the struggle which the bigoted Spanish king's tyrannical measures had provoked.

The attempt of Philip II. to introduce. the Inquisition into the Netherlands led to his loss of those fair provinces, which succeeded in establishing their independence after a bloody struggle of forty years, when the Dutch Republic became one of the independent powers of Europe. The account of this interesting struggle, which was one of the most important events of modern times, will be given in full in a separate section.

Philip II. also revived his father's cruelties against the Moriscoes, or nominally Christian Moors of Spain, who still occupied the region of the Alpujarras. Though they were nominally Christians, they secretly maintained their old Mohammedan faith. In 1556 Philip II. issued an edict forbidding them to use their native language, to bestow Moorish names on their offspring, or to indulge in any of their most innocent national customs, and requiring them to send all their children between the ages of three and fifteen to Spanish schools.

Driven to desperation in 1568, the Moriscoes sprang to arms, massacred the Christian inhabitants of that region with the most barbarous cruelty, besought aid from the Turkish Sultan and from their Moorish brethren in Africa, and chose a descendant of the Ommíyad Khalifs of Cordova for their sovereign. After a furious struggle of three years, marked with all the violence of vengeance on the one side and desperation on the other, the revolt was crushed in 1571. The fugitive Moriscoes were hunted among their mountains like wild beasts, and their spirit was broken by a series of inhuman massacres, until the last symptoms of revolt were extinguished.

In the meantime the Turks under Sultan Solyman the Magnificent were renewing their aggressions upon the nations of Christendom. In 1565 Solyman besieged the island of Malta, which had belonged to the Knights of St. John ever since Solyman had wrested Rhodes from them in 1522. The defense of Malta by the Knights of St. John in 1565 was one of the most valiant operations recorded in history. The Turks took the fort of St. Elmo; but that of St. Michael, under the command of the Grand Master La Valette, held out until Sultan Solyman the Magnificent, exhausted by a series of desperate assaults, relinquished the enterprise and sailed away to Constantinople in a rage. All the sovereigns of Christendom vied with each other in bestowing praises and gifts upon the Grand Master; and Valetta, the new capital of Malta, has borne his name ever since.

The next year, 1566, Sultan Solyman the Magnificent captured the far more valuable Greek island of Chios, the ancient Scio. The same year he renewed his invasion of Hungary, under pretense of supporting the claims of John Sigismund, son of John Zapolya, against the Emperor Maximilian II. Solyman died while besieging the fortress of Szigeth, September, 1566; but his troops took the fortress after a siege rendered memorable by the heroic death of the Hungarian commandant, who, when the fortress was no longer tenable, rushed into the ranks of the Janizaries with six hundred followers, and fell pierced with bullets and arrows. The victorious Turks forced their way into the citadel, and demanded of a page where his master's treasures were concealed. The young Hungarian replied: "My master possessed one hundred thousand ducats and a thousand golden cups, that are all destroyed; but he leaves you treasures of powder which will instantly burst beneath your feet." No sooner were these words uttered than the magazines exploded, and five thousand Turks perished.

Solyman's two elder sons had been put to death through the intrigues of his Russian wife, Roxolana, who thus prepared the way for the accession of her own son, SELIM II. The new Sultan was weak and profligate, and only secured the allegiance of the Janizaries by largely increasing the donative, which they demanded at every change of Sultans, as did the Prætorian Guards of Rome at the change of Emperors.

After making a truce with the Emperor Maximilian II., Sultan Selim II. directed his attention to the conquest of the island of Cyprus, which had been a dependency of the Venetian Republic for eighty years; but Venetian power was now on the decline, while the severity of its rule caused the Cypriots to regard the Turks as deliverers. In the summer of 1570 a Turkish army of fifty thousand men landed in Cyprus, whereupon the Venetians retired into the towns of Nicosia and Famagusta. The Turks took Nicosia in about two months, and captured Famagusta in August, 1571.

Pope Pius V., who was always an ardent foe of the Moslem power, was now aroused to the most strenuous exertions; and he united with King Philip II. of Spain and the Republic of Venice in a Holy League against the Ottoman power. The Holy League soon had a fleet of three hundred vessels in the Mediterranean. The command of this allied Christian fleet was assigned to Don John of Austria, the halfbrother of Philip II. of Spain and the most accomplished knight of his time.

The Turkish fleet, which was larger than that of the Christian powers, had taken its position in the Gulf of Lepanto when the allied fleet appeared. The conflict which ensued, September 5, 1571, was one of the most memorable sea-fights of modern times. The Turks were thoroughly defeated with the loss of two hundred and twenty-four ships and thirty thousand men; and the fame of their invincible bravery and fortune, which had attained its zenith during the brilliant career of Sultan Solyman the Magnificent, ceased to be a terror to the nations of Christendom.

4-56.-U. H.

The Ottoman Empire began its decline. from the day of the battle of Lepanto, in 1571. The triumphant Christians might have liberated Greece from the Ottoman yoke had they been more closely united and thus been enabled to follow up their great victory; but their forces were divided by rival interests, and the death of Pope Pius V. interupted their operations for a time. In 1573 Venice made a separate peace with the Ottoman Porte, ceding Cyprus and even consenting to pay an annual tribute. Sultan Selim II. died in 1574, his reign being signalized by the beginning of that series. of contests between Turkey and Russia for the possession of the Black Sea which has not yet been ended.

Pope Gregory XIII., who succeeded Pius V. in May, 1572, was the author of the New Style of the calendar. The calendar had fallen into confusion, and Gregory XIII. rectified it by passing at once from the 18th of February to the 1st of March. The New Style of the calendar was only adopted gradually by the nations of Europe; and was not adopted in Great Britain and her dominions until 1752, on account of feelings of prejudice toward popery.

The Emperor Maximilian II. was the first of the European sovereigns who recognized the duty of universal toleration. He relaxed all religious despotism in his hereditary dominions, Austria and Bohemia; though his policy was frustrated in some measure by his near connection with the Spanish branch of his dynasty; he having married Mary, a sister of King Philip II., whose fourth wife was a daughter of Maximilian II. The Empress Mary was a devoted adherent of the Jesuits, but the Emperor made an inflexible resistance to the arts of that famous order. By a treaty with John Sigismund of Hungary, Maximilian II. secured the whole of that kingdom, except Transylvania; but he died in 1576, at the age of forty-nine, and was succeeded as Emperor by his son RUDOLF II., who had already become King of Germany, Hungary and Bohemia.

King SEBASTIAN of Portugal, whose

and Eastern Asia; while the Phillippine Islands, in the Pacific Ocean, east of Asia, which derived their name from Philip II., had been settled in 1564 by a Spanish colony from Mexico.

Sebastian was succeeded on the throne of Portugal by his uncle, Cardinal HENRY of Braganza, who died in 1580, after a reign of only two years; whereupon several pretenders appeared to claim the Portuguese crown. DOM ANTONIO, Henry's brother, was crowned at Lisbon by the Portuguese party, in June, 1580.

The most powerful of the rival claimants. for the vacant throne of Portugal was King Philip II. of Spain, who sent an army of twenty-four thousand Spanish and Italian veterans under the Duke of Alva into Portugal a few months after Henry's death; and Dom Antonio was defeated and wounded in the battle of Alcantara, and fled into France a few months later. The Duke of Alva set up a reign of terror in Portugal, similar to that which he had conducted in the Netherlands; but his victims in this instance were monks, not heretics. After the Duke of Alva had thus effected the conquest of Portugal, Philip II. entered the country to receive the homage of the Portuguese Estates, and devoted two years to arranging the affairs of the conquered kingdom. The union of Portugal with Spain lasted sixty years (A. D. 1580–1640).

The other powers of Europe had been too much absorbed in their own affairs to interfere with the aggressions of Philip II. France and England suddenly became conscious of the growth of the Spanish dominion, not only in the Iberian peninsula, but also over Portugal's rich and undeveloped

France sent two naval expeditions against the Azores, those islands having declared for Dom Antonio. The Azores were of the greatest importance as a refitting and watering station for vessels sailing to the East or West Indies. The French and Spanish fleets fought a fierce conflict for the possession of those islands, ending in the destruction of the French fleet, and all the French prisoners being put to death as pirates; thus establishing the power of Philip II. firmly in the islands.

Pope Gregory XIII. died in 1585, and was succeeded by Sixtus V., one of the greatest of the Popes, and the most remarkable prince of the Church during the whole century of the Reformation. He had risen from the condition of a poor shepherd boy to be a Franciscan monk, then Inquisitor, then cardinal, and finally Pope. He was a man of strong and imperious nature, and maintained the discipline of the Church with inexorable severity. He sought to restore to the Chair of St. Peter its former splendor, and fixed the number of cardinals at seventy, in memory of the elders who aided Moses with their counsels. He improved the water supply of Rome, adorned the city with new edifices, drew the gigantic works of antiquity from their rubbish, and exterminated the banditti who had infested the Papal States during the inefficient pontificate of his predecessor. He died in 1590.

Philip II. adorned Spain with splendid. edifices, among which was the famous palace of the Escurial, the grandest monument of his reign. This magnificent palace was built in honor of St. Lawrence, to whom Philip II. ascribed his victory over the French at St. Quentin. St. Lawrence was martyred by being broiled on a gridiron, and the ground-plan of the Escurial was made in imitation of the bars and handle of

logne were members of the Electoral dynasty of Bavaria, the House of Wittelsbach.

1574, immediately | army, which capafterward defeated

The German and Ottoman Empires became involved in another war in 1593, commencing with the defeat of the Turkish governor of Bosnia near Sissek, in June of that year. Sultan AMURATH III., who had succeeded Selim II. in raised a large Turkish tured Vesprim, but was by the Austrians. The next year, 1594, the principalities of Moldavia, Wallachia and Transylvania revolted from the Sultan and formed an alliance with the Emperor Rudolf II. Struck with dismay, Sultan Amurath III. sent to Damascus for the holy standard which was supposed to insure victory over the enemies of Islam; but Amurath III. died in January, 1595, without having experienced its miraculous help.

Sultan MOHAMMED III., the son and successor of Amurath III., secured his throne with the usual Turkish barbarity by murdering his nineteen brothers. The campaign of 1595 was disastrous to the Turks, as the Austrian army under Count Mansfeld took the important town of Gran and received the submission of the towns of Wissegrad and Waitzen.

The next year, 1596, Sultan Mohammed III. took the field in person, captured Erlau, in the North of Hungary, and defeated the Christians with a loss of fifty thousand men and one hundred cannon in a three days' battle at Keresztes. Vienna was seized with consternation, which spread throughout Europe; but as the Turks neglected to follow up their great victory they reaped no advantages therefrom.

The war lasted ten years longer, and was ended by the Peace of Sitvatorok, January 1, 1607, which showed a great abatement in the pretensions of the Turks, whose power had begun to decline. The Sultan recognized the Emperor Rudolf II. with his full imperial titles instead of slightly alluding to him as "King of Vienna," and relieved him of the degrading annual tribute hitherto exacted by the Ottoman Porte, in consideration of a large immediate payment; while the frontiers of the two empires remained almost as they had been in 1597.

Philip II. of Spain died September 13, 1598, after a disastrous reign of forty-two years, which was the grave of Spain's greatness. No sovereign ever ascended a throne with more magnificent prospects. Had his wisdom and justice been equal to his diligence, his vast inheritance would have made him by far the greatest monarch in Christendom. But he crushed Spain, ruined Portugal, lost the Northern Netherlands, and drained the Southern Netherlands of their prosperity; and, although the treasures of Spanish America flowed into his coffers, he died a bankrupt. His eldest son, Don Carlos, a youth of unhappy disposition, became insane through his father's severity and died in imprisonment.

PHILIP III., the youngest and only surviving son of Philip II., succeeded his father as sovereign of Spain, Portugal, Naples, Sicily, Milan and Spanish America. The proud monarchy which under the father of Philip II. had held the balance of power in Christendom, and had been the leading Christian power, rapidly declined under Philip's insignificant successor.

T THE time of the accession of Philip II. to the sovereignty of Spain, Naples, Sicily, Milan and the Netherlands, in 1555, the Netherlands comprised seventeen provinces-the four duchies

of Brabant, Guelders, Luxemburg and Limburg; the seven countries of Artois, Flanders, Hainault, Namur, Zutphen, Holland and Zealand; the five baronies of Mechlin, Utrecht, Friesland, Overyssel and Groningen; and the margravate of Antwerp. These