The historian is a hard hitter. The enemies of liberty and their agents are not spared. Philip, Granvelle, Alva, and a score besides are characterized in withering terms. Of Philip, for example, Motley says: ‘It is curious to observe the minute reticulations of tyranny which he had begun already to spin about a whole people, while cold, venomous, and patient he watched his victims from the center of his web.’ The historian is fiery in denouncing the tortuous and Machiavellian politics of the Sixteenth Century. It was an age when honesty, plain speaking, and respect for a promise had nothing to do with the conduct of affairs of state. He who could lie most adroitly was the best man. Granvelle fills his letters with innuendoes against Egmont and Orange, all the while protesting that he would not have a hair of their heads injured. It is he, according to Motley, who puts into Philip’s mind the thoughts he is to think, almost in the words in which he is to utter them. Philip had his own strength, but he was slow to come to a conclusion. Granvelle knew how to clarify that muddy stream of ideas. The preceding work shows the Dutch states in the beginning and progress of their struggle against the tyranny of Philip; the _United Netherlands_ shows Holland as a rising hope of Protestantism, as a nation to be reckoned with in the diplomacy of Europe. The Spanish king is still writing letters, still concocting schemes for conquest, still enmeshing friends and enemies alike in a web of falsehood. He is drawn off for the moment from his mission in the Netherlands to extend his conquests elsewhere. These proposed conquests have exactly one object--to enable the spirit of despotism ‘to maintain the old mastery of mankind.’ ‘Countries and nations being regarded as private property to be inherited or bequeathed to a few favored individuals, ... it had now become right and proper for the Spanish monarch to annex Scotland, England, and France to the very considerable possessions which were already his own.’ A picturesque episode of the attempt upon England was the Armada. To this enterprise Motley gives one of his best and most thrilling chapters. Equally fascinating is the account of the attempt upon France, the battle of Ivry (when the white plume of Henry of Navarre carried the hopes of all liberal-minded men), and the terrible siege of Paris which almost immediately followed. ‘Rarely have men at any epoch defended their fatherland against foreign oppression with more heroism than that which was manifested by the Parisians of 1590 in resisting religious toleration, and in obeying a foreign and priestly despotism.’