underrated disasters, making himself oblivious to them as if they did
not exist. He was possessor of the greatest realm ever swayed by a
single scepter. He affected to be proprietor of the seas; he thought
Flanders a garden to be tilled to supply his table, and its wealth,
gold for him to squander on Armadas. Italian provinces were his, and
Spain was his; and the Western Hemisphere, by his own daring
assumption, and the generosity of the papal gift, and the toils of
Ponce de Leon and de Soto and Coronado and Pizarro and Cortes, was his.
Compared with the wide and bewildering extent of his kingdom, the Roman
Empire was a dukedom. His empire spurred him to world-dominion, and he
used his patrimony and its fabulous wealth to attempted enforcement of
his claim to the sovereignty of England and Western Europe. His
ambition was in nothing less than Alexander's, but his conception of
means adequate to campaigns was meager. A task he could see and a
kingdom he could desire, but adequacy of preparation for world-conquest
never crept into his thought. He was as niggardly in supplying his
generals and armies as Queen Elizabeth, and all but as voluble in abuse
of his servants in the field or cabinet, and as thankless to those who
had wrought his will. Parma, and Requesens, and Don John, and Alva, he
drove almost frantic by his excessive demands and expectations, coupled
with his entire inadequacy in preparation and supplies. His soldiers
were always on the point of mutiny for food, or clothing, or pay, or
all together. However, this ought in fairness to be said, that the
only contemporary Government which did pay its soldiers promptly and
fairly was the Netherlands, one reason worth weighing why, under Prince
Maurice in particular, Flemish armies made such vigorous head against
Spanish aggressions.

Just two people Philip gave consideration to--himself and the pope.
His narrow nature, while not capable of enthusiasm, was capable of a
tenacious and unflagging loyalty. What in a manly spirit or in a
martyr would have bloomed into nobility, devotion, and self-sacrifice,
in a man like Philip became a settled cruelty and bigotry which finds
few parallels in the annals of the world. He was a creature of the
Church, as he conceived all in his dominions were creatures to him.
Free will and the right to conviction he did not claim for himself and
would not consider for others. The world was an autocracy, universal,
necessary, t