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378 USE OF THE CONTINENTALstrain every nerve, in order to Itssupplant rival : all this didnot occur to her, nor was it probable that it should. Shefancied that she was raising up a, state, which could existonly under the protection of England, and would thereforenever be able to act in oppositionto the British influence.She wished to establish her supremacy here, as she had donein Scotland, and would gladly have done in France. Thismanner of extending her power, was as much studied byElizabeth as it was by Philip II. ;but she knew how to playher game more secretly, and calculated the chances better.It could not be otherwise, however, than that the mutualrivalry between England and Spain, (on which now depended the balance of Europe,) should produce these struggles the : territory which one side gained, was lost by theother ;and each therefore was compelled to endeavour, notonly to maintain, but also to add to its possessions.The turn which the affairs of the Netherlands took duringthis reign, must have tended still more to strengthen the tiesbetween them and England. The Belgic provinces,it istrue, were restored during the war to the Spanish dominion,and the Batavian alone maintained their independence but;even while the war was raging, all manufactures and tradehad been transferred from the former, which were the constant scene of action, to the latter, which suffered infinitelyless; and since in these Protestantism finally triumphed,they became connected with England by religious as wellas mercantile interests, and common enmity to Spain remained the watchword of both nations.The relations in which Elizabeth stood towards France,were much more complicated and she;could hardly herselfhave been aware, how far they would lead her. The protracted hopes of marriage which she held out to Francis ofAlen^on, the presumptive heir to the crown, and which,even allowing for the feelings of her sex to the degree whichher history requires, it could never have entered into herplans to fulfil, were the veil under which she concealed hertrue designs. The religious wars, which commenced in1562, had lasted but a short time, when she began to support the Hugonots by intercession, by money, and by volunteers; and this she continued to do, without openlybreaking off her amicable relations with the government