surpass the influence which the Spanish monarchy at that time enjoyed
throughout Europe. No state ventured to enter the arena of contest with
it. France, its most dangerous neighbor, weakened by a destructive war,
and still more by internal factions, which boldly raised their heads
during the feeble government of a child, was advancing rapidly to that
unhappy condition which, for nearly half a century, made it a theatre of
the most enormous crimes and the most fearful calamities. In England
Elizabeth could with difficulty protect her still tottering throne
against the furious storms of faction, and her new church establishment
against the insidious arts of the Romanists. That country still awaited
her mighty call before it could emerge from a humble obscurity, and had
not yet been awakened by the faulty policy of her rival to that vigor
and energy with which it finally overthrew him. The imperial family of
Germany was united with that of Spain by the double ties of blood and
political interest; and the victorious progress of Soliman drew its
attention more to the east than to the west of Europe. Gratitude and
fear secured to Philip the Italian princes, and his creatures ruled the
Conclave. The monarchies of the North still lay in barbarous darkness
and obscurity, or only just began to acquire form and strength, and were
as yet unrecognized in the political system of Europe. The most skilful
generals, numerous armies accustomed to victory, a formidable marine,
and the golden tribute from the West Indies, which now first began to
come in regularly and certainly--what terrible instruments were these in
the firm and steady hand of a talented prince Under such auspicious
stars did King Philip commence his reign.
Before we see him act we must first look hastily into the deep recesses
of his soul, and we shall there find a key to his political life. Joy
and benevolence were wholly wanting in the composition of his character.
His temperament, and the gloomy years of his early childhood, denied him
the former; the latter could not be imparted to him by men who had
renounced the sweetest and most powerful of the social ties. Two ideas,
his own self and what was above that self, engrossed his narrow and
contracted mind. Egotism and religion were the contents and the
title-page of the history of his whole life. He was a king and a
Christian, and was bad in both characters; he never was a man among men,
because he never condescended but only ascended. His belief was dark and
cruel; for his divinity was a being of terror, from whom he had nothing
to hope but everything to fear. To the ordinary man the divinity appears
as a comforter, as a Saviour; before his mind it was set up as an image
of fear, a painful, humiliating check to his human omnipotence. His
veneration for this being was so much the more profound and deeply rooted
the less it extended to other objects. He trembled servilely before God
because God was the only being before whom he had to tremble. Charles V.
was zealous for religion because religion promoted his objects. Philip
was so because he had real faith in it. The former let loose the fire and
the sword upon thousands for the sake of a dogma, while he himself, in
the person of the pope, his captive, derided the very doctrine for which
he had sacrificed so much human blood. It was only with repugnance and
scruples of conscience that Philip resolved on the most just war against
the pope, and resigned all the fruits of his victory as a penitent
malefactor surrenders his booty. The Emperor was cruel from calculation,
his son from impulse. The first possessed a strong and enlightened
spirit, and was, perhaps, so much the worse as a man; the second was
narrow-minded and weak, but the more upright.
Both, however, as it appears to me, might have been better men than they
actually were, and still, on the whole, have acted on the very same
principles. What we lay to the charge of personal character of an
individual is very often the infirmity, the necessary imperfection of
universal human nature. A monarchy so great and so powerful was too
great a trial for human pride, and too mighty a charge for human power.
To combine universal happiness with the highest liberty of the
individual is the sole prerogative of infinite intelligence, which
diffuses itself omnipresently over all. But what resource has man
when placed in the position of omnipotence? Man can only aid his
circumscribed powers by classification; like the naturalist, he
establishes certain marks and rules by which to facilitate his own
feeble survey of the whole, to which all individualities must conform.
All this is accomplished for him by religion. She finds hope and fear
planted in every human breast; by making herself mistress of these
emotions, and directing their affections to a single object, she
virtually transforms millions of independent beings into one uniform
abstract. The endless diversity of the human will no longer embarrasses
its ruler--now there exists one universal good, one universal evil,
which he can bring forward or withdraw at pleasure, and which works in
unison with himself even when absent. Now a boundary is established
before which liberty must halt; a venerable, hallowed line, towards
which all the various conflicting inclinations of the will must finally
converge. The common aim of despotism and of priestcraft is uniformity,
and uniformity is a necessary expedient of human poverty and
imperfection. Philip became a greater despot than his father because
his mind was more contracted, or, in other words, he was forced to
adhere the more scrupulously to general rules the less capable he was of
descending to special and individual exceptions. What conclusion could
we draw from these principles but that Philip II. could not possibly
have any higher object of his solicitude than uniformity, both in
religion and in laws, because without these he could not reign?
And yet he would have shown more mildness and forbearance in his
government if he had entered upon it earlier. In the judgment which is
usually formed of this prince one circumstance does not appear to be
sufficiently considered in the history of his mind and heart, which,
however, in all fairness, ought to be duly weighed. Philip counted
nearly thirty years when he ascended the Spanish throne, and the early
maturity of his understanding had anticipated the period of his
majority. A mind like his, conscious of its powers, and only too early
acquainted with his high expectations, could not brook the yoke of
childish subjection in which he stood; the superior genius of the
father, and the absolute authority of the autocrat, must have weighed
heavily on the self-satisfied pride of such a son. The share which the
former allowed him in the government of the empire was just important
enough to disengage his mind from petty passions and to confirm the
austere gravity of his character, but also meagre enough to kindle a
fiercer longing for unlimited power. When he actually became possessed
of uncontrolled authority it had lost the charm of novelty. The sweet
intoxication of a young monarch in the sudden and early possession of
supreme power; that joyous tumult of emotions which opens the soul to
every softer sentiment, and to which humanity has owed so many of the
most valuable and the most prized of its institutions; this pleasing
moment had for him long passed by, or had never existed. His character
was already hardened when fortune put him to this severe test, and his
settled principles withstood the collision of occasional emotion. He had
had time, during fifteen years, to prepare himself for the change; and
instead of youthful dallying with the external symbols of his new
station, or of losing the morning of his government in the intoxication
of an idle vanity, he remained composed and serious enough to enter at
once on the full possession of his power so as to revenge himself
through the most extensive employment of it for its having been so long
withheld from him.
THE TRIBUNAL OF THE INQUISITION
Philip II. no sooner saw himself, through the peace of Chateau-Cambray,
in undisturbed enjoyment of his immense territory than he turned his
whole attention to the great work of purifying religion, and verified
the fears of his Netherlandish subjects. The ordinances which his
father had caused to be promulgated against heretics were renewed in all
their rigor, and terrible tribunals, to whom nothing but the name of
inquisition was wanting, were appointed to watch over their execution.
But his plan appeared to him scarcely more than half-fulfilled so long
as he could not transplant into these countries the Spanish Inquisition
in its perfect form--a design in which the Emperor had already suffered
shipwreck.
The Spanish Inquisition is an institution of a new and peculiar kind,
which finds no prototype in the whole course of time, and admits of
comparison with no ecclesiastical or civil tribunal. Inquisition had
existed from the time when reason meddled with what is holy, and from
the very commencement of scepticism and innovation; but it was in the
middle of the thirteenth century, after some examples of apostasy had
alarmed the hierarchy, that Innocent III. first erected for it a
peculiar tribunal, and separated, in an unnatural manner, ecclesiastical
superintendence and instruction from its judicial and retributive
office. In order to be the more sure that no human sensibilities or
natural tenderness should thwart the stern severity of its statutes, he
took it out of the hands of the bishops and secular clergy, who, by the
ties of civil life, were still too much attached to humanity for his
purpose, and consigned it to those of the monks, a half-denaturalized
race of beings who had abjured the sacred feelings, of nature, and were
the servile tools of the Roman See. The Inquisition was received in
Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and France; a Franciscan monk sat as
judge in the terrible court, which passed sentence on the Templars. A
few states succeeded either in totally excluding or else in subjecting
it to civil authority. The Netherlands had remained free from it until
the government of Charles V.; their bishops exercised the spiritual
censorship, and in extraordinary cases reference was made to foreign
courts of inquisition; by the French provinces to that of Paris, by the
Germans to that of Cologne.
But the Inquisition which we are here speaking of came from the west of
Europe, and was of a different origin and form. The last Moorish throne
in Granada had fallen in the fifteenth century, and the false faith of
the Saracens had finally succumbed before the fortunes of Christianity.
But the gospel was still new, and but imperfectly established in this
youngest of Christian kingdoms, and in the confused mixture of
heterogeneous laws and manners the religions had become mixed. It is
true the sword of persecution had driven many thousand families to
Africa, but a far larger portion, detained by the love of climate and
home, purchased remission from this dreadful necessity by a show of
conversion, and continued at Christian altars to serve Mohammed and
Moses. So long as prayers were offered towards Mecca, Granada was not
subdued; so long as the new Christian, in the retirement of his house,
became again a Jew or a Moslem, he was as little secured to the throne
as to the Romish See. It was no longer deemed sufficient to compel a
perverse people to adopt the exterior forms of a new faith, or to wed it
to the victorious church by the weak bands of ceremonials; the object
now was to extirpate the roots of an old religion, and to subdue an
obstinate bias which, by the slow operation of centuries, had been
implanted in their manners, their language, and their laws, and by the
enduring influence of a paternal soil and sky was still maintained in
its full extent and vigor.
If the church wished to triumph completely over the opposing worship,
and to secure her new conquest beyond all chance of relapse, it was
indispensable that she should undermine the foundation itself on which
the old religion was built. It was necessary to break to pieces the
entire form of moral character to which it was so closely and intimately
attached. It was requisite to loosen its secret roots from the hold
they had taken in. the innermost depths of the soul; to extinguish all
traces of it, both in domestic life and in the civil world; to cause all
recollection of it to perish; and, if possible, to destroy the very
susceptibility for its impressions. Country and family, conscience and
honor, the sacred feelings of society and of nature, are ever the first
and immediate ties to which religion attaches itself; from these it
derives while it imparts strength. This connection was now to be
dissolved; the old religion was violently to be dissevered from the holy
feelings of nature, even at the expense of the sanctity itself of these
emotions. Thus arose that Inquisition which, to distinguish it from the
more humane tribunals of the same name, we usually call the Spanish.
Its founder was Cardinal Ximenes, a Dominican monk. Torquemada was the
first who ascended its bloody throne, who established its statutes, and
forever cursed his order with this bequest. Sworn to the degradation of
the understanding and the murder of intellect, the instruments it
employed were terror and infamy. Every evil passion was in its pay; its
snare was set in every joy of life. Solitude itself was not safe from
it; the fear of its omnipresence fettered the freedom of the soul in its
inmost and deepest recesses. It prostrated all the instincts of human
nature before it yielded all the ties which otherwise man held most
sacred. A heretic forfeited all claims upon his race; the most trivial
infidelity to his mother church divested him of the rights of his
nature. A modest doubt in the infallibility of the pope met with the
punishment of parricide and the infamy of sodomy; its sentences
resembled the frightful corruption of the plague, which turns the most
healthy body into rapid putrefaction. Even the inanimate things
belonging to a heretic were accursed. No destiny could snatch the
victim of the Inquisition from its sentence. Its decrees were carried
in force on corpses and on pictures, and the grave itself was no asylum
from its tremendous arm. The presumptuous arrogance of its decrees
could only be surpassed by the inhumanity which executed them. By
coupling the ludicrous with the terrible, and by amusing the eye with
the strangeness of its processions, it weakened compassion by the
gratification of another feeling; it drowned sympathy in derision and
contempt. The delinquent was conducted with solemn pomp to the place of
execution, a blood-red flag was displayed before him, the universal
clang of all the bells accompanied the procession. First came the
priests, in the robes of the Mass and singing a sacred hymn; next
followed the condemned sinner, clothed in a yellow vest, covered with
figures of black devils. On his head he wore a paper cap, surmounted by
a human figure, around which played lambent flames of fire, and ghastly
demons flitted. The image of the crucified Saviour was carried before,
but turned away from the eternally condemned sinner, for whom salvation
was no longer available. His mortal body belonged to the material fire,
his immortal soul to the flames of bell. A gag closed his mouth, and
prevented him from alleviating his pain by lamentations, from awakening
compassion by his affecting tale, and from divulging the secrets of the
holy tribunal. He was followed by the clergy in festive robes, by the
magistrates, and the nobility; the fathers who had been his judges
closed the awful procession. It seemed like a solemn funeral
procession, but on looking for the corpse on its way to the grave,
behold! it was a living body whose groans are now to afford such
shuddering entertainment to the people. The executions were generally
held on the high festivals, for which a number of such unfortunate
sufferers were reserved in the prisons of the holy house, in order to
enhance the rejoicing by the multitude of the victims, and on these
occasions the king himself was usually present. He sat with uncovered
head, on a lower chair than that of the Grand Inquisitor, to whom, on
such occasions, he yielded precedence; who, then, would not tremble
before a tribunal at which majesty must humble itself?
The great revolution in the church accomplished by Luther and Calvin
renewed the causes to which this tribunal owed its first origin; and
that which, at its commencement, was invented to clear the petty kingdom
of Granada from the feeble remnant of Saracens and Jews was now required
for the whole of Christendom. All the Inquisitions in Portugal, Italy,
Germany, and France adopted the form of the Spanish; it followed
Europeans to the Indies, and established in Goa a fearful tribunal,
whose inhuman proceedings make us shudder even at the bare recital.
Wherever it planted its foot devastation followed; but in no part of the
world did it rage so violently as in Spain. The victims are forgotten
whom it immolated; the human race renews itself, and the lands, too,
flourish again which it has devastated and depopulated by its fury; but
centuries will elapse before its traces disappear from the Spanish
character. A generous and enlightened nation has been stopped by it on
its road to perfection; it has banished genius from a region where it
was indigenous, and a stillness like that which hangs over the grave has
been left in the mind of a people who, beyond most others of our world,
were framed for happiness and enjoyment.
The first Inquisitor in Brabant was appointed by Charles V. in the year
1522. Some priests were associated with him as coadjutors; but he
himself was a layman. After the death of Adrian VI., his successor,
Clement VII., appointed three Inquisitors for all the Netherlands; and
Paul III. again reduced them to two, which number continued until the
commencement of the troubles. In the year 1530, with the aid and
approbation of the states, the edicts against heretics were promulgated,
which formed the foundation of all that followed, and in which, also,
express mention is made of the Inquisition. In the year 1550, in
consequence of the rapid increase of sects, Charles V. was under the
necessity of reviving and enforcing these edicts, and it was on this
occasion that the town of Antwerp opposed the establishment of the
Inquisition, and obtained an exemption from its jurisdiction. But the
spirit of the Inquisition in the Netherlands, in accordance with the
genius of the country, was more humane than in Spain, and as yet had
never been administered by a foreigner, much less by a Dominican. The
edicts which were known to everybody served it as the rule of its
decisions. On this very account it was less obnoxious; because, however
severe its sentence, it did not appear a tool of arbitrary power, and it
did not, like the Spanish Inquisition, veil itself in secrecy.
Philip, however, was desirous of introducing the latter tribunal into
the Netherlands, since it appeared to him the instrument best adapted to
destroy the spirit of this people, and to prepare them for a despotic
government. He began, therefore, by increasing the rigor of the
religious ordinances of his father; by gradually extending the power of
the inquisitors; by making the proceedings more arbitrary, and more
independent of the civil jurisdiction. The tribunal soon wanted little
more than the name and the Dominicans to resemble in every point the
Spanish Inquisition. Bare suspicion was enough to snatch a citizen from
the bosom of public tranquillity, and from his domestic circle; and the
weakest evidence was a sufficient justification for the use of the rack.
Whoever fell into its abyss returned no more to the world. All the
benefits of the laws ceased for him; the maternal care of justice no
longer noticed him; beyond the pale of his former world malice and
stupidity judged him according to laws which were never intended for
man. The delinquent never knew his accuser, and very seldom his crime,
--a flagitious, devilish artifice which constrained the unhappy victim
to guess at his error, and in the delirium of the rack, or in the
weariness of a long living interment, to acknowledge transgressions
which, perhaps, had never been committed, or at least had never come
to the knowledge of his judges. The goods of the condemned were
confiscated, and the informer encouraged by letters of grace and
rewards. No privilege, no civil jurisdiction was valid against the holy
power; the secular arm lost forever all whom that power had once
touched. Its only share in the judicial duties of the latter was to
execute its sentences with humble submissiveness. The consequences of
such an institution were, of necessity, unnatural and horrible; the
whole temporal happiness, the life itself, of an innocent man was at
the mercy of any worthless fellow. Every secret enemy, every envious
person, had now the perilous temptation of an unseen and unfailing
revenge. The security of property, the sincerity of intercourse were
gone; all the ties of interest were dissolved; all of blood and of
affection were irreparably broken. An infectious distrust envenomed
social life; the dreaded presence of a spy terrified the eye from
seeing, and choked the voice in the midst of utterance. No one believed
in the existence of an honest man, or passed for one himself. Good
name, the ties of country, brotherhood, even oaths, and all that man
holds sacred, were fallen in estimation. Such was the destiny to which
a great and flourishing commercial town was subjected, where one hundred
thousand industrious men had been brought together by the single tie of
mutual confidence,--every one indispensable to his neighbor, yet every
one distrusted and distrustful,--all attracted by the spirit of gain,
and repelled from each other by fear,--all the props of society torn
away, where social union was the basis of all life and all existence.
OTHER ENCROACHMENTS ON THE CONSTITUTION OF THE NETHERLANDS.
No wonder if so unnatural a tribunal, which had proved intolerable even
to the more submissive spirit of the Spaniard, drove a free state to
rebellion. But the terror which it inspired was increased by the
Spanish troops, which, even after the restoration of peace, were kept in
the country, and, in violation of the constitution, garrisoned border
towns. Charles V. had been forgiven for this introduction of foreign
troops so long as the necessity of it was evident, and his good
intentions were less distrusted. But now men saw in these troops only
the alarming preparations of oppression and the instruments of a
detested hierarchy. Moreover, a considerable body of cavalry, composed
of natives, and fully adequate for the protection of the country, made
these foreigners superfluous. The licentiousness and rapacity, too,
of the Spaniards, whose pay was long in arrear, and who indemnified
themselves at the expense of the citizens, completed the exasperation of
the people, and drove the lower orders to despair. Subsequently, when
the general murmur induced the government to move them from the
frontiers and transport them into the islands of Zealand, where ships
were prepared for their deportation, their excesses were carried to such
a pitch that the inhabitants left off working at the embankments, and
preferred to abandon their native country to the fury of the sea rather
than to submit any longer to the wanton brutality of these lawless
bands.
Philip, indeed, would have wished to retain these Spaniards in the
country, in order by their presence to give weight to his edicts,
and to support the innovations which he had resolved to make in the
constitution of the Netherlands. He regarded them as a guarantee for
the submission of the nation and as a chain by which he held it captive.
Accordingly, he left no expedient untried to evade the persevering
importunity of the states, who demanded the withdrawal of these troops;
and for this end he exhausted all the resources of chicanery and
persuasion. At one time he pretended to dread a sudden invasion by
France, although, torn by furious factions, that country could scarce
support itself against a domestic enemy; at another time they were, he
said, to receive his son, Don Carlos, on the frontiers; whom, however,
he never intended should leave Castile. Their maintenance should not be
a burden to the nation; he himself would disburse all their expenses
from his private purse. In order to detain them with the more
appearance of reason he purposely kept back from them their arrears of
pay; for otherwise he would assuredly have preferred them to the troops
of the country, whose demands he fully satisfied. To lull the fears of
the nation, and to appease the general discontent, he offered the chief
command of these troops to the two favorites of the people, the Prince
of Orange and Count Egmont. Both, however, declined his offer, with the
noble-minded declaration that they could never make up their minds to
serve contrary to the laws of the country. The more desire the king
showed to have his Spaniards in the country the more obstinately the
states insisted on their removal. In the following Diet at Ghent he was
compelled, in the very midst of his courtiers, to listen to republican
truth. “Why are foreign hands needed for our defence?” demanded the
Syndic of Ghent. “Is it that the rest of the world should consider us
too stupid, or too cowardly, to protect ourselves? Why have we made
peace if the burdens of war are still to oppress us? In war necessity
enforced endurance; in peace our patience is exhausted by its burdens.
Or shall we be able to keep in order these licentious bands which thine
own presence could not restrain? Here, Cambray and Antwerp cry for
redress; there, Thionville and Marienburg lie waste; and, surely, thou
hast not bestowed upon us peace that our cities should become deserts,
as they necessarily must if thou freest them not from these destroyers?
Perhaps then art anxious to guard against surprise from our neighbors?
This precaution is wise; but the report of their preparations will long
outrun their hostilities. Why incur a heavy expense to engage
foreigners who will not care for a country which they must leave
to-morrow? Hast thou not still at thy command the same brave
Netherlanders to whom thy father entrusted the republic in far more
troubled times? Why shouldest thou now doubt their loyalty, which, to
thy ancestors, they have preserved for so many centuries inviolate?
Will not they be sufficient to sustain the war long enough to give time
to thy confederates to join their banners, or to thyself to send succor
from the neighboring country?” This language was too new to the king,
and its truth too obvious for him to be able at once to reply to it.
“I, also, am a foreigner,” he at length exclaimed, “and they would like,
I suppose, to expel me from the country!” At the same time he descended
from the throne, and left the assembly; but the speaker was pardoned for
his boldness. Two days afterwards he sent a message to the states that
if he had been apprised earlier that these troops were a burden to them
he would have immediately made preparation to remove them with himself
to Spain. Now it was too late, for they would not depart unpaid; but he
pledged them his most sacred promise that they should not be oppressed
with this burden more than four months. Nevertheless, the troops
remained in this country eighteen months instead of four; and would not,
perhaps, even then have left it so soon if the exigencies of the state
had not made their presence indispensable in another part of the world.
The illegal appointment of foreigners to the most important offices of
the country afforded further occasion of complaint against the
government. Of all the privileges of the provinces none was so
obnoxious to the Spaniards as that which excluded strangers from office,
and none they had so zealously sought to abrogate. Italy, the two
Indies, and all the provinces of this vast Empire, were indeed open to
their rapacity and ambition; but from the richest of them all an
inexorable fundamental law excluded them. They artfully persuaded their
sovereign that his power in these countries would never be firmly
established so long as he could not employ foreigners as his
instruments. The Bishop of Arras, a Burgundian by birth, had already
been illegally forced upon the Flemings; and now the Count of Feria, a
Castilian, was to receive a seat and voice in the council of state. But
this attempt met with a bolder resistance than the king’s flatterers had
led him to expect, and his despotic omnipotence was this time wrecked by
the politic measures of William of Orange and the firmness of the
states.
WILLIAM OF ORANGE AND COUNT EGMONT.
By such measures, did Philip usher in his government of the Netherlands,
and such were the grievances of the nation when he was preparing to
leave them. He had long been impatient to quit a country where he was a
stranger, where there was so much that opposed his secret wishes, and
where his despotic mind found such undaunted monitors to remind him of
the laws of freedom. The peace with France at last rendered a longer
stay unnecessary; the armaments of Soliman required his presence in the
south, and the Spaniards also began to miss their long-absent king. The
choice of a supreme Stadtholder for the Netherlands was the principal
matter which still detained him. Emanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy, had
filled this place since the resignation of Mary, Queen of Hungary,
which, however, so long as the king himself was present, conferred more
honor than real influence. His absence would make it the most important
office in the monarchy, and the most splendid aim for the ambition of a
subject. It had now become vacant through the departure of the duke,
whom the peace of Chateau-Cambray had restored to his dominions. The
almost unlimited power with which the supreme Statholder would be
entrusted, the capacity and experience which so extensive and delicate
an appointment required, but, especially, the daring designs which the
government had in contemplation against the freedom of the country, the
execution of which would devolve on him, necessarily embarrassed the
choice. The law, which excluded all foreigners from office, made an
exception in the case of the supreme Stadtholder. As he could not be at
the same time a native of all the provinces, it was allowable for him
not to belong to any one of them; for the jealousy of the man of Brabant
would concede no greater right to a Fleming, whose home was half a mile
from his frontier, than to a Sicilian, who lived in another soil and
under a different sky. But here the interests of the crown itself
seemed to favor the appointment of a native. A Brabanter, for instance,
who enjoyed the full confidence of his countrymen if he were a traitor
would have half accomplished his treason before a foreign governor could
have overcome the mistrust with which his most insignificant measures
would be watched. If the government should succeed in carrying through
its designs in one province, the opposition of the rest would then be a
temerity, which it would be justified in punishing in the severest
manner. In the common whole which the provinces now formed their
individual constitutions were, in a measure, destroyed; the obedience of
one would be a law for all, and the privilege, which one knew not how to
preserve, was lost for the rest.
Among the Flemish nobles who could lay claim to the Chief
Stadtholdership, the expectations and wishes of the nation were divided
between Count Egmont and the Prince of Orange, who were alike qualified
for this high dignity by illustrious birth and personal merits, and by
an equal share in the affections of the people. Their high rank placed
them both near to the throne, and if the choice of the monarch was to
rest on the worthiest it must necessarily fall upon one of these two.
As, in the course of our history, we shall often have occasion to
mention both names, the reader cannot be too early made acquainted with
their characters.
William I., Prince of Orange, was descended from the princely German
house of Nassau, which had already flourished eight centuries, had long
disputed the preeminence with Austria, and had given one Emperor to
Germany. Besides several extensive domains in the Netherlands, which
made him a citizen of this republic and a vassal of the Spanish
monarchy, he possessed also in France the independent princedom of
Orange. William was born in the year 1533, at Dillenburg, in the
country of Nassau, of a Countess Stolberg. His father, the Count of
Nassau, of the same name, had embraced the Protestant religion, and
caused his son also to be educated in it; but Charles V., who early
formed an attachment for the boy, took him when quite young to his
court, and had him brought up in the Romish church. This monarch, who
already in the child discovered the future greatness of the man, kept
him nine years about his person, thought him worthy of his personal
instruction in the affairs of government, and honored him with a
confidence beyond his years. He alone was permitted to remain in the
Emperor’s presence when he gave audience to foreign ambassadors--a proof
that, even as a boy, he had already begun to merit the surname of the
Silent. The Emperor was not ashamed even to confess openly, on one
occasion, that this young man had often made suggestions which would
have escaped his own sagacity. What expectations might not be formed of
the intellect of a man who was disciplined in such a school.
William was twenty-three years old when Charles abdicated the
government, and had already received from the latter two public marks of
the highest esteem. The Emperor had entrusted to him, in preference to
all the nobles of his court, the honorable office of conveying to his
brother Ferdinand the imperial crown. When the Duke of Savoy, who
commanded the imperial army in the Netherlands, was called away to Italy
by the exigency of his domestic affairs, the Emperor appointed him
commander-in-chief against the united representations of his military
council, who declared it altogether hazardous to oppose so young a tyro
in arms to the experienced generals of France. Absent, and
unrecommended by any, he was preferred by the monarch to the
laurel-crowned band of his heroes, and the result gave him no cause
to repent of his choice.
The marked favor which the prince had enjoyed with the father was in
itself a sufficient ground for his exclusion from the confidence of the
son. Philip, it appears, had laid it down for himself as a rule to
avenge the wrongs of the Spanish nobility for the preference which
Charles V. had on all important occasions shown to his Flemish nobles.
Still stronger, however, were the secret motives which alienated him
from the prince. William of Orange was one of those lean and pale men
who, according to Caesar’s words, “sleep not at night, and think too
much,” and before whom the most fearless spirits quail.
The calm tranquillity of a never-varying countenance concealed a busy,
ardent soul, which never ruffled even the veil behind which it worked,
and was alike inaccessible to artifice and love; a versatile,
formidable, indefatigable mind, soft, and ductile enough to be
instantaneously moulded into all forms; guarded enough to lose itself in
none; and strong enough to endure every vicissitude of fortune. A
greater master in reading and in winning men’s hearts never existed than
William. Not that, after the fashion of courts, his lips avowed a
servility to which his proud heart gave the lie; but because he was
neither too sparing nor too lavish of the marks of his esteem, and
through a skilful economy of the favors which mostly bind men, he
increased his real stock in them. The fruits of his meditation were as
perfect as they were slowly formed; his resolves were as steadily and
indomitably accomplished as they were long in maturing. No obstacles
could defeat the plan which he had once adopted as the best; no
accidents frustrated it, for they all had been foreseen before they
actually occurred. High as his feelings were raised above terror and
joy, they were, nevertheless, subject in the same degree to fear; but
his fear was earlier than the danger, and he was calm in tumult because
he had trembled in repose. William lavished his gold with a profuse
hand, but he was a niggard of his movements. The hours of repast were
the sole hours of relaxation, but these were exclusively devoted to his
heart, his family, and his friends; this the modest deduction he allowed
himself from the cares of his country. Here his brow was cleared with
wine, seasoned by temperance and a cheerful disposition; and no serious
cares were permitted to enter this recess of enjoyment. His household
was magnificent; the splendor of a numerous retinue, the number and
respectability of those who surrounded his person, made his habitation
resemble the court of a sovereign prince. A sumptuous hospitality, that
master-spell of demagogues, was the goddess of his palace. Foreign
princes and ambassadors found here a fitting reception and
entertainment, which surpassed all that luxurious Belgium could
elsewhere offer. A humble submissiveness to the government bought off
the blame and suspicion which this munificence might have thrown on his
intentions. But this liberality secured for him the affections of the
people, whom nothing gratified so much as to see the riches of their
country displayed before admiring foreigners, and the high pinnacle of
fortune on which he stood enhanced the value of the courtesy to which he
condescended. No one, probably, was better fitted by nature for the
leader of a conspiracy than William the Silent. A comprehensive and
intuitive glance into the past, the present, and the future; the talent
for improving every favorable opportunity; a commanding influence over
the minds of men, vast schemes which only when viewed from a distance
show form and symmetry; and bold calculations which were wound up in the
long chain of futurity; all these faculties he possessed, and kept,
moreover, under the control of that free and enlightened virtue which
moves with firm step even on the very edge of the abyss.
A man like this might at other times have remained unfathomed by his
whole generation; but not so by the distrustful spirit of the age in
which he lived. Philip II. saw quickly and deeply into a character
which, among good ones, most resembled his own. If he had not seen
through him so clearly his distrust of a man, in whom were united nearly
all the qualities which he prized highest and could best appreciate,
would be quite inexplicable. But William had another and still more
important point of contact with Philip II. He had learned his policy
from the same master, and had become, it was to be feared, a more apt
scholar. Not by making Machiavelli’s ‘Prince’ his study, but by having
enjoyed the living instruction of a monarch who reduced the book to
practice, had he become versed in the perilous arts by which thrones
rise and fall. In him Philip had to deal with an antagonist who was
armed against his policy, and who in a good cause could also command the
resources of a bad one. And it was exactly this last circumstance which
accounts for his having hated this man so implacably above all others of
his day, and his having had so supernatural a dread of him.
The suspicion which already attached to the prince was increased by the
doubts which were entertained of his religious bias. So long as the
Emperor, his benefactor, lived, William believed in the pope; but it was
feared, with good ground, that the predilection for the reformed
religion, which had been imparted into his young heart, had never
entirely left it. Whatever church he may at certain periods of his life
have preferred each might console itself with the reflection that none
other possessed him more entirely. In later years he went over to
Calvinism with almost as little scruple as in his early childhood he
deserted the Lutheran profession for the Romish. He defended the rights
of the Protestants rather than their opinions against Spanish
oppression; not their faith, but their wrongs, had made him their
brother.
These general grounds for suspicion appeared to be justified by a
discovery of his real intentions which accident had made. William had
remained in France as hostage for the peace of Chateau-Cambray, in
concluding which he had borne a part; and here, through the imprudence
of Henry II., who imagined he spoke with a confidant of the King of
Spain, he became acquainted with a secret plot which the French and
Spanish courts had formed against Protestants of both kingdoms. The
prince hastened to communicate this important discovery to his friends
in Brussels, whom it so nearly concerned, and the letters which he
exchanged on the subject fell, unfortunately, into the hands of the King
of Spain. Philip was less surprised at this decisive disclosure of
William’s sentiments than incensed at the disappointment of his scheme;
and the Spanish nobles, who had never forgiven the prince that moment,
when in the last act of his life the greatest of Emperors leaned upon
his shoulders, did not neglect this favorable opportunity of finally
ruining, in the good opinion of their king, the betrayer of a state
secret.
Of a lineage no less noble than that of William was Lamoral, Count
Egmont and Prince of Gavre, a descendant of the Dukes of Gueldres, whose
martial courage had wearied out the arms of Austria. His family was
highly distinguished in the annals of the country; one of his ancestors,
had, under Maximilian, already filled the office of Stadtholder over
Holland. Egmont’s marriage with the Duchess Sabina of Bavaria reflected
additional lustre on the splendor of his birth, and made him powerful
through the greatness of this alliance. Charles V. had, in the year
1516, conferred on him at Utrecht the order of the Golden Fleece; the
wars of this Emperor were the school of his military genius, and the
battle of St. Quentin and Gravelines made him the hero of his age.
Every blessing of peace, for which a commercial people feel most
grateful, brought to mind the remembrance of the victory by which it was
accelerated, and Flemish pride, like a fond mother, exulted over the
illustrious son of their country, who had filled all Europe with
admiration. Nine children who grew up under the eyes of their
fellow-citizens, multiplied and drew closer the ties between him and his
fatherland, and the people’s grateful affection for the father was kept
alive by the sight of those who were dearest to him. Every appearance
of Egmont in public was a triumphal procession; every eye which was
fastened upon him recounted his history; his deeds lived in the plaudits
of his companions-in-arms; at the games of chivalry mothers pointed him
out to their children. Affability, a noble and courteous demeanor, the
amiable virtues of chivalry, adorned and graced his merits. His liberal
soul shone forth on his open brow; his frank-heartedness managed his
secrets no better than his benevolence did his estate, and a thought was
no sooner his than it was the property of all. His religion was gentle
and humane, but not very enlightened, because it derived its light from
the heart and not from, his understanding. Egmont possessed more of
conscience than of fixed principles; his head had not given him a code
of its own, but had merely learnt it by rote; the mere name of any
action, therefore, was often with him sufficient for its condemnation.
In his judgment men were wholly bad or wholly good, and had not
something bad or something good; in this system of morals there was no
middle term between vice and virtue; and consequently a single good
trait often decided his opinion of men. Egmont united all the eminent
qualities which form the hero; he was a better soldier than the Prince
of Orange, but far inferior to him as a statesman; the latter saw the
world as it really was; Egmont viewed it in the magic mirror of an
imagination that embellished all that it reflected. Men, whom fortune
has surprised with a reward for which they can find no adequate ground
in their actions, are, for the most part, very apt to forget the
necessary connection between cause and effect, and to insert in the
natural consequences of things a higher miraculous power to which, as
Caesar to his fortune, they at last insanely trust. Such a character
was Egmont. Intoxicated with the idea of his own merits, which the love
and gratitude of his fellow-citizens had exaggerated, he staggered on in
this sweet reverie as in a delightful world of dreams. He feared not,
because he trusted to the deceitful pledge which destiny had given him
of her favor, in the general love of the people; and he believed in its
justice because he himself was prosperous. Even the most terrible
experience of Spanish perfidy could not afterwards eradicate this
confidence from his soul, and on the scaffold itself his latest feeling
was hope. A tender fear for his family kept his patriotic courage
fettered by lower duties. Because he trembled for property and life he
could not venture much for the republic. William of Orange broke with
the throne because its arbitrary power was offensive to his pride;
Egmont was vain, and therefore valued the favors of the monarch. The
former was a citizen of the world; Egmont had never been more than a
Fleming.
Philip II. still stood indebted to the hero of St. Quentin, and the
supreme stadtholdership of the Netherlands appeared the only appropriate
reward for such great services. Birth and high station, the voice of
the nation and personal abilities, spoke as loudly for Egmont as for
Orange; and if the latter was to be passed by it seemed that the former
alone could supplant him.
Two such competitors, so equal in merit, might have embarrassed Philip
in his choice if he had ever seriously thought of selecting either of
them for the appointment. But the pre-eminent qualities by which they
supported their claim to this office were the very cause of their
rejection; and it was precisely the ardent desire of the nation for
their election to it that irrevocably annulled their title to the
appointment. Philip’s purpose would not be answered by a stadtholder in
the Netherlands who could command the good-will and the energies of the
people. Egmont’s descent from the Duke of Gueldres made him an
hereditary foe of the house of Spain, and it seemed impolitic to place
the supreme power in the hands of a man to whom the idea might occur of
revenging on the son of the oppressor the oppression of his ancestor.
The slight put on their favorites could give no just offence either to
the nation or to themselves, for it might be pretended that the king
passed over both because he would not show a preference to either.
The disappointment of his hopes of gaining the regency did not deprive
the Prince of Orange of all expectation of establishing more firmly his
influence in the Netherlands. Among the other candidates for this
office was also Christina, Duchess of Lorraine, and aunt of the king,
who, as mediatrix of the peace of Chateau-Cambray, had rendered
important service to the crown. William aimed at the hand of her
daughter, and he hoped to promote his suit by actively interposing his
good offices for the mother; but he did not reflect that through this
very intercession he ruined her cause. The Duchess Christina was
rejected, not so much for the reason alleged, namely, the dependence of
her territories on France made her an object of suspicion to the Spanish
court, as because she was acceptable to the people of the Netherlands
and the Prince of Orange.
MARGARET OF PARMA REGENT OF THE NETHERLANDS.
While the general expectation was on the stretch as to whom the fature
destines of the provinces would be committed, there appeared on the
frontiers of the country the Duchess Margaret of Parma, having been
summoned by the king from Italy to assume the government.
Margaret was a natural daughter of Charles V. and of a noble Flemish
lady named Vangeest, and born in 1522.
Out of regard for the honor of her mother’s house she was at first
educated in obscurity; but her mother, who possessed more vanity than
honor, was not very anxious to preserve the secret of her origin, and a
princely education betrayed the daughter of the Emperor. While yet a
child she was entrusted to the Regent Margaret, her great-aunt, to be
brought up at Brussels under her eye. This guardian she lost in her
eighth year, and the care of her education devolved on Queen Mary of
Hungary, the successor of Margaret in the regency. Her father had
already affianced her, while yet in her fourth year, to a Prince of
Ferrara; but this alliance being subsequently dissolved, she was
betrothed to Alexander de Medicis, the new Duke of Florence, which
marriage was, after the victorious return of the Emperor from Africa,
actually consummated in Naples. In the first year of this unfortunate
union, a violent death removed from her a husband who could not love
her, and for the third time her hand was disposed of to serve the policy
of her father. Octavius Farnese, a prince of thirteen years of age and
nephew of Paul III., obtained, with her person, the Duchies of Parma and
Piacenza as her portion. Thus, by a strange destiny, Margaret at the
age of maturity was contracted to a boy, as in the years of infancy she
had been sold to a man. Her disposition, which was anything but
feminine, made this last alliance still more unnatural, for her taste
and inclinations were masculine, and the whole tenor of her life belied
her sex. After the example of her instructress, the Queen of Hungary,
and her great-aunt, the Duchess Mary of Burgundy, who met her death in
this favorite sport, she was passionately fond of hunting, and had
acquired in this pursuit such bodily vigor that few men were better able
to undergo its hardships and fatigues.
Her gait itself was so devoid of grace that one was far more tempted to
take her for a disguised man than for a masculine woman; and Nature,
whom she had derided by thus transgressing the limits of her sex,
revenged itself finally upon her by a disease peculiar to men--the gout.
These unusual qualities were crowned by a monkish superstition which was
infused into her mind by Ignatius Loyola, her confessor and teacher.
Among the charitable works and penances with which she mortified her
vanity, one of the most remarkable was that, during Passion-Week she
yearly washed, with her own hands, the feet of a number of poor men (who
were most strictly forbidden to cleanse themselves beforehand), waited
on them at table like a servant, and sent them away with rich presents.
Nothing more is requisite than this last feature in her character to
account for the preference which the king gave her over all her rivals;
but his choice was at the same time justified by excellent reasons of
state. Margaret was born and also educated in the Netherlands. She had
spent her early youth among the people, and had acquired much of their
national manners. Two regents (Duchess Margaret and Queen Mary of
Hungary), under whose eyes she had grown up, had gradually initiated her
into the maxims by which this peculiar people might be most easily
governed; and they would also serve her as models. She did not want
either in talents; and possessed, moreover, a particular turn for
business, which she had acquired from her instructors, and had
afterwards carried to greater perfection in the Italian school. The
Netherlands had been for a number of years accustomed to female
government; and Philip hoped, perhaps, that the sharp iron of tyranny
which he was about to use against them would cut more gently if wielded
by the hands of a woman. Some regard for his father, who at the time
was still living, and was much attached to Margaret, may have in a
measure, as it is asserted, influenced this choice; as it is also
probable that the king wished to oblige the Duke of Parma, through this
mark of attention to his wife, and thus to compensate for denying a
request which he was just then compelled to refuse him. As the
territories of the duchess were surrounded by Philip’s Italian states,
and at all times exposed to his arms, he could, with the less danger,
entrust the supreme power into her hands. For his full security her
son, Alexander Farnese, was to remain at his court as a pledge for her
loyalty. All these reasons were alone sufficiently weighty to turn the
king’s decision in her favor; but they became irresistible when
supported by the Bishop of Arras and the Duke of Alva. The latter, as
it appears, because he hated or envied all the other competitors, the
former, because even then, in all probability, he anticipated from the
wavering disposition of this princess abundant gratification for his
ambition.
Philip received the new regent on the frontiers with a splendid cortege,
and conducted her with magnificent pomp to Ghent, where the States
General had been convoked. As he did not intend to return soon to the
Netherlands, he desired, before he left them, to gratify the nation for
once by holding a solemn Diet, and thus giving a solemn sanction and the
force of law to his previous regulations. For the last time he showed
himself to his Netherlandish people, whose destinies were from
henceforth to be dispensed from a mysterious distance. To enhance the
splendor of this solemn day, Philip invested eleven knights with the
Order of the Golden Fleece, his sister being seated on a chair near
himself, while he showed her to the nation as their future ruler. All
the grievances of the people, touching the edicts, the Inquisition, the
detention of the Spanish troops, the taxes, and the illegal introduction
of foreigners into the offices and administration of the country were
brought forward in this Diet, and were hotly discussed by both parties;
some of them were skilfully evaded, or apparently removed, others
arbitrarily repelled. As the king was unacquainted with the language of
the country, he addressed the nation through the mouth of the Bishop of
Arras, recounted to them with vain-glorious ostentation all the benefits
of his government, assured them of his favor for the future, and once
more recommended to the estates in the most earnest manner the
preservation of the Catholic faith and the extirpation of heresy.
The Spanish troops, he promised, should in a few months evacuate the
Netherlands, if only they would allow him time to recover from the
numerous burdens of the last war, in order that he might be enabled to
collect the means for paying the arrears of these troops; the
fundamental laws of the nation should remain inviolate, the imposts
should not be grievously burdensome, and the Inquisition should
administer its duties with justice and moderation. In the choice of a
supreme Stadtholder, he added, he had especially consulted the wishes of
the nation, and had decided for a native of the country, who had been
brought up in their manners and customs, and was attached to them by a
love to her native land. He exhorted them, therefore, to show their
gratitude by honoring his choice, and obeying his sister, the duchess,
as himself. Should, he concluded, unexpected obstacles oppose his
return, he would send in his place his son, Prince Charles, who should
reside in Brussels.
A few members of this assembly, more courageous than the rest, once more
ventured on a final effort for liberty of conscience. Every people,
they argued, ought to be treated according to their natural character,
as every individual must in accordance to his bodily constitution.
Thus, for example, the south may be considered happy under a certain
degree of constraint which would press intolerably on the north. Never,
they added, would the Flemings consent to a yoke under which, perhaps,
the Spaniards bowed with patience, and rather than submit to it would
they undergo any extremity if it was sought to force such a yoke upon
them. This remonstrance was supported by some of the king’s
counsellors, who strongly urged the policy of mitigating the rigor of
religious edicts. But Philip remained inexorable. Better not reign at
all, was his answer, than reign over heretics!
According to an arrangement already made by Charles V., three councils
or chambers were added to the regent, to assist her in the
administration of state affairs. As long as Philip was himself present
in the Netherlands these courts had lost much of their power, and the
functions of the first of them, the state council, were almost entirely
suspended. Now that he quitted the reins of government, they recovered
their former importance. In the state council, which was to deliberate
upon war and peace, and security against external foes, sat the Bishop
of Arras, the Prince of Orange, Count Egmont, the President of the Privy
Council, Viglius Van Zuichem Van Aytta, and the Count of Barlaimont,
President of the Chamber of Finance. All knights of the Golden Fleece,
all privy counsellors and counsellors of finance, as also the members of
the great senate at Malines, which had been subjected by Charles V. to
the Privy Council in Brussels, had a seat and vote in the Council of
State, if expressly invited by the regent. The management of the royal
revenues and crown lands was vested in the Chamber of Finance, and the
Privy Council was occupied with the administration of justice, and the
civil regulation of the country, and issued all letters of grace and
pardon. The governments of the provinces which had fallen vacant were
either filled up afresh or the former governors were confirmed. Count
Egmont received Flanders and Artois; the Prince of Orange, Holland,
Zealand, Utrecht, and West Friesland; the Count of Aremberg, East
Friesland, Overyssel, and Groningen; the Count of Mansfeld, Luxemburg;
Barlaimont, Namur; the Marquis of Bergen, Hainault, Chateau-Cambray, and
Valenciennes; the Baron of Montigny, Tournay and its dependencies.
Other provinces were given to some who have less claim to our attention.
Philip of Montmorency, Count of Hoorn, who had been succeeded by the
Count of Megen in the government of Gueldres and Ziitphen, was confirmed
as admiral of the Belgian navy. Every governor of a province was at the
same time a knight of the Golden Fleece and member of the Council of
State. Each had, in the province over which he presided, the command of
the military force which protected it, the superintendence of the civil
administration and the judicature; the governor of Flanders alone
excepted, who was not allowed to interfere with the administration of
justice. Brabant alone was placed under the immediate jurisdiction of
the regent, who, according to custom, chose Brussels for her constant
residence. The induction of the Prince of Orange into his governments
was, properly speaking, an infraction of the constitution, since he was
a foreigner; but several estates which he either himself possessed in
the provinces, or managed as guardian of his son, his long residence in
the country, and above all the unlimited confidence the nation reposed
in him, gave him substantial claims in default of a real title of
citizenship.
The military force of the Low Countries consisted, in its full
complement, of three thousand horse. At present it did not much exceed
two thousand, and was divided into fourteen squadrons, over which,
besides the governors of the provinces, the Duke of Arschot, the Counts
of Hoogstraten, Bossu, Roeux, and Brederode held the chief command.
This cavalry, which was scattered through all the seventeen provinces,
was only to be called out on sudden emergencies. Insufficient as it was
for any great undertaking, it was, nevertheless, fully adequate for the
maintenance of internal order. Its courage had been approved in former
wars, and the fame of its valor was diffused through the whole of
Europe. In addition to this cavalry it was also proposed to levy a body
of infantry, but hitherto the states had refused their consent to it.
Of foreign troops there were still some German regiments in the service,
which were waiting for their pay. The four thousand Spaniards,
respecting whom so many complaints had been made, were under two Spanish
generals, Mendoza and Romero, and were in garrison in the frontier
towns.
Among the Belgian nobles whom the king especially distinguished in these
new appointments, the names of Count Egmont and William of Orange stand
conspicuous. However inveterate his hatred was of both, and
particularly of the latter, Philip nevertheless gave them these public
marks of his favor, because his scheme of vengeance was not yet fully
ripe, and the people were enthusiastic in their devotion to them. The
estates of both were declared exempt from taxes, the most lucrative
governments were entrusted to them, and by offering them the command of
the Spaniards whom he left behind in the country the king flattered them
with a confidence which he was very far from really reposing in them.
But at the very time when he obliged the prince with these public marks
of his esteem he privately inflicted the most cruel injury on him.
Apprehensive lest an alliance with the powerful house of Lorraine might
encourage this suspected vassal to bolder measures, he thwarted the
negotiation for a marriage between him and a princess of that family,
and crushed his hopes on the very eve of their accomplishment,--an
injury which the prince never forgave. Nay, his hatred to the prince on
one occasion even got completely the better of his natural
dissimulation, and seduced him into a step in which we entirely lose
sight of Philip II. When he was about to embark at Flushing, and the
nobles of the country attended him to the shore, he so far forgot
himself as roughly to accost the prince, and openly to accuse him of
being the author of the Flemish troubles. The prince answered
temperately that what had happened had been done by the provinces of
their own suggestion and on legitimate grounds. No, said Philip,
seizing his hated, and shaking it violently, not the provinces, but You!
You! You! The prince stood mute with astonishment, and without waiting
for the king’s embarkation, wished him a safe journey, and went back to
the town.
Thus the enmity which William had long harbored in his breast against
the oppressor of a free people was now rendered irreconcilable by
private hatred; and this double incentive accelerated the great
enterprise which tore from the Spanish crown seven of its brightest
jewels.
Philip had greatly deviated from his true character in taking so
gracious a leave of the Netherlands. The legal form of a diet, his
promise to remove the Spaniards from the frontiers, the consideration of
the popular wishes, which had led him to fill the most important offices
of the country with the favorites of the people, and, finally, the
sacrifice which he made to the constitution in withdrawing the Count of
Feria from the council of state, were marks of condescension of which
his magnanimity was never again guilty. But in fact he never stood in
greater need of the good-will of the states, that with their aid he
might, if possible, clear off the great burden of debt which was still
attached to the Netherlands from the former war. He hoped, therefore,
by propitiating them through smaller sacrifices to win approval of more
important usurpations. He marked his departure with grace, for he knew
in what hands he left them. The frightful scenes of death which he
intended for this unhappy people were not to stain the splendor of
majesty which, like the Godhead, marks its course only with beneficence;
that terrible distinction was reserved for his representatives. The
establishment of the council of state was, however, intended rather to
flatter the vanity of the Belgian nobility than to impart to them any
real influence. The historian Strada (who drew his information with
regard to the regent from her own papers) has preserved a few articles
of the secret instructions which the Spanish ministry gave her. Amongst
other things it is there stated if she observed that the councils were
divided by factions, or, what would be far worse, prepared by private
conferences before the session, and in league with one another, then she
was to prorogue all the chambers and dispose arbitrarily of the disputed
articles in a more select council or committee. In this select
committee, which was called the Consulta, sat the Archbishop of Arras,
the President Viglius, and the Count of Barlaimont. She was to act in
the same manner if emergent cases required a prompt decision. Had this
arrangement not been the work of an arbitrary despotism it would perhaps
have been justified by sound policy, and republican liberty itself might
have tolerated it. In great assemblies where many private interests and
passions co-operate, where a numerous audience presents so great a
temptation to the vanity of the orator, and parties often assail one
another with unmannerly warmth, a decree can seldom be passed with that
sobriety and mature deliberation which, if the members are properly
selected, a smaller body readily admits of. In a numerous body of men,
too, there is, we must suppose, a greater number of limited than of
enlightened intellects, who through their equal right of vote frequently
turn the majority on the side of ignorance. A second maxim which the
regent was especially to observe, was to select the very members of
council who had voted against any decree to carry it into execution.
By this means not only would the people be kept in ignorance of the
originators of such a law, but the private quarrels also of the members
would be restrained, and a greater freedom insured in voting in
compliance with the wishes of the court.
In spite of all these precautions Philip would never have been able to
leave the Netherlands with a quiet mind so long as he knew that the
chief power in the council of state, and the obedience of the provinces,
were in the hands of the suspected nobles. In order, therefore, to
appease his fears from this quarter, and also at the same time to assure
himself of the fidelity of the regent, be subjected her, and through her
all the affairs of the judicature, to the higher control of the Bishop
of Arras. In this single individual he possessed an adequate
counterpoise to the most dreaded cabal. To him, as to an infallible
oracle of majesty, the duchess was referred, and in him there watched a
stern supervisor of her administration. Among all his contemporaries
Granvella was the only one whom Philip II. appears to have excepted from
his universal distrust; as long as he knew that this man was in Brussels
he could sleep calmly in Segovia. He left the Netherlands in September,
1559, was saved from a storm which sank his fleet, and landed at Laredo
in Biscay, and in his gloomy joy thanked the Deity who had preserved him
by a detestable vow. In the hands of a priest and of a woman was placed
the dangerous helm of the Netherlands; and the dastardly tyrant escaped
in his oratory at Madrid the supplications, the complaints, and the
curses of the people.