Artois, Hainault, and Flanders, the instructions for the envoys; Baron
Montigny and Marquis Berghen, were made out in conformity to the scheme.
Egmont had declined the mission, not having reason to congratulate
himself upon the diplomatic success of his visit to Spain in the
preceding year. The two nobles who consented to undertake the office
were persuaded into acceptance sorely against their will. They were
aware that their political conduct since the King's departure from the
country had not always been deemed satisfactory at Madrid, but they were,
of course, far from suspecting the true state of the royal mind. They
were both as sincere Catholics and as loyal gentlemen as Granvelle, but
they were not aware how continuously, during a long course of years, that
personage had represented them to Philip as renegades and rebels. They
had maintained the constitutional rights of the state, and they had
declined to act as executioners for the inquisition, but they were yet
to learn that such demonstrations amounted to high treason.
Montigny departed, on the 29th May, from Brussels. He left the bride to
whom he had been wedded amid scenes of festivity, the preceding autumn--
the unborn child who was never to behold its father's face. He received
warnings in Paris, by which he scorned to profit. The Spanish ambassador
in that city informed him that Philip's wrath at the recent transactions
in the Netherlands was high. He was most significantly requested, by a
leading personage in France, to feign illness, or to take refuge in any
expedient by which he might avoid the fulfilment of his mission. Such
hints had no effect in turning him from his course, and he proceeded to
Madrid, where he arrived on the 17th of June.
His colleague in the mission, Marquis Berghen, had been prevented from
setting forth at the same time, by an accident which, under the
circumstances, might almost seem ominous. Walking through the palace
park, in a place where some gentlemen were playing at pall-mall, he was
accidentally struck in the leg by a wooden ball. The injury, although
trifling, produced go much irritation and fever that he was confined to
his bed for several weeks. It was not until the 1st of July that he was
able to take his departure from Brussels. Both these unfortunate nobles
thus went forth to fulfil that dark and mysterious destiny from which the
veil of three centuries has but recently been removed.
Besides a long historical discourse, in eighteen chapters, delivered by
way of instruction to the envoys, Margaret sent a courier beforehand with
a variety of intelligence concerning the late events. Alonzo del Canto,
one of Philip's spies in the Netherlands, also wrote to inform the King
that the two ambassadors were the real authors of all the troubles then
existing in the country. Cardinal Granvelle, too, renewed his previous
statements in a confidential communication to his Majesty, adding that no
persons more appropriate could have been selected than Berghen and
Montigny, for they knew better than any one else the state of affairs.
in which they had borne the principal part. Nevertheless, Montigny,
upon his arrival in Madrid on the 17th of June, was received by Philip
with much apparent cordiality, admitted immediately to an audience,
and assured in the strongest terms that there was no dissatisfaction
in the royal mind against the seigniors, whatever false reports might be
circulated to that effect. In other respects, the result of this and of
his succeeding interviews with the monarch was sufficiently meagre.
It could not well be otherwise. The mission of the envoys was an
elaborate farce to introduce a terrible tragedy. They were sent to
procure from Philip the abolition of the inquisition and the moderation
of the edicts. At the very moment, however, of all these legislative and
diplomatic arrangements, Margaret of Parma was in possession of secret
letters from Philip, which she was charged to deliver to the Archbishop
of Sorrento, papal nuncio at the imperial court, then on a special visit
to Brussels. This ecclesiastic had come to the Netherlands ostensibly to
confer with the Prince of Orange upon the affairs of his principality,
to remonstrate with Count Culemburg, and to take measures for the
reformation of the clergy. The real object of his mission, however, was
to devise means for strengthening the inquisition and suppressing heresy
in the provinces. Philip, at whose request he had come, had charged him
by no means to divulge the secret, as the King was anxious to have it
believed that the ostensible was the only business which the prelate had
to perform in the country. Margaret accordingly delivered to him the
private letters, in which Philip avowed his determination to maintain the
inquisition and the edicts in all their rigor, but enjoined profound
secrecy upon the subject. The Duchess, therefore, who knew the face of
the cards, must have thought it a superfluous task to continue the game,
which to Philip's cruel but procrastinating temperament was perhaps a
pleasurable excitement.
The scheme for mitigating the edicts by the substitution of strangling
for burning, was not destined therefore far much success either in Spain
or in the provinces; but the people by whom the next great movement was
made in the drama of the revolt, conducted themselves in a manner to
shame the sovereign who oppressed, and the riotous nobles who had
undertaken to protect their liberties.
At this very moment, in the early summer of 1566, many thousands of
burghers, merchants, peasants, and gentlemen, were seen mustering and
marching through the fields of every province, armed with arquebus,
javelin, pike and broadsword. For what purpose were these gatherings?
Only to hear sermons and to sing hymns in the open air, as it was
unlawful to profane the churches with such rites. This was the first
great popular phase of the Netherland rebellion. Notwithstanding the
edicts and the inquisition with their daily hecatombs, notwithstanding
the special publication at this time throughout the country by the
Duchess Regent that all the sanguinary statutes concerning religion were
in as great vigor as ever, notwithstanding that Margaret offered a reward
of seven hundred crowns to the man who would bring her a preacher--dead
or alive,--the popular thirst for the exercises of the reformed religion
could no longer be slaked at the obscure and hidden fountains where their
priests had so long privately ministered.
Partly emboldened by a temporary lull in the persecution, partly
encouraged by the presentation of the Request and by the events to which
it had given rise, the Reformers now came boldly forth from their lurking
places and held their religious meetings in the light of day. The
consciousness of numbers and of right had brought the conviction of
strength. The audacity of the Reformers was wonderful to the mind of
President Viglius, who could find no language strong enough with which
to characterize and to deplore such blasphemous conduct. The field-
preaching seemed in the eyes of government to spread with the rapidity
of a malignant pestilence. The miasma flew upon the wings of the wind.
As early as 1562, there had been public preaching in the neighborhood of
Ypres. The executions which followed, however, had for the time
suppressed the practice both in that place as well as throughout Flanders
and the rest of the provinces. It now broke forth as by one impulse from
one end of the country to the other. In the latter part of June, Hermann
Stryoker or Modet, a monk who had renounced his vows to become one of the
most popular preachers in the Reformed Church, addressed a congregation
of seven or eight thousand persons in the neighborhood of Ghent. Peter
Dathenus, another unfrocked monk, preached at various places in West
Flanders, with great effect. A man endowed with a violent, stormy
eloquence, intemperate as most zealots, he was then rendering better
services to the cause of the Reformation than he was destined to do at
later periods.
But apostate priests were not the only preachers. To the ineffable
disgust of the conservatives in Church and State, there were men with
little education, utterly devoid of Hebrew, of lowly station--hatters,
curriers, tanners, dyers, and the like, who began to preach also;
remembering, unseasonably perhaps, that the early disciples, selected by
the founder of Christianity, had not all been doctors of theology, with
diplomas from a "renowned university." But if the nature of such men
were subdued to what it worked in, that charge could not be brought
against ministers with the learning and accomplishments of Ambrose Wille,
Marnier, Guy de Bray, or Francis Junius, the man whom Scaliger called the
"greatest of all theologians since the days of the apostles."
An aristocratic sarcasm could not be levelled against Peregrine de la
Grange, of a noble family in Provence, with the fiery blood of southern
France in his veins, brave as his nation, learned, eloquent,
enthusiastic, who galloped to his field-preaching on horseback, and fired
a pistol-shot as a signal for his congregation to give attention.
On the 28th of June, 1566, at eleven o'clock at night, there was an
assemblage of six thousand people near Tournay, at the bridge of
Ernonville, to hear a sermon from Ambrose Wille, a man who had studied
theology in Geneva, at the feet of Calvin, and who now, with a special
price upon his head,--was preaching the doctrines he had learned. Two
days afterwards, ten thousand people assembled at the same spot, to hear
Peregrine de la Grange. Governor Moulbais thundered forth a proclamation
from the citadel, warning all men that the edicts were as rigorous as
ever, and that every man, woman, or child who went to these preachings,
was incurring the penalty of death. The people became only the more
ardent and excited. Upon Sunday, the seventh of July; twenty thousand
persons assembled at the same bridge to hear Ambrose Wille. One man in
three was armed. Some had arquebuses, others pistols, pikes, swords,
pitchforks, poniards, clubs. The preacher, for whose apprehension a
fresh reward had been offered, was escorted to his pulpit by a hundred
mounted troopers. He begged his audience not to be scared from the word
of God by menace; assured them that although but a poor preacher himself,
he held a divine commission; that he had no fear of death; that, should
he fall, there were many better than he to supply his place, and fifty
thousand men to avenge his murder.
The Duchess sent forth proclamations by hundreds. She ordered the
instant suppression of these armed assemblies and the arrest of the
preachers. But of what avail were proclamations against such numbers
with weapons in their hands. Why irritate to madness these hordes of
enthusiasts, who were now entirely pacific, and who marched back to the
city, after conclusion of divine service, with perfect decorum? All
classes of the population went eagerly to the sermons. The gentry of the
place, the rich merchants, the notables, as well as the humbler artisans
and laborers, all had received the infection. The professors of the
Reformed religion outnumbered the Catholics by five or six to one. On
Sundays and other holidays, during the hours of service, Tournay was
literally emptied of its inhabitants. The streets were as silent as if
war or pestilence had swept the place. The Duchess sent orders, but she
sent no troops. The trained-bands of the city, the cross-bow-men of St.
Maurice, the archers of St. Sebastian, the sword-players of St.
Christopher, could not be ordered from Tournay to suppress the preaching,
for they had all gone to the preaching themselves. How idle, therefore;
to send peremptory orders without a matchlock to enforce the command.
Throughout Flanders similar scenes were enacted. The meetings were
encampments, for the Reformers now came to their religious services armed
to the teeth, determined, if banished from the churches, to defend their
right to the fields. Barricades of upturned wagons, branches, and
planks, were thrown up around the camps. Strong guards of mounted men
were stationed at every avenue. Outlying scouts gave notice of
approaching danger, and guided the faithful into the enclosure.
Pedlers and hawkers plied the trade upon which the penalty of death was
fixed, and sold the forbidden hymn-books to all who chose to purchase.
A strange and contradictory spectacle! An army of criminals doing deeds
which could only be expiated at the stake; an entrenched rebellion,
bearding the government with pike, matchlock, javelin and barricade, and
all for no more deadly purpose than to listen to the precepts of the
pacific Jesus.
Thus the preaching spread through the Walloon provinces to the northern
Netherlands. Towards the end of July, an apostate monk, of singular
eloquence, Peter Gabriel by name, was announced to preach at Overeen near
Harlem. This was the first field-meeting which had taken place in
Holland. The people were wild with enthusiasm; the authorities beside
themselves with apprehension. People from the country flocked into the
town by thousands. The other cities were deserted, Harlem was filled to
overflowing. Multitudes encamped upon the ground the night before. The
magistrates ordered the gates to be kept closed in the morning till long
after the usual hour. It was of no avail. Bolts and bars were but small
impediments to enthusiasts who had travelled so many miles on foot or
horseback to listen to a sermon. They climbed the walls, swam the moat
and thronged to the place of meeting long before the doors had been
opened. When these could no longer be kept closed without a conflict,
for which the magistrates were not prepared, the whole population poured
out of the city with a single impulse. Tens of thousands were assembled
upon the field. The bulwarks were erected as usual, the guards were
posted, the necessary precautions taken. But upon this occasion, and in
that region there was but little danger to be apprehended. The multitude
of Reformers made the edicts impossible, so long as no foreign troops
were there to enforce them. The congregation was encamped and arranged
in an orderly manner. The women, of whom there were many, were placed
next the pulpit, which, upon this occasion, was formed of a couple of
spears thrust into the earth, sustaining a cross-piece, against which the
preacher might lean his back. The services commenced with the singing of
a psalm by the whole vast assemblage. Clement Marot's verses, recently
translated by Dathenus, were then new and popular. The strains of the
monarch minstrel, chanted thus in their homely but nervous mother tongue
by a multitude who had but recently learned that all the poetry and
rapture of devotion were not irrevocably coffined with a buried language,
or immured in the precincts of a church, had never produced a more
elevating effect. No anthem from the world-renowned organ in that
ancient city ever awakened more lofty emotions than did those ten
thousand human voices ringing from the grassy meadows in that fervid
midsummer noon. When all was silent again, the preacher rose; a little,
meagre man, who looked as if he might rather melt away beneath the
blazing sunshine of July, than hold the multitude enchained four
uninterrupted hours long, by the magic of his tongue. His text was the
8th, 9th, and 10th verses of the second chapter of Ephesians; and as the
slender monk spoke to his simple audience of God's grace, and of faith
in Jesus, who had descended from above to save the lowliest and the most
abandoned, if they would put their trust in Him, his hearers were
alternately exalted with fervor or melted into tears. He prayed for all
conditions of men--for themselves, their friends, their enemies, for the
government which had persecuted them, for the King whose face was turned
upon them in anger. At times, according to one who was present, not a
dry eye was to be seen in the crowd. When the minister had finished, he
left his congregation abruptly, for he had to travel all night in order
to reach Alkmaar, where he was to preach upon the following day.
By the middle of July the custom was established outside all the
principal cities. Camp-meetings were held in some places; as, for
instance, in the neighborhood of Antwerp, where the congregations
numbered often fifteen thousand and on some occasions were estimated at
between twenty and thirty thousand persons at a time; "very many of
them," said an eye-witness, "the best and wealthiest in the town."
The sect to which most of these worshippers belonged was that of Calvin.
In Antwerp there were Lutherans, Calvinists, and Anabaptists. The
Lutherans were the richest sect, but the Calvinists the most numerous
and enthusiastic. The Prince of Orange at this moment was strenuously
opposed both to Calvinism and Anabaptism, but inclining to Lutheranism.
Political reasons at this epoch doubtless influenced his mind in
religious matters. The aid of the Lutheran princes of Germany, who
detested the doctrines of Geneva, could hardly be relied upon for the
Netherlanders, unless they would adapt the Confession of Augsburg. The
Prince knew that the Emperor, although inclined to the Reformation, was
bitterly averse to Calvinism, and he was, therefore, desirous of healing
the schism which existed in the general Reformed Church. To accomplish
this, however, would be to gain a greater victory over the bigotry which
was the prevailing characteristic of the age than perhaps could be
expected. The Prince, from the first moment of his abandoning the
ancient doctrines, was disposed to make the attempt.
The Duchess ordered the magistrates of Antwerp to put down these mass-
meetings by means of the guild-militia. They replied that at an earlier
day such a course might have been practicable, but that the sects had
become quite too numerous for coercion. If the authorities were able to
prevent the exercises of the Reformed religion within the city, it would
be as successful a result as could be expected. To prevent the preaching
outside the walls, by means of the bourgher force, was an utter
impossibility. The dilatoriness of the Sovereign placed the Regent in
a frightful dilemma, but it was sufficiently obvious that the struggle
could not long be deferred. "There will soon be a hard nut to crack,"
wrote Count Louis. "The King will never grant the preaching; the people
will never give it up, if it cost them their necks. There's a hard puff
coming upon the country before long." The Duchess was not yet authorized
to levy troops, and she feared that if she commenced such operations, she
should perhaps offend the King, while she at the same time might provoke
the people into more effective military preparations than her own. She
felt that for one company levied by her, the sectaries could raise ten.
Moreover, she was entirely without money, even if she should otherwise
think it expedient to enrol an army. Meantime she did what she could
with "public prayers, processions, fasts, sermons, exhortations," and
other ecclesiastical machinery which she ordered the bishops to put in
motion. Her situation was indeed sufficiently alarming.
Egmont, whom many of the sectaries hoped to secure as their leader in
case of a civil war, showed no disposition to encourage such hopes, but
as little to take up arms against the people. He went to Flanders, where
the armed assemblages for field-preaching had become so numerous that a
force of thirty or forty thousand men might be set on foot almost at a
moment's warning, and where the conservatives, in a state of alarm,
desired the presence of their renowned governor. The people of Antwerp,
on their part, demanded William of Orange. The Prince, who was
hereditary burgrave of the city, had at first declined the invitation of
the magistracy. The Duchess united her request with the universal prayer
of the inhabitants. Events meantime had been thickening, and suspicion
increasing. Meghen had been in the city for several days, much to the
disgust of the Reformers, by whom he was hated. Aremberg was expected to
join him, and it was rumored that measures were secretly in progress
under the auspices of these two leading cardinalists, for introducing a
garrison, together with great store of ammunition, into the city. On the
other hand, the "great beggar," Brederode, had taken up his quarters also
in Antwerp; had been daily entertaining a crowd of roystering nobles at
his hotel, previously to a second political demonstration, which will
soon be described, and was constantly parading the street, followed by a
swarm of adherents in the beggar livery. The sincere Reformers were made
nearly as uncomfortable by the presence of their avowed friends, as by
that of Meghen and Aremberg, and earnestly desired to be rid of them all.
Long and anxious were the ponderings of the magistrates upon all these
subjects. It was determined, at last, to send a fresh deputation to
Brussels, requesting the Regent to order the departure of Meghen,
Aremberg, and Brederode from Antwerp; remonstrating with her against any
plan she might be supposed to entertain of sending mercenary troops into
the city; pledging the word of the senate to keep the peace, meanwhile,
by their regular force; and above all, imploring her once more, in the
most urgent terms, to send thither the burgrave, as the only man who was
capable of saving the city from the calamities into which it was so
likely to fall.
The Prince of Orange being thus urgently besought, both by the government
of Antwerp, the inhabitants of that city, and by the Regent herself, at
last consented to make the visit so earnestly demanded. On the 13th
July, he arrived in Antwerp. The whole city was alive with enthusiasm.
Half its population seemed to have come forth from the gates to bid him
welcome, lining the road for miles. The gate through which he was to
pass, the ramparts, the roofs of the houses were packed close, with
expectant and eager faces. At least thirty thousand persons had
assembled to welcome their guest. A long cavalcade of eminent citizens
had come as far as Berghen to meet him and to escort him into the city.
Brederode, attended by some of the noble confederates, rode at the head
of the procession. As they encountered the Prince, a discharge of
pistol-shots was fired by way of salute, which was the signal for a
deafening shout from the assembled multitude. The crowd thronged about
the Prince as he advanced, calling him their preserver, their father,
their only hope. Wild shouts of welcome rose upon every side, as he rode
through the town, mingled with occasional vociferations of "long life to
the beggars." These party cries were instantly and sharply rebuked by
Orange, who expressed, in Brederode's presence, the determination that
he would make men unlearn that mischievous watchword. He had, moreover,
little relish at that time for the tumultuous demonstrations of
attachment to his person, which were too fervid to be censured, but too
unseasonable to be approved. When the crowd had at last been made to
understand that their huzzas were distasteful to the Prince, most of
the multitude consented to disperse, feeling, however, a relief from
impending danger in the presence of the man to whom they instinctively
looked as their natural protector.