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In 1638, when Milton began his continental journey, three years of the French period of the war had already accomplished themselves. The marchings and countermarchings of the opposed armies were the subjects of talk everywhere; Bernard of Weimar, D'Enghien, Guebriant, Turenne, Banier, and Torstenston were blazing as military names; and all along the tracks of these generals there were creeping negotiators as famous in their diplomatic craft, breaking Richelieu's threads, or knitting them together. At this point, a bird's-eye view of the continental states collectively may make their relations to each other and to England more intelligible henceforward.

FRANCE. — Louis XIII. was in the thirty-eighth year of his age and the twenty-eighth of his reign (1610—1643). He had been twenty-two years married to his queen, Anne of Austria, the daughter of Philip III. of Spain ; but the marriage was as yet childless. When not in the camp, the court was usually at St. Germain's, near Paris. The king was a person of the least possible consequence-impassive, parsimonious, and fond chiefly of farming, and of exercising his skill as an amateur barber on all his household; but with this conspicuous merit, that he believed in Richelieu, and let him do as he chose. The queen-mother, Mary de Medici, was an exile in Brussels, plotting restlessly for the destruction of the Cardinal's influence and her own return to her son's side ; but with no effect. The all-absorbing subject of Richelieu's care and of the national interest was the progress of the war in its different seats, and of the negotiations connected with it. There were, however, subordinate or tributary topics of interest. A special negotiation was on foot with Pope Urban, both through the Papal nuncio at Paris and through D'Estrées, the French ambassador at Rome, relative to certain differences between Richelieu and his Holiness in matters affecting the French Church. There were differences also between Richelieu and some of the Courts of Law, leading to arrests of judges, etc. Moreover, throughout the country there were complaints of impoverishment, of " surcharge de tailles et d'emprunts et des passages, et foule des gens de guerre.” In the midst of all this the gay nation was the gay nation still, and Paris was flourishing more and more under Richelieu's liberal care of industry, art, and science. The Palace of the Luxembourg, the Church of the Sorbonne, and the Palais Royal had been recently built or reëdified; the Jardin des Plantes had been added to the attractions of the city; and the famous Académie Française had just been founded (1635). Corneille had produced at the Theatre Française his tragedy of the Cid (1637); and there were French names of note in other departments, marking the progress from the literary era of Malherbe towards the richer age of French art and letters under Louis XIV. There was the poet Racan; there was the mathematician Fermat; there was the philosopher Gassendi; there were the two Poussins, the painters. The greatest French thinker of the age, René Descartes, was not at this time in his native country, but was residing in Holland, where his Discours sur la Méthode had just been published (1637).

SPAIN. — Philip IV. was ruling (1621–1665), with Olivarez for minister; ind the chief activity of the nation was in the war against the French and the Dutch. In the imagination of strangers, and especially of Englishmen, all was sombre and gloomy within this most Catholic peninsula — a swarthy peasantry sleek with oil and garlic ; cloaked hidalgos moving moodily in the streets of cities; no sign of life save in continual processions of monks and priests towards splendid churches. And yet, in this age of Spain's political decline, had not Cervantes arisen (1547—1616) to contradict such notions, to add to Spain's past glory in action the further glory of having produced one of the recognized masters of the world's collective literature, and to show how amid the wrecks of Catholicism there might survive a rich human life, grave with the wisdom of the past, and joyous in the southern sunshine ? To Cervantes, as the literary luminary of Spain, had succeeded Lope de Vega the prolific, with his 2,000 dramas (1568—1635); and the Spanish drama was still of matchless fame in its kind through the younger and greater genius of Calderon (1601– 1687). The contemporary representatives of Spanish art were the Sevilian painters Zurbaran and Velasquez, the immediate predecessors of Murillo. Meanwhile Portugal, though with characteristics and traditions of her own, was politically a part of Spain ; preparing, however, for the revolt which was to give her a separate dynasty in the house of Braganza (1640).

ITALY. — The most obvious fact then as now respecting Italy (a peninsula too long for its breadth, according to Napoleon's famous criticism) was its subdivision into so many states. Here is a list of them: I. THE SPANISH PROVINCES: to wit, - Naples and Sicily in the south,

and the Milanese territory in the north ; governed by Spanish Vice

roys from Madrid. II. THE THREE REPUBLICS : Venice, Genoa, and Lucca ; the last insig

nificant. III. THE NATIVE SOVEREIGNTIES :

1. Savoy and Piedmont: Reigning Duke, Carlo Emanuele II. (1638

1675), at present an infant under the guardianship of his mother

the Duchess Christina, sister of Louis XIII. 2. Parma and Piacenza: Reigning Duke, Odoardo (1622—1646),

of the Farnese family. 3. Modena: Reigning Duke, Francesco I. (1625—1658), of the Este

family. 4. Mantua : Reigning Duke, Carlo II. (1630—1665), of the Gonzaga

family. 5. Tuscany : Reigning Grand Duke, Ferdinando II. (1621—1670),

of the house of the Medici. 6. The States of the Church : Reigning Pontiff, Urban VIII. (1623—

1644), of the Florentine house of the Barberini. Thus distributed politically, the peninsula was and had been for many years under controlling Spanish domination. Holding so large a portion of the peninsula, Spain had extended in great measure over the whole the same methods of intellectual tyranny by means of the Inquisition, etc., which she practised within her own limits. None of the native states, at least, with the exception of the powerful republic of Venice and perhaps also Savoy, dared to have a policy which contradicted the Spanish, or to give refuge to men whose expulsion Spain demanded. There was, indeed, in the character of the ruling Pope, a certain capricious passion for self-assertion which made him far from the ideal of a Spanish Pope; but, on the whole, he was too fast bound to do more than flutter.

SWITZERLAND. — Though not definitively recognized as a European state till the Peace of Westphalia, the Helvetian Republic, with its mixed Germanic, Gallic, and Italian population, divided into cantons, etc., some Catholic and others Protestant, but having also a federal constitution binding its parts together, was already a fact in the European system. Geneva retained the celebrity, as a seat of Protestant theology, which had been acquired in the days of Calvin.

HOLLAND. — The Dutch Republic, though also waiting for its formal recognition till the Thirty Years' War should be concluded, was and had been for more than fifty years, a stronger fact in Europe than Switzerland. The present Stadtholder was Frederick Henry of Orange (1625—1647), by whom and by the States-General the war against Spain was vigorously conducted, in alliance with France. Meanwhile, under its singularly free institutions, the republic was extending its commerce with all parts of the world, and was not only producing a school of native painters in Mirevelt, Rembrandt, and their disciples, and supporting universities and breeding scholars renowned over the world, but was sheltering learned refugees from all other nations. And yet at this time Holland's own most learned son was in exile. This was the famous Hugo Grotius, formerly pensionary of Rotterdam, and known since 1599 as a jurist, a poet, a philologist, a historian, and a theologian. A leader of the Arminian party, and mixed up with the politics of Holland, at the time of the great contest between the Arminians and the Calvinists during the preceding Stadtholderate (1618), he had fallen along with his party, and, when his friend Barneveldt was beheaded, he had been condemned to perpetual imprisonment. He had escaped from prison in 1621 by the contrivance of his wife ; and since then he had resided chiefly in Paris, where in 1625 he added his treatise De Jure Belli et Pacis to his already numerous works. Since the death of the preceding Stadtholder he had ventured back to Holland on trial; but, as the sentence against him had not been repealed, he had not found it safe to remain. He was (1638) in his fifty-sixth year.

The Spanish NETHERLANDS. — Under a nominally separate government in the meantime, though in reality subject to Spain and about to revert to Spain in form, these provinces, in the midst of the battles and military movements of which, from their position, they were so peculiarly the theatre, were earning a special distinction in history through the fame of their painters. It was the age of Rubens (1577-1640), Jacob Jordaens (1594–1678), and Van Dyck (1599—1641), and of others of the Antwerp school. Both Rubens and Van Dyck had relations with England; where, indeed, Van Dyck was residing.

GERMANY AND THE AUSTRIAN DOMINIONS. — Distracted by the Thirty Years' War, the various Electorates and minor states of the German empire and their Austrian appendages, were less rich in products purely intellectual than they had been at any former time since the Reformation. Kepler (1571-1630) and Jacob Boehme (1575—1624) were the last German names of European

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note, except in the walk of scholarship; and the age of vernacular German literature had hardly begun. In Bohemia, where there had been a vernacular Slavonian literature, as well as much Latin learning, both had been arrested by the persecution of Protestantism.

POLAND. — This Slavonian country, interesting to Europe for nearly a century as having produced Copernicus (1473-1543), had, during that century, made an extraordinary start in consequence of the intellectual stimulus of Protestantism, and produced not a few scholars, poets, mathematicians, and theologians, whose names might be better known if they were more easy to pronounce. Here, in particular, the Socinian controversy had been agitated with not unimportant results. But the “golden age” of Poland, if it had not ceased in 1572, when the native dynasty of the Jagellons became extinct, and the Poles began their system of electing kings from the highest bidders, had come to a close in the reign of the third of these elected kings, the Swedish Sigismund III. (1587-1632). Protestantism was then systematically oppressed, and Poland swarmed with Jesuits. There was also an inheritance to the present king, Ladislav VI. (1632—1640), of wars with Sweden and Russia.

THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE. -- The confusion of the Thirty Years' War, it was supposed, might have afforded an opportunity to the Turks to recommence their assaults on Christian Europe. The wars of the Sultan Amurath IV., however (1623—1640), were almost exclusively in Asia; and, save for the appearance occasionally of Turkish corsairs in the Mediterranean in chase of Venetian or Genoese vessels, Europe heard little of the Mohammedans who had lately been her terror. The Greek lands were still included in the Turkish dominion.

Russia. — Although Russia or Muscovy had had a chaotic history of wars with the Poles, the Tartars, the Swedes, etc., extending pretty far back, it had but just taken its place as a European entity of any distinct shape, under the reigning Czar Michael Romanoff (1613—1645), the founder of the Russian dynasty which still exists.

DENMARK AND NORWAY. - Christian IV., the well-meaning Dane who had preceded Gustavus Adolphus as the voluntary champion of continental Protestantism in the Thirty Years' War, was still governing these Scandinavian and Protestant countries (1588—1648); and the Danes were doing something in commerce, were founding excellent schools, and were showing the beginnings of a literature.

SWEDEN. -- Ennobled at once as a European state by the heroic career of Gustavus, Sweden was still acting a first-rate part in Europe, as the chief ally of France in the continental war. Oxenstiern, governing as regent for Christina, still only in her twelfth year, was one of the wisest and most experienced of statesmen, and no unequal associate even for Richelieu. Administering the domestic affairs of Sweden with gravity and skill, sending the best generals he had to command the Swedish armies in the field, and frequently himself leaving Sweden to have diplomatic conferences with other powers, and to hold the balance even for Swedish interests, he was ready to use all available foreign talent in the Swedish service. One selection that he made of this kind is especially interesting. Poor Grotius, without a country, tossed back from Holland to Paris, had for many years been without employment, save in his books and

in literary correspondence. In Paris he had plenty of admiration as a Dutch lion, and Madame Grotius had her share as the brave wife who had schemed her husband's escape from prison; but money was beginning to fail them. Richelieu, to whom Grotius had been introduced, had not found in him the sort of man that would be likely to coöperate amicably with him and Père Joseph; and, though there had been offers of professorships and the like from various countries, none had come up to the mark. Just, however, when necessity might have made him aecept some such appointment, he and his wife had been invited to meet Oxenstiern at Frankfort-on-the-Main (1635). Here Oxenstiern had behaved most handsomely. Grotius had been nominated councillor to Queen Christina, and her ambassador at the court of Louis XIII. ACcepting the appointment, he had written letters to Holland renouncing his Dutch citizenship; and from March 1636, when he presented his credentials to Louis XIII., Grotius had been residing in state at Paris, as Swedish ambassador, and his wife as Madame l' Ambassadrice.'

The relations of Great Britain to this motley continent, from which it was separated by a strip of sea, were by no means of a kind considered respectable then, or that even now can be considered creditable. What was complained of was, not simply that Charles was apathetic and inactive in the European struggle, but that, following the policy of his father, he was showing a sympathy with Spain likely to become active. The war with Spain in the beginning of his reign was a by-past accident; and so was Hamilton's expedition in aid of Gustavus Adolphus. Besides the operation of natural affinities between the home policy of “Thorough," and such a style of foreign policy as the Opposition could denounce as tantamount to a league with continental Catholicism, there were other influences more easily marked. There was the Queen, with her Catholic cabinet at Denmark IIouse, and her correspondence, through agents, with the Roman court.

There was the queenmother, Mary de' Medici, in Brussels, plotting against Richelieu as her enemy, corresponding with her daughter, and sometimes inditing letters, with her signature in characters an inch long, addressed “A Monsieur mon beaufilz, le Roy d'Angleterre.To Charles's horror she was at last to come over herself (Oct. 1638), bringing with her what was called “queen-mother weather.": Acted upon by these influences, and by the influence of a distinctly Spanish party in the Privy Council, Charles had been parting gradually with every notion of an obligation imposed upon Britain, in her foreign

1 Should this table of the state of the Euro- the European connections of the history do pean nations about 1638, and the preceding not end with this volume. textual sketch seem unnecessarily extensive 2 Several such letters are in the State Paper for the purposes of the present chapter, the Office. reader will do me the favor to remember that 3 Laud's Diary

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