Let us not, however, judge Elizabeth too harshly. In reading only English history we are apt to do so, to fail in realizing the atmosphere that surrounded her, the spirit of the age throughout Europe. Statecraft, which had been grasping under Charles V and false under Francis I, seemed now to have adopted fully the maxims of Machiavelli, and pursued its ends by means wholly base, by subtle treacheries, secret murders and open massacre. The gloomy spirit of Philip II hung like blackest night over all the world. He hesitated at no crime which should advance his purposes. Where he might next strike, no man knew, until the blow had fallen. His dark secrecy and enormous power weighed as a nightmare upon the imaginations of men. We enter an age of plots. Elizabeth was unquestionably surrounded by them; and where so many existed, a thousand more were naturally suspected--leading on all sides to counterplots. Scotland had seen several assassinations. England guarded herself desperately against them. France, nearest to Spain's borders, suffered worst of all. Five times in succession did the chief leader of the state fall by sudden murder. In some of these crimes Philip had no part; in others he was plainly implicated. RELIGIOUS WARS OF FRANCE The early and unexpected death of Henry II of France (1559) had left the throne to one after another of his young and feeble sons. The first of these, Francis II, the husband of Mary Stuart, ruled only a year. He was completely under the control of the great Catholic family, the Guises, who began a vigorous attempt to suppress the Protestants of France, the Huguenots as they were called. But these Huguenots included many of the highest and ablest of the French nobility and did not yield easily to suppression. Francis II died, and the Queen-mother, Catherine de' Medici, became regent for her second son, Charles IX. At first Catherine feared the power of the Guises and encouraged the Huguenots; but Philip of Spain interfered here as everywhere in the Catholic behalf. A civil war broke out in 1562; and for over a generation France, divided against herself, became the theatre of repeated conflicts and savage massacres. She had no thought to give to other lands. The first of her chiefs to be assassinated was Francis of Guise, the great Catholic leader and general, shot by a Huguenot. Next the Catholics attempted the murder of Coligny. They failed at first, and Catherine de' Medici, who by this time had embraced fully the Catholic cause, planned the awful massacre of St. Bartholomew (1572). A marriage was arranged between the highest Huguenot in rank, the young prince Henry of Navarre, and a royal princess. This was supposed to mark the amicable ending of all disputes, and the chief Huguenots gathered gladly to Paris for the ceremony. Suddenly an army of assassins were let loose on them. Young Henry was spared, but Coligny and more than twenty thousand Huguenots were slain.[6]