She not only watched complacently the butcheries of Alva, but she plotted and counterplotted, now offering aid to the Prince of Orange, now betraying his cause in a way that may have been sport to her but was death to the men she played with.

Her aim, as far as she had a consistent one, was to allow Spain and the Netherlands to exhaust each other.
Not only far nobler but, as it proved in the end, far wiser, was the action of the Puritan party that poured money and recruits into the cause of their oppressed fellow-Calvinists.

But an equally great service to them, or at any rate a greater amount of damage to Spain, was done by the hardy buccaneers, Hawkins and Drake, who preyed upon the Spanish treasure {340} galleons and pillaged the Spanish settlements in the New World.

These men and their fellows not only cut the sinews of Spain's power but likewise built the fleet.
[Sidenote: England's sea power] The eventual naval victory of England was preceded by a long course of successful diplomacy.

As the aggressor England forced the haughtiest power in Europe to endure a protracted series of outrages.