. But
there was worse mismanagement on the Spanish side, and this led first to
failure, then to disaster.

The story of the Armada is full of useful lessons, but for England its
message for all time is that her true defence against invasion lies not in
armies, but upon the sea. The Elizabethan captains knew well that if once
Parma's veterans landed in Kent or Essex, the half-trained levies gathered
by the beacon fires could do little to stop their onward march. So they
took care to make the narrow seas an impassable barrier to the enemy by
harrying the covering fleet and making it hopeless for Parma even to think
of sending his transports to sea. The lesson is worth remembering even
now.

CHAPTER VII

THE BATTLE OFF THE GUNFLEET

1666

The decline of Spain as a great power was largely due to the unsuccessful
attempt to coerce the Dutch people. Out of the struggle arose the Republic
of the United Provinces, and Holland, won from the sea, and almost an
amphibious state, became in a few years a great naval power. A hardy race
of sailors was trained in the fisheries of the North Sea. Settlements were
established in the Far East, and fleets of Dutch East Indiamen broke the
Spanish monopoly of Asiatic trade. It was to obtain a depot and
watering-place for their East Indiamen that the Dutch founded Cape Town,
with far-reaching results on the future development of South Africa.

A Dutch fleet had assisted in defeating the Armada, but the rise of this
naval power on the eastern shores of the narrow seas made rivalry with
England on the waters inevitable. In the seventeenth century there was a
series of hard-fought naval wars between England and the United Provinces.

Under the two first Stuart Kings of England there were quarrels with the
Dutch that nearly led to war. The Dutch colonists and traders in the Far
Eastern seas had used high-handed measures to prevent English competition.
Nearer home there were disputes as to the right claimed by the King's ships
to make any foreign ship lower her flag and salute the English ensign. But
it was not till the days of the Commonwealth that the first war broke out.
It was a conflict between two republics. Its immediate cause was Cromwell's
Navigation Act, which deprived the Dutch of a considerable part of their
carrying trade. The first fight took place before the formal declaration of
war, and was the result of a Dutch captain refusing the customary salute to