Nor was Spain in much better plight. To outward appearances, indeed, the power of Philip seemed overwhelming. He was King of the whole Spanish Peninsula with the exception of Portugal;[56] King of Naples and of Sicily, and Duke of Milan, a position which enabled him to control the politics of the Peninsula;[57] Master of Franche-Comté and of the Netherlands. In Africa, he held Tunis and Oran, with places on the Barbary coast, and the islands of Cape de Verd, and the Canaries; while in the Pacific Ocean, the Philippines were under his sway. In America, Spain held a large part of the eastern coast, except Brazil, which belonged to Portugal, all the islands in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, and the kingdoms of Mexico and Peru, which had been conquered during the reign of Charles. The Spanish infantry was considered the most formidable in Europe, and the treasures of the Indies were believed to be inexhaustible. Yet Spain had suffered seriously from the long-protracted struggle. Her resources were nearly as much crippled as those of France; her government, if better organised, was fully as despotic, and all religious liberty had been crushed out; and she was shortly to give evidence of her weakness in the failure to put down the revolt of the United Provinces, and in the defeat of the Armada by the puny ships of England. The peace of Cateau Cambrésis, therefore, closes one epoch and begins another. New actors came upon the scene.[58] The struggle for supremacy is stayed a while. Germany and Spain are for ever divided; the Turkish Empire soon ceases to be aggressive, and begins to suffer from internal decay. The remaining thirty-nine years we have to cover is chiefly taken up with the Counter-Reformation and the struggles to which that movement gave birth, with the religious wars in France, and with the revolt of the Netherlands against the religious and political tyranny of Spain. FOOTNOTES: [54] It had already been summoned in 1542, but had been postponed. [55] The question whether Charles had used the words, ‘nicht einiges’ (any), or ‘nicht ewiges (perpetual) Gefängniss,’ appears to be an afterthought. Cf. Armstrong, ii. 156. [56] For the character of the Spanish rule in Italy, cf. Armstrong, _Charles V._, II. p. 291 ff. [57] As we shall have to speak but little hereafter of Italy, it may be well to give concisely the names of the chief dependent or independent states: 1. Piedmont, in the hands of Emanuel Philibert of Savoy. 2. Genoa and Venice, independent republics. 3. Parma and Piacenza, under the rule of Ottavio Farnese; of these Parma had been restored to him by Paul III., and Piacenza by Philip II. in 1556. 4. Mantua, in the hands of Frederick, first Duke of Mantua, who also gained Montferrat from Charles V. in 1536, having married the heiress of William VII. (Paleologus), Marquis of Montferrat.