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e. He sought to avenge his father's loss of Metz, and persuaded his English wife to join him in war against young Henry II. With his splendid Spanish troops Philip won a great victory at St. Quentin.[1] "Has he yet taken Paris?" cried his father eagerly when the news reached his secluded monastery. But Philip had not, he had erred from over-caution and given France time to recover. Two able generals, the great Protestant leader Coligny, and the dashing Catholic hero of Metz, Francis of Guise, held the Spaniards in check. Guise even seized Calais, and so snatched from England her last territory in France (1558). Its loss filled full the measure of poor Mary's unpopularity with her subjects and also of her own unhappiness. She had sacrificed everything for love of a husband who had no love for her. She died the same year. "They will find 'Calais,'" she said, "engraven on my heart."[2] [1] See _Battle of St. Quentin_, page 1. [2] See _England Loses Her Last French Territory_, page 1. Her Protestant sister, Elizabeth, daughter of Anne Boleyn, succeeded to the throne, and England with a cry of relief threw off the hated Spanish alliance. She was free again. Free, but in infinite danger. The Catholic Pope and Catholic Philip, remembering that the divorce under which Henry VIII married Anne Boleyn had never been admitted by the Church, declared Elizabeth illegitimate, and pointed to her cousin Mary Stuart of Scotland as the lawful ruler of England. Mary had been married to the French prince Francis II, who at this moment succeeded his father Henry II as king of France. Here was a chance indeed for Spain and France and Scotland all three to unite against Elizabeth and place a second Catholic Mary on England's throne. Many Englishmen themselves were still Catholic, and might easily have been persuaded to approve the change. That Elizabeth, by her cool and cunning diplomacy, managed to evade the threatened danger, has ever been held as little short of providential by the Protestants of the world.[3] In truth, however, each of the powers which might have assailed Elizabeth, had religious difficulties of its own to encounter. [3] See _Reign of Elizabeth_, page 8. In Scotland there was civil war. The Protestant faith had been slow of introduction there, but under the leadership of John Knox it had become at length supreme.[4] The Regent, mother of the young queen, Mary Stuart, had French troops to aid her
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