men looked coldly at the upstart commonwealth. Francis Aerssens, the
keen and accomplished minister of the States, resident in Paris for many
years, was received as ambassador after the truce with all the ceremonial
befitting the highest rank in the diplomatic service; yet Henry could not
yet persuade himself to look upon the power accrediting him as a
thoroughly organized commonwealth.
The English ambassador asked the King if he meant to continue his aid and
assistance to the States during the truce. "Yes," answered Henry.
"And a few years beyond it?"
"No. I do not wish to offend the King of Spain from mere gaiety of
heart."
"But they are free," replied the Ambassador; "the King of Spain could
have no cause for offence."
"They are free," said the King, "but not sovereign."--"Judge then," wrote
Aerssens to Barneveld, "how we shall be with the King of Spain at the end
of our term when our best friends make this distinction among themselves
to our disadvantage. They insist on making a difference between liberty
and sovereignty; considering liberty as a mean term between servitude and
sovereignty."
"You would do well," continued the Dutch ambassador, "to use the word
'sovereignty' on all occasions instead of 'liberty.'" The hint was
significant and the advice sound.
The haughty republic of Venice, too, with its "golden Book" and its
pedigree of a thousand years, looked askance at the republic of yesterday
rising like herself out of lagunes and sand banks, and affecting to place
herself side by side with emperors, kings, and the lion of St. Mark. But
the all-accomplished council of that most serene commonwealth had far too
much insight and too wide experience in political combinations to make
the blunder of yielding to this aristocratic sentiment.
The natural enemy of the Pope, of Spain, of Austria, must of necessity
be the friend of Venice, and it was soon thought highly desirable to
intimate half officially that a legation from the States-General to the
Queen of the Adriatic, announcing the conclusion of the Twelve Years'
Truce, would be extremely well received.
The hint was given by the Venetian ambassador at Paris to Francis
Aerssens, who instantly recommended van der Myle, son-in-law of
Barneveld, as a proper personage to be entrusted with this important
mission. At this moment an open breach had almost occurred between Spain
and Venice, and the Spanish ambassador at Paris, Don Pedro de Toledo,
naturally very irate with Holland, Venice, and even with France, was
vehement in his demonstrations. The arrogant Spaniard had for some time
been employed in an attempt to negotiate a double marriage between the
Dauphin and the eldest daughter of Philip III., and between the eldest
son of that king and the Princess Elizabeth of France. An indispensable
but secret condition of this negotiation was the absolute renunciation by
France of its alliance and friendly relations with the United Provinces.
The project was in truth a hostile measure aimed directly at the life of
the Republic. Henry held firm however, and Don Pedro was about to depart
malcontent, his mission having totally failed. He chanced, when going to
his audience of leave-taking, after the arrival of his successor, Don
Inigo de Cardenas, to meet the Venetian ambassador, Antonio Foscarini.
An altercation took place between them, during which the Spaniard poured
out his wrath so vehemently, calling his colleague with neat alliteration
"a poltroon, a pantaloon, and a pig," that Henry heard him.
What Signor Antonio replied has not been preserved, but it is stated that
he was first to seek a reconciliation, not liking, he said, Spanish
assassinations.
Meantime the double marriage project was for a season at least suspended,
and the alliance between the two republics went forwards. Van der Myle,
appointed ambassador to Venice, soon afterwards arrived in Paris, where
he made a very favourable impression, and was highly lauded by Aerssens
in his daily correspondence with Barneveld. No portentous shadow of
future and fatal discord between those statesmen fell upon the cheerful
scene. Before the year closed, he arrived at his post, and was received
with great distinction, despite the obstacles thrown in his way by Spain
and other powers; the ambassador of France itself, de Champigny, having
privately urged that he ought to be placed on the same footing with the
envoys of Savoy and of Florence.
Van der Myle at starting committed the trifling fault of styling the
States-General "most illustrious" (illustrissimi) instead of "most
serene," the title by which Venice designated herself.
The fault was at once remedied, however, Priuli the Doge seating the
Dutch ambassador on his right hand at his solemn reception, and giving
directions that van der Myle should be addressed as Excellency, his post
being assigned him directly after his seniors, the ambassadors of Pope,
Emperor, and kings. The same precedence was settled in Paris, while
Aerssens, who did not consider himself placed in a position of greater
usefulness by his formal installation as ambassador, received private
intimation from Henry, with whom he was on terms of great confidence and
intimacy, that he should have private access to the King as frequently
and as in formally as before. The theory that the ambassador,
representing the personality of his sovereign, may visit the monarch
to whom he is accredited, without ceremony and at his own convenience,
was as rarely carried into practice in the sixteenth century as in the
nineteenth, while on the other hand Aerssens, as the private and
confidential agent of a friendly but not publicly recognized
commonwealth, had been for many years in almost daily personal
communication with the King.
It is also important to note that the modern fallacy according to which
republics being impersonal should not be represented by ambassadors had
not appeared in that important epoch in diplomatic history. On the
contrary, the two great republics of the age, Holland and Venice,
vindicated for themselves, with as much dignity and reason as success,
their right to the highest diplomatic honours.
The distinction was substantial not shadowy; those haughty commonwealths
not considering it advantageous or decorous that their representatives
should for want of proper official designations be ranked on great
ceremonial occasions with the ministers of petty Italian principalities
or of the three hundred infinitesimal sovereignties of Germany.
It was the advice of the French king especially, who knew politics and
the world as well as any man, that the envoys of the Republic which he
befriended and which stood now on the threshold of its official and
national existence, should assert themselves at every court with the
self-reliance and courtesy becoming the functionaries of a great power.
That those ministers were second to the representatives of no other
European state in capacity and accomplishment was a fact well known to
all who had dealings with them, for the States required in their
diplomatic representatives knowledge of history and international law,
modern languages, and the classics, as well as familiarity with political
customs and social courtesies; the breeding of gentlemen in short, and
the accomplishments of scholars. It is both a literary enjoyment and a
means of historical and political instruction to read after the lapse of
centuries their reports and despatches. They worthily compare as works
of art with those diplomatic masterpieces the letters and 'Relazioni' of
the Venetian ambassadors; and it is well known that the earlier and some
of the most important treatises on public and international law ever
written are from the pens of Hollanders, who indeed may be said to have
invented that science.'
The Republic having thus steadily shouldered its way into the family of
nations was soon called upon to perform a prominent part in the world's
affairs. More than in our own epoch there was a close political
commingling of such independent states as held sympathetic views on the
great questions agitating Europe. The policy of isolation so wisely and
successfully carried out by our own trans-Atlantic commonwealth was
impossible for the Dutch republic, born as it was of a great religious
schism, and with its narrow territory wedged between the chief political
organizations of Christendom. Moreover the same jealousy on the part of
established powers which threw so many obstacles in its path to
recognized sovereignty existed in the highest degree between its two
sponsors and allies, France and England, in regard to their respective
relations to the new state.
"If ever there was an obliged people," said Henry's secretary of state,
Villeroy, to Aerssens, "then it is you Netherlanders to his Majesty. He
has converted your war into peace, and has never abandoned you. It is
for you now to show your affection and gratitude."
In the time of Elizabeth, and now in that of her successor, there was
scarcely a day in which the envoys of the States were not reminded of the
immense load of favour from England under which they tottered, and of the
greater sincerity and value of English friendship over that of France.
Sully often spoke to Aerssens on the subject in even stronger language,
deeming himself the chief protector and guardian angel of the Republic,
to whom they were bound by ties of eternal gratitude. "But if the
States," he said, "should think of caressing the King of England more
than him, or even of treating him on an equality with his Majesty, Henry
would be very much affronted. He did not mean that they should neglect
the friendship of the King of Britain, but that they should cultivate it
after and in subordination to his own, for they might be sure that James
held all things indifferent, their ruin or their conservation, while his
Majesty had always manifested the contrary both by his counsels and by
the constant furnishing of supplies."
Henry of France and Navarre--soldier, statesman, wit, above all a man
and every inch a king--brimful of human vices, foibles, and humours, and
endowed with those high qualities of genius which enabled him to mould
events and men by his unscrupulous and audacious determination to conform
to the spirit of his times which no man better understood than himself,
had ever been in such close relations with the Netherlands as to seem in
some sort their sovereign.
James Stuart, emerging from the school of Buchanan and the atmosphere of
Calvinism in which he had been bred, now reigned in those more sunny and
liberal regions where Elizabeth so long had ruled. Finding himself at
once, after years of theological study, face to face with a foreign
commonwealth and a momentous epoch, in which politics were so commingled
with divinity as to offer daily the most puzzling problems, the royal
pedant hugged himself at beholding so conspicuous a field for his
talents.
To turn a throne into a pulpit, and amaze mankind with his learning,
was an ambition most sweet to gratify. The Calvinist of Scotland now
proclaimed his deadly hatred of Puritans in England and Holland, and
denounced the Netherlanders as a pack of rebels whom it always pleased
him to irritate, and over whom he too claimed, through the possession of
the cautionary towns, a kind of sovereignty. Instinctively feeling that
in the rough and unlovely husk of Puritanism was enclosed the germ of a
wider human liberty than then existed, he was determined to give battle
to it with his tongue, his pen, with everything but his sword.
Doubtless the States had received most invaluable assistance from both
France and England, but the sovereigns of those countries were too apt to
forget that it was their own battles, as well as those of the Hollanders,
that had been fought in Flanders and Brabant. But for the alliance and
subsidies of the faithful States, Henry would not so soon have ascended
the throne of his ancestors, while it was matter of history that the
Spanish government had for years been steadily endeavouring to subjugate
England not so much for the value of the conquest in itself as for a
stepping-stone to the recovery of the revolted Netherlands.
For the dividing line of nations or at least of national alliances was a
frontier not of language but of faith. Germany was but a geographical
expression. The union of Protestantism, subscribed by a large proportion
of its three hundred and seven sovereigns, ran zigzag through the
country, a majority probably of the people at that moment being opposed
to the Roman Church.
It has often been considered amazing that Protestantism having
accomplished so much should have fallen backwards so soon, and yielded
almost undisputed sway in vast regions to the long dominant church. But
in truth there is nothing surprising about it. Catholicism was and
remained a unit, while its opponents were eventually broken up into
hundreds of warring and politically impotent organizations. Religious
faith became distorted into a weapon for selfish and greedy territorial
aggrandizement in the hands of Protestant princes. "Cujus regio ejus
religio" was the taunt hurled in the face of the imploring Calvinists of
France and the Low Countries by the arrogant Lutherans of Germany. Such
a sword smote the principle of religious freedom and mutual toleration
into the dust, and rendered them comparatively weak in the conflict with
the ancient and splendidly organized church.
The Huguenots of France, notwithstanding the protection grudgingly
afforded them by their former chieftain, were dejected and discomfited
by his apostasy, and Henry, placed in a fearfully false position, was an
object of suspicion to both friends and foes. In England it is difficult
to say whether a Jesuit or a Puritan was accounted the more noxious
animal by the dominant party.
In the United Provinces perhaps one half the population was either openly
or secretly attached to the ancient church, while among the Protestant
portion a dire and tragic convulsion was about to break forth, which for
a time at least was to render Remonstrants and Contra-Remonstrants more
fiercely opposed to each other than to Papists.
The doctrine of predestination in its sternest and strictest sense had
long been the prevailing one in the Reformed Church of the revolted
Netherlands, as in those of Scotland, France, Geneva, and the Palatinate.
No doubt up to the period of the truce a majority had acquiesced in that
dogma and its results, although there had always been many preachers to
advocate publicly a milder creed. It was not until the appointment of
Jacob Arminius to the professorship of theology at Leyden, in the place
of Francis Junius, in the year 1603, that a danger of schism in the
Church, seemed impending. Then rose the great Gomarus in his wrath,
and with all the powers of splendid eloquence, profound learning,
and the intense bigotry of conviction, denounced the horrible heresy.
Conferences between the two before the Court of Holland, theological
tournaments between six champions on a side, gallantly led by their
respective chieftains, followed, with the usual result of confirming
both parties in the conviction that to each alone belonged exclusively
the truth.
The original influence of Arminius had however been so great that when
the preachers of Holland had been severally called on by a synod to sign
the Heidelberg Catechism, many of them refused. Here was open heresy and
revolt. It was time for the true church to vindicate its authority.
The great war with Spain had been made, so it was urged and honestly
believed, not against the Inquisition, not to prevent Netherlanders from
being burned and buried alive by the old true church, not in defence of
ancient charters, constitutions, and privileges--the precious result of
centuries of popular resistance to despotic force--not to maintain an
amount of civil liberty and local self-government larger in extent than
any then existing in the world, not to assert equality of religion for
all men, but simply to establish the true religion, the one church, the
only possible creed; the creed and church of Calvin.
It is perfectly certain that the living fire which glowed in the veins of
those hot gospellers had added intense enthusiasm to the war spirit
throughout that immense struggle. It is quite possible that without that
enthusiasm the war might not have been carried on to its successful end.
But it is equally certain that Catholics, Lutherans, Baptists, and
devotees of many other creeds, had taken part in the conflict in defence
both of hearth and altar, and that without that aid the independence of
the Provinces would never have been secured.
Yet before the war was ended the arrogance of the Reformed priesthood had
begun to dig a chasm. Men who with William the Silent and Barneveld had
indulged in the vision of religious equality as a possible result of so
much fighting against the Holy Inquisition were perhaps to be
disappointed.
Preachers under the influence of the gentle Arminius having dared to
refuse signing the Creed were to be dealt with. It was time to pass from
censure to action.
Heresy must be trampled down. The churches called for a national synod,
and they did this as by divine right. "My Lords the States-General must
observe," they said, "that this assembly now demanded is not a human
institution but an ordinance of the Holy Ghost in its community, not
depending upon any man's authority, but proceeding from God to the
community." They complained that the true church was allowed to act only
through the civil government, and was thus placed at a disadvantage
compared even with Catholics and other sects, whose proceedings were
winked at. "Thus the true church suffered from its apparent and public
freedom, and hostile sects gained by secret connivance."
A crisis was fast approaching. The one church claimed infallibility and
superiority to the civil power. The Holy Ghost was placed in direct,
ostentatious opposition to My Lords the States-General. It was for
Netherlanders to decide whether, after having shaken off the Holy
Inquisition, and subjected the old true church to the public authority,
they were now to submit to the imperious claims of the new true church.
There were hundreds of links connecting the Church with the State. In
that day a divorce between the two was hardly possible or conceivable.
The system of Congregationalism so successfully put into practice soon
afterwards in the wilderness of New England, and to which so much of
American freedom political as well as religious is due, was not easy
to adopt in an old country like the Netherlands. Splendid churches and
cathedrals, the legal possession of which would be contended for by rival
sects, could scarcely be replaced by temporary structures of lath and
plaster, or by humble back parlours of mechanics' shops. There were
questions of property of complicated nature. Not only the states and the
communities claimed in rivalry the ownership of church property, but many
private families could show ancient advowsons and other claims to present
or to patronize, derived from imperial or ducal charters.
So long as there could be liberty of opinion within the Church upon
points not necessarily vital, open schism could be avoided, by which the
cause of Protestantism throughout Europe must be weakened, while at the
same time subordination of the priesthood to the civil authority would be
maintained. But if the Holy Ghost, through the assembled clergy, were
to dictate an iron formulary to which all must conform, to make laws for
church government which every citizen must obey, and to appoint preachers
and school-masters from whom alone old and young could receive
illumination and instruction religious or lay, a theocracy would be
established which no enlightened statesman could tolerate.
The States-General agreed to the synod, but imposed a condition that
there should be a revision of Creed and Catechism. This was thundered
down with one blast. The condition implied a possibility that the vile
heresy of Arminius might be correct. An unconditional synod was
demanded. The Heidelberg Creed and Netherland Catechism were sacred,
infallible, not to be touched. The answer of the government, through
the mouth of Barneveld, was that "to My Lords the States-General as the
foster-fathers and protectors of the churches every right belonged."
Thus far the States-General under the leadership of the Advocate were
unanimous. The victory remained with State against Church. But very
soon after the truce had been established, and men had liberty to devote
themselves to peaceful pursuits, the ecclesiastical trumpet again sounded
far and wide, and contending priests and laymen rushed madly to the fray.
The Remonstrance and Contra-Remonstrance, and the appointment of Conrad
Vorstius, a more abominable heretic than Arminius, to the vacant chair
of Arminius--a step which drove Gomarus and the Gomarites to frenzy,
although Gomarus and Vorstius remained private and intimate friends
to the last--are matters briefly to be mentioned on a later page.
Thus to the four chief actors in the politico-religious drama, soon to be
enacted as an interlude to an eighty years' war, were assigned parts at
first sight inconsistent with their private convictions. The King of
France, who had often abjured his religion, and was now the best of
Catholics, was denounced ferociously in every Catholic pulpit in
Christendom as secretly an apostate again, and the open protector of
heretics and rebels. But the cheerful Henry troubled himself less than
he perhaps had cause to do with these thunderblasts. Besides, as we
shall soon see, he had other objects political and personal to sway his
opinions.
James the ex-Calvinist, crypto-Arminian, pseudo-Papist, and avowed
Puritan hater, was girding on his armour to annihilate Arminians and to
defend and protect Puritans in Holland, while swearing that in England he
would pepper them and harry them and hang them and that he would even
like to bury them alive.
Barneveld, who turned his eyes, as much as in such an inflammatory age it
was possible, from subtle points of theology, and relied on his great-
grandfather's motto of humility, "Nil scire tutissima fides" was perhaps
nearer to the dogma of the dominant Reformed Church than he knew,
although always the consistent and strenuous champion of the civil
authority over Church as well as State.
Maurice was no theologian. He was a steady churchgoer, and his
favorite divine, the preacher at his court chapel, was none other than
Uytenbogaert. The very man who was instantly to be the champion of the
Arminians, the author of the Remonstrance, the counsellor and comrade of
Barneveld and Grotius, was now sneered at by the Gomarites as the "Court
Trumpeter." The preacher was not destined to change his opinions.
Perhaps the Prince might alter. But Maurice then paid no heed to the
great point at issue, about which all the Netherlanders were to take each
other by the throat--absolute predestination. He knew that the Advocate
had refused to listen to his stepmother's suggestion as to his obtaining
the sovereignty. "He knew nothing of predestination," he was wont to
say, "whether it was green or whether it was blue. He only knew that his
pipe and the Advocate's were not likely to make music together." This
much of predestination he did know, that if the Advocate and his friends
were to come to open conflict with the Prince of Orange-Nassau, the
conqueror of Nieuwpoort, it was predestined to go hard with the Advocate
and his friends.
The theological quibble did not interest him much, and he was apt to
blunder about it.
"Well, preacher," said he one day to Albert Huttenus, who had come to him
to intercede for a deserter condemned to be hanged, "are you one of those
Arminians who believe that one child is born to salvation and another to
damnation?"