grant degrees to competent persons whose poverty debarred them from studying at a University: a privilege which, by drawing to them the youths of talent among the lower classes, gave them the command of education, and enabled them to mould at an early age the pliant consciences of their pupils. Their method of instruction was most artful. They reduced study to a sort of mechanical process, whose results were quick but superficial; and even Protestant parents, dazzled by their success as teachers, confided to them their children. As they thus formed the principles of the younger portion of the community by means of education, so likewise the unreserved power conferred on them of granting absolution, enabled them to obtain the direction of the consciences of older persons, by assuming the functions of confessors. The absurd quarrels of the Protestants among themselves, and particularly that concerning original sin, contributed not a little to the success of the Jesuits.

It was about the middle of the sixteenth century that the Society of Jesus began to spread themselves throughout Europe. In 1548 the Duke of Bavaria, William I, appointed to the chairs of theology, at Ingolstadt, the Jesuits Le Jay, a Savoyard, Salmeron, a Spaniard, and the celebrated Peter Canisius, of Nymegen. Hence Ingolstadt soon became of a like importance as a Catholic seminary, as Wittenberg for Lutheranism, or Geneva for Calvinism. Favoured by William I and his son and successor Duke Albert III, the Jesuits gradually acquired the direction of all the Bavarian schools. They were likewise encouraged by the Emperor Ferdinand in Bohemia and Austria; and it was at the request of that Sovereign that Canisius, who did more than any man for his Society in Germany, drew up his Summa Doctrinae Christianae, from which he afterwards extracted his celebrated catechism. In 1551 Ferdinand established a Jesuit's college at Vienna, which he soon after incorporated with the University; in 1556 he removed some of them to Prague : and by that year their influence may be said to have extended over Bavaria, Tyrol, Franconia, Suabia, Austria, and the Rhenish lands, and also to have been felt in Hungary, Poland, Bohemia, and Moravia. In 1578, as related in the preceding chapter, Protestantism was utterly proscribed in the Austrian dominions. In Poland, Cardinal Hosias, Bishop of Ermeland, founded a college for the Jesuits at Braunsberg, in 1569. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Polish Jesuits nearly succeeded in effecting a revolution in Russia, and bringing that country within the pale of the Roman Church. After the murder of the legitimate heir, Demetrius Ivanowitch, and the usurpation of the throne by Boris Godenuff, a Muscovite Boyard, a false Demetrius appeared in Poland, the Jesuits took up his cause, procured his recognition in Poland and the help of an army, with which they entered Moscow after the death of Boris, who had died during the struggle. But the Muscovite nation soon recovered from its surprise; Demetrius was massacred, the Poles were expelled from Moscow, and the hopes of the Church of Rome entirely frustrated.

It was not till a rather later period that the Jesuits obtained a footing in France, and at first in places remote from the capital. At Paris, as we have already related, they met with great opposition; the University, the Sorbonne, and the Parliament, who thought their privileges invaded, united in bitterly opposing them. By perseverance, however, they gradually succeeded in establishing themselves : and, in 1564, were allowed to become teachers. Three years later a magnificent college was erected for them at Lyons; in 1574 the Cardinal of Guise founded a Jesuit College at Pont-a-Mousson; and they also established themselves in other important towns. Their ranks at this time included many men of distinguished talent, and wherever they appeared the numbers of the Roman Catholics were observed to increase. In 1574 a Jesuit college was founded at Lucerne, in Switzerland, to which the Pope, the Catholic King, and the Guises are said to have contributed.

But although the religious struggle in France ended, as we have seen, in favour of the Roman Catholic Church, the authority of the Pope and of the Jesuits never attained to any extraordinary height in that country. The Jesuits succeeded, indeed, in procuring the revocation of the banishment inflicted on them after Chatel's attempt on the life of Henry IV; that King even gave them the site for their College at La Fleche, whither his heart was carried after his murder; yet in general they continued to be unpopular among the French. In 1611 the inhabitants of Troyes opposed their establishment in that city, on the ground that they were fomenters of discord and division; in the same year, the University of Paris frustrated their attempt to teach publicly in their renewed college, and compelled them to content themselves with privately instructing, by means of salaried masters, the boarders whom they were permitted to keep in their house. In 1614 the Parliament of Paris ordered to be burnt a book of the Jesuit Suarez, entitled Defense de la Foi Catholique Apostolique contre les erreurs de la secte d'Angleterre, on the ground of its advocating the assassination of Sovereigns. It was remarked that, though other religious societies had produced assassins, the Jesuits were the only one which supported assassination systematically and on principle. The deed had a law of its own. It was not to be perpetrated at the arbitrament of a private individual, but it might be lawfully carried out by the decree of an ecclesiastical tribunal; and this view the Jesuits founded on the 15th decree of the Council of Constance, which anathematized those only who attempted such an act without having first procured a mandate for it.

The Huguenots

Altogether, therefore, the movement against the Reformation was not so successful in France as in Austria and Bavaria. The Edict of Nantes was, in fact, a compromise which still left the Huguenots a powerful party—a sort of imperium in imperio. They had their cautionary towns, an organized army, their representative charter, their assemblies; they had even their great seal, of which the device was Religion leaning on the cross, holding the sacred volume in her hand, and treading under foot an aged skeleton intended to represent the Romish Church. Thus they possessed an organization which enabled them, in times of disturbance, to break through all the checks and restraints which it had been endeavoured to place upon them. But the zeal and energy of their leaders had died out. Sully, Mornay, Lesdiguières, were either lukewarm or self-interested. Rohan, indeed, was animated with enthusiasm; but alone he could do nothing.

The Gallican Church, however, without regard to Rome Gaiiican and in spite of the great Huguenot party, made France groan, like other Roman Catholic countries, under the burden of an enormous ecclesiastical establishment. Early in the seventeenth century the whole number of secular and regular ecclesiastics considerably exceeded a quarter of a million, of which more than three-fifths were monks or nuns: viz. 35,600 religieux rentes, or monks belonging to foundations; 80,000 nuns of various orders; 46,500 mendicant friars, ancient and reformed; and 500 hermits. But while the cures or parochial clergy, had scarcely sufficient for the necessaries of life, the mendicant orders, by virtue of their vow of poverty, dwelt in magnificent buildings, and consumed each a pound of meat and three pints of wine a day. Their repas maigres, or fast-day meals, were still more expensive; and it was reckoned that the subsistence of each monk cost daily twenty sous.

It was not till 1580 that the Jesuits appeared in England. Dr. William Allen, early in the reign of Elizabeth, had founded an English Catholic seminary at Douai, and others were subsequently established at St. Omer, Rheims, and Rome. The pupils of these colleges were animated with the same savage spirit of murder. Against Queen Elizabeth their rage was inexhaustible, since, under her auspices, Protestantism had not only been firmly established in England, but also found her its chief protectress in other countries. The work of Saunders, De monarchia visibili Ecclesiae, published at Louvain in 1571, was the bible of these fanatics. Saunders had been secretary to bloody Mary, and his book was written under the patronage of the Duke of Alva. It was in the year mentioned that the Jesuits Parsons and Campion returned to England, after which a great many penal laws were promulgated against that Society. Queen Elizabeth, in self-defence, was compelled to take a leaf out of her enemies' book, and England witnessed to some extent a persecution of the Catholics, of whom about two hundred were executed during her reign. It should, however, be recollected that they were Elizabeth's political enemies, that they were constantly endeavouring to deprive her of her kingdom, and even of her life, and that most of those who suffered in England were convicted of conspiracy.

It may appear surprising that in a bigoted country like Spain the Jesuits should have obtained little or no influence; but, in fact, that very bigotry afforded small scope for their activity in that country; and Spain was inimical to the encroachments of Rome. Yet Spain had given birth to the founder of the Society, and produced an eminent patron of it in Francis Borgia, Duke of Gandia, great-grandson of the infamous Pope Alexander VI, who at last turned Jesuit himself, and eventually became third general of the Society. As a rule, however, the Jesuits in Spain were not native Spaniards, but converted Jews, and even became objects of suspicion to the government. St. Francis Borgia himself was prosecuted by the Inquisition as one of the mystics or illuminati, a sect which seems to have borne some resemblance to the English Quakers. In Portugal, on the other hand, during the minority of Sebastian and the tutorship of his ecclesiastical guardians, the Jesuits, as we have already said, obtained a complete control. John III had founded for them a college at the University of Coimbra, whence issued the greater part of those missionaries who spread themselves over Asia and Africa.

Neither Spain nor Italy, however, was altogether exemptfrom the invasion of heretical doctrines. As early as 1519, Froben, the celebrated printer of Basle, forwarded some of Luther's tracts into Spain; and in 1527 several works of Erasmus were condemned, and prosecutions instituted against some of the most learned men in the country. By 1530 the doctrines of Luther had made such progress that the Council of the Supreme instructed the inquisitors throughout Spain to exercise the greatest vigilance: an injunction which led to domiciliary visits by the familiars of the Inquisition. The Spaniards themselves attributed the propagation of Lutheran opinions in Spain to their own learned men who had been sent abroad to confute them; an admission than which any more complimentary to Luther can scarcely be imagined, although, according to the testimony of Valdes, that reformer was regarded in Spain as a reprobate atheist, and it was deemed as meritorious to strangle a Lutheran as to shoot a Turk. The Spanish converts, like Valdes himself, were mostly persons of rank and education; for in Spain the reformed doctrines were chiefly imbibed from books, procured and read with danger. The Protestants of Béarn, indeed, who crossed the Pyrenees, spread their faith in Aragon, where it made most progress, though it also penetrated into the neighbouring kingdoms.

It was reserved for Philip II to crush the nascent heresy, almost the only instance in which his policy can boast of entire success. This triumph of bigotry shows that the power of opinion is not always a match for despotism and physical force, when wielded with adequate means and a relentless will. Philip, who was supported by that savage Pope, Paul IV, published in 1558 a law by which death and confiscation of property were inflicted on anybody who sold, bought, read, or possessed a book prohibited by the Holy Office. In January, 1559, Paul authorized the Spanish Inquisition to hold inquests on archbishops, bishops, and other prelates suspected of heresy, and to send them to Rome; and in the following February, at the request of Philip, he published a brief authorizing the Council of the Supreme to deliver over to the secular arm—that is, to put to death—persons convicted of Lutheran opinions, even though they were not relapsed and were willing to recant, a proceeding contrary to all former practice, and against the standing laws of the Inquisition itself. It was in the same year that the first auto-da-fe of Protestants was celebrated at Valladolid, which was soon followed by another in the same city, and two more at Seville. In these human sacrifices two hundred and eight victims appeared, of whom sixty-two were burnt and the rest condemned to minor punishments. About the same time Carranza, the Primate of Spain, was pursued by the Inquisition, a prosecution followed by that of eight bishops and twenty-five doctors of theology, most of whom were men of distinguished learning, and had assisted at the Couucil of Trent. The four autos-da-fe just mentioned were followed by others down to the year 1570, when the Reformation in Spain was pretty well suppressed; for though a few Protestants were subsequently burnt, the gleaning was scanty. In the hands of the Spanish Government, the Inquisition, as we have said, became an instrument of State policy, and even of fiscal law; and thus, in 1569, the exportation of horses to France was brought under cognizance of the Council of the Supreme.

A statistical account of the year 1616 shows the wonderful progress of the Jesuits in about three-quarters of a century since their foundation. At that time they had thirty-two provinces—viz., Rome, Sicily, Naples, Milan, Venice, Portugal, Goa, Malabar, Japan, Brazil, Toledo, Castile, Aragon, Bsetica (South Spain), Sardinia, Peru, Paraguay, New Granada, Mexico, Philippine Isles, France, Aquitania, Lyons, Toulouse, Champagne, Upper Germany, the Rhenish province, Austria, Flanders, Walloon Netherlands, Poland, and Lithuania. The order numbered 13,112 members, and possessed 23 professed houses, 372 colleges, 41 novitiates, and 123 residences. At this period the Jesuits could boast of many distinguished writers, amongst whom it may suffice to mention Petau, Sirmond, Schott, Tursellinus, Bellarmine, Suarez, Sanchez, and Mariana. The Jesuits had even penetrated to Constantinople early in the seventeenth century, whither they had gone with the design of overthrowing the Greek Patriarch, and bringing his flock under the dominion of Rome. A struggle ensued which lasted many years, and in which the ambassadors of the different Christian Powers to the Porte took part, the Jesuits being supported by the French and Austrian envoys, while those of England and Holland came to the aid of the Patriarch. In 1662, by a skilful application of 40,000 dollars, the Jesuits effected the deposition and banishment by the Porte of the Patriarch Cyrill, who was supposed to be a Calvinist; but on a change in the Ministry his restoration was soon after effected, principally through the intervention of the English envoy, Sir Thomas Roe. In 1628 the same minister, supported by the Mufti and the Ulemas, gained a complete triumph over the Jesuits, and effected their banishment from Constantinople; but Roe went back to England in that year, and the Jesuits soon after managed to return.

Missionary Labour

The world-wide influence of the Jesuits appears from the preceding list of their provinces. It is their missionary labours beyond the bounds of Europe which show the brightest side of their character; for nobody can deny them the praise of courage and self-devotion. Xavier, the companion of Loyola, was the first and greatest Jesuit missionary. He proceeded to the East Indies, and founded in 1542 a college at Goa, which before the close of the century numbered 120 members. The natives educated at this institution served as interpreters to the Jesuits in the East Indies and in Japan, where, in spite of the ingenious objections of the Bonzes, they succeeded in making many converts. No permanent good was, however, effected; for in less than a century after, the Dutch, in the interests of their commerce, helped in driving all the Christians from Japan. Xavier died on his voyage to China in 1552. Towards the end of the century, the Jesuit Ricci established a mission in that country which met with some partial success.

King John III of Portugal despatched Jesuit missionaries into Brazil in 1549, some of whom found their way into Paraguay. Aided by the children of some of the natives, whom they had taught Spanish, they penetrated by degrees into that savage country, introducing flocks and herds, teaching the Indians to sow and reap, to make bricks, to build houses, in short, all the essential arts of civilized life. The people of Paraguay became the devoted servants, nay, almost the slaves of the Jesuits; who, although they acknowledged the authority of the King of Spain, and paid as a sort of tribute a piastre a head for their subjects, ruled quite independently of the Spanish government. As the masters as well as the rulers of the Paraguayans, the Jesuits distributed to them the hemp, the cotton, the wool and other raw materials which they were to manufacture; they were allowed to possess neither money nor arms, although the priests exercised them in the use of the latter, and converted them into excellent soldiers. Thus the Jesuits were at once the founders, lawgivers, pontiffs, and sovereigns of this singular state. As the Roman Catholi religion thus began to spread abroad into distant countries, Pope G-egory XV established in 1622, to superintend its diffusion, the Congregatio de propaganda Fide; and a few years afterwards Urban VIII bestowed on it the building, or college, of the Propaganda (1627).

Spain

The bigotry and intolerance of Charles V and Philip II and of friars like Ximenes and Torquemada, were one cause of the subsequent decline of Spain; in the general policy and especially the wretched commercial system of those Sovereigns we must look for others. Towards the end of Charles V's reign, Spain seemed to have reached the zenith of her prosperity, and in the year 1543 we find that Emperor congratulating himself on the flourishing state of the Indian trade whose operations were conducted at Seville. "Thanks be to God," he exclaimed, "it has ever increased and still increases daily." But the possession of the New World was regarded as supplying the means for subjugating the Old; and the command of an apparently inexhaustible source of wealth only prompted Charles and his son to gratify their ambition or their bigotry by plunging into those expensive and ruinous wars which at length exhausted even the Spanish treasures : a result which a wretched fiscal policy contributed to hasten.

It was an evil hour when governments bethought themselves of increasing the wealth and prosperity of their subjects by fiscal regulations; yet the idea seems to have been coeval Venetians, with the extension of commerce, and the Venetians, the first nation of modern Europe which enjoyed any considerable trade, were also among the first to invent restrictions, prohibitions, and monopolies. Nothing could be narrower and more selfish than the spirit of their commercial laws. Foreigners were subjected to double customs' duties; they could neither build nor purchase ships in Venetian ports; they were forbidden to be received on board a vessel of the State, or to contract a partnership with any subject of the Republic. Ingenious foreign artizans were encouraged to settle in the Venetian dominions, while native artizans and mechanics were forbidden under the severest penalties to emigrate. The nearest kinsfolk of such as attempted to do so and did not return when ordered, were thrown into prison; if the emigrant persisted in his disobedience, emissaries were employed to kill him! It is impossible to carry further the wretched selfish and cruel jealousy of trade. This system of proohibition and exclusion was imitated by other countries.

Among these, Spain was remarkable. The ruin of Spanish trade and commerce was initiated under Charles V. In 1552 the export of cloth as well as of spun and combed wool was forbidden. In the same year the Cortes proposed that the importation of foreign silk should be allowed, and the exportation of home manufactured prohibited. It was also forbidden to export corn, cattle, and leather. Reversing the very rudiments of economical policy, exorbitant duties were laid on the exportation of manufactured articles, and upon the importation of raw materials. We see in these regulations the germs of inevitable ruin, and one of the causes which drained the country of the specie acquired by so much cruelty and bloodshed.

At the end of the sixteenth century Spanish pistoles were much more common in France than in Spain, because the French exported freely their corn and wine, while the Spaniards would suffer nothing to quit the country. The consequences soon became apparent in the shutting up of the manufactories, so that in 1558 it was found necessary to relax the prohibition, at least on the Portuguese frontier. But the blow was irremediable, and fashion soon put the seal to a ruinous system that had been initiated by ignorance. In 1560 we find complaints that silk and woollen stuffs, brocades, tapestry, arms, all came from abroad, although the materials for their manufacture were abundant in Spain; nay, that the foreigner actually made them of Spanish products and then set his own price on them. The use of foreign articles begat a liking for them, which became a fashion. No better silk could be produced than in Granada and Murcia, yet that of Italy and China was preferred. English jackets, Lombard caps, German shoes, Dutch linen, Antwerp tablecloths, Brussels tapestry, Flemish cabinet ware, became all the vogue. People appeared by day in Florentine brocade, and slept at night under outlandish bed-hangings. France supplied the children of Spain with their toys, her monks and nuns with their rosaries. She was dependent on foreigners even for the materials of war : it was necessary to fetch wood and gunpowder from Flanders, metal and men to cast it from Italy; for Spain had no cannon foundries of her own.

Other circumstances which militated against commerce in Spain were the idleness, pride, and bigotry of the Spaniards. The nation was divided into two classes, between which there was a continual jealousy: the Hidalgos, or nobles, and the Pecheros, or persons employed in trade and agriculture. The Hidalgos enjoyed peculiar privileges, and are expressly named as entitled to favour by Ferdinand and Isabella, "because through them we achieved our conquests". This class would have deemed itself disgraced by any other profession than that of arms. They were regarded as the pith and marrow of the nation; they filled all the offices of state; a municipal town would have been affronted by the appointment of a trader to be its corregidor; the Cortes of Aragon would admit no member who had been engaged in commerce. As neither the house, the horse, the mule, nor the arms of a Hidalgo could be seized for debt, nor his personal liberty be infringed, nor taxes be imposed upon him, everybody naturally wished to belong to an order which enjoyed so large a share of favour; and so many claims were consequently made to the privileges of the Hidalguia, that, although the tribunals set apart every Saturday for the examination of them, it was often found insufficient.

The interest of money being high in Spain, if a roturier could scrape together some 7,000 ducats, which would yield an income of about 500, he settled it on his eldest son as a majorat, or patrimony. The son of a ci-devant farmer or shopkeeper now considered himself a noble, and dubbed himself Don; while his younger brothers began to be ashamed of their callings, and wanted the same title. Those who had no chance of attaining to such a rank, often turned their views towards a convent; where, if they could not gratify their pride, they might at least indulge their idleness. Hence the number of convents increased enormously in Spain. As the tradesman aped the noble, so the noble aped the King; and because Philip II had founded the Escorial, so the grandees thought it a fine thing to have a monastery on their estates; convents rose on every side and candidates to fill them were always forthcoming. These institutions not only offered an easy, idle life, but also secured a certain degree of respect and importance. Philip III and his consort founded even more convents than Philip II; and in the reign of the former it was computed that Spain contained 988 nunneries, all numerously filled; that there were 32,000 friars of the Dominican and Franciscan orders alone; and that the clergy in the two dioceses of Pamplona and Calahorra amounted to 20,000.

Monopolies of foreigners

A consequence of this state of society was that even the little commerce that remained in Spain fell mostly into the hands of foreigners. The financial embarrassments of Charles V led him not only to give to Germans and Italians a monopoly of the Indian trade as security for their advances, but even to allow them to encroach upon the birthright of his Spanish subjects by engrossing the trade and commerce of the interior. The Fuggers and other great foreign houses to whom Charles was under obligation obtained commercial privileges that were denied to born Spaniards, such as that of exporting prohibited articles, and others of a similar kind. By degrees, these intruders monopolized not only the higher branches of commerce, but even the smaller handicraft trades; and in 1610 it was computed that there were 160,000 foreigners settled in Castile alone, of whom 10,000 were Genoese.

In the absence of an adequate revenue from trade the Spanish government was compelled to lay on very burdensome taxes. In 1594 the Cortes complain that a capital of 1,000 ducats paid annually 300 to the King, so that in the course of three or four years the whole of it would be swallowed up. Yet people, they said, instead of engaging in commercial enterprises, lived on their capital as long as it would last. Rents were low, yet no farmers could be had; they were either emigrating or else shut up in prison. Scarcely a fifth part of the wool formerly used was now manufactured; whence, as well as through the heavy tax on that commodity, the flocks also began to be greatly diminished. Agriculture and pasturage, manufactures and commerce, drooped together; every town in the land was beginning to be depopulated; the country was going to ruin! Such is a picture of Spain at the close of the sixteenth century, after a hundred years' possession of the treasures of the New World, not drawn from the descriptions of historical writers, but taken from an official document of the Cortes.

But although the taxes were enormous they brought comparatively little into the royal treasury, the greater part of the produce being swallowed up by the expenses of collection. This abuse was one of the consequences of the sale of offices. As every place was venal, it followed that Philip II was most unfaithfully served; and his officers indemnified themselves for their outlay by impounding what passed through their hands. Another evil was, that while the taxes were so high and so badly collected, they were spent out of the country. The government had to procure its necessaries abroad; its principal creditors were foreigners; the money once withdrawn from Spain never returned, owing to its absurd fiscal system, and thus the country became every year more and more exhausted. Already in 1540, Charles V, the master of the treasures of the New World, had coined a large quantity of base gold crowns to supply his necessities. So great continued to be the drain of specie in order to purchase foreign manufactures that, in 1603, Philip III was advised by Lerma to issue a royal edict raising the nominal value of copper money almost to an equality with that of silver. All these evils were aggravated by the impolitic nature of the wars entered into by Philip II. By his quarrel with the Netherlands, besides the expense it entailed, he had deprived himself of one of his most productive sources of revenue; yet he did not even pursue that war in a manner which might have insured its success, but frittered away his means in chimerical projects in France.

Spain, however, may perhaps be said not so much to have declined as to have returned to the normal condition from which it had been forced by a series of extraordinary events; the union of the Crowns of Castile and Aragon; the reduction of the Moors; the wonderful discoveries in America; and the enormous accumulation of power in the hands of the House of Austria. All these advantages, which by able rulers might have been developed into a permanent system of power, were thrown away by the absurd and reckless mode of government which we have just described, and Spain returned to the condition depicted by the Venetian Navagero in his Viaggio in 1526. Even Catalonia is described by that writer as then ill-peopled and little cultivated; Aragon was for the most part desolate; in Castile the traveller found extensive tracts of desert, with now and then a Venta, commonly uninhabited, and resembling rather a caravansary than an hotel.

Towards the end of the sixteenth century, a little band of original thinkers arose in Calabria, who were the first to promulgate any just notions on the subject of political economy.

The chief among these were Thomas Campanella and Antonio Serra, who had both been engaged in an attempt to rescue Calabria from the Spanish yoke in 1598. From the depths of a Neapolitan dungeon the friar Campanella addressed to Philip III of Spain a remarkable prediction of that country's decline. The Spaniards, he observed, who so haughtily keep aloof from other people, who neglect agriculture and commerce, and esteem only the profession of arms, will soon exhaust themselves; they will never be able to recover their losses, and their wealth will pass away into the hands of the foreigner. Already the most useful arts of life languish in neglect; and, without manufactures, agriculture, or trade, how can any people hope to prosper? So indolent are the Spaniards that they do not even deign to record the great actions which they achieve. Campanella reviews and condemns the system of taxation; advises the encouragement of navigation, because the key of the ocean is the key of the world; recommends the equality of civil laws; the accession of all classes to power; the encouragement of art and manufacture, as things of more real value than mines of gold and silver. And while he thus proclaims the approaching ruin of Spain, the prophetic monk announces in glowing terms the renovation of the world through the wonderful discoveries of science, and the irresistible progress of human liberty and knowledge.

In 1613, Antonio Serra, then also in a Neapolitan dungeon, addressed to the Spanish Viceroy Lemos a work on the methods of procuring the precious metals in countries which do not possess mines, in which true principles of trade are first laid down.

Ruin stole on Spain with a more rapid stride than even Campanella might have anticipated. Between the years 1600 and 1619 the peasantry in the diocese of Salamanca had decreased from 8,384 to 4,135, or more than one-half, and depopulation was going on at the same rate in other parts of Spain. The most fertile fields were left unploughed, the houses were everywhere dilapidated and decayed. The first Cortes of Philip IV,who ascended the throne in 1621, complain that if things went on in their present course there would soon be no labourers for the field, no pilots for the sea; people would no longer marry, the nation would become extinct, the clergy alone surviving without a flock! The chief cities, they remark, are filled with beggars; whole families abandon house and home and adopt mendicity as affording the only chance of support. Yet, though they saw and felt these evils, so blinded were the Spaniards with bigotry, so utterly unconscious that it was one of the chief sources of their misery, that these very Cortes could suggest no better remedy than to change the patron saint! Their proposition to hand over Spain to the protection of St. Teresa de Jesus was, however, opposed on the ground that their former patron St. Iago might take offence, under whose protection they had seen the whole world at their feet, and the nation enlightened by science and virtue!"

The ancient maritime commerce which the Catalans had shared with Genoa and Venice partook in the general decay. At the beginning of the sixteenth century the trade of Barcelona was still flourishing, and does not then appear to have been much injured by the Portuguese discoveries. That city prided itself on a saying of Charles V, that he deemed it more honourable and important to be Count of Barcelona than to have received the Roman Crown. In 1529, however, Charles fitted out his last fleet from the remnant of the Catalan marine. Ten years more and Barcelona had a consul neither at Tunis nor Alexandria; commerce with Constantinople and the Levant was a thing to be no longer contemplated. The new route of ocean commerce was one of the causes of this decline; a still more direct one was the predominance of the Turkish navy in the Mediterranean after the victories of Hayraddin Barbarossa over the Spanish and Venetian fleets in the Ionian Sea in 1538, the alliance between Sultan Solyman and Francis I, and the settlements of the Mahometans on the coast of Africa.

France, like Spain, was also suffering from an erroneous system of political economy introduced by Birago, the Garde des Sceaux and Chancellor of Catharine de' Medici, before whose time the trade of France seems to have been unfettered. By birth a Milanese, Birago had adopted the prohibitive and protective theories of Venice and other Italian cities, though his regulations were somewhat better than those observed in Spain, and were intended to promote the manufactures of France. He discountenanced only the exportation of raw materials and the importation of manufactured articles; a system which from this time forward plays a great part in the laws and policy of France. Thus the export of wool, flax, hemp, etc., was forbidden, and on the other hand the importation of woollen and linen cloths, gold and silver lace, velvet, satin, arms, tapestry, etc. Drugs and spices could enter only at certain ports, as Marseilles, Rouen, Bordeaux, and La Rochelle. These laws were accompanied with others regulating the prices of articles. Special commissions of notables were appointed in every town to assess the price of victuals, cloths, and other goods, as well as to settle the rate of labourers' wages. This injudicious meddling had the same operation as in Spain, though not to the same extent, of depressing the trade and industry of the nation. At the beginning of the seventeenth century French manufactures had much deteriorated. France had at one time the reputation of making the best cloth in the world, both for dye and texture, but it had now entirely lost its character. The trade in scarlet cloth exported to Turkey, which in the time of Francis I had been very large, had been entirely lost. The Turkey trade was now carried on by the French with ready money only.

The author of the Avis au Roi, published in 1614, complains that Marseilles alone sent annually to Turkey seven million crowns of silver, and attributes to this cause the scarcity of that metal in France; what little there was being mostly foreign coin, and of baser alloy than the French. The chief cause of the great drain of money in that direction was that France still imported her spices, drugs, and cottons from Turkey instead of procuring them from the East Indies, either through the Amsterdam Company, or by establishing a company of her own. Other manufactures, as that of leather, had also deteriorated; and although glass had long been used in France, it was only recently that it had begun to be made there. As in Spain, the caprice of fashion had also proved injurious to trade. The French gentry disdained to wear articles of home manufacture, and procured instead, at an extravagant price, the rich cloths and silks of Venice and Genoa; while the inhabitants of those towns themselves went very simply clad. The Parisians, however, were already distinguished for their taste in manufacturing articles of domestic luxury, and the silver plate made in that capital was in great demand throughout the world. But, on the whole, commerce drooped, and what little existed was mostly in the hands of aliens. Commercial pursuits were not regarded with favour by the higher classes, and the French gentleman, like the Spanish hidalgo, considered arms to be the only honourable profession.

The decay of trade was aggravated by the want of good internal communications. In consequence of the badness of the roads, merchants were in many places compelled to send their goods thirty or forty leagues round, a circumstance which had caused the ruin of many towns. The rates levied for the maintenance of such roads as existed were often diverted to other purposes; and fraudulent bankrupts and other dishonest persons sometimes took advantage of the neglected and unguarded state of the highways to pretend a robbery or an accident, and thus to defraud their creditors. When Henry IV was firmly established on the throne, Sully turned his attention to the state of the roads, made them more direct, and planted their sides with elms; which, however, were uprooted by the ignorant populace. The scheme of joining the Mediterranean and the ocean by means of a canal was also agitated in Henry's reign, and appears to have been suggested in a letter of Cardinal Joyeuse to the King. The plan was subsequently discussed in the council of Mary de' Medici, "but," says Richelieu, "the ente­prise was too great for the times, nor was there anybody who cared enough for the commerce and riches of France to support it." The execution of that useful and magnificent work was reserved for the reign of Louis XVI. Sully, however, began the canal of Briare to join the Seine and Loire; a work not completed till the reign of Louis XIII.

France was saved by its agricultural wealth and by the care of Sully, who, though he paid little attention to commerce, and indeed strangely regarded foreign trade and home manufactures as sources of impoverishment,was careful to develop the natural resources of France, and to restore its financial system to a sound and vigorous condition. Giovanni Botero, a Piedmontese, who wrote towards the end of the sixteenth century, remarks that France possessed four magnets which served to attract the wealth of other countries: its corn, which helped to supply Spain and Portugal; its wine exported to England, Flanders, and the Baltic; its salt, manufactured on the shores of the Mediterranean and the ocean; and its hemp and cloth, in demand at Lisbon and Seville, for the sails and cordage of the Portuguese and Spanish shipping. The breeding of cattle, however, does not seem to have kept pace with the progress of agriculture; horses, in particular, it was found necessary to import from Turkey, Italy, Spain, England, Germany, and other places.

Hence, although France had gone through nearly half a century of civil wars, carried on in the name of religion, which to a great extent brought back the middle ages, she was nevertheless, from her natural resources, in a much more flourishing condition, and enjoyed better future prospects at the beginning of the seventeenth century than Spain, in spite of the vast colonial possessions of the latter country, the internal peace which had reigned in it, and the absolute authority acquired by its Sovereigns. This last advantage, so far as foreign affairs are concerned, was the only thing yet wanting to render France more than a match for Spain in that rivalry between the two nations which will hereafter occupy so much of our attention.

After the peace of Vervins and the Edict of Nantes, the old struggle between the French Crown and the French nobles still remained to be renewed. It was necessary that France should become a powerful monarchy before it could be a great nation, and from this period it was the constant aim of the government to centralize the power of the King; an object not thoroughly attained till the reign of Louis XIV.

The very conditions on which Henry IV. had made his peace with the heads of the League presented an obstacle to this centralization. He had been forced to purchase their submission with governments, fortresses, and money, thus creating a new class of powerful vassals, almost as formidable as those feudal ones which it had been the constant aim of Louis XI to control and humiliate. Although the twelve great governments were of royal delegation, yet the holders of them were often obeyed by the inhabitants of these provinces in preference to the King. In 1599, when Henry IV was troubled by the machinations of the Spanish Court, the Duke of Montpensier insulted him with the proposition that Governors should be allowed to hold their provinces as proprietors, doing only liege homage to the Crown; and he assured the King that he would thus always be provided with the means of raising an army. To check the power of the Governors, Henry sometimes appointed lieutenant-generals in the provinces; but these officers became sometimes as formidable as the Governors themselves. The Court had also begun to oppose the old hereditary aristocracy by another kind of nobles more dependent on the Crown, that of the "Dukes and Peers" (la duche-pairie) created by letters-patent: an order which pretended to the first rank of nobility. At the accession of Henry III. there had been only eight such duches-pairies; when Henry IV ascended the throne there were eighteen, and the Bourbons in every reign created new ones.

But there was also a class of lower nobles, having the command of a fortress or two, who could set the royal authority at defiance. As the theory and practice of engineering and fortification were then in their infancy, the King might be bearded by the commandant of a single fortress, provided he had a devoted garrison; while a confederation of three or four such commanders might make the Sovereign tremble on his throne. France was covered with such places. The fortress called Le Castellet, which commanded the town of Chateau-Renard, affords a specimen of one. The walls were four and a half toises thick, with many casemated chambers, and a subterranean passage running through the whole building. It contained dungeons, magazines, a well, windmills for grinding corn, and an oven to convert it into bread; while for its defence it was stored with battering cannon and falconets, gun­powder and ammunition of all descriptions. Richelieu caused most of this kind of castles to be dismantled after the taking of La Rochelle. The holders of such places, and indeed the nobility of France in general, were for the most part grossly illiterate, priding themselves only on their prowess and feats of arms, which were frequently exhibited in sanguinary duels.

Fury of duelling

The Constable, Henry de Montmorenci, who died in 1614, and was reputed one of the most perfect cavaliers of his time, was so illiterate that he could scarcely write his name. Henry IV was bent on repressing the practice of duelling, and in 1602 he published an edict declaring guilty of high treason, and consequently amenable to capital punishment, whosoever should be engaged in a duel either as principal or second. But this law proved too severe to be executed; and between 1601 and 1609 no fewer than 2,000 gentlemen were killed in duels! In the latter year Henry published a milder edict, referring all persons who had been affronted to himself to decide whether a duel could be permitted. Whoever sent or accepted a challenge without such authority was to lose his right of reparation, and to be deprived of all his offices and employments; and he who killed his adversary in such an unlicensed duel was to be punished with death without sepulture, and his children were to be disgraced for a term of ten years.

f In the state of disorganization in which France was left by the civil wars, and in the midst of that rude and insolent nobility, she was fortunate in possessing such a King as Henry IV and such an administrator as Sully. With all his faults, Henry did not forget his kingly office, and even the spell of the charming Gabrielle was powerless to resist the calls of duty and the stern admonitions of Sully. To repress the disorders of the nobility, which had been encouraged by Henry III, he told his nobles that they must accustom themselves to live on their own estates, without recourse to the royal coffers, or oppressing their own vassals with a thousand robberies and extortions; and he advised them, as peace was now restored, to return to their homes and look after the cultivation of their lands.

Sully

Henry's counsellor Maximilian de Bethune, Baron Rosni and afterwards Duke of Sully, was precisely the man capable of helping him in the reorganization of France. The stoical manners of Sully were little calculated to gain friends. He was rude, obstinate, proud, self-interested, but he had displayed great financial ability, and Henry saw in him the very man for the conjuncture. All the King required of him was that he would bestow as much care on the royal revenue as he had done on his own; nor cared to inquire whether his minister made his own fortune at the same time with that of the State. Rosni did not indeed belong to that order of statesmen who forget themselves. His income was 200,000 livres, and he possessed a couple of millions in trinkets. His rough and somewhat brutal manners served to stem the opposition he encountered. At the command of the King he had undertaken in the summer of 1596 a sort of financial voyage of discovery throughout France; when, armed with unlimited powers, he suspended the greater part of the officers of finance, examined their accounts for the last four years, and brought to the King seventy cart-loads of silver, amounting to half a million crowns, the fruits of his researches. Such was the rapacity of the traitants, or farmers of the revenue, that of 150 millions levied in taxes, scarce thirty found their way into the royal treasury. Besides putting an end to the thefts of the financiers, Sully also repressed the extortions of the Governors of provinces. He had found the State charged with a debt of nearly 300 million francs, and having a disposable revenue of only from seven to nine millions; in 1610, after a lapse of twelve years, one-third of this debt had been paid off, the net revenue had been doubled, and now yielded sixteen millions, exclusive of four millions arising from a better management of the royal domains, and other sources; and the King had at his disposal a reserve of more than twenty millions, three-fourths of which were deposited in specie at the Bastille.

By the wise and energetic measures of Sully, France was saved from that ruin which menaced Spain, and began rapidly to improve. Giovanni Botero, the Piedmontese writer before referred to, says that France was in his time the greatest, richest, and most populous of all European Kingdoms, and contained fifteen million inhabitants. Paris, with a population of 450,000 souls, was, with the exception, perhaps, of Moscow, the largest capital in Europe. The weak and profligate Henry III, by making that city his constant residence, had contributed much to enlarge and improve it. The earlier Kings had preferred their castles on the Loire; Francis I had commonly resided in the neighbourhood of Paris; Henry II had held his Court somewhat more frequently in the capital; but Charles IX had been mostly banished from it by the religious wars.

According to the Italian writer whom we have just cited, the three European cities of the first rank and magnitude were, at that time, Moscow, Constantinople, and Paris. London could only claim a second rank, with Naples, Lisbon, Prague, Milan, and Ghent; each containing some 160,000 inhabitants; whence Botero too hastily infers that England, Naples, Portugal, Bohemia, Milan, and Flanders were States of equal magnitude and power. The size of the capital is not always a criterion of the strength of a Kingdom; but Botero's inference will show the estimation in which England was then held by foreigners. Spain certainly was, or had been, the leading nation of Europe; yet that country did not contain any city even of such magnitude as these last; a circumstance owing partly to its being made up of several small realms. The chief cities were those in which ancient Kings and Princes had held their seats; as Barcelona, Saragossa, Valencia, Cordova, Toledo, Burgos, Leon. Madrid was increasing through the residence of Philip II; but the cities to which a Spaniard could point with most pride were Granada, the ancient capital of the Moorish Kings; Seville, enriched by being the seat of the American trade; and Valladolid, which had long been the residence of the Castilian Kings.

In Italy, Rome owed its splendour to the residence of the Pope; Milan and Venice were stationary, if not declining, and were no larger than they had been; Cracow and Wilna were the two chief cities of Poland; in Russia, besides Moscow, Vladimir and Great Novgorod.

England, under the rule of Elizabeth and her able ministers, was, at the period we are surveying, fast rising in the scale of nations, though the population was then perhaps hardly more numerous than that now contained in the capital. Meteren, the Flemish historian, who long resided in London, describes the English as being indolent, like the Spaniards, instead of laborious like the French and Hollanders, fond of dress, field sports, and good living. The more ingenious handicrafts were exercised by foreigners, nor did the natives even cultivate the soil to the extent which they might; though England at that time exported, instead of importing grain. The true principles of commerce were at first ill-understood in England as in other countries, though perhaps not to so great an extent; and she was the first to improve upon them in practice. While statesmen, like Sully, harboured the popular prejudice against the exportation of gold and silver, the English East India Company, at its first establishment in 1600, had obtained permission to export annually £30,000. It was still held, indeed, that the precious metals were the sole true elements of wealth, and that the employment of them abroad was wholesome and legitimate only when the commodities procured with them should realize in foreign markets a still larger amount, and thus raise a balance to be paid in specie. By degrees, however, juster notions began to prevail; it was at length discovered that gold and silver are nothing but commodities, and that the circulation of them, like that of any other article, should be unrestricted. These ideas at length made their way into the House of Commons, and in 1663 the statutes prohibiting the exportation of coin and bullion were repealed. The publications of Mr. Thomas Munn were very useful in establishing better notions of commerce; but that author was also the first who rendered popular the celebrated theory of the balance of trade; a system whose errors were pernicious, not only by inducing governments to tamper with trade instead of leaving it free to find its own channels, but also, what was still worse, by leading nations to regard the prosperity of their neighbours as incompatible with their own, Hence arose among them a desire to hurt and impoverish one another : commerce, that should naturally be a bond of union, became an occasion of discord, and the jealousy of trade not only impelled them to contend with hostile tariffs, but even gave rise to frequent and bloody wars.

Some years before the close of Elizabeth's reign, Raleigh had made two unsuccessful attempts to found an English colony in Virginia; and it was reserved for her successor, James I, to initiate that colonial system by which England has been distinguished among modern nations. We pass over this subject, as well as the first attempts of the English to trade with India and America, as foreign to our purpose, except in so far as they were occasions of quarrel with the Spanish Government. The voyages of Drake, Cavendish, and others, to the New World, were really no better than piratical, though in some measure excused by the absurd and exclusive pretensions of Spain, as well as by that underhand system of hostility and annoyance, without an open breach, which had during many years prevailed between the two countries. If Drake plundered Spanish settlements on the American coast, and returned with untold treasure, Philip was aiding and abetting a rebellion in Ireland, or scheming the assassination of the heretic English Queen. It must, however, be acknowledged that the piracies of the English had often no such excuse, being in many cases exercised on friendly nations, as the French, Dutch, and Danes. After the peace of Vervins, the French maritime commerce with Spain and the Netherlands was terribly annoyed by English privateers: we find the Danes also complaining, and, in 1599, Elizabeth issued a proclamation enjoining all masters of vessels having letters of marque to give security before they sailed, that they would commit no injury on the subjects of friendly Powers. The disputes which hence arose nearly produced a war between England and France, till, in 1606, they were put an end to by a treaty of commerce; by which all letters of reprisal were annulled on both sides, and many salutary regulations adopted respecting trade.

The opening of a more extensive commerce with Russia, which had hitherto been confined to Narva, was of a more legitimate nature. In the year 1558 a Joint-Stock Company was established in London, under the direction of the celebrated Sebastian Cabot, for the prosecution of maritime discovery, and a squadron of three ships, under the command of Sir Hugh Willoughby, doubled the North Cape in search of a north-eastern passage. Sir Hugh, with two of his ships, was compelled by the approach of winter to seek shelter in a harbour of Russian Lapland, where he and his crews were all frozen to death. In the following summer they were discovered by some Russian fishermen in the same attitudes in which death had surprised them; the commander still sitting at his cabin table with his diary and other papers open before him. The third vessel, under Richard Chancellor, was fortunate enough to run into the White Sea, or Bay of St. Nicholas; and the crews landing at the Abbey of St. Nicholas near Archangel, were enabled to weather the rigour of the season. Chancellor employed the opportunity to seek an interview with the Czar, Ivan Basilovitch, at Moscow, and to obtain for English commerce important privileges at Archangel, and other ports in those seas, which had been hitherto unvisited by any ships of burden. The Russians were the more inclined to enter into this connection, as Livonia, whence their products were shipped to the rest of Europe, was at this time in the hands of the Teutonic Order. Another fruit of this voyage was the discovery of the whale fishery at Spitzbergen. In the following year (1554) a charter of incorporation was granted by Queen Mary to the merchant adventurers engaged in this trade, who were subsequently called the Russia Company. In 1555 Chancellor and his companions again visited Moscow, and were hospitably entertained by the Czar, who granted them further important privileges. In the same year a Muscovite ambassador visited the Court of London. A few years after, Anthony Jenkinson, the energetic agent of the Russia Company, sailed down the Volga to Astrakan, crossed the Caspian Sea into Persia, and established at Bokhara a trade with the merchants of India, Persia, Russia, and Cathay, or China; and the silks and other products of the East were conveyed by the route thus opened to Kholmogory, on the Lower Dwina, and shipped thence to England. In 1566, the Russia Company was sanctioned and confirmed by an express statute, the first of the kind passed by the English Parliament. In the year 1581 was incorporated a trading company of the same kind, the English Turkey, or Levant Company.

But the most important of all the commercial associations formed during the reign of Elizabeth was the East India Company, established by charter, 31st December, 1600, for the purpose of carrying on a direct trade with the East Indies. In this enterprise, however, we had been anticipated by the Dutch.

Decline of the Hanseatic League

The history of Holland at this period affords a striking example how the spirit of liberty not only serves to secure the domestic happiness of a people, but also to promote their wealth and power. The war of independence became a source of prosperity to the new Republic. Although engaged in a long life-and-death struggle with the Spaniards, the commerce of the Dutch had gone on increasing every year, and their navy had attained to such a force as made them without a rival on the seas. So Athens reached her highest pitch of power and glory during her struggle with Persia; and though the Dutch will not afford many points of comparison with the Athenians, except their naval strength, yet the insolence, vain glory, and radical weakness of the Spaniards may find no unapt counterparts in the Persians. From the middle of the sixteenth century the maritime commerce of the Dutch had been gradually superseding that of the Hanse Towns; against which trading confederacy a terrible blow had also been struck by Queen Elizabeth, who, after many disputes and some deeds of violence, caused the Steelyard, or house of the Hanse merchants in London, to be shut up in 1597. Before the close of the century the Dutch had become the chief carriers between the southern and northern parts of Europe. During the year 1586 and 1587, the most miserable years of their struggle, more than 800 ships entered the Dutch ports. The merchants and manufacturers of Brabant and Flanders flocked into Holland and Zealand, and contributed so much to the wealth and population of those provinces that it became neces­sary to build new towns, and enlarge the old ones. This prosperity was accompanied with a corresponding decline in the southern, or obedient, provinces of the Netherlands. In these, large districts once fertile were become waste; innumerable villages, and even some small towns, were wholly depopulated; the fox, the wolf, and the wild boar prowled around even the larger cities, and in the winter of 1586-7, two hundred persons were killed by dogs and wolves in the neighbourhood of Ghent. Nobles and wealthy citizens had been reduced to beggary, and peasants and artizans were forced to turn soldiers or brigands. Antwerp had been completely ruined by the closing of the Scheldt.

Meanwhile the Dutch, being no longer able, on account of the Spanish conquest of Portugal in 1580, to convey the commodities of the East from the Portuguese ports to those of northern Europe, resolved to trade on their own account with the East Indies, and with this view secured the services of one Cornelis Houtman, a Fleming, who, having made several voyages to India with the Portuguese, was well acquainted not only with the navigation, but also with the ports best adapted for trade. The merchants of Amsterdam now entered into an association called the Company of Distant Countries, and despatched, under Houtman's command, four ships of small burden, carrying 250 men, with 100 guns, and laden with commodities suitable for the Indian market. After an absence of about two and a half years, Houtman, with three of his ships, returned to the Texel in August, 1597, having penetrated as far as Bantam, in Java; but the Portuguese merchants settled there set the natives against the Dutch, and the profits of the voyage scarcely re­paid the expenses of the outfit. It was found, however, that the influence of the Portuguese in the Indies had very much declined since the conquest of Portugal by Philip II.; the rapacity, tyranny, and bad faith of their governors and merchants had disgusted the natives—circumstances which en­couraged the Dutch to persevere, especially as they had acquired a good knowledge of those seas, and had brought home with them some uative Indians who might be useful in another expedition. Various trading companies were formed, and, in 1598, eighty vessels were despatched to the East and West Indies, to the coast of Africa, and even to the Pacific Ocean, in squadrons of from four to eight vessels, completely armed, and some provided with troops; so that they were alike ready to fight or trade. But as these divided associations were not found to yield much profit, they were, in the year 1602, amalgamated into one, under the name of the East India Company, with a joint-stock capital of between six and seven million guilders, or about six hundred thousand pounds sterling; and power was conferred upon this society to trade beyond the Cape of Good Hope and Straits of Magellan, to appoint governors, administer justice, build forts, raise troops, etc.

Their trade was secure from molestation through the maritime superiority which the Dutch navy had begun to assert. In time they planted factories and settlements along the coasts of Asia and Bussorah on the Persian Gulf as far as Japan, and in particular they established themselves in the island of Java, where they made Batavia the central emporium of all their eastern trade. They also appropriated the Molucca and other spice islands, and became at length so powerful in the East as to send out fleets of forty or fifty large ships, and an army of thirty thousand men.

In short, the foreign commerce of Holland grew so large as quite to overshadow that of England, and to excite the jealousy of our merchants and adventurers, as may be seen in the Observations addressed to James I by Sir Walter Raleigh shortly before his execution,

France also appeared as a competitor in the race of colonization; but that nation does not seem to be well fitted for such enterprises, which, instead of giving birth at once to brilliant and striking results, must be fostered and brought to maturity by long years of patient care and industry. It is, at all events, certain, that the attempts of the French in this way were not crowned with any remarkable success. Sully, observing this characteristic in the national genius, dissuaded Henry from renewing the attempts to form plantations in New France. But Henry was not to be discouraged. He resolved to com­pete with Spain and England in the foundation of transatlantic colonies; but in order to avoid disputes with those Powers, he confined the researches of his navigators to the regions beyond the fortieth degree N. latitude. These efforts resulted in the foundation by Champlain of the colonies of Port-Royal in Acadia (1607) and Quebec in Canada (1608). The Gallic race obtained a permanent footing in the New World, though destined at length to fall under the dominion of their English rivals in that hemisphere. Henry also attempted in 1604 to establish a French East India Company; but there was not commercial enterprise enough in the country to carry out his views. The company remained in abeyance till 1615, when Louis XIII. gave them a new charter, and they took possession of the vast island of Madagascar. But it was soon found not to answer their expectations, and the company sank into oblivion.

The Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman Empire was beginning, towards the close of the sixteenth century, to feel the approaches of decay. The wars of Selim II had so exhausted the treasure which had previously been kept in the ancient Byzantine castle, called the "Seven Towers", that he caused it to be removed to his private treasury. In the palmy days of the Empire, each of these seven towers had its appropriate use : one contained the gold, another the silver money; a third the gold and silver plate and jewels; valuable remains of antiquity were deposited in the fourth; in the fifth were preserved ancient coins and other objects, chiefly collected by Selim I during his expeditions into Persia and Egypt; the sixth was a sort of arsenal, and the seventh was appropriated to the archives. After the time of Selim II the Seven Towers were used as a prison for distinguished persons and as an arsenal. Amurath III, whose avarice was prodigious, retained and improved upon the custom of his predecessor. He caused, it is said, a vault to be built, with treble locks, in which his treasure was deposited, and over which he slept every night; it was opened only four times a year to receive fresh heaps of wealth, which have been estimated at twelve million ducats annually; but two millions are perhaps nearer the truth.

More than a century of Turkish despotism had at length state of done its work. Ragazzoni describes the Christians in the Ottoman Empire in 1571 as so depressed and degraded that they dared hardly look a Turk in the face: the only care of their listless existence was to raise enough for their maintenance, and to pay their Tcaratsh, or poll-tax—all beyond would be seized by the Turks. Constantinople, however, still afforded a secure place of residence, whither the Greeks flocked in great numbers; so that towards the end of the sixteenth century it was reckoned that there were 100,000 of them in that capital. Many of these acquired great wealth, either by trade or by farming certain branches of the Grand-Signor's revenue. Among them one Michael Kantakuzenus was conspicuous both for his enormous wealth and his intrigues, which procured him the name of the "Devil's Son" (Seitan Oglie), although it was thought that he was no true Greek, but an Englishman by birth, and belonging to the family of an English ambassador. The fate of whole provinces lay in his hands; he could fit out twenty or thirty galleys at his own expense, and the splendour of his palace at Anchioli rivalled the seraglio of the Grand-Signor. Kantakuzenus had gained his influence through the favour and friendship of Mohammed Sokolli; but even that powerful Vizier could not at last save him from the wrath of Amu­rath III; and he was hanged before the gate of his own palace (March, 1578). The Jews also occupied an important position in the Ottoman Empire. From the earliest period the physicians of the Sultan were of the Hebrew race; they monopolized most branches of commerce, and were the chief musical performers.

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE BEGINNING OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY