served to call out the vast maritime powers of the Dutch. Tromp
was rapidly reinforced to ninety-six sail and twelve fire-ships,
and ordered to attack. Leaving a detached squadron to observe
the English, and to attack them if they helped the Spaniards, he
began the fight embarrassed by a thick fog, under cover of which
the Spaniards cut their cables to escape. Many running too close
to shore went aground, and most of the remainder attempting to
retreat were sunk, captured, or driven on the French coast.
Never was victory more complete."[16]

When a navy submits to such a line of action, all tone and pride must
have departed; but the navy only shared in the general decline which
made Spain henceforward have an ever lessening weight in the policy of
Europe.

"In the midst of the splendors of her court and language," says
Guizot, "the Spanish government felt itself weak, and sought to
hide its weakness under its immobility. Philip IV. and his
minister, weary of striving only to be conquered, looked but for
the security of peace, and only sought to put aside all
questions which would call for efforts of which they felt
themselves incapable. Divided and enervated, the house of
Austria had even less ambition than power, and except when
absolutely forced, a pompous inertia became the policy of the
successors of Charles V."[17]

Such was the Spain of that day. That part of the Spanish dominions
which was then known as the Low Countries, or the Roman Catholic
Netherlands (our modern Belgium), was about to be a fruitful source of
variance between France and her natural ally, the Dutch Republic. This
State, whose political name was the United Provinces, had now reached
the summit of its influence and power,--a power based, as has already
been explained, wholly upon the sea, and upon the use of that element
made by the great maritime and commercial genius of the Dutch people.
A recent French author thus describes the commercial and colonial
conditions, at the accession of Louis XIV., of this people, which
beyond any other in modern times, save only England, has shown how the
harvest of the sea can lift up to wealth and power a country
intrinsically weak and without resources:--

"Holland had become the Phoenicia of modern times. Mistresses of
the Scheldt, the United Provinces closed the outlets of Antwerp
to the sea, and inherited the comme