, Hungary, Bohemia, the Spains, England and Ireland
(in virtue of Philip II.'s marriage with Mary I., queen-regnant of
England), the greater part of America, from the extreme north to the
extreme south, portions of Northern Africa, the Philippines, and some
minor possessions; and it really ruled, though indirectly, most of that
part of Italy, outside of the territory of Venice, that had nominally an
independent existence. Before Holland's independence was fully
established, but after the connection with England had ceased, Portugal
passed under the dominion of the Spanish branch of the house of Austria,
with all her immense American, African, and Asiatic colonial
possessions. For years, Philip II. was more powerful in France than any
one of her sovereigns could pretend to be. Frederick's prediction,
therefore, came to pass almost literally, and was less an exaggeration
than St. Luke's assertion that a decree went forth from Caesar Augustus
that all the world should be taxed. As Augustus was lord of nearly all
the world that a man like St. Luke could consider civilized and worth
governing, so might an Austrian writer of the sixteenth century declare
that the Hapsburgs ruled over wellnigh all the world that could be
looked upon as belonging to the Christian commonwealth, including not a
little that had been stolen from the heathen by Christians.

It was by marriage that the Hapsburgs became so great in so short a
time. Frederick III. married Eleanor, a Portuguese princess, whose
mother was of the royal house of Castille. Portugal is not even of
second rank now, and the Bragancas are not in the first rank of royal
families. But in the fifteenth century Portugal stood relatively and
positively very high, and the house of Avis was above the house of
Austria, though a king of Portugal was necessarily inferior to the head
of the Holy Roman Empire. This marriage did not advance the fortunes of
the Austrian family, though it connected them with three other great
families,--the reigning houses of Portugal, Castille, and England, the
Princess Eleanor having Plantagenet blood. But the son of Frederick and
Eleanor, afterward the Emperor Maximilian I.,[27] married Mary of
Burgundy in 1477, which "gave a lift" to his race that enabled it to
increase in importance at a very rapid rate. Mary was in possession of
most of the immense dominions of her father, which he had intended to
convert into a kingdom, had he lived to complete his purp