“God knows,” said Alexander, “the distress in which this event has plunged me, at the very moment when I expected to be sending your Majesty my congratulations on the success of the great undertaking.  But these are the works of the Lord, who can recompense your Majesty by giving you many victories, and the fulfilment of your Majesty’s desires, when He thinks the proper time arrived.  Meantime let Him be praised for all, and let your Majesty take great care of your health, which is the most important thing of all.”

Evidently the Lord did not think the proper time yet arrived for fulfilling his Majesty’s desires for the subjugation of England, and meanwhile the King might find what comfort he could in pious commonplaces and in attention to his health.

But it is very certain that, of all the high parties concerned, Alexander Farnese was the least reprehensible for the over-throw of Philips hopes.  No man could have been more judicious—­as it has been sufficiently made evident in the course of this narrative—­in arranging all the details of the great enterprise, in pointing out all the obstacles, in providing for all emergencies.  No man could have been more minutely faithful to his master, more treacherous to all the world beside.  Energetic, inventive, patient, courageous; and stupendously false, he had covered Flanders with canals and bridges, had constructed flotillas, and equipped a splendid army, as thoroughly as he had puzzled Comptroller Croft.  And not only had that diplomatist and his wiser colleagues been hoodwinked, but Elizabeth and Burghley, and, for a moment, even Walsingham, were in the, dark, while Henry iii. had been his passive victim, and the magnificent Balafre a blind instrument in his hands.  Nothing could equal Alexander’s fidelity, but his perfidy.  Nothing could surpass his ability to command but his obedience.  And it is very possible that had Philip followed his nephew’s large designs, instead of imposing upon him his own most puerile schemes; the result far England, Holland, and, all Christendom might have been very different from the actual one.  The blunder against which Farnese had in vain warned his master, was the stolid ignorance in which the King and all his counsellors chose to remain of the Holland and Zeeland fleet.  For them Warmond and Nassau, and Van der Does and Joost de Moor; did not exist, and it was precisely these gallant sailors, with their intrepid crews, who held the key to the whole situation.

To the Queen’s glorious naval-commanders, to the dauntless mariners of England, with their well-handled vessels; their admirable seamanship, their tact and their courage, belonged the joys of the contest, the triumph, and the glorious pursuit; but to the patient Hollanders and Zeelanders, who, with their hundred vessels held Farneae, the chief of the great enterprise, at bay, a close prisoner with his whole army in his own ports, daring him to the issue, and ready—­to the last plank of their fleet and to the last drop of their blood—­to confront both him and the Duke of Medina Sidona, an equal share of honour is due.  The safety of the two free commonwealths of the world in that terrible contest was achieved by the people and the mariners of the two states combined.