Linked with pride, ambition, avarice, every passion of a rich, strong
nature, potent for good and ill, it made the Spaniard of that day a
scourge as dire as ever fell on man.
Day was breaking on the world. Light, hope, and freedom pierced with
vitalizing ray the clouds and the miasma that hung so thick over the
prostrate Middle Age, once noble and mighty, now a foul image of decay
and death. Kindled with new life, the nations gave birth to a progeny of
heroes, and the stormy glories of the sixteenth century rose on awakened
Europe. But Spain was the citadel of darkness,--a monastic cell, an
inquisitorial dungeon, where no ray could pierce. She was the bulwark of
the Church, against whose adamantine wall the waves of innovation beat
in vain.[FN#19] In every country of Europe the party of freedom and
reform was the national party, the party of reaction and absolutism was
the Spanish party, leaning on Spain, looking to her for help. Above all,
it was so in France; and, while within her bounds there was for a time
some semblance of peace, the national and religious rage burst forth on
a wilder theatre. Thither it is for us to follow it, where, on the
shores of Florida, the Spaniard and the Frenchman, the bigot and the
Huguenot, met in the grapple of death.
In a corridor of his palace, Philip the Second was met by a man who had
long stood waiting his approach, and who with proud reverence placed a
petition in the hand of the pale and sombre King.
Pages:
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117