him to the hotel prepared for him. Arrived there, he lost no time in
opening the business which had brought him to Antwerp. He held at once a
long consultation with the upper branch of the government. Afterwards,
day after day, he honestly, arduously, sagaciously labored to restore the
public tranquillity. He held repeated deliberations with every separate
portion of the little commonwealth, the senate, the council of ancients,
the corporation of ward-masters, the deans of trades. Nor did he confine
his communication to these organized political bodies alone. He had
frequent interviews with the officers of the military associations,
with the foreign merchant companies, with the guilds of "Rhetoric."
The chambers of the "Violet" and the "Marigold" were not too frivolous
or fantastic to be consulted by one who knew human nature and the
constitution of Netherland society so well as did the Prince. Night
and day he labored with all classes of citizens to bring about a better
understanding, and to establish mutual confidence. At last by his
efforts tranquillity was restored. The broad-council having been
assembled, it was decided that the exercise of the Reformed religion
should be excluded from the city, but silently tolerated in the suburbs,
while an armed force was to be kept constantly in readiness to suppress
all attempts at insurrection. The Prince had desired, that twelve
hundred men should be enlisted and paid by the city, so that at least a
small number of disciplined troops might be ready at a moment's warning;
but he found it impossible to carry the point with the council. The
magistrates were willing to hold themselves responsible for the peace of
the city, but they would have no mercenaries.
Thus, during the remainder of July and the early part of August, was
William of Orange strenuously occupied in doing what should have been
the Regent's work. He was still regarded both by the Duchess and by the
Calvinist party--although having the sympathies of neither,--as the only
man in the Netherlands who could control the rising tide of a national
revolt. He took care, said his enemies, that his conduct at Antwerp
should have every appearance of loyalty; but they insinuated that he was
a traitor from the beginning, who was insidiously fomenting the troubles
which he appeared to rebuke. No one doubted his genius, and all felt
or affected admiration at its display upon this critical occasion.
"The Prince of Orange is doing very great and notable services at Antwerp
to the King and to the country," said Assonleville. "That seignior is
very skilful in managing great affairs." Margaret of Parma wrote letters
to him fixed with the warmest gratitude, expressions of approbation, and
of wishes that he could both remain in Antwerp and return to assist her
in Brussels. Philip, too, with his own pen, addressed him a letter,
in which implicit confidence in the Prince's character was avowed, all
suspicion on the part of the Sovereign indignantly repudiated, earnest
thanks for his acceptance of the Antwerp mission uttered, and a distinct
refusal given to the earnest request made by Orange to resign his
offices. The Prince read or listened to all this commendation, and
valued it exactly at its proper worth. He knew it to be pure grimace.
He was no more deceived by it than if he had read the letter sent by
Margaret to Philip, a few weeks later, in which she expressed herself as
"thoroughly aware that it was the intention of Orange to take advantage
of the impending tumults, for the purpose of conquering the provinces
and of dividing the whole territory among himself and friends." Nothing
could be more utterly false than so vile and ridiculous a statement.
The course of the Prince had hitherto been, and was still, both
consistent and loyal. He was proceeding step by step to place the
monarch in the wrong, but the only art which he was using, was to plant
himself more firmly upon the right. It was in the monarch's power to
convoke the assembly of the states-general, so loudly demanded by the
whole nation, to abolish the inquisition, to renounce persecution, to
accept the great fact of the Reformation. To do so he must have ceased
to be Philip. To have faltered in attempting to bring him into that
path, the Prince must have ceased to be William of Orange. Had he
succeeded, there would have been no treason and no Republic of Holland.
His conduct at the outbreak of the Antwerp troubles was firm and
sagacious. Even had his duty required him to put down the public
preaching with peremptory violence, he had been furnished with no means
to accomplish the purpose. The rebellion, if it were one, was already
full-grown. It could not be taken by the throat and strangled with one
hand, however firm.
A report that the High Sheriff of Brabant was collecting troops by
command of government, in order to attack the Reformers at their field-
preachings, went far to undo the work already accomplished by the Prince.
The assemblages swelled again from ten or twelve thousand to twenty-five
thousand, the men all providing themselves more thoroughly with weapons
than before. Soon afterwards, the intemperate zeal of another
individual, armed to the teeth--not, however, like the martial sheriff
and his forces, with arquebus and javelin, but with the still more deadly
weapons of polemical theology,--was very near causing a general outbreak.
A peaceful and not very numerous congregation were listening to one of
their preachers in a field outside the town. Suddenly an unknown
individual in plain clothes and with a pragmatical demeanor, interrupted
the discourse by giving a flat contradiction to some of the doctrines
advanced. The minister replied by a rebuke, and a reiteration of the
disputed sentiment.--The stranger, evidently versed in ecclesiastical
matters, volubly and warmly responded. The preacher, a man of humble
condition and moderate abilities, made as good show of argument as he
could, but was evidently no match for his antagonist. He was soon
vanquished in the wordy warfare. Well he might be, for it appeared that
the stranger was no less a personage than Peter Rythovius, a doctor of
divinity, a distinguished pedant of Louvain, a relation of a bishop and
himself a Church dignitary. This learned professor, quite at home in his
subject, was easily triumphant, while the poor dissenter, more accustomed
to elevate the hearts of his hearers than to perplex their heads, sank
prostrate and breathless under the storm of texts, glosses, and hard
Hebrew roots with which he was soon overwhelmed. The professor's triumph
was, however, but short-lived, for the simple-minded congregation, who
loved their teacher, were enraged that he should be thus confounded.
Without more ado, therefore, they laid violent hands upon the Quixotic
knight-errant of the Church, and so cudgelled and belabored him bodily
that he might perhaps have lost his life in the encounter had he not been
protected by the more respectable portion of the assembly. These
persons, highly disapproving the whole proceeding, forcibly rescued him
from the assailants, and carried him off to town, where the news of the
incident at once created an uproar. Here he was thrown into prison as a
disturber of the peace, but in reality that he might be personally
secure. The next day the Prince of Orange, after administering to him a
severe rebuke for his ill-timed exhibition of pedantry, released him from
confinement, and had him conveyed out of the city. "This theologian;"
wrote the Prince to Duchess Margaret, "would have done better, methinks,
to stay at home; for I suppose he had no especial orders to perform this
piece of work."
Thus, so long as this great statesman could remain in the metropolis,
his temperate firmness prevented the explosion which had so long been
expected. His own government of Holland and Zeland, too, especially
demanded his care. The field-preaching had spread in that region with
prodigious rapidity. Armed assemblages, utterly beyond the power of the
civil authorities, were taking place daily in the neighborhood of
Amsterdam. Yet the Duchess could not allow him to visit his government
in the north. If he could be spared from Antwerp for a day, it was
necessary that he should aid her in a fresh complication with the
confederated nobles in the very midst, therefore, of his Antwerp labors,
he had been obliged, by Margaret's orders, to meet a committee at Duffel.
For in this same eventful month of July a great meeting was held by the
members of the Compromise at St. Trond, in the bishopric of Liege. They
came together on the thirteenth of the month, and remained assembled till
the beginning of August. It was a wild, tumultuous convention, numbering
some fifteen hundred cavaliers, each with his esquires and armed
attendants; a larger and more important gathering than had yet been held.
Brederode and Count Louis were the chieftains of the assembly, which, as
may be supposed from its composition and numbers, was likely to be
neither very orderly in its demonstrations nor wholesome in its results.
It was an ill-timed movement. The convention was too large for
deliberation, too riotous to inspire confidence. The nobles quartered
themselves every where in the taverns and the farm-houses of the
neighborhood, while large numbers encamped upon the open fields. There
was a constant din of revelry and uproar, mingled with wordy warfare, and
an occasional crossing of swords. It seemed rather like a congress of
ancient, savage Batavians, assembled in Teutonic fashion to choose a king
amid hoarse shouting, deep drinking, and the clash of spear and shield,
than a meeting for a lofty and earnest purpose, by their civilized
descendants. A crowd of spectators, landlopers, mendicants, daily
aggregated themselves to the aristocratic assembly, joining, with natural
unction, in the incessant shout of "Vivent les gueux!" It was impossible
that so soon after their baptism the self-styled beggars should repudiate
all connection with the time-honored fraternity in which they had
enrolled themselves.
The confederates discussed--if an exchange of vociferations could be
called discussion--principally two points: whether, in case they obtained
the original objects of their petition, they should pause or move still
further onward; and whether they should insist upon receiving some pledge
from the government, that no vengeance should be taken upon them for
their previous proceedings. Upon both questions, there was much
vehemence of argument and great difference of opinion. They, moreover,
took two very rash and very grave resolutions--to guarantee the people
against all violence on account of their creeds, and to engage a force of
German soldiery, four thousand horse and forty companies of infantry by,
"wart geld" or retaining wages. It was evident that these gentlemen were
disposed to go fast and far. If they had been ready in the spring to
receive their baptism of wine, the "beggars" were now eager for the
baptism of blood. At the same time it must be observed that the levies
which they proposed, not to make, but to have at command, were purely for
defence. In case the King, as it was thought probable, should visit the
Netherlands with fire and sword, then there would be a nucleus of
resistance already formed.
Upon the 18th July, the Prince of Orange, at the earnest request of the
Regent, met a committee of the confederated nobles at Duffel. Count
Egmont was associated with him in this duty. The conference was not very
satisfactory. The deputies from St. Trend, consisting of Brederode,
Culemburg, and others, exchanged with the two seigniors the old
arguments. It was urged upon the confederates, that they had made
themselves responsible for the public tranquillity so long as the Regent
should hold to her promise; that, as the Duchess had sent two
distinguished envoys to Madrid, in order to accomplish, if possible, the
wishes of the nobles, it was their duty to redeem their own pledges; that
armed assemblages ought to be suppressed by their efforts rather than
encouraged by their, example; and that, if they now exerted themselves
zealously to check, the tumults, the Duchess was ready to declare, in her
own-name and that of his Majesty, that the presentation of the Request
had been beneficial.
The nobles replied that the pledges had become a farce, that the Regent
was playing them false, that persecution was as fierce as ever, that the
"Moderation" was a mockery, that the letters recommending "modesty and
discretion" to the inquisitors had been mere waste paper, that a price
had been set upon the heads of the preachers as if they had been wild
beasts, that there were constant threats of invasions from Spain, that
the convocation of the states-general had been illegally deferred, that
the people had been driven to despair, and that it was the conduct of
government, not of the confederates, which had caused the Reformers to
throw off previous restraint and to come boldly forth by tens of
thousands into the fields, not to defy their King, but to worship their
God.
Such, in brief, was the conference of Duffel. In conclusion, a paper was
drawn up which Brederode carried back to the convention, and which it was
proposed to submit to the Duchess for her approval. At the end of the
month, Louis of Nassau was accordingly sent to Brussels, accompanied by
twelve associates, who were familiarly called his twelve apostles. Here
he laid before her Highness in council a statement, embodying the views
of the confederates. In this paper they asserted that they were ever
ready to mount and ride against a foreign foe, but that they would never
draw a sword against their innocent countrymen. They maintained that
their past conduct deserved commendation, and that in requiring letters
of safe conduct in the names both of the Duchess and of the Fleece-
knights, they were governed not by a disposition to ask for pardon,
but by a reluctance without such guarantees to enter into stipulations
touching the public tranquillity. If, however, they should be assured
that the intentions of the Regent were amicable and that there was no
design to take vengeance for the past--if, moreover, she were willing
to confide in the counsels of Horn, Egmont, and Orange, and to take no
important measure without their concurrence--if, above all, she would
convoke the states-general, then, and then only, were the confederates
willing to exert their energies to preserve peace, to restrain popular
impetuosity and banish universal despair.
So far Louis of Nassau and his twelve apostles. It must be confessed
that, whatever might be thought of the justice, there could be but one
opinion as to the boldness of these views. The Duchess was furious. If
the language held in April had been considered audacious, certainly this
new request was, in her own words, "still more bitter to the taste and
more difficult of digestion." She therefore answered in a very
unsatisfactory, haughty and ambiguous manner, reserving decision upon
their propositions till they had been discussed by the state council, and
intimating that they would also be laid before the Knights of the Fleece,
who were to hold a meeting upon the 26th of August.
There was some further conversation without any result. Esquerdes
complained that the confederates were the mark of constant calumny, and
demanded that the slanderers should be confronted with them and punished.
"I understand perfectly well," interrupted Margaret, "you wish to take
justice into your own hands and to be King yourself." It was further
intimated by these reckless gentlemen, that if they should be driven by
violence into measures of self-protection, they had already secured
friends in a certain country. The Duchess, probably astonished at the
frankness of this statement, is said to have demanded further
explanations. The confederates replied by observing that they had
resources both in the provinces and in Germany. The state council
decided that to accept the propositions of the confederates would be to
establish a triumvirate at once, and the Duchess wrote to her brother
distinctly advising against the acceptance of the proposal. The assembly
at St. Trond was then dissolved, having made violent demonstrations which
were not followed by beneficial results, and having laid itself open to
various suspicions, most of which were ill-founded, while some of them
were just.
Before giving the reader a brief account of the open and the secret
policy pursued by the government at Brussels and Madrid, in consequence
of these transactions, it is now necessary to allude to a startling
series of events, which at this point added to the complications of the
times, and exercised a fatal influence upon the situation of the
commonwealth.
1566 [CHAPTER VII.]
Ecclesiastical architecture in the Netherlands--The image-breaking--
Description of Antwerp Cathedral--Ceremony of the Ommegang--
Precursory disturbances--Iconoclasts at Antwerp--Incidents of the
image--breaking in various cities--Events at Tournay--Preaching of
Wille--Disturbance by a little boy--Churches sacked at Tournay--
Disinterment of Duke Adolphus of Gueldres--Iconoclasts defeated and
massacred at Anchin--Bartholomew's Day at Valenciennes--General
characteristics of the image-breaking--Testimony of contemporaries
as to the honesty of the rioters--Consternation of the Duchess--
Projected flight to Mons--Advice of Horn and other seigniors--
Accord of 25th August.
The Netherlands possessed an extraordinary number of churches and
monasteries. Their exquisite architecture and elaborate decoration had
been the earliest indication of intellectual culture displayed in the
country. In the vast number of cities, towns, and villages which were
crowded upon that narrow territory, there had been, from circumstances
operating throughout Christendom, a great accumulation of ecclesiastical
wealth. The same causes can never exist again which at an early day
covered the soil of Europe with those magnificent creations of Christian
art. It was in these anonymous but entirely original achievements that
Gothic genius; awaking from its long sleep of the dark ages, first
expressed itself. The early poetry of the German races was hewn and
chiselled in atone. Around the steadfast principle of devotion then so
firmly rooted in the soil, clustered the graceful and vigorous emanations
of the newly-awakened mind. All that science could invent, all that art
could embody, all that mechanical ingenuity could dare, all that wealth
could lavish, whatever there was of human energy which was panting for
pacific utterance, wherever there stirred the vital principle which
instinctively strove to create and to adorn at an epoch when vulgar
violence and destructiveness were the general tendencies of humanity, all
gathered around these magnificent temples, as their aspiring pinnacles at
last pierced the mist which had so long brooded over the world.
There were many hundreds of churches, more or less remarkable, in the
Netherlands. Although a severe criticism might regret to find in these
particular productions of the great Germanic school a development of that
practical tendency which distinguished the Batavian and Flemish
branches,--although it might recognize a departure from that mystic
principle which, in its efforts to symbolize the strivings of humanity
towards the infinite object of worship above, had somewhat disregarded
the wants of the worshippers below,--although the spaces might be too
wide and the intercolumniations too empty, except for the convenience
of congregations; yet there were, nevertheless, many ecclesiastical
masterpieces, which could be regarded as very brilliant manifestations
of the Batavian and Belgic mind during the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries. Many were filled with paintings from a school which had
precedence in time and merit over its sister nurseries of art in Germany.
All were peopled with statues. All were filled with profusely-adorned
chapels, for the churches had been enriched generation after generation
by wealthy penitence, which had thus purchased absolution for crime and
smoothed a pathway to heaven.
And now, for the space of only six or seven summer days and nights, there
raged a storm by which all these treasures were destroyed. Nearly every
one of these temples was entirely rifled of its contents; not for the
purpose of plunder, but of destruction. Hardly a province or a town
escaped. Art must forever weep over this bereavement; Humanity must
regret that the reforming is thus always ready to degenerate into the
destructive principle; but it is impossible to censure very severely the
spirit which prompted the brutal, but not ferocious deed. Those statues,
associated as they were with the remorseless persecution which had so
long desolated the provinces, had ceased to be images. They had grown
human and hateful, so that the people arose and devoted them to
indiscriminate massacre.
No doubt the iconoclastic fury is to be regretted; for such treasures
can scarcely be renewed. The age for building and decorating great
cathedrals is past. Certainly, our own age, practical and benevolent, if
less poetical, should occupy itself with the present, and project itself
into the future. It should render glory to God rather by causing wealth
to fertilize the lowest valleys of humanity, than by rearing gorgeous
temples where paupers are to kneel. To clothe the naked, redeem the
criminal, feed the hungry, less by alms and homilies than by preventive
institutions and beneficent legislation; above all, by the diffusion of
national education, to lift a race upon a level of culture hardly
attained by a class in earlier times, is as lofty a task as to accumulate
piles of ecclesiastical splendor.
It would be tedious to recount in detail the events which characterized
the remarkable image-breaking in the Netherlands. As Antwerp was the
central point in these transactions, and as there was more wealth and
magnificence in the great cathedral of that city than in any church of
northern Europe, it is necessary to give a rapid outline of the events
which occurred there. From its exhibition in that place the spirit every
where will best be shown.
The Church of Our Lady, which Philip had so recently converted into a
cathedral, dated from the year 1124, although it may be more fairly
considered a work of the fourteenth century. Its college of canons had
been founded in another locality by Godfrey of Bouillon. The Brabantine
hero, who so romantically incarnates the religious poetry of his age, who
first mounted the walls of redeemed Jerusalem, and was its first
Christian monarch, but who refused to accept a golden diadem on the spot
where the Saviour had been crowned with thorns; the Fleming who lived and
was the epic which the great Italian, centuries afterwards; translated
into immortal verse, is thus fitly associated with the beautiful
architectural poem which was to grace his ancestral realms. The body of
the church, the interior and graceful perspectives of which were not
liable to the reproach brought against many Netherland churches, of
assimilating themselves already to the municipal palaces which they were
to suggest--was completed in the fourteenth century. The beautiful
facade, with its tower, was not completed till the year 1518. The
exquisite and daring spire, the gigantic stem upon which the consummate
flower of this architectural creation was to be at last unfolded, was a
plant of a whole century's growth. Rising to a height of nearly five
hundred feet, over a church of as many feet in length, it worthily
represented the upward tendency of Gothic architecture. Externally and
internally the cathedral was a true expression of the Christian principle
of devotion. Amid its vast accumulation of imagery, its endless
ornaments, its multiplicity of episodes, its infinite variety of details,
the central, maternal principle was ever visible. Every thing pointed
upwards, from the spire in the clouds to the arch which enshrined the
smallest sculptured saint in the chapels below. It was a sanctuary, not
like pagan temples, to enclose a visible deity, but an edifice where
mortals might worship an unseen Being in the realms above.
The church, placed in the centre of the city, with the noisy streets of
the busiest metropolis in Europe eddying around its walls, was a sacred
island in the tumultuous main. Through the perpetual twilight, tall
columnar trunks in thick profusion grew from a floor chequered with
prismatic lights and sepulchral shadows. Each shaft of the petrified
forest rose to a preternatural height, their many branches intermingling
in the space above, to form an impenetrable canopy. Foliage, flowers and
fruit of colossal luxuriance, strange birds, beasts, griffins and
chimeras in endless multitudes, the rank vegetation and the fantastic
zoology of a fresher or fabulous world, seemed to decorate and to animate
the serried trunks and pendant branches, while the shattering symphonies
or dying murmurs of the organ suggested the rushing of the wind through
the forest, now the full diapason of the storm and now the gentle cadence
of the evening breeze.