policy which, had it been carried out as he designed it, would have
anticipated the triumphs of Richelieu. Charles and the house of Austria
could alone bring about a Catholic reaction strong enough to arrest and
roll back the Reformation; and Cromwell was no sooner united with the
princes of North Germany than he sought to league them with France for
the overthrow of the emperor. Had he succeeded, the whole face of Europe
would have been changed, Southern Germany would have been secured for
Protestantism, and the Thirty Years’ War averted. He failed as men fail
who stand ahead of their age. The German princes shrank from a contest
with the emperor, France from a struggle which would be fatal to
Catholicism; and Henry, left alone to bear the resentment of the House
of Austria, and chained to a wife he loathed, turned savagely on
Cromwell. The nobles sprang on him with a fierceness that told of their
long-hoarded hate. Taunts and execrations burst from the lords at the
council table, as the Duke of Norfolk, who had been charged with the
minister’s arrest, tore the ensign of the garter from his neck. At the
charge of treason Cromwell flung his cap on the ground with a passionate
cry of despair. “This, then,” he exclaimed, “is my guerdon for the
services I have done! On your consciences, I ask you, am I a traitor?”
Then, with a sudden sense that all was over, he bade his foes “make
quick work, and not leave me to languish in prison.” Quick work was
made, and a yet louder burst of popular applause than that which hailed
the attainder of Cromwell hailed his execution.
CHARLES V, EMPEROR OF GERMANY.
BY JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY.
[Charles V, of Germany, and king of Spain under title of Charles I,
born 1500, died 1558. This fortunate monarch inherited from his
father, Archduke Philip of Austria, the Hapsburg dominion in
Germany; through his grandmother, the dukedom of Burgundy, which
included the Netherlands; and through his maternal grandfather,
Ferdinand of Spain, the magnificent dominion of the latter country
in both the New and Old Worlds. He was elected Emperor of Germany
by the diet in 1519, and was the most rich and powerful prince in
Christendom. Among the notable events of his reign were the
outbreak of Luther’s reformation, the defeat and capture of Francis
I of France, the capture and sack of Rome by his generalissimo, the
Constable de Bourbon, the two defeats of the Turkish power in
Hungary, and the severe punishment of the Mohammedan pirates of
Africa. Though Charles could turn his arms against the pontiff when
policy dictated, and was not a religious bigot, he strained every
nerve to suppress the Lutheran reformation for political reasons.
He was at last, however, obliged to assent to a certain degree of
religious toleration, fixed by the Nuremburg agreement in 1532, and
that of Augsburg in 1548. He abdicated in favor of his son Philip
in 1556, and spent the last two years of his life in the convent of
Yuste in Spain.]
The edicts and the Inquisition were the gifts of Charles to the
Netherlands, in return for their wasted treasure and their constant
obedience. For this his name deserves to be handed down to eternal
infamy, not only throughout the Netherlands but in every land where a
single heart beats for political or religious freedom. To eradicate
these institutions after they had been watered and watched by the care
of his successor, was the work of an eighty years’ war, in the course of
which millions of lives were sacrificed. Yet
[Illustration: CHARLES THE FIFTH.]
the abdicating emperor had summoned his faithful estates around him, and
stood up before them in his imperial robes for the last time, to tell
them of the affectionate regard which he had always borne them, and to
mingle his tears with theirs.
Could a single phantom have risen from one of the many thousand graves
where human beings had been thrust alive by his decree, perhaps there
might have been an answer to the question propounded by the emperor amid
all that piteous weeping. Perhaps it might have told the man, who asked
his hearers to be forgiven if he had ever unwittingly offended them,
that there was a world where it was deemed an offence to torture,
strangle, burn, and drown one’s innocent fellow-creatures. The usual but
trifling excuse for such enormities can not be pleaded for the emperor.
Charles was no fanatic. The man whose armies sacked Rome, who laid
sacrilegious hand on Christ’s vicegerent, and kept the infallible head
of the Church a prisoner to serve his own political ends, was _then_ no
bigot. He believed in nothing, save that when the course of his imperial
will was impeded and the interests of his imperial house in jeopardy,
pontiffs were wont to succumb as well as anabaptists. It was the
political heresy which lurked in the restiveness of the religious
reformers under dogma, tradition, and supernatural sanction to temporal
power, which he was disposed to combat to the death. He was too shrewd a
politician not to recognize the connection between aspirations for
religious and for political freedom. His hand was ever ready to crush
both heresies in one. Had he been a true son of the Church, a faithful
champion of her infallibility, he would not have submitted to the peace
of Passau so long as he could bring a soldier to the field.
Yet he acquiesced in the Reformation for Germany, while the fires were
burning for the reformers and were ever blazing in the Netherlands,
where it was death even to allude to the existence of the peace of
Passau. Nor did he acquiesce only from compulsion, for, long before his
memorable defeat by Maurice, he had permitted the German troops, with
whose services he could not dispense, regularly to attend Protestant
worship performed by their own Protestant chaplains. Lutheran preachers
marched from city to city of the Netherlands under the imperial banner,
while the subjects of those patrimonial provinces were daily suffering
on the scaffold for their non-conformity.
The influence of this garrison-preaching upon the progress of the
Reformation in the Netherlands is well known. Charles hated Lutherans,
but he required soldiers, and he thus helped by his own policy to
disseminate what, had he been the fanatic which he perhaps became in
retirement, he would have sacrificed his life to crush. It is quite true
that the growing Calvinism of the provinces was more dangerous, both
religiously and politically, than the Protestantism of the German
princes, which had not yet been formally pronounced heresy; but it is
thus the more evident that it was political rather than religious
heterodoxy which the despot wished to suppress.
No man, however, could have been more observant of religious rites. He
heard mass daily. He listened to a sermon every Sunday and holiday. He
confessed and received the sacrament four times a year. He was sometimes
to be seen in his tent at midnight on his knees before a crucifix, with
eyes and hands uplifted. He ate no meat in Lent, and used extraordinary
diligence to discover and to punish any man, whether courtier or
plebeian, who failed to fast during the whole forty days. He was too
good a politician not to know the value of broad phylacteries and long
prayers. He was too nice an observer of human nature not to know how
easily mint and cummin could still outweigh the “weightier matters of
law, judgment, mercy, and faith”; as if the founder of the religion
which he professed, and to maintain which he had established the
inquisition and the edicts, had never cried “woe” upon the Pharisees.
Yet there is no doubt that the emperor was at times almost popular in
the Netherlands, and that he was never as odious as his successor. There
were some deep reasons for this, and some superficial ones; among
others, a singularly fortunate manner. He spoke German, Spanish,
Italian, French, and Flemish, and could assume the characteristics of
each country as easily as he could use its language. He could be stately
with Spaniards, familiar with Flemings, witty with Italians. He could
strike down a bull in the ring like a matador at Madrid, or win the
prize in the tourney like a knight of old; he could ride at the ring
with the Flemish nobles, hit the popinjay with his cross-bow among
Antwerp artisans, or drink beer and exchange rude jests with the boors
of Brabant. For virtues such as these his grave crimes against God and
man, against religion and chartered and solemnly-sworn rights, have been
palliated, as if oppression became more tolerable because the oppressor
was an accomplished linguist and a good marksman.
But the great reason for his popularity, no doubt, lay in his military
genius. Charles was inferior to no general of his age. “When he was born
into the world,” said Alva, “he was born a soldier”; and the emperor
confirmed the statement and reciprocated the compliment, when he
declared that “the three first captains of the age was himself first,
and then the Duke of Alva and Constable Montmorency.” It is quite true
that all his officers were not of the same opinion, and many were too
apt to complain that his constant presence in the field did more harm
than good, and “that his Majesty would do much better to stay at home.”
There is, however, no doubt that he was both a good soldier and a good
general. He was constitutionally fearless, and he possessed great energy
and endurance. He was ever the first to arm when a battle was to be
fought, and the last to take off his harness. He commanded in person and
in chief, even when surrounded by veterans and crippled by the gout. He
was calm in great reverses. It was said that he was never known to
change color except upon two occasions--after the fatal destruction of
his fleet at Algiers, and in the memorable flight from Innspruck.
He was of a phlegmatic, stoical temperament, until shattered by age and
disease; a man without sentiment and without a tear. It was said by
Spaniards that he was never seen to weep, even at the death of his
nearest relatives and friends, except on the solitary occasion of the
departure of Don Ferrante Gonzaga from court. Such a temperament was
invaluable in the stormy career to which he had devoted his life. He was
essentially a man of action, a military chieftain. “Pray only for my
health and my life,” he was accustomed to say to the young officers who
came to him from every part of his dominions to serve under his banners,
“for so long as I have these I will never leave you idle--at least in
France. I love peace no better than the rest of you. I was born and bred
to arms, and must of necessity keep on my harness till I can bear it no
longer.” The restless energy and the magnificent tranquillity of his
character made him a hero among princes, an idol with his officers, a
popular favorite everywhere. The promptness with which, at much personal
hazard, he descended like a thunderbolt in the midst of the Ghent
insurrection; the juvenile ardor with which the almost bed-ridden man
arose from his sickbed to smite the Protestants at Mühlberg; the grim
stoicism with which he saw sixty thousand of his own soldiers perish in
the wintry siege of Metz--all insured him a large measure of that
applause which ever follows military distinction, especially when the
man who achieves it happens to wear a crown. He combined the personal
prowess of a knight of old with the more modern accomplishments of a
scientific tactician. He could charge the enemy in person like the most
brilliant cavalry officer, and he thoroughly understood the arrangements
of a campaign, the marshaling and victualing of troops, and the whole
art of setting and maintaining an army in the field.
Yet, though brave and warlike as the most chivalrous of his
ancestors--Gothic, Burgundian, or Suabian--he was entirely without
chivalry. Fanaticism for the faith, protection for the oppressed,
fidelity to friend or foe, knightly loyalty to a cause deemed sacred,
the sacrifice of personal interests to great ideas, generosity of hand
and heart--all those qualities which unite with courage and constancy to
make up the ideal chevalier, Charles not only lacked but despised. He
trampled on the weak antagonist, whether burgher or petty potentate. He
was false as water. He inveigled his foes, who trusted to his imperial
promises, by arts unworthy an emperor or a gentleman. He led about the
unfortunate John Frederic, of Saxony, in his own language, “like a bear
in a chain,” ready to be slipped upon Maurice should “the boy” prove
ungrateful. He connived at the famous forgery of the prelate of Arras,
to which the Landgrave Philip owed his long imprisonment--a villainy
worse than many for which humbler rogues have suffered by thousands upon
the gallows. The contemporary world knew well the history of his frauds,
on scale both colossal and minute, and called him familiarly “Charles
qui triche.”
The absolute master of realms on which the sun perpetually shone, he was
not only greedy for additional dominion, but he was avaricious in small
matters, and hated to part with a hundred dollars. To the soldier who
brought him the sword and gauntlets of Francis I he gave a hundred
crowns, when ten thousand would have been less than the customary
present; so that the man left his presence full of desperation. The
three soldiers who swam the Elbe, with their swords in their mouths, to
bring him the boats with which he passed to the victory of Mühlberg,
received from his imperial bounty a doublet, a pair of stockings, and
four crowns apiece. His courtiers and ministers complained bitterly of
his habitual niggardliness, and were fain to eke out their slender
salaries by accepting bribes from every hand rich enough to bestow them.
In truth, Charles was more than anything else a politician,
notwithstanding his signal abilities as a soldier.
If to have founded institutions which could last be the test of
statesmanship, he was even a statesman, for many of his institutions
have resisted the pressure of three centuries; but those of Charlemagne
fell as soon as his hand was cold, while the works of many ordinary
legislators have attained to a perpetuity denied to the statutes of
Solon or Lycurgus. Durability is not the test of merit in human
institutions. Tried by the only touchstone applicable to governments,
their capacity to insure the highest welfare of the governed, we shall
not find his polity deserving of much admiration. It is not merely that
he was a despot by birth and inclination, nor that he naturally
substituted, as far as was practicable, the despotic for the republican
element wherever his hand can be traced. There may be possible good in
despotisms, as there is often much tyranny in democracy. Tried, however,
according to the standard by which all governments may be measured,
those laws of truth and divine justice which all Christian nations
recognize, and which are perpetual, whether recognized or not, we shall
find little to venerate in the life-work of the emperor. The interests
of his family, the security of his dynasty--these were his end and aim.
The happiness or the progress of his people never furnished even the
indirect motives of his conduct, and the result was a baffled policy and
a crippled and bankrupt empire at last.
He knew men--especially he knew their weaknesses, and he knew how to
turn them to account. He knew how much they would bear, and that little
grievances would sometimes inflame more than vast and deliberate
injustice. Therefore he employed natives mainly in the subordinate
offices of his various states, and he repeatedly warned his successor
that the haughtiness of Spaniards and the incompatibility of their
character with the Flemish would be productive of great difficulties and
dangers. It was his opinion that men might be tyrannized more
intelligently by their own kindred, and in this, perhaps, he was right.
He was indefatigable in the discharge of business; and if it were
possible that half a world could be administered as if it were the
private property of an individual, the task would have been, perhaps, as
well accomplished by Charles as by any man. He had not the absurdity of
supposing it possible for him to attend to the details of every
individual affair in every one of his realms, and he therefore intrusted
the stewardship of all specialties to his various ministers and agents.
It was his business to know men and to deal with affairs on a large
scale, and in this he certainly was superior to his successor. His
correspondence was mainly in the hands of Granvelle the elder, who
analyzed letters received, and frequently wrote all but the signatures
of the answers. The same minister usually possessed the imperial ear,
and farmed it out for his own benefit. In all this there was, of course,
room for vast deception; but the emperor was quite aware of what was
going on, and took a philosophic view of the matter as an inevitable
part of his system. Granvelle grew enormously rich under his eye by
trading on the imperial favor and sparing his Majesty much trouble.
Charles saw it all, ridiculed his peculations, but called him his “bed
of down.” His knowledge of human nature was, however, derived from a
contemplation mainly of its weaknesses, and was therefore one-sided. He
was often deceived and made many a fatal blunder, shrewd politician
though he was. He involved himself often in enterprises which could not
be honorable or profitable, and which inflicted damage on his greatest
interests. He often offended men who might have been useful friends, and
converted allies into enemies. “His Majesty,” said a keen observer who
knew him well, “has not in his career shown the prudence which was
necessary to him. He has often offended those whose love he might have
conciliated, converted friends into enemies, and let those perish who
were his most faithful partisans.” Thus it must be acknowledged that
even his boasted knowledge of human nature and his power of dealing with
men was rather superficial and empirical than the real gift of genius.
WILLIAM OF NASSAU, PRINCE OF ORANGE.
BY JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY.
[Surnamed “the Silent,” founder of the independence of the
Netherlands, born 1533, assassinated 1584. Though the scion of a
Protestant family, the Prince of Orange was educated to arms and
diplomacy at the court of Charles V, by whom he was greatly beloved
and trusted. On the accession of Philip he was made a Councilor of
State to assist Margaret of Parma in her regency over the
Netherlands. All ties of loyalty were gradually destroyed by his
love of country, so terribly outraged by the cruelties of a bigoted
king and his no less bigoted agents. On Alva’s arrival with Spanish
troops the prince returned to Germany, and thus saved himself from
the headsman, the fate which befell counts Egmont and Horn, two of
the most eminent Flemish patriots. In the uprising of the
Netherlands, which followed, the Prince of Orange was the most
eminent figure, and to the consummate skill with which he guided
the fate of his people their ultimate success was due. William, at
the head of his brave Flemings, and with the capricious assistance
of France and England, wore out three of the greatest generals of
the age, the Duke of Alva, Don John of Austria, and Prince
Alexander Farnese. The price put on his assassination by the King
of Spain was finally earned by Baltazar Gérard, a Burgundian
fanatic.]
In person, Orange was above the middle height, perfectly well made and
sinewy, but rather spare than stout. His eyes, hair, beard, and
complexion were brown; his head was small, symmetrically shaped,
combining the alertness and compactness characteristic of the soldier,
with the capacious brow furrowed prematurely with the horizontal lines
of
[Illustration: WILLIAM OF NASSAU.]
thought, denoting the statesman and the sage. His physical appearance
was, therefore, in harmony with his organization, which was of antique
model. Of his moral qualities, the most prominent was his piety. He was
more than anything else a religious man. From his trust in God he ever
derived support and consolation in the darkest hours. Implicitly relying
upon Almighty wisdom and goodness, he looked danger in the face with a
constant smile, and endured incessant labors and trials with a serenity
which seemed more than human. While, however, his soul was full of
piety, it was tolerant of error.
Sincerely and deliberately himself a convert to the Reformed Church, he
was ready to extend freedom of worship to Catholics on the one hand, and
to Anabaptists on the other; for no man ever felt more keenly than he,
that the reformer who becomes in his turn a bigot is doubly odious.
His firmness was allied to his piety. His constancy in bearing the whole
weight of as unequal a struggle as men have ever undertaken, was the
theme of admiration even to his enemies. The rock in the ocean,
“tranquil amid raging billows,” was the favorite emblem by which his
friends expressed their sense of his firmness. From the time when, as a
hostage in France, he first discovered the plan of Philip to plant the
Inquisition in the Netherlands, up to the last moment of his life, he
never faltered in his determination to resist that iniquitous scheme.
This resistance was the labor of his life. To exclude the Inquisition,
to maintain the ancient liberties of his country, was the task which he
appointed to himself when a youth of three-and-twenty. Never speaking a
word concerning a heavenly mission, never deluding himself or others
with the usual phraseology of enthusiasts, he accomplished the task,
through danger, amid toils, and with sacrifices such as few men have
ever been able to make on their country’s altar; for the disinterested
benevolence of the man was as prominent as his fortitude.
A prince of high rank and with royal revenues, he stripped himself of
station, wealth, almost, at times, of the common necessaries of life,
and became, in his country’s cause, nearly a beggar as well as an
outlaw. Nor was he forced into his career by an accidental impulse from
which there was no recovery. Retreat was ever open to him. Not only
pardon but advancement was urged upon him again and again. Officially
and privately, directly and circuitously, his confiscated estates,
together with indefinite and boundless favors in addition, were offered
to him on every great occasion. On the arrival of Don John at the Breda
negotiations, at the Cologne conferences, we have seen how calmly these
offers were waved aside, as if their rejection was so simple that it
hardly required many words for its signification; yet he had mortgaged
his estate so deeply that his heirs hesitated at accepting their
inheritance, for fear it should involve them in debt. Ten years after
his death, the account between his executors and his brother John
amounted to one million four hundred thousand florins due to the Count,
secured by various pledges of real and personal property, and it was
finally settled upon this basis.
He was, besides, largely indebted to every one of his powerful
relatives, so that the payment of the incumbrances upon his estate very
nearly justified the fears of his children. While on the one hand,
therefore, he poured out these enormous sums like water, and firmly
refused a hearing to the tempting offers of the royal government, upon
the other hand he proved the disinterested nature of his services by
declining, year after year, the sovereignty over the provinces, and by
only accepting in the last days of his life, when refusal had become
almost impossible, the limited, constitutional supremacy over that
portion of them which now makes the realm of his descendants. He lived
and died, not for himself, but for his country. “God pity this poor
people!” were his dying words.
His intellectual faculties were various and of the highest order. He had
the exact, practical, and combining qualities which make the great
commander, and his friends claimed that, in military genius, he was
second to no captain in Europe. This was, no doubt, an exaggeration of
partial attachment, but it is certain that the Emperor Charles had an
exalted opinion of his capacity for the field. His fortification of
Philippeville and Charlemont, in the face of the enemy; his passage of
the Meuse in Alva’s sight; his unfortunate but well-ordered campaign
against that general; his sublime plan of relief, projected and
successfully directed at last from his sick bed, for the besieged city
of Leyden, will always remain monuments of his practical military skill.
Of the soldier’s great virtues--constancy in disaster, devotion to duty,
hopefulness in defeat--no man ever possessed a larger share. He arrived,
through a series of reverses, at a perfect victory. He planted a free
commonwealth under the very battery of the Inquisition, in defiance of
the most powerful empire existing. He was, therefore, a conqueror in the
loftiest sense, for he conquered liberty and a national existence for a
whole people. The contest was long, and he fell in the struggle, but the
victory was to the dead hero, not to the living monarch.