She not only meant to hold all she had of wealth and power, but
she aspired to universal dominion; already chief, she desired to be
sole, and this in the interest and name of the Holy Church.
The Reformation did not disturb Spain; it was crushed out within
twenty years. The spirit of liberty that had been growing in England
since Bosworth's Field, and that was manifesting itself in Germany and
the Netherlands, and that had begun to quiver even in France, did not
dare stir itself in Spain. Spain was united, or rather, was solidity
itself, and this solidity was both its strength and its death. England
was not so united, and England went steadily onward and upward; but
Spain's unity destroyed her, because it practically destroyed
individualism and presented the strange paradox of a strong nation of
weak men.
As a machine Spain in the sixteenth century was a marvel of power; as
an aggregation of thinking men, it was even then contemptible.
Ferdinand, Charles V and Philip II were able and illustrious rulers,
and they appeared at a time when their several characters could tell
on the immediate fortunes of Spain. They were warriors, and the nation
was entirely warlike. During this period the Spaniard overran the
earth, not that he might till the soil, but that he might rob the man
who did.
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