required of him. But the nation was determined. Although Scotland lost heavily in the Darien project, and England in the South Sea scheme, neither country could be deterred. The attacks on Carthagena failed: but among all the glorious victories of the Seven Years' War, that of Rodney in the West Indies was not the least conspicuous. At the Peace of Paris in 1763 the capture of many of those islands was confirmed; but on the outbreak of the Imperial Civil War all was again in jeopardy.

Yet when the fate of the whole empire trembled in the balance, the swift and decisive blows that Rodney struck in the West Indies in the years 1780, 1781 and 1782 again saved England from complete disaster. Once more there was peace for a while; but in the terrific final struggle with France the West Indian seas again resounded to the cannon of Nelson, Abercrombie and Moore. Not one of the plantations on the islands was secure during the years that Napoleon was supreme in Europe; but after the battle of Trafalgar had at last given Britain the mastery of the ocean, they were seldom subjected to further attack.

Trafalgar, in fact, ended the contest for the West Indies. Those beautiful lands had been known to Europe for more Peace and than three centuries, and during all that time they Misfortunes. had seen nothing but war. They had been the focus of European politics. Every nation had striven to conquer them.

When peace was concluded, Spain still possessed the pearl which repeated attempts had not been able to snatch from her jealous hands; Cuba floated the red and yellow flag for another ninety years. But if Spain held the finest, England had the largest share. France had likewise some rich dependencies, while Holland and Denmark maintained their own small settlements.

A peace that was to be permanent now dawned upon the West Indies. The seas that had been sacred to the adventurer,

the buccaneer, and the warship, were to know nothing more exciting than the sailing or steam packet, the commercial traveller, the missionary, and the globe-trotter.

But by a strange paradox, the West Indies were more prosperous in war than in peace. The victory that brought them security sealed their doom. The most brilliant period of their history was over; it proved also the more flourishing; and the clouds were already gathering that have never since been wholly dispelled.

Newer and larger areas of production opened out elsewhere. The sugar-cane, the source of most West Indian wealth, was shortly to be supplanted by the sugar-beet. The excellence of the tobacco grown on the islands was indeed unapproachable anywhere; but other countries improved and extended their

crops.

If the products of the West Indies were thus menaced on the one hand, the means by which those products were supplied were menaced on the other. The treatment of the negro slaves, and the whole question of slavery, was taken up in Europe. In spite of protests from the planters that their ruin was certain, emancipation of the negroes was insisted on by the British Government and whatever view we may take of the rights and wrongs of slavery, it must be admitted that the planters did not in this instance exaggerate more than men inevitably do when their livelihood is threatened.

The French had already been driven out of Haiti by their slaves and Europe was watching, with hopes destined to be rudely shattered, the experiment of a negro republic in that island. The shadow of approaching disaster lay over all the West Indies. The famous French phrase, 'Perish the colonies rather than perish a principle,' had gone forth the principle of freedom for the negroes and their equality with the whites was about to be essayed by all the colonising powers; and if it cannot be said that the West Indies have perished since that principle has been introduced, it must be allowed

that, whether it springs from the abolition of slavery or the adoption of Free Trade by Britain a few years later, or from both causes combined, they have perished as an economic factor in the world's industry. During a century their star has declined: and the remainder of their history offers little but gloom-a gloom that is the more depressing when contrasted with the brightness of their past, and the ideal beauty of their situation.

BOOK III

THE BEGINNING OF THE WORLD STRUGGLE: 1588-1713

CHAPTER I

THE LOSS OF SPAIN'S SUPREMACY: 1588-17001

THE close of the Middle Ages in Europe was marked by three great events. When Constantinople was taken by the Turks in the year 1453, the West was again awakened to the danger of being crushed beneath the civil and religious despotism of an alien race. Forty years later, the discovery of America and the new routes to the Indies more than compensated for the loss of the Greek empire. And meanwhile the renascence was slowly spreading from Italy into every country that had any pretence to civilisation.

The peril from Islám proved illusory. The Turks were exhausted by their last great effort; and although they made many more incursions westwards, one even so far as Vienna, they were always driven back, and the hatred and fear with which they were regarded changed gradually to contempt, as the power of the Crescent declined.

1 Authorities.--Prescott and Robertson are still useful as showing the internal state of the country. There is an invaluable chapter on the decline of Spain in Buckle's History of Civilisation. The modern history of Spain exists only in fragments; Coxe's Bourbon Kings is the best for the English reader; and Major Hume throws light on the last century. Cervantes gives an inimitable picture of the life of his country in the time of Philip III.; Calderon, whom Sismondi calls the poet of the Inquisition, and Lope de Vega have an endless series of dramas. Despite Napoleon's dictum to the contrary, Lesage's Gil Blas may be taken as an accurate description of Spain in the generations after Don Quixote.

The effects of the renascence, mingling with, attracted to or repelled by the reformation in religion, were different in different countries, illustrating curiously the distinctions of race and thought in Europe.

The Renascence in Europe.

In Italy, where liberty was already dead, the lustre of the liberal arts hid the tyranny and depravity of her princes. In the land which had conserved more of the ancient traditions than any other, the enthusiasm for classical learning reached its highest point under the patronage of splendid despots. But the wisdom of its scholars was of a temper coldly intellectual; there was no moral or religious reformation. The denunciations of Savonarola fell helplessly against the indifference of Florence, as he died the martyr of a ruined cause; the moral decadence of Venice and Naples was then, as now, cloaked with the fatal gift of beauty that has been vouchsafed the whole peninsula. The lower people were untouched by the renascence; the upper classes, having thrown aside the old garment of faith, donned no new one. And the outer contrast of palace and hovel was and is still deepened by the inner contrast of careless disbelief and unquestioning devotion, of haughty pride and pathetic servility.

In France, the religious indifference of Italy mingled with the religious fervour of Germany, as renascence and reformation clashed against the older Catholicism and each other. Civil war that developed into anarchy invaded the land. Patriotism hid her head; liberty was lost. The political ruin which disunion brought upon Germany might have been the fate of France had not Henry of Navarre, with a cynicism worthy of Montaigne, changed his religion as the price of his kingdom. But with the abandonment of the Huguenots by the king, France as a whole came slowly round to the old belief, and the strength of Catholicism was probably deepened by the bitter struggle. Yet the scoffers were not subdued; side by side with the untroubled faith that exists to the