Struggle of the United Provinces against Philip of Spain--Progress
of the Republic--Influence of Geographical position on the fate of
the Netherlands--Contrast offered by America--Miserable state of the
so--called "obedient" provinces--Prosperity of the Commonwealth--Its
internal government--Tendency to provincialism--Quibbles of the
English Members of the Council, Wilkes and Bodley--Exclusion of
Olden-Barneveld from the State Council--Proposals of Philip for
mediation with the United Provinces--The Provinces resolutely
decline all proffers of intervention.
The United Provinces had now been engaged in unbroken civil war for a
quarter of a century. It is, however, inaccurate to designate this great
struggle with tyranny as a civil war. It was a war for independence,
maintained by almost the whole population of the United Provinces against
a foreigner, a despot, alien to their blood, ignorant of their language,
a hater of their race, a scorner of their religion, a trampler upon their
liberties, their laws, and institutions--a man who had publicly declared
that he would rather the whole nation were exterminated than permitted to
escape from subjection to the Church of Rome. Liberty of speech, liberty
of the press, liberty of thought on political, religious, and social
questions existed within those Dutch pastures and Frisian swamps to a far
greater degree than in any other part of the world at that day; than in
very many regions of Christendom in our own time. Personal slavery was
unknown. In a large portion of their territory it had never existed. The
free Frisians, nearest blood-relations of, in this respect, the less
favoured Anglo-Saxons, had never bowed the knee to the feudal system, nor
worn nor caused to be worn the collar of the serf. In the battles for
human liberty no nation has stood with cleaner hands before the great
tribunal, nor offered more spotless examples of patriotism to be emulated
in all succeeding ages, than the Netherlanders in their gigantic struggle
with Philip of Spain. It was not a class struggling for their own
privileges, but trampling on their fellow-men in a lower scale of
humanity. Kings and aristocrats sneered at the vulgar republic where Hans
Miller, Hans Baker, and Hans Brewer enjoyed political rights end prated
of a sovereignty other than that of long-descended races and of anointed
heads. Yet the pikemen of Spain and the splendid cavalry and musketeers
of Italy and Burgundy, who were now beginning to show their backs both
behind entrenchments and in the open field to their republican foes,
could not deny the valour with which the battles of liberty were fought;
while Elizabeth of England, maintainer, if such ever were, of hereditary
sovereignty and hater of popular freedom, acknowledged that for wisdom in
council, dignity and adroitness in diplomatic debate, there were none to
surpass the plain burgher statesmen of the new republic.
And at least these Netherlanders were consistent with themselves. They
had come to disbelieve in the mystery of kingcraft, in the divine
speciality of a few transitory mortals to direct the world's events and
to dictate laws to their fellow-creatures. What they achieved was for the
common good of all. They chose to live in an atmosphere of blood and fire
for generation after generation rather than flinch from their struggle
with despotism, for they knew that, cruel as the sea, it would swallow
them all at last in one common destruction if they faltered or paused.
They fought for the liberty of all. And it is for this reason that the
history of this great conflict deserved to be deeply pondered by those
who have the instinct of human freedom. Had the Hollanders basely sunk
before the power of Spain, the proud history of England, France, and
Germany would have been written in far different terms. The blood and
tears which the Netherlanders caused to flow in their own stormy days
have turned to blessings for remotest climes and ages. A pusillanimous
peace, always possible at any period of their war, would have been hailed
with rapture by contemporary statesmen, whose names have vanished from
the world's memory; but would have sown with curses and misery the soil
of Europe for succeeding ages. The territory of the Netherlands is narrow
and meagre. It is but a slender kingdom now among the powers of the
earth. The political grandeur of nations is determined by physical causes
almost as much as by moral ones. Had the cataclysm which separated the
fortunate British islands from the mainland happened to occur, instead,
at a neighbouring point of the earth's crust; had the Belgian, Dutch,
German and Danish Netherland floated off as one island into the sea,
while that famous channel between two great rival nations remained dry
land, there would have been a different history of the world.
But in the 16th century the history of one country was not an isolated
chapter of personages and events. The history of the Netherlands is
history of liberty. It was now combined with the English, now with
French, with German struggles for political and religious freedom, but it
is impossible to separate it from the one great complex which makes up
the last half of the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth
centuries.
At that day the Netherland republic was already becoming a power of
importance in the political family of Christendom. If, in spite of her
geographical disadvantages, she achieved so much, how much vaster might
her power have grown, how much stronger through her example might popular
institutions throughout the world have become, and how much more pacific
the relations of European tribes, had nature been less niggard in her
gifts to the young commonwealth. On the sea she was strong, for the ocean
is the best of frontiers; but on land her natural boundaries faded
vaguely away, without strong physical demarcations and with no sharply
defined limits of tongue, history or race. Accident or human caprice
seemed to have divided German Highland from German Netherland; Belgic
Gaul from the rest of the Gallic realm. And even from the slender body,
which an arbitrary destiny had set off for centuries into a separate
organism, tyranny and religious bigotry had just hewn another portion
away. But the commonwealth was already too highly vitalized to permit
peaceful dismemberment. Only the low organisms can live in all their
parts after violent separations. The trunk remained, bleeding but alive
and vigorous, while the amputated portion lay for centuries in fossilized
impotence.
Never more plainly than in the history of this commonwealth was the
geographical law manifested by which the fate of nations is so deeply
influenced. Courage, enterprise amounting almost to audacity, and a
determined will confronted for a long lapse of time the inexorable, and
permitted a great empire to germinate out of a few sand-banks held in
defiance of the ocean, and protected from human encroachments on the
interior only by the artificial barrier of custom-house and fort.
Thus foredoomed at birth, it must increase our admiration of human energy
and of the sustaining influence of municipal liberty that the republic,
even if transitory, should yet have girdled the earth with its
possessions and held for a considerable period so vast a portion of the
world in fee.
What a lesson to our transatlantic commonwealth, whom bountiful nature
had blessed at her birth beyond all the nations of history and seemed to
speed upon an unlimited career of freedom and peaceful prosperity, should
she be capable at the first alarm on her track to throw away her
inestimable advantages! If all history is not a mockery and a fable, she
may be sure that the nation which deliberately carves itself in pieces
and, substitutes artificial boundaries for the natural and historic ones,
condemns itself either to extinction or to the lower life of political
insignificance and petty warfare, with the certain loss of liberty and
national independence at last. Better a terrible struggle, better the
sacrifice of prosperity and happiness for years, than the eternal setting
of that great popular hope, the United American Republic.
I speak in this digression only of the relations of physical nature to
liberty and nationality, making no allusion to the equally stringent
moral laws which no people can violate and yet remain in health and
vigour.
Despite a quarter of a century of what is commonly termed civil war, the
United Netherlands were prosperous and full of life. It was in the
provinces which had seceded from the union of Utrecht that there was
silence as of the grave, destitution, slavery, abject submission to a
foreign foe. The leaders in the movement which had brought about the
scission of 1579--commonly called the 'Reconciliation'--enjoyed military
and civil posts under a foreign tyrant, but were poorly rewarded for
subserviency in fighting against their own brethren by contumely on the
part of their masters. As for the mass of the people it would be
difficult to find a desolation more complete than that recorded of the
"obedient" provinces. Even as six years before, wolves littered their
whelps in deserted farmhouses, cane-brake and thicket usurped the place
of cornfield and, orchard, robbers swarmed on the highways once thronged
by a most thriving population, nobles begged their bread in the streets
of cities whose merchants once entertained emperors and whose wealth and
traffic were the wonder of the world, while the Spanish viceroy formally
permitted the land in the agricultural districts to be occupied and
farmed by the first comer for his own benefit, until the vanished
proprietors of the soil should make their re-appearance.
"Administered without justice or policy," said a Netherlander who was
intensely loyal to the king and a most uncompromising Catholic, "eaten up
and abandoned for that purpose to the arbitrary will of foreigners who
suck the substance and marrow of the land without benefit to the king,
gnaw the obedient cities to the bones, and plunder the open defenceless
country at their pleasure, it may be imagined how much satisfaction these
provinces take in their condition. Commerce and trade have ceased in a
country which traffic alone has peopled, for without it no human
habitation could be more miserable and poor than our land."--[Discours du
Seigneur de Champagny sur les affaires des Pays Bas, 21 Dec. 1589. Bibl.
de Bourgogne, MS. No. 12,962.]
Nothing could be more gloomy than the evils thus described by the
Netherland statesman and soldier, except the remedy which he suggested.
The obedient provinces, thus scourged and blasted for their obedience,
were not advised to improve their condition by joining hands with their
sister States, who had just constituted themselves by their noble
resistance to royal and ecclesiastical tyranny into a free and powerful
commonwealth. On the contrary, two great sources of regeneration and
prosperity were indicated, but very different ones from those in which
the republic had sought and found her strength. In the first place, it
was suggested as indispensable that the obedient provinces should have
more Jesuits and more Friars. The mendicant orders should be summoned to
renewed exertions, and the king should be requested to send seminary
priests to every village in numbers proportionate to the population, who
should go about from house to house, counting the children, and seeing
that they learned their catechism if their parents did not teach them,
and, even in case they did, examining whether it was done thoroughly and
without deception.
In the second place it was laid down as important that the bishops should
confirm no one who had not been sufficiently catechized. "And if the
mendicant orders," said Champagny, "are not numerous enough for these
catechizations, the Jesuits might charge themselves therewith, not more
and not less than the said mendicants, some of each being deputed to each
parish. To this end it would be well if his Majesty should obtain from
the Pope a command to the Jesuits to this effect, since otherwise they
might not be willing to comply. It should also be ordered that all
Jesuits, natives of these provinces, should return hither, instead of
wandering about in other regions as if their help were not so necessary
here."--[Ibid.]
It was also recommended that the mendicant friars should turn their
particular attention to Antwerp, and that one of them should preach in
French, another in German, another in English, every day at the opening
of the Exchange.
With these appliances it was thought that Antwerp would revive out of its
ruins and, despite the blockade of its river, renew its ancient
commercial glories. Founded on the substantial rocks of mendicancy and
jesuitism, it might again triumph over its rapidly rising rival, the
heretic Amsterdam, which had no better basis for its grandeur than
religious and political liberty, and uncontrolled access to the ocean.
Such were the aspirations of a distinguished and loyal Netherlander for
the regeneration of his country. Such were his opinions as to the true
sources of the wealth and greatness of nations. Can we wonder that the
country fell to decay, or that this experienced, statesman and brave
soldier should himself, after not many years, seek to hide his
dishonoured head under the cowl of a monk?
The coast of the obedient provinces was thoroughly blockaded. The United
Provinces commanded the sea, their cruisers, large and small, keeping
diligent watch off every port and estuary of the Flemish coast, so that
not a herringboat could enter without their permission. Antwerp, when it
fell into the hands of the Spaniard, sank for ever from its proud
position. The city which Venetians but lately had confessed with a sigh
to be superior in commercial grandeur to their own magnificent capital,
had ceased to be a seaport. Shut in from the ocean by Flushing--firmly
held by an English garrison as one of the cautionary towns for the
Queen's loan--her world-wide commerce withered before men's eyes. Her
population was dwindling to not much more than half its former numbers,
while Ghent, Bruges, and other cities were diminished by two-thirds.
On the other hand, the commerce and manufactures of the United Republic
had enormously augmented. Its bitterest enemies bore witness to the
sagacity and success by which its political affairs were administered,
and to its vast superiority in this respect over the obedient provinces.
"The rebels are not ignorant of our condition," said Champagny, "they are
themselves governed with consummate wisdom, and they mock at those who
submit themselves to the Duke of Parma. They are the more confirmed in
their rebellion, when they see how many are thronging from us to them,
complaining of such bad government, and that all take refuge in flight
who can from the misery and famine which it has caused throughout these
provinces!" The industrial population had flowed from the southern
provinces into the north, in obedience to an irresistible law. The
workers in iron, paper, silk, linen, lace, the makers of brocade,
tapestry, and satin, as well as of all the coarser fabrics, had fled from
the land of oppression to the land of liberty. Never in the history of
civilisation had there been a more rapid development of human industry
than in Holland during these years of bloodiest warfare. The towns were
filled to overflowing. Amsterdam multiplied in wealth and population as
fast as Antwerp shrank. Almost as much might be said of Middelburg,
Enkhuyzen, Horn, and many other cities. It is the epoch to which the
greatest expansion of municipal architecture is traced. Warehouses,
palaces, docks, arsenals, fortifications, dykes, splendid streets and
suburbs, were constructed on every side, and still there was not room for
the constantly increasing population, large numbers of which habitually
dwelt in the shipping. For even of that narrow span of earth called the
province of Holland, one-third was then interior water, divided into five
considerable lakes, those of Harlem, Schermer, Beemster, Waert, and
Purmer. The sea was kept out by a magnificent system of dykes under the
daily superintendence of a board of officers, called dyke-graves, while
the rain-water, which might otherwise have drowned the soil thus
painfully reclaimed, was pumped up by windmills and drained off through
sluices opening and closing with the movement of the tides.
The province of Zeeland was one vast "polder." It was encircled by an
outer dyke of forty Dutch equal to one hundred and fifty English, miles
in extent, and traversed by many interior barriers. The average cost of
dyke-building was sixty florins the rod of twelve feet, or 84,000 florins
the Dutch mile. The total cost of the Zeeland dykes was estimated at
3,360,000 florins, besides the annual repairs.
But it was on the sea that the Netherlanders were really at home, and
they always felt it in their power--as their last resource against
foreign tyranny--to bury their land for ever in the ocean, and to seek a
new country at the ends of the earth. It has always been difficult to
doom to political or personal slavery a nation accustomed to maritime
pursuits. Familiarity with the boundless expanse of ocean, and the habit
of victoriously contending with the elements in their stormy strength,
would seem to inspire a consciousness in mankind of human dignity and
worth. With the exception of Spain, the chief seafaring nations of the
world were already protestant. The counter-league, which was to do battle
so strenuously with the Holy Confederacy, was essentially a maritime
league. "All the maritime heretics of the world, since heresy is best
suited to navigators, will be banded together," said Champagny, "and then
woe to the Spanish Indies, which England and Holland are already
threatening."
The Netherlanders had been noted from earliest times for a free-spoken
and independent personal demeanour. At this epoch they were taking the
lead of the whole world in marine adventure. At least three thousand
vessels of between one hundred and four hundred tons, besides innumerable
doggers, busses, cromstevens, and similar craft used on the rivers and in
fisheries, were to be found in the United Provinces, and one thousand, it
was estimated, were annually built.
They traded to the Baltic regions for honey, wax, tallow, lumber, iron,
turpentine, hemp. They brought from farthest Indies and from America all
the fabrics of ancient civilisation, all the newly discovered products of
a virgin soil, and dispensed them among the less industrious nations of
the earth. Enterprise, led on and accompanied by science, was already
planning the boldest flights into the unknown yet made by mankind, and it
will soon be necessary to direct attention to those famous arctic
voyages, made by Hollanders in pursuit of the north-west passage to
Cathay, in which as much heroism, audacity, and scientific intelligence
were displayed as in later times have made so many men belonging to both
branches of the Anglo-Saxon race illustrious. A people, engaged in
perennial conflict with a martial and sacerdotal despotism the most
powerful in the world, could yet spare enough from its superfluous
energies to confront the dangers of the polar oceans, and to bring back
treasures of science to enrich the world.
Such was the spirit of freedom. Inspired by its blessed influence this
vigorous and inventive little commonwealth triumphed over all human, all
physical obstacles in its path. It organised armies on new principles to
drive the most famous legions of history from its soil. It built navies
to help rescue, at critical moments, the cause of England, of
Protestantism, of civil liberty, and even of French nationality. More
than all, by its trade with its arch-enemy, the republic constantly
multiplied its resources for destroying his power and aggrandizing its
own.
The war navy of the United Provinces was a regular force of one hundred
ships--large at a period when a vessel of thirteen hundred tons was a
monster--together with an indefinite number of smaller craft, which could
be put into the public service on short notice? In those days of close
quarters and light artillery a merchant ship was converted into a cruiser
by a very simple, process. The navy was a self-supporting one, for it was
paid by the produce of convoy fees and licenses to trade. It must be
confessed that a portion of these revenues savoured much of black-mail to
be levied on friend and foe; for the distinctions between, freebooter,
privateer, pirate, and legitimate sea-robber were not very closely drawn
in those early days of seafaring.
Prince Maurice of Nassau was lord high admiral, but he was obliged to
listen to the counsels of various provincial boards of admiralty, which
often impeded his action and interfered with his schemes.
It cannot be denied that the inherent vice of the Netherland polity was
already a tendency to decentralisation and provincialism. The civil
institutions of the country, in their main characteristics, have been
frequently sketched in these pages. At this period they had entered
almost completely into the forms which were destined to endure until the
commonwealth fell in the great crash of the French Revolution. Their
beneficial effects were more visible now--sustained and bound together as
the nation was by the sense of a common danger, and by the consciousness
of its daily developing strength--than at a later day when prosperity and
luxury had blunted the fine instincts of patriotism.
The supreme power, after the deposition of Philip, and the refusal by
France and by England to accept the sovereignty of the provinces, was
definitely lodged in the States-General. But the States-General did not
technically represent the people. Its members were not elected by the
people. It was a body composed of, delegates from each provincial
assembly, of which there were now five: Holland, Zeeland, Friesland,
Utrecht, and Gelderland. Each provincial assembly consisted again of
delegates, not from the inhabitants of the provinces, but from the
magistracies of the cities. Those, magistracies, again, were not elected
by the citizens. They elected themselves by renewing their own vacancies,
and were, in short, immortal corporations. Thus, in final analysis, the
supreme power was distributed and localised among the mayors and aldermen
of a large number of cities, all independent alike of the people below
and of any central power above.
It is true that the nobles, as, a class, had a voice in the provincial
and, in the general assembly, both for themselves and as technical
representatives of the smaller towns and of the rural population. But, as
a matter of fact, the influence of this caste had of late years very
rapidly diminished, through its decrease in numbers, and the far more
rapid increase in wealth and power of the commercial and manufacturing
classes. Individual nobles were constantly employed in the military,
civil, and diplomatic service of the republic, but their body had ceased
to be a power. It had been the policy of William the Silent to increase
the number of cities entitled to send deputies to the States; for it was
among the cities that his resistance to the tyranny of Spain, and his
efforts to obtain complete independence for his country, had been mainly
supported. Many of the great nobles, as has been seen in these pages,
denounced the liberator and took sides with the tyrant. Lamoral Egmont
had walked to the scaffold to which Philip had condemned him, chanting a
prayer for Philip's welfare. Egmont's eldest son was now foremost in the
Spanish army, doing battle against his own country in behalf of the
tyrant who had taken his father's life. Aremberg and Ligny, Arachot,
Chimay, Croy, Caprea, Montigny, and most of the great patrician families
of the Netherlands fought on the royal side.
The revolution which had saved the country from perdition and created the
great Netherland republic was a burgher revolution, and burgher statesmen
now controlled the State. The burgher class of Europe is not the one that
has been foremost in the revolutionary movements of history, or that has
distinguished itself--especially in more modern times--by a passionate
love of liberty. It is always easy to sneer at Hans Miller and Hans
Baker, and at the country where such plebeians are powerful. Yet the
burghers played a prominent part in the great drama which forms my theme,
and there has rarely been seen a more solid or powerful type of their
class than the burgher statesman, John of Olden-Barneveld, who, since the
death of William the Silent and the departure of Lord Leicester, had
mainly guided the destinies of Holland. Certainly no soldier nor
statesman who ever measured intellects with that potent personage was apt
to treat his genius otherwise than with profound respect.
But it is difficult to form a logical theory of government except on the
fiction of divine right as a basis, unless the fact of popular
sovereignty, as expressed by a majority, be frankly accepted in spite of
philosophical objections.
In the Netherlands there was no king, and strictly speaking no people.
But this latter and fatal defect was not visible in the period of danger
and of contest. The native magistrates of that age were singularly pure,
upright, and patriotic. Of this there is no question whatever. And the
people acquiesced cheerfully in their authority, not claiming a larger
representation than such as they virtually possessed in the multiple
power exercised over them, by men moving daily among them, often of
modest fortunes and of simple lives. Two generations later, and in the
wilderness of Massachusetts, the early American colonists voluntarily
placed in the hands of their magistrates, few in number, unlimited
control of all the functions of government, and there was hardly an
instance known of an impure exercise of authority. Yet out of that simple
kernel grew the least limited and most powerful democracy ever known.
In the later days of Netherland history a different result became
visible, and with it came the ruin of the State. The governing class, of
burgher origin, gradually separated itself from the rest of the citizens,
withdrew from commercial pursuits, lived on hereditary fortunes in the
exercise of functions which were likewise virtually hereditary, and so
became an oligarchy. This result, together with the physical causes
already indicated, made the downfall of the commonwealth probable
whenever it should be attacked by an overwhelming force from without.
The States-General, however, at this epoch--although they had in a manner
usurped the sovereignty, which in the absence of a feudal lord really
belonged to the whole people, and had silently repossessed themselves of
those executive functions which they had themselves conferred upon the
state council--were at any rate without self-seeking ambition. The
Hollanders, as a race, were not office seekers, but were singularly
docile to constituted authority, while their regents--as the municipal
magistrates were commonly called--were not very far removed above the
mass by birth or habitual occupation. The republic was a social and
political fact, against which there was no violent antagonism either of
laws or manners, and the people, although not technically existing, in
reality was all in all. In Netherland story the People is ever the true
hero. It was an almost unnoticed but significant revolution--that by
which the state council was now virtually deprived of its authority.
During Leicester's rule it had been a most important college of
administration. Since his resignation it had been entrusted by the
States-General with high executive functions, especially in war matters.
It was an assembly of learned counsellors appointed from the various
provinces for wisdom and experience, usually about eighteen in number,
and sworn in all things to be faithful to the whole republic. The
allegiance of all was rendered to the nation. Each individual member was
required to "forswear his native province in order to be true to the
generality." They deliberated in common for the general good, and were
not hampered by instructions from the provincial diets, nor compelled to
refer to those diets for decision when important questions were at issue.
It was an independent executive committee for the whole republic.
But Leicester had made it unpopular. His intrigues, in the name of
democracy, to obtain possession of sovereign power, to inflame the lower
classes against the municipal magistracies, and to excite the clergy to
claim a political influence to which they were not entitled and which was
most mischievous in its effects, had exposed the state council, with
which he had been in the habit of consulting, to suspicion.
The Queen of England, by virtue of her treaty had the right to appoint
two of her subjects to be members of the council. The governor of her
auxiliary forces was also entitled to a seat there. Since the
malpractices of Leicester and the danger to which the country had been,
subjected in consequence had been discovered, it was impossible that
there should be very kindly feeling toward England in the public mind,
however necessary a sincere alliance between the two countries was known
to be for the welfare of both.
The bickering of the two English councillors, Wilkes and Bodley, and of
the governor of the English contingent with the Hollanders, was
incessant. The Englishmen went so far as to claim the right of veto upon
all measures passed by the council, but the States-General indignantly
replied that the matters deliberated and decided upon by that board were
their own affairs, not the state affairs of England. The two members and
the military officer who together represented her Majesty were entitled
to participate in the deliberations and to vote with their brother
members. For them to claim the right, however, at will to annul the
proceedings was an intolerable assumption, and could not be listened to
for a moment. Certainly it would have been strange had two Dutchmen
undertaken to veto every measure passed by the Queen's council at
Richmond or Windsor, and it was difficult to say on what article of the
contract this extraordinary privilege was claimed by Englishmen at the
Hague.
Another cause of quarrel was the inability of the Englishmen to
understand the language in which the debates of the state council were
held.
According to a custom not entirely unexampled in parliamentary history
the members of assembly and council made use of their native tongue in
discussing the state affairs of their native land. It was however
considered a grievance by the two English members that the Dutchmen
should speak Dutch, and it was demanded in the Queen's name that they
should employ some other language which a foreigner could more easily
understand.
The Hollanders however refused this request, not believing that in a
reversed case her Majesty's Council or Houses of Parliament would be
likely or competent to carry on their discussions habitually in Italian
or Latin for the benefit of a couple of strangers who might not be
familiar with English. The more natural remedy would have been for the
foreigners to take lessons in the tongue of the country, or to seek for
an interpreter among their colleagues; especially as the States, when all
the Netherlands were but provinces, had steadily refused to adopt any
language but their mother tongue, even at the demand of their sovereign
prince.
At this moment, Sir Thomas Bodley was mainly entrusted with her Majesty's
affairs at the Hague, but his overbearing demeanour, intemperate
language, and passionate style of correspondence with the States and with
the royal government, did much injury to both countries. The illustrious
Walsingham--whose death in the spring of this year England had so much
reason to deplore--had bitterly lamented, just before his death, having
recommended so unquiet a spirit for so important a place. Ortel, envoy of
the States to London, expressed his hopes that affairs would now be
handled more to the satisfaction of the States; as Bodley would be
obliged, since the death of Sir Francis, to address his letters to the
Lord High Treasurer, with whom it would be impossible for him to obtain
so much influence as he had enjoyed with the late Secretary of State.
Moreover it was exactly at this season that the Advocate of Holland,
Olden-Barneveld, was excluded from the state council. Already the
important province of Holland was dissatisfied with its influence in that
body. Bearing one-half of the whole burthen of the war it was not content
with one-quarter of the council vote, and very soon it became the custom
for the States-General to conduct all the most important affairs of the
republic. The state council complained that even in war matters it was
not consulted, and that most important enterprises were undertaken by
Prince Maurice without its knowledge, and on advice of the Advocate
alone. Doubtless this was true, and thus, most unfortunately, the
commonwealth was degraded to a confederacy instead of becoming an
incorporate federal State. The members of the States-General--as it has
been seen were responsible only to their constituents, the separate
provinces. They avowed allegiance, each to his own province, none to the
central government. Moreover they were not representatives, but envoys,
appointed by petty provinces, bound by written orders, and obliged to
consult at every step with their sovereigns at home. The Netherland
polity was thus stamped almost at its birth with a narrow provincialism:
Delay and hesitation thus necessarily engendered were overcome in the
days of danger by patriotic fervour. The instinct of union for the sake
of the national existence was sufficiently strong, and the robust,
practical common sense of the people sufficiently enlightened to prevent
this weakness from degenerating into impotence so long as the war
pressure remained to mould them into a whole. But a day was to come for
bitterly rueing this paralysis of the imperial instincts of the people,
this indefinite decentralisation of the national strength.
For the present, the legislative and executive body was the
States-General. But the States-General were in reality the States
provincial, and the States provincial were the city municipalities, among
which the magistracies of Holland were preponderant.
Ere long it became impossible for an individual to resist the decrees of
the civic authorities. In 1591, the States-General passed a resolution by
which these arrogant corporations virtually procured their exemption from
any process at the suit of a private person to be placed on record. So
far could the principle of sovereignty be pulverized. City council boards
had become supreme.
It was naturally impossible during the long continuance of this great
struggle, that neutral nations should not be injuriously affected by it
in a variety of ways. And as a matter of course neutral nations were
disposed to counsel peace. Peace, peace; peace was the sigh of the
bystanders whose commerce was impeded, whose international relations.
were complicated, and whose own security was endangered in the course of
the bloody conflict. It was however not very much the fashion of that day
for governments to obtrude advice upon each other; or to read to each
other moral lectures. It was assumed that when the expense and sacrifice
of war had been incurred, it was for cause, and the discovery had not yet
been made that those not immediately interested in the fray were better
acquainted with its merits than, the combatants themselves, and were
moreover endued with, superhuman wisdom to see with perfect clearness
that future issue which to the parties themselves was concealed.
Cheap apothegms upon the blessings of peace and upon the expediency of
curbing the angry passions, uttered by the belligerents of yesterday to
the belligerents of to-day, did not then pass current for profound
wisdom.
Still the emperor Rudolph, abstaining for a time from his star-gazing,
had again thought proper to make a feeble attempt at intervention in
those sublunary matters which were supposed to be within his sphere.
It was perfectly well known that Philip was incapable of abating one jot
of his pretensions, and that to propose mediation to the United Provinces
was simply to request them, for the convenience of other powers, to
return to the slavery out of which, by the persistent efforts of a
quarter of a century, they had struggled. Nevertheless it was formally
proposed to re-open those lukewarm fountains of diplomatic commonplace in
which healing had been sought during the peace negotiations of Cologne in
the year 1579. But the States-General resolutely kept them sealed. They
simply answered his imperial Majesty by a communication of certain
intercepted correspondence between--the King of Spain and his ambassador
at Vienna, San Clemente, through which it was satisfactorily established
that any negotiation would prove as gigantic a comedy on the part of
Spain as had been the memorable conferences at Ostend, by which the
invasion of England had been masked.
There never was a possibility of mediation or of compromise except by
complete submission on the part of the Netherlanders to Crown and Church.
Both in this, as well as in previous and subsequent attempts at
negotiations, the secret instructions of Philip forbade any real
concessions on his side. He was always ready to negotiate, he was
especially anxious to obtain a suspension of arms from the rebels during
negotiation; but his agents were instructed to use great dexterity and
dissimulation in order that the proposal for such armistice, as well as
for negotiation at all, should appear to proceed, not from himself as was
the fact, but from the emperor as a neutral potentate. The king uniformly
proposed three points; firstly, that the rebels should reconvert
themselves to the Catholic religion; secondly, that they should return to
their obedience to himself; thirdly, that they should pay the expenses of
the war. Number three was, however, usually inserted in order that, by
conceding it subsequently, after much contestation, he might appear
conciliatory. It was a vehicle of magnanimity towards men grown insolent
with temporary success. Numbers one and two were immutable.
Especially upon number one was concession impossible. "The Catholic
religion is the first thing," said Philip, "and although the rebels do
not cease to insist that liberty of conscience should be granted them, in
order that they may preserve that which they have had during these past
years, this is never to be thought of in any event." The king always made
free use of the terrible weapon which the Protestant princes of Germany
had placed in his hands. For indeed if it were right that one man,
because possessed of hereditary power over millions of his fellow
creatures, should compel them all to accept the dogmas of Luther or of
Calvin because agreeable to himself, it was difficult to say why another
man, in a similarly elevated position, might not compel his subjects to
accept the creed of Trent, or the doctrines of Mahomet or Confucius. The
Netherlanders were fighting--even more than they knew-for liberty of
conscience, for equality of all religions; not for Moses, nor for
Melancthon; for Henry, Philip, or Pius; while Philip justly urged that no
prince in Christendom permitted license. "Let them well understand," said
his Majesty, "that since others who live in error, hold the opinion that
vassals are to conform to the religion of their master, it is
insufferable that it should be proposed to me that my vassals should have
a different religion from mine--and that too being the true religion,
proved by so many testimonies and miracles, while all others are
deception. This must be arranged with the authority of the commissioners
of the emperor, since it is well understood by them that the vassal is
never to differ from the opinion of his master." Certainly it was worth
an eighty years' war to drive such blasphemous madness as this out of
human heads, whether crowned or shaven.
There was likewise a diet held during the summer of this year, of the
circles of the empire nearest to the Netherlands--Westphalia, Cleves,
Juliers, and Saxony--from which commissioners were deputed both to
Brussels and to the Hague, to complain of the misfortunes suffered by
neutral and neighbouring nations in consequence of the civil war.
They took nothing by their mission to the Duke of Parma. At the Hague the
deputies were heard on the 22nd August, 1590. They complained to the
States-General of "brandschatting" on the border, of the holding of forts
beyond the lines, and of other invasions of neutral territory, of the
cruising of the war-vessels of the States off the shores and on the
rivers, and of their interference with lawful traders. Threats were made
of forcible intervention and reprisals.
The united States replied on the 13th September. Expressing deep regret
that neutral nations should suffer, they pronounced it to be impossible
but that some sparks from the great fire, now desolating their land,
should fly over into their neighbours' ground. The States were fighting
the battle of liberty against slavery, in which the future generations of
Germany, as well as of the Netherlands were interested. They were
combating that horrible institution, the Holy Inquisition. They were
doing their best to strike down the universal monarchy of Spain, which
they described as a bloodthirsty, insatiable, insolent, absolute dominion
of Saracenic, Moorish Christians. They warred with a system which placed
inquisitors on the seats of judges, which made it unlawful to read the
Scriptures, which violated all oaths, suppressed all civic freedom,
trampled, on all laws and customs, raised inordinate taxes by arbitrary
decree, and subjected high and low to indiscriminate murder. Spain had
sworn the destruction of the provinces and their subjugation to her
absolute dominion, in order to carry out her scheme of universal empire.
These were the deeds and designs against which the States were waging
that war, concerning some inconvenient results of which their neighbours,
now happily neutral, were complaining. But the cause of the States was
the cause of humanity itself. This Saracenic, Moorish, universal monarchy
had been seen by Germany to murder, despoil, and trample upon the
Netherlands. It had murdered millions of innocent Indians and Granadians.
It had kept Naples and Milan in abject slavery. It had seized Portugal.
It had deliberately planned and attempted an accursed invasion of England
and Ireland. It had overrun and plundered many cities of the empire. It
had spread a web of secret intrigue about Scotland. At last it was
sending great armies to conquer France and snatch its crown. Poor France
now saw the plans of this Spanish tyranny and bewailed her misery. The
subjects of her lawful king were ordered to rise against him, on account
of religion and conscience. Such holy pretexts were used by these
Saracenic Christians in order to gain possession of that kingdom.
For all these reasons, men should not reproach the inhabitants of the
Netherlands, because seeing the aims of this accursed tyranny, they had
set themselves to resist it. It was contrary to reason to consider them
as disturbers of the general peace, or to hold them guilty of violating
their oaths or their duty to the laws of the holy empire. The
States-General were sure that they had been hitherto faithful and loyal,
and they were resolved to continue in that path.
As members of the holy empire, in part--as of old they were considered to
be--they had rather the right to expect, instead of reproaches,
assistance against the enormous power and inhuman oppression of their
enemies. They had demanded it heretofore by their ambassadors, and they
still continued to claim it. They urged that, according to the laws of
the empire, all foreign soldiers, Spaniards, Saracens, and the like
should be driven out of the limits of the empire. Through these means the
German Highland and the German Netherland might be restored once more to
their old friendship and unity, and might deal with each other again in
amity and commerce.
If, however, such requests could not be granted they at least begged his
electoral highness and the other dukes, lords, and states to put on the
deeds of Netherlanders in this laborious and heavy war the best
interpretation, in order that they might, with the better courage and
resolution, bear those inevitable burthens which were becoming daily
heavier in this task of resistance and self-protection; in order that the
provinces might not be utterly conquered, and serve, with their natural
resources and advantageous situation, as 'sedes et media belli' for the
destruction of neighbouring States and the building up of the
contemplated universal, absolute monarchy.
The United Provinces had been compelled by overpowering necessity to take
up arms. That which had resulted was and remained in 'terminis
defensionis.' Their object was to protect what belonged to them, to
recover that which by force or fraud had been taken from them.
In regard to excesses committed by their troops against neutral
inhabitants on the border, they expressed a strong regret, together with
a disposition to make all proper retribution and to cause all crimes to
be punished.
They alluded to the enormous sins of this nature practised by the enemy
against neutral soil. They recalled to mind that the Spaniards paid their
troops ill or not at all, and that they allowed them to plunder the
innocent and the neutral, while the United States had paid their troops
better wages, and more punctually, than had ever been done by the
greatest potentates of Europe. It was true that the States kept many
cruisers off the coasts and upon the rivers, but these were to protect
their own citizens and friendly traders against pirates and against the
common foe. Germany derived as much benefit from this system as did the
Provinces themselves.
Thus did the States-General, respectfully but resolutely, decline all
proffers of intervention, which, as they were well aware, could only
enure to the benefit of the enemy. Thus did they avoid being entrapped
into negotiations which could only prove the most lamentable of comedies.
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
A pusillanimous peace, always possible at any period
At length the twig was becoming the tree
Being the true religion, proved by so many testimonies
Certainly it was worth an eighty years' war
Chief seafaring nations of the world were already protestant
Conceding it subsequently, after much contestation
Fled from the land of oppression to the land of liberty
German Highland and the German Netherland
Little army of Maurice was becoming the model for Europe
Luxury had blunted the fine instincts of patriotism
Maritime heretics
Portion of these revenues savoured much of black-mail
The divine speciality of a few transitory mortals
The history of the Netherlands is history of liberty
The nation which deliberately carves itself in pieces
They had come to disbelieve in the mystery of kingcraft
Worn nor caused to be worn the collar of the serf