part of the continent of Europe to be occupied by human beings. For
untold ages the Rhine, the Maas, and the Schelde had been carrying down
earth and the ocean had been casting up sand, until at last a tract of
swampy but habitable ground appeared where previously waves had rolled.
That was not many centuries before the commencement of the Christian
era, and so no traces of palæolithic man are found there such as are
found in all other parts of Europe, and in great abundance in some parts
of modern Belgium close by. The most ancient relics of man discovered in
the northern Netherlands are comparatively recent flint implements,
tumuli containing funeral urns, and the so-called hunebedden, sepulchres
of men of note, roughly built of stone taken from boulders carried from
the Scandinavian peninsula by ice in glacial times, and deposited on the
banks not yet risen to the surface of the sea. These hunebedden are
found chiefly in the present province of Drenthe, and may not date much
further back than Roman times.
[Sidenote: Historical Sketches.]
The Batavi, a Nether Teuton tribe, driven westward by war, about a
century before the birth of Christ found their way into the island
enclosed by the North sea and the extreme forks of the Rhine, which was
then a waste of morasses, lakelets, and forests. It had previously been
occupied by a Celtic population, that had abandoned it not long before
on account of disasters from floods. The position of the forks of the
Rhine was probably different from what it is to-day, for the whole face
of the country has undergone a great change since the Batavians first
saw it. Large tracts of land have been reclaimed, and still larger
tracts have been lost by the sea washing over them. Thus in the
thirteenth century of our era the very heart of the country was torn out
by the ocean, and villages and towns and wide pastures were buried for
ever under the deep waters since termed the Zuider Zee. In 1277 the
Dollart was formed between Groningen and Hanover, and in 1421 the
Biesbosch between Brabant and Holland took the place of habitable land.
[Sidenote: Different Races in the Netherlands.]
Farther north than the Batavians, the Frisians, also a Nether Teuton
people, occupied a great extent of country, but it is impossible to say
when they first took possession of it. These Batavians and Frisians were
the nearest blood relations of the Angles and Saxons who at a later date
conquered England and part of Scotland, and their language was so nearly
the same that our great Alfred could with little difficulty have
understood it.
The southern part of what is now the kingdom of Belgium and the
adjoining districts of France were inhabited at this time by a Celtic
people, who had long before replaced the early palæolithic savages.
Between them and the Batavians and Frisians was a broad tract occupied
by Teutons and Celts mixed together, who do not appear, however, to have
blended their blood to any great extent. This was the condition of the
country at the beginning of the Christian era, and it was its condition
more than fifteen centuries later, when Philippe II was king of Spain
and Elizabeth Tudor was queen of England.
Cæsar conquered the Celts and compelled the Frisians to pay tribute, but
he admitted the Batavians to an alliance, and thereafter for hundreds of
years they voluntarily supplied the Roman army with its bravest
soldiers. They gave their blood for Rome, and in return received
civilisation. During this period they learned to construct dykes to
prevent the ocean and the rivers from overflowing the land, to dig
canals, to make highways, and to build bridges.
[Sidenote: Historical Sketches.]
Then came the outpouring of the northern nations upon the western
empire, and when it ceased the power that had overshadowed the earth had
gone. In its stead the Franks were masters of the Celtic portion of the
Netherlands, where the Latin tongue was spoken, and tribes akin to the
Frisian had mixed with the occupants of the north. The Batavians
remained, but their distinctive name had disappeared, and so the racial
division of the land was as it had been before.
Some of the Frisians had been converted to Christianity by Anglo-Saxon
missionaries, and in A.D. 750 the whole of them, after a crushing defeat
by Charles Martel, accepted that religion. In A.D. 785 their conquest
was completed by Charlemagne, and the whole region then became a section
of the dominions of that able and powerful ruler. The bishopric of
Utrecht was founded at this time. Extensive domains were attached to the
see, and the bishop, besides the ecclesiastical authority which he
exercised over the whole of the Frisians, was temporal ruler of a
territory constantly varying in size, sometimes covering several of the
modern provinces.
Charlemagne left the local customs of the people of the Netherlands
undisturbed, and sent officials to govern them according to their own
laws, though in his name. Under his feeble successors the country was
broken up into a number of practically petty sovereignties by the
descendants of his officials, who now claimed hereditary authority and
ruled as despots. They called themselves dukes, counts, marquises, or
lords, and often quarrelled with each other. Most of them nominally
admitted the precedence in rank of the head of the Holy Roman Empire, as
the counts of Flanders and Artois did that of the kings of France, but
this was the full extent of their submission.
The Scandinavian pirates sailed up the rivers and made frequent attacks
upon the towns and villages on their banks, they plundered and murdered
many of the people, but they did not form permanent settlements as they
did in the more attractive lands of Normandy and Sicily.
[Sidenote: Growth of the Towns.]
The country not being capable of supporting its inhabitants by
agriculture and cattle breeding alone, manufactures and commerce were
necessary, and in addition the fisheries became a means of living for
many. They traded with England, buying wool, with the coast of the
Baltic, selling woollen and linen cloths, and with all north-western
Europe, selling Indian products, of which Bruges was the emporium for
the Italian merchants. So towns grew and prospered, and in course of
time obtained municipal charters from their sovereigns. In A.D. 1217 the
first of these in the present kingdom of the Netherlands was granted by
Count William the First of Holland and Countess Joanna of Flanders to
the town of Middelburg in Zeeland. It did not indeed confer great
privileges, but it was the beginning of a system which had most
important effects upon the country. The crusades tended to hasten this
movement. The petty sovereigns who took part in them were very willing
to sell privileges for ready money, which they needed for their
equipment, and their subjects were quite as willing to buy.
So the towns grew in number and in size, and succeeded in obtaining,
usually by purchase, a large amount of self-government and the right of
sending deputies to the estates or parliaments, who sat with the nobles
to confer upon general affairs. Just as the various kings of the Saxon
states in England, the petty sovereigns were continually quarrelling
with each other, and their number varied from time to time, as one or
other got the mastery over his neighbours. Not the least prominent or
quarrelsome among them was the bishop of Utrecht, whose dominions
contracted or expanded with the fortunes of diplomacy or war. The
estates of his province consisted of deputies from the towns, the
nobles, and abbots, over whom he presided as a sovereign. In some of the
little dominions the privileges of the towns were much greater than in
others, in several indeed the cities were practically little short of
being independent republics. Unfortunately they were so jealous of each
other that they could not unite in carrying out any policy that would
have benefited the whole province, and there was no tie whatever that
bound the different provinces together. Each city with a little domain
around it stood alone, and though it might enjoy self-government, its
position was precarious, for it could not depend upon anything outside
of itself to assist it if necessary to maintain its rights against an
aggressor.
[Sidenote: Historical Sketches.]
This was the condition of affairs political when, owing partly to the
extinction of some of the ruling families, partly to purchase, and
partly to fraud and force, in 1437 a majority of the provinces--among
them Holland and Zeeland--came under the dominion of Philippe, the
powerful duke of Burgundy. They continued, however, to be independent of
each other, and were governed by him as distinct states, of one of which
he was termed duke, of another count, and so on, though he established a
council at Mechlin, which acted as a court of appeal for them all. He
was married to the youngest daughter of João I of Portugal and Philippa
of Lancaster, Isabella by name, whose nephew, Affonso V, in 1466 made
her a present of the Azores or Western Islands. A considerable number of
families from the Netherlands, whose descendants can still be
distinguished there, then migrated to the Flemish islands, as they were
long thereafter termed. These dependencies shared the fate of the other
dominions of the house of Burgundy until 1640, when they reverted to
Portugal.
Philippe suppressed much of the freedom that had been gained, but he
encouraged and protected commerce and manufactures, and under his rule
the provinces increased greatly in material wealth. He died in 1467,
and was succeeded by his son Charles the Headstrong, a perfectly
reckless and unprincipled ruler, who endeavoured to crush out all the
acquired freedom of the people, and nearly succeeded in establishing
himself as an absolute despot. His first wife was Catherine of Valois,
by whom he had only one daughter. After her death he married, on the 3rd
of July 1468, Margaret of York, sister of Edward IV of England, but had
no children by her. Like his father, he governed the Netherlands by
means of officials termed stadholders, who acted as his representatives
and carried out his instructions. The first standing army in the country
was stationed there by him. Charles was killed in battle with the Swiss
in 1477, and as he left no son, his daughter, Mary of Burgundy, claimed
the right of succeeding him as sovereign of all the provinces he had
ruled over.
[Sidenote: Privileges of the Towns.]
Louis XI of France, however, on the ground that the Salic law was
applicable in this case, took possession of Burgundy, and cast longing
eyes on the Netherlands as well. In this hour of danger, the estates of
all the provinces came together at Ghent, when the lady Mary voluntarily
restored all the privileges and rights that her father and grandfather
had annulled. She even went further, and granted the “Groot Privilegie,”
which conferred such extensive authority upon the estates that under its
clauses despotism or even misgovernment would be impossible, for no
taxes could be imposed and no war undertaken without their consent, and
edicts of the sovereign were to be invalid if they conflicted with the
privileges of the towns. Only natives of the particular province could
be appointed to offices in any of them, thus a native of Brabant or
Namur could not fill an office in Flanders or Holland. Persons charged
with crime were to be brought to trial speedily, and no citizen could be
arbitrarily imprisoned by the ruler. A more liberal constitution could
hardly have been imagined at that time nor indeed even at present.
The estates were then ready to support the lady Mary, they acknowledged
her as their sovereign, and with their approval she married Maximilian
of Hapsburg, son of the German emperor. Five years later she was killed
by a fall from her horse, leaving a son, Philippe by name, then four
years of age, as heir to her sovereignty of the Netherlands. Maximilian
claimed to act as regent and guardian of his son, and was accepted as
such by all of the provinces subject to Burgundy except Flanders, which
he got possession of by force. He disowned the “Great Privilege,” as did
his son Philippe, when in 1494 at seventeen years of age he assumed the
government.
[Sidenote: Historical Sketches.]
In 1496 Philippe married Joanna, eldest daughter of Ferdinand of Aragon
and Isabella of Castile. Her sister Catherine was destined at a later
date to play an important part in English history as the spouse of King
Henry the Eighth. From the union of Philippe and Joanna was born in the
year 1500 a son, who as the emperor Charles V was the most powerful
monarch in Europe. From his mother he inherited the sovereignty of
Spain, of portions of Italy, and of the greater part of the New World,
with the title of king, from his father he inherited the sovereignty of
all the Netherlands except Gelderland, Utrecht, the Frisian provinces,
and Liege, with the titles of count and duke, and by election of the
German princes he became the head of the Holy Roman Empire, with the
title of emperor. His father Philippe died in 1506, and the Netherlands
became the first portion of his vast inheritance that fell to him. To
those provinces that had been dependencies of Burgundy, he was able to
add Friesland in 1524, Utrecht and Overyssel in 1528, and Groningen and
Drenthe in 1536, all obtained by cession after long civil war, when the
bishop of Utrecht, who was unable to protect himself from the duke of
Gelderland, resigned his temporal authority. In 1543 he conquered
Gelderland, and in the following year he compelled the king of France,
to whom his father Philippe had done homage for Flanders and Artois, to
renounce the suzerainty of those provinces, so that the entire country,
Liege only excepted, came under his undisputed sovereignty. In this
manner the provinces became united with Spain under one ruler, though
their governments remained distinct.
[Sidenote: Rule of Charles V.]
Under Charles just as much or as little freedom as he pleased was left
to the people of the Netherlands, for he regarded his edicts as superior
in authority to all charters or customs, and he inflicted terrible
vengeance upon the city of Ghent, his own birthplace, for daring to
resist the payment of an amount of money that he arbitrarily demanded.
He professed to regard the provinces with favour, but he drew largely
upon their resources to enable him to carry on wars in which they had no
interest whatever.
And now another factor came into play, which tended very greatly to
increase the bitterness of the people at the diminution of freedom. The
reformation had commenced, and its principles were spreading in the
Netherlands. Charles, who regarded schism as even more criminal than
rebellion, attempted to stamp out the new teaching, and for this purpose
introduced the inquisition. His sister Mary, dowager queen of Hungary,
acted as regent of the country for twenty-five years, and carried out
his instructions in letter and in spirit. Many thousands of people
perished by various forms of death, but wretched as the condition of the
unhappy Netherlanders was, a still darker day was about to dawn upon
them.
It is generally affirmed that there were seventeen distinct provinces at
this time, but in fact the number seventeen was derived from the titles
of the sovereign and the accidental circumstance that there were
seventeen separate estates present at the abdication of Charles V,[17]
though these did not correspond exactly with the titles. For instance,
one of the titles was count of Zutphen, but Zutphen had for centuries
been part of Gelderland; another of the titles was marquis of Anvers or
Antwerp, but Antwerp was a city of Brabant. On the other hand Lille with
Douai and Orchies, though cities of Flanders, had separate estates, but
did not furnish a title, the same was the case with Valenciennes, a city
of Hainaut, while Mechlin, in the very heart of Brabant, had separate
estates and furnished the title lord of Malines or Mechlin.
[Sidenote: Historical Sketches.]
What would be termed provinces to-day were the duchies of Gelderland,
Brabant, Limburg, and Luxemburg, the counties of Holland, Zeeland,
Flanders, Namur or Namen, Hainaut or Henegouwen, and Artois, and the
lordships of Utrecht, Friesland, Groningen with Drenthe, Overyssel, and
Mechlin or Malines.[18] To make seventeen, the county of Zutphen and the
marquisate of Antwerp must be added if titles alone are considered, or
if states present at the abdication of Charles V be taken as a guide,
Lille with Douai and Orchies and Tournai with the Tournaisis[19] must
be included. Only five of these--Holland, Utrecht, Friesland, Groningen,
and Overyssel--remain on the map to-day as they were in the middle of
the sixteenth century. Of them all, Brabant was the most important at
that time, Flanders came next, and Holland, soon to take the leading
place, was regarded as only the third.[20]
[Sidenote: Accession of Philippe II.]
On the 25th of October 1555 in presence of the estates of seventeen
provinces assembled at Brussels, the emperor Charles the Fifth, worn out
with disease and infirmity, abdicated the sovereignty, and his son
Philippe became ruler in his stead. The change was all for the worse.
Charles had been a despot, it is true, but he was by birth a
Netherlander, he spoke the language of the people, and took an interest
in their commerce and their manufactures; Philippe was a Spaniard,
ignorant of Flemish (_i.e._ Dutch) and of French, and without a particle
of sympathy with them in any particular.
For the first four years of his reign Philippe resided in the
Netherlands, though he appointed the duke of Savoy regent of the
country. They were years of war between Spain and France, and the
Netherlands were obliged to aid their sovereign very largely with money
and with men. Under the count of Egmont as their general, the combined
Spanish and Flemish forces won the great battles of Saint Quentin and
Gravelines, but the French were compensated by taking Calais from the
English, for Queen Mary Tudor had provoked attack by giving assistance
in the war to her husband King Philippe.
Peace having been concluded, in 1559 the king prepared to return to
Spain, where his surroundings would be much more congenial. He appointed
Margaret of Parma, a natural daughter of the emperor Charles the Fifth
and consequently his own half sister, regent of the Netherlands, but all
real authority was confided to the bishop of Arras, afterwards widely
known as Cardinal Granvelle. This man was a staunch absolutist in
politics, and could be depended upon to carry out the king’s wishes to
the utmost of his ability. And the dearest wish of the king was to
extirpate the new doctrines in religion, which he clearly saw would tend
to produce a far more liberal system of government than he approved of.
Among the appointments made before he left was that of William prince of
Orange to be stadholder of the provinces of Holland, Zeeland, and
Utrecht, but subject to the authority of the duchess of Parma, who was
to be guided by the bishop of Arras.
[Sidenote: Historical Sketches.]
Against the entreaties and protests of the estates, Philippe left in the
Netherlands four thousand Spanish soldiers, the most highly disciplined
troops in Europe at that time.
Previous to this date, excepting the sovereign bishop of Liege,[21]
whose territory was independent and therefore not then included in the
provinces, there had only been four bishops in the whole of the
Netherlands: one in Utrecht in what is now the kingdom of Holland, one
at Tournai in the present kingdom of Belgium, and two at Arras and
Cambrai in territory since annexed to France. Philippe obtained from the
pope a bull increasing the number to three archbishops and fifteen
bishops, of whom one archbishop at Utrecht and six bishops at Haarlem,
Middelburg, Leeuwarden, Groningen, Deventer, and ’s Hertogenbosch, were
to be stationed in the northern provinces, now the kingdom of Holland.
Each was to have inquisitors serving under him.
[Sidenote: Dissatisfaction of the People.]
These measures gave intense dissatisfaction to the whole body of the
people, nobles, burghers, and artisans alike. There was not a single
Protestant noble in the country at the time, and the great majority of
the people were still adherents of the Roman church, but Catholics and
Calvinists alike were opposed to persecution in matters of faith and to
the erection of ecclesiastical power upon the ruins of civil liberty.
Still the king[22] would not yield, and the people were as yet
indisposed to resist in arms. Perhaps they did not know their own
strength, and over-estimated that opposed to them. There was no such
thing either as political union among them. Seventeen states jealous of
each other, and each important state containing rival towns, presented
to a despot a field that could be easily worked. Still greater suffering
was needed before the people could unite against the murderous hand that
was raised to crush them.
After a time the Spanish soldiers, who were needed elsewhere, were
withdrawn, but matters went on no better afterwards. The whole hatred of
the country was turned against Cardinal Granvelle, who was believed to
be the instigator of all the evil, and at length the duchess Margaret
grew to detest him also, so that Philippe was obliged to recall him. He
left the Netherlands in March 1564, and after a short period of
retirement, was employed by the king in still higher offices.
The government of the duchess Margaret was corrupt, though perhaps not
more so than that of some other administrations of the time. Offices
were sold to the highest bidder by her secretary, and she as well as he
profited by such transactions. Under such circumstances the courts of
law were venal, and judgment in civil cases was usually in favour of him
who had the longest purse. A man who had to pay a large sum of money for
his office was obliged to try to recover his capital by some means, and
as that could not be done honestly, he was open to receive bribes. In
the great agony caused by the inquisition, however, this evil was hardly
considered as one of importance, and is only casually referred to by the
chroniclers of the time.
[Sidenote: Historical Sketches.]
The great number of persons burnt, buried alive, and strangled by the
inquisitors had the opposite effect to that which King Philippe
intended. Instead of stamping out the reformation, its doctrines were
spreading more rapidly month after month, until mass meetings of
thousands of people were openly held in the fields outside the towns to
listen to the preaching of some earnest and eloquent reformer. The men
on such occasions usually went armed and determined to defend their
pastors and themselves, but if need should be, they were ready to face
death in its most appalling forms for the sake of what they believed to
be truth.
Another effect of the inquisition was to destroy the material prosperity
of the country. Flanders had long been the leading cloth manufactory of
Europe, it was there that wool, imported chiefly from England, was
converted by spinning wheels and handlooms into the choicest cloths.
Nowhere else were spinning, weaving, dyeing, and pressing so well
understood or so skilfully practised as in the Flemish towns. But now
persecution drove those industrious artisans out of the country. They
fled to England, where Queen Elizabeth permitted them to settle, and it
was they who in East Anglia gave to the country that adopted and
protected them the preëminence in woollen manufactures which she retains
to this day. A very few years later, instead of exporting raw wool and
importing cloth, England was sending to Flanders the products of
Anglo-Flemish looms. This was not the only industry that persecution
drove from the provinces to other lands, but it was the most important.
[Sidenote: Destruction of Church Property.]