The shooting of Concini seemed almost to convert the little king into a

hero. Everyone in the Netherlands, without distinction of party, was

delighted with the achievement. "I cannot represent to the King," wrote

du Maurier to Villeroy, "one thousandth part of the joy of all these

people who are exalting him to heaven for having delivered the earth from

this miserable burthen. I can't tell you in what execration this public

pest was held. His Majesty has not less won the hearts of this state than

if he had gained a great victory over the Spaniards. You would not

believe it, and yet it is true, that never were the name and reputation

of the late king in greater reverence than those of our reigning king at

this moment."

Truly here was glory cheaply earned. The fame of Henry the Great, after a

long career of brilliant deeds of arms, high statesmanship, and twenty

years of bountiful friendship for the States, was already equalled by

that of Louis XIII., who had tremblingly acquiesced in the summary

execution of an odious adventurer--his own possible father--and who never

had done anything else but feed his canary birds.

As for Villeroy himself, the Ambassador wrote that he could not find

portraits enough of him to furnish those who were asking for them since

his return to power.

Barneveld had been right in so often instructing Langerac to "caress the

old gentleman."

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

And give advice. Of that, although always a spendthrift

Casual outbursts of eternal friendship

Changed his positions and contradicted himself day by day

Conciliation when war of extermination was intended

Considered it his special mission in the world to mediate

Denoungced as an obstacle to peace

France was mourning Henry and waiting for Richelieu

Hardly a sound Protestant policy anywhere but in Holland

History has not too many really important and emblematic men

I hope and I fear

King who thought it furious madness to resist the enemy

Mockery of negotiation in which nothing could be negotiated

More apprehension of fraud than of force

Opening an abyss between government and people

Successful in this step, he is ready for greater ones

That he tries to lay the fault on us is pure malice

The magnitude of this wonderful sovereign's littleness

This wonderful sovereign's littleness oppresses the imagination

Wise and honest a man, although he be somewhat longsome

Yesterday is the preceptor of To-morrow

THE LIFE AND DEATH of JOHN OF BARNEVELD, ADVOCATE OF HOLLAND

WITH A VIEW OF THE PRIMARY CAUSES AND MOVEMENTS OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR

By John Lothrop Motley, D.C.L., LL.D.

Life and Death of John of Barneveld, v8, 1617

CHAPTER XIII.

Ferdinand of Gratz crowned King of Bohemia--His Enmity to

Protestants--Slawata and Martinitz thrown from the Windows of the

Hradschin--Real Beginning of the Thirty Years' War--The Elector-

Palatine's Intrigues in Opposition to the House of Austria--He

supports the Duke of Savoy--The Emperor Matthias visits Dresden--

Jubilee for the Hundredth Anniversary of the Reformation.

When the forlorn emperor Rudolph had signed the permission for his

brother Matthias to take the last crown but one from his head, he bit the

pen in a paroxysm of helpless rage. Then rushing to the window of his

apartment, he looked down on one of the most stately prospects that the

palaces of the earth can offer. From the long monotonous architectural

lines of the Hradschin, imposing from its massiveness and its imperial

situation, and with the dome and minarets of the cathedral clustering

behind them, the eye swept across the fertile valley, through which the

rapid, yellow Moldau courses, to the opposite line of cliffs crested with

the half imaginary fortress-palaces of the Wyscherad. There, in the

mythical legendary past of Bohemia had dwelt the shadowy Libuscha,

daughter of Krok, wife of King Premysl, foundress of Prague, who, when

wearied of her lovers, was accustomed to toss them from those heights

into the river. Between these picturesque precipices lay the two Pragues,

twin-born and quarrelsome, fighting each other for centuries, and growing

up side by side into a double, bellicose, stormy, and most splendid city,

bristling with steeples and spires, and united by the ancient

many-statued bridge with its blackened mediaeval entrance towers.

But it was not to enjoy the prospect that the aged, discrowned, solitary

emperor, almost as dim a figure among sovereigns as the mystic Libuscha

herself, was gazing from the window upon the imperial city.

"Ungrateful Prague," he cried, "through me thou hast become thus

magnificent, and now thou hast turned upon and driven away thy

benefactor. May the vengeance of God descend upon thee; may my curse come

upon thee and upon all Bohemia."

History has failed to record the special benefits of the Emperor through

which the city had derived its magnificence and deserved this

malediction. But surely if ever an old man's curse was destined to be

literally fulfilled, it seemed to be this solemn imprecation of Rudolph.

Meantime the coronation of Matthias had gone on with pomp and popular

gratulations, while Rudolph had withdrawn into his apartments to pass the

little that was left to him of life in solitude and in a state of

hopeless pique with Matthias, with the rest of his brethren, with all the

world.

And now that five years had passed since his death, Matthias, who had

usurped so much power prematurely, found himself almost in the same

condition as that to which he had reduced Rudolph.

Ferdinand of Styria, his cousin, trod closely upon his heels. He was the

presumptive successor to all his crowns, had not approved of the

movements of Matthias in the lifetime of his brother, and hated the

Vienna Protestant baker's son, Cardinal Clesel, by whom all those

movements had been directed. Professor Taubmann, of Wittenberg,

ponderously quibbling on the name of that prelate, had said that he was

of "one hundred and fifty ass power." Whether that was a fair measure of

his capacity may be doubted, but it certainly was not destined to be

sufficient to elude the vengeance of Ferdinand, and Ferdinand would soon

have him in his power.

Matthias, weary of ambitious intrigue, infirm of purpose, and shattered

in health, had withdrawn from affairs to devote himself to his gout and

to his fair young wife, Archduchess Anna of Tyrol, whom at the age of

fifty-four he had espoused.

On the 29th June 1617, Ferdinand of Gratz was crowned King of Bohemia.

The event was a shock and a menace to the Protestant cause all over the

world. The sombre figure of the Archduke had for years appeared in the

background, foreshadowing as it were the wrath to come, while throughout

Bohemia and the neighbouring countries of Moravia, Silesia, and the

Austrias, the cause of Protestantism had been making such rapid progress.

The Emperor Maximilian II. had left five stalwart sons, so that there had

seemed little probability that the younger line, the sons of his brother,

would succeed. But all the five were childless, and now the son of

Archduke Charles, who had died in 1590, had become the natural heir after

the death of Matthias to the immense family honours--his cousins

Maximilian and Albert having resigned their claims in his favour.

Ferdinand, twelve years old at his father's death, had been placed under

the care of his maternal uncle, Duke William of Bavaria. By him the boy

was placed at the high school of Ingolstadt, to be brought up by the

Jesuits, in company with Duke William's own son Maximilian, five years

his senior. Between these youths, besides the tie of cousinship, there

grew up the most intimate union founded on perfect sympathy in religion

and politics.

When Ferdinand entered upon the government of his paternal estates of

Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola, he found that the new religion, at which

the Jesuits had taught him to shudder as at a curse and a crime, had been

widely spreading. His father had fought against heresy with all his

might, and had died disappointed and broken-hearted at its progress. His

uncle of Bavaria, in letters to his son and nephew, had stamped into

their minds with the enthusiasm of perfect conviction that all happiness

and blessing for governments depended on the restoration and maintenance

of the unity of the Catholic faith. All the evils in times past and

present resulting from religious differences had been held up to the two

youths by the Jesuits in the most glaring colours. The first duty of a

prince, they had inculcated, was to extirpate all false religions, to

give the opponents of the true church no quarter, and to think no

sacrifice too great by which the salvation of human society, brought

almost to perdition by the new doctrines, could be effected.

Never had Jesuits an apter scholar than Ferdinand. After leaving school,

he made a pilgrimage to Loretto to make his vows to the Virgin Mary of

extirpation of heresy, and went to Rome to obtain the blessing of Pope

Clement VIII.

Then, returning to the government of his inheritance, he seized that

terrible two-edged weapon of which the Protestants of Germany had taught

him the use.

"Cujus regio ejus religio;" to the prince the choice of religion, to the

subject conformity with the prince, as if that formula of shallow and

selfish princelings, that insult to the dignity of mankind, were the

grand result of a movement which was to go on centuries after they had

all been forgotten in their tombs. For the time however it was a valid

and mischievous maxim. In Saxony Catholics and Calvinists were

proscribed; in Heidelberg Catholics and Lutherans. Why should either

Calvinists or Lutherans be tolerated in Styria? Why, indeed? No logic

could be more inexorable, and the pupil of the Ingolstadt Jesuits

hesitated not an instant to carry out their teaching with the very

instrument forged for him by the Reformation. Gallows were erected in the

streets of all his cities, but there was no hanging. The sight of them

proved enough to extort obedience to his edict, that every man, woman,

and child not belonging to the ancient church should leave his dominions.

They were driven out in hordes in broad daylight from Gratz and other

cities. Rather reign over a wilderness than over heretics was the device

of the Archduke, in imitation of his great relative, Philip II. of Spain.

In short space of time his duchies were as empty of Protestants as the

Palatinate of Lutherans, or Saxony of Calvinists, or both of Papists.

Even the churchyards were rifled of dead Lutherans and Utraquists, their

carcasses thrown where they could no longer pollute the true believers

mouldering by their side.

It was not strange that the coronation as King of Bohemia of a man of

such decided purposes--a country numbering ten Protestants to one

Catholic--should cause a thrill and a flutter. Could it be doubted that

the great elemental conflict so steadily prophesied by Barneveld and

instinctively dreaded by all capable of feeling the signs of the time

would now begin? It had begun. Of what avail would be Majesty-Letters and

Compromises extorted by force from trembling or indolent emperors, now

that a man who knew his own mind, and felt it to be a crime not to

extirpate all religions but the one orthodox religion, had mounted the

throne? It is true that he had sworn at his coronation to maintain the

laws of Bohemia, and that the Majesty-Letter and the Compromise were part

of the laws.

But when were doctors ever wanting to prove the unlawfulness of law which

interferes with the purposes of a despot and the convictions of the

bigot?

"Novus rex, nova lex," muttered the Catholics, lifting up their heads and

hearts once more out of the oppression and insults which they had

unquestionably suffered at the hands of the triumphant Reformers. "There

are many empty poppy-heads now flaunting high that shall be snipped off,"

said others. "That accursed German Count Thurn and his fellows, whom the

devil has sent from hell to Bohemia for his own purposes, shall be

disposed of now," was the general cry.

It was plain that heresy could no longer be maintained except by the

sword. That which had been extorted by force would be plucked back by

force. The succession of Ferdinand was in brief a warshout to be echoed

by all the Catholics of Europe. Before the end of the year the Protestant

churches of Brunnau were sealed up. Those at Klostergrab were demolished

in three days by command of the Archbishop of Prague. These dumb walls

preached in their destruction more stirring sermons than perhaps would

ever have been heard within them had they stood. This tearing in pieces

of the Imperial patent granting liberty of Protestant worship, this

summary execution done upon senseless bricks and mortar, was an act of

defiance to the Reformed religion everywhere. Protestantism was struck in

the face, spat upon, defied.

The effect was instantaneous. Thurn and the other defenders of the

Protestant faith were as prompt in action as the Catholics had been in

words. A few months passed away. The Emperor was in Vienna, but his ten

stadholders were in Prague. The fateful 23rd of May 1618 arrived.

Slawata, a Bohemian Protestant, who had converted himself to the Roman

Church in order to marry a rich widow, and who converted his peasants by

hunting them to mass with his hounds, and Martinitz, the two stadholders

who at Ferdinand's coronation had endeavoured to prevent him from

including the Majesty-Letter among the privileges he was swearing to

support, and who were considered the real authors of the royal letters

revoking all religious rights of Protestants, were the most obnoxious of

all. They were hurled from the council-chamber window of the Hradschin.

The unfortunate secretary Fabricius was tossed out after them.

Twenty-eight ells deep they fell, and all escaped unhurt by the fall;

Fabricius being subsequently ennobled by a grateful emperor with the

well-won title of Baron Summerset.

The Thirty Years' War, which in reality had been going on for several

years already, is dated from that day. A provisional government was

established in Prague by the Estates under Protestant guidance, a college

of thirty directors managing affairs.

The Window-Tumble, as the event has always been called in history,

excited a sensation in Europe. Especially the young king of France, whose

political position should bring him rather into alliance with the rebels

than the Emperor, was disgusted and appalled. He was used to rebellion.

Since he was ten years old there had been a rebellion against himself

every year. There was rebellion now. But his ministers had never been

thrown out of window. Perhaps one might take some day to tossing out

kings as well. He disapproved the process entirely.

Thus the great conflict of Christendom, so long impending, seemed at last

to have broken forth in full fury on a comparatively insignificant

incident. Thus reasoned the superficial public, as if the throwing out of

window of twenty stadholders could have created a general war in Europe

had not the causes of war lain deep and deadly in the whole framework of

society.

The succession of Ferdinand to the throne of the holy Wenzel, in which

his election to the German Imperial crown was meant to be involved, was a

matter which concerned almost every household in Christendom. Liberty of

religion, civil franchise, political charters, contract between

government and subject, right to think, speak, or act, these were the

human rights everywhere in peril. A compromise between the two religious

parties had existed for half a dozen years in Germany, a feeble

compromise by which men had hardly been kept from each others' throats.

That compromise had now been thrown to the winds. The vast conspiracy of

Spain, Rome, the House of Austria, against human liberty had found a

chief in the docile, gloomy pupil of the Jesuits now enthroned in

Bohemia, and soon perhaps to wield the sceptre of the Holy Roman Empire.

There was no state in Europe that had not cause to put hand on

sword-hilt. "Distrust and good garrisons," in the prophetic words of

Barneveld, would now be the necessary resource for all intending to hold

what had been gained through long years of toil, martyrdom, and hard

fighting.

The succession of Ferdinand excited especial dismay and indignation in

the Palatinate. The young elector had looked upon the prize as his own.

The marked advance of Protestant sentiment throughout the kingdom and its

neighbour provinces had seemed to render the succession of an extreme

Papist impossible. When Frederic had sued for and won the hand of the

fair Elizabeth, daughter of the King of Great Britain, it was understood

that the alliance would be more brilliant for her than it seemed. James

with his usual vanity spoke of his son-in-law as a future king.

It was a golden dream for the Elector and for the general cause of the

Reformed religion. Heidelberg enthroned in the ancient capital of the

Wenzels, Maximilians, and Rudolphs, the Catechism and Confession enrolled

among the great statutes of the land, this was progress far beyond flimsy

Majesty-Letters and Compromises, made only to be torn to pieces.

Through the dim vista of futurity and in ecstatic vision no doubt even

the Imperial crown might seem suspended over the Palatine's head. But

this would be merely a midsummer's dream. Events did not whirl so rapidly

as they might learn to do centuries later, and--the time for a Protestant

to grasp at the crown of Germany could then hardly be imagined as

ripening.

But what the Calvinist branch of the House of Wittelsbach had indeed long

been pursuing was to interrupt the succession of the House of Austria to

the German throne. That a Catholic prince must for the immediate future

continue to occupy it was conceded even by Frederic, but the electoral

votes might surely be now so manipulated as to prevent a slave of Spain

and a tool of the Jesuits from wielding any longer the sceptre of

Charlemagne.

On the other hand the purpose of the House of Austria was to do away with

the elective principle and the prescriptive rights of the Estates in

Bohemia first, and afterwards perhaps to send the Golden Bull itself to

the limbo of wornout constitutional devices. At present however their

object was to secure their hereditary sovereignty in Prague first, and

then to make sure of the next Imperial election at Frankfurt. Time

afterwards might fight still more in their favour, and fix them in

hereditary possession of the German throne.

The Elector-Palatine had lost no time. His counsellors even before the

coronation of Ferdinand at Prague had done their best to excite alarm

throughout Germany at the document by which Archdukes Maximilian and

Albert had resigned all their hereditary claims in favour of Ferdinand

and his male children. Should there be no such issue, the King of Spain

claimed the succession for his own sons as great-grandchildren of Emperor

Maximilian, considering himself nearer in the line than the Styrian

branch, but being willing to waive his own rights in favour of so ardent

a Catholic as Ferdinand. There was even a secret negotiation going on a

long time between the new king of Bohemia and Philip to arrange for the

precedence of the Spanish males over the Styrian females to the

hereditary Austrian states, and to cede the province of Alsace to Spain.

It was not wonderful that Protestant Germany should be alarmed. After a

century of Protestantism, that Spain should by any possibility come to be

enthroned again over Germany was enough to raise both Luther and Calvin

from their graves. It was certainly enough to set the lively young

palatine in motion. So soon as the election of Frederic was proclaimed,

he had taken up the business in person. Fond of amusement, young, married

to a beautiful bride of the royal house of England, he had hitherto left

politics to his counsellors.

Finding himself frustrated in his ambition by the election of another to

the seat he had fondly deemed his own, he resolved to unseat him if he

could, and, at any rate, to prevent the ulterior consequences of his

elevation. He made a pilgrimage to Sedan, to confer with that

irrepressible intriguer and Huguenot chieftain, the Duc de Bouillon. He

felt sure of the countenance of the States-General, and, of course, of

his near relative the great stadholder. He was resolved to invite the

Duke of Lorraine to head the anti-Austrian party, and to stand for the

kingship of the Romans and the Empire in opposition to Ferdinand. An

emissary sent to Nancy came back with a discouraging reply. The Duke not

only flatly refused the candidacy, but warned the Palatine that if it

really came to a struggle he could reckon on small support anywhere, not

even from those who now seemed warmest for the scheme. Then Frederic

resolved to try his cousin, the great Maximilian of Bavaria, to whom all

Catholics looked with veneration and whom all German Protestants

respected. Had the two branches of the illustrious house of Wittelsbach

been combined in one purpose, the opposition to the House of Austria

might indeed have been formidable. But what were ties of blood compared

to the iron bands of religious love and hatred? How could Maximilian,

sternest of Papists, and Frederick V., flightiest of Calvinists, act

harmoniously in an Imperial election? Moreover, Maximilian was united by

ties of youthful and tender friendship as well as by kindred and perfect

religious sympathy to his other cousin, King Ferdinand himself. The case

seemed hopeless, but the Elector went to Munich, and held conferences

with his cousin. Not willing to take No for an answer so long as it was

veiled under evasive or ornamental phraseology, he continued to negotiate

with Maximilian through his envoys Camerarius and Secretary Neu, who held

long debates with the Duke's chief councillor, Doctor Jocher. Camerarius

assured Jocher that his master was the Hercules to untie the Gordian

knot, and the lion of the tribe of Judah. How either the lion of Judah or

Hercules were to untie the knot which was popularly supposed to have been

cut by the sword of Alexander did not appear, but Maximilian at any rate

was moved neither by entreaties nor tropes. Being entirely averse from

entering himself for the German crown, he grew weary at last of the

importunity with which the scheme was urged. So he wrote a short billet

to his councillor, to be shown to Secretary Neu.

"Dear Jocher," he said, "I am convinced one must let these people

understand the matter in a little plainer German. I am once for all

determined not to let myself into any misunderstanding or even

amplifications with the House of Austria in regard to the succession. I

think also that it would rather be harmful than useful to my house to

take upon myself so heavy a burthen as the German crown."

This time the German was plain enough and produced its effect. Maximilian

was too able a statesman and too conscientious a friend to wish to

exchange his own proud position as chief of the League, acknowledged head

of the great Catholic party, for the slippery, comfortless, and unmeaning

throne of the Holy Empire, which he considered Ferdinand's right.

The chiefs of the anti-Austrian party, especially the Prince of Anhalt

and the Margrave of Anspach, in unison with the Heidelberg cabinet, were

forced to look for another candidate. Accordingly the Margrave and the

Elector-Palatine solemnly agreed that it was indispensable to choose an

emperor who should not be of the House of Austria nor a slave of Spain.

It was, to be sure, not possible to think of a Protestant prince. Bavaria

would not oppose Austria, would also allow too much influence to the

Jesuits. So there remained no one but the Duke of Savoy. He was a prince

of the Empire. He was of German descent, of Saxon race, a great general,

father of his soldiers, who would protect Europe against a Turkish

invasion better than the bastions of Vienna could do. He would be

agreeable to the Catholics, while the Protestants could live under him

without anxiety because the Jesuits would be powerless with him. It would

be a master-stroke if the princes would unite upon him. The King of

France would necessarily be pleased with it, the King of Great Britain

delighted.

At last the model candidate had been found. The Duke of Savoy having just

finished for a second time his chronic war with Spain, in which the

United Provinces, notwithstanding the heavy drain on their resources, had

allowed him 50,000 florins a month besides the soldiers under Count

Ernest of Nassau, had sent Mansfeld with 4000 men to aid the revolted

estates in Bohemia. Geographically, hereditarily, necessarily the deadly

enemy of the House of Austria, he listened favourably to the overtures

made to him by the princes of the Union, expressed undying hatred for the

Imperial race, and thought the Bohemian revolt a priceless occasion for

expelling them from power. He was informed by the first envoy sent to

him, Christopher van Dohna, that the object of the great movement now

contemplated was to raise him to the Imperial throne at the next

election, to assist the Bohemian estates, to secure the crown of Bohemia

for the Elector-Palatine, to protect the Protestants of Germany, and to

break down the overweening power of the Austrian house.

The Duke displayed no eagerness for the crown of Germany, while approving

the election of Frederic, but expressed entire sympathy with the

enterprise. It was indispensable however to form a general federation in

Europe of England, the Netherlands, Venice, together with Protestant

Germany and himself, before undertaking so mighty a task. While the

negotiations were going on, both Anspach and Anhalt were in great

spirits. The Margrave cried out exultingly, "In a short time the means

will be in our hands for turning the world upside down." He urged the

Prince of Anhalt to be expeditious in his decisions and actions. "He who

wishes to trade," he said, "must come to market early."

There was some disappointment at Heidelberg when the first news from

Turin arrived, the materials for this vast scheme for an overwhelming and

universal European war not seeming to be at their disposition. By and by

the Duke's plans seem to deepen and broaden. He told Mansfeld, who,

accompanied by Secretary Neu, was glad at a pause in his fighting and

brandschatzing in Bohemia to be employed on diplomatic business, that on

the whole he should require the crown of Bohemia for himself. He also

proposed to accept the Imperial crown, and as for Frederic, he would

leave him the crown of Hungary, and would recommend him to round himself

out by adding to his hereditary dominions the province of Alsace, besides

Upper Austria and other territories in convenient proximity to the

Palatinate.

Venice, it had been hoped, would aid in the great scheme and might in her

turn round herself out with Friuli and Istria and other tempting

possessions of Ferdinand, in reward for the men and money she was

expected to furnish. That republic had however just concluded a war with

Ferdinand, caused mainly by the depredations of the piratical Uscoques,

in which, as we have seen, she had received the assistance of 4000

Hollanders under command of Count John of Nassau. The Venetians had

achieved many successes, had taken the city of Gortz, and almost reduced

the city of Gradiska. A certain colonel Albert Waldstein however, of whom

more might one day be heard in the history of the war now begun, had

beaten the Venetians and opened a pathway through their ranks for succour

to the beleaguered city. Soon afterwards peace was made on an undertaking

that the Uscoques should be driven from their haunts, their castles

dismantled, and their ships destroyed.

Venice declined an engagement to begin a fresh war.

She hated Ferdinand and Matthias and the whole Imperial brood, but, as

old Barbarigo declared in the Senate, the Republic could not afford to

set her house on fire in order to give Austria the inconvenience of the

smoke.

Meantime, although the Elector-Palatine had magnanimously agreed to use

his influence in Bohemia in favour of Charles Emmanuel, the Duke seems at

last to have declined proposing himself for that throne. He knew, he

said, that King James wished that station for his son-in-law. The

Imperial crown belonged to no one as yet after the death of Matthias, and

was open therefore to his competition.

Anhalt demanded of Savoy 15,000 men for the maintenance of the good

cause, asserting that "it would be better to have the Turk or the devil

himself on the German throne than leave it to Ferdinand."

The triumvirate ruling at Prague-Thurn, Ruppa, and Hohenlohe--were

anxious for a decision from Frederic. That simple-hearted and ingenuous

young elector had long been troubled both with fears lest after all he

might lose the crown of Bohemia and with qualms of conscience as to the

propriety of taking it even if he could get it. He wrestled much in

prayer and devout meditation whether as anointed prince himself he were

justified in meddling with the anointment of other princes. Ferdinand had

been accepted, proclaimed, crowned. He artlessly sent to Prague to

consult the Estates whether they possessed the right to rebel, to set

aside the reigning dynasty, and to choose a new king. At the same time,

with an eye to business, he stipulated that on account of the great

expense and trouble devolving upon him the crown must be made hereditary

in his family. The impression made upon the grim Thurn and his colleagues

by the simplicity of these questions may be imagined. The splendour and

width of the Savoyard's conceptions fascinated the leaders of the Union.

It seemed to Anspach and Anhalt that it was as well that Frederic should

reign in Hungary as in Bohemia, and the Elector was docile. All had

relied however on the powerful assistance of the great defender of the

Protestant faith, the father-in-law of the Elector, the King of Great

Britain. But James had nothing but cold water and Virgilian quotations

for his son's ardour. He was more under the influence of Gondemar than

ever before, more eagerly hankering for the Infanta, more completely the

slave of Spain. He pledged himself to that government that if the

Protestants in Bohemia continued rebellious, he would do his best to

frustrate their designs, and would induce his son-in-law to have no

further connection with them. And Spain delighted his heart not by

immediately sending over the Infanta, but by proposing that he should

mediate between the contending parties. It would be difficult to imagine

a greater farce. All central Europe was now in arms. The deepest and

gravest questions about which men can fight: the right to worship God

according to their conscience and to maintain civil franchises which have

been earned by the people with the blood and treasure of centuries, were

now to be solved by the sword, and the pupil of Buchanan and the friend

of Buckingham was to step between hundreds of thousands of men in arms

with a classical oration. But James was very proud of the proposal and

accepted it with alacrity.

"You know, my dear son," he wrote to Frederic, "that we are the only king

in Europe that is sought for by friend and foe for his mediation. It

would be for this our lofty part very unbecoming if we were capable of

favouring one of the parties. Your suggestion that we might secretly

support the Bohemians we must totally reject, as it is not our way to do

anything that we would not willingly confess to the whole world."

And to do James justice, he had never fed Frederic with false hopes,

never given a penny for his great enterprise, nor promised him a penny.

He had contented himself with suggesting from time to time that he might

borrow money of the States-General. His daughter Elizabeth must take care

of herself, else what would become of her brother's marriage to the

daughter of Spain.

And now it was war to the knife, in which it was impossible that Holland,

as well as all the other great powers should not soon be involved. It was

disheartening to the cause of freedom and progress, not only that the

great kingdom on which the world, had learned to rely in all movements

upward and onward should be neutralized by the sycophancy of its monarch

to the general oppressor, but that the great republic which so long had

taken the lead in maintaining the liberties of Europe should now be torn

by religious discord within itself, and be turning against the great

statesman who had so wisely guided her councils and so accurately

foretold the catastrophe which was now upon the world.

Meantime the Emperor Matthias, not less forlorn than through his

intrigues and rebellions his brother Rudolph had been made, passed his

days in almost as utter retirement as if he had formally abdicated.

Ferdinand treated him as if in his dotage. His fair young wife too had

died of hard eating in the beginning of the winter to his inexpressible

grief, so that there was nothing left to solace him now but the

Rudolphian Museum.

He had made but one public appearance since the coronation of Ferdinand

in Prague. Attended by his brother Maximilian, by King Ferdinand, and by

Cardinal Khlesl, he had towards the end of the year 1617 paid a visit to

the Elector John George at Dresden. The Imperial party had been received

with much enthusiasm by the great leader of Lutheranism. The Cardinal had

seriously objected to accompanying the Emperor on this occasion. Since

the Reformation no cardinal had been seen at the court of Saxony. He

cared not personally for the pomps and glories of his rank, but still as

prince of the Church he had settled right of precedence over electors. To

waive it would be disrespectful to the Pope, to claim it would lead to

squabbles. But Ferdinand had need of his skill to secure the vote of

Saxony at the next Imperial election. The Cardinal was afraid of

Ferdinand with good reason, and complied. By an agreeable fiction he was

received at court not as cardinal but as minister, and accommodated with

an humble place at table. Many looking on with astonishment thought he

would have preferred to dine by himself in retirement. But this was not

the bitterest of the mortifications that the pastor and guide of Matthias

was to suffer at the hands of Ferdinand before his career should be

closed. The visit at Dresden was successful, however. John George, being

a claimant, as we have seen, for the Duchies of Cleve and Julich, had

need of the Emperor. The King had need of John George's vote. There was a

series of splendid balls, hunting parties, carousings.

The Emperor was an invalid, the King was abstemious, but the Elector was

a mighty drinker. It was not his custom nor that of his councillors to go

to bed. They were usually carried there. But it was the wish of Ferdinand

to be conciliatory, and he bore himself as well as he could at the

banquet. The Elector was also a mighty hunter. Neither of his Imperial

guests cared for field sports, but they looked out contentedly from the

window of a hunting-lodge, before which for their entertainment the

Elector and his courtiers slaughtered eight bears, ten stags, ten pigs,

and eleven badgers, besides a goodly number of other game; John George

shooting also three martens from a pole erected for that purpose in the

courtyard. It seemed proper for him thus to exhibit a specimen of the

skill for which he was justly famed. The Elector before his life closed,

so says the chronicle, had killed 28,000 wild boars, 208 bears, 3543

wolves, 200 badgers, 18,967 foxes, besides stags and roedeer in still

greater number, making a grand total of 113,629 beasts. The leader of the

Lutheran party of Germany had not lived in vain.

Thus the great chiefs of Catholicism and of Protestantism amicably

disported themselves in the last days of the year, while their respective

forces were marshalling for mortal combat all over Christendom. The

Elector certainly loved neither Matthias nor Ferdinand, but he hated the

Palatine. The chief of the German Calvinists disputed that Protestant

hegemony which John George claimed by right. Indeed the immense advantage

enjoyed by the Catholics at the outbreak of the religious war from the

mutual animosities between the two great divisions of the Reformed Church

was already terribly manifest. What an additional power would it derive

from the increased weakness of the foe, should there be still other and

deeper and more deadly schisms within one great division itself!

"The Calvinists and Lutherans," cried the Jesuit Scioppius, "are so

furiously attacking each other with calumnies and cursings and are

persecuting each other to such extent as to give good hope that the

devilish weight and burthen of them will go to perdition and shame of

itself, and the heretics all do bloody execution upon each other.

Certainly if ever a golden time existed for exterminating the heretics,

it is the present time."

The Imperial party took their leave of Dresden, believing themselves to

have secured the electoral vote of Saxony; the Elector hoping for

protection to his interests in the duchies through that sequestration to

which Barneveld had opposed such vigorous resistance. There had been much

slavish cringing before these Catholic potentates by the courtiers of

Dresden, somewhat amazing to the ruder churls of Saxony, the common

people, who really believed in the religion which their prince had

selected for them and himself.

And to complete the glaring contrast, Ferdinand and Matthias had scarcely

turned their backs before tremendous fulminations upon the ancient church

came from the Elector and from all the doctors of theology in Saxony.

For the jubilee of the hundredth anniversary of the Reformation was

celebrated all over Germany in the autumn of this very year, and nearly

at the exact moment of all this dancing, and fuddling, and pig shooting

at Dresden in honour of emperors and cardinals. And Pope Paul V. had

likewise ordained a jubilee for true believers at almost the same time.

The Elector did not mince matters in his proclamation from any regard to

the feelings of his late guests. He called on all Protestants to rejoice,

"because the light of the Holy Gospel had now shone brightly in the

electoral dominions for a hundred years, the Omnipotent keeping it

burning notwithstanding the raging and roaring of the hellish enemy and

all his scaly servants."

The doctors of divinity were still more emphatic in their phraseology.

They called on all professors and teachers of the true Evangelical

churches, not only in Germany but throughout Christendom, to keep the

great jubilee. They did this in terms not calculated certainly to smother

the flames of religious and party hatred, even if it had been possible at

that moment to suppress the fire. "The great God of Heaven," they said,

"had caused the undertaking of His holy instrument Mr. Doctor Martin

Luther to prosper. Through His unspeakable mercy he has driven away the

Papal darkness and caused the sun of righteousness once more to beam upon

the world. The old idolatries, blasphemies, errors, and horrors of the

benighted Popedom have been exterminated in many kingdoms and countries.

Innumerable sheep of the Lord Christ have been fed on the wholesome

pasture of the Divine Word in spite of those monstrous, tearing, ravenous

wolves, the Pope and his followers. The enemy of God and man, the ancient

serpent, may hiss and rage. Yes, the Roman antichrist in his frantic

blusterings may bite off his own tongue, may fulminate all kinds of

evils, bans, excommunications, wars, desolations, and burnings, as long

and as much as he likes. But if we take refuge with the Lord God, what

can this inane, worn-out man and water-bubble do to us?" With more in the

same taste.

The Pope's bull for the Catholic jubilee was far more decorous and lofty

in tone, for it bewailed the general sin in Christendom, and called on

all believers to flee from the wrath about to descend upon the earth, in

terms that were almost prophetic. He ordered all to pray that the Lord

might lift up His Church, protect it from the wiles of the enemy,

extirpate heresies, grant peace and true unity among Christian princes,

and mercifully avert disasters already coming near.

But if the language of Paul V. was measured and decent, the swarm of

Jesuit pamphleteers that forthwith began to buzz and to sting all over

Christendom were sufficiently venomous. Scioppius, in his Alarm Trumpet

to the Holy War, and a hundred others declared that all heresies and

heretics were now to be extirpated, the one true church to be united and

re-established, and that the only road to such a consummation was a path

of blood.

The Lutheran preachers, on the other hand, obedient to the summons from

Dresden, vied with each other in every town and village in heaping

denunciations, foul names, and odious imputations on the Catholics; while

the Calvinists, not to be behindhand with their fellow Reformers,

celebrated the jubilee, especially at Heidelberg, by excluding Papists

from hope of salvation, and bewailing the fate of all churches sighing

under the yoke of Rome.

And not only were the Papists and the Reformers exchanging these blasts

and counterblasts of hatred, not less deadly in their effects than the

artillery of many armies, but as if to make a thorough exhibition of

human fatuity when drunk with religious passion, the Lutherans were

making fierce paper and pulpit war upon the Calvinists. Especially Hoe,

court preacher of John George, ceaselessly hurled savage libels against

them. In the name of the theological faculty of Wittenberg, he addressed

a "truehearted warning to all Lutheran Christians in Bohemia, Moravia,

Silesia, and other provinces, to beware of the erroneous Calvinistic

religion." He wrote a letter to Count Schlick, foremost leader in the

Bohemian movement, asking whether "the unquiet Calvinist spirit, should

it gain ascendency, would be any more endurable than the Papists. Oh what

woe, what infinite woe," he cried, "for those noble countries if they

should all be thrust into the jaws of Calvinism!"

Did not preacher Hoe's master aspire to the crown of Bohemia himself? Was

he not furious at the start which Heidelberg had got of him in the race

for that golden prize? Was he not mad with jealousy of the Palatine, of

the Palatine's religion, and of the Palatine's claim to "hegemony" in

Germany?

Thus embittered and bloodthirsty towards each other were the two great

sections of the Reformed religion on the first centennial jubilee of the

Reformation. Such was the divided front which the anti-Catholic party

presented at the outbreak of the war with Catholicism.

Ferdinand, on the other hand, was at the head of a comparatively united

party. He could hardly hope for more than benevolent neutrality from the

French government, which, in spite of the Spanish marriages, dared not

wholly desert the Netherlands and throw itself into the hands of Spain;

but Spanish diplomacy had enslaved the British king, and converted what

should have been an active and most powerful enemy into an efficient if

concealed ally. The Spanish and archiducal armies were enveloping the

Dutch republic, from whence the most powerful support could be expected

for the Protestant cause. Had it not been for the steadiness of

Barneveld, Spain would have been at that moment established in full

panoply over the whole surface of those inestimable positions, the

disputed duchies. Venice was lukewarm, if not frigid; and Savoy, although

deeply pledged by passion and interest to the downfall of the House of

Austria, was too dangerously situated herself, too distant, too poor, and

too Catholic to be very formidable.

Ferdinand was safe from the Turkish side. A twenty years' peace,

renewable by agreement, between the Holy Empire and the Sultan had been

negotiated by those two sons of bakers, Cardinal Khlesl and the Vizier

Etmekdschifade. It was destined to endure through all the horrors of the

great war, a stronger protection to Vienna than all the fortifications

which the engineering art could invent. He was safe too from Poland, King

Sigmund being not only a devoted Catholic but doubly his brother-in-law.

Spain, therefore, the Spanish Netherlands, the Pope, and the German

League headed by Maximilian of Bavaria, the ablest prince on the

continent of Europe, presented a square, magnificent phalanx on which

Ferdinand might rely. The States-General, on the other hand, were a most

dangerous foe. With a centennial hatred of Spain, splendidly disciplined

armies and foremost navy of the world, with an admirable financial system

and vast commercial resources, with a great stadholder, first captain of

the age, thirsting for war, and allied in blood as well as religion to

the standard-bearer of the Bohemian revolt; with councils directed by the

wisest and most experienced of living statesman, and with the very life

blood of her being derived from the fountain of civil and religious

liberty, the great Republic of the United Netherlands--her Truce with the

hereditary foe just expiring was, if indeed united, strong enough at the

head of the Protestant forces of Europe to dictate to a world in arms.

Alas! was it united?

As regarded internal affairs of most pressing interest, the electoral

vote at the next election at Frankfurt had been calculated as being

likely to yield a majority of one for the opposition candidate, should

the Savoyard or any other opposition candidate be found. But the

calculation was a close one and might easily be fallacious. Supposing the

Palatine elected King of Bohemia by the rebellious estates, as was

probable, he could of course give the vote of that electorate and his own

against Ferdinand, and the vote of Brandenburg at that time seemed safe.

But Ferdinand by his visit to Dresden had secured the vote of Saxony,

while of the three ecclesiastical electors, Cologne and Mayence were sure

for him. Thus it would be three and three, and the seventh and decisive

vote would be that of the Elector-Bishop of Treves. The sanguine Frederic

thought that with French influence and a round sum of money this

ecclesiastic might be got to vote for the opposition candidate. The

ingenious combination was not destined to be successful, and as there has

been no intention in the present volume to do more than slightly indicate

the most prominent movements and mainsprings of the great struggle so far

as Germany is concerned, without entering into detail, it may be as well

to remind the reader that it proved wonderfully wrong. Matthias died on

the 20th March, 1619, the election of a new emperor took place at

Frankfurt On the 28th of the following August, and not only did Saxony

and all three ecclesiastical electors vote for Ferdinand, but Brandenburg

likewise, as well as the Elector-Palatine himself, while Ferdinand,

personally present in the assembly as Elector of Bohemia, might according

to the Golden Bull have given the seventh vote for himself had he chosen

to do so. Thus the election was unanimous.

Strange to say, as the electors proceeded through the crowd from the hall

of election to accompany the new emperor to the church where he was to

receive the popular acclaim, the news reached them from Prague that the

Elector-Palatine had been elected King of Bohemia.

Thus Frederic, by voting for Ferdinand, had made himself voluntarily a

rebel should he accept the crown now offered him. Had the news arrived

sooner, a different result and even a different history might have been

possible.

CHAPTER XIV.

Barneveld connected with the East India Company, but opposed to the West

India Company--Carleton comes from Venice inimical to Barneveld--Maurice

openly the Chieftain of the Contra-Remonstrants--Tumults about the

Churches--"Orange or Spain" the Cry of Prince Maurice and his Party--They

take possession of the Cloister Church--"The Sharp Resolve"--Carleton's

Orations before the States-General.

King James never forgave Barneveld for drawing from him those famous

letters to the States in which he was made to approve the Five Points and

to admit the possibility of salvation under them. These epistles had

brought much ridicule upon James, who was not amused by finding his

theological discussions a laughing-stock. He was still more incensed by

the biting criticisms made upon the cheap surrender of the cautionary

towns, and he hated more than ever the statesman who, as he believed, had

twice outwitted him.

On the other hand, Maurice, inspired by his brother-in-law the Duke of

Bouillon and by the infuriated Francis Aerssens, abhorred Barneveld's

French policy, which was freely denounced by the French Calvinists and by

the whole orthodox church. In Holland he was still warmly sustained

except in the Contra-Remonstrant Amsterdam and a few other cities of less

importance. But there were perhaps deeper reasons for the Advocate's

unpopularity in the great commercial metropolis than theological

pretexts. Barneveld's name and interests were identified with the great

East India Company, which was now powerful and prosperous beyond anything

ever dreamt of before in the annals of commerce. That trading company had

already founded an empire in the East. Fifty ships of war, fortresses

guarded by 4000 pieces of artillery and 10,000 soldiers and sailors,

obeyed the orders of a dozen private gentlemen at home seated in a back

parlour around a green table. The profits of each trading voyage were

enormous, and the shareholders were growing rich beyond their wildest

imaginings. To no individual so much as to Holland's Advocate was this

unexampled success to be ascribed. The vast prosperity of the East India

Company had inspired others with the ambition to found a similar

enterprise in the West. But to the West India Company then projected and

especially favoured in Amsterdam, Barneveld was firmly opposed. He

considered it as bound up with the spirit of military adventure and

conquest, and as likely to bring on prematurely and unwisely a renewed

conflict with Spain. The same reasons which had caused him to urge the

Truce now influenced his position in regard to the West India Company.

Thus the clouds were gathering every day more darkly over the head of the

Advocate. The powerful mercantile interest in the great seat of traffic

in the Republic, the personal animosity of the Stadholder, the

execrations of the orthodox party in France, England, and all the

Netherlands, the anger of the French princes and all those of the old

Huguenot party who had been foolish enough to act with the princes in

their purely selfish schemes against the, government, and the overflowing

hatred of King James, whose darling schemes of Spanish marriages and a

Spanish alliance had been foiled by the Advocate's masterly policy in

France and in the duchies, and whose resentment at having been so

completely worsted and disarmed in the predestination matter and in the

redemption of the great mortgage had deepened into as terrible wrath as

outraged bigotry and vanity could engender; all these elements made up a

stormy atmosphere in which the strongest heart might have quailed. But

Barneveld did not quail. Doubtless he loved power, and the more danger he

found on every side the less inclined he was to succumb. But he honestly

believed that the safety and prosperity of the country he had so long and

faithfully served were identified with the policy which he was pursuing.

Arrogant, overbearing, self-concentrated, accustomed to lead senates and

to guide the councils and share the secrets of kings, familiar with and

almost an actor in every event in the political history not only of his

own country but of every important state in Christendom during nearly two

generations of mankind, of unmatched industry, full of years and

experience, yet feeling within him the youthful strength of a thousand

intellects compared to most of those by which he was calumniated,

confronted, and harassed; he accepted the great fight which was forced

upon him. Irascible, courageous, austere, contemptuous, he looked around

and saw the Republic whose cradle he had rocked grown to be one of the

most powerful and prosperous among the states of the world, and could

with difficulty imagine that in this supreme hour of her strength and her

felicity she was ready to turn and rend the man whom she was bound by

every tie of duty to cherish and to revere.

Sir Dudley Carleton, the new English ambassador to the States, had

arrived during the past year red-hot from Venice. There he had perhaps

not learned especially to love the new republic which had arisen among

the northern lagunes, and whose admission among the nations had been at

last accorded by the proud Queen of the Adriatic, notwithstanding the

objections and the intrigues both of French and English representatives.

He had come charged to the brim with the political spite of James against

the Advocate, and provided too with more than seven vials of theological

wrath. Such was the King's revenge for Barneveld's recent successes. The

supporters in the Netherlands of the civil authority over the Church were

moreover to be instructed by the political head of the English Church

that such supremacy, although highly proper for a king, was "thoroughly

unsuitable for a many-headed republic." So much for church government. As

for doctrine, Arminianism and Vorstianism were to be blasted with one

thunderstroke from the British throne.

"In Holland," said James to his envoy, "there have been violent and sharp

contestations amongst the towns in the cause of religion . . . . . If

they shall be unhappily revived during your time, you shall not forget

that you are the minister of that master whom God hath made the sole

protector of His religion."

There was to be no misunderstanding in future as to the dogmas which the

royal pope of Great Britain meant to prescribe to his Netherland

subjects. Three years before, at the dictation of the Advocate, he had

informed the States that he was convinced of their ability to settle the

deplorable dissensions as to religion according to their wisdom and the

power which belonged to them over churches and church servants. He had

informed them of his having learned by experience that such questions

could hardly be decided by the wranglings of theological professors, and

that it was better to settle them by public authority and to forbid their

being brought into the pulpit or among common people. He had recommended

mutual toleration of religious difference until otherwise ordained by the

public civil authority, and had declared that neither of the two opinions

in regard to predestination was in his opinion far from the truth or

inconsistent with Christian faith or the salvation of souls.

It was no wonder that these utterances were quite after the Advocate's

heart, as James had faithfully copied them from the Advocate's draft.

But now in the exercise of his infallibility the King issued other

decrees. His minister was instructed to support the extreme views of the

orthodox both as to government and dogma, and to urge the National Synod,

as it were, at push of pike. "Besides the assistance," said he to

Carleton, "which we would have you give to the true professors of the

Gospel in your discourse and conferences, you may let fall how hateful

the maintenance of these erroneous opinions is to the majesty of God, how

displeasing unto us their dearest friends, and how disgraceful to the

honour and government of that state."

And faithfully did the Ambassador act up to his instructions. Most

sympathetically did he embody the hatred of the King. An able,

experienced, highly accomplished diplomatist and scholar, ready with

tongue and pen, caustic, censorious, prejudiced, and partial, he was soon

foremost among the foes of the Advocate in the little court of the Hague,

and prepared at any moment to flourish the political and theological goad

when his master gave the word.

Nothing in diplomatic history is more eccentric than the long sermons

upon abstruse points of divinity and ecclesiastical history which the

English ambassador delivered from time to time before the States-General

in accordance with elaborate instructions drawn up by his sovereign with

his own hand. Rarely has a king been more tedious, and he bestowed all

his tediousness upon My Lords the States-General. Nothing could be more

dismal than these discourses, except perhaps the contemporaneous and

interminable orations of Grotius to the states of Holland, to the

magistrates of Amsterdam, to the states of Utrecht; yet Carleton was a

man of the world, a good debater, a ready writer, while Hugo Grotius was

one of the great lights of that age and which shone for all time.

Among the diplomatic controversies of history, rarely refreshing at best,

few have been more drouthy than those once famous disquisitions, and they

shall be left to shrivel into the nothingness of the past, so far as is

consistent with the absolute necessities of this narrative.

The contest to which the Advocate was called had become mainly a personal

and a political one, although the weapons with which it was fought were

taken from ecclesiastical arsenals. It was now an unequal contest.

For the great captain of the country and of his time, the son of William

the Silent, the martial stadholder, in the fulness of his fame and vigour

of his years, had now openly taken his place as the chieftain of the

Contra-Remonstrants. The conflict between the civil and the military

element for supremacy in a free commonwealth has never been more vividly

typified than in this death-grapple between Maurice and Barneveld.

The aged but still vigorous statesman, ripe with half a century of

political lore, and the high-born, brilliant, and scientific soldier,

with the laurels of Turnhout and Nieuwpoort and of a hundred famous

sieges upon his helmet, reformer of military science, and no mean

proficient in the art of politics and government, were the

representatives and leaders of the two great parties into which the

Commonwealth had now unhappily divided itself. But all history shows that

the brilliant soldier of a republic is apt to have the advantage, in a

struggle for popular affection and popular applause, over the statesman,

however consummate. The general imagination is more excited by the

triumphs of the field than by those of the tribune, and the man who has

passed many years of life in commanding multitudes with necessarily

despotic sway is often supposed to have gained in the process the

attributes likely to render him most valuable as chief citizen of a flee

commonwealth. Yet national enthusiasm is so universally excited by

splendid military service as to forbid a doubt that the sentiment is

rooted deeply in our nature, while both in antiquity and in modern times

there are noble although rare examples of the successful soldier

converting himself into a valuable and exemplary magistrate.

In the rivalry of Maurice and Barneveld however for the national

affection the chances were singularly against the Advocate. The great

battles and sieges of the Prince had been on a world's theatre, had

enchained the attention of Christendom, and on their issue had frequently

depended, or seemed to depend, the very existence of the nation. The

labours of the statesman, on the contrary, had been comparatively secret.

His noble orations and arguments had been spoken with closed doors to

assemblies of colleagues--rather envoys than senators--were never printed

or even reported, and could be judged of only by their effects; while his

vast labours in directing both the internal administration and especially

the foreign affairs of the Commonwealth had been by their very nature as

secret as they were perpetual and enormous.

Moreover, there was little of what we now understand as the democratic

sentiment in the Netherlands. There was deep and sturdy attachment to

ancient traditions, privileges, special constitutions extorted from a

power acknowledged to be superior to the people. When partly to save

those chartered rights, and partly to overthrow the horrible

ecclesiastical tyranny of the sixteenth century, the people had

accomplished a successful revolt, they never dreamt of popular

sovereignty, but allowed the municipal corporations, by which their local

affairs had been for centuries transacted, to unite in offering to

foreign princes, one after another, the crown which they had torn from

the head of the Spanish king. When none was found to accept the dangerous

honour, they had acquiesced in the practical sovereignty of the States;

but whether the States-General or the States-Provincial were the supreme

authority had certainly not been definitely and categorically settled. So

long as the States of Holland, led by the Advocate, had controlled in

great matters the political action of the States-General, while the

Stadholder stood without a rival at the head of their military affairs,

and so long as there were no fierce disputes as to government and dogma

within the bosom of the Reformed Church, the questions which were now

inflaming the whole population had been allowed to slumber.

The termination of the war and the rise of Arminianism were almost

contemporaneous. The Stadholder, who so unwillingly had seen the

occupation in which he had won so much glory taken from him by the Truce,

might perhaps find less congenial but sufficiently engrossing business as

champion of the Church and of the Union.

The new church--not freedom of worship for different denominations of

Christians, but supremacy of the Church of Heidelberg and Geneva--seemed

likely to be the result of the overthrow of the ancient church. It is the

essence of the Catholic Church to claim supremacy over and immunity from

the civil authority, and to this claim for the Reformed Church, by which

that of Rome had been supplanted, Barneveld was strenuously opposed.

The Stadholder was backed, therefore, by the Church in its purity, by the

majority of the humbler classes--who found in membership of the oligarchy

of Heaven a substitute for those democratic aspirations on earth which

were effectually suppressed between the two millstones of burgher

aristocracy and military discipline--and by the States-General, a

majority of which were Contra-Remonstrant in their faith.

If the sword is usually an overmatch for the long robe in political

struggles, the cassock has often proved superior to both combined. But in

the case now occupying our attention the cassock was in alliance with the

sword. Clearly the contest was becoming a desperate one for the

statesman.

And while the controversy between the chiefs waged hotter and hotter, the

tumults around the churches on Sundays in every town and village grew

more and more furious, ending generally in open fights with knives,

bludgeons, and brickbats; preachers and magistrates being often too glad

to escape with a whole skin. One can hardly be ingenuous enough to

consider all this dirking, battering, and fisticuffing as the legitimate

and healthy outcome of a difference as to the knotty point whether all

men might or might not be saved by repentance and faith in Christ.

The Greens and Blues of the Byzantine circus had not been more typical of

fierce party warfare in the Lower Empire than the greens and blues of

predestination in the rising commonwealth, according to the real or

imagined epigram of Prince Maurice.

"Your divisions in religion," wrote Secretary Lake to Carleton, "have, I

doubt not, a deeper root than is discerned by every one, and I doubt not

that the Prince Maurice's carriage doth make a jealousy of affecting a

party under the pretence of supporting one side, and that the States fear

his ends and aims, knowing his power with the men of war; and that

howsoever all be shadowed under the name of religion there is on either

part a civil end, of the one seeking a step of higher authority, of the

other a preservation of liberty."

And in addition to other advantages the Contra-Remonstrants had now got a

good cry--an inestimable privilege in party contests.

"There are two factions in the land," said Maurice, "that of Orange and

that of Spain, and the two chiefs of the Spanish faction are those

political and priestly Arminians, Uytenbogaert and Oldenbarneveld."

Orange and Spain! the one name associated with all that was most

venerated and beloved throughout the country, for William the Silent

since his death was almost a god; the other ineradicably entwined at that

moment with, everything execrated throughout the land. The Prince of

Orange's claim to be head of the Orange faction could hardly be disputed,

but it was a master stroke of political malice to fix the stigma of

Spanish partisanship on the Advocate. If the venerable patriot who had

been fighting Spain, sometimes on the battle-field and always in the

council, ever since he came to man's estate, could be imagined even in a

dream capable of being bought with Spanish gold to betray his country,

who in the ranks of the Remonstrant party could be safe from such

accusations? Each party accused the other of designs for altering or

subverting the government. Maurice was suspected of what were called

Leicestrian projects, "Leycestrana consilia"--for the Earl's plots to

gain possession of Leyden and Utrecht had never been forgotten--while the

Prince and those who acted with him asserted distinctly that it was the

purpose of Barneveld to pave the way for restoring the Spanish

sovereignty and the Popish religion so soon as the Truce had reached its

end?

Spain and Orange. Nothing for a faction fight could be neater. Moreover

the two words rhyme in Netherlandish, which is the case in no other

language, "Spanje-Oranje." The sword was drawn and the banner unfurled.

The "Mud Beggars" of the Hague, tired of tramping to Ryswyk of a Sunday

to listen to Henry Rosaeus, determined on a private conventicle in the

capital. The first barn selected was sealed up by the authorities, but

Epoch Much, book-keeper of Prince Maurice, then lent them his house. The

Prince declared that sooner than they should want a place of assembling

he would give them his own. But he meant that they should have a public

church to themselves, and that very soon. King James thoroughly approved

of all these proceedings. At that very instant such of his own subjects

as had seceded from the Established Church to hold conventicles in barns

and breweries and backshops in London were hunted by him with bishops'

pursuivants and other beagles like vilest criminals, thrown into prison

to rot, or suffered to escape from their Fatherland into the

trans-Atlantic wilderness, there to battle with wild beasts and savages,

and to die without knowing themselves the fathers of a more powerful

United States than the Dutch Republic, where they were fain to seek in

passing a temporary shelter. He none the less instructed his envoy at the

Hague to preach the selfsame doctrines for which the New England Puritans

were persecuted, and importunately and dictatorially to plead the cause

of those Hollanders who, like Bradford and Robinson, Winthrop and Cotton,

maintained the independence of the Church over the State.

Logic is rarely the quality on which kings pride themselves, and

Puritanism in the Netherlands, although under temporary disadvantage at

the Hague, was evidently the party destined to triumph throughout the

country. James could safely sympathize therefore in Holland with what he

most loathed in England, and could at the same time feed fat the grudge

he owed the Advocate. The calculations of Barneveld as to the respective

political forces of the Commonwealth seem to have been to a certain

extent defective.

He allowed probably too much weight to the Catholic party as a motive

power at that moment, and he was anxious both from that consideration and

from his honest natural instinct for general toleration; his own broad

and unbigoted views in religious matters, not to force that party into a

rebellious attitude dangerous to the state. We have seen how nearly a

mutiny in the important city of Utrecht, set on foot by certain Romanist

conspirators in the years immediately succeeding the Truce, had subverted

the government, had excited much anxiety amongst the firmest allies of

the Republic, and had been suppressed only by the decision of the

Advocate and a show of military force.

He had informed Carleton not long after his arrival that in the United

Provinces, and in Holland in particular, were many sects and religions of

which, according to his expression, "the healthiest and the richest part

were the Papists, while the Protestants did not make up one-third part of

the inhabitants."

Certainly, if these statistics were correct or nearly correct, there

could be nothing more stupid from a purely political point of view than

to exasperate so influential a portion of the community to madness and

rebellion by refusing them all rights of public worship. Yet because the

Advocate had uniformly recommended indulgence, he had incurred more odium

at home than from any other cause. Of course he was a Papist in disguise,

ready to sell his country to Spain, because he was willing that more than

half the population of the country should be allowed to worship God

according to their conscience. Surely it would be wrong to judge the

condition of things at that epoch by the lights of to-day, and perhaps in

the Netherlands there had before been no conspicuous personage, save

William the Silent alone, who had risen to the height of toleration on

which the Advocate essayed to stand. Other leading politicians considered

that the national liberties could be preserved only by retaining the

Catholics in complete subjection.

At any rate the Advocate was profoundly convinced of the necessity of

maintaining harmony and mutual toleration among the Protestants

themselves, who, as he said, made up but one-third of the whole people.

In conversing with the English ambassador he divided them into "Puritans

and double Puritans," as they would be called, he said, in England. If

these should be at variance with each other, he argued, the Papists would

be the strongest of all. "To prevent this inconvenience," he said, "the

States were endeavouring to settle some certain form of government in the

Church; which being composed of divers persecuted churches such as in the

beginning of the wars had their refuge here, that which during the wars

could not be so well done they now thought seasonable for a time of

truce; and therefore would show their authority in preventing the schism

of the Church which would follow the separation of those they call

Remonstrants and Contra-Remonstrants."

There being no word so offensive to Carleton's sovereign as the word

Puritan, the Ambassador did his best to persuade the Advocate that a

Puritan in Holland was a very different thing from a Puritan in England.

In England he was a noxious vermin, to be hunted with dogs. In the

Netherlands he was the governing power. But his arguments were vapourous

enough and made little impression on Barneveld. "He would no ways yield,"

said Sir Dudley.

Meantime the Contra-Remonstrants of the Hague, not finding sufficient

accommodation in Enoch Much's house, clamoured loudly for the use of a

church. It was answered by the city magistrates that two of their

persuasion, La Motte and La Faille, preached regularly in the Great

Church, and that Rosaeus had been silenced only because he refused to

hold communion with Uytenbogaert. Maurice insisted that a separate church

should be assigned them. "But this is open schism," said Uytenbogaert.

Early in the year there was a meeting of the Holland delegation to the

States-General, of the state council, and of the magistracy of the Hague,

of deputies from the tribunals, and of all the nobles resident in the

capital. They sent for Maurice and asked his opinion as to the alarming

situation of affairs. He called for the register-books of the States of

Holland, and turning back to the pages on which was recorded his

accession to the stadholderate soon after his father's murder, ordered

the oath then exchanged between himself and the States to be read aloud.

That oath bound them mutually to support the Reformed religion till the

last drop of blood in their veins.

"That oath I mean to keep," said the Stadholder, "so long as I live."

No one disputed the obligation of all parties to maintain the Reformed

religion. But the question was whether the Five Points were inconsistent

with the Reformed religion. The contrary was clamorously maintained by

most of those present: In the year 1586 this difference in dogma had not

arisen, and as the large majority of the people at the Hague, including

nearly all those of rank and substance, were of the Remonstrant

persuasion, they naturally found it not agreeable to be sent out of the

church by a small minority. But Maurice chose to settle the question very

summarily. His father had been raised to power by the strict Calvinists,

and he meant to stand by those who had always sustained William the

Silent. "For this religion my father lost his life, and this religion

will I defend," said he.

"You hold then," said Barneveld, "that the Almighty has created one child

for damnation and another for salvation, and you wish this doctrine to be

publicly preached."

"Did you ever hear any one preach that?" replied the Prince.

"If they don't preach it, it is their inmost conviction," said the other.

And he proceeded to prove his position by copious citations.

"And suppose our ministers do preach this doctrine, is there anything

strange in it, any reason why they should not do so?"

The Advocate expressed his amazement and horror at the idea.

"But does not God know from all eternity who is to be saved and who to be

damned; and does He create men for any other end than that to which He

from eternity knows they will come?"

And so they enclosed themselves in the eternal circle out of which it was

not probable that either the soldier or the statesman would soon find an

issue.

"I am no theologian," said Barneveld at last, breaking off the

discussion.

"Neither am I," said the Stadholder. "So let the parsons come together.

Let the Synod assemble and decide the question. Thus we shall get out of

all this."

Next day a deputation of the secessionists waited by appointment on

Prince Maurice. They found him in the ancient mediaeval hall of the

sovereign counts of Holland, and seated on their old chair of state. He

recommended them to use caution and moderation for the present, and to go

next Sunday once more to Ryswyk. Afterwards he pledged himself that they

should have a church at the Hague, and, if necessary, the Great Church

itself.

But the Great Church, although a very considerable Catholic cathedral

before the Reformation, was not big enough now to hold both Henry Rosaeus

and John Uytenbogaert. Those two eloquent, learned, and most pugnacious

divines were the respective champions in the pulpit of the opposing

parties, as were the Advocate and the Stadholder in the council. And

there was as bitter personal rivalry between the two as between the

soldier and statesman.

"The factions begin to divide themselves," said Carleton, "betwixt his

Excellency and Monsieur Barneveld as heads who join to this present

difference their ancient quarrels. And the schism rests actually between

Uytenbogaert and Rosaeus, whose private emulation and envy (both being

much applauded and followed) doth no good towards the public

pacification." Uytenbogaert repeatedly offered, however, to resign his

functions and to leave the Hague. "He was always ready to play the

Jonah," he said.

A temporary arrangement was made soon afterwards by which Rosaeus and his

congregation should have the use of what was called the Gasthuis Kerk,

then appropriated to the English embassy.

Carleton of course gave his consent most willingly. The Prince declared

that the States of Holland and the city magistracy had personally

affronted him by the obstacles they had interposed to the public worship

of the Contra-Remonstrants. With their cause he had now thoroughly

identified himself.

The hostility between the representatives of the civil and military

authority waxed fiercer every hour. The tumults were more terrible than

ever. Plainly there was no room in the Commonwealth for the Advocate and

the Stadholder. Some impartial persons believed that there would be no

peace until both were got rid of. "There are many words among this

free-spoken people," said Carleton, "that to end these differences they

must follow the example of France in Marshal d'Ancre's case, and take off

the heads of both chiefs."

But these decided persons were in a small minority. Meantime the States

of Holland met in full assembly; sixty delegates being present.

It was proposed to invite his Excellency to take part in the

deliberations. A committee which had waited upon him the day before had

reported him as in favour of moderate rather than harsh measures in the

church affair, while maintaining his plighted word to the seceders.

Barneveld stoutly opposed the motion.

"What need had the sovereign states of Holland of advice from a

stadholder, from their servant, their functionary?" he cried.

But the majority for once thought otherwise. The Prince was invited to

come. The deliberations were moderate but inconclusive. He appeared again

at an adjourned meeting when the councils were not so harmonious.

Barneveld, Grotius, and other eloquent speakers endeavoured to point out

that the refusal of the seceders to hold communion with the Remonstrant

preachers and to insist on a separation was fast driving the state to

perdition. They warmly recommended mutual toleration and harmony. Grotius

exhausted learning and rhetoric to prove that the Five Points were not

inconsistent with salvation nor with the constitution of the United

Provinces.

The Stadholder grew impatient at last and clapped his hand on his rapier.

"No need here," he said, "of flowery orations and learned arguments. With

this good sword I will defend the religion which my father planted in

these Provinces, and I should like to see the man who is going to prevent

me!"

The words had an heroic ring in the ears of such as are ever ready to

applaud brute force, especially when wielded by a prince. The argumentum

ad ensem, however, was the last plea that William the Silent would have

been likely to employ on such an occasion, nor would it have been easy to

prove that the Reformed religion had been "planted" by one who had drawn

the sword against the foreign tyrant, and had made vast sacrifices for

his country's independence years before abjuring communion with the Roman

Catholic Church.

When swords are handled by the executive in presence of civil assemblies

there is usually but one issue to be expected.

Moreover, three whales had recently been stranded at Scheveningen, one of

them more than sixty feet long, and men wagged their beards gravely as

they spoke of the event, deeming it a certain presage of civil

commotions. It was remembered that at the outbreak of the great war two

whales had been washed ashore in the Scheldt. Although some free-thinking

people were inclined to ascribe the phenomenon to a prevalence of strong

westerly gales, while others found proof in it of a superabundance of

those creatures in the Polar seas, which should rather give encouragement

to the Dutch and Zealand fisheries, it is probable that quite as dark

forebodings of coming disaster were caused by this accident as by the

trumpet-like defiance which the Stadholder had just delivered to the

States of Holland.

Meantime the seceding congregation of the Hague had become wearied of the

English or Gasthuis Church, and another and larger one had been promised

them. This was an ancient convent on one of the principal streets of the

town, now used as a cannon-foundry. The Prince personally superintended

the preparations for getting ready this place of worship, which was

thenceforth called the Cloister Church. But delays were, as the

Contra-Remonstrants believed, purposely interposed, so that it was nearly

Midsummer before there were any signs of the church being fit for use.

They hastened accordingly to carry it, as it were, by assault. Not

wishing peaceably to accept as a boon from the civil authority what they

claimed as an indefeasible right, they suddenly took possession one

Sunday night of the Cloister Church.

It was in a state of utter confusion--part monastery, part foundry, part

conventicle. There were few seats, no altar, no communion-table, hardly

any sacramental furniture, but a pulpit was extemporized. Rosaeus

preached in triumph to an enthusiastic congregation, and three children

were baptized with the significant names of William, Maurice, and Henry.

On the following Monday there was a striking scene on the Voorhout. This

most beautiful street of a beautiful city was a broad avenue, shaded by a

quadruple row of limetrees, reaching out into the thick forest of secular

oaks and beeches--swarming with fallow-deer and alive with the notes of

singing birds--by which the Hague, almost from time immemorial, has been

embowered. The ancient cloisterhouse and church now reconverted to

religious uses--was a plain, rather insipid structure of red brick picked

out with white stone, presenting three symmetrical gables to the street,

with a slender belfry and spire rising in the rear.

Nearly adjoining it on the north-western side was the elegant and

commodious mansion of Barneveld, purchased by him from the

representatives of the Arenberg family, surrounded by shrubberies and

flower-gardens; not a palace, but a dignified and becoming abode for the

first citizen of a powerful republic.

On that midsummer's morning it might well seem that, in rescuing the old

cloister from the military purposes to which it had for years been

devoted, men had given an even more belligerent aspect to the scene than

if it had been left as a foundry. The miscellaneous pieces of artillery

and other fire-arms lying about, with piles of cannon-ball which there

had not been time to remove, were hardly less belligerent and threatening

of aspect than the stern faces of the crowd occupied in thoroughly

preparing the house for its solemn destination. It was determined that

there should be accommodation on the next Sunday for all who came to the

service. An army of carpenters, joiners, glaziers, and other

workmen-assisted by a mob of citizens of all ranks and ages, men and

women, gentle and simple were busily engaged in bringing planks and

benches; working with plane, adze, hammer and saw, trowel and shovel, to

complete the work.

On the next Sunday the Prince attended public worship for the last time

at the Great Church under the ministration of Uytenbogaert. He was

infuriated with the sermon, in which the bold Remonstrant bitterly

inveighed against the proposition for a National Synod. To oppose that

measure publicly in the very face of the Stadholder, who now considered

himself as the Synod personified, seemed to him flat blasphemy. Coming

out of the church with his step-mother, the widowed Louise de Coligny,

Princess of Orange, he denounced the man in unmeasured terms. "He is the

enemy of God," said Maurice. At least from that time forth, and indeed

for a year before, Maurice was the enemy of the preacher.

On the following Sunday, July 23, Maurice went in solemn state to the

divine service at the Cloister Church now thoroughly organized. He was

accompanied by his cousin, the famous Count William Lewis of Nassau,

Stadholder of Friesland, who had never concealed his warm sympathy with

the Contra-Remonstrants, and by all the chief officers of his household

and members of his staff. It was an imposing demonstration and meant for

one. As the martial stadholder at the head of his brilliant cavalcade

rode forth across the drawbridge from the Inner Court of the old moated

palace--where the ancient sovereign Dirks and Florences of Holland had so

long ruled their stout little principality--along the shady and stately

Kneuterdyk and so through the Voorhout, an immense crowd thronged around

his path and accompanied him to the church. It was as if the great

soldier were marching to siege or battle-field where fresher glories than

those of Sluys or Geertruidenberg were awaiting him.

The train passed by Barneveld's house and entered the cloister. More than

four thousand persons were present at the service or crowded around the

doors vainly attempting to gain admission into the overflowing aisles;

while the Great Church was left comparatively empty, a few hundred only

worshipping there. The Cloister Church was thenceforth called the

Prince's Church, and a great revolution was beginning even in the Hague.

The Advocate was wroth as he saw the procession graced by the two

stadholders and their military attendants. He knew that he was now to bow

his head to the Church thus championed by the chief personage and

captain-general of the state, to renounce his dreams of religious

toleration, to sink from his post of supreme civic ruler, or to accept an

unequal struggle in which he might utterly succumb. But his iron nature

would break sooner than bend. In the first transports of his indignation

he is said to have vowed vengeance against the immediate instruments by

which the Cloister Church had, as he conceived, been surreptitiously and

feloniously seized. He meant to strike a blow which should startle the

whole population of the Hague, send a thrill of horror through the

country, and teach men to beware how they trifled with the sovereign

states of Holland, whose authority had so long been undisputed, and with

him their chief functionary.

He resolved--so ran the tale of the preacher Trigland, who told it to

Prince Maurice, and has preserved it in his chronicle--to cause to be

seized at midnight from their beds four men whom he considered the

ringleaders in this mutiny, to have them taken to the place of execution

on the square in the midst of the city, to have their heads cut off at

once by warrant from the chief tribunal without any previous warning, and

then to summon all the citizens at dawn of day, by ringing of bells and

firing of cannon, to gaze on the ghastly spectacle, and teach them to

what fate this pestilential schism and revolt against authority had

brought its humble tools. The victims were to be Enoch Much, the Prince's

book-keeper, and three others, an attorney, an engraver, and an

apothecary, all of course of the Contra-Remonstrant persuasion. It was

necessary, said the Advocate, to make once for all an example, and show

that there was a government in the land.

He had reckoned on a ready adhesion to this measure and a sentence from

the tribunal through the influence of his son-in-law, the Seignior van

Veenhuyzen, who was president of the chief court. His attempt was foiled

however by the stern opposition of two Zealand members of the court, who

managed to bring up from a bed of sickness, where he had long been lying,

a Holland councillor whom they knew to be likewise opposed to the fierce

measure, and thus defeated it by a majority of one.

Such is the story as told by contemporaries and repeated from that day to

this. It is hardly necessary to say that Barneveld calmly denied having

conceived or even heard of the scheme. That men could go about looking

each other in the face and rehearsing such gibberish would seem

sufficiently dispiriting did we not know to what depths of credulity men

in all ages can sink when possessed by the demon of party malice.

If it had been narrated on the Exchange at Amsterdam or Flushing during

that portentous midsummer that Barneveld had not only beheaded but

roasted alive, and fed the dogs and cats upon the attorney, the

apothecary, and the engraver, there would have been citizens in plenty to

devour the news with avidity.

But although the Advocate had never imagined such extravagances as these,

it is certain that he had now resolved upon very bold measures, and that

too without an instant's delay. He suspected the Prince of aiming at

sovereignty not only over Holland but over all the provinces and to be

using the Synod as a principal part of his machinery. The gauntlet was

thrown down by the Stadholder, and the Advocate lifted it at once. The

issue of the struggle would depend upon the political colour of the town

magistracies. Barneveld instinctively felt that Maurice, being now

resolved that the Synod should be held, would lose no time in making a

revolution in all the towns through the power he held or could plausibly

usurp. Such a course would, in his opinion, lead directly to an

unconstitutional and violent subversion of the sovereign rights of each

province, to the advantage of the central government. A religious creed

would be forced upon Holland and perhaps upon two other provinces which

was repugnant to a considerable majority of the people. And this would be

done by a majority vote of the States-General, on a matter over which, by

the 13th Article of the fundamental compact--the Union of Utrecht--the

States-General had no control, each province having reserved the

disposition of religious affairs to itself. For let it never be forgotten

that the Union of the Netherlands was a compact, a treaty, an agreement

between sovereign states. There was no pretence that it was an

incorporation, that the people had laid down a constitution, an organic

law. The people were never consulted, did not exist, had not for

political purposes been invented. It was the great primal defect of their

institutions, but the Netherlanders would have been centuries before

their age had they been able to remedy that defect. Yet the Netherlanders

would have been much behind even that age of bigotry had they admitted

the possibility in a free commonwealth, of that most sacred and important

of all subjects that concern humanity, religious creed--the relation of

man to his Maker--to be regulated by the party vote of a political board.

It was with no thought of treason in his heart or his head therefore that

the Advocate now resolved that the States of Holland and the cities of

which that college was composed should protect their liberties and

privileges, the sum of which in his opinion made up the sovereignty of

the province he served, and that they should protect them, if necessary,

by force. Force was apprehended. It should be met by force. To be

forewarned was to be forearmed. Barneveld forewarned the States of

Holland.

On the 4th August 1617, he proposed to that assembly a resolution which

was destined to become famous. A majority accepted it after brief debate.

It was to this effect.

The States having seen what had befallen in many cities, and especially

in the Hague, against the order, liberties, and laws of the land, and

having in vain attempted to bring into harmony with the States certain

cities which refused to co-operate with the majority, had at last

resolved to refuse the National Synod, as conflicting with the

sovereignty and laws of Holland. They had thought good to set forth in

public print their views as to religious worship, and to take measures to

prevent all deeds of violence against persons and property. To this end

the regents of cities were authorized in case of need, until otherwise

ordained, to enrol men-at-arms for their security and prevention of

violence. Furthermore, every one that might complain of what the regents

of cities by strength of this resolution might do was ordered to have

recourse to no one else than the States of Holland, as no account would

be made of anything that might be done or undertaken by the tribunals.

Finally, it was resolved to send a deputation to Prince Maurice, the

Princess-Widow, and Prince Henry, requesting them to aid in carrying out

this resolution.

Thus the deed was done. The sword was drawn. It was drawn in self-defence

and in deliberate answer to the Stadholder's defiance when he rapped his

sword hilt in face of the assembly, but still it was drawn. The States of

Holland were declared sovereign and supreme. The National Synod was

peremptorily rejected. Any decision of the supreme courts of the Union in

regard to the subject of this resolution was nullified in advance.

Thenceforth this measure of the 4th August was called the "Sharp

Resolve." It might prove perhaps to be double-edged.

It was a stroke of grim sarcasm on the part of the Advocate thus solemnly

to invite the Stadholder's aid in carrying out a law which was aimed

directly at his head; to request his help for those who meant to defeat

with the armed hand that National Synod which he had pledged himself to

bring about.

The question now arose what sort of men-at-arms it would be well for the

city governments to enlist. The officers of the regular garrisons had

received distinct orders from Prince Maurice as their military superior

to refuse any summons to act in matters proceeding from the religious

question. The Prince, who had chief authority over all the regular

troops, had given notice that he would permit nothing to be done against

"those of the Reformed religion," by which he meant the

Contra-Remonstrants and them only.

In some cities there were no garrisons, but only train-bands. But the

train bands (Schutters) could not be relied on to carry out the Sharp

Resolve, for they were almost to a man Contra-Remonstrants. It was

therefore determined to enlist what were called "Waartgelders;" soldiers,

inhabitants of the place, who held themselves ready to serve in time of

need in consideration of a certain wage; mercenaries in short.

This resolution was followed as a matter of course by a solemn protest

from Amsterdam and the five cities who acted with her.

On the same day Maurice was duly notified of the passage of the law. His

wrath was great. High words passed between him and the deputies. It could

hardly have been otherwise expected. Next-day he came before the Assembly

to express his sentiments, to complain of the rudeness with which the

resolution of 4th August had been communicated to him, and to demand

further explanations. Forthwith the Advocate proceeded to set forth the

intentions of the States, and demanded that the Prince should assist the

magistrates in carrying out the policy decided upon. Reinier Pauw,

burgomaster of Amsterdam, fiercely interrupted the oration of Barneveld,

saying that although these might be his views, they were not to be held

by his Excellency as the opinions of all. The Advocate, angry at the

interruption, answered him sternly, and a violent altercation, not

unmixed with personalities, arose. Maurice, who kept his temper admirably

on this occasion, interfered between the two and had much difficulty in

quieting the dispute. He then observed that when he took the oath as

stadholder these unfortunate differences had not arisen, but all had been

good friends together. This was perfectly true, but he could have added

that they might all continue good friends unless the plan of imposing a

religious creed upon the minority by a clerical decision were persisted

in. He concluded that for love of one of the two great parties he would

not violate the oath he had taken to maintain the Reformed religion to

the last drop of his blood. Still, with the same 'petitio principii' that

the Reformed religion and the dogmas of the Contra-Remonstrants were one

and the same thing, he assured the Assembly that the authority of the

magistrates would be sustained by him so long as it did not lead to the

subversion of religion.

Clearly the time for argument had passed. As Dudley Carleton observed,

men had been disputing 'pro aris' long enough. They would soon be

fighting 'pro focis.'

In pursuance of the policy laid down by the Sharp Resolution, the States

proceeded to assure themselves of the various cities of the province by

means of Waartgelders. They sent to the important seaport of Brielle and

demanded a new oath from the garrison. It was intimated that the Prince

would be soon coming there in person to make himself master of the place,

and advice was given to the magistrates to be beforehand with him. These

statements angered Maurice, and angered him the more because they

happened to be true. It was also charged that he was pursuing his

Leicestrian designs and meant to make himself, by such steps, sovereign

of the country. The name of Leicester being a byword of reproach ever

since that baffled noble had a generation before left the Provinces in

disgrace, it was a matter of course that such comparisons were

excessively exasperating. It was fresh enough too in men's memory that

the Earl in his Netherland career had affected sympathy with the

strictest denomination of religious reformers, and that the profligate

worldling and arrogant self-seeker had used the mask of religion to cover

flagitious ends. As it had indeed been the object of the party at the

head of which the Advocate had all his life acted to raise the youthful

Maurice to the stadholderate expressly to foil the plots of Leicester, it

could hardly fail to be unpalatable to Maurice to be now accused of

acting the part of Leicester.

He inveighed bitterly on the subject before the state council: The state

council, in a body, followed him to a meeting of the States-General. Here

the Stadholder made a vehement speech and demanded that the States of

Holland should rescind the "Sharp Resolution," and should desist from the

new oaths required from the soldiery. Barneveld, firm as a rock, met

these bitter denunciations. Speaking in the name of Holland, he repelled

the idea that the sovereign States of that province were responsible to

the state council or to the States-General either. He regretted, as all

regretted, the calumnies uttered against the Prince, but in times of such

intense excitement every conspicuous man was the mark of calumny.

The Stadholder warmly repudiated Leicestrian designs, and declared that

he had been always influenced by a desire to serve his country and

maintain the Reformed religion. If he had made mistakes, he desired to be

permitted to improve in the future.

Thus having spoken, the soldier retired from the Assembly with the state

council at his heels.

The Advocate lost no time in directing the military occupation of the

principal towns of Holland, such as Leyden, Gouda, Rotterdam,

Schoonhoven, Hoorn, and other cities.

At Leyden especially, where a strong Orange party was with difficulty

kept in obedience by the Remonstrant magistracy, it was found necessary

to erect a stockade about the town-hall and to plant caltrops and other

obstructions in the squares and streets.

The broad space in front; of the beautiful medieval seat of the municipal

government, once so sacred for the sublime and pathetic scenes enacted

there during the famous siege and in the magistracy of Peter van der

Werff, was accordingly enclosed by a solid palisade of oaken planks,

strengthened by rows of iron bars with barbed prongs: The entrenchment

was called by the populace the Arminian Fort, and the iron spear heads

were baptized Barneveld's teeth. Cannon were planted at intervals along

the works, and a company or two of the Waartgelders, armed from head to

foot, with snaphances on their shoulders, stood ever ready to issue forth

to quell any disturbances. Occasionally a life or two was lost of citizen

or soldier, and many doughty blows were interchanged.

It was a melancholy spectacle. No commonwealth could be more fortunate

than this republic in possessing two such great leading minds. No two men

could be more patriotic than both Stadholder and Advocate. No two men

could be prouder, more overbearing, less conciliatory.

"I know Mons. Barneveld well," said Sir Ralph Winwood, "and know that he

hath great powers and abilities, and malice itself must confess that man

never hath done more faithful and powerful service to his country than

he. But 'finis coronat opus' and 'il di lodi lacera; oportet imperatorem

stantem mori.'"

The cities of Holland were now thoroughly "waartgeldered," and Barneveld

having sufficiently shown his "teeth" in that province departed for

change of air to Utrecht. His failing health was assigned as the pretext

for the visit, although the atmosphere of that city has never been

considered especially salubrious in the dog-days.

Meantime the Stadholder remained quiet, but biding his time. He did not

choose to provoke a premature conflict in the strongholds of the

Arminians as he called them, but with a true military instinct preferred

making sure of the ports. Amsterdam, Enkhuyzen, Flushing, being without

any effort of his own within his control, he quietly slipped down the

river Meuse on the night of the 29th September, accompanied by his

brother Frederic Henrys and before six o'clock next morning had

introduced a couple of companies of trustworthy troops into Brielle, had

summoned the magistrates before him, and compelled them to desist from

all further intention of levying mercenaries. Thus all the fortresses

which Barneveld had so recently and in such masterly fashion rescued from

the grasp of England were now quietly reposing in the hands of the

Stadholder.

Maurice thought it not worth his while for the present to quell the

mutiny--as he considered it the legal and constitutional defence of

vested right--as great jurists like Barneveld and Hugo Grotius accounted

the movement--at its "fountain head Leyden or its chief stream Utrecht;"

to use the expression of Carleton. There had already been bloodshed in

Leyden, a burgher or two having been shot and a soldier stoned to death

in the streets, but the Stadholder deemed it unwise to precipitate

matters. Feeling himself, with his surpassing military knowledge and with

a large majority of the nation at his back, so completely master of the

situation, he preferred waiting on events. And there is no doubt that he

was proving himself a consummate politician and a perfect master of

fence. "He is much beloved and followed both of soldiers and people,"

said the English ambassador, "he is a man 'innoxiae popularitatis' so as

this jealousy cannot well be fastened upon him; and in this cause of

religion he stirred not until within these few months he saw he must

declare himself or suffer the better party to be overborne."

The chief tribunal-high council so called-of the country soon gave

evidence that the "Sharp Resolution" had judged rightly in reckoning on

its hostility and in nullifying its decisions in advance.

They decided by a majority vote that the Resolution ought not to be

obeyed, but set aside. Amsterdam, and the three or four cities usually

acting with her, refused to enlist troops.

Rombout Hoogerbeets, a member of the tribunal, informed Prince Maurice

that he "would no longer be present on a bench where men disputed the

authority of the States of Holland, which he held to be the supreme

sovereignty over him."

This was plain speaking; a distinct enunciation of what the States' right

party deemed to be constitutional law.

And what said Maurice in reply?

"I, too, recognize the States of Holland as sovereign; but we might at

least listen to each other occasionally."

Hoogerbeets, however, deeming that listening had been carried far enough,

decided to leave the tribunal altogether, and to resume the post which he

had formerly occupied as Pensionary or chief magistrate of Leyden.

Here he was soon to find himself in the thick of the conflict. Meantime

the States-General, in full assembly, on 11th November 1617, voted that

the National Synod should be held in the course of the following year.

The measure was carried by a strict party vote and by a majority of one.

The representatives of each province voting as one, there were four in

favour of to three against the Synod. The minority, consisting of

Holland, Utrecht, and Overyssel, protested against the vote as an

outrageous invasion of the rights of each province, as an act of flagrant

tyranny and usurpation.

The minority in the States of Holland, the five cities often named,

protested against the protest.

The defective part of the Netherland constitutions could not be better

illustrated. The minority of the States of Holland refused to be bound by

a majority of the provincial assembly. The minority of the States-General

refused to be bound by the majority of the united assembly.

This was reducing politics to an absurdity and making all government

impossible. It is however quite certain that in the municipal governments

a majority had always governed, and that a majority vote in the

provincial assemblies had always prevailed. The present innovation was to

govern the States-General by a majority.

Yet viewed by the light of experience and of common sense, it would be

difficult to conceive of a more preposterous proceeding than thus to cram

a religious creed down the throats of half the population of a country by

the vote of a political assembly. But it was the seventeenth and not the

nineteenth century.

Moreover, if there were any meaning in words, the 13th Article of Union,

reserving especially the disposition over religious matters to each

province, had been wisely intended to prevent the possibility of such

tyranny.

When the letters of invitation to the separate states and to others were

drawing up in the general assembly, the representatives of the three

states left the chamber. A solitary individual from Holland remained

however, a burgomaster of Amsterdam.

Uytenbogaert, conversing with Barneveld directly afterwards, advised him

to accept the vote. Yielding to the decision of the majority, it would be

possible, so thought the clergyman, for the great statesman so to handle

matters as to mould the Synod to his will, even as he had so long

controlled the States-Provincial and the States-General.

"If you are willing to give away the rights of the land," said the

Advocate very sharply, "I am not."

Probably the priest's tactics might have proved more adroit than the

stony opposition on which Barneveld was resolved.

But it was with the aged statesman a matter of principle, not of policy.

His character and his personal pride, the dignity of opinion and office,

his respect for constitutional law, were all at stake.

Shallow observers considered the struggle now taking place as a personal

one. Lovers of personal government chose to look upon the Advocate's

party as a faction inspired with an envious resolve to clip the wings of

the Stadholder, who was at last flying above their heads.

There could be no doubt of the bitter animosity between the two men.

There could be no doubt that jealousy was playing the part which that

master passion will ever play in all the affairs of life. But there could

be no doubt either that a difference of principle as wide as the world

separated the two antagonists.

Even so keen an observer as Dudley Carleton, while admitting the man's

intellectual power and unequalled services, could see nothing in the

Advocate's present course but prejudice, obstinacy, and the insanity of

pride. "He doth no whit spare himself in pains nor faint in his

resolution," said the Envoy, "wherein notwithstanding he will in all

appearance succumb ere afore long, having the disadvantages of a weak

body, a weak party, and a weak cause." But Carleton hated Barneveld, and

considered it the chief object of his mission to destroy him, if he

could. In so doing he would best carry out the wishes of his sovereign.

The King of Britain had addressed a somewhat equivocal letter to the

States-General on the subject of religion in the spring of 1617. It

certainly was far from being as satisfactory as, the epistles of 1613

prepared under the Advocate's instructions, had been, while the exuberant

commentary upon the royal text, delivered in full assembly by his

ambassador soon after the reception of the letter, was more than usually

didactic, offensive, and ignorant. Sir Dudley never omitted an

opportunity of imparting instruction to the States-General as to the

nature of their constitution and the essential dogmas on which their

Church was founded. It is true that the great lawyers and the great

theologians of the country were apt to hold very different opinions from

his upon those important subjects, but this was so much the worse for the

lawyers and theologians, as time perhaps might prove.

The King in this last missive had proceeded to unsay the advice which he

had formerly bestowed upon the States, by complaining that his earlier

letters had been misinterpreted. They had been made use of, he said, to

authorize the very error against which they had been directed. They had

been held to intend the very contrary of what they did mean. He felt

himself bound in conscience therefore, finding these differences ready to

be "hatched into schisms," to warn the States once more against pests so

pernicious.

Although the royal language was somewhat vague so far as enunciation of

doctrine, a point on which he had once confessed himself fallible, was

concerned, there was nothing vague in his recommendation of a National

Synod. To this the opposition of Barneveld was determined not upon

religious but upon constitutional grounds. The confederacy did not

constitute a nation, and therefore there could not be a national synod

nor a national religion.

Carleton came before the States-General soon afterwards with a prepared

oration, wearisome as a fast-day sermon after the third turn of the

hour-glass, pragmatical as a schoolmaster's harangue to fractious little

boys.

He divided his lecture into two heads--the peace of the Church, and the

peace of the Provinces--starting with the first. "A Jove principium," he

said, "I will begin with that which is both beginning and end. It is the

truth of God's word and its maintenance that is the bond of our common

cause. Reasons of state invite us as friends and neighbours by the

preservation of our lives and property, but the interest of religion

binds us as Christians and brethren to the mutual defence of the liberty

of our consciences."

He then proceeded to point out the only means by which liberty of

conscience could be preserved. It was by suppressing all forms of

religion but one, and by silencing all religious discussion. Peter

Titelman and Philip II. could not have devised a more pithy formula. All

that was wanting was the axe and faggot to reduce uniformity to practice.

Then liberty of conscience would be complete.

"One must distinguish," said the Ambassador, "between just liberty and

unbridled license, and conclude that there is but one truth single and

unique. Those who go about turning their brains into limbecks for

distilling new notions in religious matters only distract the union of

the Church which makes profession of this unique truth. If it be

permitted to one man to publish the writings and fantasies of a sick

spirit and for another moved by Christian zeal to reduce this wanderer

'ad sanam mentem;' why then 'patet locus adversus utrumque,' and the

common enemy (the Devil) slips into the fortress." He then proceeded to

illustrate this theory on liberty of conscience by allusions to Conrad

Vorstius.

This infamous sectary had in fact reached such a pitch of audacity, said

the Ambassador, as not only to inveigh against the eternal power of God

but to indulge in irony against the honour of his Majesty King James.

And in what way had he scandalized the government of the Republic? He had

dared to say that within its borders there was religious toleration. He

had distinctly averred that in the United Provinces heretics were not

punished with death or with corporal chastisement.

"He declares openly," said Carleton, "that contra haereticos etiam vere

dictos (ne dum falso et calumniose sic traductos) there is neither

sentence of death nor other corporal punishment, so that in order to

attract to himself a great following of birds of the name feather he

publishes to all the world that here in this country one can live and die

a heretic, unpunished, without being arrested and without danger."

In order to suppress this reproach upon the Republic at which the

Ambassador stood aghast, and to prevent the Vorstian doctrines of

religious toleration and impunity of heresy from spreading among "the

common people, so subject by their natures to embrace new opinions," he

advised of course that "the serpent be sent back to the nest where he was

born before the venom had spread through the whole body of the Republic."

A week afterwards a long reply was delivered on part of the

States-General to the Ambassador's oration. It is needless to say that it

was the work of the Advocate, and that it was in conformity with the

opinions so often exhibited in the letters to Caron and others of which

the reader has seen many samples.

That religious matters were under the control of the civil government,

and that supreme civil authority belonged to each one of the seven

sovereign provinces, each recognizing no superior within its own sphere,

were maxims of state always enforced in the Netherlands and on which the

whole religious controversy turned.

"The States-General have always cherished the true Christian Apostolic

religion," they said, "and wished it to be taught under the authority and

protection of the legal government of these Provinces in all purity, and

in conformity with the Holy Scriptures, to the good people of these

Provinces. And My Lords the States and magistrates of the respective

provinces, each within their own limits, desire the same."

They had therefore given express orders to the preachers "to keep the

peace by mutual and benign toleration of the different opinions on the

one side and the other at least until with full knowledge of the subject

the States might otherwise ordain. They had been the more moved to this

because his Majesty having carefully examined the opinions of the learned

hereon each side had found both consistent with Christian belief and the

salvation of souls."

It was certainly not the highest expression of religious toleration for

the civil authority to forbid the clergymen of the country from

discussing in their pulpits the knottiest and most mysterious points of

the schoolmen lest the "common people" should be puzzled. Nevertheless,

where the close union of Church and State and the necessity of one church

were deemed matters of course, it was much to secure subordination of the

priesthood to the magistracy, while to enjoin on preachers abstention

from a single exciting cause of quarrel, on the ground that there was

more than one path to salvation, and that mutual toleration was better

than mutual persecution, was; in that age, a stride towards religious

equality. It was at least an advance on Carleton's dogma, that there was

but one unique and solitary truth, and that to declare heretics not

punishable with death was an insult to the government of the Republic.

The States-General answered the Ambassador's plea, made in the name of

his master, for immediate and unguaranteed evacuation of the debatable

land by the arguments already so often stated in the Advocate's

instructions to Caron. They had been put to great trouble and expense

already in their campaigning and subsequent fortification of important

places in the duchies. They had seen the bitter spirit manifested by the

Spaniards in the demolition of the churches and houses of Mulheim and

other places. "While the affair remained in its present terms of utter

uncertainty their Mightinesses," said the States-General, "find it most

objectionable to forsake the places which they have been fortifying and

to leave the duchies and all their fellow-religionists, besides the

rights of the possessory princes a prey to those who have been hankering

for the territories for long years, and who would unquestionably be able

to make themselves absolute masters of all within a very few days."

A few months later Carleton came before the States-General again and

delivered another elaborate oration, duly furnished to him by the King,

upon the necessity of the National Synod, the comparative merits of

Arminianism and Contra-Remonstrantism, together with a full exposition of

the constitutions of the Netherlands.

It might be supposed that Barneveld and Grotius and Hoogerbeets knew

something of the law and history of their country.

But James knew much better, and so his envoy endeavoured to convince his

audience.

He received on the spot a temperate but conclusive reply from the

delegates of Holland. They informed him that the war with Spain--the

cause of the Utrecht Union--was not begun about religion but on account

of the violation of liberties, chartered rights and privileges, not the

least of which rights was that of each province to regulate religious

matters within its borders.