instruments. His troops were usually mercenaries, who were but too apt
to mutiny upon the eve of battle, while he was opposed by the most
formidable veterans of Europe, commanded successively by the first
captains of the age. That, with no lieutenant of eminent valor or
experience save only his brother Louis, and with none at all after that
chieftain’s death, William of Orange should succeed in baffling the
efforts of Alva, Requescens, Don John of Austria, and Alexander
Farnese--men whose names are among the most brilliant in the military
annals of the world--is in itself sufficient evidence of his warlike
capacity. At the period of his death, he had reduced the number of
obedient provinces to two--only Artois and Hainault acknowledging
Philip--while the other fifteen were in open revolt, the greater part
having solemnly forsworn their sovereign.
The supremacy of his political genius was entirely beyond question. He
was the first statesman of the age. The quickness of his perception was
only equaled by the caution which enabled him to mature the results of
his observations. His knowledge of human nature was profound. He
governed the passions and sentiments of a great nation as if they had
been but the keys and chords of one vast instrument; and his hand rarely
failed to evoke harmony even out of the wildest storms. The turbulent
city of Ghent, which could obey no other master, which even the haughty
emperor could only crush without controlling, was ever responsive to the
master-hand of Orange. His presence scared away Imbize and his bat-like
crew, confounded the schemes of John Casimir, frustrated the wiles of
Prince Chimay, and while he lived, Ghent was what it ought always to
have remained, the bulwark, as it had been the cradle, of popular
liberty. After his death it became its tomb.
Ghent, saved twice by the policy, the eloquence, the self-sacrifices of
Orange, fell within three months of his murder into the hands of Parma.
The loss of this most important city, followed in the next year by the
downfall of Antwerp, sealed the fate of the southern Netherlands. Had
the prince lived, how different might have been the country’s fate! If
seven provinces could dilate, in so brief a space, into the powerful
commonwealth which the republic soon became, what might not have been
achieved by the united seventeen--a confederacy which would have united
the adamantine vigor of the Batavian and Frisian races with the subtler,
more delicate, and more graceful national elements in which the genius
of the Frank, the Roman, and the Romanized Celt were so intimately
blended. As long as the father of the country lived, such a union was
possible. His power of managing men was so unquestionable that there was
always a hope, even in the darkest hour; for men felt implicit reliance
as well on his intellectual resources as on his integrity.
This power of dealing with his fellow-men he manifested in the various
ways in which it has been usually exhibited by statesmen. He possessed a
ready eloquence--sometimes impassioned, oftener argumentative, always
rational. His influence over his audience was unexampled in the annals
of that country or age; yet he never condescended to flatter the people.
He never followed the nation, but always led her in the path of duty and
of honor, and was much more prone to rebuke the vices than to pander to
the passions of his hearers. He never failed to administer ample
chastisement to parsimony, to jealousy, to insubordination, to
intolerance, to infidelity, wherever it was due, nor feared to confront
the states or the people in their most angry hours, and to tell them the
truth to their faces. This commanding position he alone could stand
upon, for his countrymen knew the generosity which had sacrificed his
all for them, the self-denial which had eluded rather than sought
political advancement, whether from king or people, and the untiring
devotion which had consecrated a whole life to toil and danger in the
cause of their emancipation.
While, therefore, he was ever ready to rebuke, and always too honest to
flatter, he at the same time possessed the eloquence which could
convince or persuade. He knew how to reach both the mind and the heart
of his hearers. His orations, whether extemporaneous or prepared; his
written messages to the states-general, to the provincial authorities,
to the municipal bodies; his private correspondence with men of all
ranks, from emperors and kings down to secretaries, and even children,
all show an easy flow of language, a fullness of thought, a power of
expression rare in that age, a fund of historical allusion, a
considerable power of imagination, a warmth of sentiment, a breadth of
view, a directness of purpose, a range of qualities, in short, which
would in themselves have stamped him as one of the master-minds of his
century, had there been no other monument to his memory than the remains
of his spoken or written eloquence.
The bulk of his performances in this department was prodigious. Not even
Philip was more industrious in the cabinet. Not even Granvelle held a
more facile pen. He wrote and spoke equally well in French, German, or
Flemish; and he possessed, besides, Spanish, Italian, Latin. The weight
of his correspondence alone would have almost sufficed for the common
industry of a lifetime; and although many volumes of his speeches and
letters have been published, there remain in the various archives of the
Netherlands and Germany many documents from his hand which will probably
never see the light. If the capacity for unremitted intellectual labor
in an honorable cause be the measure of human greatness, few minds could
be compared to the “large composition” of this man. The efforts made to
destroy the Netherlands by the most laborious and painstaking of tyrants
were counteracted by the industry of the most indefatigable of patriots.
He went through life bearing the load of a people’s sorrows upon his
shoulders with a smiling face. Their name was the last word upon his
lips, save the simple affirmative, with which the soldier who had been
battling for the right all his lifetime commended his soul in dying “to
his great captain, Christ.” The people were grateful and affectionate,
for they trusted the character of their “Father Wiliam,” and not all the
clouds which calumny could collect ever dimmed to their eyes the
radiance of that lofty mind to which they were accustomed, in their
darkest calamities, to look for light. As long as he lived he was the
guiding star of a whole brave nation, and when he died the little
children cried in the streets.
JOHN KNOX.
BY JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE.
[The greatest of the Scotch religious reformers, born in 1505, died
1572, distinguished for a stern fanaticism as intolerant as that of
the Roman Church, against which he battled. He had suffered
bitterly from persecution during his earlier life, and for
lengthened periods been an exile from Scotland, but remained always
the head and front of the new propaganda till the establishment of
the Reformed religion in 1560, which carried with it the
interdiction of Roman Catholicism. On the arrival of the young
queen Mary Stuart from France, in 1561, Knox soon became the
sharpest critic of her life and policy. His unsparing antagonism
and influence with the Protestant lords did much to make Mary’s
position a very difficult one, and to precipitate the events which
finally drove her from Scotland and made her an English prisoner.
Knox was known to have been an ardent advocate of Mary’s death long
prior to the queen’s execution at Fotheringay.]
Our primary characteristic of a hero, that he is sincere, applies
emphatically to Knox. It is not denied anywhere that this, whatever
might be his other qualities or faults, is among the truest of men. With
a singular instinct he holds to the truth and fact; the truth alone is
there for him, the rest a mere shadow and a deceptive nonentity. However
feeble, forlorn the reality may seem, on that and that only _can_ he
take his stand. In the galleys of the river Loire--whither Knox and the
others, after their castle of St. Andrews was taken, had been sent as
galley-slaves--some officer or priest one day presented them an image of
the Virgin Mother, requiring that they, the blasphemous heretics, should
do it reverence. “Mother? Mother of God?” said Knox, when the turn came
to him: “This is no Mother of God; this is a _pented bredd_--a piece of
wood, I tell you, with paint on it! She is fitter for swimming, I think,
than for being worshiped,” added Knox, and flung the thing into the
river. It was not very cheap jesting there; but come of it what might,
this thing to Knox was and must continue nothing other than the real
truth; it was a _pented bredd_: worship it he would not.
He told his fellow-prisoners, in this darkest time, to be of courage;
the cause they had was a true one, and must and would prosper; the whole
world could not put it down. Reality is of God’s making; it is alone
strong. How many _pented bredds_, pretending to be real, are fitter to
swim than to be worshiped! This Knox can not live but by fact: he clings
to reality as the shipwrecked sailor to the cliff. He is an instance to
us how a man by sincerity itself becomes heroic; it is the grand gift he
has. We find in Knox a good, honest, intellectual talent, no
transcendent one; a narrow, inconsiderable man as compared with Luther,
but in heartfelt, instinctive adherence to truth, in _sincerity_, as we
say, he has no superior; nay, one might ask, What equal he has? The
heart of him is of the true prophet cast. “He lies there,” said the Earl
of Morton at his grave, “who never feared the face of man.” He
resembles, more than any of the moderns, an old Hebrew prophet. The same
inflexibility, intolerance, rigid, narrow-looking adherence to God’s
truth, stern rebuke in the name of God to all that forsake truth; an old
Hebrew prophet in the guise of an Edinburgh minister of the sixteenth
century. We are to take him for that; not require him to be other.
Knox’s conduct to Queen Mary, the harsh visits he used to make in her
own palace to reprove her there, have been much commented upon. Such
cruelty, such coarseness fill us with indifference. On reading the
actual narrative of the business, what Knox said and what Knox meant, I
must say one’s tragic feeling is rather disappointed. They are not so
coarse, these speeches; they seem to me about as fine as the
circumstances would permit. Knox was not there to do the courtier; he
came on another errand. Whoever, reading these colloquies of his with
the queen, thinks they are vulgar insolences of a plebeian priest to a
delicate high lady, mistakes the purport and essence of them
altogether. It was unfortunately not possible to be polite with the
Queen of Scotland, unless one proved untrue to the nation and cause of
Scotland.
A man who did not wish to see the land of his birth made a hunting-field
for intriguing, ambitious Guises, and the cause of God trampled under
foot of falsehoods, formulas, and the devil’s cause, had no method of
making himself agreeable. “Better that women weep,” said Morton, “than
that bearded men be forced to weep.” Knox was the constitutional
opposition party in Scotland; the nobles of the country, called by their
station to take that post, were not found in it; Knox had to go, or no
one. The hapless queen--but still the more hapless country, if _she_
were made happy! Mary herself was not without sharpness enough, among
her other qualities. “Who are you,” said she once, “that presume to
school the nobles and sovereign of this realm?” “Madam, a subject born
within the same,” answered he. Reasonably answered! If the “subject”
have truth to speak, it is not the “subject’s” footing that will fail
him here.
We blame Knox for his intolerance. Well, surely it is good that each of
us be as tolerant as possible. Yet, at bottom, after all the talk there
is and has been about it, what is tolerance? Tolerance is to tolerate
the unessential, and to see well what that is. Tolerance has to be
noble, measured, just in its very wrath, when it can tolerate no longer.
But, on the whole, we are not altogether here to tolerate. We are here
to resist, to control, and vanquish withal. We do not “tolerate”
falsehoods, thieveries, iniquities, when they fasten on us; we say to
them, Thou art false! thou art not tolerable! We are here to extinguish
falsehoods, and to put an end to them in some wise way. I will not
quarrel so much with the way; the doing of the thing is our great
concern. In this sense Knox was, full surely, intolerant.
A man sent to row in the French galleys, and such like, for teaching
the truth in his own land, can not always be in the mildest humor. I am
not prepared to say that Knox had a soft temper, nor do I know that he
had what we call an ill temper. An ill nature he decidedly had not.
Kind, honest affections dwell in the much-enduring, hard-worn,
ever-battling man. That he _could_ rebuke queens, and had such weight
among those proud, turbulent nobles--proud enough, whatever else they
were--and could maintain to the end a kind of virtual presidency and
sovereignty over that wild realm, he who was only “a subject born within
the same”; this of itself will prove to us that he was found, close at
hand, to be no mean, acrid man, but at heart a healthful, strong,
sagacious man. Such alone can bear rule in that kind. They blame him for
pulling down cathedrals, and so forth, as if he were a seditious,
rioting demagogue; precisely the reverse is seen to be the fact in
regard to cathedrals and the rest of it, if we examine. Knox wanted no
pulling down of stone edifices; he wanted leprosy and darkness thrown
out of the lives of men. Tumult was not his element. It was the tragic
feature of his life that he was forced to dwell so much in that. Every
such man is the born enemy of disorder--hates to be in it; but what
then? Smooth falsehood is not order. It is the general sum-total of
_dis_order. Order is _truth_--each thing standing on the basis that
belongs to it. Order and falsehood can not subsist together.
Withal, unexpectedly enough, this Knox has a vein of drollery in him,
which I like much, in combination with his other qualities. He has a
true eye for the ridiculous. His history, with its rough earnestness, is
curiously enlivened with this. When the two prelates, entering Glasgow
Cathedral, quarrel about precedence, march rapidly up, take to hustling
one another, twitching one another’s rochets, and at last flourishing
their crosiers like quarter-staves, it is a great sight for him every
way. Not mockery, scorn, bitterness alone, though there is enough of
that too; but a true, loving, illuminating laugh mounts up over the
earnest visage; not a loud laugh; you would say a laugh in the _eyes_
most of all. An honest-hearted, brotherly man; brother to the high,
brother also to the low; sincere in his sympathy with both. He had his
pipe of Bordeaux too, we find, in that old Edinburgh house of his--a
cheery, social man, with faces that loved him. They go far wrong who
think this Knox was a gloomy, spasmodic, shrieking fanatic. Not at all;
he is one of the solidest of men. Practical, cautious, hopeful, patient;
a most shrewd, observing, quietly discerning man. In fact, he has very
much the type of character we assign to the Scotch at present. A certain
sardonic taciturnity is in him; insight enough, and a stouter heart than
he himself knows of. He has the power of holding his peace over many
things which do not vitally concern him--“They, what are they?” But the
thing which does vitally concern him, that thing he will speak of, and
in a tone the whole world shall be made to hear, all the more emphatic
for his long silence.
This prophet of the Scotch is to me no hateful man. He had a sore fight
of an existence; wrestling with popes and principalities; in defeat,
contention, life-long struggle; rowing as a galley-slave, wandering as
an exile. A sore fight; but he won it. “Have you hope?” they asked him
in his last moment, when he could no longer speak. He lifted his finger,
“pointed upward with his finger,” and so died. Honor to him. His works
have not died. The letter of his work dies, as of all men’s, but the
spirit of it never.
DUKE OF ALVA.
BY JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY.
[Ferdinando Alvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alva, a Spanish statesman
and general, born 1508, died 1582. From his earliest years a
soldier, the dominating passion of his soul was hatred of heretics
and infidels. He bore a distinguished part in the wars and
negotiations of Charles V’s splendid reign, and on the accession of
Philip II was equally honored by that monarch. On the outbreak of
the rebellion in the Netherlands, Alva was sent thither with an
army, as viceroy. His six years of rule was one of the most bloody
and atrocious episodes in modern history. His great opponent was
the Prince of Orange. Utterly failing in stamping out the
rebellion, he was recalled by his master in 1573.]
Ferdinando Alvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alva, was the most successful and
experienced general of Spain, or of Europe. No man studied more deeply,
or practiced more constantly the military science. In the most important
of all arts at that epoch, he was the most consummate artist. In the
only honorable profession of the age, he was the most thorough and the
most pedantic professor. Since the days of Demetrius Poliorcetes, no man
had besieged so many cities. Since the days of Fabius Cunctator, no
general had avoided so many battles, and no soldier, courageous as he
was, ever attained to a more sublime indifference to calumny or
depreciation. Having proved in his boyhood, at Fontarabia, and in his
maturity, at Mühlberg, that he could exhibit heroism and headlong
courage, when necessary, he could afford to look with contempt upon the
witless gibes which his enemies had occasionally perpetrated at his
expense. Conscious of holding his armies in his hand, by the power of an
unrivalled discipline, and the magic of a name illustrated by a hundred
triumphs, he could bear with patience and benevolence the murmurs of his
soldiers when their battles were denied them.
He was born in 1508, of a family which boasted imperial descent. A
Palæologus, brother of a Byzantine emperor, had conquered the city of
Toledo, and transmitted its appellation as a family name. The father of
Ferdinando, Don Garcia, had been slain on the Isle of Gerbes, in battle
with the Moors, when his son was but four years of age. The child was
brought up by his grandfather, Don Frederic, and trained from his
tenderest infancy to arms. Hatred to the infidel, and a determination to
avenge his father’s blood crying to him from a foreign grave, were the
earliest of his instincts. As a youth he was distinguished for his
prowess. His maiden sword was fleshed at Fontarabia, where, although but
sixteen years of age, he was considered by his constancy in hardship, by
his brilliant and desperate courage, and by the example of military
discipline which he afforded to the troops, to have contributed in no
small degree to the success of the Spanish arms.
In 1530 he accompanied the emperor in his campaign against the Turks.
Charles, instinctively recognizing the merit of the youth who was
destined to be the life-long companion of his toils and glories,
distinguished him with his favor at the opening of his career. Young,
brave, and enthusiastic, Ferdinando de Toledo at this period was as
interesting a hero as ever illustrated the pages of Castilian romance.
His mad ride from Hungary to Spain and back again, accomplished in
seventeen days, for the sake of a brief visit to his newly-married wife,
is not the least attractive episode in the history of an existence which
was destined to be so dark and sanguinary. In 1535 he accompanied the
emperor on his memorable expedition to Tunis. In 1546 and 1547 he was
generalissimo in the war against the Smalcaldian league. His most
brilliant feat of arms--perhaps the most brilliant exploit of the
emperor’s reign--was the passage of the Elbe and the battle of Mühlberg,
accomplished in spite of Maximilian’s bitter and violent reproaches, and
the tremendous possibilities of a defeat. That battle had finished the
war.
The gigantic and magnanimous John Frederic, surprised at his devotions
in the church, fled in dismay, leaving his boots behind him, which for
their superhuman size were ridiculously said afterward to be treasured
among the trophies of the Toledo house. The rout was total. “I came, I
saw, and God conquers,” said the emperor, in pious parody of his
immortal predecessor’s epigram. Maximilian, with a thousand apologies
for his previous insults, embraced the heroic Don Ferdinand over and
over again, as, arrayed in a plain suit of blue armor, unadorned save
with the streaks of his enemies’ blood, he returned from pursuit of the
fugitive. So complete and so sudden was the victory, that it was found
impossible to account for it save on the ground of miraculous
interposition. Like Joshua in the vale of Ajalon, Don Ferdinand was
supposed to have commanded the sun to stand still for a season, and to
have been obeyed. Otherwise, how could the passage of the river, which
was only concluded at six in the evening, and the complete overthrow of
the Protestant forces, have all been accomplished within the narrow
space of an April twilight?
The reply of the duke to Henry II of France, who questioned him
subsequently upon the subject, is well known. “Your Majesty, I was too
much occupied that evening with what was taking place on the earth
beneath, to pay much heed to the evolutions of the heavenly bodies.”
Spared as he had been by his good fortune from taking any part in the
Algerine expedition, or in witnessing the ignominious retreat from
Innspruck, he was obliged to submit to the intercalation of the
disastrous siege of Metz in the long history of his successes. Doing the
duty of a field-marshal and a sentinel, supporting his army by his
firmness and his discipline when nothing else could have supported them,
he was at last enabled, after half the hundred thousand men with whom
Charles had begun the siege had been sacrificed, to induce his imperial
master to raise the siege before the remaining fifty thousand had been
frozen or starved to death.
The culminating career of Alva seemed to have closed in the mist which
gathered around the setting star of the empire. Having accompanied
Philip to England in 1554, on his matrimonial expedition, he was
destined in the following year, as viceroy and generalissimo of Italy,
to be placed in a series of false positions. A great captain engaged in
a little war, the champion of the cross in arms against the successor
of St. Peter, he had extricated himself at last with his usual
adroitness, but with very little glory. To him had been allotted the
mortification, to another the triumph. The luster of his own name seemed
to sink in the ocean, while that of a hated rival, with new spangled
ore, suddenly “flamed in the forehead of the morning sky.” While he had
been paltering with a dotard, whom he was forbidden to crush, Egmont had
struck down the chosen troops of France and conquered her most
illustrious commanders. Here was the unpardonable crime which could only
be expiated by the blood of the victor. Unfortunately for his rival, the
time was now approaching when the long-deferred revenge was to be
satisfied.