TO THE PACIFICATION OF GHENT
A.D. 1573--1576
The character of Requesens was not more opposed to that of his
predecessor, than were the instructions given to him for his
government. He was an honest, well-meaning, and moderate man,
and the king of Spain hoped that by his influence and a total
change of measures he might succeed in recalling the Netherlands
to obedience. But, happily for the country, this change was adopted
too late for success; and the weakness of the new government
completed the glorious results which the ferocity of the former
had prepared.
Requesens performed all that depended on him, to gain the confidence
of the people. He caused Alva's statue to be removed; and hoped
to efface the memory of the tyrant by dissolving the Council of
Blood and abandoning the obnoxious taxes which their inventor
had suspended rather than abolished. A general amnesty was also
promulgated against the revolted provinces; they received it
with contempt and defiance. Nothing then was left to Requesens
but to renew the war; and this he found to be a matter of no
easy execution. The finances were in a state of the greatest
confusion; and the Spanish troops were in many places seditious,
in some openly mutinous, Alva having left large arrears of pay
due to almost all, notwithstanding the immense amount of his
pillage and extortion. Middleburg, which had long sustained a
siege against all the efforts of the patriots, was now nearly
reduced by famine, notwithstanding the gallant efforts of its
governor, Mondragon. Requesens turned his immediate attention
to the relief of this important place; and he soon assembled,
at Antwerp and Berg-op-Zoom, a fleet of sixty vessels for that
purpose. But Louis Boisot, admiral of Zealand, promptly repaired
to attack this force; and after a severe action he totally defeated
it, and killed De Glimes, one of its admirals, under the eyes of
Requesens himself, who, accompanied by his suite, stood during
the whole affair on the dike of Schakerloo. This action took place
the 29th of January, 1574; and, on the 19th of February following,
Middleburg surrendered, after a resistance of two years. The Prince
of Orange granted such conditions as were due to the bravery of
the governor; and thus set an example of generosity and honor
which greatly changed the complexion of the war. All Zealand was
now free; and the intrepid Admiral Boisot gained another victory
on the 30th of May--destroying several of the Spanish vessels, and
taking some others, with their Admiral Von Haemstede. Frequent
naval enterprises were also undertaken against the frontiers of
Flanders; and while the naval forces thus harassed the enemy on
every vulnerable point, the unfortunate provinces of the interior
were ravaged by the mutinous and revolted Spaniards, and by the
native brigands, who pillaged both royalists and patriots with
atrocious impartiality.
To these manifold evils was now added one more terrible, in the
appearance of the plague, which broke out at Ghent in the month
of October, and devastated a great part of the Netherlands; not,
however, with that violence with which it rages in more southern
climates.
Requesens, overwhelmed by difficulties, yet exerted himself to
the utmost to put the best face on the affairs of government.
His chief care was to appease the mutinous soldiery: he even
caused his plate to be melted, and freely gave the produce toward
the payment of their arrears. The patriots, well informed of this
state of things, labored to turn it to their best advantage. They
opened the campaign in the province of Guelders, where Louis of
Nassau, with his younger brother Henry, and the prince Palatine,
son of the elector Frederick III., appeared at the head of eleven
thousand men; the Prince of Orange prepared to join him with an
equal number; but Requesens promptly despatched Sanchez d'Avila
to prevent this junction. The Spanish commander quickly passed
the Meuse near Nimeguen; and on the 14th of April he forced Count
Louis to a battle, on the great plain called Mookerheyde, close
to the village of Mook. The royalists attacked with their usual
valor; and, after two hours of hard fighting, the confederates
were totally defeated. The three gallant princes were among the
slain, and their bodies were never afterward discovered. It has
been stated, on doubtful authority, that Louis of Nassau, after
having lain some time among the heaps of dead, dragged himself
to the side of the river Meuse, and while washing his wounds
was inhumanly murdered by some straggling peasants, to whom he
was unknown. The unfortunate fate of this enterprising prince
was a severe blow to the patriot cause, and a cruel affliction
to the Prince of Orange. He had now already lost three brothers
in the war; and remained alone, to revenge their fate and sustain
the cause for which they had perished.
D'Avila soon found his victory to be as fruitless as it was
brilliant. The ruffian troops, by whom it was gained, became
immediately self-disbanded; threw off all authority; hastened
to possess themselves of Antwerp; and threatened to proceed to
the most horrible extremities if their pay was longer withheld.
The citizens succeeded with difficulty in appeasing them, by
the sacrifice of some money in part payment of their claims.
Requesens took advantage of their temporary calm, and despatched
them promptly to take part in the siege of Leyden.
This siege formed another of those numerous instances which became
so memorable from the mixture of heroism and horror. Jean Vanderdoes,
known in literature by the name of Dousa, and celebrated for his
Latin poems, commanded the place. Valdez, who conducted the siege,
urged Dousa to surrender; when the latter replied, in the name of
the inhabitants, "that when provisions failed them, they would
devour their left hands, reserving the right to defend their
liberty." A party of the inhabitants, driven to disobedience and
revolt by the excess of misery to which they were shortly reduced,
attempted to force the burgomaster, Vanderwerf, to supply them with
bread, or yield up the place. But he sternly made the celebrated
answer, which, cannot be remembered without shuddering--"Bread I
have none; but if my death can afford you relief, tear my body
in pieces, and let those who are most hungry devour it!"
But in this extremity relief at last was afforded by the decisive
measures of the Prince of Orange, who ordered all the neighboring
dikes to be opened and the sluices raised, thus sweeping away the
besiegers on the waves of the ocean: the inhabitants of Leyden
were apprised of this intention by means of letters intrusted
to the safe carriage of pigeons trained for the purpose. The
inundation was no sooner effected than hundreds of flat-bottomed
boats brought abundance of supplies to the half-famished town;
while a violent storm carried the sea across the country for
twenty leagues around, and destroyed the Spanish camp, with above
one thousand soldiers, who were overtaken by the flood. This
deliverance took place on the 3d of October, on which day it
is still annually celebrated by the descendants of the grateful
citizens.
It was now for the first time that Spain would consent to listen
to advice or mediation, which had for its object the termination
of this frightful war. The emperor Maximilian II. renewed at
this epoch his efforts with Philip; and under such favorable
auspices conferences commenced at Breda, where the counts
Swartzenberg and Hohenloe, brothers-in-law of the Prince of Orange,
met, on the part of the emperor, the deputies from the king of
Spain and the patriots; and hopes of a complete pacification
were generally entertained. But three months of deliberation
proved their fallacy. The patriots demanded toleration for the
reformed religion. The king's deputies obstinately refused it.
The congress was therefore broken up; and both oppressors and
oppressed resumed their arms with increased vigor and tenfold
desperation.
Requesens had long fixed his eyes on Zealand as the scene of an
expedition by which he hoped to repair the failure before Leyden;
and he caused an attempt to be made on the town of Zuriczee, in
the island of Scauwen, which merits record as one of the boldest
and most original enterprises of the war.
The little islands of Zealand are separated from each other by
narrow branches of the sea, which are fordable at low water;
and it was by such a passage, two leagues in breadth, and till
then untried, that the Spanish detachment of one thousand seven
hundred and fifty men, under Ulloa and other veteran captains,
advanced to their exploit in the midst of dangers greatly increased
by a night of total darkness. Each man carried round his neck
two pounds of gunpowder, with a sufficient supply of biscuit
for two days; and holding their swords and muskets high over
their heads, they boldly waded forward, three abreast, in some
places up to their shoulders in water. The alarm was soon given;
and a shower of balls was poured upon the gallant band, from
upward of forty boats which the Zealanders sent rapidly toward
the spot. The only light afforded to either party was from the
flashes of their guns; and while the adventurers advanced with
undaunted firmness, their equally daring assailants, jumping
from their boats into the water, attacked them with oars and
hooked handspikes, by which many of the Spaniards were destroyed.
The rearguard, in this extremity, cut off from their companions,
was obliged to retreat; but the rest, after a considerable loss,
at length reached the land, and thus gained possession of the
island, on the night of the 28th of September, 1575.
Requesens quickly afterward repaired to the scene of this gallant
exploit, and commenced the siege of Zuriczee, which he did not
live to see completed. After having passed the winter months
in preparation for the success of this object which he had so
much at heart, he was recalled to Brussels by accounts of new
mutinies in the Spanish cavalry; and the very evening before
he reached the city he was attacked by a violent fever, which
carried him off five days afterward, on the 5th of March, 1516.
The suddenness of Requesen's illness had not allowed time for
even the nomination of a successor, to which he was authorized by
letters patent from the king. It is believed that his intention
was to appoint Count Mansfield to the command of the army, and De
Berlaimont to the administration of civil affairs. The government,
however, now devolved entirely into the hands of the council of
state, which was at that period composed of nine members. The
principal of these was Philip de Croi, duke of Arschot; the other
leading members were Viglius, Counts Mansfield and Berlaimont; and
the council was degraded by numbering, among the rest, Debris
and De Roda, two of the notorious Spaniards who had formed part
of the Council of Blood.
The king resolved to leave the authority in the hands of this
incongruous mixture, until the arrival of Don John of Austria,
his natural brother, whom he had already named to the office of
governor-general. But in the interval the government assumed an
aspect of unprecedented disorder; and widespread anarchy embraced
the whole country. The royal troops openly revolted, and fought
against each other like deadly enemies. The nobles, divided in
their views, arrogated to themselves in different places the
titles and powers of command. Public faith and private probity
seemed alike destroyed. Pillage, violence and ferocity were the
commonplace characteristics of the times.
Circumstances like these may be well supposed to have revived
the hopes of the Prince of Orange, who quickly saw amid this
chaos the elements of order, strength, and liberty. Such had
been his previous affliction at the harrowing events which he
witnessed and despaired of being able to relieve, that he had
proposed to the patriots of Holland and Zealand to destroy the
dikes, submerge the whole country, and abandon to the waves the
soil which refused security to freedom. But Providence destined
him to be the savior, instead of the destroyer, of his country. The
chief motive of this excessive desperation had been the apparent
desertion by Queen Elizabeth of the cause which she had hitherto
so mainly assisted. Offended at the capture of some English ships
by the Dutch, who asserted that they carried supplies for the
Spaniards, she withdrew from them her protection; but by timely
submission they appeased her wrath; and it is thought by some
historians that even thus early the Prince of Orange proposed to
place the revolted provinces wholly under her protection. This,
however, she for the time refused; but she strongly solicited
Philip's mercy for these unfortunate countries, through the Spanish
ambassador at her court.
In the meantime the council of state at Brussels seemed disposed
to follow up as far as possible the plans of Requesens. The siege
of Zuriczee was continued; but speedy dissensions among the members
of the government rendered their authority contemptible, if not
utterly extinct, in the eyes of the people. The exhaustion of
the treasury deprived them of all power to put an end to the
mutinous excesses of the Spanish troops, and the latter carried
their licentiousness to the utmost bounds. Zuriczee, admitted to
a surrender, and saved from pillage by the payment of a large
sum, was lost to the royalists within three months, from the
want of discipline in its garrison; and the towns and burghs
of Brabant suffered as much from the excesses of their nominal
protectors as could have been inflicted by the enemy. The mutineers
at length, to the number of some thousands, attacked and carried
by force the town of Alost, at equal distances between Brussels,
Ghent, and Antwerp, imprisoned the chief citizens, and levied
contributions on all the country round. It was then that the
council of state found itself forced to proclaim them rebels,
traitors, and enemies to the king and the country, and called
on all loyal subjects to pursue and exterminate them wherever
they were found in arms.
This proscription of the Spanish mutineers was followed by the
convocation of the states-general, and the government thus hoped
to maintain some show of union and some chance of authority.
But a new scene of intestine violence completed the picture of
executive inefficiency. On the 4th of September, the grand bailiff
of Brabant, as lieutenant of the Baron de Hesse, governor of
Brussels, entered the council chamber by force, and arrested all
the members present, on suspicion of treacherously maintaining
intelligence with the Spaniards. Counts Mansfield and Berlaimont
were imprisoned, with some others. Viglius escaped this indignity
by being absent froth indisposition. This bold measure was hailed
by the people with unusual joy, as the signal for that total
change in the government which they reckoned on as the prelude
to complete freedom.
The states-general were all at this time assembled, with the
exception of those of Flanders, who joined the others with but
little delay. The general reprobation against the Spaniards procured
a second decree of proscription; and their desperate conduct
justified the utmost violence with which they might be pursued.
They still held the citadels of Ghent and Antwerp, as well as
Maestricht, which they had seized on, sacked, and pillaged with
all the fury which a barbarous enemy inflicts on a town carried
by assault. On the 3d of November, the other body of mutineers,
in possession of Alost, marched to the support of their fellow
brigands in the citadel of Antwerp; and both, simultaneously
attacking this magnificent city, became masters of it in all
points, in spite of a vigorous resistance on the part of the
citizens. They then began a scene of rapine and destruction
unequalled in the annals of these desperate wars. More than five
hundred private mansions and the splendid town-house were delivered
to the flames: seven thousand citizens perished by the sword or
in the waters of the Scheldt. For three days the carnage and
the pillage went on with unheard-of fury; and the most opulent
town in Europe was thus reduced to ruin and desolation by a few
thousand frantic ruffians. The loss was valued at above two million
golden crowns. Vargas and Romero were the principal leaders of
this infernal exploit; and De Roda gained a new title to his
immortality of shame by standing forth as its apologist.
The states-general, assembled at Ghent, were solemnly opened on
the 14th of September. Being apprehensive of a sudden attack from
the Spanish troops in the citadel, they proposed a negotiation,
and demanded a protecting force from the Prince of Orange, who
immediately entered into a treaty with their envoy, and sent to
their assistance eight companies of infantry and seventeen pieces
of cannon, under the command of the English colonel, Temple.
In the midst of this turmoil and apparent insecurity, the
states-general proceeded in their great work, and assumed the
reins of government in the name of the king. They allowed the
council of state still nominally to exist, but they restricted
its powers far within those it had hitherto exercised; and the
government, thus absolutely assuming the form of a republic,
issued manifestoes in justification of its conduct, and demanded
succor from all the foreign powers. To complete the union between
the various provinces, it was resolved to resume the negotiations
commenced the preceding year at Breda; and the 10th of October
was fixed for this new congress to be held in the town-house
of Ghent.
On the day appointed, the congress opened its sittings; and rapidly
arriving at the termination of its important object, the celebrated
treaty known by the title of "The Pacification of Ghent" was
published on the 8th of November, to the sound of bells and trumpets;
while the ceremony was rendered still more imposing by the thunder
of the artillery which battered the walls of the besieged citadel.
It was even intended to have delivered a general assault against the
place at the moment of the proclamation; but the mutineers demanded
a capitulation and finally surrendered three days afterward. It
was the wife of the famous Mondragon who commanded the place
in her husband's absence; and by her heroism gave a new proof
of the capability of the sex to surpass the limits which nature
seems to have fixed for their conduct.
The Pacification contained twenty-five articles. Among others,
it was agreed:
That a full amnesty should be passed for all offences whatsoever.
That the estates of Brabant, Flanders, Hainault, Artois, and
others, on the one part; the Prince of Orange, and the states of
Holland and Zealand and their associates, on the other; promised
to maintain good faith, peace, and friendship, firm and inviolable;
to mutually assist each other, at all times, in council and action;
and to employ life and fortune, above all things, to expel from
the country the Spanish soldiers and other foreigners.
That no one should be allowed to injure or insult, by word or
deed, the exercise of the Catholic religion, on pain of being
treated as a disturber of the public peace.
That the edicts against heresy and the proclamations of the duke
of Alva should be suspended.
That all confiscations, sentences, and judgments rendered since
1566 should be annulled.
That the inscriptions, monuments, and trophies erected by the
duke of Alva should be demolished.
Such were the general conditions of the treaty; the remaining
articles chiefly concerned individual interests. The promulgation
of this great charter of union, which was considered as the
fundamental law of the country, was hailed in all parts of the
Netherlands with extravagant demonstrations of joy.