raised forces in Germany and attempted the rescue of the
terrorized Provinces; but their troops were ill-paid and
mutinous and they suffered defeat. For the time being, the
Netherlands were crushed. As many of the people as could
escape had fled; commerce was at a standstill; workshops were
idle; the cities, once so wealthy, were impoverished; death,
mourning, and terror, were everywhere. Alva had done very
perfectly what he was sent to do.
The first break in the blackness of the clouds appeared in
April, 1572, when a fleet, manned by refugee adventurers who
called themselves Sea-Beggars, attacked and captured the town
of Brill. From that day the revolt had its right footing, on
the decks of the ships of the best sailors in the world. It
faced Philip from that day as a maritime power, which would
grow by the very feeding of its war with him, until it had
consumed everything Spanish within its reach. The taking of
Brill soon gave the patriots control of so many places in
Holland and Zealand that a meeting of deputies was held at
Dort, in July, 1572, which declared William of Orange to be
"the King's legal Stadtholder in Holland, Zealand, Friesland
and Utrecht," and recommended to the other Provinces that he
be appointed Protector of all the Netherlands during the
King's absence.
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Alva's reign of terror had failed so signally that even he was
discouraged and asked to be recalled. It was his boast when he
retired that he had put eighteen thousand and six hundred of
the Netherlanders to death since they were delivered into his
hands, above and beyond the horrible massacres by which he had
half depopulated every captured town. Under Alva's successor,
Don Louis de Requesens, a man of more justice and humanity,
the struggle went on, adversely, upon the whole, to the
patriots, though they triumphed gloriously in the famous
defense of Leyden. To win help from England, they offered the
sovereignty of their country to Queen Elizabeth; but in vain.
They made no headway in the southern provinces, where
Catholicism prevailed, and where the religious difference drew
people more to the Spanish side. But when Requesens died
suddenly, in the spring of 1576, and the Spanish soldiery
broke into a furious mutiny, sacking Antwerp and other cities,
then the nobles of Flanders and Brabant applied to the northern
provinces for help. The result was a treaty, called the
Pacification of Ghent, which contemplated a general effort to
drive the Spaniards from the whole land. But not much came of
this confederacy; the Catholic provinces never co-operated
with the Protestant provinces, and the latter went their own
way to freedom and prosperity, while the former sank back,
submissive, to their chains.
For a short time after the death of Requesens, Philip was
represented in the Netherlands by his illegitimate
half-brother, Don John of Austria; but Don John died in
October, 1578, and then came the great general, Alexander
Farnese, Prince of Parma, who was to try the patriots sorely
by his military skill. In 1579, the Prince of Orange drew them
more closely together, in the Union of Utrecht, which Holland,
Zealand, Gelderland, Zutphen, Utrecht, Overyssel, and
Groningen, subscribed, and which was practically the
foundation of the Dutch republic, though allegiance to Philip
was not yet renounced. This followed two years later, in July,
1581, when the States General, assembled at the Hague, passed a
solemn Act of Abjuration, which deposed Philip from his
sovereignty and transferred it to the Duke of Anjou, a prince
of the royal family of France, who did nothing for the
Provinces, and who died soon after. At the same time, the
immediate sovereignty of Holland and Zealand was conferred on
the Prince of Orange.
In March, 1582, Philip made his first deliberate attempt to
procure the assassination of the Prince. He had entered into a
contract for the purpose, and signed it with his own hand. The
assassin employed failed only because the savage pistol wound
he inflicted, in the neck and jaw of his victim, did not kill.
The master-murderer, at Madrid, was not discouraged. He
launched his assassins, one following the other, until six had
made their trial in two years. The sixth, one Balthazar
Gerard, accomplished that for which he was sent, and William
the Silent, wise statesman and admirable patriot, fell under
his hand (July 10, 1584). Philip was so immeasurably delighted
at this success that he conferred three lordships on the
parents of the murderer.
William's son, Maurice, though but eighteen years old, was
immediately chosen Stadtholder of Holland, Zealand and
Utrecht, and High Admiral of the Union. In the subsequent
years of the war, he proved himself a general of great
capacity. Of the details of the war it is impossible to speak.
Its most notable event was the siege of Antwerp, whose
citizens defended themselves against the Duke of Parma, with
astonishing courage and obstinacy, for many months. They
capitulated in the end on honorable terms; but the prosperity
of their city had received a blow from which it never revived.
Once more the sovereignty of the Provinces was offered to
Queen Elizabeth of England, and once more declined; but the
queen sent her favorite, the Earl of Leicester, with a few
thousand men, to help the struggling Hollanders (1585). This
was done, not in sympathy with them or their cause, but purely
as a self-defensive measure against Spain. The niggardliness
and the vacillations of Elizabeth, combined with the
incompetency of Leicester, caused troubles to the Provinces
nearly equal to the benefit of the forces lent them. Philip of
Spain was now involved in his undertakings with the Guises and
the League in France, and in his plans against England, and
was weakened in the Netherlands for some years. Parma died in
1592, and Count Mansfield took his place, succeeded in his
turn by the Marquis Spinola. The latter, at last, made an
honest report, that the subjugation of the United Provinces
was impracticable, and, Philip II. being now dead, the Spanish
government was induced in 1607 to agree to a suspension of
arms. A truce for twelve years was arranged; practically it
was the termination of the war of independence, and
practically it placed the United Provinces among the nations,
although the formal acknowledgment of their independence was
not yielded by Spain until 1648.
England under Mary.
While the Netherlands had offered to Philip of Spain a special
field for his malice, there were others thrown open to him
which he did not neglect. He may be said, in fact, to have
whetted his appetite for blood and for burned human flesh in
England, whither he went, as a young prince, in 1554, to marry
his elderly second cousin, Queen Mary. We may be sure that he
did not check the ardor of his consort, when she hastened to
re-establish the supremacy of the Pope, and to rekindle the
fires of religious persecution. The two-hundred and
seventy-seven heretics whom she is reckoned to have burned may
have seemed to him, even then, an insignificant handful. He
quickly tired of her, if not of her congenial work, and left
her in 1555. In 1558 she died, and the Church of Rome fell
once more, never to regain its old footing of authority.
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England under Elizabeth.
Elizabeth, daughter of Anne Boleyn, who now came to the
throne, was Protestant by the necessities of her position,
whether doctrinally convinced or no. The Catholics denied her
legitimacy of birth, and disputed, therefore, her right to the
crown. She depended upon the Protestants for her support, and
Protestantism, either active or passive, had become, without
doubt, the dominant faith of the nation. But the mild schism
which formerly took most of its direction from Luther, had now
been powerfully acted upon by the influence of Calvin. Geneva
had been the refuge of many ministers and teachers who fled
from Mary's fires, and they returned to spread and deepen in
England the stern, strong, formidable piety which Calvin
evoked. These Calvinistic Protestants now made themselves felt
as a party in the state, and were known ere long by that name
which the next century rendered famous in English and American
history--the great name of the Puritans. They were not
satisfied with the stately, decorous, ceremonious Church which
Elizabeth reconstructed on the pattern of the Church of Edward
VI. At the same time, no party could be counted on more surely
for the support of the queen, since the hope of Protestantism
in England depended upon her, even as she was dependent upon
it.
The Catholics, denying legitimacy to Elizabeth, recognized
Mary Queen of Scots as the lawful sovereign of England. And
Mary was, in fact, the next in succession, tracing her
lineage, as stated before, to the elder sister of Henry VIII.
If Elizabeth had been willing to frankly acknowledge Mary's
heirship, failing heirs of her own body, it seems probable
that the partisans of the Scottish queen would have been
quieted, to a great extent. But Mary had angered her by
assuming, while in France, the arms and style of Queen of
England. She distrusted and disliked her Stuart cousin, and,
moreover, the whole idea of a settlement of the succession was
repugnant to her mind. At the same time, she could not be
brought to marry, as her Protestant subjects wished. She
coquetted with the notion of marriage through half her reign,
but never to any purpose.
Such were the elements of agitation and trouble in England
under Elizabeth. The history of well-nigh half-a-century was
shaped in almost all its events by the threatening attitude of
Catholicism and its supporters, domestic and foreign, toward
the English queen. She was supported by the majority of her
subjects with staunch loyalty and fidelity, even though she
treated them none too well, and troubled them in their very
defense of her by her whims and caprices. They identified her
cause with themselves, and took such pride in her courage that
they shut their eyes to the many weaknesses that went with it.
She never grasped the affairs she dealt with in a broadly
capable way. She never acted on them with well considered
judgment. Her ministers, it is clear, were never able to
depend upon a reasonable action of her mind. Her vanity or her
jealousy might put reason in eclipse at any moment, and a skilful
flatterer could make the queen as foolish as a milkmaid. But
she had a royal courage and a royal pride of country, and she
did make the good and glory of England her aim. So she won the
affection of all Englishmen whose hearts were not in the
keeping of the Pope, and no monarch so arbitrary was ever more
ardently admired.
Mary, Queen of Scots.
In 1567, Mary Stuart was deposed by her own subjects, or
forced to abdicate in favor of her infant son, James. She had
alienated the Scottish people, first by her religion, and then
by her suspected personal crimes. Having married her second
cousin, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, she was accused of being
false to him. Darnley revenged his supposed wrongs as a
husband by murdering her secretary, David Rizzio. In the next
year (1567) Darnley was killed; the hand of the Earl of
Bothwell appeared quite plainly in the crime, and the queen's
complicity was believed. She confirmed the suspicions against
herself by marrying Bothwell soon afterwards. Then her
subjects rose against her, imprisoned her in Loch Leven
Castle, and made the Earl of Murray regent of the Kingdom. In
1568 Mary escaped from her Scottish prison and entered
England. From that time until her death, in 1587, she was a
captive in the hands of her rival, Queen Elizabeth, and was
treated with slender magnanimity. More than before, she became
the focus of intrigues and conspiracies which threatened both
the throne and the life of Elizabeth, and a growing feeling of
hostility to the wretched woman was inevitable.
In 1570, Pope Pius V. issued against Elizabeth his formal bull
of excommunication, absolving her subjects from their
allegiance. This quickened, of course, the activity of the
plotters against the queen and set treason astir. Priests from
the English Catholic Seminary at Douai, afterwards at Rheims,
began to make their appearance in the country; a few Jesuits
came over; and both were active agents of the schemes on foot
which contemplated the seating of Mary Stuart on the throne of
Elizabeth Tudor. Some of these emissaries were executed, and
they are counted among the martyrs of the Catholic Church,
which is a serious mistake. The Protestantism of the sixteenth
century was quite capable of religious persecution, even to
death; but it has no responsibilities of that nature in these
Elizabethan cases. As a matter of fact, the religion of the
Jesuit sufferers in the reign of Elizabeth was a mere incident
attaching itself to a high political crime, which no nation
has ever forgiven.
The plotting went on for twenty years, keeping the nation in
unrest; while beyond it there were thickening signs of a great
project of invasion in the sinister mind of Philip II. At
last, in 1586, the coolest councillors of Elizabeth persuaded
her to bring Mary Stuart to trial for alleged complicity in a
conspiracy of assassination which had lately come to light.
Convicted, and condemned to death, Mary ended her sad life on
the scaffold, at Fotheringay, on the 8th of February, 1587.
Whether guilty or guiltless of any knowledge of what had been
done in her name, against the peace of England and against the
life of the English queen, it cannot be thought strange that
Protestant England took her life.
The Spanish Armada.
A great burst of wrath in Catholic Europe was caused by the
execution of Mary, and Philip of Spain hastened forward his
vast preparations for the invasion and conquest of England. In
1588, the "invincible armada," as it was believed to be,
sailed out of the harbors of Portugal and Spain, and wrecked
itself with clumsy imbecility on the British and Irish coasts.
It scarcely did more than give sport to the eager English
sailors who scattered its helpless ships and hunted them down.
Philip troubled England no more, and conspiracy ceased.
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England at Sea.
But the undeclared, half-piratical warfare which private
adventurers had been carrying on against Spanish commerce for
many years now acquired fresh energy. Drake, Hawkins,
Frobisher, Grenvil, Raleigh, were the heroic spirits of this
enterprising warfare; but they had many fellows. It was the
school of the future navy of England, and the foundations of
the British Empire were laid down by those who carried it on.
Otherwise, Elizabeth had little war upon her hands, except in
Ireland, where the state of misery and disorder had already
been long chronic. The first really complete conquest of the
island was accomplished by Lord Mountjoy between 1600 and
1603.
Intellectual England.
But neither the political troubles nor the naval and military
triumphs of England during the reign of Elizabeth are of much
importance, after all, compared with the wonderful flowering
of the genius of the nation which took place in that age.
Shakespeare, Spenser, Bacon, Ben Jonson, Marlowe, Hooker,
Raleigh, Sidney, are the great facts of Elizabeth's time, and
it shines with the luster of their names, the period most
glorious in English history.
The Religious Wars in France.
Wherever the stealthy arm of the influence of Philip II. of
Spain could reach, there the Catholic reaction of his time
took on a malignant form. In France, it is quite probable that
the Catholics and the Huguenots, if left to themselves, would
have come to blows; but it is certain that the meddling
fingers of the Spanish king put fierceness and fury into the
wars of religion, which raged from 1562 to 1596, and that they
were prolonged by his encouragement and help.
Catherine de' Medici, to strengthen herself against the
Guises, after the death of Francis II., offered attentions for
a time to the Huguenot nobles, and encouraged them to expect a
large and lasting measure of toleration. She went so far that
the Huguenot influence at court, surrounding the young king,
became very seriously alarming to Catholic onlookers, both at
home and abroad. Among the many remonstrances addressed to the
queen-regent, the one which appears to have been decisive in
its effect came from Philip. He coldly sent her word that he
intended to interfere in France and to establish the supremacy
of the Catholic Church; that he should give his support for that
purpose to any true friend of the Church who might request it.
Whether Catherine had entertained an honest purpose or not, in
her dealing with the Huguenots, this threat, with what lay
behind it, put an end to the hope of justice for them. It is
true that an assembly of notables, in January, 1562, did
propose a law which the queen put forth, in what is known as
the "Edict of January," whereby the Huguenots were given, for
the first time, a legal recognition, ceasing to be outlaws,
and were permitted to hold meetings, in the daytime, in open
places, outside of walled cities; but their churches were
taken away from them, they were forbidden to build more, and
they could hold no meetings in walled towns. It was a measure
of toleration very different from that which they had been led
to expect; and even the little meted out by this Edict of January
was soon shown to have no guarantee. Within three months, the
Duke of Guise had found an opportunity for exhibiting his
contempt of the new law, by ordering his armed followers to
attack a congregation at Vassy, killing fifty and wounding two
hundred of the peaceful worshippers. This outrage drove the
Huguenots to arms and the civil wars began.
The frivolous Anthony, King of Navarre, had been won back to
the Catholic side. His staunch wife, Jeanne d'Albret, with her
young son, the future Henry IV., and his brother, Louis,
Prince of Condé, remained true to their faith. Condé was the
chief of the party. Next to him in rank, and first in real
worth and weight, was the noble Admiral Coligny. The first war
was brief, though long enough to end the careers of Anthony of
Navarre, killed in battle, and the Duke of Guise,
assassinated. Peace was made in 1563 through a compromise,
which conceded certain places to the Huguenots, wherein they
might worship God in their own way. But it was a hollow peace,
and the malicious finger of the great master of assassins at
Madrid never ceased picking at it. In 1566, civil war broke
out a second time, continuing until 1570. Its principal
battles were that of Jarnac, in which Condé was taken prisoner
and basely assassinated by his captors, and that of
Moncontour. The Huguenots were defeated in both. After the
death of Condé, young Henry of Navarre, who had reached his
fifteenth year, was chosen to be the chief of the party, with
Coligny for his instructor in war.
Again peace was made, on a basis of slight concessions. Henry
of Navarre married the King's sister, Margaret of Valois;
prior to which he and his mother took up their residence with
the court, at Paris, where Jeanne d'Albret soon sickened and
died. The Admiral Coligny acquired, apparently, a marked
influence over the mind of the young king; and once more there
seemed to be a smiling future for the Reformed. But damnable
treacheries were hidden underneath this fair showing. The most
hideous conspiracy of modern times was being planned, at the
very moment of the ostentatious peace-marriage of the King of
Navarre, and the chief parties to it were Catherine de' Medici
and the Guises, whose evil inclinations in common had brought
them together at last. On the 22d of August, 1572, Coligny was
wounded by an assassin, employed by the widow and son of the
late Duke of Guise, whose death they charged against him,
notwithstanding his protestations of innocence. Two days
later, the monstrous and almost incredible massacre of St.
Bartholomew's Day was begun. Paris was full of Huguenots--the
heads of the party--its men of weight and influence--who had
been drawn to the capital by the King of Navarre's marriage
and by the supposed new era of favor in which they stood. To
cut these off was to decapitate Protestantism in France, and
that was the purpose of the infernal scheme. The weak-minded
young king was not an original party to the plot. When
everything had been planned, he was easily excited by a tale
of pretended Huguenot conspiracies, and his assent to summary
measures of prevention was secured. A little after midnight,
on the morning of Sunday, August 24, the signal was given, by
Catherine's order, which let loose a waiting swarm of
assassins, throughout Paris, on the victims who had been
marked for them. The Huguenots had had no warning; they were
taken everywhere by surprise, and they were easily murdered in
their beds, or hunted down in their hopeless flight.
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The noble Coligny, prostrated by the wound he had received two
days before, was killed in his chamber, and his body flung out
of the window. The young Duke of Guise stood waiting in the
court below, to gloat on the corpse and to basely spurn it
with his foot.
The massacre in Paris was carried on through two nights and
two days; and, for more than a month following, the example of
the capital was imitated in other cities of France, as the
news of what were called "the Paris Matins" reached them. The
total number of victims in the kingdom is estimated variously
to have been between twenty thousand and one hundred thousand.
Henry of Navarre and the young Prince of Condé escaped the
massacre, but they saved their lives by a hypocritical
abjuration of their religion.
The strongest town in the possession of the Huguenots was La
Rochelle, and great numbers of their ministers and people of
mark who survived the massacre now took refuge in that city,
with a considerable body of armed men. The royal forces laid
siege to the city, but made no impression on its defences.
Peace was conceded in the end on terms which again promised
the Huguenots some liberty of worship. But there was no
sincerity in it.
In 1574, Charles IX. died, and his brother, the Duke of Anjou,
who had lately been elected King of Poland, ran away from his
Polish capital with disgraceful haste and secrecy, to secure
the French crown. He was the most worthless of the
Valois-Medicean brood, and the French court in his reign
attained its lowest depth of degradation. The contending
religions were soon at war again, with the accustomed result,
in 1576, of another short-lived peace. The Catholics were
divided into two factions, one fanatical, following the
Guises, the other composed of moderate men, calling themselves
the Politiques, who hated the Spanish influence under which
the Guises were always acting, and who were willing to make
terms with the Huguenots. The Guises and the ultra-Catholics
now organized throughout France a great oath-bound "Holy
League", which became so formidable in power that the king
took fright, put himself at the head of it, and reopened war
with the Reformed.
More and more, the conflict of religions became confused with
questions of politics and mixed with personal quarrels. At one
time, the king's younger brother, the Duke of Alençon, had
gone over to the Huguenot side; but stayed only long enough to
extort from the court some appointments which he desired. The
king, more despised by his subjects than any king of France
before him had ever been, grew increasingly jealous and afraid
of the popularity and strength of the Duke of Guise, who was
proving to be a man quite superior to his father in
capability. Guise, on his side, was made arrogant by his sense
of power, and his ambition soared high. There were reasons for
believing that he did not look upon the throne itself as
beyond his reach.