is father's policy. Lerma
did but act as he was forced to act. The circumstance that the Catholic
Reaction had triumphed was alone sufficient to make a change necessary.
Spanish greatness was no longer the leading political interest of the
Church, and Rome was at liberty to have some regard to the new powers
that were growing up in Europe. Pacific ideas prevailed. Spain ceased to
make war in every direction, and husbanded her resources, and began to
renew her native strength. The skeleton bequeathed by Philip II. became
clothed with flesh, and sinewy. Could this policy have been continued
for a generation, Spanish history might have been made to read
differently from the melancholy text it now presents. But the process of
rehabilitation was not allowed to go on. There had always been a strong
party opposed to Lerma, and that statesman's friendliness to the English
and the Dutch made him liable to the charge of favoring heresy,--a
charge that was the heaviest that could be brought against any one in
the estimation of Philip III., who was as bigoted as his father. The
Catholic and warlike policy of Idiaquez, Granvella, and Moura was
revived. The two branches of the Austrian family were again brought into
the closest alliance, and at a time when the German branch had become
even more Catholic than the elder branch. Spain stepped once more into
the European arena, and her generals and armies by their abilities and
exploits revived recollections of what had been done by Parma and his
hosts. Spinola, who was scarcely inferior to Farnese, conquered the
Palatinate, and so began the Thirty Years' War favorably to the Catholic
cause. The great victory of Nordlingen, won by the Catholics in 1635,
was due to the valor of the Spanish troops in the Imperial army. Spain
appeared to be as powerful as at any former period, and the revival of
her ascendency might have been expected by those who judged only from
external indications of strength. Yet a few years, however, and it was
clear to all politicians at least that Spain was far gone into a
decline, and that the course of Olivarez had been fatal to her
greatness; and the mass of mankind, who judge only from glaring actions,
could not fail to appreciate the nature of such events as the defeat of
Rocroi and the loss of Portugal, the latter including the loss of all
the dependencies of the Portuguese in Africa, America, and India. No
historical transaction of the seventeenth century testi