The wars with almost every European nation in turn, which raged during
the reigns of the third and fourth Philips, swallowed up all the
blood-stained treasure that the colonial governors could wring from
the natives of the New World. The flower of the German and Italian
legions had left their bones in the marshes of Holland, and Spain, the
proudest nation in Europe, had been humiliated to the point of
treating for peace, on an equal footing, with a handful of rebels and
recognizing their independence. France had four armies in the field
against her (1637). A fleet equipped with great sacrifice and
difficulty was destroyed by the Hollanders in the waters of Brazil
(1630). Van Tromp annihilated another in the English Channel,
consisting of 70 ships, with 10,000 of Spain's best troops on board.
Cataluña was in open revolt (1640). The Italian provinces followed
(1641). Portugal fought and achieved her emancipation from Spanish
rule. The treasury was empty, the people starving. Yet, while all
these calamities were befalling the land, the king and his court,
under the guidance of an inept minister (the Duke of Olivares), were
wasting the country's resources in rounds of frivolous and immoral
pleasures, in dances, theatrical representations, and bull-fights. The
court was corrupt; vice and crime were rampant in the streets of
Madrid.[40]

Under such a régime the colonists were naturally left to take care of
themselves, and this, coupled with the policy of excluding them from
all foreign commerce, justified Spain's enemies in seeking to wrest
from her the possessions from which she drew the revenues that enabled
her to make war on them. Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Hollanders made of
the Antilles their trysting-ground for the purpose of preying upon the
common enemy.