Murder of Orange--Extension of Protestantism--Vast Power of Spain--
Religious Origin of the Revolt--Disposal of the Sovereignty--Courage
of the Estates of Holland--Children of William the Silent--
Provisional Council of State--Firm attitude of Holland and Zeeland--
Weakness of Flanders--Fall of Ghent--Adroitness of Alexander
Farnese.
WILLIAM THE SILENT, Prince of Orange, had been murdered on the 10th of
July, 1534. It is difficult to imagine a more universal disaster than
the one thus brought about by the hand of a single obscure fanatic. For
nearly twenty years the character of the Prince had been expanding
steadily as the difficulties of his situation increased. Habit,
necessity, and the natural gifts of the man, had combined to invest him
at last with an authority which seemed more than human. There was such
general confidence in his sagacity, courage, and purity, that the nation
had come to think with his brain and to act with his hand. It was
natural that, for an instant, there should be a feeling as of absolute
and helpless paralysis.
Whatever his technical attributes in the polity of the Netherlands--and
it would be difficult to define them with perfect accuracy--there is no
doubt that he stood there, the head of a commonwealth, in an attitude
such as had been maintained by but few of the kings, or chiefs, or high
priests of history. Assassination, a regular and almost indispensable
portion of the working machinery of Philip's government, had produced, in
this instance, after repeated disappointments, the result at last which
had been so anxiously desired. The ban of the Pope and the offered gold
of the King had accomplished a victory greater than any yet achieved by
the armies of Spain, brilliant as had been their triumphs on the blood-
stained soil of the Netherlands.
Had that "exceeding proud, neat, and spruce" Doctor of Laws, William
Parry, who had been busying himself at about the same time with his
memorable project against the Queen of England, proved as successful as
Balthazar Gerard, the fate of Christendom would have been still darker.
Fortunately, that member of Parliament had made the discovery in time--
not for himself, but for Elizabeth--that the "Lord was better pleased
with adverbs than nouns;" the well-known result being that the traitor
was hanged and the Sovereign saved.
Yet such was the condition of Europe at that day. A small, dull,
elderly, imperfectly-educated, patient, plodding invalid, with white hair
and protruding under jaw, and dreary visage, was sitting day after day;
seldom speaking, never smiling, seven or eight hours out of every twenty-
four, at a writing table covered with heaps of interminable despatches,
in a cabinet far away beyond the seas and mountains, in the very heart of
Spain. A clerk or two, noiselessly opening and shutting the door, from
time to time, fetching fresh bundles of letters and taking away others--
all written and composed by secretaries or high functionaries--and all
to be scrawled over in the margin by the diligent old man in a big
schoolboy's hand and style--if ever schoolboy, even in the sixteenth
century, could write so illegibly or express himself so awkwardly;
couriers in the court-yard arriving from or departing for the uttermost
parts of earth-Asia, Africa America, Europe-to fetch and carry these
interminable epistles which contained the irresponsible commands of this
one individual, and were freighted with the doom and destiny of countless
millions of the world's inhabitants--such was the system of government
against which the Netherlands had protested and revolted. It was a
system under which their fields had been made desolate, their cities
burned and pillaged, their men hanged, burned, drowned, or hacked to
pieces; their women subjected to every outrage; and to put an end to
which they had been devoting their treasure and their blood for nearly
the length of one generation. It was a system, too, which, among other
results, had just brought about the death of the foremost statesman of
Europe, and had nearly effected simultaneously the murder of the most
eminent sovereign in the world. The industrious Philip, safe and
tranquil in the depths of the Escorial, saying his prayers three times
a day with exemplary regularity, had just sent three bullets through the
body of William the Silent at his dining-room door in Delft. "Had it
only been done two years earlier," observed the patient old man, "much
trouble might have been spared me; but 'tis better late than never." Sir
Edward Stafford, English envoy in Paris, wrote to his government--so soon
as the news of the murder reached him--that, according to his information
out of the Spanish minister's own house, "the same practice that had been
executed upon the Prince of Orange, there were practisers more than two
or three about to execute upon her Majesty, and that within two months."
Without vouching for the absolute accuracy of this intelligence, he
implored the Queen to be more upon her guard than ever. "For there is no
doubt," said the envoy, "that she is a chief mark to shoot at; and seeing
that there were men cunning enough to inchant a man and to encourage him
to kill the Prince of Orange, in the midst of Holland, and that there was
a knave found desperate enough to do it, we must think hereafter that
anything may be done. Therefore God preserve her Majesty."
Invisible as the Grand Lama of Thibet, clothed with power as extensive
and absolute as had ever been wielded by the most imperial Caesar, Philip
the Prudent, as he grew older and feebler in mind and body seemed to
become more gluttonous of work, more ambitious to extend his sceptre over
lands which he had never seen or dreamed of seeing, more fixed in his
determination to annihilate that monster Protestantism, which it had been
the business of his life to combat, more eager to put to death every
human creature, whether anointed monarch or humble artizan, that defended
heresy or opposed his progress to universal empire.
If this enormous power, this fabulous labour, had, been wielded or
performed with a beneficent intention; if the man who seriously regarded
himself as the owner of a third of the globe, with the inhabitants
thereof, had attempted to deal with these extensive estates inherited
from his ancestors with the honest intention of a thrifty landlord, an
intelligent slave-owner, it would have yet been possible for a little
longer to smile at the delusion, and endure the practice.
But there was another old man, who lived in another palace in another
remote land, who, in his capacity of representative of Saint Peter,
claimed to dispose of all the kingdoms of the earth--and had been willing
to bestow them upon the man who would go down and worship him. Philip
stood enfeoffed, by divine decree, of all America, the East Indies, the
whole Spanish Peninsula, the better portion of Italy, the seventeen
Netherlands, and many other possessions far and near; and he contemplated
annexing to this extensive property the kingdoms of France, of England,
and Ireland. The Holy League, maintained by the sword of Guise, the
pope's ban, Spanish ducats, Italian condottieri, and German mercenaries,
was to exterminate heresy and establish the Spanish dominion in France.
The same machinery, aided by the pistol or poniard of the assassin, was
to substitute for English protestantism and England's queen the Roman
Catholic religion and a foreign sovereign. "The holy league," said
Duplessis-Mornay, one of the noblest characters of the age, "has destined
us all to the name sacrifice. The ambition of the Spaniard, which has
overleaped so many lands and seas, thinks nothing inaccessible."
The Netherland revolt had therefore assumed world-wide proportions.
Had it been merely the rebellion of provinces against a sovereign, the
importance of the struggle would have been more local and temporary. But
the period was one in which the geographical land-marks of countries were
almost removed. The dividing-line ran through every state, city, and
almost every family. There was a country which believed in the absolute
power of the church to dictate the relations between man and his Maker,
and to utterly exterminate all who disputed that position. There was
another country which protested against that doctrine, and claimed,
theoretically or practically, a liberty of conscience. The territory of
these countries was mapped out by no visible lines, but the inhabitants
of each, whether resident in France, Germany, England, or Flanders,
recognised a relationship which took its root in deeper differences than
those of race or language. It was not entirely a question of doctrine or
dogma. A large portion of the world had become tired of the antiquated
delusion of a papal supremacy over every land, and had recorded its
determination, once for all, to have done with it. The transition to
freedom of conscience became a necessary step, sooner or later to be
taken. To establish the principle of toleration for all religions was
an inevitable consequence of the Dutch revolt; although thus far, perhaps
only one conspicuous man in advance of his age had boldly announced that
doctrine and had died in its defence. But a great true thought never
dies--though long buried in the earth--and the day was to come, after
long years, when the seed was to ripen into a harvest of civil and
religious emancipation, and when the very word toleration was to sound
like an insult and an absurdity.
A vast responsibility rested upon the head of a monarch, placed as Philip
II. found himself, at this great dividing point in modern history. To
judge him, or any man in such a position, simply from his own point of
view, is weak and illogical. History judges the man according to its
point of view. It condemns or applauds the point of view itself. The
point of view of a malefactor is not to excuse robbery and murder. Nor
is the spirit of the age to be pleaded in defence of the evil-doer at a
time when mortals were divided into almost equal troops. The age of
Philip II. was also the age of William of Orange and his four brethren,
of Sainte Aldegonde, of Olden-Barneveldt, of Duplessis-Mornay, La Noue,
Coligny, of Luther, Melancthon, and Calvin, Walsingham, Sidney, Raleigh,
Queen Elizabeth, of Michael Montaigne, and William Shakspeare. It was
not an age of blindness, but of glorious light. If the man whom the
Maker of the Universe had permitted to be born to such boundless
functions, chose to put out his own eyes that he might grope along his
great pathway of duty in perpetual darkness, by his deeds he must be
judged. The King perhaps firmly believed that the heretics of the
Netherlands, of France, or of England, could escape eternal perdition
only by being extirpated from the earth by fire and sword, and therefore;
perhaps, felt it his duty to devote his life to their extermination.
But he believed, still more firmly, that his own political authority,
throughout his dominions, and his road to almost universal empire, lay
over the bodies of those heretics. Three centuries have nearly past
since this memorable epoch; and the world knows the fate of the states
which accepted the dogma which it was Philip's life-work to enforce, and
of those who protested against the system. The Spanish and Italian
Peninsulas have had a different history from that which records the
career of France, Prussia, the Dutch Commonwealth, the British Empire,
the Transatlantic Republic.
Yet the contest between those Seven meagre Provinces upon the sand-banks
of the North Sea, and--the great Spanish Empire, seemed at the moment
with which we are now occupied a sufficiently desperate one. Throw a
glance upon the map of Europe. Look at the broad magnificent Spanish
Peninsula, stretching across eight degrees of latitude and ten of
longitude, commanding the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, with a genial
climate, warmed in winter by the vast furnace of Africa, and protected
from the scorching heats of summer by shady mountain and forest, and
temperate breezes from either ocean. A generous southern territory,
flowing with wine and oil, and all the richest gifts of a bountiful
nature-splendid cities--the new and daily expanding Madrid, rich in the
trophies of the most artistic period of the modern world--Cadiz, as
populous at that day as London, seated by the straits where the ancient
and modern systems of traffic were blending like the mingling of the two
oceans--Granada, the ancient wealthy seat of the fallen Moors--Toledo,
Valladolid, and Lisbon, chief city of the recently-conquered kingdom of
Portugal, counting, with its suburbs, a larger population than any city,
excepting Paris, in Europe, the mother of distant colonies, and the
capital of the rapidly-developing traffic with both the Indies--these
were some of the treasures of Spain herself. But she possessed Sicily
also, the better portion of Italy, and important dependencies in Africa,
while the famous maritime discoveries of the age had all enured to her
aggrandizement. The world seemed suddenly to have expanded its wings
from East to West, only to bear the fortunate Spanish Empire to the most
dizzy heights of wealth and power. The most accomplished generals, the
most disciplined and daring infantry the world has ever known, the best-
equipped and most extensive navy, royal and mercantile, of the age, were
at the absolute command of the sovereign. Such was Spain.
Turn now to the north-western corner of Europe. A morsel of territory,
attached by a slight sand-hook to the continent, and half-submerged by
the stormy waters of the German Ocean--this was Holland. A rude climate,
with long, dark, rigorous, winters, and brief summers, a territory, the
mere wash of three great rivers, which had fertilized happier portions of
Europe only to desolate and overwhelm this less-favoured land, a soil so
ungrateful, that if the whole of its four hundred thousand acres of
arable land had been sowed with grain, it could not feed the labourers
alone, and a population largely estimated at one million of souls--these
were the characteristics of the Province which already had begun to give
its name to the new commonwealth. The isles of Zeeland--entangled in the
coils of deep slow-moving rivers, or combating the ocean without--and the
ancient episcopate of Utrecht, formed the only other Provinces that had
quite shaken off the foreign yoke. In Friesland, the important city of
Groningen was still held for the King, while Bois-le-Duc, Zutphen,
besides other places in Gelderland and North Brabant, also in possession
of the royalists, made the position of those provinces precarious.
The limit of the Spanish or "obedient" Provinces, on the one hand, and of
the United Provinces on the other, cannot, therefore, be briefly and
distinctly stated. The memorable treason--or, as it was called, the
"reconciliation" of the Walloon Provinces in the year 1583-4--had placed
the Provinces of Hainault, Arthois, Douay, with the flourishing cities
Arran, Valenciennes, Lille, Tournay, and others--all Celtic Flanders, in
short-in the grasp of Spain. Cambray was still held by the French
governor, Seigneur de Balagny, who had taken advantage of the Duke of
Anjou's treachery to the States, to establish himself in an unrecognized
but practical petty sovereignty, in defiance both of France and Spain;
while East Flanders and South Brabant still remained a disputed
territory, and the immediate field of contest. With these limitations,
it may be assumed, for general purposes, that the territory of the United
States was that of the modern Kingdom of the Netherlands, while the
obedient Provinces occupied what is now the territory of Belgium.
Such, then, were the combatants in the great eighty years' war for civil
and religious liberty; sixteen of which had now passed away. On the one
side, one of the most powerful and, populous world-empires of history,
then in the zenith of its prosperity; on the other hand, a slender group
of cities, governed by merchants and artisans, and planted precariously
upon a meagre, unstable soil. A million and a half of souls against the
autocrat of a third part of the known world. The contest seemed as
desperate as the cause was certainly sacred; but it had ceased to be a
local contest. For the history which is to occupy us in these volumes is
not exclusively the history of Holland. It is the story of the great
combat between despotism, sacerdotal and regal, and the spirit of
rational human liberty. The tragedy opened in the Netherlands, and its
main scenes were long enacted there; but as the ambition of Spain
expanded, and as the resistance to the principle which she represented
became more general, other nations were, of necessity, involved in the
struggle. There came to be one country, the citizens of which were the
Leaguers; and another country, whose inhabitants were Protestants. And
in this lay the distinction between freedom and absolutism. The religious
question swallowed all the others. There was never a period in the early
history of the Dutch revolt when the Provinces would not have returned to
their obedience, could they have been assured of enjoying liberty of
conscience or religious peace; nor was there ever a single moment in
Philip II.'s life in which he wavered in his fixed determination never to
listen to such a claim. The quarrel was in its nature irreconcilable and
eternal as the warfare between wrong and right; and the establishment of
a comparative civil liberty in Europe and America was the result of the
religious war of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The struggle
lasted eighty years, but the prize was worth the contest.
The object of the war between the Netherlands and Spain was not,
therefore, primarily, a rebellion against established authority for the
maintenance of civil rights. To preserve these rights was secondary.
The first cause was religion. The Provinces had been fighting for years
against the Inquisition. Had they not taken arms, the Inquisition would
have been established in the Netherlands, and very probably in England,
and England might have become in its turn a Province of the Spanish
Empire.
The death of William the Silent produced a sudden change in the political
arrangements of the liberated Netherlands. During the year 1583, the
United Provinces had elected Francis, Duke of Anjou, to be Duke of
Brabant and sovereign of the whole country, under certain constitutional
provisions enumerated in articles of solemn compact. That compact had
been grossly violated. The Duke had made a treacherous attempt to
possess himself of absolute power and to seize several important cities.
He had been signally defeated in Antwerp, and obliged to leave the
country, covered with ignominy. The States had then consulted William of
Orange as to the course to be taken in the emergency. The Prince had
told them that their choice was triple. They might reconcile themselves
with Spain, and abandon the contest for religious liberty which they had
so long been waging; they might reconcile themselves with Anjou,
notwithstanding that he had so utterly forfeited all claims to their
consideration; or they might fight the matter out with Spain single-
handed. The last course was, in his opinion, the most eligible one, and
he was ready to sacrifice his life to its furtherance. It was, however,
indispensable, should that policy be adopted, that much larger supplies
should be voted than had hitherto been raised, and, in general, that a
much more extensive and elevated spirit of patriotism should manifest
itself than had hitherto been displayed.
It was, on the whole, decided to make a second arrangement with the Duke
of Anjou, Queen Elizabeth warmly urging that course. At the same time,
however, that articles of agreement were drawn up for the installation of
Anjou as sovereign of the United Provinces, the Prince had himself
consented to accept the title of Count of Holland, under an ample
constitutional charter, dictated by his own lips. Neither Anjou nor
Orange lived to be inaugurated into the offices thus bestowed upon them.
The Duke died at Chateau-Thierry on the 10th June, and the Prince was
assassinated a month later at Delft.
What now was the political position of the United Provinces at this
juncture? The sovereignty which had been held by the Estates, ready to
be conferred respectively upon Anjou and Orange, remained in the hands of
the Estates. There was no opposition to this theory. No more enlarged
view of the social compact had yet been taken. The people, as such,
claimed no sovereignty. Had any champion claimed it for them they would
hardly have understood him. The nation dealt with facts. After abjuring
Philip in 1581--an act which had been accomplished by the Estates--the
same Estates in general assembly had exercised sovereign power, and had
twice disposed of that sovereign power by electing a hereditary ruler.
Their right and their power to do this had been disputed by none, save by
the deposed monarch in Spain. Having the sovereignty to dispose of, it
seemed logical that the Estates might keep it, if so inclined. They did
keep it, but only in trust. While Orange lived, he might often have been
elected sovereign of all the Provinces, could he have been induced to
consent. After his death, the Estates retained, ex necessitate, the
sovereignty; and it will soon be related what they intended to do with
it. One thing is very certain, that neither Orange, while he lived, nor
the Estates, after his death, were actuated in their policy by personal
ambition. It will be seen that the first object of the Estates was to
dispossess themselves of the sovereignty which had again fallen into
their hands.
What were the Estates? Without, at the present moment, any farther
inquiries into that constitutional system which had been long
consolidating itself, and was destined to exist upon a firmer basis for
centuries longer, it will be sufficient to observe, that the great
characteristic of the Netherland government was the municipality.
Each Province contained a large number of cities, which were governed by
a board of magistrates, varying in number from twenty to forty. This
college, called the Vroedschap (Assembly of Sages), consisted of the most
notable citizens, and was a self-electing body--a close corporation--the
members being appointed for life, from the citizens at large. Whenever
vacancies occurred from death or loss of citizenship, the college chose
new members--sometimes immediately, sometimes by means of a double or
triple selection of names, the choice of one from among which was offered
to the stadtholder of the province. This functionary was appointed by
the Count, as he was called, whether Duke of Bavaria or of Burgundy,
Emperor, or King. After the abjuration of Philip, the governors were
appointed by the Estates of each Province.
The Sage-Men chose annually a board of senators, or schepens, whose
functions were mainly judicial; and there were generally two, and
sometimes three, burgomasters, appointed in the same way. This was
the popular branch of the Estates. But, besides this body of
representatives, were the nobles, men of ancient lineage and large
possessions, who had exercised, according to the general feudal law of
Europe, high, low, and intermediate jurisdiction upon their estates, and
had long been recognized as an integral part of the body politic, having
the right to appear, through delegates of their order, in the provincial
and in the general assemblies.
Regarded as a machine for bringing the most decided political capacities
into the administration of public affairs, and for organising the most
practical opposition to the system of religious tyranny, the Netherland
constitution was a healthy, and, for the age, an enlightened one. The
officeholders, it is obvious, were not greedy for the spoils of office;
for it was, unfortunately, often the case that their necessary expenses
in the service of the state were not defrayed. The people raised
enormous contributions for carrying on the war; but they could not afford
to be extremely generous to their faithful servants.
Thus constituted was the commonwealth upon the death of William the
Silent. The gloom produced by that event was tragical. Never in human
history was a more poignant and universal sorrow for the death of any
individual. The despair was, for a brief season, absolute; but it was
soon succeeded by more lofty sentiments. It seemed, after they had laid
their hero in the tomb, as though his spirit still hovered above the
nation which he had loved so well, and was inspiring it with a portion of
his own energy and wisdom.
Even on the very day of the murder, the Estates of Holland, then sitting
at Delft, passed a resolution "to maintain the good cause, with God's
help, to the uttermost, without sparing gold or blood." This decree was
communicated to Admiral de Warmont, to Count Hohenlo, to William Lewis of
Nassau, and to other commanders by land and sea. At the same time, the
sixteen members--for no greater number happened to be present at the
session--addressed letters to their absent colleagues, informing them
of the calamity which had befallen them, summoning them at once to
conference, and urging an immediate convocation of the Estates of all
the Provinces in General Assembly. They also addressed strong letters of
encouragement, mingled with manly condolence, upon the common affliction,
to prominent military and naval commanders and civil functionaries,
begging them to "bear themselves manfully and valiantly, without
faltering in the least on account of the great misfortune which had
occurred, or allowing themselves to be seduced by any one from the union
of the States." Among these sixteen were Van Zuylen, Van Nyvelt, the
Seigneur de Warmont, the Advocate of Holland, Paul Buys, Joost de Menin,
and John van Olden-Barneveldt. A noble example was thus set at once to
their fellow citizens by these their representatives--a manful step taken
forward in the path where Orange had so long been leading.
The next movement, after the last solemn obsequies had been rendered to
the Prince was to provide for the immediate wants of his family. For the
man who had gone into the revolt with almost royal revenues, left his
estate so embarrassed that his carpets, tapestries, household linen--
nay, even his silver spoons, and the very clothes of his wardrobe were
disposed of at auction for the benefit of his creditors. He left eleven
children--a son and daughter by the first wife, a son and daughter by
Anna of Saxony, six daughters by Charlotte of Bourbon, and an infant,
Frederic Henry, born six months before his death. The eldest son, Philip
William, had been a captive in Spain for seventeen years, having been
kidnapped from school, in Leyden, in the year 1567. He had already
become so thoroughly Hispaniolized under the masterly treatment of the
King and the Jesuits, that even his face had lost all resemblance to the
type of his heroic family, and had acquired a sinister, gloomy,
forbidding expression, most painful to contemplate. All of good that
he had retained was a reverence for his father's name--a sentiment which
he had manifested to an extravagant extent on a memorable occasion in
Madrid, by throwing out of window, and killing on the spot a Spanish
officer who had dared to mention the great Prince with insult.
The next son was Maurice, then seventeen years of age, a handsome youth,
with dark blue eyes, well-chiselled features, and full red lips, who had
already manifested a courage and concentration of character beyond his
years. The son of William the Silent, the grandson of Maurice of Saxony,
whom he resembled in visage and character, he was summoned by every drop
of blood in his veins to do life-long battle with the spirit of Spanish
absolutism, and he was already girding himself for his life's work. He
assumed at once for his device a fallen oak, with a young sapling
springing from its root. His motto, "Tandem fit surculus arbor," "the
twig shall yet become a tree"--was to be nobly justified by his career.
The remaining son, then a six months' child, was also destined to high
fortunes, and to win an enduring name in his country's history. For the
present he remained with his mother, the noble Louisa de Coligny, who had
thus seen, at long intervals, her father and two husbands fall victims to
the Spanish policy; for it is as certain that Philip knew beforehand, and
testified his approbation of, the massacre of St. Bartholomew, as that he
was the murderer of Orange.
The Estates of Holland implored the widowed Princess to remain in their
territority, settling a liberal allowance upon herself and her child, and
she fixed her residence at Leyden.
But her position was most melancholy. Married in youth to the Seigneur
de Teligny, a young noble of distinguished qualities, she had soon become
both a widow and an orphan in the dread night of St. Bartholomew. She
had made her own escape to Switzerland; and ten years afterwards she had
united herself in marriage with the Prince of Orange. At the age of
thirty-two, she now found herself desolate and wretched in a foreign
land, where she had never felt thoroughly at home. The widow and
children of William the Silent were almost without the necessaries of
life. "I hardly know," wrote the Princess to her brother-in-law, Count
John, "how the children and I are to maintain ourselves according to the
honour of the house. May God provide for us in his bounty, and certainly
we have much need of it." Accustomed to the more luxurious civilisation
of France, she had been amused rather than annoyed, when, on her first
arrival in Holland for her nuptials, she found herself making the journey
from Rotterdam to Delft in an open cart without springs, instead of the
well-balanced coaches to which she had been used, arriving, as might have
been expected, "much bruised and shaken." Such had become the primitive
simplicity of William the Silent's household. But on his death, in
embarrassed circumstances, it was still more straightened. She had no
cause either to love Leyden, for, after the assassination of her husband,
a brutal preacher, Hakkius by name, had seized that opportunity for
denouncing the French marriage, and the sumptuous christening of the
infant in January, as the deeds which had provoked the wrath of God and
righteous chastisement. To remain there in her widowhood, with that six
months' child, "sole pledge of her dead lord, her consolation and only
pleasure," as she pathetically expressed herself, was sufficiently
painful, and she had been inclined to fix her residence in Flushing, in
the edifice which had belonged to her husband, as Marquis of Vere. She
had been persuaded, however, to remain in Holland, although "complaining,
at first, somewhat of the unkindness of the people."
A small well-formed woman, with delicate features, exquisite complexion,
and very beautiful dark eyes, that seemed in after-years, as they looked
from beneath her coif, to be dim with unshed tears; with remarkable
powers of mind, angelic sweetness of disposition, a winning manner, and a
gentle voice, Louisa de Coligny became soon dear to the rough Hollanders,
and was ever a disinterested and valuable monitress both to her own child
and to his elder brother Maurice.
Very soon afterwards the States General established a State Council,
as a provisional executive board, for the term of three months, for the
Provinces of Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Friesland, and such parts of
Flanders and Brabant as still remained in the Union. At the head of this
body was placed young Maurice, who accepted the responsible position,
after three days' deliberation. The young man had been completing his
education, with a liberal allowance from Holland and Zeeland, at the
University of Leyden; and such had been their tender care for the child
of so many hopes, that the Estates had given particular and solemn
warning, by resolution, to his governor during the previous summer,
on no account to allow him to approach the sea-shore, lest he should be
kidnapped by the Prince of Parma, who had then some war-vessels cruising
on the coast.
The salary of Maurice was now fixed at thirty thousand florins a year,
while each of the councillors was allowed fifteen hundred annually, out
of which stipend he was to support at least one servant; without making
any claim for travelling or other incidental expenses.
The Council consisted of three members from Brabant, two from Flanders,
four from Holland, three from Zeeland, two from Utrecht, one from
Mechlin, and three from Friesland--eighteen in all. They were empowered
and enjoined to levy troops by land and sea, and to appoint naval and
military officers; to establish courts of admiralty, to expend the moneys
voted by the States, to maintain the ancient privileges of the country,
and to see that all troops in service of the Provinces made oath of
fidelity to the Union. Diplomatic relations, questions of peace and war,
the treaty-making power, were not entrusted to the Council, without the
knowledge and consent of the States General, which body was to be
convoked twice a year by the State Council.
Thus the Provinces in the hour of danger and darkness were true to
themselves, and were far from giving way to a despondency which under
the circumstances would not have been unnatural.
For the waves of bitterness were rolling far and wide around them. A
medal, struck in Holland at this period, represented a dismasted hulk
reeling through the tempest. The motto, "incertum quo fate ferent" (who
knows whither fate is sweeping her?) expressed most vividly the ship
wrecked condition of the country. Alexander of Parma, the most
accomplished general and one of the most adroit statesmen of the age,
was swift to take advantage of the calamity which had now befallen the
rebellious Provinces. Had he been better provided with men and money,
the cause of the States might have seemed hopeless. He addressed many
letters to the States General, to the magistracies of various cities, and
to individuals, affecting to consider that with the death of Orange had
died all authority, as well as all motive for continuing the contest with
Spain. He offered easy terms of reconciliation with the discarded
monarch--always reserving, however, as a matter of course, the religious
question--for it was as well known to the States as to Parma that there
was no hope of Philip making concessions upon that important point.
In Holland and Zeeland the Prince's blandishments were of no avail. His
letters received in various towns of those Provinces, offered, said one
who saw them, "almost every thing they would have or demand, even till
they should repent." But the bait was not taken. Individuals and
municipalities were alike stanch, remembering well that faith was not to
be kept with heretics. The example was followed by the Estates of other
Provinces, and all sent in to the General Assembly, soon in session at
Delft, "their absolute and irrevocable authority to their deputies to
stand to that which they, the said States General, should dispose of as
to their persons, goods and country; a resolution and agreement which
never concurred before among them, to this day, in what age or government
soever."
It was decreed that no motion of agreement "with the tyrant of Spain"
should be entertained either publicly or privately, "under pain to be
reputed ill patriots." It was also enacted in the city of Dort that any
man that brought letter or message from the enemy to any private person
"should be forthwith hanged." This was expeditious and business-like.
The same city likewise took the lead in recording its determination by
public act, and proclaiming it by sound of trumpet, "to live and die in
the cause now undertaken."
In Flanders and Brabant the spirit was less noble. Those Provinces were
nearly lost already. Bruges seconded Parma's efforts to induce its
sister-city Ghent to imitate its own baseness in surrendering without
a struggle; and that powerful, turbulent, but most anarchical little
commonwealth was but too ready to listen to the voice of the tempter.
"The ducats of Spain, Madam, are trotting about in such fashion," wrote
envoy Des Pruneaux to Catherine de Medici, "that they have vanquished a
great quantity of courages. Your Majesties, too, must employ money if
you wish to advance one step." No man knew better than Parma how to
employ such golden rhetoric to win back a wavering rebel to his loyalty,
but he was not always provided with a sufficient store of those practical
arguments.
He was, moreover, not strong in the field, although he was far superior
to the States at this contingency. He had, besides his garrisons,
something above 18,000 men. The Provinces had hardly 3000 foot and 2500
horse, and these were mostly lying in the neighbourhood of Zutphen.
Alexander was threatening at the same time Ghent, Dendermonde, Mechlin,
Brussels, and Antwerp. These five powerful cities lie in a narrow
circle, at distances varying from six miles to thirty, and are, as it
were, strung together upon the Scheldt, by which river, or its tributary,
the Senne, they are all threaded. It would have been impossible for
Parma, with 100,000 men at his back, to undertake a regular and
simultaneous siege of these important places. His purpose was to isolate
them from each other and from the rest of the country, by obtaining the
control of the great river, and so to reduce them by famine. The scheme
was a masterly one, but even the consummate ability of Farnese would have
proved inadequate to the undertaking, had not the preliminary
assassination of Orange made the task comparatively easy. Treason,
faint-heartedness, jealousy, were the fatal allies that the Governor-
General had reckoned upon, and with reason, in the council-rooms of these
cities. The terms he offered were liberal. Pardon, permission for
soldiers to retreat with technical honour, liberty to choose between
apostacy to the reformed religion or exile, with a period of two years
granted to the conscientious for the winding up of their affairs; these
were the conditions, which seemed flattering, now that the well-known
voice which had so often silenced the Flemish palterers and intriguers
was for ever hushed.
Upon the 17th August (1584) Dendermonde surrendered, and no lives were
taken save those of two preachers, one of whom was hanged, while the
other was drowned. Upon the 7th September Vilvoorde capitulated, by
which event the water-communication between Brussels and Antwerp was cut
off. Ghent, now thoroughly disheartened, treated with Parma likewise;
and upon the 17th September made its reconciliation with the King. The
surrender of so strong and important a place was as disastrous to the
cause of the patriots as it was disgraceful to the citizens themselves.
It was, however, the result of an intrigue which had been long spinning,
although the thread had been abruptly, and, as it was hoped,
conclusively, severed several months before. During the early part of
the year, after the reconciliation of Bruges with the King--an event
brought about by the duplicity and adroitness of Prince Chimay--the same
machinery had been diligently and almost successfully employed to produce
a like result in Ghent. Champagny, brother of the famous Cardinal
Granvelle, had been under arrest for six years in that city. His
imprisonment was not a strict one however; and he avenged himself for
what he considered very unjust treatment at the hands of the patriots,
by completely abandoning a cause which he had once begun to favour.
A man of singular ability, courage, and energy, distinguished both for
military and diplomatic services, he was a formidable enemy to the party
from which he was now for ever estranged. As early as April of this
year, secret emissaries of Parma, dealing with Champagny in his nominal
prison, and with the disaffected burghers at large, had been on the point
of effecting an arrangement with the royal governor. The negotiation had
been suddenly brought to a close by the discovery of a flagrant attempt
by Imbue, one of the secret adherents of the King, to sell the city of
Dendermonde, of which he was governor, to Parma. For this crime he had
been brought to Ghent for trial, and then publicly beheaded. The
incident came in aid of the eloquence of Orange, who, up to the latest
moment of his life, had been most urgent in his appeals to the patriotic
hearts of Ghent, not to abandon the great cause of the union and of
liberty. William the Silent knew full well, that after the withdrawal of
the great keystone-city of Ghent, the chasm between the Celtic-Catholic
and the Flemish-Calvinist Netherlands could hardly be bridged again.
Orange was now dead. The negotiations with France, too, on which those
of the Ghenters who still held true to the national cause had fastened
their hopes, had previously been brought to a stand-still by the death of
Anjou; and Champagny, notwithstanding the disaster to Imbize, became more
active than ever. A private agent, whom the municipal government had
despatched to the French court for assistance, was not more successful
than his character and course of conduct would have seemed to warrant;
for during his residence in Paris, he had been always drunk, and
generally abusive. This was not good diplomacy, particularly on the part
of an agent from a weak municipality to a haughty and most undecided
government.
"They found at this court," wrote Stafford to Walsingham, "great fault
with his manner of dealing that was sent from Gaunt. He was scarce sober
from one end of the week to the other, and stood so much on his tiptoes
to have present answer within three days, or else that they of Gaunt
could tell where to bestow themselves. They sent him away after keeping
him three weeks, and he went off in great dudgeon, swearing by yea and
nay that he will make report thereafter."
Accordingly, they of Ghent did bestow themselves very soon thereafter
upon the King of Spain. The terms were considered liberal, but there
was, of course, no thought of conceding the great object for which the
patriots were contending--religious liberty. The municipal privileges--
such as they might prove to be worth under the interpretation of a royal
governor and beneath the guns of a citadel filled with Spanish troops--
were to be guaranteed; those of the inhabitants who did not choose to go
to mass were allowed two years to wind up their affairs before going into
perpetual exile, provided they behaved themselves "without scandal;"
while on the other hand, the King's authority as Count of Flanders was to
be fully recognised, and all the dispossessed monks and abbots to be
restored to their property.
Accordingly, Champagny was rewarded for his exertions by being released
from prison and receiving the appointment of governor of the city: and,
after a very brief interval, about one-half of the population, the most
enterprising of its merchants and manufacturers, the most industrious of
its artizans, emigrated to Holland and Zeeland. The noble city of Ghent
--then as large as Paris, thoroughly surrounded with moats, and fortified
with bulwarks, ravelins, and counterscarps, constructed of earth, during
the previous two years, at great expense, and provided with bread and
meat, powder and shot, enough to last a year--was ignominiously
surrendered. The population, already a very reduced and slender one
for the great extent of the place and its former importance, had been
estimated at 70,000. The number of houses was 35,000, so that as the
inhabitants were soon farther reduced to one-half, there remained but one
individual to each house. On the other hand, the twenty-five monasteries
and convents in the town were repeopled--with how much advantage as a
set-off to the thousands of spinners and weavers who had wandered away,
and who in the flourishing days of Ghent had sent gangs of workmen
through the streets "whose tramp was like that of an army"--may be
sufficiently estimated by the result.
The fall of Brussels was deferred till March, and that of Mechlin (19th
July, 1585) and of Antwerp (19th August, 1585), till Midsummer of the
following year; but, the surrender of Ghent (10th March 1585)
foreshadowed the fate of Flanders and Brabant. Ostend and Sluys,
however, were still in the hands of the patriots, and with them the
control of the whole Flemish coast. The command of the sea was destined
to remain for centuries with the new republic.
The Prince of Parma, thus encouraged by the great success of his
intrigues, was determined to achieve still greater triumphs with his
arms, and steadily proceeded with his large design of closing the
Scheldt--and bringing about the fall of Antwerp. The details of that
siege-one of the most brilliant military operations of the age and one of
the most memorable in its results--will be given, as a connected whole,
in a subsequent series of chapters. For the present, it will be better
for the reader who wishes a clear view of European politics at this
epoch, and of the position of the Netherlands, to give his attention to
the web of diplomatic negotiation and court-intrigue which had been
slowly spreading over the leading states of Christendom, and in which the
fate of the world was involved. If diplomatic adroitness consists mainly
in the power to deceive, never were more adroit diplomatists than those
of the sixteenth century. It would, however, be absurd to deny them a
various range of abilities; and the history of no other age can show more
subtle, comprehensive, indefatigable--but, it must also be added, often
unscrupulous--intellects engaged in the great game of politics in which
the highest interests of millions were the stakes, than were those of
several leading minds in England, France, Germany, and Spain. With such
statesmen the burgher-diplomatists of the new-born commonwealth had to
measure themselves; and the result was to show whether or not they could
hold their own in the cabinet as on the field,
For the present, however, the new state was unconscious of its latent
importance, The new-risen republic remained for a season nebulous, and
ready to unsphere itself so soon as the relative attraction of other
great powers should determine its absorption. By the death of Anjou and
of Orange the United Netherlands had became a sovereign state, an
independent republic; but they stood with that sovereignty in their
hands, offering it alternately, not to the highest bidder, but to the
power that would be willing to accept their allegiance, on the sole
condition of assisting them in the maintenance of their religious
freedom.