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Home Foreign Policy, 1649-1688, and the Beginnings of Greater Britain, 1603-1688 1603-1688; Part 3 |
1603-1688; Part 3Shortly after this successful intervention Cromwell made a treaty with France, and war was formally declared between England and Spain in the beginning of 1656. The year 1657 saw a great naval success. The English fleet, under Blake, found the Spanish treasure fleet at Santa Cruz, protected by the forts. Entering the harbour with the flowing tide, Blake succeeded, before he retired with the ebb tide, in sinking, blowing up, or burning every Spanish ship (Blake died on his homeward journey on board his ship at the very entrance of Plymouth Sound, August 7, 1657). The following year (1658) it was the turn of the soldiers. The French and English determined to besiege Dunkirk, the possession of which would give the English "a bridle for the Dutch and a door into the Continent". Six thousand of the New Model Army combined with the French. They took the chief part in a battle waged near the fort, and earned for themselves the nickname of "the Immortals". Shortly alter this Dunkirk fell. But then Cromwell died, and in the confusion which followed nothing more could be done. " Cromwell's greatness at home ", said Clarendon, " was a mere shadow of his greatness abroad"; and with this admission from the great Royalist historian we may be content to leave the study of the Commonwealth's foreign policy. The Commonwealth had done something, at all events, to restore the prestige which England had lost in Europe under the first two Stuarts.England in the period of the Commonwealth had secured a position of great influence in Europe. With the return of the Stuarts, in 1660, she was soon to lose it Between the restoration of Charles II, in 1660, and the revolution which hi? brother, James II, brought upon himself, after three years of rule^ in 1688, there elapse twenty-eight years. During those years the King of France, Louis XIV, who reigned from 1643-1715, is the central figure in European politics. With the aid of a large revenue, capable ministers, and wonderful generals, he had already secured for the Crown, before the Restoration, absolute power at home and a pre-eminent position in Europe. By the time of the Revolution of 1688 his ambitions and resources were, as we shall see, a menace to every state in Europe. Charles returned to England in 1660 under obligations to no foreign power. But from the first he was attracted towards France. His mother was French; his cousin, Louis XIV, was such a king in France as he would have liked to be in England. Moreover, Charles wanted to foster the commercial welfare of England, and he looked upon Holland, not France, as the rival of the country over which he ruled. And so he married his sister, Henrietta, the only person whom he ever really loved, to the French Duke of Orleans, and he himself married Catherine of Braganza, the daughter of the King of Portugal, with whom Louis XIV was in alliance. Catherine, as her dowry, secured two useful possessions for England—Bombay, which Charles leased to the East India Company for the trivial rent of £10 a year, and Tangier, an important strategic port, which encouraged England to hope that " she might give the law to all the trade of the Mediterranean ". Moreover, Charles sold Dunkirk to the French. The sale was unpopular, but wise; for Dunkirk was expensive to keep up, useless strategically, and the king could not afford to maintain garrisons there as well as at Tangier. |
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