ABSTRACT
France and the Habsburgs had by 1559 reached agreement over Italy and the balance of power in Western Europe which seemed to have a chance to be lasting. A few years earlier the Habsburg dynasty had also separated into two branches. Philip II ruled Spain, large parts of Italy, the Netherlands and Spain’s American colonies. The Austrian land–locked lands and the imperial crown were transferred to the junior branch of the House of Habsburg and this made the economically dynamic Netherlands into a northern outpost in a maritime empire centred in Southern Europe. Philip’s empire faced both the Mediterranean and the Atlantic and it was dependent on sea lines of communication for defence, trade and transfer of money, weapons and soldiers. France was a compact territorial state with a huge population and an important maritime economy. England, the third party in the peace of 1559, was a medium–sized power traditionally connected with the Habsburgs which now faced Europe’s two great powers as close neighbours. The Tudor dynasty had created a permanent navy for home–water operations which had become the first line of defence of an island state but also a key to the European sea lines of communication within the Spanish Habsburg empire. Up to 1560 England had shown very limited Atlantic ambitions and its maritime trade had increasingly been concentrated on the Netherlands and the great entrepôt, Antwerp. 1
