young state as an independent power among the nations of the earth, and ceding to it the towns of Dutch Flanders and the Dutch conquests in the East Indies, in Africa and in the New World.

As we have seen, the Peace of Westphalia, October 24, 1648, which ended the Thirty Years' War, did not end hostilities between Spain and France, which continued eleven years longer, until ended by the Peace of the Pyrenees, November 7, 1659, by which Spain was obliged to cede to France the county of Roussillon, north of the Pyrenees, and the county of Artois, in the Spanish Netherlands. Spain retained the rest of the Spanish Netherlands, and also Franche-Comté, the Duchy of Milan, and the Kingdom of Naples and Sicily. By the Treaty of the Pyrenees, Spain surrendered the last vestige of supremacy which she had exercised in Europe since the reign of Philip II.; and she rapidly sunk into insignificance.

Philip IV. died in September, 1665, and was succeeded as King of Spain by his son CHARLES II., the child of a second marriage. Excepting the wars with Louis XIV. of France, the reign of Charles II. was uneventful. He was the last of the dynasty of the Spanish Hapsburgs, who had reigned over the Spanish dominions for almost two centuries, beginning with Charles I., the Emperor Charles V. of Germany, in 1516.

As Charles II. was childless, his death in 1700 gave rise to a contest for the Spanish dominions, which brought on a general European struggle known as the War of the Spanish Succession, A. D. 1702-1713, which placed the French House of Bourbon on the Spanish throne, in the person of Duke Philip of Anjou, who became PHILIP V. By the Peace of Utrecht, in 1713, Spain ceded the Spanish Netherlands, Milan, Naples and Sicily to the Emperor Charles VI. of Germany, the head of the Austrian House of Hapsburg and the competitor of Philip of Anjou for the Spanish throne; while Gibraltar and Minorca were ceded to England, and Spain and Portugal resumed their former boundaries.

PORTUGAL.

During the sixty years' subjection of Portugal to the Spanish crown the greatness of Portugal steadily declined. The Portuguese possessions in North-western Africa passed into the hands of Spain, and Ceuta was thus permanently lost to Portugal. The Dutch became formidable rivals of the Portuguese on the western coast of Africa, and deprived them of much of their commerce in that quarter. In the East Indies the Dutch also seized many of the Portuguese possessions and absorbed the Portuguese trade, thus giving the death-blow to the Portuguese supremacy in that part of the world, and placing the remaining Portuguese settlements in Southern and Eastern Asia in great peril. At the same time the English laid the foundations of their empire in India, which was destined eventually to overshadow both the Portuguese and Dutch dominions in that quarter.

During the same period the European enemies of Spain also attacked Brazil, which Portuguese dependency had also fallen into the hands of Spain. The Portuguese settlements in Brazil were repeatedly attacked and plundered by French, English and Dutch fleets. In 1612 the French seized Maranhao and founded the city of Sao Luiz do Maranhao, but in 1615 the Portuguese expelled the French from that town. In 1623 a Dutch fleet captured Bahia, but in 1625 the Dutch garrison in that town was forced to surrender to the Portuguese. In 1629 the Dutch captured Pernambuco; after which they rapidly extended their conquests in Brazil, so that by 1645 they had possession of all Brazil north of Pernambuco, except Para.

The Portuguese universally detested the Spaniards; and the Spanish rule was so oppressive that the popular discontent in Portugal steadily increased, until 1640, when the Portuguese rose in revolt and proclaimed the Duke of Braganza King of Portugal with the title of JOHN IV. France, England and Holland at once recognized the independence of Portugal under the House of Braganza, France and Holland being en

progress of the Thirty Years' War. John IV. successfully resisted the efforts which Spain made during his entire reign to reconquer Portugal.

During the reign of John IV. the Portuguese gradually drove the Dutch from Brazil, and recovered that entire dependency by 1654. Brazil was erected into a principality, and the heir-apparent to the crown of Portugal was invested with the title of Prince of Brazil. In the meantime Brazil had prospered steadily, in spite of the struggles with the Dutch and the exactions of the home government. The prosperity of the province was based on agriculture.

King John IV. died in 1656, and was succeeded on the throne of Portugal by his second son ALFONSO VI., whose elder brother had died some time before. In 1660 Holland concluded a treaty with Portugal renouncing all her claims to Brazil. In 1661 a treaty of alliance was concluded between Portugal and England; by which the Princess Catharine of Braganza, the daughter of King Alfonso VI., was married to King Charles II. of England; while Portugal ceded Tangier, in North-western Africa, and Bombay, in Hindoostan, to England as Catharine's dowry. This treaty was the beginning of intimate relations between Portugal and England which lasted a long time and had a marked effect upon the fortunes of Portugal.

King Alfonso VI. was so weak and contemptible a monarch that the Spaniards felt encouraged to prosecute hostilities against the Portuguese with increased vigor; but the Portuguese were victorious, the Spaniards being decisively defeated at Almexial in 1663 and at Villaviciosa in 1666. The battle of Villaviciosa virtually secured the independence of Portugal, though Spain still refused to acknowledge it.

The Portuguese had become so disgusted with Alfonso VI. that the Portuguese Cortes deprived him of his authority as an imbecile, in 1667, and made his brother Dom Pedro regent. A dispensation was obtained from Pope Clement IX. annulling Alfonso's mar

Savoy, then married Dom Pedro. One of the first acts of the regency was the Peace of Lisbon with Spain, February 13, 1668, by which Spain treated with the Portuguese as a sovereign and independent nation, and a mutual restitution of all conquests during the war was made, with the exception of the city of Ceuta, in North-western Africa, which remained to Spain. The subjects of both nations recovered all property alienated or confiscated during the war. By the Peace of the Hague between Portugal and Holland, July 31, 1669, the Dutch were left in possession of all the conquests which they had made from the Portuguese in the East Indies.

King Alfonso VI. was closely confined until his death, in 1683, when the regent Dom Pedro ascended the throne of Portugal with the title of PEDRO II. In 1696 gold was discovered in Brazil, and diamonds were also found in that country about the same time. These discoveries vastly increased the wealth of Brazil, and poured a steady stream of wealth into the Portuguese treasury. In 1703 Portugal, by an offensive and defensive alliance with England, was drawn into the War of the Spanish Succession. During the war Pedro II. died, and was succeeded as King of Portugal by his son JOHN V., A. D. 1706, during whose reign Spain by treaty formally acknowledged the independence of Portugal, A. D. 1737.

The history of Portugal is thenceforth generally unimportant and uneventful. Though the country had recovered its independence, the restored Kingdom of Portugal lacked vigor, and has manifested the same tendency to decay that has characterized Spain since the reign of Philip II. Though Portugal had recovered its independence through the growing feebleness and decline of Spain, the restored kingdom was unable to recover more than half of its old colonial empire, most of its former possessions in the East Indies having come into the possession of the young and vigorous Dutch Republic. Only in Brazil was Portugal able to reestablish her old dominion.

DENMARK.

URING the sixty years' reign of CHRISTIAN IV., A. D. 15881648, Denmark was prosperous, notwithstanding her disastrous wars. The Danish monarchy embraced all of Denmark and Norway, with the seven southern provinces of Sweden; while Iceland and Greenland were among its foreign possessions. In 1611 Christian IV. began a foolish and useless war with the King of Sweden; but this war was ended by the Peace of Siorod in 1613, through the mediation of England. The part which Christian IV. took in the Thirty Years' War as an ally of the German Protestants, which ended in his defeat, and which was closed by the Peace of Lübeck in 1629, has already been alluded to; as has also his disastrous war with Sweden in 1644, which was ended by the Peace of Brömsebro, in August, 1645.

Upon the death of Christian IV., in 1648, his son FREDERICK III. became King of Denmark and Norway. In 1657 Frederick III. became involved in a war with Charles X. of Sweden, which was ended by the Peace of Roskild in 1658. A second war with Charles X. of Sweden, begun in 1658, was ended by the Peace of Copenhagen in 1660. In 1660 Frederick III. accomplished a peaceful revolution by which he changed the constitution of Denmark, thus converting his kingdom from an elective and limited monarchy into an absolute and hereditary one. Thus the Danish nobility were deprived of their great privileges and revenues by the Royal Law, which conferred unlimited power upon the king. The nobles thus lost their former power and independent position, and were bound to the throne by titles and orders.

Frederick III. died in 1670, and was succeeded on the Danish throne by his son CHRISTIAN V., who engaged in a war with Charles XI. of Sweden in 1675, which was

ended in 1679 through the intervention of Louis XIV. of France. Upon the death of Christian V., in 1699, his son FREDERICK IV. became King of Denmark and Norway. He reigned until his death in 1730.

SWEDEN.

CHARLES IX. of Sweden was engaged during part of his reign of twelve years, A. D. 1599-1611, in a war with his nephew and predecessor, King Sigismund III. of Poland, who still claimed the Swedish crown after his deposition by the Swedish Diet. A few months before his death, in 1611, Charles IX. became involved in a war with Christain IV. of Denmark. Among the causes of complaint of the two kings was one that each bore upon his shield three crowns symbolizing the three Scandinavian kingdoms.

Upon the death of Charles IX., in the fall of 1611, his son, the illustrious GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS-"the Lion of the North" -became King of Sweden at the age of sixteen. He chose for his Prime Minister the famous Axel Oxenstiern, a man of profound wisdom and good judgment, a model statesman and diplomatist, and the prime mover in Swedish affairs for a long series of year.

Gustavus Adolphus had served his apprenticeship in the art of war in the struggle with Christian IV. of Denmark, and he was destined to become not only one of the most famous of military heroes, but also the founder of a new system of warfare and army organization, which in the course of time superseded the closely serried ranks of the Swiss pikemen and the Spanish lancers.

Through the mediation of England, the war with Christian IV. of Denmark was ended in two years by the Peace of Siorod, in January, 1613; but a war with Russia had already begun. The male line of Rurik having become extinct, a party in Russia desired to place a brother of Gustavus Adolphus on the Russian throne. The

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Swedes gained some advantages in this war, but the greater part of the Russian nation succeeded in maintaining the right of Michael Romanoff to the Russian crown. the Peace of Stolbova, in 1617, Russia ceded considerable territory to Sweden, including the site of the present city of St. Petersburg.

In 1620 Gustavus Adolphus became involved in a war of nine years with his cousin, King Sigismund III. of Poland, caused by the latter's pretensions to the Swedish crown. This war was ended in 1629, by the six years' Truce of Altmark, through the mediation of France, whose illustrious Prime Minister, Cardinal Richelieu, was anxious to allow Gustavus Adolphus liberty to engage in the great Thirty Years' War in Germany. By this war with Poland, Sweden acquired Livonia and part of Prussia; but far more valuable were the discipline and experience which enabled Gustavus Adolphus to assume his place as the great leader of the Protestant hosts in the Thirty Years' War.

As we have seen, Gustavus Adolphus, upon leaving Sweden in 1630 to take part in the Thirty Years' War, placed the government of his kingdom in the hands of a Council of Regency presided over by his able Prime Minister, the Chancellor, Axel Oxenstiern; confiding his infant daughter Christina to this council. Upon her valiant father's death on the memorable field of Lutzen, in 1632, CHRISTINA was proclaimed Queen of Sweden; the government being administered by Oxenstiern, under whose guidance Sweden became the head of the Protestant league. The Thirty Years' War made Sweden the great military power of the North, and gave rise to the StatesSystem in the Northern kingdoms of Europe. During the young queen's minority the noble families of Sweden improved their opportunity to increase their privileges and property. Christina assumed the government in 1644; and during the first years of her reign she displayed a wisdom, a firmness and a manifold ability which surprised her venerable counselors, and thus proved

herself a worthy daughter and successor of Gustavus Adolphus. She exhibited a masculine spirit and character in everything. Her influence in favor of peace was felt in the Treaty of Westphalia.

Christina surrounded herself with a brilliant court adorned with the society of artists and scholars from all Europe, whom she invited to Stockholm. Her extraordinary accomplishments won the admiration of the learned foreigners who thronged her court, among whom was the great French philosopher Descartes.

Unfortunately, Christina's powers of mind were not properly balanced and supported by steadiness of purpose. She wasted her revenues in fantastic entertainments, and bestowed the crown-lands on her favorites, who made use of her gifts to oppose the royal prerogatives in the next reign.

As the years advanced, Christina disappointed the expectations that had been formed of her in the early part of her reign. Her taste for art and her love for science found little encouragement in the Protestant North, and for that reason she never found herself at home in her kingdom. Thus be coming weary of the cares of state, and in order to indulge her artistic and scientific tastes she abdicated the throne of Sweden in 1654, after a reign of ten years and in the twenty-eighth year of her age, naming her cousin Charles Gustavus of Pfalz-Zweibrücken as her successor, and reserving an annuity for herself.

Christina then left her native Sweden, and sought freedom in a milder climate. At Innsbruck she abjured her father's religion and was solemnly admitted into the Roman Catholic Church. She passed the remaining thirty-five years of her life in wandering over Europe; traveling through the Netherlands, France and Italy, and twice revisiting Sweden; dividing her time between learning and vice; and finally establishing her permanent residence in that renowned city filled with all the splendor of artRome-where she ended her dissolute life in 1689 at the age of sixty-three.

CHARLES X., the cousin and successor of

Christina, upon his accession in 1654, found Sweden still exhausted by her efforts in the Thirty Years' War, as well as by Christina's extravagant expenditures. Nevertheless, he was ambitious of building up a great Scandinavian empire in the North of Europe under the supremacy of Sweden, and thus making himself the absolute master of the North. The weakness of the neighboring kingdoms of Denmark and Poland seemed to flatter the hopes of the ambitious King of Sweden.

As John Casimir, King of Poland, claimed the Swedish crown, the Swedish monarch formed an alliance with the Czar Alexis of Russia, the second of the Romanoffs, who found a pretext for war with Poland in a revolt of the Cossacks of the Ukraine against the Polish kingdom, to which they had been subject since 1386. In 1654 the Czar Alexis besieged and took Smolensk, while other Russian armies occupied Lithuania and the Ukraine; and in 1655 two Swedish armies invaded Poland, while the Swedish fleet blockaded the free city of Dantzic.

In August, 1655, King Charles X. of Sweden defeated King John Casimir of Poland in the decisive battle of Sobota, after which Warsaw surrendered to the victorious Swedish king. The Polish army and most of the Polish nobility took oaths of allegiance to the King of Sweden. Cracow also opened its gates to the Swedish monarch; and the province of Lithuania, occupied chiefly by his Russian allies, acknowledged him as its sovereign. A party in the Polish Diet offered the crown of Poland to the Emperor Leopold I. of Germany, but a majority of the Polish nation favored Charles X.

In this emergency the Great Elector Frederick William of Brandenburg, the ally of John Casimir of Poland, led an army into West Prussia to protect that duchy against the Swedes; but he was defeated by Charles X. of Sweden, and was thus forced to acknowledge himself a vassal of Sweden instead of Poland. In subsequent treaties the Swedish king's embarrassments enabled the Great Elector to secure the sovereignty

of the duchy of East Prussia, thus laying the foundation of the subsequent powerful Kingdom of Prussia.

In the meantime King John Casimir of Poland mustered an army of Poles and Tartars to recover Warsaw from the Swedes, and recaptured that city June 21, 1656; but after a three days' battle in its vicinity the next month, July, 1656, in which Charles X. of Sweden and his new ally, the Great Elector of Brandenburg, were victorious, Warsaw again surrendered to the Swedish monarch.

At this juncture Poland was saved from destruction by the lack of harmony among her enemies; as the Czar Alexis of Russia had now grown jealous of the Swedes, and invaded the Swedish province of Livonia with one hundred thousand men, while he sent another army to ravage the Swedish provinces of Ingria, Carelia and Finland, on the east side of the Baltic. The Emperor Leopold I. of Germany and King Frederick III. of Denmark also became alarmed and offended by the progress of Charles X. of Sweden, and became the allies of John Casimir of Poland in opposing the "Pyrrhus of the North," A. D. 1657.

Oliver Cromwell, the Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, favored Sweden, though he offered her no active aid; but George Ragotzky, Prince of Transylvania, entered into a close offensive alliance with the King of Sweden, in the hope of obtaining the crown of Poland, or at least the Polish provinces of Red Russia, Podolia, Volhynia, and a large territory in the South of the Polish kingdom. The Great Elector Frederick William of Brandenburg retired from the Swedish army with his contingent force; and by the Peace of Welau with Poland, September 19, 1657, he was guaranteed his title of Sovereign Duke of Prussia and the possession of that duchy as an independent state.

As the Czar Alexis of Russia, King John Casimir of Poland, King Frederick III. of Denmark, the Emperor Leopold I. of Germany, the Great Elector Frederick William of Brandenburg, and the Dutch Republic