Immediately after taking leave of his friend, the Prince of Gaure
hastened back to Brussels, to receive from the regent the reward of his
firmness, and there, in the excitement of the court and in the sunshine
of his good fortune, to dispel the light cloud which the earnest
warnings of the Prince of Orange had cast over his natural gayety.
The flight of the latter now left him in possession of the stage.
He had now no longer any rival in the republic to dim his glory. With
redoubled zeal he wooed the transient favor of the court, above which he
ought to have felt himself far exalted. All Brussels must participate
in his joy. He gave splendid banquets and public entertainments, at
which, the better to eradicate all suspicion from his mind, the regent
herself frequently attended. Not content with having taken the required
oath, he outstripped the most devout in devotion; outran the most
zealous in zeal to extirpate the Protestant faith, and to reduce by
force of arms the refractory towns of Flanders. He declared to his old
friend, Count Hogstraten, as also to the rest of the Gueux, that he
would withdraw from them his friendship forever if they hesitated any
longer to return into the bosom of the church, and reconcile themselves
with their king. All the confidential letters which had been exchanged
between him and them were returned, and by this last step the breach
between them was made public and irreparable. Egmont's secession, and
the flight of the Prince of Orange, destroyed the last hope of the
Protestants and dissolved the whole league of the Gueux. Its members
vied with each other in readiness--nay, they could not soon enough
abjure the covenant and take the new oath proposed to them by the
government. In vain did the Protestant merchants exclaim at this breach
of faith on the part of the nobles; their weak voice was no longer
listened to, and all the sums were lost with which they had supplied the
league.
The most important places were quickly reduced and garrisoned; the
rebels had fled, or perished by the hand of the executioner; in the
provinces no protector was left. All yielded to the fortune of the
regent, and her victorious army was advancing against Antwerp. After a
long and obstinate contest this town had been cleared of the worst
rebels; Hermann and his adherents took to flight; the internal storms
had spent their rage. The minds of the people became gradually
composed, and no longer excited at will by every furious fanatic, began
to listen to better counsels. The wealthier citizens earnestly longed
for peace to revive commerce and trade, which had suffered severely from
the long reign of anarchy. The dread of Alva's approach worked wonders;
in order to prevent the miseries which a Spanish army would inflict upon
the country, the people hastened to throw themselves on the gentler
mercies of the regent. Of their own accord they despatched
plenipotentiaries to Brussels to negotiate for a treaty and to hear her
terms. Agreeably as the regent was surprised by this voluntary step,
she did not allow herself to be hurried away by her joy. She declared
that she neither could nor would listen to any overtures or
representations until the town had received a garrison. Even this was
no longer opposed, and Count Mansfeld marched in the day after with
sixteen squadrons in battle array. A solemn treaty was now made between
the town and duchess, by which the former bound itself to prohibit the
Calvinistic form of worship, to banish all preachers of that persuasion,
to restore the Roman Catholic religion to its former dignity, to
decorate the despoiled churches with their former ornaments, to
administer the old edicts as before, to take the new oath which the
other towns had sworn to, and, lastly, to deliver into the hands of
justice all who been guilty of treason, in bearing arms, or taking part
in the desecration of the churches. On the other hand, the regent
pledged herself to forget all that had passed, and even to intercede for
the offenders with the king. All those who, being dubious of obtaining
pardon, preferred banishment, were to be allowed a month to convert
their property into money, and place themselves in safety. From this
grace none were to be excluded but such as had been guilty of a capital
offence, and who were excepted by the previous article. Immediately
upon the conclusion of this treaty all Calvinist and Lutheran preachers
in Antwerp, and the adjoining territory, were warned by the herald to
quit the country within twenty-four hours. All the streets and gates
were now thronged with fugitives, who for the honor of their God
abandoned what was dearest to them, and sought a more peaceful home for
their persecuted faith. Here husbands were taking an eternal farewell
of their wives, fathers of their children; there whole families were
preparing to depart. All Antwerp resembled a house of mourning;
wherever the eye turned some affecting spectacle of painful separation
presented itself. A seal was set on the doors of the Protestant
churches; the whole worship seemed to be extinct. The 10th of April
(1567) was the day appointed for the departure of the preachers. In the
town hall, where they appeared for the last time to take leave of the
magistrate, they could not command their grief; but broke forth into
bitter reproaches. They had been sacrificed, they exclaimed, they had
been shamefully betrayed; but a time would come when Antwerp would pay
dearly enough for this baseness. Still more bitter were the complaints
of the Lutheran clergy, whom the magistrate himself had invited into the
country to preach against the Calvinists. Under the delusive
representation that the king was not unfavorable to their religion they
had been seduced into a combination against the Calvinists, but as soon
as the latter had been by their co-operation brought under subjection,
and their own services were no longer required, they were left to bewail
their folly, which had involved themselves and their enemies in common
ruin.
A few days afterwards the regent entered Antwerp in triumph, accompanied
by a thousand Walloon horse, the Knights of the Golden Fleece, all the
governors and counsellors, a number of municipal officers, and her whole
court. Her first visit was to the cathedral, which still bore
lamentable traces of the violence of the Iconoclasts, and drew from her
many and bitter tears. Immediately afterwards four of the rebels, who
had been overtaken in their flight, were brought in and executed in the
public market-place. All the children who had been baptized after the
Protestant rites were rebaptized by Roman Catholic priests; all the
schools of heretics were closed, and their churches levelled to the
ground. Nearly all the towns in the Netherlands followed the example of
Antwerp and banished the Protestant preachers. By the end of April the
Roman Catholic churches were repaired and embellished more splendidly
than ever, while all the Protestant places of worship were pulled down,
and every vestige of the proscribed belief obliterated in the seventeen
provinces. The populace, whose sympathies are generally with the
successful party, was now as active in accelerating the ruin of the
unfortunate as a short time before it had been furiously zealous in its
cause; in Ghent a large and beautiful church which the Calvinists had
erected was attacked, and in less than an hour had wholly disappeared.
From the beams of the roofless churches gibbets were erected for those
who had profaned the sanctuaries of the Roman Catholics. The places of
execution were filled with corpses, the prisons with condemned victims,
the high roads with fugitives. Innumerable were the victims of this
year of murder; in the smallest towns fifty at least, in several of the
larger as many as three hundred, were put to death, while no account was
kept of the numbers in the open country who fell into the hands of the
provost-marshal and were immediately strung up as miscreants, without
trial and without mercy.
The regent was still in Antwerp when ambassadors presented themselves
from the Electors of Brandenburg, Saxony, Hesse, Wurtemberg, and Baden
to intercede for their fugitive brethren in the faith. The expelled
preachers of the Augsburg Confession had claimed the rights assured to
them by the religious peace of the Germans, in which Brabant, as part of
the empire, participated, and had thrown themselves on the protection of
those princes. The arrival of the foreign ministers alarmed the regent,
and she vainly endeavored to prevent their entrance into Antwerp; under
the guise, however, of showing them marks of honor, she continued to
keep them closely watched lest they should encourage the malcontents in
any attempts against the peace of the town. From the high tone which
they most unreasonably adopted towards the regent it might almost be
inferred that they were little in earnest in their demand. "It was but
reasonable," they said, "that the Confession of Augsburg, as the only
one which met the spirit of the gospel, should be the ruling faith in
the Netherlands; but to persecute it by such cruel edicts as were in
force was positively unnatural and could not be allowed. They therefore
required of the regent, in the name of religion, not to treat the people
entrusted to her rule with such severity." She replied through the Count
of Staremberg, her minister for German affairs, that such an exordium
deserved no answer at all. From the sympathy which the German princes
had shown for the Belgian fugitives it was clear that they gave less
credit to the letters of the king, in explanation of his measures, than
to the reports of a few worthless wretches who, in the desecrated
churches, had left behind them a worthier memorial of their acts and
characters. It would far more become them to leave to the King of Spain
the care of his own subjects, and abandon the attempt to foster a spirit
of rebellion in foreign countries, from which they would reap neither
honor nor profit. The ambassadors left Antwerp in a few days without
having effected anything. The Saxon minister, indeed, in a private
interview with the regent even assured her that his master had most
reluctantly taken this step.
The German ambassadors had not quitted Antwerp when intelligence from
Holland completed the triumph of the regent. From fear of Count Megen
Count Brederode had deserted his town of Viane, and with the aid of the
Protestants inhabitants had succeeded in throwing himself into
Amsterdam, where his arrival caused great alarm to the city magistrate,
who had previously found difficulty in preventing a revolt, while it
revived the courage of the Protestants. Here Brederode's adherents
increased daily, and many noblemen flocked to him from Utrecht,
Friesland, and Groningen, whence the victorious arms of Megen and
Aremberg had driven them. Under various disguises they found means to
steal into the city, where they gathered round Brederode, and served him
as a strong body-guard. The regent, apprehensive of a new outbreak,
sent one of her private secretaries, Jacob de la Torre, to the council
of Amsterdam, and ordered them to get rid of Count Brederode on any
terms and at any risk. Neither the magistrate nor de la Torre himself,
who visited Brederode in person to acquaint him with the will of the
duchess, could prevail upon him to depart. The secretary was even
surprised in his own chamber by a party of Brederode's followers, and
deprived of all his papers, and would, perhaps, have lost his life also
if he had not contrived to make his escape. Brederode remained in
Amsterdam a full month after this occurrence, a powerless idol of the
Protestants, and an oppressive burden to the Roman Catholics; while his
fine army, which he had left in Viane, reinforced by many fugitives from
the southern provinces, gave Count Megen enough to do without attempting
to harass the Protestants in their flight. At last Brederode resolved
to follow the example of Orange, and, yielding to necessity, abandon a
desperate cause. He informed the town council that he was willing to
leave Amsterdam if they would enable him to do so by furnishing him with
the pecuniary means. Glad to get quit of him, they hastened to borrow
the money on the security of the town council. Brederode quitted
Amsterdam the same night, and was conveyed in a gunboat as far as Vlie,
from whence he fortunately escaped to Embden. Fate treated him more
mildly than the majority of those he had implicated in his foolhardy
enterprise; he died the year after, 1568, at one of his castles in
Germany, from the effects of drinking, by which he sought ultimately to
drown his grief and disappoint ments. His widow, Countess of Moers in
her own right, was remarried to the Prince Palatine, Frederick III. The
Protestant cause lost but little by his demise; the work which he had
commenced, as it had not been kept alive by him, so it did not die with
him.
The little army, which in his disgraceful flight he had deserted, was
bold and valiant, and had a few resolute leaders. It disbanded, indeed,
as soon as he, to whom it looked for pay, had fled; but hunger and
courage kept its parts together some time longer. One body, under
command of Dietrich of Battenburgh, marched to Amsterdam in the hope of
carrying that town; but Count Megen hastened with thirteen companies of
excellent troops to its relief, and compelled the rebels to give up the
attempt. Contenting themselves with plundering the neighboring
cloisters, among which the abbey of Egmont in particular was hardly
dealt with, they turned off towards Waaterland, where they hoped the
numerous swamps would protect them from pursuit. But thither Count
Megen followed them, and compelled them in all haste to seek safety in
the Zuyderzee. The brothers Van Battenburg, and two Friesan nobles,
Beima and Galama, with a hundred and twenty men and the booty they had
taken from the monasteries, embarked near the town of Hoorne, intending
to cross to Friesland, but through the treachery of the steersman, who
ran the vessel on a sand-bank near Harlingen, they fell into the hands
of one of Aremberg's captains, who took them all prisoners. The Count
of Aremberg immediately pronounced sentence upon all the captives of
plebeian rank, but sent his noble prisoners to the regent, who caused
seven of them to be beheaded. Seven others of the most noble, including
the brothers Van Battenburg and some Frieslanders, all in the bloom of
youth, were reserved for the Duke of Alva, to enable him to signalize
the commencement of his administration by a deed which was in every way
worthy of him. The troops in four other vessels which set sail from
Medenhlick, and were pursued by Count Megen in small boats, were more
successful. A contrary wind had forced them out of their course and
driven them ashore on the coast of Gueldres, where they all got safe to
land; crossing the Rhine, near Heusen, they fortunately escaped into
Cleves, where they tore their flags in pieces and dispersed. In North
Holland Count Megen overtook some squadrons who had lingered too long in
plundering the cloisters, and completely overpowered them. He
afterwards formed a junction with Noircarmes and garrisoned Amsterdam.
The Duke Erich of Brunswick also surprised three companies, the last
remains of the army of the Gueux, near Viane, where they were
endeavoring to take a battery, routed them and captured their leader,
Rennesse, who was shortly afterwards beheaded at the castle of
Freudenburg, in Utrecht. Subsequently, when Duke Erich entered Viane,
he found nothing but deserted streets, the inhabitants having left it
with the garrison on the first alarm. He immediately razed the
fortifications, and reduced this arsenal of the Gueux to an open town
without defences. All the originators of the league were now dispersed;
Brederode and Louis of Nassau had fled to Germany, and Counts
Hogstraten, Bergen, and Kuilemberg had followed their example.
Mansfeld had seceded, the brothers Van Battenburg awaited in prison an
ignomonious fate, while Thoulouse alone had found an honorable death on
the field of battle. Those of the confederates who had escaped the
sword of the enemy and the axe of the executioner had saved nothing but
their lives, and thus the title which they had assumed for show became
at last a terrible reality.
Such was the inglorious end of the noble league, which in its beginning
awakened such fair hopes and promised to become a powerful protection
against oppression. Unanimity was its strength, distrust and internal
dissension its ruin. It brought to light and developed many rare and
beautiful virtues, but it wanted the most indispensable of all, prudence
and moderation, without which any undertaking must miscarry, and all the
fruits of the most laborious industry perish. If its objects had been
as pure as it pretended, or even had they remained as pure as they
really were at its first establishment, it might have defied the
unfortunate combination of circumstances which prematurely overwhelmed
it, and even if unsuccessful it would still have deserved an honorable
mention in history. But it is too evident that the confederate nobles,
whether directly or indirectly, took a greater share in the frantic
excesses of the Iconoclasts than comported with the dignity and
blamelessness of their confederation, and many among them openly
exchanged their own good cause for the mad enterprise of these worthless
vagabonds. The restriction of the Inquisition and a mitigation of the
cruel inhumanity of the edicts must be laid to the credit of the league;
but this transient relief was dearly purchased, at the cost of so many
of the best and bravest citizens, who either lost their lives in the
field, or in exile carried their wealth and industry to another quarter
of the world; and of the presence of Alva and the Spanish arms. Many,
too, of its peaceable citizens, who without its dangerous temptations
would never have been seduced from the ranks of peace and order, were
beguiled by the hope of success into the most culpable enterprises, and
by their failure plunged into ruin and misery. But it cannot be denied
that the league atoned in some measure for these wrongs by positive
benefits. It brought together and emboldened many whom a selfish
pusillanimity kept asunder and inactive; it diffused a salutary public
spirit amongst the Belgian people, which the oppression of the
government had almost entirely extinguished, and gave unanimity and a
common voice to the scattered members of the nation, the absence of
which alone makes despots bold. The attempt, indeed, failed, and the
knots, too carelessly tied, were quickly unloosed; but it was through
such failures that the nation was eventually to attain to a firm and
lasting union, which should bid defiance to change.
The total destruction of the Geusen army quickly brought the Dutch towns
also back to their obedience, and in the provinces there remained not a
single place which had not submitted to the regent; but the increasing
emigration, both of the natives and the foreign residents, threatened
the country with depopulation. In Amsterdam the crowd of fugitives was
so great that vessels were wanting to convey them across the North Sea
and the Zuyderzee, and that flourishing emporium beheld with dismay the
approaching downfall of its prosperity. Alarmed at this general flight,
the regent hastened to write letters to all the towns, to encourage the
citizens to remain, and by fair promises to revive a hope of better and
milder measures. In the king's name she promised to all who would
freely swear to obey the state and the church complete indemnity, and by
public proclamation invited the fugitives to trust to the royal clemency
and return to their homes. She engaged also to relieve the nation from
the dreaded presence of a Spanish army, even if it were already on the
frontiers; nay, she went so far as to drop hints that, if necessary,
means might be found to prevent it by force from entering the provinces,
as she was fully determined not to relinquish to another the glory of a
peace which it had cost her so much labor to effect. Few, however,
returned in reliance upon her word, and these few had cause to repent it
in the sequel; many thousands had already quitted the country, and
several thousands more quickly followed them. Germany and England were
filled with Flemish emigrants, who, wherever they settled, retained
their usages and manners, and even their costume, unwilling to come to
the painful conclusion that they should never again see their native
land, and to give up all hopes of return. Few carried with them any
remains of their former affluence; the greater portion had to beg their
way, and bestowed on their adopted country nothing but industrious skill
and honest citizens.
And now the regent hastened to report to the king tidings such as,
during her whole administration, she had never before been able to
gratify him with. She announced to him that she had succeeded in
restoring quiet throughout the provinces, and that she thought herself
strong enough to maintain it. The sects were extirpated, and the Roman
Catholic worship re-established in all its former splendor; the rebels
had either already met with, or were awaiting in prison, the punishment
they deserved; the towns were secured by adequate garrisons. There was
therefore no necessity for sending Spanish troops into the Netherlands,
and nothing to justify their entrance. Their arrival would tend to
destroy the existing repose, which it had cost so much to establish,
would check the much-desired revival of commerce and trade, and, while
it would involve the country in new expenses, would at the same time
deprive them of the only means of supporting them. The mere rumor of
the approach of a Spanish army had stripped the country of many
thousands of its most valuable citizens; its actual appearance would
reduce it to a desert. As there was no longer any enemy to subdue, or
rebellion to suppress, the people would see no motive for the march of
this army but punishment and revenge, and under this supposition its
arrival would neither be welcomed nor honored. No longer excused by
necessity, this violent expedient would assume the odious aspect of
oppression, would exasperate the national mind afresh, drive the
Protestants to desperation, and arm their brethren in other countries in
their defence. The regent, she said, had in the king's name promised
the nation it should be relieved from this foreign army, and to this
stipulation she was principally indebted for the present peace; she
could not therefore guarantee its long continuance if her pledge was not
faithfully fulfilled. The Netherlands would receive him as their
sovereign, the king, with every mark of attachment and veneration, but
he must come as a father to bless, not as a despot to chastise them.
Let him come to enjoy the peace which she had bestowed on the country,
but not to destroy it afresh.