But the eyes of Elizabeth as of her subjects were drawn from difficulties at home to the conflict which took fresh fire oversea. In Europe, as in England, the tide of religious passion which had so long been held in check was now breaking over the banks which restrained it; and with this outbreak of forces before which the diplomacy and intrigues of its statesmen fell powerless the political face of Europe was changed. In 1572 the power of the king of Spain had reached its height. The Netherlands were at his feet. In the East his trouble from the pressure of the Turks seemed brought to an end by a brilliant victory at Lepanto in which his fleet with those of Venice and the Pope annihilated the fleet of the Sultan. He could throw his whole weight upon the Calvinism of the West, and above all upon France, where the Guises were fast sinking into mere partizans of Spain. The common danger drew France and England together; and Catharine of Medicis strove to bind the two countries in one political action by offering to Elizabeth the hand of her son Henry, the Duke of Anjou. But at this moment of danger the whole situation was changed by the rising of the Netherlands. Driven to despair by the greed and persecution of Alva, the Low Countries rose in a revolt which after strange alternations of fortune gave to the world the Republic of the United Provinces. Of the Protestants driven out by the Duke's cruelties, many had taken to the seas and cruised as pirates in the Channel, making war on Spanish vessels under the flag of the Prince of Orange. Like the Huguenot privateers who had sailed under Condé's flag, these freebooters found shelter in the English ports. But in the spring of 1572 Alva demanded their expulsion; and Elizabeth, unable to resist, sent them orders to put to sea. The Duke's success proved fatal to his master's cause. The "water-beggars," a little band of some two hundred and fifty men, were driven by stress of weather into the Meuse. There they seized the city of Brill, and repulsed a Spanish force which strove to recapture it. The repulse was the signal for a general rising. All the great cities of Holland and Zealand drove out their garrisons. The northern Provinces of Gelderland, Overyssel, and Friesland, followed their example, and by the summer half of the Low Countries were in revolt.