Ill-timed Interregnum in the Provinces--Firmness of the English and
Dutch People--Factions during Leicester's Government--Democratic
Theories of the Leicestriana--Suspicions as to the Earl's Designs--
Extreme Views of the Calvinists--Political Ambition of the Church--
Antagonism of the Church and States--The States inclined to
Tolerance--Desolation of the Obedient Provinces--Pauperism and
Famine--Prosperity of the Republic--The Year of Expectation.
It was not unnatural that the Queen should desire the presence of her
favourite at that momentous epoch, when the dread question, "aut fer aut
feri," had at last demanded its definite solution. It was inevitable,
too, that Leicester should feel great anxiety to be upon the spot where
the great tragedy, so full of fate to all Christendom, and in which his
own fortunes were so closely involved, was to be enacted. But it was most
cruel to the Netherlands--whose well-being was nearly as important to
Elizabeth as that of her own realm--to plunge them into anarchy at such a
moment. Yet this was the necessary result of the sudden retirement of
Leicester.
He did not resign his government. He did not bind himself to return. The
question of sovereignty was still unsettled, for it was still hoped by a
large and influential party, that the English Queen would accept the
proposed annexation. It was yet doubtful, whether, during the period of
abeyance, the States-General or the States-Provincial, each within their
separate sphere, were entitled to supreme authority. Meantime, as if here
were not already sufficient elements of dissension and doubt, came a
sudden and indefinite interregnum, a provisional, an abnormal, and an
impotent government. To the state-council was deputed the executive
authority. But the state-council was a creature of the States-General,
acting in concert with the governor-general, and having no actual life of
its own. It was a board of consultation, not of decision, for it could
neither enact its own decrees nor interpose a veto upon the decrees of
the governor.
Certainly the selection of Leicester to fill so important a post had not
been a very fortunate one; and the enthusiasm which had greeted him, "as
if he had been a Messiah," on his arrival, had very rapidly dwindled
away, as his personal character became known. The leading politicians of
the country had already been aware of the error which they had committed
in clothing with almost sovereign powers the delegate of one who had
refused the sovereignty. They, were too adroit to neglect the
opportunity, which her Majesty's anger offered them, of repairing what
they considered their blunder. When at last the quarrel, which looked so
much like a lovers' quarrel, between Elizabeth and 'Sweet Robin,' had
been appeased to the satisfaction of Robin, his royal mistress became
more angry with the States for circumscribing than she had before been
for their exaggeration of his authority. Hence the implacable hatred of
Leicester to Paul Buys and Barneveld.
Those two statesmen, for eloquence, learning, readiness, administrative
faculty, surpassed by few who have ever wielded the destinies of free
commonwealths, were fully equal to the task thrown upon their hands by
the progress of events. That task was no slight one, for it was to the
leading statesmen of Holland and England, sustained by the indomitable
resistance to despotism almost universal in the English and Dutch
nations, that the liberty of Europe was entrusted at that, momentous
epoch. Whether united under one crown, as the Netherlands ardently
desired, or closely allied for aggression and defence, the two peoples
were bound indissolubly together. The clouds were rolling up from the
fatal south, blacker and more portentous than ever; the artificial
equilibrium of forces, by which the fate of France was kept in suspense,
was obviously growing every day more uncertain; but the prolonged and
awful interval before the tempest should burst over the lands of freedom
and Protestantism, gave at least time for the prudent to prepare. The
Armada was growing every day in the ports of Spain and Portugal, and
Walsingham doubted, as little as did Buys or Barneveld, toward what
shores that invasion was to be directed. England was to be conquered in
order that the rebellious Netherlands might be reduced; and 'Mucio' was
to be let slip upon the unhappy Henry III. so soon as it was thought
probable that the Bearnese and the Valois had sufficiently exhausted each
other. Philip was to reign in Paris, Amsterdam, London, and Edinburgh,
without stirring from the Escorial. An excellent programme, had there not
been some English gentlemen, some subtle secretaries of state, some
Devonshire skippers, some Dutch advocates and merchants, some Zeeland
fly-boatsmen, and six million men, women, and children, on the two sides
of the North Sea, who had the power of expressing their thoughts rather
bluntly than otherwise, in different dialects of old Anglo-Saxon speech.
Certainly it would be unjust and ungracious to disparage the heroism of
the great Queen when the hour of danger really came, nor would it be
legitimate for us, who can scan that momentous year of expectation, 1587,
by the light of subsequent events and of secret contemporaneous record,
to censure or even sharply to criticise the royal hankering for peace,
when peace had really become impossible. But as we shall have occasion to
examine rather closely the secrets of the Spanish, French, English, and
Dutch councils, during this epoch, we are likely to find, perhaps, that
at least as great a debt is due to the English and Dutch people, in mass,
for the preservation of European liberty at that disastrous epoch as to
any sovereign, general, or statesman.
For it was in the great waters of the sixteenth century that the nations
whose eyes were open, discovered the fountain of perpetual youth, while
others, who were blind, passed rapidly onward to decrepitude. England
was, in many respects, a despotism so far as regarded governmental forms;
and no doubt the Catholics were treated with greater rigour than could be
justified even by the perpetual and most dangerous machinations of the
seminary priests and their instigators against the throne and life of
Elizabeth. The word liberty was never musical in Tudor ears, yet
Englishmen had blunt tongues and sharp weapons which rarely rusted for
want of use. In the presence of a parliament, and the absence of a
standing army, a people accustomed to read the Bible in the vernacular,
to handle great questions of religion and government freely, and to bear
arms at will, was most formidable to despotism. There was an advance on
the olden time. A Francis Drake, a John Hawkins, a Roger Williams, might
have been sold, under the Plantagenets, like an ox or an ass. A 'female
villain' in the reign of Henry III. could have been purchased for
eighteen shillings--hardly the price of a fatted pig, and not one-third
the value of an ambling palfrey--and a male villain, such an one as could
in Elizabeth's reign circumnavigate the globe in his own ship, or take
imperial field-marshals by the beard, was worth but two or three pounds
sterling in the market. Here was progress in three centuries, for the
villains were now become admirals and generals in England and Holland,
and constituted the main stay of these two little commonwealths, while
the commanders who governed the 'invincible' fleets and armies of
omnipotent Spain, were all cousins of emperors, or grandees of bluest
blood. Perhaps the system of the reformation would not prove the least
effective in the impending crisis.
It was most important, then, that these two nations should be united in
council, and should stand shoulder to shoulder as their great enemy
advanced. But this was precisely what had been rendered almost impossible
by the course of events during Leicester's year of administration, and by
his sudden but not final retirement at its close. The two great national
parties which had gradually been forming, had remained in a fluid state
during the presence of the governor-general. During his absence they
gradually hardened into the forms which they were destined to retain for
centuries. In the history of civil liberty, these incessant contests,
these oral and written disquisitions, these sharp concussions of opinion,
and the still harder blows, which, unfortunately, were dealt on a few
occasions by the combatants upon each other, make the year 1587 a
memorable one. The great questions of the origin of government, the
balance of dynastic forces, the distribution of powers, were dealt with
by the ablest heads, both Dutch and English, that could be employed in
the service of the kingdom and republic. It was a war of protocols,
arguments, orations, rejoinders, apostilles, and pamphlets; very
wholesome for the cause of free institutions and the intellectual
progress of mankind. The reader may perhaps be surprised to see with how
much vigour and boldness the grave questions which underlie all polity,
were handled so many years before the days of Russell and Sidney, of
Montesquieu and Locke, Franklin, Jefferson, Rousseau, and Voltaire; and
he may be even more astonished to find exceedingly democratic doctrines
propounded, if not believed in, by trained statesmen of the Elizabethan
school. He will be also apt to wonder that a more fitting time could not
be found for such philosophical debate than the epoch at which both the
kingdom and the republic were called upon to strain every sinew against
the most formidable and aggressive despotism that the world had known
since the fall of the Roman Empire.
The great dividing-line between the two parties, that of Leicester and
that of Holland, which controlled the action of the States-General, was
the question of sovereignty. After the declaration of independence and
the repudiation of Philip, to whom did the sovereignty belong? To the
people, said the Leicestrians. To the States-General and the
States-Provincial, as legitimate representatives of the people, said the
Holland party. Without looking for the moment more closely into this
question, which we shall soon find ably discussed by the most acute
reasoners of the time, it is only important at present to make a
preliminary reflection. The Earl of Leicester, of all men is the world,
would seem to have been precluded by his own action, and by the action of
his Queen, from taking ground against the States. It was the States who,
by solemn embassy, had offered the sovereignty to Elizabeth. She had not
accepted the offer, but she had deliberated on the subject, and certainly
she had never expressed a doubt whether or not the offer had been legally
made. By the States, too, that governor-generalship had been conferred
upon the Earl, which had been so thankfully and eagerly accepted. It was
strange, then, that he should deny the existence of the power whence his
own authority was derived. If the States were not sovereigns of the
Netherlands, he certainly was nothing. He was but general of a few
thousand English troops.
The Leicester party, then, proclaimed extreme democratic principles as to
the origin of government and the sovereignty of the people. They sought
to strengthen and to make almost absolute the executive authority of
their chief, on the ground that such was the popular will; and they
denounced with great acrimony the insolence of the upstart members of the
States, half a dozen traders, hired advocates, churls, tinkers, and the
like--as Leicester was fond of designating the men who opposed him--in
assuming these airs of sovereignty.
This might, perhaps, be philosophical doctrine, had its supporters not
forgotten that there had never been any pretence at an expression of the
national will, except through the mouths of the States. The
States-General and the States-Provincial, without any usurpation, but as
a matter of fact and of great political convenience, had, during fifteen
years, exercised the authority which had fallen from Philip's hands. The
people hitherto had acquiesced in their action, and certainly there had
not yet been any call for a popular convention, or any other device to
ascertain the popular will. It was also difficult to imagine what was the
exact entity of this abstraction called the "people" by men who expressed
such extreme contempt for "merchants, advocates, town-orators, churls,
tinkers, and base mechanic men, born not to command but to obey." Who
were the people when the educated classes and the working classes were
thus carefully eliminated? Hardly the simple peasantry--the boors--who
tilled the soil. At that day the agricultural labourers less than all
others dreamed of popular sovereignty, and more than all others submitted
to the mild authority of the States. According to the theory of the
Netherland constitutions, they were supposed--and they had themselves not
yet discovered the fallacies to which such doctrines could lead--to be
represented by the nobles and country-squires who maintained in the
States of each Province the general farming interests of the republic.
Moreover, the number of agricultural peasants was comparatively small.
The lower classes were rather accustomed to plough the sea than the land,
and their harvests were reaped from that element, which to Hollanders and
Zeelanders was less capricious than the solid earth. Almost every
inhabitant of those sea-born territories was, in one sense or another, a
mariner; for every highway was a canal; the soil was percolated by rivers
and estuaries, pools and meres; the fisheries were the nurseries in which
still more daring navigators rapidly learned their trade, and every child
took naturally to the ocean as to its legitimate home.
The "people," therefore, thus enthroned by the Leicestrians over all the
inhabitants of the country, appeared to many eyes rather a misty
abstraction, and its claim of absolute sovereignty a doctrine almost as
fantastic as that of the divine right of kings. The Netherlanders were,
on the whole, a law-abiding people, preferring to conduct even a
revolution according to precedent, very much attached to ancient usages
and traditions, valuing the liberties, as they called them, which they
had wrested from what had been superior force, with their own right
hands, preferring facts to theories, and feeling competent to deal with
tyrants in the concrete rather than to annihilate tyranny in the abstract
by a bold and generalizing phraseology. Moreover the opponents of the
Leicester party complained that the principal use to which this newly
discovered "people" had been applied, was to confer its absolute
sovereignty unconditionally upon one man. The people was to be sovereign
in order that it might immediately abdicate in favour of the Earl.
Utrecht, the capital of the Leicestrians, had already been deprived of
its constitution. The magistracy was, according to law, changed every
year. A list of candidates was furnished by the retiring board, an equal
number of names was added by the governor of the Province, and from the
catalogue thus composed the governor with his council selected the new
magistrates for the year. But De Villiers, the governor of the Province,
had been made a prisoner by the enemy in the last campaign; Count Moeurs
had been appointed provisional stadholder by the States; and, during his
temporary absence on public affairs, the Leicestrians had seized upon the
government, excluded all the ancient magistrates, banished many leading
citizens from the town, and installed an entirely new board, with Gerard
Proninck, called Deventer, for chief burgomaster, who was a Brabantine
refugee just arrived in the Province, and not eligible to office until
after ten years' residence.
It was not unnatural that the Netherlanders, who remembered the scenes of
bloodshed and disorder produced by the memorable attempt of the Duke of
Anjou to obtain possession of Antwerp and other cities, should be
suspicious of Leicester. Anjou, too, had been called to the Provinces by
the voluntary action of the States. He too had been hailed as a Messiah
and a deliverer. In him too had unlimited confidence been reposed, and he
had repaid their affection and their gratitude by a desperate attempt to
obtain the control of their chief cities by the armed hand, and thus to
constitute himself absolute sovereign of the Netherlands. The inhabitants
had, after a bloody contest, averted the intended massacre and the
impending tyranny; but it was not astonishing that--so very, few years
having elapsed since those tragical events--they should be inclined to
scan severely the actions of the man who had already obtained by
unconstitutional means the mastery of a most important city, and was
supposed to harbour designs upon all the cities.
No, doubt it was a most illiberal and unwise policy for the inhabitants
of the independent States to exclude from office the wanderers, for
conscience' sake, from the obedient Provinces. They should have been
welcomed heart and hand by those who were their brethren in religion and
in the love of freedom. Moreover, it was notorious that Hohenlo,
lieutenant-general under Maurice of Nassau, was a German, and that by the
treaty with England, two foreigners sat in the state council, while the
army swarmed with English, Irish, end German officers in high command.
Nevertheless, violently to subvert the constitution of a Province, and to
place in posts of high responsibility men who were ineligible--some whose
characters were suspicious, and some who were known to be dangerous, and
to banish large numbers of respectable burghers--was the act of a despot.
Besides their democratic doctrines, the Leicestrians proclaimed and
encouraged an exclusive and rigid Calvinism.
It would certainly be unjust and futile to detract from the vast debt
which the republic owed to the Geneva Church. The reformation had entered
the Netherlands by the Walloon gate. The earliest and most eloquent
preachers, the most impassioned converts, the sublimest martyrs, had
lived, preached, fought, suffered, and died with the precepts of Calvin
in their hearts. The fire which had consumed the last vestige of royal
and sacerdotal despotism throughout the independent republic, had been
lighted by the hands of Calvinists.
Throughout the blood-stained soil of France, too, the men who were
fighting the same great battle as were the Netherlanders against Philip
II. and the Inquisition, the valiant cavaliers of Dauphiny and Provence,
knelt on the ground, before the battle, smote their iron breasts with
their mailed hands, uttered a Calvinistic prayer, sang a psalm of Marot,
and then charged upon Guise, or upon Joyeuse, under the white plume of
the Bearnese. And it was on the Calvinist weavers and clothiers of
Rochelle that the great Prince relied in the hour of danger as much as on
his mountain chivalry. In England too, the seeds of liberty, wrapped up
in Calvinism and hoarded through many trying years, were at last destined
to float over land and sea, and to bear large harvests of temperate
freedom for great commonwealths, which were still unborn. Nevertheless
there was a growing aversion in many parts of the States for the rigid
and intolerant spirit of the reformed religion. There were many men in
Holland who had already imbibed the true lesson--the only, one worth
learning of the reformation--liberty of thought; but toleration in the
eyes of the extreme Calvinistic party was as great a vice as it could be
in the estimation of Papists. To a favoured few of other habits of
thought, it had come to be regarded as a virtue; but the day was still
far distant when men were to scorn the very word toleration as an insult
to the dignity of man; as if for any human being or set of human beings,
in caste, class, synod, or church, the right could even in imagination be
conceded of controlling the consciences of their fellow-creatures.
But it was progress for the sixteenth century that there were
individuals, and prominent individuals, who dared to proclaim liberty of
conscience for all. William of Orange was a Calvinist, sincere and rigid,
but he denounced all oppression of religion, and opened wide the doors of
the Commonwealth to Papists, Lutherans, and Anabaptists alike. The Earl
of Leicester was a Calvinist, most rigid in tenet, most edifying of
conversation, the acknowledged head of the Puritan party of England, but
he was intolerant and was influenced only by the most intolerant of his
sect. Certainly it would have required great magnanimity upon his part to
assume a friendly demeanour towards the Papists. It is easier for us, in
more favoured ages, to rise to the heights of philosophical abstraction,
than for a man, placed as was Leicester, in the front rank of a mighty
battle, in which the triumph of either religion seemed to require the
bodily annihilation of all its adversaries. He believed that the success
of a Catholic conspiracy against the life of Elizabeth or of a Spanish
invasion of England, would raise Mary to the throne and consign himself
to the scaffold. He believed that the subjugation of the independent
Netherlands would place the Spaniards instantly in England, and he
frequently received information, true or false, of Popish plots that were
ever hatching in various parts of the Provinces against the English
Queen. It was not surprising, therefore, although it was unwise, that he
should incline his ear most seriously to those who counselled severe
measures not only against Papists, but against those who were not
persecutors of Papists, and that he should allow himself to be guided by
adventurers, who wore the mask of religion only that they might plunder
the exchequer and rob upon the highway.
Under the administration of this extreme party, therefore, the Papists
were maltreated, disfranchised, banished, and plundered. The distribution
of the heavy war-taxes, more than two-thirds of which were raised in
Holland only, was confided to foreigners, and regulated mainly at
Utrecht, where not one-tenth part of the same revenue was collected. This
naturally excited the wrath of the merchants and manufacturers of Holland
and the other Provinces, who liked not that these hard-earned and
lavishly-paid subsidies should be meddled with by any but the cleanest
hands.
The clergy, too, arrogated a direct influence in political affairs. Their
demonstrations were opposed by the anti-Leicestrians, who cared not to
see a Geneva theocracy in the place of the vanished Papacy. They had as
little reverence in secular affairs for Calvinistic deacons as for the
college of cardinals, and would as soon accept the infallibility of
Sixtus V. as that of Herman Modet. The reformed clergy who had
dispossessed and confiscated the property of the ancient ecclesiastics
who once held a constitutional place in the Estates of Utrecht--although
many of those individuals were now married and had embraced the reformed
religion who had demolished, and sold at public auction, for 12,300
florins, the time-honoured cathedral where the earliest Christians of the
Netherlands had worshipped, and St. Willibrod had ministered, were
roundly rebuked, on more than one occasion, by the blunt matters beyond
their sphere.
The party of the States-General, as opposed to the Leicester party, was
guided by the statesmen of Holland. At a somewhat later period was formed
the States-right party, which claimed sovereignty for each Province, and
by necessary consequence the hegemony throughout the confederacy, for
Holland. At present the doctrine maintained was that the sovereignty
forfeited by Philip had naturally devolved upon the States-General. The
statesmen of this party repudiated the calumny that it had therefore
lapsed into the hands of half a dozen mechanics and men of low degree.
The States of each Province were, they maintained, composed of nobles and
country-gentlemen, as representing the agricultural interest, and of
deputies from the 'vroedschappen,' or municipal governments, of every
city and smallest town.
Such men as Adrian Van der Werff, the heroic burgomaster of Leyden during
its famous siege, John Van der Does, statesman, orator, soldier, poet,
Adolphus Meetkerke, judge, financier, politician, Carl Roorda, Noel de
Carom diplomatist of most signal ability, Floris Thin, Paul Buys, and
Olden-Barneveld, with many others, who would have done honour to the
legislative assemblies and national councils in any country or any age,
were constantly returned as members of the different vroedschaps in the
commonwealth.
So far from its being true then that half a dozen ignorant mechanics had
usurped the sovereignty of the Provinces, after the abjuration of the
Spanish King, it may be asserted in general terms, that of the eight
hundred thousand inhabitants of Holland at least eight hundred persons
were always engaged in the administration of public affairs, that these
individuals were perpetually exchanged for others, and that those whose
names became most prominent in the politics of the day were remarkable
for thorough education, high talents, and eloquence with tongue and pen.
It was acknowledged by the leading statesmen of England and France, on
repeated occasions throughout the sixteenth century, that the
diplomatists and statesmen of the Netherlands were even more than a match
for any politicians who were destined to encounter them, and the profound
respect which Leicester expressed for these solid statesmen, these
"substantial, wise, well-languaged" men, these "big fellows," so soon as
he came in contact with them, and before he began to hate them for
outwitting him, has already appeared. They were generally men of the
people, born without any of the accidents of fortune; but, the leaders
had studied in the common schools, and later in the noble universities of
a land where to be learned and eloquent was fast becoming almost as great
an honour as to be wealthy or high born.
The executive, the legislative, and the judiciary departments were more
carefully and scientifically separated than could perhaps have been
expected in that age. The lesser municipal courts, in which city-senators
presided, were subordinate to the supreme court of Holland, whose
officers were appointed by the stadholders and council; the supplies were
in the hands of the States-Provincial, and the supreme administrative
authority was confided to a stadholder appointed by the states.
The States-General were constituted of similar materials to those of
which the States-Provincial were constructed, and the same individuals
were generally prominent in both. They were deputies appointed by the
Provincial Estates, were in truth rather more like diplomatic envoys than
senators, were generally bound very strictly by instructions, and were
often obliged, by the jealousy springing from the States-right principle,
to refer to their constituents, on questions when the times demanded a
sudden decision, and when the necessary delay was inconvenient and
dangerous.
In religious matters, the States-party, to their honour, already leaned
to a wide toleration. Not only Catholics were not burned, but they were
not banished, and very large numbers remained in the territory, and were
quite undisturbed in religious matters, within their own doors. There
were even men employed in public affairs who were suspected of papistical
tendencies, although their hostility, to Spain and their attachment to
their native land could not fairly be disputed. The leaders of the
States-party had a rooted aversion to any political influence on the part
of the clergy of any denomination whatever. Disposed to be lenient to all
forms of worship, they were disinclined to an established church, but
still more opposed to allowing church-influence in secular affairs. As a
matter of course, political men with such bold views in religious matters
were bitterly assailed by their rigid opponents. Barneveld, with his "nil
scire tutissima fides," was denounced as a disguised Catholic or an
infidel, and as for Paul Buys, he was a "bolsterer of Papists, an
atheist, a devil," as it has long since been made manifest.
Nevertheless these men believed that they understood the spirit of their
country and of the age. In encouragement to an expanding commerce, the
elevation and education of the masses, the toleration of all creeds, and
a wide distribution of political functions and rights, they looked for
the salvation of their nascent republic from destruction, and the
maintenance of the true interests of the people. They were still loyal to
Queen Elizabeth, and desirous that she should accept the sovereignty of
the Provinces. But they were determined that the sovereignty should be a
constitutional one, founded upon and limited by the time-honoured laws
and traditions of their commonwealth; for they recognised the value of a
free republic with an hereditary chief, however anomalous it might in
theory appear. They knew that in Utrecht the Leicestrian party were about
to offer the Queen the sovereignty of their Province, without conditions,
but they were determined that neither Queen Elizabeth nor any other
monarch should ever reign in the Netherlands, except under conditions to
be very accurately defined and well secured.
Thus, contrasted, then, were the two great parties in the Netherlands, at
the conclusion of Leicester's first year of administration. It may easily
be understood that it was not an auspicious moment to leave the country
without a chief.
The strength of the States-party lay in Holland, Zeeland, Friesland. The
main stay of the democratic or Leicester faction was in the city of
Utrecht, but the Earl had many partizans in Gelderland, Friesland, and in
Overyssel, the capital of which Province, the wealthy and thriving
Deventer, second only in the republic to Amsterdam for commercial and
political importance, had been but recently secured for the Provinces by
the vigorous measures of Sir William Pelham.
The condition of the republic and of the Spanish Provinces was, at that
moment, most signally contrasted. If the effects of despotism and of
liberty could ever be exhibited at a single glance, it was certainly only
necessary to look for a moment at the picture of the obedient and of the
rebel Netherlands.
Since the fall of Antwerp, the desolation of Brabant, Flanders, and of
the Walloon territories had become complete. The King had recovered the
great commercial capital, but its commerce was gone. The Scheldt, which,
till recently, had been the chief mercantile river in the world, had
become as barren as if its fountains had suddenly dried up. It was as if
it no longer flowed to the ocean, for its mouth was controlled by
Flushing. Thus Antwerp was imprisoned and paralyzed. Its docks and
basins, where 2500 ships had once been counted, were empty, grass was
growing in its streets, its industrious population had vanished, and the
Jesuits had returned in swarms. And the same spectacle was presented by
Ghent, Bruges, Valenciennes, Tournay, and those other fair cities, which
had once been types of vigorous industry and tumultuous life. The
sea-coast was in the hands of two rising commercial powers, the great and
free commonwealths of the future. Those powers were acting in concert,
and commanding the traffic of the world, while the obedient Provinces
were excluded from all foreign intercourse and all markets, as the result
of their obedience. Commerce, manufactures, agriculture; were dying
lingering deaths. The thrifty farms, orchards, and gardens, which had
been a proverb and wonder of industry were becoming wildernesses. The
demand for their produce by the opulent and thriving cities, which had
been the workshops of the world, was gone. Foraging bands of Spanish and
Italian mercenaries had succeeded to the famous tramp of the artizans and
mechanics, which had often been likened to an army, but these new
customers were less profitable to the gardeners and farmers. The
clothiers, the fullers, the tapestry-workers, the weavers, the cutlers,
had all wandered away, and the cities of Holland, Friesland, and of
England, were growing skilful and rich by the lessons and the industry of
the exiles to whom they afforded a home. There were villages and small
towns in the Spanish Netherlands that had been literally depopulated.
Large districts of country had gone to waste, and cane-brakes and squalid
morasses usurped the place of yellow harvest-fields. The fog, the wild
boar, and the wolf, infested the abandoned homes of the peasantry;
children could not walk in safety in the neighbourhood even of the larger
cities; wolves littered their young in the deserted farm-houses; two
hundred persons, in the winter of 1586-7, were devoured by wild beasts in
the outskirts of Ghent. Such of the remaining labourers and artizans as
had not been converted into soldiers, found their most profitable
employment as brigands, so that the portion of the population spared by
war and emigration was assisting the enemy in preying upon their native
country. Brandschatzung, burglary, highway-robbery, and murder, had
become the chief branches of industry among the working classes. Nobles
and wealthy burghers had been changed to paupers and mendicants. Many a
family of ancient lineage, and once of large possessions, could be seen
begging their bread, at the dusk of evening, in the streets of great
cities, where they had once exercised luxurious hospitality; and they
often begged in vain.
For while such was the forlorn aspect of the country--and the portrait,
faithfully sketched from many contemporary pictures, has not been
exaggerated in any of its dark details--a great famine smote the land
with its additional scourge. The whole population, soldiers and brigands,
Spaniards and Flemings, beggars and workmen, were in danger of perishing
together. Where the want of employment had been so great as to cause a
rapid depopulation, where the demand for labour had almost entirely
ceased, it was a necessary result, that during the process, prices should
be low, even in the presence of foreign soldiery, and despite the
inflamed' profits, which such capitalists as remained required, by way
not only of profit but insurance, in such troublous times. Accordingly,
for the last year or two, the price of rye at Antwerp and Brussels had
been one florin for the veertel (three bushels) of one hundred and twenty
pounds; that of wheat, about one-third of a florin more. Five pounds of
rye, therefore, were worth, one penny sterling, reckoning, as was then
usual, two shillings to the florin. A pound weight of wheat was worth
about one farthing. Yet this was forty-one years after the discovery of
the mines of Potosi (A.D. 1545), and full sixteen years after the epoch;
from which is dated that rapid fall in the value of silver, which in the
course of seventy years, caused the average price of corn and of all
other commodities, to be tripled or even quadrupled. At that very moment
the average cost of wheat in England was sixty-four shillings the
quarter, or about seven and sixpence sterling the bushel, and in the
markets of Holland, which in truth regulated all others, the same prices
prevailed. A bushel of wheat in England was equal therefore to eight
bushels in Brussels.
Thus the silver mines, which were the Spanish King's property, had
produced their effect everywhere more signally than within the obedient
Provinces. The South American specie found its way to Philip's coffers,
thence to the paymasters of his troops in Flanders, and thence to the
commercial centres of Holland and England. Those countries, first to feel
and obey the favourable expanding impulse of the age, were moving surely
and steadily on before it to greatness. Prices were rising with
unexampled rapidity, the precious metals were comparatively a drug, a
world-wide commerce, such as had never been dreamed of, had become an
every-day concern, the arts and sciences and a most generous culture in
famous schools and universities, which had been founded in the midst of
tumult and bloodshed, characterized the republic, and the golden age of
English poetry, which was to make the Elizabethan era famous through all
time, had already begun.
In the Spanish Netherlands the newly-found treasure served to pay the
only labourers required in a subjugated and almost deserted country, the
pikemen of Spain and Italy, and the reiters of Germany. Prices could not
sustain themselves in the face of depopulation. Where there was no
security for property, no home-market, no foreign intercourse, industrial
pursuits had become almost impossible. The small demand for labour had
caused it, as it were, to disappear, altogether. All men had become
beggars, brigands, or soldiers. A temporary reaction followed. There were
no producers. Suddenly it was discovered that no corn had been planted,
and that there was no harvest. A famine was the inevitable result. Prices
then rose with most frightful rapidity. The veertel of rye, which in the
previous year had been worth one florin at Brussels and Antwerp, rose in
the winter of 1586-7 to twenty, twenty-two, and even twenty-four florins;
and wheat advanced from one and one-third florin to thirty-two florins
the veertel. Other articles were proportionally increased in
market-value; but it is worthy of remark that mutton was quoted in the
midst of the famine at nine stuyvers (a little more than ninepence
sterling) the pound, and beef at fivepence, while a single cod-fish sold
for twenty-two florins. Thus wheat was worth sixpence sterling the pound
weight (reckoning the veertel of one hundred and twenty pounds at thirty
florins), which was a penny more than the price of a pound of beef; while
an ordinary fish was equal in value to one hundred and six pounds of
beef. No better evidence could be given that the obedient Provinces were
relapsing into barbarism, than that the only agricultural industry then
practised was to allow what flocks and herds were remaining to graze at
will over the ruined farms and gardens, and that their fishermen were
excluded from the sea.
The evil cured itself, however, and, before the expiration of another
year, prices were again at their previous level. The land was
sufficiently cultivated to furnish the necessaries of life for a
diminishing population, and the supply of labour was more than enough,
for the languishing demand. Wheat was again at tenpence the bushel, and
other commodities valued in like proportion, and far below the
market-prices in Holland and England.
On the other, hand, the prosperity of the republic was rapidly
increasing. Notwithstanding the war, which had beer raging for a
terrible quarter of a century without any interruption, population was
increasing, property rapidly advancing in value, labour in active demand.
Famine was impossible to a state which commanded the ocean. No corn grew
in Holland and Zeeland, but their ports were the granary of the world.
The fisheries were a mine of wealth almost equal to the famous Potosi,
with which the commercial world was then ringing. Their commerce with the
Baltic nations was enormous. In one month eight hundred vessels left
their havens for the eastern ports alone. There was also no doubt
whatever--and the circumstance was a source of constant complaint and of
frequent ineffective legislation--that the rebellious Provinces were
driving a most profitable trade with Spain and the Spanish possessions,
in spite of their revolutionary war. The mines of Peru and Mexico were as
fertile for the Hollanders and Zeelanders as for the Spaniards
themselves. The war paid for the war, one hundred large frigates were
constantly cruising along the coasts to protect the fast-growing traffic,
and an army of twenty thousand foot soldiers and two thousand cavalry
were maintained on land. There were more ships and sailors at that moment
in Holland and Zeeland than in the whole kingdom of England.
While the sea-ports were thus rapidly increasing in importance, the towns
in the interior were advancing as steadily. The woollen manufacture, the
tapestry, the embroideries of Gelderland, and Friesland, and Overyssel,
were becoming as famous as had been those of Tournay, Ypres, Brussels,
and Valenciennes. The emigration from the obedient Provinces and from
other countries was very great. It was difficult to obtain lodgings in
the principal cities; new houses, new streets, new towns, were rising
every day. The single Province of Holland furnished regularly, for
war-expenses alone, two millions of florins (two hundred thousand pounds)
a year, besides frequent extraordinary grants for the same purpose, yet
the burthen imposed upon the vigorous young commonwealth seemed only to
make it the more elastic. "The coming generations may see," says a
contemporary historian, "the fortifications erected at that epoch in the
cities, the costly and magnificent havens, the docks, the great extension
of the cities; for truly the war had become a great benediction to the
inhabitants." Such a prosperous commonwealth as this was not a prize to
be lightly thrown away. There is no doubt whatever that a large majority
of the inhabitants, and of the States by whom the people were
represented, ardently and affectionately desired to be annexed to the
English crown. Leicester had become unpopular, but Elizabeth was adored,
and there was nothing unreasonable in the desire entertained by the
Provinces of retaining their ancient constitutions, and of transferring
their allegiance to the English Queen.
But the English Queen could not resolve to take the step. Although the
great tragedy which was swiftly approaching its inevitable catastrophe,
the execution of the Scottish Queen, was to make peace with Philip
impossible--even if it were imaginable before--Elizabeth, during the year
1587, was earnestly bent on peace. This will be made manifest in
subsequent pages, by an examination of the secret correspondence of the
court. Her most sagacious statesmen disapproved her course, opposed it,
and were often overruled, although never convinced; for her imperious
will would have its way.
The States-General loathed the very name of peace with Spain. The people
loathed it. All knew that peace with Spain meant the exchange of a
thriving prosperous commonwealth, with freedom of religion,
constitutional liberty, and self-government, for provincial subjection to
the inquisition and to despotism: To dream of any concession from Philip
on the religious point was ridiculous. There was a mirror ever held up
before their eyes by the obedient Provinces, in which they might see
their own image, should, they too return to obedience. And there was
never a pretence, on the part of any honest adviser of Queen Elizabeth in
the Netherlands, whether Englishman or Hollander, that the idea of
peace-negotiation could be tolerated for a moment by States or people.
Yet the sum of the Queen's policy, for the year 1587, may be summed up in
one word--peace; peace for the Provinces, peace for herself, with their
implacable enemy.
In France, during the same year of expectation, we shall see the long
prologue to the tragic and memorable 1588 slowly enacting; the same
triangular contest between the three Henrys and their partizans still
proceeding. We shall see the misguided and wretched Valois lamenting over
his victories, and rejoicing over his defeats; forced into hollow
alliance with his deadly enemy; arrayed in arms against his only
protector and the true champion of the realm; and struggling vainly in
the toils of his own mother and his own secretary of state, leagued with
his most powerful foes. We shall see 'Mucio,' with one 'hand extended in
mock friendship toward the King, and with the other thrust backward to
grasp the purse of 300,000 crowns held forth to aid his
fellow-conspirator's dark designs against their common victim; and the
Bearnese, ever with lance in rest, victorious over the wrong antagonist,
foiled of the fruits of victory, proclaiming himself the English Queen's
devoted knight, but railing at her parsimony; always in the saddle,
always triumphant, always a beggar, always in love, always cheerful, and
always confident to outwit the Guises and Philip, Parma and the Pope.
And in Spain we shall have occasion to look over the King's shoulder, as
he sits at his study-table, in his most sacred retirement; and we shall
find his policy for the year 1587 summed up in two words--invasion of
England. Sincerely and ardently as Elizabeth meant peace with Philip,
just so sincerely did Philip intend war with England, and the
dethronement and destruction of the Queen. To this great design all
others were now subservient, and it was mainly on account of this
determination that there was sufficient leisure in the republic for the
Leicestrians and the States-General to fight out so thoroughly their
party-contests.
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
Acknowledged head of the Puritan party of England (Leicester)
Geneva theocracy in the place of the vanished Papacy
Hankering for peace, when peace had really become impossible
Hating nothing so much as idleness
Mirror ever held up before their eyes by the obedient Provinces
Rigid and intolerant spirit of the reformed religion
Scorn the very word toleration as an insult
The word liberty was never musical in Tudor ears
HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS
From the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce--1609
By John Lothrop Motley
History United Netherlands, Volume 51, 1587