WARS and BATTLES
From Ancient Greece - to modern day.
Throughout continental Europe, the Protestants, discomfitted and dismayed, looked to England as their, protector and refuge. England was the acknowledged central point of Protestant power and policy and to conquer England was to stab Protestantism to the very heart. Sixtus V., the then reigning pope, earnestly exhorted Philip to this enterprise. And when the tidings reached Italy and Spain that the Protestant Queen of England had put to death her Catholic prisoner, Mary Queen of Scots, the fury of the Vatican and Escurial knew no bounds. Elizabeth was denounced as the murderous heretic whose destruction was an instant duty. A formal treaty was concluded (in June 1587), by which the pope bound himself to contribute a million of scudi to the expenses of the war; the money to be paid as soon as the king had actual possession of an English port. Philip, on his part, strained the resources of his vast empire to the utmost. The French Catholic chiefs eagerly co-operated with him. In the seaports of the Mediterranean, and along almost the whole coast from Gibraltar to Jutland, the preparations for the great armament were urged forward with all the earnestness of religious zeal as well as of angry ambition. "Thus," says the German historian of the popes, "thus did the united powers of Italy and Spain, from which such mighty influences had gone forth over the whole world, now rouse themselves for an attack upon England! The king had already compiled, from the archives of Simancas, a statement of the claims, which he had to the throne of that country on the extinction of the Stuart line; the most brilliant prospects, especially that of a universal dominion of the seas, were associated in his mind with this enterprise. Every thing seemed to conspire to such an end the predominance of Catholicism in Germany, the renewed attack upon the Huguenots in France, the attempt upon Geneva, and the enterprise against England. At the same moment, a thoroughly Catholic prince, Sigismund III, ascended the throne of Poland, with the prospect also of future succession to the throne of Sweden. But whenever any principle or power, be it what it may, aims at unlimited supremacy in Europe, some vigorous resistance to it, having its origin in the deepest spring of human nature, invariably arises. Philip had to encounter newly, awakened powers, braced by the vigor of youth, and elevated by a sense of their future destiny. The intrepid corsairs, who had rendered every sea insecure, now clustered round the coasts of their native island. The Protestants in a body—even the Puritans, although they had been subjected to as severe oppressions as the Catholics—rallied round their queen, who now gave admirable proof of her mason-line courage, and her princely talent of winning the affections, and leading the minds, and preserving the allegiance of men." Ranke should have added that the English Catholics at this crisis proved themselves as loyal to their queen and true to their country as were the most vehement anti-Catholic zealots in the island. Some few traitors there were; but as a body, the Englishmen who held the ancient faith stood the trial of their patriotism
nobly. The lord admiral himself was a Catholic, and (to adopt the words of Hallam) "then it was that the Catholics in every county repaired
to the standard of the lord lieutenant, imploring that they might not be suspected of bartering the national independence for their
religion itself." The Spaniard found no partisans in the country, which, he assailed, nor did England, self-wounded, " Lie at the proud
foot of her enemy."
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