"I sent my ships against men," said Philip when the news reached him, "not against the seas." It was in nobler tone that England owned her debt to the storm that drove the Armada to its doom. On the medal that commemorated its triumph were graven the words, "The Lord sent his wind, and scattered them." The pride of the conquerors was hushed before their sense of a mighty deliverance. It was not till England saw the broken host "fly with a southerly wind to the north" that she knew what a weight of fear she had borne for thirty years. The victory over the Armada, the deliverance from Spain, the rolling away of the Catholic terror which had hung like a cloud over the hopes of the new people, was like a passing from death unto life. Within as without, the dark sky suddenly cleared. The national unity proved stronger than the religious strife. When the Catholic lords flocked to the camp at Tilbury, or put off to join the fleet in the Channel, Elizabeth could pride herself on a victory as great as the victory over the Armada. She had won it by her patience and moderation, by her refusal to lend herself to the fanaticism of the Puritan or the reaction of the Papist, by her sympathy with the mass of the people, by her steady and unflinching preference of national union to any passing considerations of safety or advantage. For thirty years, amidst the shock of religious passions at home and abroad, she had reigned not as a Catholic or as a Protestant Queen, but as a Queen of England, and it was to England, Catholic and Protestant alike, that she could appeal in her hour of need. "Let tyrants fear," she exclaimed in words that still ring like the sound of a trumpet, as she appeared among her soldiers. "Let tyrants fear! I have always so behaved myself that under God I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and goodwill of my subjects! And therefore I am come among you, as you see, resolved in the midst and heat of the battle to live and die amongst you all." The work of Edward and of Mary was undone, and the strife of religions fell powerless before the sense of a common country. [Sidenote: Its European results.]