The rise of the Dutch Republic must ever be regarded as one of the
leading events of modern times. Without the birth of this great
commonwealth, the various historical phenomena of: the sixteenth and
following centuries must have either not existed; or have presented
themselves under essential modifications.--Itself an organized protest
against ecclesiastical tyranny and universal empire, the Republic guarded
with sagacity, at many critical periods in the world's history; that
balance of power which, among civilized states; ought always to be
identical with the scales of divine justice. The splendid empire of
Charles the Fifth was erected upon the grave of liberty. It is a
consolation to those who have hope in humanity to watch, under the reign
of his successor, the gradual but triumphant resurrection of the spirit
over which the sepulchre had so long been sealed. From the handbreadth
of territory called the province of Holland rises a power which wages
eighty years' warfare with the most potent empire upon earth, and which,
during the progress of the struggle, becoming itself a mighty state, and
binding about its own slender form a zone of the richest possessions of
earth, from pole to tropic, finally dictates its decrees to the empire of
Charles.
So much is each individual state but a member of one great international
commonwealth, and so close is the relationship between the whole human
family, that it is impossible for a nation, even while struggling for
itself, not to acquire something for all mankind. The maintenance of the
right by the little provinces of Holland and Zealand in the sixteenth, by
Holland and England united in the seventeenth, and by the United States
of America in the eighteenth centuries, forms but a single chapter in the
great volume of human fate; for the so-called revolutions of Holland,
England, and America, are all links of one chain.
To the Dutch Republic, even more than to Florence at an earlier day, is
the world indebted for practical instruction in that great science of
political equilibrium which must always become more and more important as
the various states of the civilized world are pressed more closely
together, and as the struggle for pre-eminence becomes more feverish and
fatal. Courage and skill in political and military combinations enabled
William the Silent to overcome the most powerful and unscrupulous monarch
of his age. The same hereditary audacity and fertility of genius placed
the destiny of Europe in the hands of William's great-grandson, and
enabled him to mould into an impregnable barrier the various elements of
opposition to the overshadowing monarchy of Louis XIV. As the schemes of
the Inquisition and the unparalleled tyranny of Philip, in one century,
led to the establishment of the Republic of the United Provinces, so, in
the next, the revocation of the Nantes Edict and the invasion of Holland
are avenged by the elevation of the Dutch stadholder upon the throne of
the stipendiary Stuarts.
To all who speak the English language; the history of the great agony
through which the Republic of Holland was ushered into life must have
peculiar interest, for it is a portion of the records of the Anglo-Saxon
race--essentially the same, whether in Friesland, England, or
Massachusetts.
A great naval and commercial commonwealth, occupying a small portion of
Europe but conquering a wide empire by the private enterprise of trading
companies, girdling the world with its innumerable dependencies in Asia,
America, Africa, Australia--exercising sovereignty in Brazil, Guiana, the
West Indies, New York, at the Cape of Good Hope, in Hindostan, Ceylon,
Java, Sumatra, New Holland--having first laid together, as it were, many
of the Cyclopean blocks, out of which the British realm, at a late:
period, has been constructed--must always be looked upon with interest by
Englishmen, as in a great measure the precursor in their own scheme of
empire.
For America the spectacle is one of still deeper import. The Dutch
Republic originated in the opposition of the rational elements of human
nature to sacerdotal dogmatism and persecution--in the courageous
resistance of historical and chartered liberty to foreign despotism.
Neither that liberty nor ours was born of the cloud-embraces of a false
Divinity with, a Humanity of impossible beauty, nor was the infant career
of either arrested in blood and tears by the madness of its worshippers.
"To maintain," not to overthrow, was the device of the Washington of the
sixteenth century, as it was the aim of our own hero and his great
contemporaries.
The great Western Republic, therefore--in whose Anglo-Saxon veins flows
much of that ancient and kindred blood received from the nation once
ruling a noble portion of its territory, and tracking its own political
existence to the same parent spring of temperate human liberty--must look
with affectionate interest upon the trials of the elder commonwealth.
These volumes recite the achievement of Dutch independence, for its
recognition was delayed till the acknowledgment was superfluous and
ridiculous. The existence of the Republic is properly to be dated from
the Union of Utrecht in 1581, while the final separation of territory
into independent and obedient provinces, into the Commonwealth of the
United States and the Belgian provinces of Spain, was in reality effected
by William the Silent, with whose death three years subsequently, the
heroic period of the history may be said to terminate. At this point
these volumes close. Another series, with less attention to minute
details, and carrying the story through a longer range of years, will
paint the progress of the Republic in its palmy days, and narrate the
establishment of, its external system of dependencies and its interior
combinations for self-government and European counterpoise. The lessons
of history and the fate of free states can never be sufficiently pondered
by those upon whom so large and heavy a responsibility for the
maintenance of rational human freedom rests.
I have only to add that this work is the result of conscientious
research, and of an earnest desire to arrive at the truth. I have
faithfully studied al1 the important contemporary chroniclers and later
historians--Dutch, Flemish, French, Italian, Spanish, or German.
Catholic and Protestant, Monarchist and Republican, have been consulted
with the same sincerity. The works of Bor (whose enormous but
indispensable folios form a complete magazine of contemporary state-
papers, letters, and pamphlets, blended together in mass, and connected
by a chain of artless but earnest narrative), of Meteren, De Thou,
Burgundius, Heuterus; Tassis, Viglius, Hoofd, Haraeus, Van der Haer,
Grotius-of Van der Vynckt, Wagenaer, Van Wyn, De Jonghe, Kluit, Van
Kampen, Dewez, Kappelle, Bakhuyzen, Groen van Prinsterer--of Ranke and
Raumer, have been as familiar to me as those of Mendoza, Carnero,
Cabrera, Herrera, Ulloa, Bentivoglio, Peres, Strada. The manuscript
relations of those Argus-eyed Venetian envoys who surprised so many
courts and cabinets in their most unguarded moments, and daguerreotyped
their character and policy for the instruction of the crafty Republic,
and whose reports remain such an inestimable source for the secret
history of the sixteenth century, have been carefully examined--
especially the narratives of the caustic and accomplished Badovaro, of
Suriano, and Michele. It is unnecessary to add that all the publications
of M. Gachard--particularly the invaluable correspondence of Philip II.
and of William the Silent, as well as the "Archives et Correspondence" of
the Orange Nassau family, edited by the learned and distinguished Groen
van Prinsterer, have been my constant guides through the tortuous
labyrinth of Spanish and Netherland politics. The large and most
interesting series of pamphlets known as "The Duncan Collection," in the
Royal Library at the Hague, has also afforded a great variety of details
by which I have endeavoured to give color and interest to the narrative.
Besides these, and many other printed works, I have also had the
advantage of perusing many manuscript histories, among which may be
particularly mentioned the works of Pontua Payen, of Renom de France, and
of Pasquier de la Barre; while the vast collection of unpublished
documents in the Royal Archives of the Hague, of Brussels, and of
Dresden, has furnished me with much new matter of great importance.
I venture to hope that many years of labour, a portion of them in the
archives of those countries whose history forms the object of my study,
will not have been entirely in vain; and that the lovers of human
progress, the believers in the capacity of nations for self-government
and self-improvement, and the admirers of disinterested human genius and
virtue, may find encouragement for their views in the detailed history of
an heroic people in its most eventful period, and in the life and death
of the great man whose name and fame are identical with those of his
country.
No apology is offered for this somewhat personal statement. When an
unknown writer asks the attention of the public upon an important theme,
he is not only authorized, but required, to show, that by industry and
earnestness he has entitled himself to a hearing. The author too keenly
feels that he has no further claims than these, and he therefore most
diffidently asks for his work the indulgence of his readers.
I would take this opportunity of expressing my gratitude to Dr. Klemm,
Hofrath and Chief Librarian at Dresden, and to Mr. Von Weber,
Ministerial-rath and Head of the Royal Archives of Saxony, for the
courtesy and kindness extended to me so uniformly during the course of my
researches in that city. I would also speak a word of sincere thanks to
Mr. Campbell, Assistant Librarian at the Hague, for his numerous acts of
friendship during the absence of, his chief, M. Holtrop. To that most
distinguished critic and historian, M. Bakhuyzen van den Brinck, Chief
Archivist of the Netherlands, I am under deep obligations for advice,
instruction, and constant kindness, during my residence at the Hague; and
I would also signify my sense of the courtesy of Mr. Charter-Master de
Schwane, and of the accuracy with which copies of MSS. in the archives
were prepared for me by his care. Finally, I would allude in the
strongest language of gratitude and respect to M. Gachard, Archivist-
General of Belgium, for his unwearied courtesy and manifold acts of
kindness to me during my studies in the Royal Archives of Brussels.