After the consolidation of the
great kingdoms they for some time kept each other in mutual check.
During the first half of the sixteenth century the balancing system was
successfully practised by European statesmen. But when Philip II
reigned, France had become so miserably weak through her civil wars that
he had nothing to dread from the rival state which had so long curbed
his father, the Emperor Charles V. In Germany, Italy, and Poland he had
either zealous friends and dependents or weak and divided enemies.
Against the Turks he had gained great and glorious successes; and he
might look round the Continent of Europe without discerning a single
antagonist of whom he could stand in awe. Spain, when he acceded to the
throne, was at the zenith of her power.
The hardihood and spirit which the Aragonese, the Castilians, and the
other nations of the peninsula had acquired during centuries of free
institutions and successful war against the Moors had not yet become
obliterated. Charles V had, indeed, destroyed the liberties of Spain;
but that had been done too recently for its full evil to be felt in
Philip's time. A people cannot be debased in a single generation; and
the Spaniards under Charles V and Philip II proved the truth of the
remark that no nation is ever so formidable to its neighbors, for a
time, as a nation which, after being trained up in self-government,
passes suddenly under a despotic ruler.
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