Home › CHAPTER XIV › CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XIV

From the Commencement of the Seventeenth Century, to the Peace of Westphalia. THE seventeenth century, at its commencement, found Spain drained of its treasure, and destitute of eminent men. The colonies of America, the war in the Low Countries, and the incessant enterprises of Philip II. had produced a pernicious effect on the population; and his successor, Philip III., banished two hundred thousand Moors, who constituted the most industrious portion of the remaining inhabitants.

Portugal was now under the power of Spain; and saw, as the consequence of her subjection, the greater part of the discoveries and conquests of her better days fall into the hands of strangers. The Dutch, who were forbidden, as rebels against the authority of Philip, to purchase in Lisbon the commodities of the East Indies went to the latter country in search of them, where they found an administration which had been rendered feeble by the influence of the climate, by luxurious and effeminate habits, and by spiritual and temporal tyranny; and while Philip III., after a siege of three years , which cost him from eighty to a hundred thousand men, got possession of Ostend, the Dutch took the isles of Molucca from his Portuguese subjects. In fact, of all the foreign possessions of the Portuguese, Goa, in the East Indies, and Brazil, in America, alone remained; and had that great man, Sir Walter Raleigh, been adequately supported, the Spanish power in America would probably have been overthrown . Italy endured their yoke with impatience, and even Rome wished to see them humbled.

Venice both feared and hated them: and to the dukes of Mantua and Savoy, the overbearing power and the lofty tone of the cabinet of Madrid were insupportable.