them--by the English garrisons and the wild Irish kerns. Only sixty-five ships ever got back to Spain, and of the 24,000 men who sailed, full of hope that they were going on a sacred crusade to certain victory, only 10,000 poor, starved, stricken creatures crept back to Santander. A wail of grief went up through Spain. The little-hearted duke abandoned his ships and men as soon as he sighted Spanish land, and went to his home in the south in shameful, selfish luxury, with the curses and insults of a whole populace ringing in his ears. Some said it was Parma’s jealousy that caused the disaster, others that it was the duke’s cowardice. Be it as it may, the old sailors, Oquendo and Recalde, who had borne themselves like the heroes that they were, died of grief and shame as soon as they brought their battered hulls to port. It is difficult to apportion the blame, but one thing is certain, that the germ of the disaster lay in Philip’s rigid, blighting system, by which everything, great and small, had to be worked by one weary, overburdened man from a cell in the Escorial. Spain might curse and clamour for vengeance, but Philip said not a word. He saw the efforts and hopes of years scattered like scudding clouds. He saw his impotence made patent to a scoffing world. He saw his enemies exulting in his downfall, and his rebel Netherlanders at last free from his grasp. He saw his treasury empty and his credit ruined, for the pope himself mocked him, and refused to pay the subsidy he had promised, because the conditions had not been fulfilled. He saw himself an old and ailing man, with only a dull child to succeed him; and yet in the face of all this his marble equanimity never left him. He had, he said, only striven to do God’s work, and if God in His inscrutable wisdom had ordained that he should fail, he could only humbly bow his head to the divine decree and bless Him for all things. There was no defeat for such a man as this; and he could afford to be generous and magnanimous, as he was, to the men whose shortcomings were the immediate cause of the great catastrophe which ruined the power of a nation, but could not break the faith or spirit of a man who regarded himself as the fly-wheel of the machine by which the Almighty worked the earth. CHAPTER XVI Don Antonio in England--Catharine’s support of him--Strozzi’s defeat at St. Michaels--Philip’s patronage of assassination--Philip and the League--Renewal of the war of religion in France--The murder of Guise--Imprisonment of Antonio Perez and the Princess of Eboli--Perez’s treachery--His escape to Aragon--The _fueros_ of Aragon--Philip proceeds against Perez--Perez arrested by the Inquisition of Aragon--Rising in Zaragoza--Perez’s escape--Suppression of the Aragonese.