There was a momentary struggle there, it is true. But so
apathetic was the popular mind that the effort to bring it into sympathy
with the vast movement of the age was hopeless from the beginning. The
axe and the fagot made rapid work of the heresy. After only ten years of
burnings and beheadings Philip II. could boast that not a heretic lived
in his borders.
Crazed by his success and his unquestioned omnipotence at home, and
drunken with the delirious dream that God's wrath was breathing through
him upon a revolted world, he essayed to crush heresy throughout Europe;
and in this mad and awful crime his people undoubtingly seconded him. In
this he failed, the stars in their courses fighting against him, the God
that his worship slandered taking sides against him. But history records
what rivers of blood he shed in the long and desperate fight, and how
lovingly and adoringly his people sustained him. He killed, in cold
blood, some forty thousand harmless people for their faith, besides the
vastly greater number whose lives he took in battle.
Yet this horrible monster, who is blackened with every crime at which
humanity shudders, who had no grace of manhood, no touch of humanity, no
gleam of sympathy which could redeem the gloomy picture of his ravening
life, was beloved and worshipped as few men have been since the world
has stood. The common people mourned him at his death with genuine
unpaid sobs and tears. They will weep even yet at the story of his
edifying death, - this monkish vampire breathing his last with his eyes
fixed on the cross of the mild Nazarene, and tormented with impish
doubts as to whether he had drunk blood enough to fit him for the
company of the just!
His successors rapidly fooled away the stupendous empire that had filled
the sixteenth century with its glory. Spain sank from the position of
ruler of the world and queen of the seas to the place of a second-rate
power, by reason of the weakening power of superstition and bad
government, and because the people and the chieftains had never learned
the lesson of law.
The clergy lost no tittle of their power. They went on, gayly roasting
their heretics and devouring the substance of the people, more
prosperous than ever in those days of national decadence. Philip III.
gave up the government entirely to the Duke of Lerma, who formed an
alliance with the Church, and they led together a joyous life.
