All through 1606 the game of intrigue was going on without any great advance or advantage to anyone.  But while the Dutch had been campaigning in the Netherlands, they had also been establishing themselves in the Spice Islands, and in 1607 the rise of the United Provinces as a sea-power received emphatic demonstration in a great fight off Gibraltar.  The disparity in size between the Spanish and Dutch vessels was enormous, but the victory was overwhelming.  Not a Dutch ship was lost, and the Spanish fleet, which had viewed their approach with laughter, was annihilated.  The name of Heemskerk, the Dutch admiral who inspired the battle, and lost his life at its beginning, is enrolled among those of the nation’s heroes.

This event had greatly stimulated the desire of the archduke for an armistice, which had been in process of negotiation.  With the old king negotiation had been futile, since there was no prospect of his ever conceding the minimum requirements of the provinces.  Now, Spain had reached a different position, and Spinola himself required a far heavier expenditure than she was prepared for as the alternative to a peace on the uti possidetis basis.  In the provinces, however, Barneveld and Maurice were in antagonism; but an armistice was established and extended, while solemn negotiations went on at The Hague in the beginning of 1608.  The proposals accepted next year implied virtually the recognition of the Dutch republic as an independent nation, though nominally there was only a truce for twelve years.  The practical effect was to secure not only independence but religious liberty, and the form implied the independence and security of the Indian trade and even of the West Indian trade.  So, in 1609 the Dutch republic took its place among the European powers.

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MOUNTSTUART ELPHINSTONE

The History of India

Mountstuart Elphinstone was born in October 1779, and joined the Bengal service in 1795, some three years before the arrival in India of Lord Mornington, afterwards Marquess Wellesley.  He continued in the Indian service till 1829, and was offered but refused the Governor Generalship.  The last thirty years of his life he passed in comparative retirement in England, and died in November, 1859, at Hook Wood.  He was one of the particularly brilliant group of British administrators in India in the first quarter of the last century.  Like his colleagues, Munro and Malcolm, he was a keen student of Indian History.  And although some of his views require to be modified in the light of more recent enquiry, his “History of India” published in 1841 is still the standard authority from the earliest times to the establishment of the British as a territorial power.

I.—­The Hindus

India is crossed from East to West by a chain of mountains called the Vindhyas.  The country to the North of this chain is now called Hindustan and that to the South of it the Deckan.  Hindustan is in four natural divisions; the valley of the Indus including the Panjab, the basin of the Ganges, Rajputana and Central India.  Neither Bengal nor Guzerat is included in Hindustan power.  The rainy season lasts from June to October while the South West wind called the Monsoon is blowing.