This etext was produced by David Widger
[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of the
file for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making an
entire meal of them. D.W.]
MOTLEY'S HISTORY OF THE NETHERLANDS, PG EDITION, VOLUME 4.
THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC
JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY, D.C.L., LL.D.
1855
PHILIP THE SECOND IN THE NETHERLANDS
1555-1558 [CHAPTER II.]
Sketch of Philip the Second--Characteristics of Mary Tudor--Portrait
of Philip--His council--Rivalry of Rup Gomez and Alva--Character of
Rup Gomez--Queen Mary of Hungary--Sketch of Philibert of Savoy--
Truce of Vaucelles--Secret treaty between the Pope and Henry II.--
Rejoicings in the Netherlands on account of the Peace--Purposes of
Philip--Re-enactment of the edict of 1b60--The King's dissimulation
--"Request" to the provinces--Infraction of the truce in Italy--
Character of Pope Paul IV.--Intrigues of Cardinal Caraffa--War
against Spain resolved upon by France--Campaign in Italy--Amicable
siege of Rome--Pence with the pontiff--Hostilities on the Flemish
border--Coligny foiled at Douay--Sacks Lens--Philip in England--
Queen Mary engages in the war--Philip's army assembled at Givet--
Portrait of Count Egmont--The French army under Coligny and
Montmorency--Siege of St. Quentin--Attempts of the constable to
relieve the city--Battle of St. Quentin--Hesitation and timidity of
Philip--City of St. Quentin taken and sacked--Continued indecision
of Philip--His army disbanded--Campaign of the Duke of Guise--
Capture of Calais--Interview between Cardinal de Lorraine and the
Bishop of Arran--Secret combinations for a league between France and
Spain against heresy--Languid movements of Guise--Foray of De
Thermes on the Flemish frontier--Battle of Gravelines--Popularity of
Egmont--Enmity of Alva.
Philip the Second had received the investiture of Milan and the crown of
Naples, previously to his marriage with Mary Tudor. The imperial crown
he had been obliged, much against his will, to forego. The archduchy of
Austria, with the hereditary German dependencies of his father's family,
had been transferred by the Emperor to his brother Ferdinand, on the
occasion of the marriage of that prince with Anna, only sister of King
Louis of Hungary. Ten years afterwards, Ferdinand (King of Hungary and
Bohemia since the death of Louis, slain in 1526 at the battle of Mohacz)
was elected King of the Romans, and steadily refused all the entreaties
afterwards made to him in behalf of Philip, to resign his crown and his
succession to the Empire, in favor of his nephew. With these
diminutions, Philip had now received all the dominions of his father.
He was King of all the Spanish kingdoms and of both the Sicilies. He was
titular King of England, France, and Jerusalem. He was "Absolute
Dominator" in Asia, Africa, and America; he was Duke of Milan and of both
Burgundies, and Hereditary Sovereign of the seventeen Netherlands.
Thus the provinces had received a new master. A man of foreign birth and
breeding, not speaking a word of their language, nor of any language
which the mass of the inhabitants understood, was now placed in supreme
authority over them, because he represented, through the females, the
"good" Philip of Burgundy, who a century before had possessed himself by
inheritance, purchase, force, or fraud, of the sovereignty in most of
those provinces. It is necessary to say an introductory word or two
concerning the previous history of the man to whose hands the destiny of
so many millions was now entrusted.
He was born in May, 1527, and was now therefore twenty-eight years of
age. At the age of sixteen he had been united to his cousin, Maria of
Portugal, daughter of John III. and of the Emperor's sister, Donna
Catalina. In the following year (1544) he became father of the
celebrated and ill-starred Don Carlos, and a widower. The princess owed
her death, it was said, to her own imprudence and to the negligence or
bigotry of her attendants. The Duchess of Alva, and other ladies who had
charge of her during her confinement, deserted her chamber in order to
obtain absolution by witnessing an auto-da-fe of heretics. During their
absence, the princess partook voraciously of a melon, and forfeited her
life in consequence.
In 1548, Don Philip had made his first appearance in the Netherlands. He
came thither to receive homage in the various provinces as their future
sovereign, and to exchange oaths of mutual fidelity with them all.
Andrew Doria, with a fleet of fifty ships, had brought him to Genoa,
whence he had passed to Milan, where he was received with great
rejoicing. At Trent he was met by Duke Maurice of Saxony, who warmly
begged his intercession with the Emperor in behalf of the imprisoned
Landgrave of Hesse. This boon Philip was graciously pleased to promise,
--and to keep the pledge as sacredly as most of the vows plighted by him
during this memorable year. The Duke of Aerschot met him in Germany with
a regiment of cavalry and escorted him to Brussels. A summer was spent
in great festivities, the cities of the Nether lands vieing with each
other in magnificent celebrations of the ceremonies, by which Philip
successively swore allegiance to the various constitutions and charters
of the provinces, and received their oaths of future fealty in return.
His oath to support all the constitutions and privileges was without
reservation, while his father and grandfather had only sworn to maintain
the charters granted or confirmed by Philip and Charles of Burgundy.
Suspicion was disarmed by these indiscriminate concessions, which had
been resolved upon by the unscrupulous Charles to conciliate the good
will of the people. In view of the pretensions which might be preferred
by the Brederode family in Holland, and by other descendants of ancient
sovereign races in other provinces, the Emperor, wishing to ensure the
succession to his sisters in case of the deaths of himself, Philip, and
Don Carlos without issue, was unsparing in those promises which he knew
to be binding only upon the weak. Although the house of Burgundy had
usurped many of the provinces on the express pretext that females could
not inherit, the rule had been already violated, and he determined to
spare no pains to conciliate the estates, in order that they might be
content with a new violation, should the contingency occur. Philip's
oaths were therefore without reserve, and the light-hearted Flemings,
Brabantines, and Walloons received him with open arms. In Valenciennes
the festivities which attended his entrance were on a most gorgeous
scale, but the "joyous entrance" arranged for him at Antwerp was of
unparalleled magnificence. A cavalcade of the magistrates and notable
burghers, "all attired in cramoisy velvet," attended by lackies in
splendid liveries and followed by four thousand citizen soldiers in full
uniform, went forth from the gates to receive him. Twenty-eight
triumphal arches, which alone, according to the thrifty chronicler, had
cost 26,800 Carolus guldens, were erected in the different streets and
squares, and every possible demonstration of affectionate welcome was
lavished upon the Prince and the Emperor. The rich and prosperous city,
unconscious of the doom which awaited it in the future, seemed to have
covered itself with garlands to honor the approach of its master. Yet
icy was the deportment with which Philip received these demonstrations of
affection, and haughty the glance with which he looked down upon these
exhibitions of civic hilarity, as from the height of a grim and
inaccessible tower. The impression made upon the Netherlanders was any
thing but favorable, and when he had fully experienced the futility of
the projects on the Empire which it was so difficult both for his father
and himself to resign, he returned to the more congenial soil of Spain.
In 1554 he had again issued from the peninsula to marry the Queen of
England, a privilege which his father had graciously resigned to him.
He was united to Mary Tudor at Winchester, on the 25th July of that year,
and if congeniality of tastes could have made a marriage happy, that
union should have been thrice blessed. To maintain the supremacy of
the Church seemed to both the main object of existence, to execute
unbelievers the most sacred duty imposed by the Deity upon anointed
princes, to convert their kingdoms into a hell the surest means of
winning Heaven for themselves. It was not strange that the conjunction
of two such wonders of superstition in one sphere should have seemed
portentous in the eyes of the English nation. Philip's mock efforts in
favor of certain condemned reformers, and his pretended intercessions in
favor of the Princess Elizabeth, failed entirely of their object. The
parliament refused to confer upon him more than a nominal authority in
England. His children, should they be born, might be sovereigns; he was
but husband of the Queen; of a woman who could not atone by her abject
but peevish fondness for himself, and by her congenial blood-thirstiness
towards her subjects, for her eleven years seniority, her deficiency in
attractions, and her incapacity to make him the father of a line of
English monarchs. It almost excites compassion even for Mary Tudor, when
her passionate efforts to inspire him with affection are contrasted with
his impassiveness. Tyrant, bigot, murderess though she was, she was
still woman, and she lavished upon her husband all that was not ferocious
in her nature. Forbidding prayers to be said for the soul of her father,
hating her sister and her people, burning bishops, bathing herself in
the blood of heretics, to Philip she was all submissiveness and feminine
devotion. It was a most singular contrast, Mary, the Queen of England
and Mary the wife of Philip. Small, lean and sickly, painfully near-
sighted, yet with an eye of fierceness and fire; her face wrinkled by the
hands of care and evil passions still more than by Time, with a big man's
voice, whose harshness made those in the next room tremble; yet feminine
in her tastes, skilful with her needle, fond of embroidery work, striking
the lute with a touch remarkable for its science and feeling, speaking
many languages, including Latin, with fluency and grace; most feminine,
too, in her constitutional sufferings, hysterical of habit, shedding
floods of tears daily at Philip's coldness, undisguised infidelity, and
frequent absences from England--she almost awakens compassion and causes
a momentary oblivion of her identity.
Her subjects, already half maddened by religious persecution, were
exasperated still further by the pecuniary burthens which she imposed
upon them to supply the King's exigencies, and she unhesitatingly
confronted their frenzy, in the hope of winning a smile from him. When
at last her chronic maladies had assumed the memorable form which caused
Philip and Mary to unite in a letter to Cardinal Pole, announcing not the
expected but the actual birth of a prince, but judiciously leaving the
date in blank, the momentary satisfaction and delusion of the Queen was
unbounded. The false intelligence was transmitted every where. Great
were the joy and the festivities in the Netherlands, where people were so
easily made to rejoice and keep holiday for any thing. "The Regent,
being in Antwerp," wrote Sir Thomas Gresham to the lords of council,
"did cause the great bell to rings to give all men to understand that the
news was trewe. The Queene's highness here merchants caused all our
Inglishe ships to shoote off with such joy and triumph, as by men's arts
and pollicey coulde be devised--and the Regent sent our Inglishe maroners
one hundred crownes to drynke." If bell-ringing and cannon-firing could
have given England a Spanish sovereign, the devoutly-wished consummation
would have been reached. When the futility of the royal hopes could no
longer be concealed, Philip left the country, never to return till his
war with France made him require troops, subsidies, and a declaration of
hostilities from England.
The personal appearance of the new sovereign has already been described.
His manner was far from conciliatory, and in this respect he was the
absolute reverse of his father. Upon his first journey out of Spain, in
1548, into his various dominions, he had made a most painful impression
every where. "He was disagreeable," says Envoy Suriano, "to the
Italians, detestable to the Flemings, odious to the Germans."
The remonstrances of the Emperor, and of Queen Mary of Hungary, at the
impropriety of his manners, had produced, however, some effect, so that
on his wedding journey to England, he manifested much "gentleness and
humanity, mingled with royal gravity." Upon this occasion, says another
Venetian, accredited to him, "he had divested himself of that Spanish
haughtiness, which, when he first came from Spain, had rendered him so
odious. The famous ambassador, Badovaro confirms the impression. "Upon
his first journey," he says, "he was esteemed proud, and too greedy for
the imperial succession; but now 'tis the common opinion that his
humanity and modesty are all which could be desired. These humane
qualities, however, it must be observed, were exhibited only in the
presence of ambassadors and grandees, the only representatives of
"humanity" with whom he came publicly and avowedly in contact.
He was thought deficient in manly energy. He was an infirm
valetudinarian, and was considered as sluggish in character, as deficient
in martial enterprise, as timid of temperament as he was fragile and
sickly of frame. It is true, that on account of the disappointment which
he occasioned by his contrast to his warlike father, he mingled in some
tournaments in Brussels, where he was matched against Count Mansfeld, one
of the most distinguished chieftains of the age, and where, says his
professed panegyrist, "he broke his lances very mach to the satisfaction
of his father and aunts."
That learned and eloquent author, Estelle Calvete, even filled the
greater part of a volume, in which he described the journey of the
Prince, with a minute description of these feasts and jousts, but we may
reasonably conclude that to the loyal imagination of his eulogist Philip
is indebted for most of these knightly trophies. It was the universal
opinion of unprejudiced cotemporaries, that he was without a spark of
enterprise. He was even censured for a culpable want of ambition, and
for being inferior to his father in this respect, as if the love of
encroaching on his neighbor's dominions, and a disposition to foreign.
commotions and war would have constituted additional virtues, had he
happened to possess them. Those who were most disposed to think
favorably of him, remembered that there was a time when even Charles the
Fifth was thought weak and indolent, and were willing to ascribe Philip's
pacific disposition to his habitual cholic and side-ache, and to his
father's inordinate care for him in youth. They even looked forward to
the time when he should blaze forth to the world as a conqueror and a
hero. These, however, were views entertained by but few; the general and
the correct opinion, as it proved, being, that Philip hated war, would
never certainly acquire any personal distinction in the field, and when
engaged in hostilities would be apt to gather his laurels at the hands of
his generals, rather than with his own sword. He was believed to be the
reverse of the Emperor. Charles sought great enterprises, Philip would
avoid them. The Emperor never recoiled before threats; the son was
reserved, cautious, suspicious of all men, and capable of sacrificing a
realm from hesitation and timidity. The father had a genius for action,
the son a predilection for repose. Charles took "all men's opinions, but
reserved his judgment," and acted on it, when matured, with irresistible
energy; Philip was led by others, was vacillating in forming decisions,
and irresolute in executing them when formed.
Philip, then, was not considered, in that warlike age, as likely to shine
as a warrior. His mental capacity, in general, was likewise not very
highly esteemed. His talents were, in truth, very much below mediocrity.
His mind was incredibly small. A petty passion for contemptible details
characterized him from his youth, and, as long as he lived, he could
neither learn to generalize, nor understand that one man, however
diligent, could not be minutely acquainted with all the public and
private affairs of fifty millions of other men. He was a glutton of
work. He was born to write despatches, and to scrawl comments upon those
which he received.
[The character of these apostilles, always confused, wordy and
awkward, was sometimes very ludicrous; nor did it improve after his
thirty or forty years' daily practice in making them. Thus, when he
received a letter from France in 1589, narrating the assassination
of Henry III., and stating that "the manner in which he had been
killed was that a Jacobin monk had given him a pistol-shot in the
head" (la facon qua l'on dit qu'il a ette tue, sa ette par un
Jacobin qui luy a donna d'un cou de pistolle dans la tayte), he
scrawled the following luminous comment upon the margin.
Underlining the word "pistolle," he observed, "this is perhaps some
kind of knife; and as for 'tayte,' it can be nothing else but head,
which is not tayte, but tete, or teyte, as you very well know"
(quiza de alguna manera de cuchillo, etc., etc.)--Gachard. Rapport
a M. le Minist. de l'Interieur, prefixed to corresp. Philippe II.
Vol. I. xlix. note 1. It is obvious that a person who made such
wonderful commentaries as this, and was hard at work eight or nine
hours a day for forty years, would leave a prodigious quantity of
unpublished matter at his death.]
He often remained at the council-board four or five hours at a time, and
he lived in his cabinet. He gave audiences to ambassadors and deputies
very willingly, listening attentively to all that was said to him, and
answering in monosyllables. He spoke no tongue but Spanish; and was
sufficiently sparing of that, but he was indefatigable with his pen.
He hated to converse, but he could write a letter eighteen pages long,
when his correspondent was in the next room, and when the subject was,
perhaps, one which a man of talent could have settled with six words of
his tongue. The world, in his opinion, was to move upon protocols and
apostilles. Events had no right to be born throughout his dominions,
without a preparatory course of his obstetrical pedantry. He could never
learn that the earth would not rest on its axis, while he wrote a
programme of the way it was to turn. He was slow in deciding, slower
in communicating his decisions. He was prolix with his pen, not from
affluence, but from paucity of ideas. He took refuge in a cloud of
words, sometimes to conceal his meaning, oftener to conceal the absence
of any meaning, thus mystifying not only others but himself. To one
great purpose, formed early, he adhered inflexibly. This, however, was
rather an instinct than an opinion; born with him, not created by him.
The idea seemed to express itself through him, and to master him, rather
than to form one of a stock of sentiments which a free agent might be
expected to possess. Although at certain times, even this master-feeling
could yield to the pressure of a predominant self-interest-thus showing
that even in Philip bigotry was not absolute--yet he appeared on the
whole the embodiment of Spanish chivalry and Spanish religious
enthusiasm, in its late and corrupted form. He was entirely a Spaniard.
The Burgundian and Austrian elements of his blood seemed to have
evaporated, and his veins were filled alone with the ancient ardor,
which in heroic centuries had animated the Gothic champions of Spain.
The fierce enthusiasm for the Cross, which in the long internal warfare
against the Crescent, had been the romantic and distinguishing feature of
the national character, had degenerated into bigotry. That which had
been a nation's glory now made the monarch's shame. The Christian
heretic was to be regarded with a more intense hatred than even Moor or
Jew had excited in the most Christian ages, and Philip was to be the
latest and most perfect incarnation of all this traditional enthusiasm,
this perpetual hate. Thus he was likely to be single-hearted in his
life. It was believed that his ambition would be less to extend his
dominions than to vindicate his title of the most Catholic king. There
could be little doubt entertained that he would be, at least, dutiful to
his father in this respect, and that the edicts would be enforced to the
letter.
He was by birth, education, and character, a Spaniard, and that so
exclusively, that the circumstance would alone have made him unfit to
govern a country so totally different in habits and national sentiments
from his native land. He was more a foreigner in Brussels, even, than
in England. The gay, babbling, energetic, noisy life of Flanders and
Brabant was detestable to him. The loquacity of the Netherlanders was a
continual reproach upon his taciturnity. His education had imbued him,
too, with the antiquated international hatred of Spaniard and Fleming,
which had been strengthening in the metropolis, while the more rapid
current of life had rather tended to obliterate the sentiment in the
provinces.
The flippancy and profligacy of Philip the Handsome, the extortion and
insolence of his Flemish courtiers, had not been forgotten in Spain,
nor had Philip the Second forgiven his grandfather for having been a
foreigner. And now his mad old grandmother, Joanna, who had for years
been chasing cats in the lonely tower where she had been so long
imprisoned, had just died; and her funeral, celebrated with great pomp by
both her sons, by Charles at Brussels and Ferdinand at Augsburg, seemed
to revive a history which had begun to fade, and to recall the image of
Castilian sovereignty which had been so long obscured in the blaze of
imperial grandeur.
His education had been but meagre. In an age when all kings and noblemen
possessed many languages, he spoke not a word of any tongue but Spanish,
--although he had a slender knowledge of French and Italian, which he
afterwards learned to read with comparative facility. He had studied a
little history and geography, and he had a taste for sculpture, painting,
and architecture. Certainly if he had not possessed a feeling for art,
he would have been a monster. To have been born in the earlier part of
the sixteenth century, to have been a king, to have had Spain, Italy, and
the Netherlands as a birthright, and not to have been inspired with a
spark of that fire which glowed so intensely in those favored lands and
in that golden age, had indeed been difficult.
The King's personal habits were regular. His delicate health made it
necessary for him to attend to his diet, although he was apt to exceed
in sweetmeats and pastry. He slept much, and took little exercise
habitually, but he had recently been urged by the physicians to try the
effect of the chase as a corrective to his sedentary habits. He was most
strict in religious observances, as regular at mass, sermons, and vespers
as a monk; much more, it was thought by many good Catholics, than was
becoming to his rank and age. Besides several friars who preached
regularly for his instruction, he had daily discussions with others on
abstruse theological points. He consulted his confessor most minutely as
to all the actions of life, inquiring anxiously whether this proceeding
or that were likely to burthen his conscience. He was grossly
licentious. It was his chief amusement to issue forth at night
disguised, that he might indulge in vulgar and miscellaneous incontinence
in the common haunts of vice. This was his solace at Brussels in the
midst of the gravest affairs of state. He was not illiberal, but, on the
contrary, it was thought that he would have been even generous, had he
not been straitened for money at the outset of his career. During a cold
winter, he distributed alms to the poor of Brussels with an open hand.
He was fond of jests in private, and would laugh immoderately, when with
a few intimate associates, at buffooneries, which he checked in public by
the icy gravity of his deportment. He dressed usually in the Spanish
fashion, with close doublet, trunk hose, and short cloak, although at
times he indulged in the more airy fashions of France and Burgundy,
wearing buttons on his coats and feathers in his hat. He was not thought
at that time to be cruel by nature, but was usually spoken of, in the
conventional language appropriated to monarchs, as a prince "clement,
benign, and debonnaire." Time was to show the justice of his claims to
such honorable epithets.
The court was organized during his residence at Brussels on the
Burgundian, not the Spanish model, but of the one hundred and fifty
persons who composed it, nine tenths of the whole were Spaniards; the
other fifteen or sixteen being of various nations, Flemings, Burgundians,
Italians, English, and Germans. Thus it is obvious how soon he
disregarded his father's precept and practice in this respect, and began
to lay the foundation of that renewed hatred to Spaniards which was soon
to become so intense, exuberant, and fatal throughout every class of
Netherlanders. He esteemed no nation but the Spanish, with Spaniards he
consorted, with Spaniards he counselled, through Spaniards he governed.
His council consisted of five or six Spanish grandees, the famous Ruy
Gomez, then Count of Melito, afterwards Prince of Eboli; the Duke of
Alva, the Count de Feria, the Duke of Franca Villa, Don Antonio Toledo,
and Don Juan Manrique de Lara. The "two columns," said Suriano, "which
sustain this great machine, are Ruy Gomez and Alva, and from their
councils depends the government of half the world." The two were ever
bitterly opposed to each other. Incessant were their bickerings, intense
their mutual hate, desperate and difficult the situation of any man,
whether foreigner or native, who had to transact business with the
government. If he had secured the favor of Gomez, he had already earned
the enmity of Alva. Was he protected by the Duke, he was sure to be cast
into outer darkness by the favorite.--Alva represented the war party,
Ruy Gomez the pacific polity more congenial to the heart of Philip.
The Bishop of Arras, who in the opinion of the envoys was worth them all
for his capacity and his experience, was then entirely in the background,
rarely entering the council except when summoned to give advice in
affairs of extraordinary delicacy or gravity. He was, however, to
reappear most signally in course of the events already preparing. The
Duke of Alva, also to play so tremendous a part in the yet unborn history
of the Netherlands, was not beloved by Philip. He was eclipsed at this
period by the superior influence of the favorite, and his sword,
moreover, became necessary in the Italian campaign which was impending.
It is remarkable that it was a common opinion even at that day that the
duke was naturally hesitating and timid. One would have thought that his
previous victories might have earned for him the reputation for courage
and skill which he most unquestionably deserved. The future was to
develop those other characteristics which were to make his name the
terror and wonder of the world.
The favorite, Ruy Gomez da Silva, Count de Melito, was the man upon whose
shoulders the great burthen of the state reposed. He was of a family
which was originally Portuguese. He had been brought up with the King,
although some eight years his senior, and their friendship dated from
earliest youth. It was said that Ruy Gomez, when a boy, had been
condemned to death for having struck Philip, who had come between him and
another page with whom he was quarrelling. The Prince threw himself
passionately at his father's feet, and implored forgiveness in behalf of
the culprit with such energy that the Emperor was graciously pleased to
spare the life of the future prime minister. The incident was said to
have laid the foundation of the remarkable affection which was supposed
to exist between the two, to an extent never witnessed before between
king and subject. Ruy Gomez was famous for his tact and complacency, and
omitted no opportunity of cementing the friendship thus auspiciously
commenced. He was said to have particularly charmed his master, upon one
occasion, by hypocritically throwing up his cards at a game of hazard
played for a large stake, and permitting him to win the game with a far
inferior hand. The King learning afterwards the true state of the case,
was charmed by the grace and self-denial manifested by the young
nobleman. The complacency which the favorite subsequently exhibited in
regard to the connexion which existed so long and so publicly between his
wife, the celebrated Princess Eboli, and Philip, placed his power upon an
impregnable basis, and secured it till his death.
At the present moment he occupied the three posts of valet, state
councillor, and finance minister. He dressed and undressed his master,
read or talked him to sleep, called him in the morning, admitted those
who were to have private audiences, and superintended all the
arrangements of the household. The rest of the day was devoted to the
enormous correspondence and affairs of administration which devolved upon
him as first minister of state and treasury. He was very ignorant. He
had no experience or acquirement in the arts either of war or peace, and
his early education had been limited. Like his master, he spoke no
tongue but Spanish, and he had no literature. He had prepossessing
manners, a fluent tongue, a winning and benevolent disposition. His
natural capacity for affairs was considerable, and his tact was so
perfect that he could converse face to face with statesmen; doctors, and
generals upon campaigns, theology, or jurisprudence, without betraying
any remarkable deficiency. He was very industrious, endeavoring to make
up by hard study for his lack of general knowledge, and to sustain with
credit the burthen of his daily functions. At the same time, by the
King's desire, he appeared constantly at the frequent banquets,
masquerades, tourneys and festivities, for which Brussels at that epoch
was remarkable. It was no wonder that his cheek was pale, and that he
seemed dying of overwork. He discharged his duties cheerfully, however,
for in the service of Philip he knew no rest. "After God," said
Badovaro, "he knows no object save the felicity of his master." He was
already, as a matter of course, very rich, having been endowed by Philip
with property to the amount of twenty-six thousand dollars yearly, [at
values of 1855] and the tide of his fortunes was still at the flood.
Such were the two men, the master and the favorite, to whose hands the
destinies of the Netherlands were now entrusted.
The Queen of Hungary had resigned the office of Regent of the
Netherlands, as has been seen, on the occasion of the Emperor's
abdication. She was a woman of masculine character, a great huntress
before the Lord, a celebrated horsewoman, a worthy descendant of the Lady
Mary of Burgundy. Notwithstanding all the fine phrases exchanged between
herself and the eloquent Maas, at the great ceremony of the 25th of
October, she was, in reality, much detested in the provinces, and she
repaid their aversion with abhorrence. "I could not live among these
people," she wrote to the Emperor, but a few weeks before the abdication,
"even as a private person, for it would be impossible for me to do my
duty towards God and my prince. As to governing them, I take God to
witness that the task is so abhorrent to me, that I would rather earn my
daily bread by labor than attempt it." She added, that a woman of fifty
years of age, who had served during twenty-five of them, had a right to
repose, and that she was moreover "too old to recommence and learn her A,
B, C." The Emperor, who had always respected her for the fidelity with
which she had carried out his designs, knew that it was hopeless to
oppose her retreat. As for Philip, he hated his aunt, and she hated him-
-although, both at the epoch of the abdication and subsequently, he was
desirous that she should administer the government.
The new Regent was to be the Duke of Savoy. This wandering and
adventurous potentate had attached himself to Philip's fortunes, and had
been received by the King with as much favor as he had ever enjoyed at
the hands of the Emperor. Emanuel Philibert of Savoy, then about twenty-
six or seven years of age, was the son of the late unfortunate duke, by
Donna Beatrice of Portugal, sister of the Empress. He was the nephew of
Charles, and first cousin to Philip. The partiality of the Emperor for
his mother was well known, but the fidelity with which the family had
followed the imperial cause had been productive of nothing but disaster
to the duke. He had been ruined in fortune, stripped of all his
dignities and possessions. His son's only inheritance was his sword.
The young Prince of Piedmont, as he was commonly called in his youth;
sought the camp of the Emperor, and was received with distinguished
favor. He rose rapidly in the military service. Acting always upon his
favorite motto, "Spoliatis arma supersunt," he had determined, if
possible, to carve his way to glory, to wealth, and even to his
hereditary estates, by his sword alone. War was not only his passion,
but his trade. Every one of his campaigns was a speculation, and he had
long derived a satisfactory income by purchasing distinguished prisoners
of war at a low price from the soldiers who had captured them, and were
ignorant of their rank, and by ransoming them afterwards at an immense
advance. This sort of traffic in men was frequent in that age, and was
considered perfectly honorable. Marshal Strozzi, Count Mansfeld, and
other professional soldiers, derived their main income from the system.
They were naturally inclined, therefore, to look impatiently upon a state
of peace as an unnatural condition of affairs which cut off all the
profits of their particular branch of industry, and condemned them both
to idleness and poverty. The Duke of Savoy had become one of the most
experienced and successful commanders of the age, and an especial
favorite with the Emperor. He had served with Alva in the campaigns
against the Protestants of Germany, and in other important fields. War
being his element, he considered peace as undesirable, although he could
recognize its existence. A truce he held, however, to be a senseless
parodox, unworthy of the slightest regard. An armistice, such as was
concluded on the February following the abdication, was, in his opinion,
only to be turned to account by dealing insidious and unsuspected blows
at the enemy, some portion of whose population might repose confidence in
the plighted faith of monarchs and plenipotentiaries. He had a show of
reason for his political and military morality, for he only chose to
execute the evil which had been practised upon himself. His father had
been beggared, his mother had died of spite and despair, he had himself
been reduced from the rank of a sovereign to that of a mercenary soldier,
by spoliations made in time of truce. He was reputed a man of very
decided abilities, and was distinguished for headlong bravery. His
rashness and personal daring were thought the only drawbacks to his high
character as a commander. He had many accomplishments. He spoke Latin,
French, Spanish, and Italian with equal fluency, was celebrated for his
attachment to the fine arts, and wrote much and with great elegance.
Such had been Philibert of Savoy, the pauper nephew of the powerful
Emperor, the adventurous and vagrant cousin of the lofty Philip, a prince
without a people, a duke without a dukedom; with no hope but in warfare,
with no revenue but rapine; the image, in person, of a bold and manly
soldier, small, but graceful and athletic, martial in bearing, "wearing
his sword under his arm like a corporal," because an internal malady made
a belt inconvenient, and ready to turn to swift account every chance
which a new series of campaigns might open to him. With his new salary
as governor, his pensions, and the remains of his possessions in Nice and
Piedmont, he had now the splendid annual income of one hundred thousand
crowns, and was sure to spend it all.
It had been the desire of Charles to smooth the commencement of Philip's
path. He had for this purpose made a vigorous effort to undo, as it
were, the whole work of his reign, to suspend the operation of his whole
political system. The Emperor and conqueror, who had been warring all
his lifetime, had attempted, as the last act of his reign, to improvise
a peace. But it was not so easy to arrange a pacification of Europe as
dramatically as he desired, in order that he might gather his robes about
him, and allow the curtain to fall upon his eventful history in a grand
hush of decorum and quiet. During the autumn and winter of 1555,
hostilities had been virtually suspended, and languid negotiations
ensued. For several months armies confronted each other without
engaging, and diplomatists fenced among themselves without any palpable
result. At last the peace commissioners, who had been assembled at
Vaucelles since the beginning of the year 1556, signed a treaty of truce
rather than of peace, upon the 5th of February. It was to be an
armistice of five years, both by land and sea, for France, Spain,
Flanders, and Italy, throughout all the dominions of the French and
Spanish monarchs. The Pope was expressly included in the truce, which
was signed on the part of France by Admiral Coligny and Sebastian
l'Aubespine; on that of Spain, by Count de Lalain, Philibert de
Bruxelles, Simon Renard, and Jean Baptiste Sciceio, a jurisconsult of
Cremona. During the precious month of December, however, the Pope had
concluded with the French monarch a treaty, by which this solemn
armistice was rendered an egregious farce. While Henry's
plenipotentiaries had been plighting their faith to those of Philip,
it had been arranged that France should sustain, by subsidies and armies,
the scheme upon which Paul was bent, to drive the Spaniards entirely out
of the Italian peninsula. The king was to aid the pontiff, and, in
return, was to carve thrones for his own younger children out of the
confiscated realms of Philip. When was France ever slow to sweep upon
Italy with such a hope? How could the ever-glowing rivalry of Valois and
Habsburg fail to burst into a general conflagration, while the venerable
vicegerent of Christ stood thus beside them with his fan in his hand?
For a brief breathing space, however, the news of the pacification
occasioned much joy in the provinces. They rejoiced even in a temporary
cessation of that long series of campaigns from which they could
certainly derive no advantage, and in which their part was to furnish
money, soldiers, and battlefields, without prospect of benefit from any
victory, however brilliant, or any treaty, however elaborate.
Manufacturing, agricultural and commercial provinces, filled to the full
with industrial life, could not but be injured by being converted into
perpetual camps. All was joy in the Netherlands, while at Antwerp, the
great commercial metropolis of the provinces and of Europe, the rapture
was unbounded. Oxen were roasted whole in the public squares; the
streets, soon to be empurpled with the best blood of her citizens, ran
red with wine; a hundred triumphal arches adorned the pathway of Philip
as he came thither; and a profusion of flowers, although it was February,
were strewn before his feet. Such was his greeting in the light-hearted
city, but the countenance was more than usually sullen with which the
sovereign received these demonstrations of pleasure. It was thought by
many that Philip had been really disappointed in the conclusion of the
armistice, that he was inspired with a spark of that martial ambition for
which his panegyrists gave him credit, and that knowing full well the
improbability of a long suspension of hostilities, he was even eager for
the chance of conquest which their resumption would afford him. The
secret treaty of the Pope was of course not so secret but that the hollow
intention of the contracting parties to the truce of Vaucelles were
thoroughly suspected; intentions which certainly went far to justify the
maxims and the practice of the new governor-general of the Netherlands
upon the subject of armistices.
Philip, understanding his position, was revolving renewed military
projects while his subjects were ringing merry bells and lighting
bonfires in the Netherlands. These schemes, which were to be carried out
in the immediate future, caused, however, a temporary delay in the great
purpose to which he was to devote his life.
The Emperor had always desired to regard the Netherlands as a whole, and
he hated the antiquated charters and obstinate privileges which
interfered with his ideas of symmetry. Two great machines, the court of
Mechlin and the inquisition, would effectually simplify and assimilate
all these irregular and heterogeneous rights. The civil tribunal was to
annihilate all diversities in their laws by a general cassation of their
constitutions, and the ecclesiastical court was to burn out all
differences in their religious faith. Between two such millstones it was
thought that the Netherlands might be crushed into uniformity. Philip
succeeded to these traditions. The father had never sufficient leisure
to carry out all his schemes, but it seemed probable that the son would
be a worthy successor, at least in all which concerned the religious part
of his system. One of the earliest measures of his reign was to re-enact
the dread edict of 1550. This he did by the express advice of the Bishop
of Arras who represented to him the expediency of making use of the
popularity of his father's name, to sustain the horrible system resolved
upon. As Charles was the author of the edict, it could be always argued
that nothing new was introduced; that burning, hanging, and drowning for
religious differences constituted a part of the national institutions;
that they had received the sanction of the wise Emperor, and had been
sustained by the sagacity of past generations. Nothing could have been
more subtle, as the event proved, than this advice. Innumerable were the
appeals made in subsequent years, upon this subject, to the patriotism
and the conservative sentiments of the Netherlanders. Repeatedly they
were summoned to maintain the inquisition, on the ground that it had been
submitted to by their ancestors, and that no change had been made by
Philip, who desired only to maintain church and crown in the authority
which they had enjoyed in the days of his father of very laudable
memory.
Nevertheless, the King's military plans seemed to interfere for the
moment with this cherished object. He seemed to swerve, at starting,
from pursuing the goal which he was only to abandon with life. The edict
of 1550 was re-enacted and confirmed, and all office-holders were
commanded faithfully to enforce it upon pain of immediate dismissal.
Nevertheless, it was not vigorously carried into effect any where.
It was openly resisted in Holland, its proclamation was flatly refused
in Antwerp, and repudiated throughout Brabant. It was strange that such
disobedience should be tolerated, but the King wanted money. He was
willing to refrain for a season from exasperating the provinces by fresh
religious persecution at the moment when he was endeavoring to extort
every penny which it was possible to wring from their purses.
The joy, therefore, with which the pacification had been hailed by the
people was far from an agreeable spectacle to the King. The provinces
would expect that the forces which had been maintained at their expense
during the war would be disbanded, whereas he had no intention of
disbanding them. As the truce was sure to be temporary, he had no
disposition to diminish his available resources for a war which might be
renewed at any moment. To maintain the existing military establishment
in the Netherlands, a large sum of money was required, for the pay was
very much in arrear. The king had made a statement to the provincial
estates upon this subject, but the matter was kept secret during the
negotiations with France. The way had thus been paved for the "Request"
or "Bede," which he now made to the estates assembled at Brussels, in the
spring of 1556. It was to consist of a tax of one per cent. (the
hundredth penny) upon all real estate, and of two per cent. upon all
merchandise; to be collected in three payments. The request, in so far
as the imposition of the proposed tax was concerned, was refused by
Flanders, Brabant, Holland, and all the other important provinces, but
as usual, a moderate, even a generous, commutation in money was offered
by the estates. This was finally accepted by Philip, after he had become
convinced that at this moment, when he was contemplating a war with
France, it would be extremely impolitic to insist upon the tax. The
publication of the truce in Italy had been long delayed, and the first
infractions which it suffered were committed in that country. The arts
of politicians; the schemes of individual ambition, united with the
short-lived military ardor of Philip to place the monarch in an eminently
false position, that of hostility to the Pope. As was unavoidable, the
secret treaty of December acted as an immediate dissolvent to the truce
of February.
Great was the indignation of Paul Caraffa, when that truce was first
communicated to him by the Cardinal de Tournon, on the part of the French
Government. Notwithstanding the protestations of France that the secret
league was still binding, the pontiff complained that he was likely to be
abandoned to his own resources, and to be left single-handed to contend
with the vast power of Spain.