Thus in this rapid sketch of the course and development of the Netherland
nation during sixteen centuries, we have seen it ever marked by one
prevailing characteristic, one master passion--the love of liberty, the
instinct of self-government. Largely compounded of the bravest Teutonic
elements, Batavian and Frisian, the race ever battles to the death with
tyranny, organizes extensive revolts in the age of Vespasian, maintains a
partial independence even against the sagacious dominion of Charlemagne,
refuses in Friesland to accept the papal yoke or feudal chain, and,
throughout the dark ages, struggles resolutely towards the light,
wresting from a series of petty sovereigns a gradual and practical
recognition of the claims of humanity. With the advent of the Burgundian
family, the power of the commons has reached so high a point, that it is
able to measure itself, undaunted, with the spirit of arbitrary rule, of
which that engrossing and tyrannical house is the embodiment. For more
than a century the struggle for freedom, for civic life, goes on; Philip
the Good, Charles the Bold, Mary's husband Maximilian, Charles V., in
turn, assailing or undermining the bulwarks raised, age after age,
against the despotic principle. The combat is ever renewed. Liberty,
often crushed, rises again and again from her native earth with redoubled
energy. At last, in the 16th century, a new and more powerful spirit,
the genius of religious freedom, comes to participate in the great
conflict. Arbitrary power, incarnated in the second Charlemagne, assails
the new combination with unscrupulous, unforgiving fierceness. Venerable
civic magistrates; haltered, grovel in sackcloth and ashes; innocent,
religious reformers burn in holocausts. By the middle of the century,
the battle rages more fiercely than ever. In the little Netherland
territory, Humanity, bleeding but not killed, still stands at bay and
defies the hunters. The two great powers have been gathering strength
for centuries. They are soon to be matched in a longer and more
determined combat than the world had ever seen. The emperor is about to
leave the stage. The provinces, so passionate for nationality, for
municipal freedom, for religious reformation, are to become the property
of an utter stranger; a prince foreign to their blood, their tongue,
their religion, their whole habits of life and thought.
Such was the political, religious, and social condition of a nation who
were now to witness a new and momentous spectacle.