amidst the devastations of the
sword, and over the blood of her citizens the banner of the new republic
floated victorious.

This improbable turn of affairs seems to border on a miracle; many
circumstances, however, combined to break the power of Philip, and to
favor the progress of the infant state. Had the whole weight of his
power fallen on the United Provinces there had been no hope for their
religion or their liberty. His own ambition, by tempting him to divide
his strength, came to the aid of their weakness. The expensive policy
of maintaining traitors in every cabinet of Europe; the support of the
League in France; the revolt of the Moors in Granada; the conquest of
Portugal, and the magnificent fabric of the Escurial, drained at last
his apparently inexhaustible treasury, and prevented his acting in the
field with spirit and energy. The German and Italian troops, whom the
hope of gain alone allured to his banner, mutinied when he could no
longer pay them, and faithlessly abandoned their leaders in the decisive
moment of action. These terrible instruments of oppression now turned
their dangerous power against their employer, and wreaked their
vindictive rage on the provinces which remained faithful to him.
The unfortunate armament against England, on which, like a desperate
gamester, he had staked the whole strength of his kingdom, completed his
ruin; with the armada sank the wealth of the two Indies, and the flower
of Spanish chivalry.

But in the very same proportion that the Spanish power declined the
republic rose in fresh vigor. The ravages which the fanaticism of the
new religion, the tyranny of the Inquisition, the furious rapacity of
the soldiery, and the miseries of a long war unbroken by any interval of
peace, made in the provinces of Brabant, Flanders, and Hainault, at once
the arsenals and the magazines of this expensive contest, naturally
rendered it every year more difficult to support and recruit the royal
armies. The Catholic Netherlands had already lost a million of
citizens, and the trodden fields maintained their husbandmen no longer.
Spain itself had but few more men to spare. That country, surprised by
a sudden affluence which brought idleness with it, had lost much of its
population, and could not long support the continual drafts of men which
were required both for the New World and the Netherlands. Of these
conscripts few ever saw their country again; and these few having left
it as yout