accomplished neither. She had deeply injured the nation, while
comparatively she had done little service to the king. It is true that
she at last crushed the Protestant faction, but the accidental outbreak
of the Iconoclasts assisted her in this more than all her dexterity.
She certainly succeeded by her intrigues in dissolving the league of the
nobles, but not until the first blow had been struck at its roots by
internal dissensions. The object, to secure which she had for many
years vainly exhaused her whole policy, was effected at last by a single
enlistment of troops, for which, however, the orders were issued from
Madrid. She delivered to the duke, no doubt, a tranquillized country;
but it cannot be denied that the dread of his approach had the chief
share in tranquillizing it. By her reports she led the council in Spain
astray; because she never informed it of the disease, but only of the
occasional symptoms; never of the universal feeling and voice of the
nation, but only of the misconduct of factions. Her faulty
administration, moreover, drew the people into the crime, because
she exasperated without sufficiently awing them. She it was that
brought the murderous Alva into the country by leading the king to
believe that the disturbances in the provinces were to be ascribed, not
so much to the severity of the royal ordinances, as to the unworthiness
of those who were charged with their execution. Margaret possessed
natural capacity and intellect; and an acquired political tact enabled
her to meet any ordinary case; but she wanted that creative genius
which, for new and extraordinary emergencies, invents new maxims, or
wisely oversteps old ones. In a country where honesty was the best
policy, she adopted the unfortunate plan of practising her insidious
Italian policy, and thereby sowed the seeds of a fatal distrust in the
minds of the people. The indulgence which has been so liberally imputed
to her as a merit was, in truth, extorted from her weakness and timidity
by the courageous opposition of the nation; she had never departed from