Grave, which was valorously relieved by Martin Schenk and Sir John
Norris; but soon after he took it, to Leicester's surprise and disgust.
The capture of Axed by Maurice of Nassau and Sidney served as some
balance. Presently Leicester laid siege to Zutphen; but the place was
relieved, in spite of the memorable fight of Warnsfeld, where less than
six hundred English attacked and drove off a force of six times their
number, for reinforcements compelled their retreat. This was the famous
battle of Zutphen, where Philip Sidney fell.
But Elizabeth persisted in keeping Leicester in a false position which
laid him open to suspicion; while his own conduct kept him on ill terms
with the Estates, and the queen's parsimony crippled his activities. In
effect, there was soon a strong opposition to Leicester. He was at odds
also with stout Sir John Norris, from which evil was to come.
Now, the discovery of Babington's plot made Leicester eager to go back
to England, since he was set upon ending the life of Mary Stuart. At the
close of November he took ship from Flushing. But while Norris was left
in nominal command, his commission was not properly made out; and the
important town of Deventer was left under the papist Sir William
Stanley, with the adventurer Rowland York at Zutphen, because they were
at feud with Norris. Then came disaster; for Stanley and York
deliberately introduced Spanish troops by night, and handed over
Deventer and Zutphen to the Spaniards, which was all the worse, as
Leicester had ample warning that mischief was brewing. Every suspicion
ever felt against Leicester, or as to the honesty of English policy,
seemed to be confirmed, and there was a wave of angry feeling against
all Englishmen. The treachery of Anjou seemed about to be repeated.
The Queen of Scots was on the very verge of her doom, and Elizabeth was
entering on that most lamentable episode of her career, in which she
displayed all her worst characteristics, when a deputation arrived from
the Estates to plead for more effective help. The news of Deventer had
not yet arrived, and the queen subjected them to a furious and
contumelious harangue, and advised them to make peace with Philip. But
on the top of this came a letter from the Estates, with some very plain
speaking about Deventer.
Buckhurst, about the best possible ambassador, was despatched to the
Estates. He very soon found the evidence of the underhand dealings of
certain of Leicester's agents to be irresistible. He appealed
vehemently, as did Walsingham at home, for immediate aid, dwelling on
the immense importance to England of saving the Netherlands. But
Leicester had the queen's ear. Charges of every kind were flying on
every hand. Buckhurst's efforts met with the usual reward. The Estates
would have nothing to do with counsels of peace. At the moment they were
appointing Maurice of Nassau captain-general came the news that
Leicester was returning with intolerable claims.
While this was going on, Parma had turned upon Sluys, which, like the
rest of the coast harbours, was in the hands of the States. This was the
news which had necessitated the appointment of Maurice of Nassau. The
Dutch and English in Sluys fought magnificently. But the dissensions of
the opposing parties outside prevented any effective relief. Leicester's
arrival did not, mend matters. The operations intended to effect a
relief were muddled. At last the garrison found themselves with no
alternative but capitulation on the most honourable terms. In the
meanwhile, however, Drake had effected his brilliant destruction of the
fleet and stores preparing in Cadiz harbour; though his proceedings were
duly disowned by Elizabeth, now zealously negotiating with Parma.
This game of duplicity went on merrily; Elizabeth was intriguing behind
the backs of her own ministers; Parma was deliberately deceiving and
hoodwinking her, with no thought of anything but her destruction. In
France, civil war practically, between Henry of Navarre and Henry of
Guise was raging. In the Netherlands, the hostility between the Estates,
led by Barneveld and Leicester continued. When the earl was finally
recalled to England, and Willoughby was left in command, it was not due
to him that no overwhelming disaster had occurred, and that the splendid
qualities shown by other Englishmen had counter-balanced politically his
own extreme unpopularity.
The great crisis, however, was now at hand. The Armada was coming to
destroy England, and when England was destroyed the fate of the
Netherlands would soon be sealed. But in both England and the
Netherlands the national spirit ran high. The great fleet came; the
Flemish ports were held blockaded by the Dutch. The Spaniards had the
worse of the fighting in the Channel; they were scattered out of Calais
roads by the fireships, driven to flight in the engagement of
Gravelines, and the Armada was finally shattered by storms. Philip
received the news cheerfully; but his great project was hopelessly
ruined.
Of the events immediately following, the most notable were in
France--the murder of Guise, followed by that of Henry III., and the
claim of Henry IV. to be king. The actual operations in the Netherlands
brought little advantage to either side, and the Anglo-Dutch expedition
to Lisbon was a failure. But the grand fact which was to be of vital
consequence was this: that Maurice of Nassau was about to assume a new
character. The boy was now a man; the sapling had developed into the
oak-tree.
_III.--Maurice of Nassau_
The crushing blow, then, had failed completely. But Philip, instead of
concentrating on another great effort in the Netherlands, or retrieval
of the Armada disaster, had fixed his attention on France. The Catholic
League had proclaimed Henry IV.'s uncle, the Cardinal of Bourbon, king
as Charles X. Philip, to Parma's despair, meant to claim the succession
for his own daughter; and Parma's orders were to devote himself to
crushing the Béarnais.
And this was at the moment when Barneveld, the statesman, with young
Maurice, the soldier, were becoming decisively recognised as the chiefs
of the Dutch. Maurice had realised that the secret of success lay in
engineering operations, of which he had made himself a devoted student,
and in a reorganisation of the States army and of tactics, in which he
was ably seconded by his cousin Lewis William.
While Parma was forced to turn against Henry, who was pressing Paris
hard, Breda was captured (March 1590) by a very daring stratagem carried
out with extraordinary resolution--an event of slight intrinsic
importance, but exceedingly characteristic. During the summer several
other places were reduced, but Maurice was planning a great and
comprehensive campaign.
The year gave triumphant proof of the genius of Parma as a general, and
of the soundness of his views as to Philip's policy. Henry was
throttling Paris; by masterly movements Parma evaded the pitched battle,
for which Béarnais thirsted, yet compelled his adversary to relinquish
the siege. Nevertheless, Henry's activity was hardly checked; and when
Parma, in December, returned to the Netherlands, he found the Spanish
provinces in a deplorable state, and the Dutch states prospering and
progressing; while in France itself Henry's victory had certainly been
staved off, but had by no means been made impossible.
Throughout 1591, Maurice's operations were recovering strong places for
the States, one after another, from Zutphen and Deventer to Nymegen.
Parma was too much hampered by the bonds Philip had imposed on him to
meet Maurice effectively. And Henry was prospering in Normandy and
Brittany, and was laying siege to Rouen before the year ended.
In the spring Parma succeeded in relieving Rouen. Then Henry manoeuvred
him into what seemed a trap; but his genius was equal to the occasion,
and he escaped. But while the great general was engaged in France,
Maurice went on mining and sapping his way into Netherland fortresses.
In the meantime, Philip's grand object was to secure the French crown
for his own daughter, whose mother had been a sister of the last three
kings of France; the present plan being to marry her to the young Duke
of Guise--a scheme not to the liking of Guise's uncle Mayenne, who
wanted the crown himself. But Philip's chief danger lay in the prospect
of Henry turning Catholic.
Parma's death, in December 1592, deprived Philip of the genius which had
for years past been the mainstay of his power. Henry's public
announcement of his return to the Holy Catholic Church, in the summer of
1593, deprived the Spanish king of nearly all the support he had
hitherto received in France. Before this Maurice had opened his attack
on the two great cities which the Spaniards still held in the United
Provinces, Gertruydenberg and Groningen. His scientific methods secured
the former in June. In similar scientific style he raised the siege of
Corwarden. A year after Gertruydenberg, Groningen surrendered.
In 1595, France and Spain were at open war again, and in spite of
Henry's apostasy he had drawn into close alliance with the United
Provinces. The inefficient Archduke Ernest, who had succeeded Parma,
died at the beginning of the year. Fuentes, nephew of Alva, was the new
governor, _ad interim_. His operations in Picardy were successfully
conducted. The summer gave an extraordinary example of human vigour
triumphing, both physically and mentally, over the infirmities of old
age. Christopher Mondragon, at the age of ninety-two, marched against
Maurice, won a skirmish on the Lippe, and spoilt Maurice's campaign. In
January 1596 the governorship was taken over by the Archduke Albert. A
disaster both to France and England was the Spaniards' capture of
Calais, which Elizabeth might have relieved, but offered to do so only
on condition of it being restored to England--an offer flatly declined.
At the same time Henry and Elizabeth negotiated a league, but its
ostensible arrangements, intended to bring in the United Provinces and
Protestant German States, were very different from the real
stipulations, the queen promising very much less than was supposed. At
the end of October the Estates signed the articles.
Before winter was over, Maurice, with 800 horse, cut up an army of 5,000
men on the heath of Tiel, killing 2,000 and taking 500 prisoners, with a
loss of nine or ten men only. The enemy had comprised the pick of the
Spaniards' forces, and their prestige was absolutely wiped out. This was
just after Philip had wrecked European finance at large by publicly
repudiating the whole of his debts. The year 1697 was further remarkable
for the surprise and capture of Amiens by the Spaniards, and its siege
and recovery by Henry--a siege conducted on the engineering methods
introduced by Maurice. But the relations of the provinces with France
were now much strained; uncertainty prevailed as to whether either Henry
or Elizabeth, or both, might not make peace with Spain separately.
The Treaty of Vervins did, in fact, end the war between France and
Spain. It was followed almost at once by the death of Philip, who,
however, had just married the infanta to the archduke, and ceded the
sovereignty of the Netherlands to them.
_IV.--Winning Through_
In 1600 the States-General planned the invasion of the Spanish
Netherlands, but the scheme proved impracticable, and was abandoned.
Ostend was the one position in Flanders held by the United Provinces,
with a very mixed garrison. The archduke besieged Ostend (1601). Maurice
did not attack him, but captured the keys of the debatable land of
Cleves and Juliers. The siege of Ostend developed into a tremendous
affair, and a school in the art of war. Maurice, instead of aiming at a
direct relief, continued his operations so as to prevent the archduke
from a thorough concentration. In the summer of 1602 he was besieging
Grave, and Ostend was kept amply supplied from the sea, where the Dutch
had inflicted a tremendous defeat on the enemy. But early in 1603 the
Spaniards succeeded in carrying some outworks.
The death of Elizabeth, and the accession of James I. to the throne of
England affected the European situation; but Robert Cecil, Lord
Salisbury, was the new king's minister. Nevertheless, no long time had
elapsed before James was entering upon alliance with the Spaniard.
A new commander-in-chief was now before Ostend in the person of Ambrose
Spinola, an unknown young Italian, who was soon to prove himself a
worthy antagonist for Maurice. Spinola continued the siege of Ostend,
where the garrison were being driven inch by inch within an
ever-narrowing circle. This year, Maurice's counter-stroke was the
investment of Sluys, which was reduced in three months, in spite of a
skilful but unsuccessful attempt at its relief by Spinola. At length,
however, the long resistance of Ostend was finished when there was
practically nothing of the place left. The garrison marched out with the
honours of war, after a siege of over three years.
The next year was a bad one for Maurice. Spinola was beginning to show
his quality. Maurice's troops met with one reverse, when what should
have been a victory was turned into a rout by an unaccountable panic.
Spinola had learnt his business from Maurice, and was a worthy pupil.
All through 1606 the game of intrigue was going on without any great
advance or advantage to anyone. But while the Dutch had been campaigning
in the Netherlands, they had also been establishing themselves in the
Spice Islands, and in 1607 the rise of the United Provinces as a
sea-power received emphatic demonstration in a great fight off
Gibraltar. The disparity in size between the Spanish and Dutch vessels
was enormous, but the victory was overwhelming. Not a Dutch ship was
lost, and the Spanish fleet, which had viewed their approach with
laughter, was annihilated. The name of Heemskerk, the Dutch admiral who
inspired the battle, and lost his life at its beginning, is enrolled
among those of the nation's heroes.
This event had greatly stimulated the desire of the archduke for an
armistice, which had been in process of negotiation. With the old king
negotiation had been futile, since there was no prospect of his ever
conceding the minimum requirements of the provinces. Now, Spain had
reached a different position, and Spinola himself required a far heavier
expenditure than she was prepared for as the alternative to a peace on
the _uti possidetis_ basis. In the provinces, however, Barneveld and
Maurice were in antagonism; but an armistice was established and
extended, while solemn negotiations went on at The Hague in the
beginning of 1608. The proposals accepted next year implied virtually
the recognition of the Dutch republic as an independent nation, though
nominally there was only a truce for twelve years. The practical effect
was to secure not only independence but religious liberty, and the form
implied the independence and security of the Indian trade and even of
the West Indian trade. So, in 1609 the Dutch republic took its place
among the European powers.
* * * * *
MOUNTSTUART ELPHINSTONE
The History of India
Mountstuart Elphinstone was born in October 1779, and joined
the Bengal service in 1795, some three years before the
arrival in India of Lord Mornington, afterwards Marquess
Wellesley. He continued in the Indian service till 1829, and
was offered but refused the Governor Generalship. The last
thirty years of his life he passed in comparative retirement
in England, and died in November, 1859, at Hook Wood. He was
one of the particularly brilliant group of British
administrators in India in the first quarter of the last
century. Like his colleagues, Munro and Malcolm, he was a keen
student of Indian History. And although some of his views
require to be modified in the light of more recent enquiry,
his "History of India" published in 1841 is still the standard
authority from the earliest times to the establishment of the
British as a territorial power.
_I.--The Hindus_
India is crossed from East to West by a chain of mountains called the
Vindhyas. The country to the North of this chain is now called Hindustan
and that to the South of it the Deckan. Hindustan is in four natural
divisions; the valley of the Indus including the Panjab, the basin of
the Ganges, Rajputana and Central India. Neither Bengal nor Guzerat is
included in Hindustan power. The rainy season lasts from June to October
while the South West wind called the Monsoon is blowing.
Every Hindu history must begin with the code of Menu which was probably
drawn up in the 9th century B.C. In the society described, the first
feature that strikes us is the division into four castes--the
sacerdotal, the military, the industrial, and the servile. The Bramin is
above all others even kings. In theory he is excluded from the world
during three parts of his life. In practice he is the instructor of
kings, the interpreter of the military class; the king, his ministers,
and the soldiers. Third are the Veisyas who conduct all agricultural and
industrial operations; and fourth the Sudras who are outside the pale.
The king stands at the head of the Government with a Bramin for chief
Counsellor. Elaborate rules and regulations are laid down in the code as
to administration, taxation, foreign policy, and war. Land perhaps but
not certainly was generally held in common by village communities.
The king himself administers justice or deputes that work to Bramins.
The criminal code is extremely rude; no proportion is observed between
the crime and the penalty, and offences against Bramins or religion are
excessively penalised. In the civil law the rules of evidence are
vitiated by the admission of sundry excuses for perjury. Marriage is
indissoluble. The regulations on this subject and on inheritance are
elaborate and complicated.
The religion is drawn from the sacred books called the Vedas, compiled
in a very early form of Sanskrit. There is one God, the supreme spirit,
who created the universe including the inferior deities. The whole
creation is re-absorbed and re-born periodically. The heroes of the
later Hindu Pantheon do not appear. The religious observances enjoined
are infinite; but the eating of flesh is not prohibited. At this date,
however, moral duties are still held of higher account than ceremonial.
Immense respect is enjoined for immemorial customs as being the root of
all piety. The distinction between the three superior or "Twice Born"
classes points to the conclusion that they were a conquering people and
that the servile classes were the subdued Aborigines. It remains to be
proved, however, that the conquerors were not indigenous. The system
might have come into being as a natural growth, without the hypothesis
of an external invasion.
The Bramins claim that they alone now have preserved their lineage in
its purity. The Rajputs, however, claim to be pure Cshatriyas. In the
main the Bramin rules of life have been greatly relaxed. The castes
below the Cshatriyas have now become extremely mixed and extremely
numerous; a servile caste no longer exists. A man who loses caste is
excluded both from all the privileges of citizenship and all the
amenities of private life. As a rule, however, the recovery of caste by
expiation is an easy matter. The institution of Monastic Orders scarcely
seems to be a thousand years old.
Menu's administrative regulations have similarly lost their uniformity.
The township or village community, however, has survived. It is a
self-governing unit with its own officials, for the most part
hereditary. In large parts of India the land within the community is
regarded as the property of a group of village landowners, who
constitute the township, the rest of the inhabitants being their
tenants. The tenants whether they hold from the landowners or from the
Government are commonly called Ryots. An immense proportion of the
produce, or its equivalent, has to be paid to the State. The Zenindars
who bear a superficial likeness to English landlords were primarily the
Government officials to whom these rents were farmed. Tenure by military
service bearing some resemblance to the European feudal system is found
in the Rajput States. The code of Menu is still the basis of the Hindu
jurisprudence.
Religion has been greatly modified. Monotheism has been supplanted by a
gross Polytheism, by the corruption of symbolism. At the head are the
Triad Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the preserver, Siva the destroyer.
Fourteen more principal deities may be enumerated. To them must be added
their female Consorts. Many of the Gods are held to be incarnations of
Vishnu or Siva. Further, there is a vast host of spirits and demons,
good or evil. By far the most numerous sect is that of the followers of
Devi the spouse of Siva. The religions of the Buddhists and the Jains
though differing greatly from the Hindu seemed to have the same origin.
The five languages of Hindustan are of Sanscrit origin, belonging to the
Indo-European family. Of the Deckan languages, two are mixed, while the
other three have no connection with Sanscrit.
From Menu's code it is clear that there was an open trade between the
different parts of India. References to the sea seemed to prove that a
coasting trade existed. Maritime trade was probably in the hands of the
Arabs. The people of the East Coast were more venturesome sailors than
those of the West. The Hindus certainly made settlements in Java. There
are ten nations in India which differ from each other as much as do the
nations of Europe, and also resemble each other in much the same degree.
The physical contrast between the Hindustanis and the Bengalis is
complete; their languages are as near akin and as mutually
unintelligible as English and German, yet in religion, in their notions
on Government, in very much of their way of life, they are
indistinguishable to the European.
Indian widows sometimes sacrifice themselves on the husband's funeral
pile. Such a victim is called Sati. It is uncertain when the custom was
first introduced, but, evidently it existed before the Christian era.
A curious feature is that as there are castes for all trades, so there
are hereditary thief castes. Hired watchmen generally belong to these
castes on a principle which is obvious. The mountaineers of Central
India are a different race from the dwellers in the plain. They appear
to have been aboriginal inhabitants before the Hindu invasion. The
mountaineers of the Himalayas are in race more akin to the Chinese.
Established Hindu chronology is found in the line of Magadha. We can fix
the King Ajata Satru, who ruled, in the time of Gotama, in the
middle of the sixth century B.C. Some generations later comes
Chandragupta--undoubtedly the Sandracottus of Diodorus. The early legend
apparently begins to give place to real history with Rama, who certainly
invaded the Deckan. He would seem to have been a king in Oudh. The next
important event is the war of the Maha Bharata, probably in the
fourteenth century B.C. Soon after the main seat of Government seems to
have transferred to Delhi. The kingdom of Magadha next assumes a
commanding position though its rulers long before Chandragupta were of
low caste. Of these kings the greatest is Asoka, three generations after
Chandragupta. There was certainly no lord paramount of India at the time
of Alexander's invasion. Nothing points to any effective universal Hindu
Empire, though such an empire is claimed for various kings at intervals
until the beginning of the Mahometan invasions.
_II.--The Mahometan Conquest_