Martin Hume

España ha sido el único país en que se ha dado completo un ciclo de poder y agotamiento en un tiempo tan breve, cuyas consecuencias radican en la política miope que los ocasionó.

Whether youve seen the recent movie starring Saoirse Ronan and Margot Robbie or the classic 1970s film starring Vanessa Redgrave and Glenda Jackson, this vibrant work of history will give you new insight into the life of Mary, Queen of Scots and her rivalry with Elizabeth I of England. Mary Queen of Scots, also known as Mary Stuart, was one of the most well-known and controversial monarchs of the sixteenth century. She ascended to the throne of Scotland at only six days old and would eventually become ruler of four countries at onceScotland, England, Ireland, and France. She was intelligent, compassionate, and tolerant, despite the popularity of that time for religious persecution. Despite her popularity, Marys reign was a tumultuous one: she was married three times, was forced to abdicate her throne, and was eventually imprisoned and beheaded by her cousin, Elizabeth I of England. What caused Marys rapid descent from royalty? Historian and scholar Martin Hume analyzes Mary Queen of Scotss fall from power based on her love affairs. Though many previous historians had assumed that her downfall was caused by her lack of virtue, Hume posits that Marys ruin was not based on her goodness or badness as a woman, but from a certain weakness of character. Fans of the royal families of Scotland and England, professional and amateur historians, and anyone looking to discover one of historys most famous and controversial women, the ups and downs of Mary Stuarts life and reign in The Love Affairs of Mary Queen of Scots will be educational and entertaining.

Some years ago I passed many laborious months in archives and libraries at home and abroad, searching and transcribing contemporary papers for what I hoped to make a complete history of the long reign of Philip IV., during which the final seal of decline was stamped indelibly upon the proud Spanish empire handed down by the great Charles V. to his descendants. I had dreamed of writing a book which should not only be a social review of the period signalised by the triumph of French over Spanish influence in the civilisation of Europe, but also a political history of the wane and final disappearance of the prodigious national imposture that had enabled Spain, aided by the rivalries between other nations, to dominate the world for a century by moral force unsupported by any proportionate material power.

For three hundred years a bitter controversy has raged around the actions of Philip the Second of Spain. Until our own times no attempt even had been made to write his life-history from an impartial point of view. He had been alternately deified and execrated, until through the mists of time and prejudice he loomed rather as the permanent embodiment of a system than as an individual man swayed by changing circumstances and controlled by human frailties...

FOR three hundred years a bitter controversy has raged around the actions of Philip II. of Spain. Until our own times no attempt even had been made to write his life-history from an impartial point of view. He had been alternately deified and execrated, until through the mists of time and prejudice he loomed rather as the permanent embodiment of a system than as an individual man swayed by changing circumstances and controlled by human frailties. The more recent histories of his reignthe works of English, American, German, and French scholarshave treated their subject with fuller knowledge and broader sympathies, but they have necessarily been to a large extent histories of the great events which convulsed Europe for fifty years at the most critical period of modern times. The space to be occupied by the present work will not admit of this treatment of the subject. The purpose is therefore to consider Philip mainly as a statesman, in relation to the important problems with which he had to deal, rather than to write a connected account of the occurrences of a long reign. It will be necessary for us to try to penetrate the objects he aimed at and the influences, personal and exterior, which ruled him, and to seek the reasons for his failure. For he did fail utterly. In spite of very considerable powers of mind, of a long lifetime of incessant toil, of deep-laid plans, and vast ambitions, his record is one continued series of defeats and disappointments; and in exchange for the greatest heritage that Christendom had ever seen, with the apparently assured prospect of universal domination which opened before him at his birth, he closed his dying eyes upon dominions distracted and ruined beyond all recovery, a bankrupt State, a dwindled prestige, and a defeated cause. He had devoted his life to the task of establishing the universal supremacy of Catholicism in the political interests of Spain, and he was hopelessly beaten...

For three hundred years a bitter controversy has raged around the actions of Philip II. of Spain. Until our own times no attempt even had been made to write his life-history from an impartial point of view. He had been alternately deified and execrated, until through the mists of time and prejudice he loomed rather as the permanent embodiment of a system than as an individual man swayed by changing circumstances and controlled by human frailties.

Prólogo de Francisco Nuñez Roldán.

THE present volume, as its title imports, relates a complicated series of conflicts of which the origin or the pretext has for the most part to be sought in the great religious schism of Christianity. But the cause of the restoration of Catholic unity in the West was, in the minds of both the supporters and the opponents of that cause, inextricably interwoven with the purposes of dynastic ambition, and powerfully affected by influences traceable to the rapid advance of the monarchical principle and to the gradual growth of the conception of the modern national State. Although in graver peril than ever before from the persistent advance of the Ottoman Power, Europe no longer finds a real unifying force in either Papacy or Empire. The spiritual ardor of the Catholic Reaction, which might have served to strengthen the resistance to the general enemy of Christendom, is expended largely on internecine conflicts. It allies itself with the settled resolution of Philip of Spain to control the destinies of Western Europe; and thus there is not a phase of the religious and political struggle here described which remains unconnected with the rest. The Religious Wars of France, with an account of which this volume opens, furnish the most complete instance of the constant intersection of native and foreign influences; but it is illustrated by almost every portion of the narrative. Since, therefore, the story of no European country or group of countries in this troubled period admits of being told as detached from the contemporary history of its neighbors, allies, or adversaries, the same series of events must necessarily appear more than once in these pages as forming an organic part of the history of several countries, but treated in each case from a distinct point of view...