JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY
1814-1877
One day in the year 1827, a boy of thirteen first entered the
chapel of Harvard College to take his seat there as a student. His
schoolfellows looked at him curiously first, because of his remarkable
beauty, and second because of his reputation as a linguist, a great
distinction among boys who looked upon foreign tongues as so many
traps for tripping their unlucky feet in the thorny paths of learning.
He had come to Harvard from Mr. Bancroft's school at Northampton,
where he was famous as a reader, writer, and orator, and was more
admired, perhaps, than is good for any boy. Both pupils and masters
recognized his talents and overlooked his lack of industry. But
neither dreamed that their praise was but the first tribute to the
genius of the future historian, John Lothrop Motley.
Motley was born in Dorchester, a suburb of Boston, April 15, 1814. As
a child he was delicate, a condition which fostered his great natural
love for reading. He devoured books of every kind, history, poetry,
plays, orations, and particularly the novels of Cooper and Scott. Not
satisfied with reading about heroes, he must be a hero himself, and
when scarcely eight he bribed a younger brother with sweetmeats to lie
quiet, wrapped in a shawl, while he, mounted upon a stool, delivered
Mark Antony's oration over the dead body of Caesar. At eleven he began
a novel, the scene of which was laid in the Housatonic Valley, because
that name sounded grand and romantic. On Saturday afternoon he and
his playmates, among whom was Wendell Phillips, would assemble in
the garret of the Motley house, and in plumed hats and doublets enact
tragedies or stirring melodramas. Comedy was too frivolous for these
entertainments, in which Motley was always the leading spirit; the
chief bandit, the heavy villain, the deadliest foe.
In the school-room also Motley led by divine right, and expected
others to follow. Thus, in spite of his dislike for rigid rules of
study, he was always before the class as one to be deferred to and
honored wherever honor might be given. While still at college Motley
seems to have had some notion of a literary career. His writing-desk
was constantly crammed with manuscripts of plays, poetry, and sketches
of character, which never found their way to print, and which were
burned to make room for others when the desk became too full. With the
exception of a few verses published in a magazine, this work of
his college days served only for pastime. Graduated from Harvard at
seventeen, Motley spent the next two years at a German university,
where he lived the pleasant, social life of the German student, one of
his friends and classmates being young Bismarck, afterward the great
Chancellor, who was always fond of the handsome young American, whose
wit was the life of the student company and whose powers of argument
surpassed his own.
Coming back to America, Motley studied law until 1841, when, in his
twenty-seventh year, he received the appointment of Secretary of
Legation to St. Petersburg.
His friends now looked forward to a brilliant diplomatic career
for him, but the unfavorable climate soon led him to resign the
appointment and return to America. But the St. Petersburg visit was
not fruitless, for three years afterward he published an essay in the
_North American Review_ which showed a keen appreciation of Russian
political conditions. The article was called "A Memoir of the Life
of Peter the Great," and its appearance surprised the critics who had
justly condemned a novel previously published by the young author. His
essay portrayed the character of the great Peter, half king and
half savage. It showed a full appreciation of the difficulties that
hindered the establishment of a great monarchy, and paid due honor to
that force of will, savage courage, and ideal patriotism that laid
the foundations of Russia's greatness. The reader is made to see this
fiery Sclav, building up a new Russia from his ice-fields and barren
valleys; a Russia of great cities, imperial armies, vast commerce,
and splendid hopes. It was a brilliant and scholarly narrative of the
achievement of a great man, and it placed Motley among the writers of
highest promise.
A year later he began collecting materials for the serious work of
his life. For his subject he chose the story of the old Frisians or
Hollanders who rescued from the sea a few islands formed by the ooze
and slime of ages, and laid thereon the foundations of a great nation.
They raised dykes to keep back the sea, built canals to serve as
roads, turned bogs into pasture-lands and morasses into grain-fields,
fought with the Romans, founded cities, laid the foundations of
the vast maritime commerce of to-day, and finally, in the sixteenth
century, when the wealth of their merchants, the power of their
cities, and the progress of their arts were the wonder of the world,
met their worst foe in the person of their own king, Philip II.
From the beginning the Hollanders or Netherlanders had cherished a
savage independence which commanded respect even in barbarous ages,
and this characteristic insured a quarrel between them and their
ruler. Philip II. was King of Spain and of Sicily as well as of
Holland. Born in Spain, he could not speak a word of Dutch. He was
haughty, overbearing, and unscrupulous, and he resolved to make the
Hollanders see in him a master as well as a king. Already in
his father's reign there had been trouble because of the growing
Protestantism which many of the Hollanders favored. Already some of
the chief Dutch cities had been punished for resisting the Emperor's
authority, and their burghers sentenced to kneel in sackcloth and beg
him to spare their homes from destruction. These things happened in
his father's time and had made an impression upon Philip II., who
saw that in every case the royal power had been triumphant, and he
believed himself invincible.
Motley painted the life of Philip from the day of his inauguration
through all the years of revolt, bloodshed, and horror which marked
his reign. He saw that this rebellion of the Hollanders meant less
the discontent of a people with their king than the growth of a great
idea, the idea that civil and religious liberty is the right of all
men and nations. To Motley's mind the struggle seemed like some old
battle between giants and Titans. Unlike other historians, who looked
over the world for a subject, rejecting first one and then another,
Motley's subject took possession of him and would not be rejected. His
work was born, as a great poem or picture is born, from a glimpse of
things hidden from other eyes.
But at once he discovered that Prescott had already in contemplation a
history of Philip II. This was a severe blow to all his hopes. But he
resolved to see Prescott, lay the matter before him, and abide by his
decision, feeling that the master of history, who was the author of
the _Conquest of Mexico_ and the _Conquest of Peru_, would be the best
adviser of a young and unknown writer.
Prescott received the idea with the most generous kindness, advised
Motley to undertake the work, and placed at his disposal all the
material which he himself had collected for his own enterprise.
After several years the book appeared in 1856, under the title _The
Rise of the Dutch Republic_.
To write this book Motley dwelt for years in the world of three
hundred years ago, when the whole of Europe was shaken by the new
Protestantism, when Raleigh and Drake were sailing the Atlantic and
adding the shores of the new world to English dominion, the French
settling Canada and the Mississippi Valley, Spain sending her mission
priests to California, and the Huguenots establishing themselves in
Florida. Thus the foundations of the American Republic were being
laid, while Philip was striving to overthrow the freedom of the
Netherlands.
Leaving the nineteenth century as far behind him as he could, Motley
established himself successively at Berlin, Dresden, The Hague, and
Brussels, in order to consult the libraries and archives of state
which contained documents relating to the revolt of the Netherlands
against Philip II. In speaking of his work in the libraries of
Brussels, he says that at this time only dead men were his familiar
friends, and that he was at home in any country, and he calls himself
a worm feeding on musty mulberry leaves out of which he was to spin
silk. Day after day, year after year, he haunted the old libraries,
whose shadows held so many secrets of the past, until the
personalities of those great heroes who fought for the liberty of
Holland were as familiar as the faces of his own children. William of
Orange, called the Silent, the Washington of Dutch independence, Count
Egmont, Van Horn, and all that band of heroes who espoused the cause
of liberty, came to be comrades.
And the end rewarded the years of toil. Out of old mouldy documents
and dead letters Motley recreated the Netherlands of the sixteenth
century. Again were seen the great cities with their walls miles in
extent, their gay streets, their palaces and churches, and public
buildings, and the great domains of the clergy, second to none in
Europe. The nobles possessed magnificent estates and entertained their
guests with jousts and tourneys like the great lords of England and
France. The tradespeople and artisans who comprised the population
of the cities were divided into societies or guilds, which were so
powerful that no act of state could be passed without their consent,
and so rich that to their entertainments the proudest nobles came
as guests, to see a luxuriousness which vied with that of kings. The
Dutch artists were celebrated for their noble pictures, for their
marvellous skill in wood and stone carving, and for the wonderful
tapestries which alone would have made Dutch art famous.
In the midst of this prosperity Philip II. came to the throne, and
soon after his coronation the entire Netherlands were in revolt.
Motley has described this struggle like an eye-witness. We see the
officers of the Inquisition dragging their victims daily to the
torture-chamber, and the starved and dying rebels defending their
cities through sieges which the Spanish army made fiendish in
suffering. Motley's description of the siege of Leyden, and his
portrait of William the Silent, are among the finest specimens of
historical composition.
The work ends with the death of the Prince of Orange, this tragic
event forming a fitting climax to the great revolution which had
acknowledged him its hope and leader.
Motley carried the completed manuscript of _The Rise of the Dutch
Republic_ to London, but failing to find a publisher willing to
undertake such a work by an unknown author, he was obliged to produce
it at his own expense. It met with the most flattering reception,
and the reviews which appeared in England, France, and America placed
Motley's name among the great historians. The book was soon translated
into Dutch, German, and Russian.
Motley's two other great works were similar in character to the first.
The second work, called _The History of the United Netherlands_, began
with the death of William the Silent, and ended with the period known
as the Twelve Years' Truce, when by common consent the independence of
the Netherlands was recognized throughout Europe.
This work consists of four volumes, the first two having been
published in 1860, and the remaining two in 1867.
These volumes embrace much of the history of England, which became
the ally and friend of Holland, and are full of the great events which
made up that epoch of English history. The names of Queen Elizabeth,
the Duke of Leicester, Lord Burghley, and the noble and chivalrous Sir
Philip Sidney, who lost his life on one of the battle-fields of this
war, figure as largely in its pages as those of the Dutch themselves.
The war had ceased to be the revolt of Holland against Spain, and had
become a mighty battle for the liberty of Europe. Every nation was
interested in its progress, and all men knew that upon its success or
failure would depend the fate of Europe for many centuries. In this
work Motley's pen lost none of its art. The chapters follow one
another in harmonious succession, the clear and polished style giving
no hint of the obscurities of diplomatic letters, the almost illegible
manuscripts, and the contradictory reports which often made up the
original materials.
Like its predecessor, it was at once classed among the great histories
of the world. _The Life of John of Barneveld_, who shares with William
of Orange the glory of achieving Dutch independence, was the subject
of Motley's next and last work. The book is not in a strict sense a
biography. It is rather a narrative of the quarrel of the Netherlands
among themselves over theological questions. The country was now
Protestant, and yet the people fought as fiercely over the
different points of doctrine as when they were struggling for their
independence. The book appeared in 1874, completing the series,
which the author called _The History of the Eighty Years' War for
Independence_.
During this period of literary work Motley was twice appointed to
represent the United States at foreign courts. He was Minister to
Austria from 1861 to 1866, and during the stormy period of the Civil
War showed his powers as a statesman in his diplomatic relations with
the Austrian Court, which honored him always both as a diplomatist and
as a patriot, his devotion to his country being a proverb among his
fellows.
In 1868 he was appointed Minister to England, but held the office only
two years. On both these occasions Motley proved his ability to meet
and master questions of state, and there is no doubt that, had fortune
led him into active political life, he would have made a brilliant
reputation.
He died in May, 1877, and was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery, near
London, England.