Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/448



T might be advanced with some show of reason by a deductive historian whose retrospect covered a large field that a general rule existed by which political eras succeed each other with attributes alternately virile and feminine: that a period of largeness, during which policies are generated and circumstances created, must be followed by an age of nimble wit and small chicanery, in which the best advantage is made of conditions already existing. Certain it is that the sixteenth century in Europe was sharply divided into two such contrasted periods: the first half when Charles V., Henry VIII., and Francis L, with such subsidiary factors as Luther, Calvin, and Wolsey, made policies; and the second half, when Elizabeth of England, Catharine de' Medici, Mary Stuart, Philip II., and William of Orange juggled and gyrated, in order to make the most of such policies for their respective objects. The qualities which tended to success in statesmanship from 1500 to 1550 were strength and boldness in arms and council; what was needed in the following fifty years was unblushing effrontery, cold-blooded cynicism, and a complete absence of scruple, religious or moral.

Of all the contending personages representing principles who played the great game during that half-century, the one who could turn most rapidly, lie most glibly, and bewilder opponents most completely by swift alternation of curses and caresses stood to win the stakes; and posterity has usually been content to applaud the result of success by raising the winner upon a pinnacle as the embodiment of the national virtues professed by each successive age, oblivious of changing standards of morality. Philip II. of Spain saw the vast empire of his father doomed to inevitable decay because his principles were fixed, and he was no match for rivals who could change theirs as often as suited them. He, looking upon himself as the executor and junior partner of the Most High, scorned the petty shifts and complacencies that might have given him victory, as in the pursuit of his ends he scorned human sacrifice and suffering; and he failed because of his steadfast faith and humble conscientiousness. Mary Stuart was beaten, even more disastrously, because in her breast there was room for love and trust in men, when a heart of ice alone could save her. Though they failed politically because in some particular respect they were not bad enough, both Philip II. and Mary Stuart, judged impartially by the standard of to-day, would nevertheless be considered monsters of wickedness. If this is the case, as it is, with the personages who lost the game most signally in consequence of the incompleteness of their reprehensible equipment, how much more remarkable must have been the turpitude of the Queen who beat them, and whose possession of every faculty and defect tending to her triumph enabled her to raise her country from poverty and impotence to unparalleled riches and power!

In all ages the first quality for a successful politician has been unscrupulous egotism overcoming other human passions, and in the battle of wits by which a great England was made in the sixteenth century Queen Elizabeth was of all the competitors the most selfish. In cold-blooded aloofness from humanity Philip II. was fully her match, but he was the most self-sacrificing of men. Catharine de' Medici was as insincere in religion as Elizabeth, but ambition for herself and her children was her motive, not love for France, and all her children failed her.

Mary Stuart was as selfish as her cousin, but the Stuart and Guise blood in her was hot and tumultuous, and she was very human. Elizabeth alone was armed at all points for the fray, and the