^l*,j',l^l^ " CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND GIVEN IN 1 89 1 BY HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE Date Due ftiH» » ^ .-'I HP*? f> H "SW^ MAY 1 i KiiY yttra J^flfiO til » >>^ ..- £h ^AJSSS ifr» DEC, 7 1970 J i- .JAW-n mvi'i^- rj MAY Z- «^«? • ^ JUW" (^s?^ 3 1924 071 186 377 Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924071186377 ] I __, ! i i ^ift (Bamplste Wotka of VOLUME I Sllfp Star at llj? iutrtf HS^jmblir A i^iatnrg Vol. I Vitta fork '\ Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight hundred and fifty-five, by John Lothbop Motley, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. Copyright, 1883, 1900, hy Elizabeth Cabot Vbbnon Hakcourt, Mart Lothrop Sheridaw, Susan Margaret Stackpole Mildmay. Y A7VV This Edition limited to i,ooo sets No JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY The position of Motley in tlie world of letters is unique. He was the first American historian to teU the story of a foreign country with such fullness of research, with such scholarly ability, and with such wide general accep- tance, that his work at once became a classic. Prescott, Ticknor, and Irving had indeed preceded him, and with the supposed advantage of writing upon more romantic and fascinating subjects, because dealing with the older and southern Europe. Yet Motley showed that not only could the glory of romance enhalo even a little northern country wrapped in fog and cloud, but that the actual facts when set in sober narrative made a story more wonderful than that of Spain, while vastly more morally beautiful and more helpful to the lover of liberty. He pictured the drama of the Netherlands' struggle for liberty as no other writer had done before him or is likely to do after him. As Busken Huet has written. Motley succeeded, where even Schiller had failed, in making the story of Dutch liberty interesting. Richly dowered by nature and inheritance. Motley's life spanned the course of years from 1814 to 1877. On viii JOHN LOTHEOP MOTLEY his father's side descended from nonconformist and Irish, and on his mother's from English, ancestry, he was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on April 15, 1814. The delicacy of his physical organization, which in after life manifested itself in extreme refinement of manner and beauty of countenance, made him more fond of study than of rough outdoor sports. From childhood he de- lighted in reading the works of romancers, novelists, and poets. As early as eleven he had planned a novel. Pre- pared in the schools of Boston, at thirteen he entered Harvard CoUege. There he won the admiration of professors and students for his many fine qualities. His facility in EngUsh composition and the mastery of languages was noteworthy. After graduation he visited Europe, devoting a year to travel and reading. Re- turning home, he began the study of law. Married at twenty-three to Miss Mary Benjamin, daughter of Park Benjamin,, he found an accomplished helpmeet. With domestic happiness and inherited wealth, it was not won- derful that Motley should follow his innate tastes rather than persevere against nature in attempts to adorn either the jurisprudence or the legislative annals of Massachu- setts. It did not surprise his friends when they learned that he was engaged upon a novel, " Morton's Hope." Motley was then a young man of but twenty-five, full of aspiration and promise, though his powers were as yet chaotic and unregulated. Intellectually gorged with the undigested results of miscellaneous reading, he was JOHN LOTHEOP MOTLEY ix not yet able, possibly not persevering enough, to produce an enduring work of art. " Morton's Hope " is absurd as a story and unreadable as a book. In its general mass it reminds one rather of a crucible of steel bub- bling over with the slag as yet unhammered and un- purified out of it, rather than the product that has issued from the converter and passed under the trip-hammer and the lathe. There is no cohesion in the plot, no de- velopment of character. Even the unities of time and place are outraged. Yet this novel, so called, is a self- revelation of the writer. Reading the work in the light of his triumph of disciplined powers, one can see that under the mask of the hero is Motley himself. The appointment of secretary to the American lega- tion in St. Petersburg was offered to Motley in the autumn of 1841. He accepted, but being alone, this young husband and father was too homesick to remain longer than a few wintry months. He studied this half-way house between Asia and Europe, and enjoyed the gorgeous splendors of a court at which the Oriental semibarbarism meets modern Christendom. He became especially fascinated with the story of the life and work of Russia's great civUizer, Czar Peter. The task of shaping the career of a young and robust nation, while adapting the forms of an older civilization to a new and untamed country, must ever be of intrinsic interest to Americans, and Motley was American to the core. In his first serious effort in historical composition he X JOHN LOTHEOP MOTLEY treated of Peter the Great, in an elaborate article in the " North American Review " of October, 1845. To the student of Motley, the man of letters, this essay is of extreme interest, for in a double sense it reveals and foreshadows the future historian of the Dutch Ee- publie. It suggests, if it does not teU exactly, why he took the Netherlands for his life-theme. With thorough command of his subject, brilliancy of coloring, power of dramatic arrangement, skiU in startling antitheses, swiftness in penetrating the designs of leading actors in a great drama, and delicacy in discriminating and portraying their characteristics. Motley frames a superb historical painting in prose and tells an entrancing story. It is highly probable that Motley's experiences in St. Petersburg gave him his supreme subject and his future task. Living as he did in the Russia which "Baas Pieter " had done so much to mold, so keen an observer could not fail to note how greatly little Holland had been the tutor and helper of the Muscovite empire. In- deed, the assistance which Holland gave to Russia in her national renovation and alliance of interests with civi- lized Europe may be likened to, and finds a parallel in, the work which Americans have done in Japan in our own century. In or near St. Petersburg there was a settlement of Dutchmen who wrought in Russia, which was named after their own home. Not a few of Peter's best helpers were Hollanders, and to this day many of JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY xi the terms of command and the points, places, and things useful in a ship are Dutch. It is certain that about this time (1846) Motley began seriously to collect materials for a history of the Nether- lands. Meantime, as Dr. Holmes— as yet his only biog- rapher—says, Motley was " studying history for its facts and principles, and fiction for its scenery and portraits." In two other essays in the "North American Review" he showed how highly he appreciated Balzac. In an- other he reviewed with appreciative sympathy the policy of the Puritans in America. Mr. Motley served one year faithfully, but not very effectively, as a member of the Massachusetts legislature. The bill which he brought in to reform education in Mas- sachusetts was hopelessly beaten. Na,ture seemed, by dooming him to failure there, to be only showing him the one road which he was to travel. On the other hand. Motley's literary ambition was greatly stimulated by the warm praises of his essay on Peter the Great. Thereupon he ventured upon the pub- lication of a novel which he had written several years before. Fascinated with the early annals and local lore of Plymouth and the Pilgrims, Motley had put together a certain number of thousands of words into a novel called " Merry Mount." Yet although this story in its structure was a vast improvement upon his first venture, almost as much so as in the Japanese theory of evolution those gods having form and sex show improvement over xii JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY masses of warm and moving mud, it showed very clearly that Motley was not to rank high as a romancer. His descriptive powers were uncommonly fine, but it seemed utterly beyond his power to originate or develop char- acter, to create events, or to imagine circumstances. He was stiU exuberantly and chaotically what he always remained, even when order and splendor were his char- acteristics—a colorist rather than a draftsman. From first to last Motley is a maker of pictures. What he needed was something tangible and solid to hang his pictures upon. Nevertheless, this novel showed such unquestionable signs of promise and power that the reviewers gave it kindly notice and detailed attention. They further in- vited him to meet them again on the " half -historical ground" which he had chosen. Certainly fame was beckoning him on. At any rate, Motley kept on collecting his materials for a history of Holland, in which his friend Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes— himself a descendant of Dutchmen in Europe, and of Schenectady and Kensselaer- wyck deacons in New Netherland— encouraged him. Yet having made his plans to write of one of the small- est while one of the greatest nations of Europe, and one which, after England, had the most to do in the making of the American republic, we can imagine with what a sense first of hunger and then of disgust Motley must have investigated and exhausted the libraries of Boston and Cambridge and the region adjacent, then JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY xiii and until recently notorious for their poverty as to- Dutch books and literature. His passionate love of the truth drove him to the fountains, yes, even into the un- explored recesses of the wilderness of parchment and paper, of dust and neglect, where, like dry bones, lay the material which he was to summon forth to take on a life of glory and of beauty. What was there akeady in the field before Motley wrote ? We name, of course, the old folios— ponderous black-lettered tomes bound in pigskin, weighing, many of them, ten to fifteen pounds apiece— of Meteren, Bor, Hoofd, Boudart, besides Wagenaer's serried array of volumes, nearly fourscore in number (counting text and additions). These, however, were in Dutch, which, not to the discredit of the average man of culture perhaps, but certainly to the man professing to be a historian of American origins, was as little known in New England as Japanese. Even among the Dutch themselves there were few modern monographs on the history of their own country. It may be safely said that the modem revival of Dutch historical writing, which has been such a marked feature of the recent literary movement in the Netherlands, was in very gi-eat part due to the stimulus given by Motley's labors. The Germans had done little, except SchDler, whose work is at best a crude sketch and confessedly uninteresting. One need not forget that Grattan, the Irish novelist, had in 1830, twenty years be- fore, penned the histoiy of the Netherlands. His duU xiv JOHN LOTHEOP MOTLEY and thoroughly uninteresting story, reprinted in Phila- delphia in 1831, is a compilation rather than an original work, affording Motley a warning. Mr. C. M. Davies, a gentleman of Welsh extraction, who had made himself thoroughly conversant with Dutch, Flemish, and Frisian, and had spent several years upon his congenial task, pub- lished in 1841 his first and in 1851 his second and third volume of his "History of Holland." Excellent as is Da,vies's work in judicial breadth of mind, and irritating as some of his truthful revelations must have been to his British countrymen, there is no comparison to be made between Davies and Motley, whether for philo- sophic insight, breadth of view, thoroughness of exami- nation of authorities, or beauty and splendor of diction. It wiU be seen that Motley had almost a virgin field before him, while it is doubtful whether any modern historian since Gibbon had, before his time and example, gone so thoroughly into origiaal research, so utilized the treasures of archives, or made such long and detailed preparations. Fortunately, having wealth at his back to carry out his plans. Motley left America with his family and spent several years in Europe. He gave most of his time to the archives in Berlin, Dresden, Brussels, and The Hague, recreating for himself out of their own recdrds the characters of the men who had once moved as living figures in the streets of the Netherlands. During these years Motley had, except in the joys of JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY XV home and family, few recreations. He beguiled his hours of leisure with fiction. He fed his soul with art. In the land of Rubens he reveled in the splendid color- ing of the grand Fleming. In the land of Rembrandt he enjoyed the might and mirth, the truth and glory, of the Netherlandish painters, taking many a hint for his pen both from the brush of the king of the colorists and from the sovereign tamer of light and shadow. The literary methods of Motley — clear statements followed by rhetorical amplification and embellishment, Rem- brandt-like antitheses which arrayed against each other glory and gloom, sunshine and darkness, the fine Umning and illumination of his portraits, the artistic attention to minute details— seem, if not borrowed, certainly stimulated to their best expression by Rubens, Rem- brandt, Frans Hals, the matchless portrait-painter, Teniers, Ostade, and Jan Steen, the leaders of the world in genre. Calculating that from the time of writing his first historical work, the essay on Peter the Great, with its contact with Dutch themes. Motley was collecting material, making his studies, and shaping the design or composing the chapters, his great work occupied him during ten years. His " Rise of the Dutch Republic " appeared in London and New York in 1856. In England the welcome from the nonconformist press was instant and warm, while the Tory papers and those that repre- sent that England which Americans find hard to love XVi JOHN LOTHEOP MOTLEY were, as Motley said, decidedly disagreeable. Tlie re- view which set the tone for later English criticism was from the pen of Mr. J. A. Fronde. He declared this story of the first twenty years of the revolt of the United Prov- inces to be "a history as complete as industry and genius can make it. In power of dramatic description no modern historian except Mr. Carlyle surpasses him, and in analysis of character he is elaborate and distinct. His place will be at once conceded to him among the first historians in our common language." The wide reading of Motley's "Rise of the Dutch Republic" and his subsequent historical works on the same general theme is shown by the fact that his works are now found in nearly every library of importance, whether public or private. On the Continent the book was quickly translated into Dutch, German, French, and Russian. In Holland Bak- huyzen van den Brink, the Dutch archivist and scholar, translated the work, furnishing an introduction and an abundance of luminous and helpful notes. He thus gave the narrative a dress which, especially in the Dutch forms of the proper names, was delightful to the eyes of all natives of Patria. Edition after edition of this translation has been read, while many thousand Dutchmen have read the work in the original English, not a few, as I have been credibly informed, learning our tongue for the express purpose of reading Motley at first-hand. In America, Motley's friends and literary JOHN LOTHEOP MOTLEY xvii men broke out in one great chorus of approval. The sincerest form of flattery has been shown abundantly in later years by numerous writers and orators, who, find- ing Motley's books a mine of information, and not going to the original authorities, copy both his statements and style, besides taking his general view and his coloring of events. Motley's name was once for aU enrolled among the names of the great writers of history. Motley's literary triumph made him a citizen of the world. He returned to America, living in Boston during the winter of 1856-57, but went back to " our old home " in 1858, finding the doors of English society open to him. He entered that society with the ease, grace, and power of the cultivated American, appreciating also, as the cul- tivated American invariably does, the warmth of true English hearts. He was an active patriot during our Civil War. In later years he was minister of the United States to Austria and Great Britain. " The Rise of the Dutch Republic " was only the portico of a larger temple of history of which Motley hoped to be the builder. A letter written March 4, 1869, from Rome, reveals his plan of devoting stiU other volumes to the epoch of Independence Achieved, from the death of WUliam the Silent to the twelve years' truce (1586-1609) ; and another set to the third epoch, Independence Rec- ognized, from the twelve years' truce to the peace of Westphalia (1609-48). Comparing this plan with the work actually accom- xviii JOHN LOTHBOP MOTLEY plished, it will be seen that Motley, like so many other earnest scholars who find that life is short, while art is long, left only part of the finished building. In after years, the history of which we need not detail, he accom- plished only the writing of the four volumes devoted to the " History of the United Netherlands," thus finishing his treatment of the two epochs. Into the third he really never entered, for after issuing the four volumes on the " History of the United Netherlands " he turned aside to picture that long confiict of principles between state sovereignty and national supremacy, and that protracted duel between the two men who incarnated these ideas, the aristocratic burgher John of Barneveldt and the man of the people. Prince Maurice. The entire period of Dutch history covered in detail by Motley is that from the abdication of Charles V., in 1555, to the death of Barneveldt, in 1619. Motley died near Dorchester, England, on May 29, 1877, and was buried at Kensal Green Cemetery, Lon- don. Through painting, picture, and marble bust, his features have become familiar to the American people, and his name is honored on both sides of the sea. Rev. William Elliot Geipfis. CONTENTS PASE Preface xxv HisTOEiOAL Introduction 1 Part I PttttiTP the Second nsr the Netherlands, 1555-1559 Chapter I. — Abdication of Charles resolved upon — Brussels In the sixteenth century— Hall of the palace described- Portraits of prominent individuals present at the ceremony — Formalities of the abdication- Universal emotion— Re- marks upon the character and career of Charles — His retirement at Yuste 119 Chapter II.— Sketch of Philip II.— Characteristics of Mary Tudor — Portrait of Philip— His council- Eivalry of Euy Gomez and Alva— Character of Ruy Gomez — Queen Mary of Hungary— Sketch of Philibert of Savoy— Truce of Vau- celles— Secret treaty between the pope and Henry H.— Eejoieings in the Netherlands on account of the peace- Purposes of Philip— Eeenaetment of the edict of 1550— The king's dissimulation— "Request" to the provinces— Infrac- tion of the truce in Italy— Character of Pope Paul IV. — In- trigues of Cardinal Caraffa- War against Spain resolved upon by Prance — Campaign in Italy — Amicable siege of Rome — Peace with the pontiff— Hostilities on the Flemish border— Coligny foiled at Douai— 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.-Quentiu —Attempts of the constable to relieve the city— Battle of Y1T XX CONTENTS PAOE 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 Arras— Secret combinations for a league between France and Spain against heresy— Languid move- ments of Guise— Foray of De Thermes on the Flemish fron- tier—Battle of Graveliues— Popularity of Egmont— Enmity of Alva 166 Chapter HI. — Secret negotiations for peace —Two fresh armies assembled, but inactive- Negotiations at Cercamp— Death of Mary Tudor — Treaty of Cateau-Cambr6sis— Death of Henry II.— Policy of Catherine de' Medici— Revelations by Henry II. to the Prince of Orange— Funeral of Charles V. in Brussels— Universal joy in the Netherlands at the resto- ration of peace- Organization of the government by Philip, and preparations for his departure — Appointment of Mar- garet of Parma as regent of the Netherlands— Three councils- The consulta— The stadholders of the different provinces — Dissatisfaction caused by the foreign troops- Assembly of the estates at Ghent to receive the parting instructions and farewell of the king— Speech of the Bishop of Arras— Request for three millions— Fierce denunciation of heresy on the part of Philip— Strenuous enforcement of the edicts commanded— Reply by the states of Artois— Unexpected conditions— Rage of the king— Similar conduct on the part of the other provinces— Remonstrance in the name of the States-General against the foreign soldiery- Formal reply on the part of the crown— Departure of the king from the Netherlands— Autos da fe in Spain .... 247 Part II Administration of the Duchess Margaret, 1559-1567 Chapter I.— Biographical sketch and portrait of Margaret of Parma— The state council— Berlaymont— Viglius— Sketch of William the Silent— Portrait of Anthony Perrenot, after- CONTENTS xxi PAGE ■ward Cardinal Gran velle— General view of the political, social, and religious condition of the Netherlands— Habits of the aristocracy— Emulation in extravagance— Pecuniary embarrassments- Sympathy for the Eeformation, steadily increasing among the people, the true cause of the impend- ing revolt— Measures of the government— Edict of 1550 described— Papal bulls granted to Philip for increasing the number of bishops in the Netherlands— Necessity for retaining the Spanish troops to enforce the policy of perse- cution 279 Chapter II.- Agitation in the Netherlands— The ancient charters resorted to as barriers against the measures of gov- ernment— "Joyous entrance" of Brabant— Constitution of Holland— Growing unpopularity of Anthony Perrenot, Arch- bishop of Mechlin— Opposition to the new bishoprics by Orange, Egmont, and other influential nobles— Fury of the people at the continued presence of the foreign soldiery — Orange resigns the command of the legion— The troops recalled— Philip's personal attention to the details of perse- cution — Perrenot becomes Cardinal de Granvelle— All the power of government in his hands— His increasing un- popularity-Animosity and violence of Egmont toward the cardinal— Eelations between Orange and Granvelle— An- cient friendship gradually changing to enmity— Renewal of the magistracy at Antwerp— Quarrel between the prince and cardinal — Joint letter of Orange and Egmont to the king — Answer of the king — Indignation of PhUip against Count Horn— Secret correspondence between the king and cardinal— Bemonstrances against the new bishopries — Philip's private financial statements— Penury of the ex- chequer in Spain and in the provinces— Plan for debasing the coin— Marriage of "William the Silent with the Princess of Lorraine circumvented— Negotiations for his matrimonial alliance with Princess Anna of Saxony- Correspondence be- tween Granvelle and Philip upon the subject— Opposition of Landgrave Philip and of Philip H. —Character and conduct of Elector Augustus— Mission of Count Schwarzburg- Com- munications of Orange to the king and to Duchess Margaret — Characteristic letter of Philip— Artful conduct of Gran- xxii CONTENTS PASS velle and of the regent— Visit of Orange to Dresden— Pro- posed "note" of Elector Augustus— Refusal of tlie prince —Protest of the landgrave against the marriage— Prepara- tions for the wedding at Leipsic— Notarial instrument drawn up on the marriage day— Wedding ceremonies and festiv- ities—Entrance of Granvelle into Mechlin as archbishop- Compromise in Brabant between the abbeys and bishops . 329 Chaptee III. — The Inquisition the great cause of the revolt — The three varieties of the institution — The Spanish In- quisition described — -The episcopal Inquisition in the Nether- lands — The papal Inquisition established in the provinces by Charles V. — His instructions to the inquisitors — They are renewed by Philip — Inquisitor Titelmann — Instances of his manner of proceeding — Spanish and Netherland inquisitions compared — Conduct of Granvelle — Faveau and Mallart condemned at Valenciennes — " Joum^e des mau- brul6s " — Severe measures at Valenciennes — Attack of the rhetoric clubs upon Granvelle — Granvelle's insinuations against Egmont and Simon Renard — Timidity of VigUus — Universal hatred toward the cardinal — Buffoonery of Brede- rode and Lumey — Courage of Granvelle — Philip taxes the Netherlands for the suppression of the Huguenots in Prance — Meeting of the Knights of the Fleece — Assembly at the house of Orange — ^Demand upon the estates for sup- plies — Montigny appointed envoy to Spain — Open and de- termined opposition to Granvelle — Secret representations by the cardinal to Philip concerning Egmont and other seigniors — Line of conduct traced out for the king — Mon- tigny's representations in Spain — Unsatisfactory result of his mission 393 PREFACE The rise of the Dutch Republic must ever be regarded as one of the leading events of modern times. Without the birth of this great commonwealth, the various his- torical phenomena of the sixteenth and following cen- turies must have either not existed, or have presented themselves under essential modifications. Itself an or- ganized protest against ecclesiastical tyranny and uni- versal empire, the Republic guarded with sagacity, at many critical periods in the world's history, that balance of power which, among civilized states, ought always to be identical with the scales of divine justice. The splendid empire of Charles V. was erected upon the grave of liberty. It is a consolation to those who have hope in humanity to watch, under the reign of his suc- cessor, the gradual but triumphant resurrection of the spirit over which the sepulcher had so long been sealed. From the handbreadth of territoiy called the province of Holland rises a power which wages eighty years' war- fare with the most potent empire upon earth, and which, during the progress of the struggle, becoming itself a mighty state, and binding about its own slender form a XXVI PREFACE zone of the richest possessions of earth, from pole to tropic, finally dictates its decrees to the empire of Charles. So much is each individual state but a member of one great international commonwealth, and so close is the relationship between the whole human family, that it is impossible for a nation, even while struggling for itself, not to acquire something for all mankind. The mainte- nance of the right by the little provinces of Holland and Zealand in the sixteenth, by HoUand and England united in the seventeenth, and by the United States of America in the eighteenth centuries, forms but a single chapter in the great volume of human fate ; for the so- caUed revolutions of Holland, England, and America are all links of one chain. To the Dutch Republic, even more than to Florence at an earlier day, is the world indebted for practical in- struction in that great science of political equilibrium which must always become more and more important as the various states of the civilized world are pressed more closely together, and as the struggle for preeminence becomes more feverish and fatal. Courage and skill in political and military combinations enabled William the SUent to overcome the most powerful and unscrupulous monarch of his age. The same hereditary audacity and fertility of genius placed the destiny of Europe in the hands of William's great-grandson, and enabled him to mold into an impregnable barrier the various elements PREFACE XXVU of opposition to the overshadowing monarchy of Louis XIV. As the schemes of the Inquisition and the unpar- alleled tyranny of Philip, in one century, led to the es- tablishment of the Eepublic of the United Provinces, so, in the next, the revocation of the Nantes Edict and the invasion of Holland are avenged by the elevation of the Dutch stadholder upon the throne of the stipendiary Stuarts. To all who speak the Enghsh language, the history of the great agony through which the Republic of Holland was ushered into life must have peculiar interest, for it is a portion of the records of the Anglo-Saxon race— es- sentially the same, whether in Friesland, England, or Massachusetts. A great naval and commercial commonwealth, occupy- ing a small portion of Europe but conquering a wide empire by the private enterprise of trading companies, girdling the world with its innumerable dependencies in Asia, America, Africa, Australia,— exercising sovereignty in Brazil, Guiana, the West Indies, New York, at the Cape of Good Hope, in Hindustan, Ceylon, Java, Suma- tra, New Holland,— having first laid together, as it were, many of the Cyclopean blocks out of which the British realm, at a later period, has been constructed, must always be looked upon with interest by Englishmen, as in a great measure the precursor in their own scheme of empire. For America the spectacle is one of still deeper import xxviii PEEFACB The Duteli Eepublic originated in the opposition of the rational elements of human nature to sacerdotal dogma- tism and persecution— in the courageous resistance of historical and chartered liberty to foreign despotism. Neither that liberty nor ours was born of the cloud-em- braces of a false Divinity with a Humanity of impos- sible beauty, nor was the infant career of either arrested in blood and tears by the madness of its worshipers. " To maintain," not to overthrow, was the device of the Washington of the sixteenth century, as it was the aim of our own hero and his great contemporaries. The great Western Republic, therefore,— in whose Anglo-Saxon veins flows much of that ancient and kin- dred blood received from the nation once ruling a noble portion of its territory, and tracking its own political existence to the same parent spring of temperate human liberty,— must look with affectionate interest upon the trials of the older commonwealth. These volumes recite the achievement of Dutch independence, for its recog- nition was delayed till the acknowledgment was super- fluous and ridiculous. The existence of the Republic is properly to be dated from the Union of Utrecht in 1581, whUe the final separation of territory into independent and obedient provinces, into the Commonwealth of the United States and the Belgian provinces of Spain, was in reality effected by William the Silent, with whose death, three years subsequently, the heroic period of the history may be said to terminate. At this point these volumes PKEFACB xxix close. Another series, with less attention to minute details, and carrying the story through a longer range of years, wiU paint the progress of the Republic in its palmy days, and narrate the establishment of its exter- nal system of dependencies and its interior combinations for self-government and European counterpoise. The lessons of history and the fate of free states can never be sufficiently pondered by those upon whom so large and heavy a responsibility for the maintenance of rational human freedom rests. I have only to add that this work is the result of con- scientious research, and of an earnest desire to arrive at the truth. I have faithfully studied all the important contemporary chroniclers and later historians— Dutch, Flemish, French, Italian, Spanish, or German. Catholic and Protestant, Monarchist and Republican, have been consulted with the same sincerity. The works of Bor (whose enormous but indispensable folios form a complete magazine of contemporary state papers, letters, and pamphlets, blended together in mass, and connected by a chain of artless but earnest narrative), of Meteren, De Thou, Burgundius, Heuterus, Tassis, Viglius, Hoofd, Haraeus, Van der Haer, Grotius, of Van der Vynekt, Wagenaer, Van Wyn, De Jonghe, Kluit, Van Kampen, Dewez, KappeUe, Bakhuyzen, Groen van Prinsterer, of Ranke and Raumer, have been as familiar to me as those of Mendoza, Carnero, Cabrera, Herrera, Ulloa, Ben- tivoglio, Perez, Strada. The manuscript relations of XXX PREFACE those Argus-eyed Venetian envoys who surprised so many courts and cabinets in their most unguarded mo- ments, and daguerreotyped their character and policy for the instruction of the crafty republic, and whose re- ports remain such an inestimable source for the secret history of the sixteenth century, have been carefully examined, especially the narratives of the caustic and accomplished Badovaro, of Suriano and Michele. It is unnecessary to add that aU the publications of M. Gachard, particularly the invaluable correspondence of Philip II. and of William the Silent, as well as the " Archives et Correspondance " of the Orange Nassau family, edited by the learned and distinguished Groen van Prinsterer, have been my constant guides through the tortuous labyrinth of Spanish and Netherland politics. The large and most interesting series of pamphlets known as " The Duncan Collection," in the Royal Library at The Hague, has also afforded a great variety of details by which I have en- deavored to give color and interest to the narrative. Besides these and many other printed works, I have also had the advantage of perusing many manuscript his- tories, among which may be particularly mentioned the works of Pontus Payen, of Renom de France, and of Pasquier de la Barre ; while the vast collection of unpub- lished documents in the Royal Archives of The Hague, of Brussels, and of Dresden has furnished me with much new matter of great importance. I venture to hope that many years of labor, a portion of them in the archives PREFACE XXXI of those countries whose history forms the object of my study, will not have been entirely in vain ; and that the lovers of human progress, the believers in the capacity of nations for self-government and self -improvement, and the admirers of disinterested human genius and virtue, may find encouragement for their views in the detailed history of an heroic people in its most eventful period, and in the Uf e and death of the great man whose name and fame are identical with those of his country. No apology is offered for this somewhat personal state- ment. When an unknown writer asks the attention of the public upon an important theme, he is not only authorized, but required, to show that by industry and earnestness he has entitled himself to a hearing. The author too keenly feels that he has no further claims than these, and he therefore most diffidently asks for his work the indulgence of his readers. I would take this opportunity of expressing my grati- tude to Dr. Klemm, Hofrath and Chief Librarian at Dresden, and to Mr. Von "Weber, MinisteriaJrath and Head of the Royal Archives of Saxony, for the courtesy and kindness extended to me so uniformly during the course of my researches in that city. I would also speak a word of sincere thanks to Mr. Campbell, Assistant Librarian at The Hague, for his numerous acts of friend- ship during the absence of his chief, M. Holtrop. To that most distinguished critic and historian, M. Bakhuy- zen van den Brinck, Chief Archivist of the Netherlands, XXXU PREFACE I am under deep obligations for advice, instruction, and constant kindness during my residence at The Hague ; and I would also signify my sense of the courtesy of Mr. Charter-Master de Schwane, and of the accuracy with which copies of MSS. in the archives were prepared for me by his care. Finally, I would allude in the strongest language of gratitude and respect to M. Gachard, Archi- vist-General of Belgium, for his unwearied courtesy and manifold acts of kindness to me during my studies in the Royal Archives of Brussels. THE EISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC HISTORICAL INTEODUCTION THE northwestern corner of the vast plain which extends from the German Ocean to the Ural Moun- tains is occupied by the countries called the Netherlands. This small triangle, inclosed between France, Germany and the sea, is divided by the modern kingdoms of Bel- gium and Holland into two nearly equal portions. Our earliest information concerning this territory is derived from the Romans. The wars waged by that nation with the northern barbarians have rescued the damp island of Batavia, with its neighboring morasses, from the obscu- rity in which they might have remained for ages, before anything concerning land or people would have been made known by the native inhabitants. Julius Csesar has saved from oblivion the heroic savages who fought against his legions in defense of their dismal homes with ferocious but unfortunate patriotism ; and the great poet of England, learning from the conqueror's Commenta- ries the name of the boldest tribe, has kept the Nervii, VOL. I.— 1 I 2 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC after almost twenty centuries, still fresh and familiar in our ears. Tacitus, too, has described with singular minuteness the struggle between the people of these regions and the power of Rome, overwhelming, although tottering to its fall ; and has, moreover, devoted several chapters of his work upon Germany to a description of the most re- markable Teutonic tribes of the Netherlands. Geographically and ethno graphically, the Low Coun- tries belong both to Gaul and to Germany. It is even doubtful to which of the two the Batavian island, which is the core of the whole country, was reckoned by the Romans. It is, however, most probable that all the land, with the exception of Friesland, was considered a part of Gaul. Three great rivers— the Rhine, the Meuse, and the Schelde— had deposited their slime for ages among the dunes and sand-banks heaved up by the ocean around their mouths. A delta was thus formed, habitable at last for man. It was by nature a wide morass, in which oozy islands and savage forests were interspersed among lagoons and shallows ; a district lying partly below the level of the ocean at its higher tides, subject to constant overflow from the rivers, and to frequent and terrible inundations by the sea. The Rhine, leaving at last the regions where its storied lapse, through so many ages, has been consecrated alike by nature and art, by poetry and eventful truth, flows reluctantly through the basalt portal of the Seven Moun- tains into the open fields which extend to the German Sea. After entering this vast meadow, the stream divides itself into two branches, becoming thus the two-horned Rhine of Virgil, and holds in these two arms the island of Batavia, THE TEERITOEY 3 The Meuse, taking its rise in the Vosges, pours itself through the Ardennes wood, pierces the rooky ridges upon the southeastern frontier of the Low Countries, receives the Sambre in the midst of that picturesque anthracite basin where now stands the city of Namur, and then moves toward the north, through nearly the whole length of the country, till it mingles its waters with the Rhine. The Schelde, almost exclusively a Belgian river, after leaving its fountains in Picardy, flows through the pres- ent provinces of Flanders and Hainault. In Ctesar's time it was suffocated before reaching the sea in quick- sands and thickets, which long afforded protection to the savage inhabitants against the Roman arms, and which the slow process of nature and the untiring industry of man have since converted into the archipelago of Zea- land and South Holland. These islands were unknown to the Romans. Such were the rivers which, with their numerous tributaries, coursed through the spongy land. Their frequent overflow, when forced back upon their currents by the stormy sea, rendered the country almost unin- habitable. Here, within a half-submerged territory, a race of wretched ichthyophagi dwelt upon terpen, or mounds, which they had raised, like beavers, above the almost fluid soil. Here, at a later day, the same race chained the tyrant Ocean and his mighty streams into subserviency, forcing them to fertilize, to render com- modious, to cover with a beneficent network of veins and arteries, and to bind by watery highways with the far- thest ends of the world, a country disinherited by na- ture of its rights. A region outcast of ocean and earth wrested at last from both domains their richest treasures. 4 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH EEPUBLIC A race engaged for generations in stubborn conflict witli the angry elements was unconsciously educating itself for its great struggle with the stiU more savage despo- tism of man. The whole territory of the Netherlands was girt with forests. An extensive belt of woodland skirted the sea- coast, reaching beyond the mouths of the Khine. Along the outer edge of this barrier, the dunes cast up by the sea were prevented by the close tangle of thickets from drifting farther inward, and thus formed a breastwork which time and art were to strengthen. The groves of Haarlem and The Hague are relics of this ancient forest. The Badahuenna wood, horrid with Druidic sacrifices, extended along the eastern line of the vanished lake of Flevo. The vast Hercynian forest, nine days' journey in breadth, closed in the country on the German side, stretching from the banks of the Rhine to the remote regions of the Dacians, in such vague immensity (says the conqueror of the whole country) that no German, after traveling sixty days, had ever reached, or even heard of, its commencement. On the south, the famous groves of Ardennes, haunted by faun and satjT, embow- ered the country, and separated it from Celtic Gaul. Thus inundated by mighty rivers, quaking beneath the level of the ocean, belted about by hirsute forests, this low land, nether land, hollow land, or Holland, seemed hardly deserving the arms of the all-accomplished Roman. Yet foreign tyranny, from the earliest ages, has coveted this meager territory as lustfully as it has sought to wrest from their native possessors those lands with the fatal gift of beauty for their dower ; while the genius of liberty has inspired as noble a resistance to oppression here as it ever aroused in Grecian or Italian breasts. THE EARLY INHABITANTS II It can never be satisfactorily ascertained who were the aboriginal inhabitants. The record does not reach be- yond Caesar's epoch, and he found the territory on the left of the Rhine mainly tenanted by tribes of the Celtic family. That large division of the Indo-European group which had already overspread many portions of Asia Minor, Greece, Germany, the British Islands, France, and Spain, had been long settled in Belgic Gaul, and constituted the bulk of its population. Checked in its westward movement by the Atlantic, its current began to flow backward toward its fountains, so that the GaUic portion of the Netherland population was derived from the original race in its earlier wanderings and from the later and refluent tide coming out of Celtic Gaul. The modern appellation of the Walloons points to the afOnity of their ancestors with the Gallic, "Welsh, and Gaelic family. The Belgss were in many respects a superior race to most of their blood-allies. They were, according to Ctesar's testimony, the bravest of aU the Celts. This may be in part attributed to the presence of several German tribes, who at this period had already forced their way across the Rhine, mingled their qualities with the Belgic material, and lent an additional mettle to the Celtic blood. The heart of the country was thus inhabited by a Gallic race, but the frontiers had been taken possession of by Teutonic tribes. When the Cimbri and their associates, about a century before our era, made their memorable onslaught upon Rome, the early inhabitants of the Rhine island of Bata- via, who were probably Celts, joined in the expedition. 6 THE RISE OP THE DUTCH EEPUBLIC A recent and tremendous inundation had swept away their miserable homes, and even the trees of the forests, and had thus rendered them stUl more dissatisfied with their gloomy ahodes. The island was deserted of its population. At about the same period a civil dissension among the Chatti— a powerful German race within the Hercynian forest— resulted in the expatriation of a por- tion of the people. The exiles sought a new home iu the empty Rhine island, called it Bet-auw, or "good- meadow," and were themselves called, thenceforward, Batavi, or Batavians. These Batavians, according to Tacitus, were the brav- est of all the Germans. The Chatti, of whom they formed a portion, were a preeminently warlike race. " Others go to battle," says the historian ; " these go to war." Their bodies were more hardy, their minds more vigorous, than those of other tribes. Their young men cut neither hair nor beard till they had slain an enemy. On the field of battle, in the midst of carnage and plun- der, they, for the first time, bared their faces. The cowardly and sluggish only remained unshorn. They wore an iron ring, too, or shackle upon their necks until they had performed the same achievement, a symbol which they then threw away, as the emblem of sloth. The Batavians were ever spoken of by the Romans with entire respect. They conquered the Belgians, they forced the free Frisians to pay tribute, but they called the Batavians their friends. The tax-gatherer never invaded their island. Honorable alliance united them with the Romans. It was, however, the alliance of the giant and the dwarf. The Roman gained glory and empire, the Batavia,n gained nothing but the hardest blows. The Batavian cavalry became famous through- TWO RACES CONTEASTED 7 out the Republic and the Empire. They were the fa- vorite troops of Caesar, and with reason, for it was their valor which turned the tide of battle at Pharsalia. From the death of Julius down to the times of Ves- pasian, the Batavian legion was the imperial body- guard, the Batavian island the basis of operations in the Roman wars with Gaul, Germany, and Britain. Beyond the Batavians, upon the north, dwelt the great Frisian family, occupying the regions between the Rhine and Ems. The Zuyder Zee and the DoUart, both caused by the terrific inundations of the thirteenth cen- tury and not existing at this period, did not then inter- pose boundaries between kindred tribes. AU formed a homogeneous nation of pure German origin. Thus the population of the country was partly Cel- tic, partly German. Of these two elements, dissimilar in their tendencies and always difl&cult to blend, the Netherland people has ever been compounded. A cer- tain fatality of history has perpetually helped to sepa- rate still more widely these constituents,, instead of detecting and stimulating the elective afiinities which existed. Religion, too, upon all gi-eat historical occa- sions, has acted as the most powerful of dissolvents. Otherwise, had so many valuable and contrasted characteristics been early fused into a whole, it would be difi&eult to show a race more richly endowed by nature for dominion and progress than the Belgo- Germanic people. Physically the two races resembled each other. Both were of vast stature. The gigantic Gaul derided the Roman soldiers as a band of pygmies. The German excited astonishment by his huge body and muscular limbs. Both were fair, with fierce blue eyes, but the 8 THE RISE OP THE DUTCH EEPXTBLIC Celt had yellow hair floating over his shoulders, and the German long locks of fiery red, which he even dyed with woad to heighten the favorite color, and wore twisted into a war-knot upon the top of his head. Here the German's love of finery ceased. A simple tunie fastened at his throat with a thorn, while his other garments defined and gave full play to his Hmbs, completed his costume. The Gaul, on the contrary, was so fond of dress that the Romans divided his race respectively into long-haired, breeched, and gowned Gaul {Gallia comata, draccata, togata). He was fond of brilliant and party-colored clothes, a taste which sur- vives in the Highlander's costume. He covered his neck and arms with golden chains. The simple and ferocious German wore no decoration save his iron ring, from which his first homicide relieved him. The Gaul was irascible, furious in his wrath, but less formidable in a sustained conflict with a powerful foe. "All the Gauls are of very high stature," says a soldier who fought under Julian (Amm. Marcel, xv. 12, 1). " They are white, golden-haired, terrible in the fierceness of their eyes, greedy of quarrels, bragging and insolent. A band of strangers could not resist one of them in a brawl, assisted by his strong blue-eyed wife, especially when she begins, gnashing her teeth, her neck swollen, brandishing her vast and snowy arms, and kicking with her heels at the same time, to deliver her fisticuffs, like bolts from the twisted strings of a catapult. The voices of many are threatening and formidable. They are quick to anger, but quickly appeased. All are clean in their persons ; nor among them is ever seen any man or woman, as elsewhere, squalid in ragged garments. At all ages they are apt for military service. The old man CELTIC AND TEUTONIC POLITICS 9 goes forth to the fight with equal strength of breast, with limbs as hardened by cold and assiduous labor, and as contemptuous of all dangers, as the young. Not one of them, as in Italy is often the case, was ever known to cut ofE his thumbs to avoid the service of Mars." The polity of each race differed widely from that of the other. The government of both may be said to have been republican, but the Gallic tribes were aris- tocracies, in which the influence of clanship was a pre- dominant feature; while the German system, although nominally regal, was in reality democratic. In Gaul were two orders, the nobility and the priesthood, while the people, says Caesar, were aU slaves. The knights or nobles were all trained to arms. Each went forth to battle, followed by his dependents, while a chief of aU the clans was appointed to take command during the war. The prince or chief governor was elected annu- ally, but only by the nobles. The people had no rights at all, and were glad to assign themselves as slaves to any noble who was strong enough to protect them. In peace the Druids exercised the main functions of government. They decided all controversies, civil and criminal. To rebel against their decrees was punished by exclusion from the sacrifices— a most terrible excom- munication, through which the criminal was cut off from all intercourse with his fellow-creatures. With the Germans, the sovereignty resided in the great assembly of the people. There were slaves, indeed, but in small number, consisting either of prisoners of war or of those unfortunates who had gambled away their liberty in games of chance. Their chieftains, although called by the Romans princes and kings, were, 10 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH KEPUBLIC in reality, generals, chosen by universal suffrage. Elected in the great assembly to preside in war, they were raised on the shoulders of martial freemen, amid wUd battle-cries and the clash of spear and shield. The army consisted entirely of volunteers, and the soldier was for life infamous who deserted the field while his chief remained alive. The same great assembly elected the village magistrates and decided upon all important matters both of peace and war. At the full of the moon it was usually convoked. The nobles and the popular delegates arrived at irregular intervals, for it was an inconvenience arising from their liberty that two or three days were often lost in waiting for the delinquents. All state affairs were in the hands of this fierce democracy. The elected chief- tains had rather authority to persuade than power to command. The Gauls were an agricultural people. They were not without many arts of life. They had extensive flocks and herds, and they even exported salted provi- sions as far as Rome. The truculent German, Ger- mann, Heer-mann, War-man, considered carnage the only useful occupation, and despised agriculture as en- ervating and ignoble. It was base, in his opinion, to gain by sweat what was more easily acquired by blood. The land was divided annually by the magistrates, certain farms being assigned to certain families, who were forced to leave them at the expiration of the year. They cultivated as a common property the lands allotted by the magistrates, but it was easier to summon them to the battle-field than to the plow. Thus they were more fitted for the roaming and conquering life which Providence was to assign to them for ages than if they RELIGIOUS PRINCIPLES H had become more prone to root themselves in the soil. The Gauls built towns and villages. The German built his solitary hut where inclination prompted. Close neighborhood was not to his taste. In their system of religion the two races were most widely contrasted. The Gauls were a priest-ridden race. Their Druids were a dominant caste, presiding even over civil affairs, while in religious matters their authority was despotic. What were the principles of their wild theology will never be thoroughly ascer- tained, but we know too much of its sanguinary rites. The imagination shudders to penetrate those shaggy forests, ringing with the death-shrieks of ten thousand human victims, and with the hideous h3rmns chanted by smoke-and-blood-stained priests to the savage gods whom they served. The German, in his simplicity, had raised himself to a purer belief than that of the sensuous Roman or the superstitious Gaul. He believed in a single, supreme, almighty God, All-Vater or All-father. This Divinity was too sublime to be incarnated or imaged, too infinite to be inclosed in temples built with hands. Such is the Roman's testimony to the lofty conception of the Ger- man. Certain forests were consecrated to the unseen God whom the eye of reverent faith could alone behold. Thither, at stated times, the people repaired to worship. They entered the sacred grove with feet bound to- gether, in token of submission. Those who fell were forbidden to rise, but dragged themselves backward on the ground. Their rites were few and simple. They had no caste of priests, nor were they, when first known to the Romans, accustomed to offer sacrifice. It must be confessed that in a later age a single victim, a crim- 12 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC inal or a prisoner, was occasionally immolated. The purity of their religion was soon stained by their Celtic neighborhood. In the course of the Roman dominion it became contaminated, and at last profoundly de- praved. The fantastic intermixture of Roman mythol- ogy with the gloomy but modified superstition of Romanized Celts was not favorable to the simple char- acter of German theology. The entire extirpation, thus brought about, of any conceivable system of religion prepared the way for a true revelation. Within that little river territory, amid those obscure morasses of the Rhine and Scheld, three great forms of religion— the sanguinary superstition of the Druid, the sensuous polytheism of the Roman, the elevated but dimly grop- ing creed of the German — stood for centuries face to face, until, having mutually debased and destroyed each other, they all faded away in the pure light of Chris- tianity. Thus contrasted were Gaul and German in religious and political systems. The difference was no less remarkable in their social characteristics. The Gaul was singularly unchaste. The marriage state was almost unknown, Many tribes lived in most revolting and incestuous concubinage, brethren, parents, and children having wives in common. The German was loyal as the Celt was dissolute. Alone among barbari- ans, he contented himself with a single wife, save that a few dignitaries, from motives of policy, were per- mitted a larger number. On the marriage day the German offered presents to his bride— not the bracelets and golden necklaces with which the Gaul adorned his fair-haired concubine, but oxen and a bridled horse, a sword, a shield, and a spear— symbols that thencefor- SOCIAL CHARACTERISTICS 13 ward she was to share his labors and to become a por- tion of himself. They differed, too, in the honors paid to the dead. The funerals of the Gauls were pompous. Both burned the corpse, but the Celt cast into the flames the favor- ite animals and even the most cherished slaves and dependents of the master. Vast monuments of stone or piles of earth were raised above the ashes of the dead. Scattered relics of the Celtic age are yet visi- ble throughout Europe in these huge but unsightly memorials. The German was not ambitious at the grave. He threw neither garments nor odors upon the funeral pyre, but the arms and the war-horse of the departed were burned and buried with him. The turf was his only sepidcher, the memory of his valor his only monu- ment. Even tears were forbidden to the men. "It was esteemed honorable," says the historian, "for wo- men to lament, for men to remember." The parallel need be pursued no further. Thus much it was necessary to reeaU to the historical student con- cerning the prominent characteristics by which the two great races of the land were distinguished— charac- teristics which time has rather hardened than effaced. In the contrast and the separation lies the key to much of their history. Had Providence permitted a fusion of the two races, it is possible, from their position, and from the geographical and historical link which they would have afforded to the dominant tribes of Europe, that a world-empire might have been the result, differ- ent in many respects from any which has ever arisen. Speculations upon what might have been are idle. It is well, however, to ponder the many misfortunes result- 14 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH KEPUBLIC ing from a mutual repulsion, whicli, under other cir- cumstances and in other spheres, has been exchanged for mutual attraction and support. It is now necessary to sketch rapidly the political transformations undergone by the country, from the early period down to the middle of the sixteenth cen- tury, the epoch when the long agony commenced out of which the Batavian Republic was born. Ill The earliest chapter in the history of the Netherlands was written by their conqueror. Celtic G-aul is already in the power of Rome; the Belgic tribes, alarmed at the approaching danger, arm against the universal tyrant. Inflammable, quick to strike, but too fickle to prevail against so powerful a foe, they hastily form a league of almost every clan. At the first blow of Csesar's sword, the frail confederacy falls asunder like a rope of sand. The tribes scatter in aU directions. Nearly all are soon defeated, and sue for mercy. The Nervii, true to the German blood in their veins, swear to die rather than surrender. They, at least, are worthy of their cause. Caesar advances against them at the head of eight legions. Drawn up on the banks of the Sambre, they await the Roman's approach. In three days' march Csesar comes up with them, pitches his camp upon a steep hill sloping down to the river, and sends some cavalry across. Hardly have the Roman horsemen crossed the stream than the Nervii rush from the wooded hilltop, overthrow horse and rider, plunge in one great mass into the current, and, directly afterward, are seen STRUGGLES WITH ROME 15 charging up the hill into the midst of the enemy's force. "At the same moment," says the conqueror, "they seemed in the wood, in the river, and within our lines." There is a panic among the Romans, but it is brief. Eight veteran Roman legions, with the world's victor at their head, are too much for the brave but undisciplined Nervii. Snatching a shield from a soldier, and otherwise unarmed, Caesar throws himself into the hottest of the fight. The battle rages foot to foot and hand to hand ; but the hero's skill, with the cool valor of his troops, proves invincible as ever. The Nervii, true to their vow, die, but not a man surrenders. They fought upon that day till the ground was heaped with their dead, while, as the foremost fell thick and fast, their com- rades, says the Roman, sprang upon their pUed-up bodies, and hurled their javelins at the enemy as from a hill. They fought like men to whom Uf e without liberty was a curse. They were not defeated, but ex- terminated. Of many thousand fighting men went home but five hundred. Upon reaching the place of refuge where they had bestowed their women and children, Csesar found, after the battle, that there were but three of their senators left alive. So perished the Nervii. CsBsar commanded his legions to treat with respect the little remnant of the tribe which had just fallen to swell the empty echo of his glory, and then, ■vvdth hardly a breathing-pause, he proceeded to annihilate the Aduatici, the Menapii, and the Morini. Graul being thus pacified, as, with sublime irony, he expresses himself concerning a country some of whose tribes had been annihilated, some sold as slaves, and others hunted to their lairs like beasts of prey, the conqueror departed for Italy. Legations for peace 16 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH EBPUBLIC from many German races to Rome were the consequence of these great achievements. Among others the Batar vians formed an alliance with the masters of the world. Their position was always an honorable one. They were justly proud of paying no tribute, but it was, perhaps, because they had nothing to pay. They had few cattle, they could give no hides and horns like the Frisians, and they were therefore allowed to furnish only their blood. From this time forth, their cavalry, which was the best of Germany, became renowned in the Roman army upon every battle-field of Europe. It is melancholy, at a later moment, to find the brave Batavians distinguished in the memorable expedition of Germanicus to crush the liberties of their German kindred. They are forever associated with the sublime but misty image of the great Hermann, the hero, edu- cated in Rome, and aware of the colossal power of the empire, who yet, by his genius, valor, and political adroitness, preserved for Germany her nationality, her purer religion, and perhaps even that noble language which her late-flowering literature has rendered so illustrious ; but they are associated as enemies, not as friends. Galba, succeeding to the purple upon the suicide of Nero, dismissed the Batavian life-guards to whom he owed his elevation. He is murdered, Otho and Vitellius contend for the succession, while all eyes are turned upon the eight Batavian regiments. In their hands the scales of empire seem to rest. They declare for Vitel- Hus, and the civU war begins. Otho is defeated, Vitel- lius acknowledged by Senate and people. Fearing, like his predecessors, the imperious turbulence of the Bata- vian legions, he, too, sends them into Germany. It was EEVOLT UNDEE CIVILIS 17 the signal for a long and extensive revolt, whicli had well-nigh overturned the Eoman power in Gaul and Lower Germany. IV Clatjdius Civilis was a Batavian of noble race, who had served twenty -five years in the Roman armies. His Teutonic name has perished, for, like most savages who become denizens of a civilized state, he had assumed an appellation in the tongue of his superiors. He was a soldier of fortune, and had fought wherever the Roman eagles flew. After a quarter of a century's service he was sent in chains to Rome, and his brother executed, both falsely charged with conspiracy. Such were the triumphs adjudged to Batavian auxiliaries. He escaped with Uf e, and was disposed to consecrate what remained of it to a nobler cause. Civilis was no barbarian. Like the German hero Arminius, he had received a Roman education, and had learned the degraded condi- tion of Rome. He knew the infamous vices of her riders ; he retained an unconquerable love for liberty and for his own race. Desire to avenge his own wrongs was mingled with loftier motives in his breast. He knew that the scepter was in the gift of the Batavian soldiery. Galba had been murdered, Otho had destroyed himself, and Vitellius, whose weekly gluttony cost the empire more gold than would have fed the whole Batavian population and converted their whole island-morass into fertile pastures, was contending for the purple with Ves- pasian, once an obscure adventurer like Civilis himself, and even his friend and companion in arms. It seemed a time to etrike a blow for freedom. VOL. I.— 2 18 THE RISE OP THE DUTCH REPUBLIC By his courage, eloquence, aud talent for political combinations, Civilis effected a general confederation of all the Netherland tribes, both Celtic and German. For a brief moment there was a united people, a Batavian commonwealth. He found another source of strength in German superstition. On the banks of the Lippe, near its confluence with the Rhine, dwelt the Virgin VeUeda, a Bructerian weird woman, who exercised vast influence over the warriors of her nation. Dwelling alone in a lofty tower shrouded in a wild forest, she was revered as an oracle. Her answers to the demands of her worshipers concerning future events were delivered only to a chosen few. To Civilis, who had formed a close friendship with her, she promised success and the downfall of the Roman world. Inspired by her prophe- cies, many tribes of Germany sent large subsidies to the Batavian chief. The details of the revolt have been carefully preserved by Tacitus, and form one of his grandest and most elaborate pictures. The spectacle of a brave nation in- spired by the soul of one great man and rising against an overwhelming despotism will always speak to the heart from generation to generation. The battles, the sieges, the defeats, the indomitable spirit of Civilis, stUl flaming most brightly when the clouds were darkest around him, have been described by the great historian in his most powerful manner. The high-bom Roman has thought the noble barbarian's portrait a subject worthy his genius. The struggle was an unsuccessful one. After many victories and many overthrows, Civilis was left alone. The Gallic tribes fell off, and sued for peace. Vespasian, victorious over ViteUius, proved too powerful for his old DEFEAT OF CIVILIS 19 comrade. Even the Batavians became weary of the hopeless contest, while fortune, after much capricious hovering, settled at last upon the Roman side. The imperial commander, Ceriahs, seized the moment when the cause of the Batavian hero was most desperate to send emissaries among his tribe, and even to tamper with the mysterious woman whose prophecies had so inflamed his imagination. These intrigues had their effect. The fidelity of the people was sapped; the prophetess fell away from her worshiper, and foretold ruin to his cause. The Batavians murmured that their destruction was inevitable, that one nation could not arrest the slavery which was destined for the whole world. How large a part of the human race were the Batavians ? What were they in a contest with the whole Roman Empire? Moreover, they were not oppressed with tribute. They were only expected to furnish men and valor to their proud allies. It was the next thing to liberty. If they were to have rulers, it was better to serve a Roman emperor than a German witch. Thus murmured the people. Had Civilis been suc- cessful, he would have been deified ; but his misfortunes at last made him odious in spite of his heroism. But the Batavian was not a man to be crushed, nor had he lived so long in the Roman service to be outmatched in politics by the barbarous Germans. He was not to be sacrificed as a peace-offering to revengeful Rome. "Watching from behind the Rhine the progress of defec- tion and the decay of national enthusiasm, he determined to be beforehand with those who were now his enemies. He accepted the offer of negotiation from Cerialis. The Roman general was eager to grant a full pardon and to reenlist so brave a soldier in the service of the empire. 20 THE KISE OF THE DUTCH EEPUBLIC A colloquy was agreed upon. The bridge across tlie Nabalia was broken asunder in the middle, and Cerialis and Civilis met upon the severed sides. The placid stream by which Roman enterprise had connected the waters of the Rhine with the lake of Flevo flowed between the imperial commander and the rebel chieftain. Here the story abruptly terminates. The remainder of the Roman's narrative is lost, and upon that broken bridge the form of the Batavian hero disappears for- ever. His name fades from history: not a syllable is known of his subsequent career; everything is buried in the profound oblivion which now steals over the scene where he was the most imposing actor. The soul of Civilis had proved insufficient to animate a whole people ; yet it was rather owing to position than to any personal inferiority that his name did not become as illustrious as that of Hermann. The German patriot was neither braver nor wiser than the Batavian, but he had the infinite forests of his fatherland to protect him. Every legion which plunged into those unfathomable depths was forced to retreat disastrously or to perish miserably. Civilis was hemmed in by the ocean ; his country, long the basis of Roman military operations, was accessible by river and canal. The patriotic spirit which he had for a moment raised had abandoned him ; his allies had deserted him ; he stood alone and at bay, encompassed by the hunters, with death or surrender as his only alternative. Under such circumstances, Her- mann could not have shown more courage or conduct, nor have terminated the impossible struggle with greater dignity or adroitness. The contest of Civilis with Rome contains a remark- STRUGGLES WlTH EOME AND SPAIN COMPARED 21 able foreshadowing of the future conflict with Spain, through which the Batavian Republic, fifteen centuries later, was to be founded. The characters, the events, the amphibious battles, desperate sieges, slippery alli- ances, the traits of generosity, audacity, and cruelty, the generous confidence, the broken faith, seem so closely to repeat themselves that History appears to present the selfsame drama played over and over again, with but a change of actors and of costume. There is more than a fanciful resemblance between Civilis and William the Silent, two heroes of ancient German stock, who had learned the arts of war and peace in the service of a foreign and haughty world-empire. Determination, concentration of purpose, constancy in calamity, elas- ticity almost preternatural, self-denial, c.onsummate craft in political combinations, personal fortitude, and passion- ate patriotism were the heroic elements in both. The ambition of each was subordinate to the cause which he served. Both refused the crown, although each perhaps contemplated, in the sequel, a Batavian realm of which he would have been the inevitable chief. Both offered the throne to a Gallic prince,— for Classicus was but the prototype of Anjou, as Brinno of Brederode,— and neither was destined, in this world, to see his sacrifices crowned with success. The characteristics of the two great races of the land portrayed themselves in the Roman and the Spanish struggle with much the same colors. The Southrons, inflammable, petulant, audacious, were the first to assault and to defy the imperial power in both revolts, while the inhabitants of the northern provinces, slower to be aroused, but of more enduring wrath, were less ardent at the commencement, but alone steadfast at 22 THE EISB OF THE DUTCH EEPUBLIC the close of the contest. In hoth wars the southern Celts fell away from the league, their courageous but corrupt chieftains haAang been purchased with imperial gold to bring about the abject submission of their fol- lowers ; while the German Netherlands, although even- tually subjugated by Rome, after a desperate struggle, were successful in the great conflict with Spain, and trampled out of existence every vestige of her authority. The Batavian Republic took its rank among the leading powers of the earth; the Belgic provinces remained Roman, Spanish, Austrian property. V Obscure but important movements in the regions of eternal twilight ; revolutions, of which history has been silent, in the mysterious depths of Asia ; outpourings of human rivers along the sides of the Altai Mountains; convulsions upheaving remote realms and unknown dynasties ; shock after shock throbbing throughout the barbarian world and dying upon the edge of civiliza- tion ; vast throes which shake the earth as precursory pangs to the birth of a new empire, as dying symptoms of the proud but effete realm which called itself the world ; scattered hordes of sanguinary, grotesque savages pushed from their own homes, and hovering with vague pur- poses upon the Roman frontier, constantly repelled and perpetually reappearing in ever-increasing swarms guided thither by a fierce instinct or by mysterious laws — such are the well-known phenomena which preceded the fall of western Rome. Stately, externally powerful, although undermined and putrescent at the core, the TEUTONIC WANDERINGS 23 death-stricken empire still dashed back the assaults of its barbarous enemies. During the long struggle intervening between the age of Vespasian and that of Odoacer, during all the preliminary ethnographical revolutions which preceded the great people's-wandering, the Netherlands remained subject provinces. Their country was upon the high- road which led the Goths to Rome. Those low and barren tracts were the outlying marches of the empire. Upon that desolate beach broke the first surf from the rising ocean of German freedom which was soon to overwhelm Rome. Yet, although the ancient landmarks were soon well-nigh obliterated, the Netherlands still remained faithful to the empire, Batavian blood was stUl poured out for its defense. By the middle of the fourth century, the Pranks and Alemannians (aUe-manner, all-men), a mass of united Germans, are defeated by the Emperor Julian at Stras- burg, the Batavian cavalry, as upon many other great occasions, saving the day for despotism. This achieve- ment, one of the last in which the name appears upon historic record, was therefore as triumphant for the valor as it was humiliating to the true fame of the nation. Their individuality soon afterward disappears, the race having been partly exhausted in the Roman service, partly merged in the Frank and Frisian tribes who occupy the domains of their forefathers. For a century longer, Rome stiU retains its outward form, but the swarming nations are now in f uU career. The Netherlands are successively or simultaneously trampled by Franks, Vandals, Alani, Suevl, Saxons, Frisians, and even Slavonians, as the great march of Germany to universal empire, which her prophets and 24 THE EISE OP THE DUTCH KEPUBLIC bards had foretold, went majestically forward. The fountains of the frozen North were opened, the waters prevailed, but the ark of Christianity floated upon the flood. As the deluge assuaged, the earth had returned to chaos, the last pagan empire had been washed out of existence, but the dimly groping, faltering, ignorant in- fancy of Christian Europe had begun. After the wanderings had subsided, the Netherlands are found with much the same ethnological character as before. The Prank dominion has succeeded the Eoman, the German stock preponderates over the Celtic, but the national ingredients, although in somewhat altered pro- portions, remain essentially the same. The old Belgae, having become Romanized in tongue and customs, ac- cept the new empire of the Franks. That people, how- ever, pushed from their hold of the Rhine by thickly thronging hordes of Gepidi, Quadi, Sarmati, Heruli, Saxons, Burgundians, move toward the south and west. As the empire faUs before Odoacer, they occupy Celtic Gaul, with the Belgian portion of the Netherlands, while the Frisians— into which ancient German tribe the old Batavian element has melted, not to be extinguished, but to live a renovated existence, the "free Frisians," whose name is synonymous with liberty, nearestblood- relations of the Anglo-Saxon race— now occupy the northern portion, including the whole future European territory of the Dutch Republic. The history of the Franks becomes, therefore, the history of the Netherlands. The Frisians struggle for several centuries against their dominion, until eventu- ally subjugated by Charlemagne. They even encroach upon the Franks in Belgic Gaul, who are determined not to yield their possessions. Moreover, the pious Mero- INTRODUCTION OP CHEISTIANIT-Y 25 vingian fainiants desire to plant Christianity among the still pagan Frisians. Dagobert, son of the second Clotaire, advances against them as far as the Weser, takes possession of Utrecht, founds there the first Christian church in Friesland, and establishes a nominal dominion over the whole country. Yet the feeble Merovingians would have been power- less against rugged Friesland had not their dynasty already merged in that puissant family of Brabant which long wielded their power before it assumed their crown. It was Pepin of Heristal, grandson of the Netherlander Pepin of Landen, who conquered the Frisian Radbod (a. d. 692) and forced him to exchange his royal for the ducal title. It was Pepin's bastard, Charles the Hammer, whose tremendous blows completed his father's work. The new mayor of the palace soon drove the Frisian chief into submission, and even into Christianity. A bishop's indiscretion, however, neutralized the apostolic blows of the mayor. The pagan Radbod had already immersed one of his royal legs in the baptismal font when a thought struck him. " Where are my dead forefathers at present?" he said, turning suddenly upon Bishop WoHran. "In hell, with aU other unbelievers," was the imprudent a,nswer. " Mighty well," replied Radbod, removing his leg ; " then will I rather feast with my ancestors in the haUs of Woden than dwell with your little starveling band of Christians in heaven." En- treaties and threats were unavailing. The Frisian de- clined positively a rite which was to cause an eternal separation from his buried kindred, and he died as he had lived, a heathen. His son Poppo, succeeding to the nominal sovereignty, did not actively oppose the 26 THE EISE OP THE DUTCH EEPUBLIC introduction of Christianity among his people, but him- self refused to be converted. Rebelling against the Frank dominion, he was totally routed by Charles Martel in a great battle (a. d. 750), and perished with a vast number of Frisians. The Christian dispensation, thus enforced, was now accepted by these northern pagans. The commencement of their conversion had been mainly the work of their brethren from Britain. The monk Wilfred was followed in a few years by the Anglo-Saxon Willibrord. It was he who destroyed the images of Woden in Walcheren, abolished his worship, and founded churches in North Holland. Charles Mar- tel rewarded him with extensive domains about Utrecht, together with many slaves and other chattels. Soon afterward he was consecrated bishop of all the Frisians. Thus rose the famous episcopate of Utrecht. Another Anglo-Saxon, Winfred, or Bonifacius, had been equally active among his Frisian cousins. His crozier had gone hand in hand with the battle-ax. Bonifacius followed close upon the track of his orthodox coadjutor Charles. By the middle of the eighth century some hundred thousand Frisians had been slaughtered, and as many more converted. The hammer which smote the Saracens at Tours was at last successful in beating the Nether- landers into Christianity. The labors of Bonifacius through Upper and Lower Germany were immense; but he, too, received great material rewards. He was created Archbishop of Mayence, and, upon the death of Willibrord, Bishop of Utrecht. Faithful to his mission, however, he met heroically a martyr's death at the hands of the refractory pagans at Dokkum. Thus was Christianity established in the Netherlands. Under Charlemagne the Frisians often rebelled, mak- RISE OF CHARLEMAGNE 27 ing common cause with the Saxons. In 785 A. d. they were, however, completely subjugated, and never rose again until the epoch of their entire separation from the Frank empire. Charlemagne left them their name of free Frisians and the property in their own land. The feudal system never took root in their soil. "The Frisians," says their statute-book, "shall be free as long as the wind blows out of the clouds and the world stands." They agreed, however, to obey the chiefs whom the Frank monarch should appoint to govern them, ac- cording to their own laws. Those laws were collected, and are still extant. The vernacular version of their Asega book contains their ancient customs, together with the Frank additions. The general statutes of Charlemagne were, of course, in vigor also ; but that great legislator knew too well the importance attached by all mankind to local customs to allow his imperial capitidars to in- terfere unnecessarily with the Frisian laws. Thus again the Netherlands, for the first time since the fall of Rome, were united under one crown imperial. They had already been once united, in their slavery to Rome. Eight centuries pass away, and they are again united, in subjection to Charlemagne. Their union was but in forming a single link in the chain of a new realm. The reign of Charlemagne had at last accomplished the promise of the sorceress Velleda and other sooth- sayers. A German race had reestablished the empire of the world. The Netherlands, like the other provinces of the great monarch's dominion, were governed by crown-appointed functionaries, military and judicial. In the northeastern or Frisian portion, however, the grants of land were never in the form of revocable benefices or feuds. With this important exception, the whole 28 THE EISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC coTintry shared the fate aud enjoyed the general organ- ization of the empire. But Charlemagne came an age too soon. The chaos which had brooded over Europe since the dissolution of the Roman world was stUl too absolute. It was not to be fashioned into permanent forms, even by his bold and constructive genius. A soil exhausted by the long culture of pagan empires was to lie fallow for a stUl longer period. The discordant elements out of which the emperor had compounded his realm did not coalesce during his lifetime. They were only held together by the vigorous grasp of the hand which had combined them. When the great statesman died, his empire necessarily fell to pieces. Society had need of further disintegration before it could begin to reconstruct itself locally. A new civilization was not to be improvised by a single mind. When did one man ever civilize a people? In the eighth and ninth centuries there was not even a people to be civilized. The construction of Charles was, of necessity, temporary. His empire was supported by artificial columns, resting upon the earth, which fell prostrate almost as soon as the hand of their architect was cold. His institutions had not struck down into the soU. There were no extensive and vigor- ous roots to nourish, from below, a flourishing empire through time and tempest. Moreover, the Carlovingian race had been exhausted by producing a race of heroes like the Pepins and the Charleses. The family became, soon, as contemptible as the ox-drawn, long-haired " do-nothings " whom it had expelled. But it is not our task to describe the fortunes of the emperor's ignoble descendants. The realm was divided, subdivided, at times partially reunited, like a FALL OF CHARLEMAGNE'S REALM 29 family farm, among monarchs incompetent alike to hold, to delegate, or to resign the inheritance of the great warrior and lawgiver. The meek, bald, fat, stam- mering, simple Charles or Louis who successively sat upon his throne— princes whose only historic individu- ality consists in these insipid appellations— had not the sense to comprehend, far less to develop, the plans of their ancestor. Charles the Simple was the last Carlovingian who governed Lotharingia, in which were comprised most of the Netherlands and Friesland. The German monarch, Henry the Fowler, at that period called King of the East Franks, as Charles of the West Franks, acquired Lotha- ringia by the treaty of Bonn, Charles reserving the sovereignty over the kingdom during his lifetime. In 925 A. D., however, the Simpleton having been im- prisoned and deposed by his own subjects, the Fowler was recognized King of Lotharingia. Thus the Nether- lands passed out of France into Germany, remaining still provinces of a loose, disjointed empii-e. This is the epoch in which the various dukedoms, earldoms, and other petty sovereignties of the Nether- lands became hereditary. It was in the year 922 that Charles the Simple presented to Count Dirk the terri- tory of Holland by letters patent. This narrow hook of land, destined in future ages to be the cradle of a considerable empire stretching through both hemi- spheres, was thenceforth the inheritance of Dirk's descendants. Historically, therefore, he is Dirk I., Count of Holland. Of this small sovereign and his successors the most powerful foe for centuries was ever the Bishop of Utrecht, the origin of whose greatness has been already 30 THE EISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC indicated. Of the other Netherland provinces, now or before become hereditary, the fii'st in rank was Lotha- ringia, once the kingdom of Lothaire, now the dukedom of Lorraiae. In 965 it was divided into Upper and Lower Lorraine, of which the lower duchy alone be- longed to the Netherlands. Two centuries later, the counts of Louvain, then occupying most of Brabant, ob- tained a permanent hold of Lower Lorraine, and began to caU themselves Dukes of Brabant. The same prru- ciple of local independence and isolation which created these dukes established the hereditary power of the counts and barons who formerly exercised jurisdiction under them and others. Thus arose sovereign counts of Namur, Hainault, Limburg, Zutphen, dukes of Luxemburg and Guelders, barons of Mechlin, mar- quises of Antwerp, and others, all petty autocrats. The most important of all, after the house of Lorraine, were the earls of Flanders ; for the bold foresters of Charles the Great had soon wrested the sovereignty of their little territory from his feeble descendants as easily as Bald- win, with the iron arm, had deprived the bald Charles of his daughter. Holland, Zealand, Utrecht, Overyssel, Groningen, Drenthe, and Friesland (all seven being por- tions of Friesland in a general sense) were crowded together upon a little desolate corner of Europe, an obscure fragment of Charlemagne's broken empire. They were afterward to constitute the United States of the Netherlands, one of the most powerful republics of history. Meantime, for century after century, the counts of Holland and the bishops of Utrecht were to exercise divided sway over the territory. Thus the whole country was broken into many shreds and patches of sovereignty. The separate history of EPOCH OF UNDIVIDED SOVEREIGNTY 31 such half-organized morsels is tedious and petty. Tri- fling dynasties, where a fanaily or two were everything, the people nothing, leave little worth recording. Even the most devout of genealogists might shudder to chronicle the long succession of so many illustrious obscure. A glance, however, at the general features of the gov- ernmental system now established in the Netherlands, at this important epoch in the world's history, will show the transformations which the country, in common with other portions of the western world, had undergone. In the tenth century the old Batavian and later Roman forms have faded away. An entirely new polity has succeeded. No great popular assembly asserts its sovereignty, as in the ancient German epoch; no generals and temporary kings are chosen by the nation. The elective power had been lost under the Romans, who, after conquest, had conferred the administrative authority over their subject provinces upon officials ap- pointed by the metropolis. The Franks pursued the same course. In Charlemagne's time the revolution is complete. Popular assemblies and popular election entirely vanish. Military, civil, and judicial ofBcers— dukes, earls, margraves, and others— are aU king's creatures, Jcnegton des Jconings, pueri regis, and so remain till they abjure the creative power and set up their own. The principle of Charlemagne that his oflcers should govern according to local custom helps them to achieve their own independence, while it preserves aU that is left of national liberty and law. The counts, assisted by inferior judges, hold diets from time to time— thrice, perhaps, annually. They also summon assemblies in case of war. Thither are 32 THE EISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC called the great vassals, who, in turn, call their lesser vassals, each armed with "a shield, a spear, a bow, twelve arrows, and a cuirass." Such assemblies, con- voked in the name of a distant sovereign, whose face his subjects had never seen, whose language they could hardly understand, were very different from those tumultuous mass-meetings where boisterous freemen, armed with the weapons they loved the best, and arriv- ing sooner or later, according to their pleasure, had been accustomed to elect their generals and magistrates and to raise them upon their shields. The people are now governed, their rulers appointed, by an invisible hand. Edicts issued by a power, as it were, supernatural de- mand implicit obedience. The people, acquiescing in their own annihilation, abdicate not only their political but their personal rights. On the other hand, the great source of power diffuses less and less of light and warmth. Losing its attractive and controlling influence, it becomes gradually eclipsed, while its satellites fly from their prescribed bounds, and chaos and darkness return. The scepter, stretched over realms so wide, re- quires stronger hands than those of degenerate Carlo- vingians. It breaks asunder. Functionaries become sovereigns, with hereditary, not delegated, right to own the people, to tax their roads and rivers, to take tithings of their blood and sweat, to harass them in all the rela- tions of life. There is no longer a metropolis to protect them from official oppression. Power the more sub- divided becomes the more tyrannical. The sword is the only symbol of law, the cross is a weapon of offense, the bishop is a consecrated pirate, every petty baron a burglar, while the people, alternately the prey of duke, prelate, and seignior, shorn and butchered like sheep, MEDIEVAL SYSTEMS CHAEACTEEIZED 33 esteem it happiness to sell themselves into slavery, or to huddle beneath the castle walls of some little potentate, for the sake of his wolfish protection. Here they build hovels, which they surround from time to time with palisades and muddy intrenchments ; and here, in these squalid abodes of ignorance and misery, the genius of Liberty, conducted by the spirit of Commerce, descends at last to awaken mankind from its sloth and cowardly stupor. A longer night was to intervene, however, be- fore the dawn of day. The crown-appointed functionaries had been, of course, financial ofiScers. They collected the revenue of the sov- ereign, one third of which slipped through their fingers into their own coffers. Becoming sovereigns themselves, they retain these funds for their private emolument. Four principal sources yielded this revenue— royal do- mains, tolls and imposts, direct levies, and a pleasantry caUed voluntary contributions or benevolences. In ad- dition to these supplies were also the proceeds of fines. Taxation upon sin was, in those rude ages, a considerable branch of the revenue. The old Frisian laws consisted almost entirely of a discriminating tariff upon crimes. Nearlyallthe misdeedswhich man is proneto commitwere punished by a money-bote only. Murder, larceny, arson, rape— all offenses against the person— were commuted for a definite price. There were a few exceptions, such as parricide, which was followed by loss of inheritance ; sacrilege and the murder of a master by a slave, which were punished with death. It is a natural inference that, as the royal treasury was enriched by these im- posts, the sovereign would hardly attempt to check the annual harvest of iniquity by which his revenue was increased. StUl, although the moral sense is shocked by V01-. I.— 3 34 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH EEPUBLIC a system whicli makes the ruler's interest identical with the wickedness of his people and holds out a com- parative immunity in evil-doing for the rich, it was better that crime should be punished by money rather than not be punished at all. A severe tax, which the noble reluctantly paid and which the penniless culprit commuted by personal slavery, was snfficiently unjust as well as absurd, yet it served to mitigate the horrors with which tumult, rapine, and murder enveloped those early days. Gradually, as the light of reason broke upon the dark ages, the most noxious features of the system were removed, while the general sentiment of reverence for law remained. VI FrVE centuries of isolation succeed. In the Netherlands, as throughout Europe, a thousand obscure and slender rills are slowly preparing the great stream of universal culture. Five dismal centuries of feudalism, during which period there is little talk of human right, little obedience to divine reason. Rights there are none, only forces, and, in brief, three great forces, gradually aris- ing, developing themselves, acting upon each other and upon the general movement of society. The sword— the first, for a time the only, force: the force of iron. The "land's master," having acquired the property in the territory and in the people who feed thereon, distributes to his subalterns, often but a shade beneath him in power, portions of his estate, getting the use of their faithful swords in return. Vavasors subdivide again to vassals, exchanging land jand cattle, THE FOBCE OF THE SWORD 35 human or otherwise, against fealtj'^, and so the iron chain of a military hierarchy, forged of mutually inter- dependent links, is stretched over each little province. Impregnable castles, here more numerous than in any other part of Christendom, dot the level surface of the country. Mail-clad knights, with their followers, en- camp permanently upon the soU. The fortunate fable of divine right is invented to sanction the system; superstition and ignorance give currency to the de- lusion. Thus the grace of God, having conferred the property in a vast portion of Europe upon a certain idiot in France, makes him competent to sell large frag- ments of his estate, and to give a divine, and therefore most satisfactory, title along with them— a great con- venience to a man who had neither power, wit, nor will to keep the property in his own hands. So the Dirks of Holland get a deed from Charles the Simple, and al- though the grace of God does not prevent the royal grantor himself from dying a miserable, discrowned captive, the conveyance to Dirk is none the less hallowed by almighty fiat. So the Roberts and Guys, the Johns and Baldwins, become sovereigns in Hainault, Brabant, Flanders, and other little districts, affecting supernatural sanction for the authority which their good swords have won and are ever ready to maintain. Thus organized, the force of iron asserts and exerts itself. Duke, count, seignior and vassal, knight and squire, master and man, swarm and struggle amain— a wild, chaotic, sanguinary scene. Here bishop and baron contend, centuries long, murdering human creatures by ten thousands for an acre or two of swampy pasture ; there doughty families, hugging old musty quarrels to their heart, buffet each other from generation to generation. Thus they go on. 36 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH EEPUBLIC raging and wrestling among themselves, witli aU the world, shrieking insane war-cries which no human soul ever understood— red caps and black, white hoods and gray. Hooks and Kabbeljaws, dealing destruction, building castles and burning them, tilting at tourneys, stealing bullocks, roasting Jews, robbing the highways, crusading,— now upon Syrian sands against paynim dogs, now in Frisian quagmires against Albigenses, Stedingers, and other heretics,— plunging about in blood and fire, repenting at idle times, and paying their passage through purgatory with large slices of ill-gotten gains placed in the ever-extended dead-hand of the Church ; acting, on the whole, according to their kind, and so getting themselves civilized or exterminated, it matters little which. Thus they play their part, those energetic men-at-arms; and thus one great force, the force of iron, spins and expands itself, century after century, helping on, as it whirls, the great progress of society toward its goal, wherever that may be. Another force— the force clerical, the power of clerks— arises ; the might of educated mind measuring itself against brute violence ; a force embodied, as often before, as priestcraft— the strength of priests, " craft " meaning simply strength in our old mother-tongue. This great force, too, develops itself variously, being sometimes beneficent, sometimes malignant. Priest- hood works out its task age after age : now smoothing penitent death-beds, consecrating graves, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, incarnating the Christian precepts in an age of rapine and homicide, doing a thousand deeds of love and charity among the obscure and forsaken— deeds of which there shall never be human chronicle, but a leaf or two, perhaps, in the re- POWER OF LEARNING AND GOLD 37 cording angel's book ; hiving precious honey from the few flowers of gentle art which bloom upon a howling wilderness; holding up the light of science over a stormy sea ; treasuring in convents and crypts the few fossils of antique learning which become visible, as the extinct megatherium of an elder world reappears after the Gothic deluge : and now careering in helm and hau- berk with the other rufilans, bandying blows in the thickest of the fight, blasting with beU, book, and candle its trembling enemies, while sovereigns, at the head of armies, grovel in the dust and offer abject submission for the kiss of peace ; exercising the same conjury over ignorant baron and cowardly hind ; making the fiction of apostolic authority to bind and loose as prolific in acres as the other divine right to have and hold. Thus the force of cultivated intellect, wielded by a chosen few ' and sanctioned by supernatural authority, becomes as potent as the sword. A third force, developing itself more slowly, becomes even more potent than the rest: the power of gold. Even ii'on yields to the more ductile metal. The im- portance of municipalities enriched by trade begins to be felt. Commerce, the mother of Netherland freedom, and eventually its destroyer,— even as in all human history the vivifying becomes afterward the dissolving principle, — commerce changes insensibly and miracu- lously the aspect of society. Clusters of hovels become towered cities; the green and gilded hanse of com- mercial republicanism coils itself around the decaying trunk of feudal despotism. Cities leagued with cities throughout and beyond Christendom— empire within empire— bind themselves closer and closer in the electric chain of human sympathy, and grow stronger and 38 THE RISE OP THE DUTCH EEPUBLIC stronger by mutual support. Pislierinen and river raftsmen become ocean adventurers and merchant princes. Commerce plucks up half-drowned HoUand by the locks and pours gold into her lap. Gold wrests power from iron. Needy Flemish weavers become mighty manufacturers. Armies of workmen, fifty thousand strong, tramp through the swarming streets. Silk-makers, clothiers, brewers, become the gossips of kings, lend their royal gossips vast sums, and burn the royal notes of hand in fires of cinnamon-wood. Wealth brings strength, strength confidence. Learning to handle crossbow and dagger, the burghers fear less the baronial sword, finding that their own will cut as well, seeing that great armies— flowers of chivalry— can ride away before them fast enough at battles of spurs and other encounters. Sudden riches beget insolence, tumults, civic broils. Internecine quarrels, horrible tumults, stain the streets with blood. But education lifts the citizens more and more out of the original slough. They learn to tremble as little at priestcraft as at sword- craft, having acquired something of each. Gold in the end, unsanctioned by right divine, weighs up the other forces, supernatural as they are. And so, struggling along their appointed path, making cloth, making money, making treaties with great kingdoms, making war by land and sea, ringing great bells, waving great banners, they, too,— these insolent, boisterous burghers, —accomplish their work. Thus the mighty power of the purse develops itself, and municipal liberty becomes a substantial fact. A fact, not a principle ; for the old theorem of sovereignty remains undisputed as ever. Neither the nation, in mass, nor the citizens, in class, lay claim to human rights. All upper attributes— legis- RISE OF MUNICIPAL POWER 39 lative, judicial, administrative— remain in the land- master's breast alone. It is an absurdity, therefore, to argue with Grotius concerning the unknown antiquity of the Batavian Republic. The repubUc never existed at all till the sixteenth century, and was only born after long years of agony. The democratic instincts of the ancient German savages were to survive in the breasts of their cultivated descendants, but an organized, civilized, republican polity had never existed. The cities, as they grew in strength, never claimed the right to make the laws or to share in the government. As a matter of fact, they did make the laws, and shared, besides, in most important functions of sovereignty, in the treaty-making power especially. Sometimes by bargains, sometimes by blood, by gold, threats, promises, or good hard blows, they extorted their charters. Their codes, statutes, joyful entrances, and other constitutions were dictated by the burghers and sworn to by the monarch. They were concessions from above ; privileges — private laws; fragments indeed of a larger liberty, but vastly better than the slavery for which they had been substituted ; solid facts instead of empty abstrac- tions, which, in those practical and violent days, would have yielded little nutriment; but they stiU rather sought to reconcile themselves, by a rough, clumsy fic- tion, with the hierarchy which they had invaded, than to overturn the system. Thus the cities, not regarding themselves as representatives or aggregations of the people, became fabulous personages, bodies without souls, corporations which had acquired vitality and strength enough to assert their existence. As persons, therefore,— gigantic individualities,— they wheeled into the feudal ranks and assumed feudal powers and re- 40 THE RISE OP THE DUTCH EEPTJBLIC sponsibilities. The city of Dort, of Middelburg, of Ghent, of Louvain, was a living being, doing fealty, claiming service, bowing to its lord, struggling with its equals, trampling upon its slaves. Thus, in these obscure provinces, as throughout Europe in a thousand remote and isolated corners, civilization builds itself up synthetically and slowly; yet at last a whole is likely to get itself constructed. Thus, impelled by great and conflicting forces, now obliquely, now backward, now upward, yet, upon the whole, onward, the new Society moves along its pre- destined orbit, gathering consistency and strength as it goes. Society, civilization perhaps, but hardly humanity. The people has hardly begun to extricate itself from the clods in which it lies buried. There are only nobles, priests, and, latterly, cities. In the north- ern Netherlands the degraded condition of the mass continued longest. Even in Friesland, liberty, the dearest blessing of the ancient Frisians, had been for- feited in a variety of ways. Slavery was both voluntary and compulsory. Paupers sold themselves that they might escape starvation. The timid sold themselves that they might escape violence. These voluntary sales, which were frequent, were usually made to cloisters and ecclesiastical establishments, for the condition of church slaves was preferable to that of other serfs. Persons worsted in judicial duels, shipwrecked sailors, vagrants, strangers, criminals unable to pay the money-bote im- posed upon them, were all deprived of freedom ; but the prolific source of slavery was war. Prisoners were almost universally reduced to servitude. A free woman who intermarried with a slave condemned herself and offspring to perpetual bondage. Among the Ripuarian SLAVERY IN THE NETHEELAND8 41 Franks, a free woman thus disgracing herself was girt with a sword and a distaff. Choosing the one, she was to strike her husband dead; choosing the other, she adopted the symbol of slavery, and became a chattel for Me. The ferocious inroads of the Normans scared many weak and timid persons into servitude. They fled by throngs to church and monastery, and were happy, by enslaving themselves, to escape the more terrible bondage of the sea-kings. During the brief dominion of the Norman Godfrey, every free Frisian was forced to wear a halter around his neck. The lot of a church slave was freedom in comparison. To Mil him was punishable by a heavy fine. He could give testimony in court, could inherit, could make a will, could even plead before the law, if law could be found. The num- ber of slaves throughout the Netherlands was very large ; the number belonging to the bishopric of Utrecht, enor- mous. The condition of those belonging to laymen was much more painful. The lyf-eigene, or absolute slaves, were the most wretched. They were mere brutes. They had none of the natural attributes of humanity, their life and death were in the master's hands, they had no claim to a fraction of their own labor or its fruits, they had no marriage, except under condition of the infamous jus primce noctis. The villagers, or villains, were the second class and less forlorn. They could commute the labor due to their owner by a fixed sum of money, after an- nual payment of which the villain worked for himself. Hi3 master, therefore, was not his absolute proprietor. The chattel had a beneficial interest in a portion of his own flesh and blood. 42 THE KISE OP THE DUTCH REPUBLIC The crusades made great improvement in the condi- tion of the serfs. He who became a soldier of the cross was free upon his return, and many were adventurous enough to purchase liberty at so honorable a price. Many others were sold or mortgaged by the crusading knights, desirous of converting their property into gold before embarking upon their enterprise. The pur- chasers or mortgagees were in general churches and con- vents, so that the slaves thus alienated obtained at least a preferable servitude. The place of the absent serfs was supplied by free labor, so that agricultural and mechanical occupations, now devolving upon a more elevated class, became less degrading, and in process of time opened an ever-widening sphere for the industry and progress of freemen. Thus a people began to exist. It was, however, a miserable people, with personal but no civil rights whatever. Their condition, although bet- ter than servitude, was almost desperate. They were taxed beyond their ability, while priest and noble were exempt. They had no voice in the apportionment of the money thus contributed. There was no redress against the lawless violence to which they were perpetually ex- posed. In the manorial courts the criminal sat in judg- ment upon Ms victim. The functions of highwayman and magistrate were combined in one individual. By degrees, the class of freemen, artisans, traders, and- the like, becoming the more numerous, built stronger and better houses outside the castle gates of the " land's master" or the burghs of the more powerful nobles. The superiors, anxious to increase their own importance, favored the progress of the little boroughs. The popu- lation, thus collected, began to divide themselves into gilds. These were soon afterward erected by the com- EARLY CHARTERS 43 munity into bodies corporate, the establishment of the community, of course, preceding the incorporation of the gilds. Those communities were created by charters, or heuren, granted by the sovereign. Unless the earli- est concessions of this nature have perished, the town charters of HoUand or Zealand are nearly a century later than those of Flanders, France, and England. The oldest keur, or act of municipal incorporation, in the provinces afterward constituting the Republic, was that granted by Count WUliam I. of HoUand and Countess Joanna of Flanders, as joint proprietors of Walcheren, to the town of Middelburg. It wiU be seen that its main purport is to promise, as a special privilege to this community, Jaw, in place of the arbitrary violence by which mankind in general were governed by their betters. " The inhabitants," ran the charter, " are taken into protection by both counts. Upon fighting, maiming, wounding, striking, scolding ; upon peace-breaking, upon resistance to peacemakers and to the judgment of schepens; upon contemning the ban, upon selling spoiled wine, and upon other misdeeds, fines are imposed for behoof of the count, the city, and sometimes of the schepens. ... To all Middelburgers one kind of law is guaranteed. Every man must go to law before the schepens. If any one being summoned and present in Walcheren does not appear or refuses submission to sentence, he shall be banished, with confiscation of property. Sehout or schepen denying justice to a com- plainant shall, until reparation, hold no tribunal again. ... A burgher having a dispute with an outsider [hiiten mann\ must summon him before the schepens. An appeal lies from the schepens to the coimt. No 44 THE EISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC one can testify but a householder. All alienation of real estate must take place before the schepens. If an outsider has a complaint against a burgher, the schepens and schout must arrange it. If either party refuses submission to them, they must ring the town bell and summon an assembly of all the burghers to compel him. Any one ringing the town bell, except by general con- sent, and any one not appearing when it tolls, are liable to a fine. No Middelburger can be arrested or held in durance within Flanders or Holland, except for crime." This document was signed, sealed, and sworn to by the two sovereigns in the year 1217. It was the model upon which many other communities, cradles of great cities, in Holland and Zealand, were afterward created. These charters are certainly not very extensive, even for the privileged municipalities which obtained them, when viewed from an abstract standpoint. They con- stituted, however, a very great advance from the stand- point at which humanity actually found itself. They created, not for all inhabitants, but for great numbers of them, the right, not to govern themselves, but to be governed by law. They furnished a local administra- tion of justice. They provided against arbitrary im- prisonment. They set up tribunals where men of burgher class were to sit in judgment. They held up a shield against arbitrary violence from above and sedi- tion from within. They encouraged peacemakers, pun- ished peace-breakers. They guarded the fundamental principle, ut sua tenerent, to the verge of absurdity, for- bidding a freeman without a freehold from testifying — a capacity not denied even to a country slave. Certainly all this was better than fist-law and courts manorial. THE EXTENSION OF COMMERCE 45 For the commencement of the thirteenth century it was progress. The schout and schepens, or chief magistrate and aldermen, were originally appointed by the sovereign. In process of time the election of these municipal authorities was conceded to the communities. This in- estimable privilege, however, after having been exer- cised during a certain period by the whole body of citi- zens, was eventually monopolized by the municipal government itself, acting in common with the deans of the various gilds. Thus organized and inspired with the breath of civic life, the communities of Flanders and Holland began to move rapidly forward. More and more they assumed the appearance of prosperous little repubhcs. For this prosperity they were indebted to commerce, particularly with England and the Baltic nations, and to manu- factures, especially of wool. The trade between England and the Netherlands had existed for ages, and was still extending itself, to the great advantage of both countries. A dispute, however, between the merchants of Holland and England, toward the year 1275, caused a privateering warfare and a ten years' suspension of intercourse. A reconciliation after- ward led to the establishment of the English wool staple at Dort. A subsequent quarrel deprived Holland of this great advantage. King Edward refused to assist Count Florence in a war with the Flemings, and trans- ferred the staple from Dort to Bruges and Mechlin. The trade of the Netherlands with the Mediterranean and the East was mainly through this favored city of Bruges, which already in the thirteenth century had risen to the first rank in the commercial world. It was 46 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH KEPUBLIC the resting-place for the Lombards and other Italians, the great entrepot for their merchandise. It now be- came, in addition, the great market-place for English wool and the woolen fabrics of all the Netherlands, as well as for the drugs and spices of the East. It had, however, by no means reached its apogee, but was to culminate with Venice, and to sink with her decline. When the overland Indian trade feU off with the dis- covery of the Cape passage, both cities withered. Grass grew in the fair and pleasant streets of Bruges, and sea- weed clustered about the marble haUs of Venice. At this epoch, however, both were in a state of rapid and insolent prosperity. The cities, thus advancing in wealth and importance, were no longer satisfied with being governed according to law, and began to participate not only in their own, but in the general government. Under Guy of Flanders the towns appeared regularly, as well as the nobles, in the assembly of the provincial estates (1386-89 a. d.). In the course of the following century the six chief cities, or capitals, of Holland (Dort, Haarlem, Delft, Leyden, Gouda, and Amsterdam) acquired the right of sending their deputies regularly to the estates of the provinces. These towns, therefore, with the nobles, constituted the parliamentary power of the nation. They also acquired letters patent from the count, allow- ing them to choose their burgomasters and a limited number of councilors or senators {vroedschappen). Thus the liberties of Holland and Flanders waxed daily stronger. A great physical convulsion in the course of the thirteenth century came to add its in- fluence to the slower process of political revolution. Hitherto there had been but one Friesland, including THE GREAT INUNDATION 47 Holland and nearly all the territory of tlie futnre Re- public. A slender stream alone separated the two great districts. The low lands along the Vlie, often threat- ened, at last sank in the waves. The German Ocean rolled in upon the inland lake of Flevo. The stormy Zuyder Zee began its existence by engulfing thousands of Frisian villages, with aU their population, and by spreading a chasm between kindred peoples. The polit- ical as weU as the geographical continuity of the land was obliterated by this tremendous deluge. The Hol- landers were cut off from their relatives in the east by as dangerous a sea as that which divided them from their Anglo-Saxon brethren in Britain. The deputies to the general assemblies at Aurich could no longer under- take a journey grown so perilous. West Friesland be- came absorbed in Holland. East Friesland remained a federation of rude but self-governed maritime prov- inces until the brief and bloody dominion of the Saxon dukes led to the establishment of Charles V.'s author- ity. Whatever the nominal sovereignty over them, this most republican tribe of Netherlanders, or of Euro- peans, had never accepted feudalism. There was an annual congress of the whole confederacy. Each of the seven little states, on the other hand, regulated its own internal affairs. Each state was subdivided into districts, each district governed by a griet-mann (great- man, selectman) and assistants. Above all these dis- trict ofBcers was a podest^, a magistrate identical in name and functions with the chief officer of the Italian republics. There was sometimes but one podesta, some- times one for each province. He was chosen by the people, took oath of fidelity to the separate estates, or, if podesta-general, to the federal diet, and was generally 48 THE RISE OP THE DUTCH EEPUBLIC elected for a limited term, although sometimes for life. He was assisted by a board of eighteen or twenty councilors. The deputies to the general congress were chosen by popular suffrage in Easter week. The clergy were not recognized as a political estate. Thus, in those lands which a niggard nature had ap- parently condemned to perpetual poverty and obscurity, the principle of reasonable human freedom, without which there is no national prosperity or glory worth contending for, was taking deepest and strongest root Already in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries Friesland was a republic, except in name; Holland, Flanders, Brabant, had acquired a large share of self- government. The powerful commonwealth at a later period to be evolved out of the great combat between centralized tyranny and the spirit of civil and religious liberty was already foreshadowed. The elements of which that important republic was to be compounded were germinating for centuries. Love of freedom, read- iness to strike and bleed at any moment in her cause, manly resistance to despotism, however overshadow- ing, were the leading characteristics of the race in all regions or periods, whether among Frisian swamps, Dutch dikes, the gentle hUls and dales of England, or the pathless forests of America. Doubtless the history of human liberty in HoUand and Flanders, as every- where else upon earth where there has been such a history, unrolls many scenes of turbulence and blood- shed, although these features have been exaggerated by prejudiced historians. Still, if there were luxury and insolence, sedition and uproar, at any rate there was life. Those violent little commonwealths had blood in their veins. They were compact of proud, self-helping, DYNASTIC TRANSFORMATIONS 49 musctilar vigor. The most sanguinary tumults which they ever enacted in the face of day were better than the order and silence born of the midnight darkness of despotism. That very unruliness was educating the people for their future work. Those merchants, manu- facturers, country squires, and hard-flghting barons, all pent up in a narrow corner of the earth, quarreling with each other and with all the world for centuries, were keeping alive a national pugnacity of character, for which there was to be a heavy demand in the six- teenth century, and without which the fatherland had perhaps succiimbed in the most unequal conflict ever waged by man against oppression. To sketch the special history of even the leading Netherland provinces, during the five centuries which we have thus rapidly sought to characterize, is foreign to our purpose. By holding the clue of Holland's history the general maze of dynastic transformations through- out the country may, however, be swiftly threaded. From the time of the first Dirk to the close of the thirteenth century there were nearly four hundred years of unbroken male descent, a long line of Dirks and Florences. This iron-handed, hot-headed, adventurous race, placed as sovereign upon its little sandy hook, making ferocious exertions to swell into larger consequence, conquering a mile or two of morass or barren furze, after harder blows and bloodier encounters than might have estab- lished an empire under more favorable circumstances, at last dies out. The countship falls to the house of Avennes, counts of Hainault. Holland, together with Zealand, which it had annexed, is thus joined to the province of Hainault. At the end of another half- century the Hainault line expires. "William IV. died VOL. U—i ^t^ 50 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC childless in 1355. His death is the signal for the outbreak of an almost interminable series of civil com- motions. Those two great parties known by the un- couth names of Hook and Kabbeljaw come into ex- istence, dividing noble against noble, city against city, father against son, for some hundred and fifty years, without foundation upon any abstract or intelligible principle. It may be observed, however, that, in the sequel and as a general rule, the Kabbeljaw or codfish party represented the city or municipal faction, while the Hooks (fish-hooks), that were to catch and control them, were the nobles ; iron and audacity against brute number and weight. Duke "William of Bavaria, sister's son of William IV., gets himself established in 1354. He is succeeded by his brother Albert ; Albert by his son William. William, who had married Margaret of Burgundy, daughter of Philip the Bold, dies in 1417. The goodly heritage of these three Netherland provinces descends to his daugh- ter Jacqueline, a damsel of seventeen. Little need to trace the career of the fair and ill-starred Jacqueline. Few chapters of historical romance have drawn more frequent tears. The favorite heroine of ballad and drama, to Netherlanders she is endued with the palpa- ble form and perpetual existence of the Iphigenias, Mary Stuarts, Joans of Arc, or other consecrated indi- vidualities. Exhausted and broken-hearted after thir- teen years of conflict with her own kinsmen, consoled for the cowardice and brutality of three husbands by the gentle and knightly spirit of the fourth, dispos- sessed of her father's broad domains, degraded from the rank of sovereign to be lady forester of her own prov- inces by her cousin, the bad Duke of Burgundy, Philip THE BUEGUNDIAN DYNASTY 51 surnamed " the Good," she dies at last, and the good cousin takes undisputed dominion of the land (1437). VII The five centuries of isolation are at end. The many- obscure streams of Netherland history are merged in one broad current. Burgundy has absorbed all the provinces, which once more are forced to recognize a single master. A century and a few years more succeed, during which this house and its heirs are undisputed sovereigns of the soU. Philip the Good had already acquired the principal Netherlands before dispossessing Jacqueline. He had inherited, besides the two Burgundies, the counties of Flanders and Artois. He had purchased the county of Namur, and had usurped the duchy of Brabant, to which the duchy of Limburg, the marquisate of Ant- werp, and the barony of Mechlin had already been annexed. By his assumption of Jacqueline's dominions he was now lord of Holland, Zealand, and Hainault, and titular master of Friesland. He acquired Luxemburg a few years later. Lord of so many opulent cities and fruitful provinces, he felt himself equal to the kings of Europe. Upon his marriage with Isabella of Portugal, he founded, at Bruges, the celebrated Order of the Golden Fleece. What could be more practical or more devout than the con- ception ? Did not the Lamb of God suspended at each knightly breast symbolize at once the woolen fabrics to which so much of Flemish wealth and Burgundian power was owing, and the gentle humility of Christ, 52 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC which was ever to characterize the order ? Twenty-five was the limited number, including Philip himself, as grand master. The chevaliers were emperors, kings, priaces, and the most illustrious nobles of Christendom ; while a leading provision at the outset forbade the brethren, crowned heads excepted, to accept or retain the companionship of any other order. The accession of so potent and ambitious a prince as the good Philip boded evil to the cause of freedom in the Netherlands. The spirit of liberty seemed to have been typified in the fair form of the benignant and un- happy Jacqueline, and to be buried in her grave. The usurper who had crushed her out of existence now strode forward to trample upon all the laws and privi- leges of the provinces which had formed her heritage. At his advent the municipal power had already reached an advanced stage of development. The burgher class controlled the government not only of the cities, but often of the provinces, through its influence in the estates. Industry and wealth had produced their natural results. The supreme authority of the sovereign and the power of the nobles were balanced by the muni- cipal principle, which had even begun to preponderate over both. All three exercised a constant and salutary check upon each other. Commerce had converted slaves into freemen, freemen into burghers, and the burghers were acquiring daily a larger practical hold upon the government. The town councils were becoming almost omnipotent. Although with an oligarchical tendency, which at a later period was to be more fully developed, they were now composed of large numbers of individuals who had raised themselves, by industry and intelligence, out of the popular masses. There was an unquestion- IMPERFECTLY DEVELOPED REPRESENTATION 53 ably republican tone to the institutions. Power actually, if not nominally, was in the hands of many who had achieved the greatness to which they had not been born. The assemblies of the estates were rather diplomatic than representative. They consisted generally of the nobles and of the deputations from the cities. In Hol- land the clergy had neither influence nor seats in the parliamentary body. Measures were proposed by the stadholder, who represented the sovereign. A request, for example, of pecuniary accommodation was made by that functionary or by the count himself in person. The nobles then voted upon the demand, generally as one body, but sometimes by heads. The measure was then laid before the burghers. If they had been specially commissioned to act upon the matter, they voted, each city as a city, not each deputy individually. If they had received no instructions, they took back the proposi- tion to lay before the councils of their respective cities, in order to return a decision at an adjourned session or at a subsequent diet. It will be seen, therefore, that the principle of national, popular representation was but imperfectly developed. The municipal deputies acted only under instructions. Each city was a little independent state, suspicious not only of the sovereign and nobles, but of its sister cities. This mutual jealousy hastened the general humiliation now impending. The center of the system waxing daily more powerful, it more easily unsphered these feebler and mutually re- pulsive bodies. Philip's first step upon assuming the government was to issue a declaration, through the council of Hol- land, that the privileges and constitutions which he had sworn to as ruward, or guardian, during the period 54 THE EISE OF THE DUTCH EEPUBLIC in wMch Jacqueline had still retained a nominal sovereignty, were to be considered null and void, unless afterward confirmed by him as count. At a single blow he thus severed the whole knot of pledges, oaths, and other political complications by which he had en- tangled himself during his cautious advance to power. He was now untrammeled again. As the conscience of the smooth usurper was thenceforth the measure of provincial liberty, his subjects soon found it meted to them more sparingly than they wished. From this point, then, through the Burgundian period, and until the rise of the Republic, the hberty of the Netherlands, notwithstanding several brilliant but brief luminations, occurring at irregular intervals, seemed to remain in almost perpetual eclipse. The material prosperity of the country had, however, vastly increased. The fisheries of Holland had become of enormous importance. The invention of the humble beuhekoon of Biervliet had expanded into a mine of wealth. The fisheries, too, were most useful as a nursery of seamen, and were already indicating Holland's fixture naval supremacy. The fishermen were the militia of the ocean, their prowess attested in the war with the Hanseatic cities, which the provinces of Holland and Zealand, in Philip's name, but by their own unassisted exertions, carried on triumphantly at this epoch. Then came into existence that race of cool and daring mariners who in after times were to make the Dutch name illustrious throughout the world— the men whose fierce descendants, the "beggars of the sea," were to make the Spanish empire tremble ; the men whose later successors swept the seas with brooms at the masthead, and whose ocean battles with their equally fearless Eng- MAEITIME STRENGTH 55 lish brethren often lasted four uninterrupted days and nights. The main strength of Holland was derived from the ocean, from whose destructive grasp she had wrested herself, but in whose friendly embrace she remained. She was already placing securely the foundations of commercial wealth and civil liberty upon those shifting quicksands which the Roman doubted whether to call land or water. Her submerged deformity as she floated, mermaid-like, upon the waves was to be forgotten in her material splendor. Enriched with the spoils of every clime, crowned with the divine jewels of science and art, she was one day to sing a siren song of freedom, luxury, and power. As with Holland, so with Flanders, Brabant, and the other leading provinces. Industry and wealth, agri- culture, commerce, and manufactures, were constantly augmenting. The natural sources of power were fuU to overflowing, while the hand of despotism was delib- erately sealing the fountain. For the house of Burgundy was rapidly culminating and as rapidly cux'tailing the political privileges of the Netherlands. The contest was at flrst favorable to the cause of arbitrary power ; but little seeds were silently germinating, which, in the progress of their gigantic de- velopment, were one day to undermine the foundations of tyranny and to overshadow the world. The early prog- ress of the religious reformation in the Netherlands will be outlined in a separate chapter. Another great principle was likewise at work at this period. At the very epoch when the greatness of Burgundy was most swiftly ripening, another weapon was secretly forging, more potent in the great struggle for freedom than 56 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC any whicli the wit or hand of man has ever devised or wielded. When Philip the Good, in the full blaze of his power, and flushed with the triumphs of territorial aggrandizement, was instituting at Bruges the Order of the Golden Fleece, " to the glory of God, of the Blessed Virgin, and of the holy Andrew, patron saint of the Burgundian family," and enrolling the names of the kings and princes who were to be honored with its symbols, at that very moment, an obscure citizen of Haarlem, one Lorenz Coster, or Lawrence the Sexton, succeeded in printing a little grammar by means of movable types. The invention of printing was ac- complished, but it was not ushered in with such a blaze of glory as heralded the contemporaneous erection of the Golden Fleece. The humble setter of types did not deem emperors and princes alone worthy his compan- ionship. His invention sent no thrill of admiration throughout Christendom ; and yet, what was the good PhiUp of Burgundy, with his Knights of the Golden Fleece, and aU their effulgent trumpery, in the eye of humanity and civilization, compared with the poor sex- ton and his wooden types ? ^ Philip died in February, 1467. The details of his life and career do not belong to our purpose. The practical tendency of his government was to repress the spirit of liberty, while especial privileges, extensive in nature, but limited in time, were frequently granted to corpora- 1 The question of the time and place to which the invention of printing should be referred has been often discussed. It is not probable that it will ever be settled to the entire satisfaction of Holland and Germany. The Dutch claim that movable types were first used at Haarlem, fixing the time variously between the years 1423 and 1440. The first and very faulty editions of Lorenz are religiously preserved at Haarlem. SKETCH OF PHILIPS EEIGN 57 tions. Philip in one day conferred thirty charters upon as many different bodies of citizens. These were, how- ever, grants of monopoly, not concessions of rights. He also fixed the number of city councils, or vroedschappen, in many Netherland cities, giving them permission to present a double list of candidates for burgomasters and judges, from which he himself made the appoint- ments. He was certainly neither a good nor great prince, but he possessed much administrative ability. His military talents were considerable, and he was suc- cessful in his wars. He was an adroit dissembler, a practical politician. He had the sense to comprehend that the power of a prince, however absolute, must de- pend upon the prosperity of his subjects. He taxed severely the wealth, but he protected the commerce and the manufactures, of Holland and Flanders. He en- couraged art, science, and literature. The brothers John and Hubert van Eyek were attracted by his generosity to Bruges, where they painted many pictures. John was even a member of the duke's council. The art of oil-painting was carried to great perfection by Hubert's scholar, John of Bruges. An incredible num- ber of painters, of greater or less merit, flourished at this epoch in the Netherlands, heralds of that great school which at a subsequent period was to astonish the world with brilliant colors, profound science, star- tling effects, and vigorous reproductions of nature. Authors, too, like Olivier de la Marche and Philippe de Comines, who, in the words of the latter, " wrote, not for the amusement of brutes and people of low degree, but for princes and other persons of quality," these and other writers, with aims as lofty, flourished at the court of Burgundy, and were rewarded by the duke with 58 THE EISE OP THE DUTCH REPUBLIC princely generosity. Philip remodeled and befriended the University of Louvain. He founded at Brussels the Burgundian library, which became celebrated through- out Europe. He levied largely, spent profusely, but was yet so thrifty a housekeeper as to leave four hun- dred thousand crowns of gold, a vast amount in those days, besides three million marks' worth of plate and furniture, to be wasted like water in the insane career of his son. The exploits of that son require but few words of illustration. Hardly a chapter of European history or romance is more familiar to the world than the one which records the meteoric course of Charles the Bold. The propriety of his title was never doubtful. No prince was ever bolder, but it is certain that no quality could be less desirable at that particular moment in the history of his house. It was not the quality to con- firm a usurping family in its ill-gotten possessions. Re- newed aggressions upon the rights of others justified retaliation and invited attack. Justice, prudence, firm- ness, wisdom of internal administration, were desirable in the son of Philip and the rival of Louis. These at- tributes the gladiator lacked entirely. His career might have been a brilliant one in the old days of chivalry. His image might have appeared as imposing as the romantic forms of Baldwin Bras de Fer or Godfrey of Bouillon, had he not been misplaced in history. Never- theless, he imagined himself governed by a profound policy. He had one dominant idea, to make Burgundy a kingdom. From the moment when, with almost the first standing army known to history, and with cofEers well filled by his cautious father's economy, he threw himself into the lists against the crafty Louis, down to CHAELES THE BOLD 59 the day when he was found dead, naked, deserted, and with his face frozen into a pool of blood and water, he faithfully pursued this thought. His ducal cap was to be exchanged for a kingly crown, while all the provinces which lay between the Mediterranean and the North Sea and between France and Germany were to be united under his scepter. The Netherlands, with their wealth, had been already appropriated and their free- dom crushed. Another land of liberty remained, physi- cally the reverse of Holland, but stamped with the same courageous nationality, the same ardent love of human rights. Switzerland was to be conquered. Her eternal battlements of ice and granite were to constitute the great bulwark of his realm. The world knows weU the result of the struggle between the lord of so many duchies and earldoms and the Alpine mountaineers. With all his boldness, Charles was but an indifferent soldier. His only merit was physical courage. He imagined himseU a consummate commander, and in conversation with his jester was fond of comparing himself to Hannibal. "We are getting well Hanni- baHzed to-day, my lord," said the bitter fool, as they rode off together from the disastrous defeat of Granson. Well " Hannibalized " he was, too, at Granson, at Murten, and at Nancy. He followed in the track of his proto- type only to the base of the mountains. As a conqueror he was signally unsuccessful ; as a politician he could outwit none but himself ; it was only as a tyrant within his own ground that he could sustain the character which he chose to enact. He lost the crown which he might have secured, because he thought the emperor's son unworthy the heiress of Burgundy; and yet after her father's death her marriage with that 60 THE EISE OF THE DUTCH EEPUBLIC very Maximilian alone secured the possession of her paternal inheritance. Unsuccessful in schemes of con- quest and in political intrigue, as an oppressor of the Netherlands he nearly carried out his plans. Those provinces he regarded merely as a bank to draw upon. His immediate intercourse with the country was confined to the extortion of vast requests. These were granted with ever-increasing reluctance by the estates. The new taxes and excises which the sanguinary extrava- gance of the duke rendered necessary could seldom be collected in the various cities without tumults, sedi- tion, and bloodshed. Few princes were ever a greater curse to the people whom they were allowed to hold as property. He nearly succeeded in establishing a cen- trahzed despotism upon the ruins of the provincial institutions. His sudden death alone deferred the catastrophe. His removal of the Supreme Court of Holland from The Hague to Mechlin, and his main- tenance of a standing army, were the two great mea- sures by which he prostrated the Netherlands. The tribunal had been remodeled by his father ; the expanded authority which Philip had given to a bench of judges dependent upon himself was an infraction of the rights of Holland. The court, however, stiU held its sessions in the country, and the sacred privilege, de non evocando, the right of every Hollander to be tried in his own land, was, at least, retained. Charles threw off the mask ; he proclaimed that this council— composed of his creatures, holding office at his pleasure— should have supreme jurisdiction over all the charters of the prov- inces; that it was to follow his person and derive all authority from his will. The usual seat of the court he transferred to Mechlin. It wiU be seen, in the sequel, DEATH OF CHARLES 61 that the attempt, under Philip II., to enforce its supreme authority was a collateral cause of the great revolution of the Netherlands. Charles, like his father, administered the country by stadholders. From the condition of flourishing, self- ruled little republics, which they had for a moment almost attained, they became departments of an ill- assorted, ill-conditioned, ill-governed realm, which was neither commonwealth nor empire, neither kingdom nor duchy, and which had no homogeneousness of popula- tion, no affection between ruler and people, small sym- pathies of lineage or of language. His triumphs were but few, his fall ignominious. His father's treasure was squandered, the curse of a stand- ing army fixed upon his people, the trade and manu- factures of the country paralyzed by his extortions, and he accomplished nothing. He lost his life in the forty-fourth year of his age (1477), leaving all the prov- inces, duchies, and lordships which formed the miscel- laneous realm of Burgundy to his only child, the Lady Mary. Thus already the countries which Philip had wrested from the feeble hand of Jacqueline had fallen to another female. Philip's own granddaughter, as young, fair, and unprotected as Jacqueline, was now sole mistress of those broad domains. VIII A CRISIS, both for Burgundy and the Netherlands, succeeds. Within the provinces there is an elastic re- bound as soon as the pressure is removed from them by the tyrant's death. A sudden spasm of liberty gives 62 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC the whole people gigantic strength. In an instant they recover all, and more than aU, the rights which they had lost. The cities of Holland, Flanders, and other prov- inces call a convention at Ghent. Laying aside their musty feuds, men of all parties, Hooks and Kabbel- jaws, patricians and people, move forward in phalanx to recover their national constitutions. On the other hand, Louis XL seizes Burgundy, claiming the territory for his crown, the heiress for his son. The situation is critical for the Lady Mary. As usual in such cases, appeals are made to the faithful commons. A prodi- gality of oaths and pledges is showered upon the people, that their loyalty may be refreshed and grow green. The congress meets at Ghent. The Lady Mary pro- fesses much, but she wiU keep her vow. The deputies are called upon to raUy the country around the duchess and to resist the fraud and force of Louis. The con- gress is willing to maintain the cause of its young mis- tress. The members declare, at the same time, very roundly, "that the provinces have been much im- poverished and oppressed by the enormous taxation im- posed upon them by the ruinous wars waged by Duke Charles from the beginning to the end of his life." They rather require " to be relieved than additionally encum- bered." They add that, "for many years past, there has been a constant violation of the provincial and municipal charters, and that they should be happy to see them restored." The result of the deliberations is the formal grant by Duchess Mary of the " Groot Privilegie," or Great Priv- ilege, the Magna Charta of HoUand. Although this in- strument was afterward violated, and indeed abolished, it became the foundation of the Republic. It was a re- THE "GREAT PRIVILEGE" 63 capitulation and recognition of ancient rights, not an acquisition of new privileges. It was a restoration, not a revolution. Its principal points deserve attention from those interested in the political progress of man- kind. " The duchess shall not marry without consent of the estates of her provinces. All offices in her gift shall be conferred on natives only. No man shall fill two offices. No office shall be farmed. The 'Great Council and Supreme Court of Holland' is reestablished. Causes shall be brought before it on appeal from the ordinary courts. It shall have no original jurisdiction of matters within the cognizance of the provincial and municipal tribunals. The estates and cities are guaranteed in their right not to be summoned to justice beyond the limits of their territory. The cities, in common with all the provinces of the Netherlands, may hold diets as often and at such places as they choose. No new taxes shall be imposed but by consent of the provincial estates. Neither the duchess nor her descendants shall begin either an offensive or defensive war without consent of the estates. In case a war be iHegaUy undertaken, the estates are not bound to contribute to its maintenance. In all public and legal documents the Netherland language shall be employed. The commands of the duchess shall be invalid if conflicting with the privileges of a city. The seat of the Supreme Council is trans- ferred from Mechlin to The Hague. No money shall be coined, nor its value raised or lowered, but by consent of the estates. Cities are not to be compelled to con- tribute to requests which they have not voted. The sovereign shall come in person before the estates to make his request for supplies." 64 THE RISE OP THE DUTCH REPUBLIC Here was good work. The land was rescued at a blow from the helpless condition to which it had been reduced. This summary annihilation of all the despotic arrangements of Charles was enough to raise him from his tomb. The law, the sword, the purse, were aU taken from the hand of the sovereign and placed within the control of parliament. Such sweeping reforms, if main- tained, would restore health to the body politic. They gave, moreover, an earnest of what was one day to arrive. Certainly, for the fifteenth century, the Great Privilege was a reasonably liberal constitution. Where else upon earth, at that day, was there half so much liberty as was thus guaranteed? The congress of the Netherlands, according to their Magna Charta, had power to levy all taxes, to regulate commerce and man- ufactures, to declare war, to coin money, to raise armies and navies. The executive was required to ask for money in person, could appoint only natives to office, recognized the right of disobedience in his subjects if his commands should conflict with law, and acknow- ledged himself bound by decisions of courts of justice. The cities appointed their own magistrates, held diets at their own pleasure, made their local by-laws and saw to their execution. Original cognizance of legal matters belonged to the municipal courts, appellate jurisdiction to the supreme tribunal, in which the judges were ap- pointed by the sovereign. The liberty of the citizen against arbitrary imprisonment was amply provided for. The jus de non evocando, the habeas corpus of Holland, was reestablished. Truly, here was a fundamental law which largely, roundly, and reasonably recognized the existence of a people with hearts, heads, and hands of their own. It IMBEECOURT AND HUGONET 65 was a vast step in advance of natural servitude, the dogma of the dark ages. It was a noble and temperate vindication of natural liberty, the doctrine of more en- lightened days. To no people in the world more than to the stout burghers of Flanders and Holland belongs the honor of having battled audaciously and perennially in behalf of human rights. Similar privileges to the great charter of Holland are granted to many other provinces, especially to Flanders, ever ready to stand forward in fierce vindication of freedom. For a season all is peace and joy; but the duchess is young, weak, and a woman. There is no lack of intriguing politicians, reactionary councilors. There is a cunning old king in the distance, lying in wait, seeking what he can devour. A mission goes from the estates to France. The well-known tragedy of Im- brecourt and Hugonet occurs. Envoys from the states, they dare to accept secret instructions from the duchess to enter into private negotiations with the French mon- arch, against their colleagues, against the great charter, against their country. Sly Louis betrays them, think- ing that policy the more expedient. They are seized in G-hent, rapidly tried, and as rapidly beheaded by the en- raged burghers. All the entreaties of the Lady Mary, who, dressed in mourning garments, with disheveled hair, unloosed girdle, and streaming eyes, appears at the town house, and afterward in the market-place, humbly to intercede for her servants, are fruitless. There is no help for the juggling diplomatists. The punishment was sharp. Was it more severe and sudden than that which betrayed monarchs usually inflict? Would the Flemings, at that critical moment, have deserved their freedom had they not taken swift and VOL. I.— 5 66 THE BISE OP THE DUTCH EEPUBLIC signal vengeance for this first infraction of their newly recognized rights ? Had it not been weakness to spare the traitors who had thus stained the childhood of the national joy at liberty regained ? IX Another step, and a wide one, into the great stream of European history. The Lady Mary espouses the Archduke Maximilian. The Netherlands are about to become Hapsburg property. The Ghenters reject the pretensions of the dauphin, and select for husband of their duchess the very man whom her father had so stupidly rejected. It had been a wiser choice for Charles the Bold than for the Netherlanders. The mar- riage takes place on the 18th of August, 1477. Mary of Burgundy passes from the guardianship of Ghent burghers into that of the emperor's son. The crafty husband allies himself with the city party, feeling where the strength lies. He knows that the voracious Kabbel- jaws have at last swallowed the Hooks and run away with them. Promising himself future rights of recon- sideration, he is liberal in promises to the municipal party. In the meantime he is governor and guardian of his wife and her provinces. His children are to in- herit the Netherlands and all that therein is. "What can be more consistent than laws of descent regulated by right divine 1 At the beginning of the century, good PhiMp dispossesses Jacqueline, because females cannot inherit. At its close, his granddaughter succeeds to the property, and transmits it to her children. Pope and emperor maintain both positions with equal logic. The i^-.- , g^^ w^^ ■ *lv mt^'--..^^^-.y ■ 1 y,n.„ ^ /.- 1 -toz • MAXIMILIAN I. Painting by Predis; Imp. Gall., Vienna. DEATH OP MARY 57 policy and promptness of Maximilian are as effective as the force and fraud of Philip. The Lady Mary falls from her horse and dies. Her son Philip, four years of age, is recognized as successor. Thus the house of Burgundy is followed by that of Austria, the fifth and last family which governed Hol- land previously to the erection of the Republic. Maxi- milian is recognized by the provinces as governor and guardian during the minority of his children. Flanders alone refuses. The burghers, ever prompt in action, take personal possession of the child PhUip, and carry on the government in his name. A commission of citi- zens and nobles thus maintain their authority against Maximilian for several years. In 1488 the archduke, now King of the Romans, with a small force of cavalry, attempts to take the city of Bruges, but the result is a mortifying one to the Roman king. The citizens of Bruges take him. Maximilian, with several councilors, is kept a prisoner in a house on the market-place. The magistrates are all changed, the affairs of government conducted in the name of the young Philip alone. Meantime the estates of the other Netherlands assemble at Ghent, anxious, unfortunately, not for the national liberty, but for that of the Roman king. Already Hol- land, torn again by civil feuds and blinded by the arti- fices of Maximilian, has deserted, for a season, the great cause to which Flanders has remained so true. At last a treaty is made between the archduke and the Flem- ings. Maximilian is to be regent of the other prov- inces ; Philip, under guardianship of a council, is to govern Flanders. Moreover, a congress of all the prov- inces is to be summoned annually to provide for the general welfare. Maximilian signs and swears to the 68 THE RISE OP THE DUTCH KEPUBLIC treaty on the 16th May, 1488. He swears, also, to dis- miss all foreign troops within four days. Griving hos- tages for his fidelity, he is set at liberty. What are oaths and hostages when prerogative and the people are con- tending 1 Emperor Frederick sends to his son an army under the Duke of Saxony. The oaths are broken, the hostages left to their fate. The struggle lasts a year, but at the end of it the Flemings are subdued. What could a single province effect, when its sister states, even liberty-loving Holland, had basely abandoned the common cause? A new treaty is made (October, 1489). Maximilian obtains uncontrolled guardianship of his son, absolute dominion over Flanders and the other provinces. The insolent burghers are severely punished for remembering that they had been freemen. The magistrates of Ghent, Bruges, and Ypres, in black gar- ments, ungirdled, bareheaded, and kneeling, are com- pelled to implore the despot's forgiveness and to pay three hundred thousand crowns of gold as its price. After this, for a brief season, order reigns in Flanders. The course of Maximilian had been stealthy, but decided Allying himself with the city party, he had crushed the nobles. The power thus obtained he then turned against the burghers. Step by step he had trampled out the liberties which his wife and himself had sworn to protect. He had spurned the authority of the Great Privilege and all other charters. Bur- gomasters and other citizens had been beheaded in great numbers for appealing to their statutes against the edicts of the regent, for voting in favor of a general congress according to the unquestionable law. He had proclaimed that aU landed estates should, in lack of heirs male, escheat to his own exchequer. He had de- PHILIP THE FAIR 69 based the coin of the country, and thereby authorized unlimited swindling on the part of all his agents, from stadholders down to the meanest official. If such op- pression and knavery did not justify the resistance of the Flemings to the guardianship of Maximilian, it would be difficult to find any reasonable course in pohti- cal affairs save abject submission to authority. In 1493 Maximilian succeeds to the imperial throne, at the death of his father. In the following year his son, Philip the Pair, now seventeen years of age, re- ceives the homage of the different states of the Nether- lands. He swears to maintain only the privileges granted by Philip and Charles of Burgundy or their ancestors, proclaiming null and void all those which might have been acquired since the death of Charles. Holland, Zealand, and the other provinces accept him upon these conditions, thus ignominiously and without a struggle relinquishing the Great Privilege and all similar charters. Friesland is, for a brief season, politically separated from the rest of the country. Harassed and exhausted by centuries of warfare, foreign and domestic, the free Frisians, at the suggestion or command of Emperor Maximilian, elect the Duke of Saxony as their podesta. The sovereign prince, naturally proving a chief magis- trate far from democratic, gets himself acknowledged or submitted to, soon afterward, as legitimate sovereign of Friesland. Seventeen years afterward Saxony sells the sovereignty to the Austrian house for three hundred and fifty thousand crowns. This little country, whose statutes proclaimed her to be " free as the wind, as long as it blew," whose institutions Charlemagne had honored and left unmolested, who had freed herself with ready 70 THE EISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC poniard from Norman tyranny, who never bowed her neck to feudal chieftain nor to the papal yoke, now driven to madness and suicide by the dissensions of her wild chil- dren, forfeits at last her independent existence. All the provinces are thus united in a common servitude, and regret, too late, their supineness at a moment when their liberties might yet have been vindicated. Their ancient and cherished charters, which their bold ancestors had earned with the sweat of their brows and the blood of their hearts, are at the mercy of an autocrat, and liable to be superseded by his edicts. In 1496 the momentous marriage of Philip the Fair with Joanna, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Castile and Aragon, is solemnized. Of this union, in the first year of the century, is born the second Charle- magne, who is to unite Spain and the Netherlands, to- gether with so many vast and distant realms, under a single scepter. Sik years afterward (September 25, 1506), Philip dies at Burgos. A handsome profligate, devoted to his pleasures, and leaving the cares of state to his ministers, Philip, " croit-conseil," is the bridge over which the house of Hapsburg passes to almost universal monarchy, but in himself is nothing. Two prudent marriages, made by Austrian archdukes within twenty years, have altered the face of the earth. The stream, which we have been tracing from its source, empties itself at last into the ocean of a world- empire. Count Dirk I., lord of a half-submerged corner of Europe, is succeeded by Count Charles II. THE TWO CHAELEMAGNES 71 of Holland, better kDown as Charles V., King of Spain, Sicily, and Jerusalem, Duke of Milan, Emperor of Ger- many, dominator in Asia and Africa, autocrat of haK the world. The leading events of his brUliant reign are familiar to every child. The Netherlands now share the fate of so large a group of nations, a fate to these prov- inces most miserable. The weddings of Austria Felix i were not so prolific of happiness to her subjects as to herself. It can never seem just or reasonable that the destiny of many millions of human beings shoiild depend upon the marriage settlements of one man with one woman, and a permanent, prosperous empire can never be reared upon so fraU a foundation. The leading thought of the first Charlemagne was a noble and a useful one, nor did his imperial scheme seem chimerical, even although time, wiser than monarchs or lawgivers, was to prove it impracticable. To weld into one great whole the various tribes of Franks, Frisians, Saxons, Lombards, Burgundians, and others, still in their tur- bulent youth, and still composing one great Teutonic family; to enforce the mutual adhesion of naturally coherent masses, all of one lineage, one language, one history, and which were only beginning to exhibit their tendencies to insulation ; to acqtdesce in a variety of local laws and customs, while an iron will was to concentrate a vast but homogeneous people into a single nation; to raise up from the grave of corrupt and buried Rome a fresh, vigorous, G-erman, Christian empire— this was a reasonable and manly thought. Far different the con- ception of the second Charlemagne. To force into discordant union tribes which for seven centuries had developed themselves into hostile nations, separated by 1 "Bella, gerant alii, tu felix Austria nube," etc. 72 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH BEPI7BLIC geography and history, customs and laws ; to combine many millions under one scepter, not because of natural identity, but for the sake of composing one splendid family property ; to establish unity by annihilating local institutions ; to supersede popular and liberal charters by the edicts of a central despotism ; to do battle with the whole spirit of an age ; to regard the souls as well as the bodies of vast multitudes as the personal property of one individual ; to strive for the perpetuation in a single house of many crowns which accident had blended, and to imagine the consecration of the whole system by placing the pope's triple diadem forever upon the im- perial head of the Hapsburgs— all this was not the effort of a great constructive genius, but the selfish scheme of an autocrat. The union of no two countries could be less likely to prove advantageous or agreeable than that of the Neth- erlands and Spain. They were widely separated geo- graphically, while in history, manners, and politics they were utterly opposed to each other. Spain, which had but just assumed the form of a single state by the com- bination of aU its kingdoms, with its haughty nobles descended from petty kings and arrogating almost sovereign power within their domains, with its fierce en- thusiasm for the Catholic religion, which, in the course of long warfare with the Saracens, had become the absorbing characteristic of a whole nation, with its sparse population scattered over a wide and stern coun- try, with a military spirit which led nearly all classes to prefer poverty to the wealth attendant upon degrad- ing pursuits of trade— Spain, with her gloomy, martial, and exaggerated character, was the absolute contrast of the Netherlands. SPAIN AND THE NETHERLANDS 73 These provinces had been rarely combined into a whole, but there was natural affinity in their character, history, and position. There was life, movement, bus- tling activity everywhere. An energetic population swarmed in all the flourishing cities which dotted the surface of a contracted and highly cultivated country. Their ships were the carriers for the world; their merchants, if invaded in their rights, engaged in vigor- ous warfare with their own funds and their own frigates ; their fabrics were prized over the whole earth; their burghers possessed the wealth of princes, lived with royal luxury, and exercised vast political influence ; their love of liberty was their predominant passion. Their religious ardor had not been fuUy awakened; but the events of the next generation were to prove that in no respect more than in the religious sentiment were the two races opposed to each other. It was as certain that the Netherlanders would be fierce reformers as that the Spaniards would be uncompromising persecutors. Un- hallowed was the union between nations thus utterly contrasted. Philip the Fair and Ferdinand had detested and quar- reled with each other from the beginning. The Span- iards and Flemings participated in the mutual antipathy, and hated each other cordially at first sight. The un- scrupulous avarice of the Netherland nobles in Spain, their grasping and venal ambition, enraged and dis- gusted the haughty Spaniards. This international malignity furnishes one of the keys to a proper under- standing of the great revolt in the next reign. The provinces, now all united again under an emperor, were treated, opulent and powerful as they were, as obscure dependencies. The regency over them was in- 74 THE KISE OF THE DUTCH BEPUBLIC trusted by Charles to his near relatives, who governed in the interest of his house, not of the country. His course toward them upon the religious question wiU be hereafter indicated. The political character of his administration was typi&ed and, as it were, dramatized on the occasion of the memorable insurrection at Ghent. For this reason a few interior details concerning that remarkable event seem requisite. XI Ghent was in all respects one of the most important cities in Europe. Erasmus, who, as a Hollander and a courtier, was not likely to be partial to the turbulent Flemings, asserted that there was no town in aU Christen- dom to be compared to it for size, power, political con- stitution, or the culture of its inhabitants. It was, said one of its inhabitants at the epoch of the insurrection, rather a country than a city. The activity and wealth of its burghers were proverbial. The beUs were rung daily, and the drawbridges over the many arms of the river intersecting the streets were raised, in order that all business might be suspended while the armies of workmen were going to or returning from their labors. As early as the fourteenth century, the age of the Arte- veldes, Froissart estimated the number of fighting men whom Ghent could bring into the field at eighty thou- sand. The city, by its jurisdiction over many large but subordinate towns, disposed of more than its own immediate popidation, which has been reckoned as high as two hundred thousand. Placed in the midst of well-cultivated plains, Ghent CONDITION OP GHENT 75 was surrounded by strong walls, the external circuit of which measured nine miles. Its streets and squares were spacious and elegant, its churches and other public buildings numerous and splendid. The sumptuous Church of St. John or St. Bavon, where Charles V. had been baptized, the ancient castle whither Baldwin Bras de Fer had brought the daughter of Charles the Bald, the city hall with its graceful Moorish front, the weU-known belfry, where for three centuries had perched the dragon sent by the Emperor Baldwin of Flanders from Constantinople, and where swung the famous Roland, whose iron tongue had called the citizens, generation after generation, to arms, whether to win battles over foreign kings at the head of their chivalry, or to plunge their swords in each other's breasts, were aU conspicuous in the city and celebrated in the land. Especially the great beU was the object of the burghers' affection, and, generally, of the sovereign's hatred ; while to aU it seemed, as it were, a living historical personage, endowed with the human powers and passions which it had so long directed and inflamed. The constitution of the city was very free. It was a little republic in aU but name. Its population was divided into fifty-two gilds of manufacturers and into thirty-two tribes of weavers, each fraternity electing annually or biennially its own deans and subordinate ofilcers. The senate, which exercised functions legisla- tive, judicial, and administrative, subject of course to the Grand Council of Mechlin and to the sovereign au- thority, consisted of twenty-six members. These were appointed partly from the upper class, or the men who lived upon their means, partly from the manufacturers in general, and partly from the weavers. They were 76 THE EISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC chosen by a college of eight electors, who were ap- pointed by the sovereign on nomination by the citizens. The whole city, in its collective capacity, constituted one of the four estates (membra) of the province of Flan- ders. It is obvious that so much liberty of form and of fact, added to the stormy character by which its citizens were distinguished, would be most offensive in the eyes of Charles, and that the delinquencies of the little com- monwealth would be represented in the most glaring colors by all those quiet souls who preferred the tran- quillit}'' of despotism to the turbulence of freedom. The city claimed, moreover, the general provisions of the Great Privilege of the Lady Mary, the Magna Charta, which, according to the monarchical party, had been legally abrogated by Maximilian. The liberties of the town had also been nominally curtailed by the " Calf- skin" (Kalf Vel). By this celebrated document, Charles v., then fifteen years of age, had been made to threaten with condign punishment all persons who should main- tain that he had sworn at his inauguration to observe any privileges or charters claimed by the Ghenters before the peace of Cadsand. The immediate cause of the discontent, the attempt to force from Flanders a subsidy of four hundred thousand caroli, as the third part of the twelve hundred thousand granted by the states of the Netherlands, and the resis- tance of Ghent in opposition to the other three members of the province, will, of course, be judged differently, according as the sympathies are stronger with popular rights or with prerogative. The citizens claimed that the subsidy could only be granted by the unanimous con- sent of the four estates of the province. Among other proofs of this their unquestionable right, they appealed THE "BARGAIN OF FLANDERS" 77 to a muniment which had never existed, save in the imagination of the credulous populace. At a certain remote epoch, one of the counts of Flanders, it was contended, had gambled away his countship to the Earl of Holland, but had been extricated from his dilemma by the generosity of Ghent. The burghers of the town had paid the debts and redeemed the sovereignty of their lord, and had thereby gained, in return, a charter, called the " Bargain of Flanders " (Koop van Flandern). Among the privileges granted by this document was an express stipulation that no subsidy should ever be granted by the province without the consent of Ghent. This charter would have been conclusive in the present emergency, had it not labored under the disadvantage of never having existed. It was supposed by many that the magistrates, some of whom were favorable to gov- ernment, had hidden the document. Lieven Pyl, an ex-senator, was supposed to be privy to its concealment. He was also, with more justice, charged with an act of great baseness and effrontery. Deputed by the citizens to carry to the queen regent their positive refusal to grant the subsidy, he had, on the contrary, given an answer, in their name, in the affirmative. For these delinquencies, the imaginary and the real, he was inhumanly tortured and afterward beheaded. " I know, my children," said he upon the scaffold, "that you will be grieved when you have seen my blood flow, and that you will regret me when it is too late." It does not appear, however, that there was any especial reason to regret him, how- ever sanguinary the punishment which had requited his broken faith. The mischief being thus afoot, the tongue of Roland and the easily excited spirits of the citizens soon did 78 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH EEPUBLIC the rest. Ghent broke forth into open insurrection. They had been willing to enlist and pay troops under their own banners, but they had felt outraged at the enor- mous contribution demanded of them for a foreign war undertaken in the family interests of their distant master. They could not find the Bargain of Flanders, but they got possession of the odious Calfskin, which was sol- emnly cut in two by the dean of the weavers. It was then torn in shreds by the angry citizens, many of whom paraded the streets with pieces of the hated document stuck in their caps like plumes. From these demon- strations they proceeded to intrigues with Francis I. He rejected them, and gave notice of their overtures to Charles, who now resolved to quell the insurrection at once. Francis wrote, begging that the emperor would honor him by coming through Prance ; " wishing to assure you," said he, " my lord and good brother, by this letter, written and signed by my hand, upon my honor, and on the faith of a prince and of the best brother you have, that in passing through my kingdom every possible honor and hospitality will be offered you, even as they could be to myself." Certainly the French king, after such profuse and voluntary pledges, to con- firm which he, moreover, offered his two sons and other great individuals as hostages, could not, without utterly disgracing himself, have taken any unhandsome advan- tage of the emperoi-'s presence in his dominions. The reflections often made concerning the high-minded chiv- alry of Francis and the subtle knowledge of human nature displayed by Charles upon the occasion seem, therefore, entirely superfluous. The emperor came to Paris. "Here," says a citizen of Ghent at the time, who has left a minute accojint of the transaction upon INSUEEECTION AT GHENT 79 record, but whose sympathies were ludicrously with the despot and against his own townspeople, "here the emperor was received as if the God of Paradise had descended." On the 9th of February, 1540, he left Brussels ; on the 14th he came to Ghent. His entrance into the city lasted more than six hours. Four thou- sand lancers, one thousand archers, five thousand hal- berdmen and musketeers composed his body-guard, all armed to the teeth and ready for combat. The em- peror rode in their midst, surrounded by "cardinals, archbishops, bishops, and other great ecclesiastical lords," so that the terrors of the Church were combined with the panoply of war to affright the souls of the tur- bulent burghers. A briUiant train of " dukes, princes, earls, barons, grand masters, and seigniors, together with most of the Knights of the Fleece," were, according to the testimony of the same eye-witness, in attendance upon his Majesty. This unworthy son of Ghent was in ecstasies with the magnifleence displayed upon the occasion. There was such a number of " grand lords, members of sovereign houses, bishops, and other ecclesi- astical dignitaries going about the streets that," as the poor soul protested with delight, "there was nobody else to be met with." Especially the fine clothes of these distinguished guests excited his warmest admira- tion. It was wonderful to behold, he said, " the nobility and great richness of the princes and seigniors, displayed as weU in their beautiful furs, martens and sables, as in the great chains of fine gold which they wore twisted round their necks, and the pearls and precious stones in their bonnets and otherwise, which they displayed in great abundance. It was a very triumphant thing to see them thus richly dressed and accoutred." 80 THE KISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC An idea may be formed of the size and wealtli of the city at this period from the fact that it received and accommodated sixty thousand strangers, with their fifteen thousand horses, upon the occasion of the emperor's visit. Charles allowed a month of awful suspense to intervene between his arrival and his vengeance. Despair and hope alternated during the interval. On the 17th of March the spell was broken by the execution of nineteen persons, who were beheaded as ringleaders. On the 29th of April he pronounced sentence upon the city. The haU where it was rendered was open to all comers, and graced by the presence of the emperor, the queen regent, and the great func- tionaries of court, church, and state. The decree, now matured, was read at length. It annulled all the charters, privileges, and laws of Ghent. It confiscated aU its public property, rents, revenues, houses, artillery, munitions of war, and in general everything which the corporation or the traders, each and all, possessed in common. In particular, the great beU Roland was con- demned and sentenced to immediate removal. It was decreed that the four hundred thousand fiorins which had caused the revolt should forthwith be paid, to- gether with an additional fine by Ghent of one hun- dred and fifty thousand, besides six thousand a year forever after. In place of their ancient and beloved constitution, thus annihilated at a blow, was promul- gated a new form of municipal government of the simplest kind, according to which all officers were in future to be appointed by himself, and the gUds to be reduced to half their number, shorn of all political power, and deprived entirely of self-government. It was, moreover, decreed that the senators, their pensionaries, GHENT CHASTISED 81 clerks, and secretaries, thirty notable burgliers to be named by the emperor, with the great dean and second dean of the weavers, all dressed in black robes, without their chains, and bareheaded, should appear upon an appointed day, in company with fifty persons from the gilds, and fifty others to be arbitrarily named, in their shirts, with halters upon their necJcs. This large number of deputies, as representatives of the city, were then to fall upon their knees before the emperor, say in a loud and intelligible voice, by the mouth of one of their clerks, that they were extremely sorry for the disloyalty, disobedience, infraction of laws, commotions, rebellion, and high treason of which they had been guilty, prom- ise that they would never do the like again, and hum. bly implore him, for the sake of the passion of Jesus Christ, to grant them mercy and forgiveness. The third day of May was appointed for the execu- tion of the sentence. Charles, who was fond of imposing exhibitions and prided himself upon arranging them with skill, was determined that this occasion shotdd be long remembered by all burghers throughout his do- minions who might be disposed to insist strongly upon their municipal rights. The streets were alive with troops, cavalry and infantry in great numbers keeping strict guard at every point throughout the whole extent of the city ; for it was known that the hatred produced by the sentence was most deadly, and that nothing but an array of invincible force could keep those hostile sentiments in check. The senators in their black mourning robes, the other deputies in linen shirts, bareheaded, with halters on their necks, proceeded at the appointed hour from the senate-house to the im- perial residence. High on his throne, with the queen VOL. I. — 6 82 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC regent at his side, surrounded by princes, prelates, and nobles, guarded by his archers and halberdiers, his crown on his head and his scepter in his hand, the emperor, exalted, sat. The senators and burghers, in their robes of humiliation, knelt in the dust at his feet. The prescribed words of contrition and of supplication for mercy were then read by the pensionary, all the deputies remaining upon their knees, and many of them crying bitterly with rage and shame. " What principally distressed them," said the honest citizen whose admiration for the brilliant accoutrement of the princes and prelates has been recorded, " was to have the halter on their necks, which they found hard to bear, and if they had not been compelled, they would rather have died than submit to it." As soon as the words had been all spoken by the pensionary, the emperor, whose cue was now to appear struggling with mingled emotions of reasonable wrath and of natural benignity, performed his part with much dramatic effect. "He held himself coyly for a little time," says the eye-witness, " without saying a word ; deporting himself as though he were considering whether or not he would grant the pardon for which the culprits had prayed." Then the queen regent enacted her share in the show. Turning to his Majesty " with aU rever- ence, honor, and humility, she begged that he would concede forgiveness, in honor of his nativity, which had occurred in that city." Upon this the emperor " made a fine show of benig- nity," and replied " very sweetly " that in consequence of his "fraternal love for her, by reason of his being a gentle and virtuous prince, who preferred mercy to the rigor of justice, and in view of their repentance, he would accord his pardon to the citizens." EAKLT NBTHERLAND HERESY 83 The Netherlands, after this issue to the struggle of Grhent, were reduced practically to a very degraded condition. The form of local self-government remaiaed, but its spirit, when invoked, only arose to be derided. The Supreme Court of Mechlin, as in the days of Charles the Bold, was again placed in despotic authority above the ancient charters. Was it probable that the lethargy of proArinces which had reached so high a point of free- dom only to be deprived of it at last could endure forever? "Was it to be hoped that the stern spirit of religious enthusiasm, allying itself with the keen instinct of civil liberty, would endue the provinces with strength to throw off the Spanish yoke ? XII It is impossible to comprehend the character of the great Netherland revolt in the sixteenth century without taking a rapid retrospective survey of the religious phenomena exhibited in the provinces. The introduc- tion of Christianity has been already indicated. From the earliest times, neither prince, people, nor even prel- ates were very dutiful to the pope. As the papal au- thority made progress, strong resistance was often made to its decrees. The bishops of Utrecht were dependent for their wealth and territory upon the good will of the emperor. They were the determined opponents of Hildebrand, warm adherents of the Hohenstaufens— Ghibelline rather than Guelf. Heresy was a plant of early growth in the Netherlands. As early as the be- ginning of the twelfth century, the notorious Tanchelyn preached at Antwerp, attacking the authority of the 84 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC pope and of all other ecclesiastics, scofBng at the cere- monies and sacraments of the Church. Unless his char- acter and career have been grossly misrepresented, he was the most infamous of the many impostors who have so often disgraced the cause of religions reformation. By more than four centuries he anticipated the Heen- tiousness and greediness manifested by a series of false prophets, and was the first to turn both the stupidity of a poptdaee and the vieiousness of a priesthood to his own advancement— an ambition which afterward reached its most signal expression in the celebrated John of Leyden. The impudence of Tanchelyn and the superstition of his followers seem alike incredible. All Antwerp was his harem. He levied, likewise, vast sums upon his con- verts, and whenever he appeared in public, his apparel and pomp were befitting an emperor. Three thousand armed satellites escorted his steps and put to death all who resisted his commands. So groveling became the superstition of his followers that they drank of the water in which he had washed, and treasured it as a divine ehxir. Advancing stUl further in his experiments upon human credulity, he announced his approaching marriage with the Virgin Mary, bade all his disciples to the wedding, and exhibited himself before an immense crowd in company with an image of his holy bride. He then ordered the people to provide for the expenses of the nuptials and the dowry of his wife, placing a coffer upon each side of the image, to receive the contributions of either sex. Which is the most wonderful manifesta- tion in the history of this personage— the audacity of the impostor, or the bestiality of his victims? His career was so successful in the Netherlands that he had ECCLESIASTICAL OPPRESSION 85 the effrontery to proceed to Rome, promtilgating what he called his doctrines as he went. He seems to have been assassinated by a priest in an obscure brawl, about the year 1115. By the middle of the twelfth century other and purer heresiarchs had arisen. Many Netherlanders became converts to the doctrines of Waldo. From that period until the appearance of Luther, a succession of sects— Waldenses, Albigenses, Perfectists, Lollards, Poplicans, Arualdists, Bohemian Brothers— waged perpetual but unequal warfare with the power and depravity of the Church, fertilizing with their blood the future field of the Reformation. Nowhere was the persecution of heretics more relentless than in the Netherlands. Sus- pected persons were subjected to various torturing but ridiculous ordeals. After such trial, death by fire was the usual but perhaps not the most severe form of execution. In Flanders, monastic ingenuity had in- vented another most painful punishment for Waldenses and similar malefactors. A criminal whose guilt had been established by the hot iron, hot plowshare, boil- ing kettle, or other logical proof, was stripped and bound to the stake ; he was then flayed from the neck to the navel, while swarms of bees were let loose to fasten upon his bleeding flesh and torture him to a death of exquisite agony. Nevertheless, heresy increased in the face of oppres- sion. The Scriptures, translated by Waldo into French, were rendered into Netherland rhyme, and the converts to the Vaudois doctrine increased in numbers and bold- ness. At the same time the power and luxury of the clergy was waxing daily. The bishops of Utrecht, no longer the defenders of the people against arbitrary 86 THE RISE OP THE DUTCH REPUBLIC power, conducted themselves like little popes. Yielding in dignity neither to king nor kaiser, they exacted homage from the most powerful princes of the Nether- lands. The clerical order became the most privileged of all. The accused priest refused to acknowledge the temporal tribunals. The protection of ecclesiastical edifices was extended over all criminals and fugitives from justice— a beneficent result in those sanguinary ages, even if its roots were sacerdotal pride. To estab- lish an accusation against a bishop, seventy-two wit- nesses were necessary ; against a deacon, twenty-seven ; against an inferior dignitary, seven; while two were suflcient to convict a layman. The power to read and write helped the clergy to much wealth. Privileges and charters from petty princes, gifts and devises from private persons, were documents which few, save eccle- siastics, could draw or dispute. Not content, moreover, with their territories and their tithings, the churchmen perpetually devised new burdens upon the peasantry. Plows, sickles, horses, oxen, all implements of hus- bandry, were taxed for the benefit of those who toiled not, but who gathered into barns. In the course of the twelfth century, many religious houses, richly endowed with lands and other property, were founded in the Netherlands. "Was hand or voice raised against clerical encroachment, the priests held ever in readiness a deadly weapon of defense: a blasting anathema was thundered against their antagonist, and smote him into submission. The disciples of Him who ordered his fol- lowers to bless their persecutors and to love their enemies invented such Christian formulas as these: " In the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Grhost, the Blessed Virgin Mary, John the Baptist, Peter and THE FORCE OP ANATHEMA 87 Paul, and all other saints in heaven, do we curse and cut off from our communion him who has thus rebelled against us. May the curse strike him in his house, barn, bed, field, path, city, castle. May he be cursed in battle, accursed in praying, in speaking, in silence, in eating, in drinking, in sleeping. May he be accursed in his taste, hearing, smell, and all his senses. May the curse blast his eyes, head, and his body, from his crown to the soles of his feet. I conjure you, Devil, and all your imps, that you take no rest till you have brought him to eternal shame; till he is destroyed by drowning or hanging, tiU he is torn to pieces by wild beasts, or con- sumed by fire. Let his children become orphans, his wife a widow. I command you. Devil, and all your imps, that even as I now blow out these torches, you do immediately extinguish the light from his eyes. So be it, so be it. Amen, amen." So speaking, the curser was wont to blow out two waxen torches which he held in his hands, and with this practical illustration the anathema was complete. Such insane ravings, even in the mouth of some im- potent beldam, were enough to .excite a shudder, but in that dreary epoch these curses from the lips of clergy- men were deemed sufQcient to draw down celestial light- ning upon the head, not of the blasphemer, but of his victim. Men who trembled neither at sword nor fire cowered like slaves before such horrid imprecations, uttered by tongues gifted, as it seemed, with super- human power. Their fellow-men shrank from the wretches thus blasted, and refused communication with them as unclean and abhorred. By the end of the thirteenth century, however, the clerical power was already beginning to decline. It was 88 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC not the corruption of the Church, but its enormous wealth, which engendered the hatred with which it was by many regarded. Temporal princes and haughty barons began to dispute the right of ecclesiastics to enjoy vast estates, while refusing the burden of taxa- tion, and unable to draw a sword for the common defense. At this period the counts of Flanders, of Holland, and other Netherland sovereigns, issued de- crees forbidding clerical institutions from acquiring property by devise, gift, purchase, or any other mode. The downfall of the rapacious and licentious Knights Templars in the provinces and throughout Europe was another severe blow administered at the same time. The attacks upon church abuses redoubled in boldness as its authority declined. Toward the end of the four- teenth century the doctrines of Wyclif had made great progress in the land. Early in the fifteenth, the execu- tions of Huss and Jerome of Prague produce the Bohe- mian rebellion. The pope proclaims a crusade against the Hussites. Knights and prelates, esquires and citi- zens, enlist in the sacred cause throughout HoUand and its sister provinces ; but many Netherlanders who had felt the might of Ziska's arm come back, feeling more sym- pathy with the heresy which they had attacked than with the Church for which they had battled. Meantime, the restrictions imposed by Netherland sovereigns upon clerical rights to hold or acquire prop- erty become more stern and more general. On the other hand, with the invention of printing the cause of the Reformation takes a colossal stride in advance. A Bible, which before had cost five hundred crowns, now costs but five. The people acquire the power of read- ing God's Word, or of hearing it read, for themselves. RESISTANCE TO THE CLERGY 89 The light of truth dispels the clouds of superstition as by a new revelation. The pope and his monks are found to bear, very often, but faint resemblance to Jesus and his apostles. Moreover, the instinct of self- interest sharpens the eye of the public. Many greedy priests of lower rank had turned shopkeepers in the Netherlands, and were growing rich by selling their wares, exempt from taxation, at a lower rate than lay hucksters could afford. The benefit of clergy, thus taking the bread from the mouths of many, excites jealousy'; the more so as, besides their miscellaneous business, the reverend traders have a most lucrative branch of commerce from which other merchants are excluded. The sale of absolutions was the source of large f ortimes to the priests. The enormous impudence of this trafllc almost exceeds belief. Throughout the Netherlands the price current of the wares thus offered for sale was published in every town and village. God's pardon for crimes already committed, or about to be committed, was advertised according to a graduated tariff. Thus, poisoning, for example, was absolved for eleven ducats six livres tournois. Absolution for incest was afforded at three ducats thirty-six livres. Perjury came to seven livres and three carlinos. Pardon for murder, if not by poison, was cheaper. Even a parri- cide could buy forgiveness at God's tribunal at one ducat four livres eight carlinos. Henry de Montfort, in the year 1448, purchased absolution for that crime at that price. "Was it strange that a century or so of this kind of work should produce a Luther? Was it unnatural that plain people who loved the ancient Church should rather desire to see her purged of such blasphemous abuses than to hear of St. Peter's dome rising a little 90 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH KEPUBLIC nearer to the clouds on these proceeds of commuted crime? At the same time, while ecclesiastical abuses are thus augmenting, ecclesiastical power is diminishing in the Netherlands. The Church is no longer able to protect itself against the secular arm. The halcyon days of ban, book, and candle are gone. In 1459 Duke Philip of Burgundy prohibits the churches from affording protection to fugitives. Charles the Bold, in whose eyes nothing is sacred save war and the means of making it, lays a heavy impost upon all clerical property. Upon being resisted, he enforces collection with the armed hand. The sword and the pen, strength and intellect, no longer the exclusive servants or instruments of priest- craft, are both in open revolt. Charles the Bold storms one fortress; Dr. Grandfort of Groningen batters another. This learned Frisian, called "the light of the world," friend and compatriot of the gi-eat Rodolphus Agricola, preaches throughout the provinces, uttering bold denunciations of ecclesiastical error. He even disputes the infallibility of the pope, denies the utility of prayers for the dead, and inveighs against the whole doctrine of purgatory and absolution. With the beginning of the sixteenth century the great Reformation was actually alive. The name of Erasmus of Rotterdam was already celebrated— the man who, according to Grotius, "so weU showed the road to a reasonable reformation." But if Erasmus showed the road, he certainly did not travel far upon it himself. Perpetual type of the quietist, the moderate man, he censured the errors of the Church with discrimination and gentleness, as if Borgianism had not been too long rampant at Rome, as if men's minds throughout Chris- tendom were not too deeply stirred to be satisfied with ERASMUS 91 mild rebukes against sin, especially when the mUd rebulcer was in receipt of livings and salaries from the sinner. Instead of rebukes, the age wanted reforms. The sage of Rotterdam was a keen observer, a shrewd satirist, but a moderate moralist. He loved ease, good company, the soft repose of princely palaces, better than a life of martyrdom and a death at the stake. He was not of the stuff of which martyrs are made, as he hand- somely confessed on more than one occasion. "Let others affect martyrdom," he said ; " for myself, I am unworthy of the honor"; and, at another time, "I am not of a mind," he observed, " to venture my life for the truth's sake ; all men have not strength to endure the martyr's death. For myself, if it came to the point, I should do no better than Simon Peter." Moderate in all things, he would have liked, he said, to live without eating and drinking, although he never found it con- venient to do so, and he rejoiced when advancing age diminished his tendency to other carnal pleasures in which he had moderately indulged. Although awake to the abuses of the Church, he thought Luther going too fast and too far. He began by applauding, ended by censuring, the monk of Wittenberg. The Reforma- tion might have been delayed for centuries had Erasmus and other moderate men been the only reformers. He wiU long be honored for his elegant Latinity. In the republic of letters, his efforts to infuse a pure taste, a sound criticism, a love for the beautiful and the classic, in place of the owlish pedantry which had so long flapped and hooted through medieval cloisters, will always be held in grateful reverence. In the history of the religious Reformation his name seems hardly to deserve the com- mendations of Grotius. As the schism yawns more and more ominously 92 THE EISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC througliout Christendom, the emperor naturally trem- bles. Anxious to save the state, but being no antique Roman, he wishes to close the gulf, but with more con- venience to himself. He conceives the highly original plan of combining church and empire under one crown. This is Maximilian's scheme for church reformation. An hereditary papacy, a perpetual pope-emperor, the Charlemagne and Hildebrand systems united and sim- plified—thus the world may yet be saved. "Nothing more honorable, nobler, better, could happen to us," writes Maximilian to Paul Lichtenstein (September 16, 1511), "than to reannex the said popedom — which prop- erly belongs to us— to our empire. Cardinal Adrian approves our reasons and encourages us to proceed, being of opinion that we should not have much trouble with the cardinals. It is much to be feared that the pope may die of his present sickness. He has lost his appetite, and fills himself with so much drink that his health is destroyed. As such matters cannot be arranged without money, we have promised the cardi- nals, whom we expect to bring over, three hundred thou- sand ducats, which we shaU raise from the Fuggers, and make payable in Rome upon the appointed day." These businesslike arrangements he communicates, two days afterward, in a secret letter to his daughter Margaret, and already exults at his future eminence, both in this world and the next. "We are sending Monsieur de Gurce," he says, "to make an agreement with the pope, that we may be taken as coadjutor, in order that, upon his death, we may be sure of the papacy, and, afterward, of becoming a saint. After my decease, therefore, you wUl be constrained to adore me, of which I shall be very proud. I am beginning to work upon the TRAFFIC IN ABSOLUTION 93 cardinals, in which affair two or three hundred thousand ducats will be of great service." The letter was signed, " From the hand of your good father, M.a'smnlian, future pope." These intrigues are not destined, however, to be suc- cessful. Pope Julius lives two years longer; Leo X. succeeds ; and, as Medici are not much prone to church reformation, some other scheme, and perhaps some other reformer, may be wanted. Meantime the traf- fic in bulls of absolution becomes more horrible than ever. Money must be raised to supply the magnifi- cent extravagance of Rome. Accordingly, Christians throughout Europe are offered by papal authority guaranties of forgiveness for every imaginable sin, "even for the rape of God's mother, if that were pos- sible," together with a promise of life eternal in paradise, all upon payment of the price affixed to each crime. The Netherlands, like other countries, are districted and farmed for the collection of this papal revenue. Much of the money thus raised remains in the hands of the vile collectors. Sincere Catholics, who love and honor the ancient religion, shrink with horror at the spectacle offered on every side. Criminals buying paradise for money, monks spending the money thus paid in gaming- houses, taverns, and brothels— this seems, to those who have studied their Testaments, a different scheme of salvation from the one promulgated by Christ. There has evidently been a departure from the system of earlier apostles. Innocent, conservative souls are much perplexed ; but at last all these infamies arouse a giant to do battle with the giant wrong. Martin Luther enters the lists aU alone, armed only with a quiver filled with ninety-five propositions, and a bow which can send them 94 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC all over Christendom with incredible swiftness. Within a few weeks the ninety-five propositions have flown through G-ermanj'^, the Netherlands, Spain, and are found in Jerusalem. At the beginning Erasmus encourages the bold friar. So long as the ax is not laid at the foot of the tree which bears the poisonous but golden fruit, the moderate man applauds the blows. " Luther's cause is considered odious," writes Erasmus to the Elector of Saxony, " be- cause he has at the same time attacked the bellies of the monks and the bulls of the pope." He complains that the zealous man had been attacked with railing, but not with arguments. He foresees that the work will have a bloody and turbulent result, but imputes the principal blame to the clergy. " The priests talk," said he, "of absolution in such terms that laymen cannot stomach it. Luther has been for nothing more censured than for making little of Thomas Aquinas, for wishing to diminish the absolution traffic, for having a low opinion of mendicant orders, and for respecting scho- lastic opinions less than the gospels. All this is con- sidered intolerable heresy." Erasmus, however, was offending both parties. A swarm of monks were already buzzing about him for the bold language of his Commentaries and Dialogues. He was called Errasmus for his errors, Arasmus because he would plow up sacred things, Erasinus because he had written himself an ass ; Behemoth, Antichrist, and many other names of similar import. Luther was said to have bought the deadly seed in his barn. The egg had been laid by Erasmus, hatched by Luther. On the other hand, he was reviled for not taking side manfully with the reformer. The moderate man received much LUTHEE 95 deminciation from zealots on either side. He soon clears himself, however, from aU suspicions of Luther- anism. He is appalled at the fiei-ce conflict which rages far and wide. He becomes querulous as the mighty besom sweeps away sacred dust and consecrated cobwebs. " Men should not attempt everything at once," he writes, " but rather step by step. That which men cannot im- prove they must look at through the fingers. If the godlessness of mankind requires such fierce physicians as Luther, if man cannot be healed with soothing oint- ments and cooling drinks, let us hope that God wlU comfort as repentant those whom he has punished as rebellious. If the dove of Christ— not the owl of Minerva — would only fly to us, some measure might be put to the madness of mankind." Meantime the man whose talk is not of doves and owls, the fierce physician who deals not with ointments and cooling draughts, strides past the crowd of gentle quacks to smite the foul disease. Devils, thicker than tUes on housetops, scare him not from his work. Bans and buUs, excommunications and decrees, are rained upon his head. The paternal emperor sends down dire edicts thicker than haU upon the earth. The Holy Father blasts and raves from Rome. Louvain doctors denounce, Louvain hangmen burn, the bitter, blasphe- mous books. The immoderate man stands firm in the storm, demanding argument instead of illogical thunder ; shows the hangmen and the people too, outside the Elster gate at Wittenberg, that papal buUs will blaze as merrily as heretic scrolls. What need of allusion to events which changed the world, which every child has learned— to the war of Titans, uprooting of hoary trees and rock-ribbed hiUs, to the Worms Diet, peasant wars, 96 THE RISE OP THE DUTCH REPUBLIC the Patmos of Eisenach, and huge wrestlings with the devil? Imperial edicts are soon employed to suppress the Eeformation in the Netherlands by force. The prov- inces, unfortunately, are the private property of Charles, his paternal inheritance ; and most paternally, according to his view of the matter, does he deal with them. Ger- many cannot be treated thus summarily, not being his heritage. " As it appears," says the edict of 1521, " that the aforesaid Martin is not a man, but a devil under the form of a man, and clothed in the dress of a priest, the better to bring the human race to heU and damna- tion, therefore all his disciples and converts are to be punished with death and forfeiture of all their goods." This was succinct and intelligible. The bloody edict issued at Worms, without even a pretense of sanction by the estates, was carried into immediate effect. The papal Inquisition was introduced into the provinces to assist its operations. The bloody work for which the reign of Charles is mainly distinguished in the Nether- lands now began. In 1523, July 1, two Augustine monks were burned at Brussels, the first victims to Lutheranism in the provinces. Erasmus observed, with a sigh, that " two had been burned at Brussels, and that the city now began strenuously to favor Lutheranism." Pope Adrian VI., the Netherland boat-maker's son and the emperor's ancient tutor, was sufficiently alive to the sins of churchmen. The humble scholar of Utrecht was, at least, no Borgia. At the Diet of Nurem- berg, summoned to put down Luther, the honest pope declared roundly, through the Bishop of Pabriano, that " these disorders had sprung from the sins of men, more especially /row the sins of priests and prelates. Even in IMPERIAL EDICTS 97 the holy chair," said he, "many horrible crimes have been committed. Many abuses have grown up in the ecclesiastical state. The contagious disease, spreading from the head to the members,— from the pope to lesser prelates,— has spread far and wide, so that scarcely any one is to be found who does right and who is free from infection. Nevertheless, the evils have become so an- cient and manifold that it will be necessaiy to go step by step." In those passionate days the ardent reformers were as much outraged by this pregnant confession as the eccle- siastics. It would indeed be a slow process, they thought, to move step by step in the Reformation, if between each step a whole centttry was to intervene. In vain did the gentle pontiff call upon Erasmus to assuage the stormy sea with his smooth rhetoric. The sage of Rot- terdam was old and sickly ; his day was over. Adrian's head, too, languishes beneath the triple crown but twenty months. He dies September 13, 1523, having arrived at the conviction, according to his epitaph, that the greatest misfortune of his life was to have reigned. Another edict published in the Netherlands forbids all private assemblies for devotion ; aU reading of the Scriptures ; all discussions within one's own doors con- cerning faith, the sacraments, the papal authority, or other religious matter, under penalty of death. The edicts were no dead letter. The fires were kept con- stantly supplied with human fuel by monks who knew the art of burning reformers better than that of arguing with them. The scaffold was the most conclusive of syllogisms, and used upon all occasions. Still the people remained unconvinced. Thousands of burned heretics had not made a single convert. VOL. I.— 7 98 THE EISE OP THE DUTCH REPUBLIC A fresh edict renewed and sharpened the punishment for reading the Scriptures in private or public. At the same time, the violent personal altercation between Luther and Erasmus upon predestination, together with the bitter dispute between Luther and ZwingU concern- ing the real presence, did more to impede the progress of the Reformation than ban or edict, sword or fire. The spirit of humanity hung her head, finding that the bold reformer had only a new dogma in place of the old ones, seeing that dissenters, in their turn, were some- times as ready as papists with ax, fagot, and excom- munication. In 1526 Felix Mants, the Anabaptist, is drowned at Zurich, in obedience to Zwingli's pithy for- mula, " Qui iterum mergit mergatur." Thus the Ana- baptists, upon their first appearance, were exposed to the fires of the Church and the water of the Zwinglians. There is no doubt that the Anabaptist delusion was so ridiculous and so loathsome as to palliate or at least render intelligible the wrath with which they were re- garded by all parties. The turbulence of the sect was alarming to constituted authorities, its bestiality dis- graceful to the cause of religious reformation. The leaders were among the most depraved of human crea- tures, as much distinguished for licentiousness, blas- phemy, and cruelty as their followers for groveUng superstition. The evil spirit driven out of Luther seemed, in orthodox eyes, to have taken possession of a herd of swine. The Germans Muncer and Hoffmann had been succeeded, as chief prophets, by a Dutch baker named Matthiszoon, of Haarlem, who announced himself as Enoch. Chief of this man's disciples was the notori- ous John Boccold of Leyden. Under the government of this prophet the Anabaptists mastered the city of THE ANABAPTIST DELUSION 99 Miinster. Here they confiscated property, plundered churches, violated females, murdered men who refused to join the gang, and, in brief, practised all the enormi- ties which humanity alone can conceive or perpetrate. The prophet proclaimed himself King of Sion, and sent out apostles to preach his doctrines in Germany and the Netherlands. Polygamy being a leading article of the system, he exemplified the principle by marrying four- teen wives. Of these, the beautiful widow of Matthiszoon was chief, was called the Queen of Sion, and wore a golden crown. The prophet made many fruitless efforts to seize Amsterdam and Leyden. The armed invasion of the Anabaptists was repelled, but their contagious madness spread. The plague broke forth in Amsterdam. On a cold winter's night (February, 1535) seven men and five women, inspired by the Holy Ghost, threw off their clothes and rushed naked and raving through the streets, shrieking, "Woe, woe, woe! the wrath of God, the wrath of God ! " When arrested, they obstinately refused to put on clothing. "We are," they observed, " the naked truth." In a day or two, these furious luna- tics, who certainly deserved a madhouse rather than the scaffold, were all executed. The numbers of the sect increased with the martyrdom to which they were ex- posed, and the disorder spread to every part of the Netherlands. Many were put to death in lingering torments, but no perceptible effect was produced by the chastisement. Meantime the great chief of the sect, the prophet John, was defeated by the forces of the Bishop of Miinster, who recovered his city and caused the " King of Sion " to be pinched to death with red-hot tongs. Unfortunately, the severity of government was not wreaked alone upon the prophet and his mischievous crew. 100 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC Thousands and ten thousands of virtuous, well-disposed men and women, who had as little sympathy with ana- baptistieal as with Roman depravity, were butchered in cold blood, under the sanguinary rule of Charles, in the Netherlands. In 1533 Queen Dowager Mary of Hun- gary, sister of the emperor, regent of the provinces, the "Christian widow" admired by Erasmus, wrote to her brother that "in her opinion all heretics, whether repentant or not, should be prosecuted with such sever- ity as that error might be at once extinguished, care being only taken that the provinces were not entirely depopulated." With this humane limitation, the " Chris- tian widow" cheerfully set herself to superintend as foul and wholesale a system of murder as was ever organized. In 1535 an imperial edict was issued at Brussels condemning all heretics to death; repentant males to be executed with the sword, repentant females to be buried aUve, the obstinate of both sexes to be burned. This and similar edicts were the law of the land for twenty years, and rigidly enforced. Imperial and papal persecution continued its daily deadly work with such diligence as to make it doubtful whether the limits set by the Regent Mary might not be overstepped. In the midst of the carnage, the emperor sent for his son Philip, that he might receive the fealty of the Neth- erlands as their future lord and master. Contemporane- ously, a new edict was published at Brussels (April 29, 1549), confirming and reenacting all previous decrees in their most severe provisions. Thus stood religious matters in the Netherlands at the epoch of the imperial abdication. TENDENCY OP CIVIL INSTITUTIONS 101 XIII The civil institutions of the country had assumed their last provincial form in the Burgundo-Austrian epoch. As already stated, their tendency, at a later period a vicious one, was to substitute fictitious person- ages for men. A chain of corporations was wound about the liberty of the Netherlands; yet that liberty had been originally sustained by the system in which it, one day, might be strangled. The spirit of local self- government, always the life-blood of liberty, was often excessive in its manifestations. The centrifugal force had been too much developed, and, combining with the mutual jealousy of corporations, had often made the nation weak against a common foe. Instead of popular rights there were state rights ; for the large cities, with extensive districts and villages under their government, were rather petty states than municipalities. Although the supreme legislative and executive functions belonged to the sovereign, yet each city made its by-laws, and possessed, besides, a body of statutes and regulations made from time to time by its own authority and con- firmed by the prince. Thus a large portion, at least, of the nation shared practically in the legislative functions, which, technically, it did not claim ; nor had the require- ments of society made constant legislation so necessary as that to exclude the people from the work was to enslave the country. There was popular power enough to effect much good, but it was widely scattered, and, at the same time, confined in artificial forms. The gUds were vassals of the towns, the towns vassals of the feudal lord. The gild voted in the "broad council" 102 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC of the city as one person ; the city voted in the estates as one person. The people of the United Netherlands was the personage yet to be invented. It was a privilege, not a right, to exercise a handiwork or to participate in the action of government. Yet the mass of privileges was so large, the shareholders so numerous, that prac- tically the towns were republics. The government was in the hands of a large number of the people. Industry and intelligence led to wealth and power. This was great progress from the general servitude of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, an immense barrier against arbi- trary rule. Loftier ideas of human rights, larger concep- tions of commerce, have taught mankind, in later days, the difference between liberties and liberty, between gUds and free competition. At the same time it was the prin- ciple of mercantile association in the middle ages which protected the infant steps of human freedom and human industry against violence and wrong. Moreover, at this period the tree of municipal Ufe was stiU green and vigorous. The healthful flow of sap from the humblest roots to the most verdurous branches indicated the in- ternal soundness of the core and provided for the con- stant development of exterior strength. The road to political influence was open to aU, not by right of birth, but through honorable exertion of heads and hands. The chief city of the Netherlands, the commercial capital of the world, was Antwerp. In the north and east of Europe the Hanseatic League had withered with the revolution in commerce. At the south the splendid marble channels through which the overland India trade had been conducted from the Mediterranean by a few stately cities were now dry, the great aqueducts ruinous and deserted. Verona, Venice, Nuremberg, Augsburg, ANTWEEP 103 Bruges, were sinking ; but Antwerp, with its deep and convenient river, stretched its arm to the ocean and caught the golden prize as it fell from its sister cities' grasp. The city was so ancient that its genealogists, with ridiculous gravity, ascended to a period two cen- turies before the Trojan war, and discovered a giant, rejoicing in the classic name of Antigonus, established on the Schelde. This patriarch exacted one half the merchandise of all navigators who passed his castle, and was accustomed to amputate and cast into the river the right hands of those who infringed this simple tariff. Thus Sand-werpen, "hand-throwing," became Antwerp, and hence two hands, in the escutcheon of the city, were ever held up in heraldic attestation of the truth. The giant was, in his turn, thrown into the Schelde by a hero named Brabo, from whose exploits Brabant derived its name ; " de quo Brabonica tellus." But for these anti- quarian researches, a simpler derivation of the name would seem an t' werf, "on the wharf." It had now become the principal entrep6t and exchange of Europe. The Puggers, Velsens, Ostetts, of Germany, the Gual- terotti and Bonvisi of Italy, and many other great mer- cantile houses were there established. No city, except Paris, surpassed it in population, none approached it in commercial splendor. Its government was very free. The sovereign, as Marquis of Antwerp, was solemnly sworn to govern according to the ancient charters and laws. The stadholder, as his representative, shared his authority with the four estates of the city. The senate of eighteen members was appointed by the stadholder out of a quadruple number nominated by the senate itself and by the fourth body, called the borgery. Half the board was thus renewed annually. It exercised 104 THE EISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC executive and appellate judicial functions, appointed two burgomasters and two pensionaries or legal coun- cilors, and also selected the lesser magistrates and officials of the city. The board of ancients or ex-sena- tors held their seats ex officio. The twenty-six ward- masters, appointed, two from each ward, by the senate on nomination by the wards, formed the third estate. Their especial business was to enroll the militia and to attend to its mustering and training. The deans of the gilds, fifty-four in number, two from each gild, selected by the senate from a triple list of candidates presented by the gilds, composed the fourth estate. This influential body was always assembled in the broad council of the city. Their duty was likewise to conduct the examination of candidates claiming admittance to any gild and offering specimens of art or handiwork, to superintend the general affairs of the gilds, and to regulate disputes. There were also two important functionaries repre- senting the king in criminal and civil matters. The vicarius capitalis, scultetus, schont, sheriff, or mar- grave, took precedence of all magistrates. His business was to superintend criminal arrests, trials, and execu- tions. The vicarius civilis was caUed the amman, and his office corresponded with that of the podest^, in the Frisian and Italian republics. His duties were nearly sim- ilar in civil to those of his colleague in criminal matters. These four branches, with their functionaries and dependents, composed the commonwealth of Antwerp. Assembled together in council, they constituted the great and general court. No tax could be imposed by the sovereign except with consent of the four branches, all voting separately. STATES-GENERAL 105 The personal and domiciliary rights of the citizen were scrupulously guarded. The schout could only make arrests with the burgomaster's warrant, and was obliged to bring the accused within three days before the judges, whose courts were open to the public. The condition of the population was prosperous. There were but few poor, and those did not seek, but were sought by, the almoners. The schools were excel- lent and cheap. It was difficult to find a child of sufl- cient age who could not read, write, and speak at least two languages. The sons of the wealthier citizens completed their education at Louvain, Douai, Paris, or Padua. The city itself was one of the most beautiful in Europe. Placed upon a plain along the banks of the Sehelde, shaped like a bent bow with the river for its string, it inclosed within its walls some of the most splendid edifices in Christendom. The world-renowned Church of Notre Dame, the stately exchange where five thousand merchants daily congregated, prototype of all similar establishments throughout the world, the capa- cious mole and port where twenty-five hundred vessels were often seen at once, and where five hundred made their daily entrance or departure, were aU establishments which it would have been difficult to rival in any other part of the world. Prom what has already been said of the municipal institutions of the country, it may be inferred that the powers of the States-General were limited. The mem- bers of that congress were not representatives chosen by the people, but merely a few ambassadors from indi- vidual provinces. This individuality was not always composed of the same ingredients. Thus, Holland con- 106 THE EISE OP THE DUTCH REPUBLIC sisted of two members, or branches— the nobles and tlie six chief cities; Flanders of four branches— the cities, namely, of Ghent, Bruges, Ypres, and the " freedom of Bruges"; Brabant of Louvain, Brussels, Bois-le-Duc, and Antwerp, four great cities, without representation of nobility or clergy ; Zealand of one clerical person, the Abbot of Middelburg, one noble, the Marquis of Veer and Vlissingen, and six chief cities; Utrecht of three branches— the nobility, the clergy, and five cities. These and other provinces, constituted in similar manner, were supposed to be actually present at the diet when assembled. The chief business of the States-General was financial, the sovereign, or his stadholder, only obtaining supplies by making a request in person, while any single city, as branch of a province, had a right to refuse the grant. XIV Education had felt the onward movement of the coun- try and the times. The whole system was, however, pervaded by the monastic spirit, which had originally preserved all learning from annihilation, but which now kept it wrapped in the ancient cerecloths and stiffening in the stony sarcophagus of a bygone age. The Uni- versity of Louvain was the chief literary institution in the provinces. It had been established in 1423 by Duke John IV. of Brabant. Its government consisted of a president and senate, forming a close corporation, which had received from the founder all his own au- thority, and the right to supply their own vacancies. The five f acidties of law, canon law, medicine, theology, and the arts were cultivated at the institution. There EDUCATION 107 was, besides, a higli school for undergraduates, divided into four classes. The place reeked with pedantry, and the character of the university naturally diffused itself through other scholastic establishments. Nevertheless, it had done and was doing much to preserve the love for profound learning, while the rapidly advancing spirit of commerce was attended by an ever-increasing train of humanizing arts. The standard of culture in those flourishing cities was elevated, compared with that observed in many parts of Europe. The children of the wealthier classes enjoyed great facilities for education in all the great capitals. The classics, music, and the modern languages, particu- larly the French, were universally cultivated. Nor was intellectual cultivation confined to the higher orders. On the contrary, it was diffused to a remarkable degree among the hard-working artisans and handicraftsmen of the great cities. For the principle of association had not confined itself exclusively to politics and trade. Besides the numerous gilds by which citizenship was acquired in the various cities were many other societies for mutual improve- ment, support, or recreation. The great secret, archi- tectural or masonic brotherhood of Germany, that league to which the artistic and patient completion of the magnificent works of Gothic architecture in the middle ages is mainly to be attributed, had its branches in nether Germany, and explains the presence of so many splendid and elaborately finished churches in the prov- inces. There were also military sodalities of muske- teers, crossbowmen, archers, swordsmen, in every town. Once a year these clubs kept holiday, choosing a king, who was selected for his prowess and skiU in the use of 108 THE EISE OF THE DUTCH EEPUBLIC various weapons. These festivals, always held with great solemnity and rejoicing, were accompanied by many exhibitions of archery and swordsmanship. The people were not likely, therefore, voluntarily to abandon that privilege and duty of freemen, the right to bear arms, and the power to handle them. Another and most important collection of brother- hoods were the so-called gilds of rhetoric, which existed, in greater or less number, in aU the principal cities. These were associations of mechanics for the purpose of amusing their leisure with poetical effusions, dramatic and musical exhibitions, theatrical processions, and other harmless and not inelegant recreations. Such chambers of rhetoric came originally in the fifteenth century from France. The fact that in their very title they confounded rhetoric with poetry and the drama in- dicates the meager attainments of these early " redery- kers." In the outset of their career they gave theatrical exhibitions. " King Herod and his Deeds " was enacted in the cathedral at Utrecht in 1418. The associations spread with great celerity throughout the Netherlands, and, as they were aU connected with each other and in habits of periodical intercourse, these humble links of literature were of great value in drawing the people of the provinces into closer union. They became, like- wise, important political engines. As early as the time of Philip the Good, their songs and lampoons be- came so offensive to the arbitrary notions of the Bur- gundian government as to cause the societies to be prohibited. It was, however, out of the sovereign's power permanently to suppress institutions which already partook of the character of the modern periodi- cal press combined with functions resembling the show GILDS OF EHETOEIC ' IQQ and license of the Athenian drama. Viewed from the standpoint of literary criticism their productions were not very commendable in taste, conception, or execution. To torture the Muses to madness, to wire-draw poetry through inextricable coils of difdeult rhymes and im- possible measures, to hammer one golden grain of wit into a sheet of infinite platitude, with frightful ingenuity to construct ponderous anagrams and preternatural acrostics, to dazzle the vulgar eye with tawdry costumes, and to tickle the vulgar ear with virulent personalities, were tendencies which perhaps smacked of the hammer, the yardstick, and the pincers, and gave sufficient proof, had proof been necessary, that literature is not one of the mechanical arts, and that poetry cannot be manu- factured to a profit by joint-stock companies. Yet, if the style of these lucubrations was often depraved, the artisans rarely received a better example from the literary institutions above them. It was not for gilds of mechanics to give the tone to literature, nor were their efforts in more execrable taste than the emanations from the pedants of Louvain. The "rhetoricians" are not responsible for all the bad taste of their generation. The gravest historians of the Netherlands often relieved their elephantine labors by the most asinine gambols, and it was not to be expected that these bustling weavers and cutlers should excel their literary superiors in taste or elegance. Philip the Fair enrolled himself as a member in one of these societies. It may easily be inferred, therefore, that they had already become bodies of recognized im- portance. The rhetorical chambers existed ia the most obscure villages. The number of yards of Flemish poetry annually manufactured and consumed through- 110 THE EISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC out the provinces almost exceed belief. The societies had regular constitutions. Their presiding officers were calleid kings, princes, captains, archdeacons, or rejoiced in similar high-sounding names. Each chamber had its treasurer, its buffoon, and its standard-bearer for public processions. Each had its peculiar title or blazon, as the Lily, the Marigold, or the Violet, wilh an appro- priate motto. By the year 1493 the associations had become so important that Philip the Fair summoned them all to a general assembly at Mechlin. Here they were organized, and formally incorporated under the general supervision of an upper or mother society of rhetoric, consisting of fifteen members, and called by the title of " Jesus with the balsam flower." The sovereigns were always anxious to conciliate these influential gilds by becoming members of them in person. Like the players, the rhetoricians were the brief abstract and chronicle of the time, and neither prince nor private person desired their ill report. It had, indeed, been Philip's intention to convert them into engines for the arbitrary purposes of his house, but fortunately the publicly organized societies were not the only chambers. On the contrary, the unchartered gilds were the most numerous and influential. They exercised a vast influence upon the progress of the religious ref- ormation and the subsequent revolt of the Netherlands. They ridiculed, with their farces and their satires, the vices of the clergy. They dramatized tyranny for public execration. It was also not surprising that among the leaders of the wild Anabaptists, who disgraced the great revolution in church and state by their hideous antics, should be found many who, like David of Delft, John of Leyden, and others, had been members of rhetorical PERIODIC JUBILEES m chambers. The genius for nniminery and theatrical exhibitions, transplanted from its sphere, and exerting itself for purposes of fraud and licentiousness, was as baleful in its effects as it was healthy in its original manifestations. Such exhibitions were but the excres- cences of a system which had borne good fruit. These literary gilds befitted and denoted a people which was alive, a people which had neither sunk to sleep in the lap of material prosperity, nor abased itself in the sty of ignorance and political servitude. The spirit of liberty pervaded these rude but not illiterate assemblies, and her fair proportions were distinctly visible even through the somewhat grotesque garb which she thus assumed. The great leading recreations which these chambers afforded to themselves and the public were the periodic jubilees which they celebrated in various capital cities. All the gilds of rhetoric throughout the Netherlands were then invited to partake and to compete in magnifi- cent processions, brilliant costumes, living pictures, charades, and other animated, glittering groups, and in trials of dramatic and poetic skiU, all arranged under the superintendence of the particular association which in the preceding year had borne away the prize. Such jubilees were called "land-jewels." From the amusements of a people may be gathered much that is necessary for a proper estimation of its character. No unfavorable opinion can be formed as to the culture of a nation whose weavers, smiths, gar- deners, and traders found the favorite amusement of their holidays in composing and enacting tragedies or farces, reciting their own verses, or in personifying moral and esthetic sentiments by ingeniously arranged groups or gorgeous habiliments. The cramoisie velvets 112 THE EISE OF THE DUTCH EEPUBLIC and yellow-satin doublets of the court, the gold-brocaded mantles of priests and princes, are often but vulgar drapery of little historic worth. Such costumes thrown around the swart figures of hard-working artisans for literary and artistic purposes have a real significance, and are worthy of a closer examination. Were not these amusements of the Netherlands as elevated and humanizing as the contemporary bull-fights and autos da f e of Spain ? "What place in history does the gloomy bigot merit who, for the love of Christ, converted all these gay cities into shambles, and changed the glit- tering processions of their land-jewels into fettered marches to the scaffold? Thus fifteen ages have passed away, and in the place of a horde of savages, living among swamps and thickets, swarm three millions of people, the most industrious, the most prosperous, perhaps the most intelligent under the sun. Their cattle, grazing on the bottom of the sea, are the finest in Europe, their agricultural products of more exchangeable value than if nature had made their land to overflow with wine and oil. Their navigators are the boldest, their mercantile marine the most power- ful, their merchants the most enterprising in the world. HoUand and Flanders, peopled by one race, vie with each other in the pursuits of civilization. The Flemish skill in the mechanical and in the fine arts is unrivaled. Belgian musicians delight and instruct other nations, Belgian pencils have, for a century, caused the canvas to glow with colors and combinations never seen before. Flemish fabrics are exported to all parts of Europe, to the East and West Indies, to Africa. The splendid tapestries, silks, linens, as well as the more homely and useful manufactures of the Netherlands, are prized CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE 113 througliout the world. Most ingenious, as they had already been described by the keen-eyed Caesar, in imi- tating the arts of other nations, the skilful artificers of the country, at Louvain, Ghent, and other places, re- produce the shawls and silks of India with admirable accuracy. Their national industry was untiring ; their prosperity unexampled; their love of liberty indomitable; their pugnacity proverbial. Peaceful in their pursuits, phleg- matic by temperament, the Netherlanders were yet the most belligerent and excitable population of Europe. Two centuries of civil war had but thinned the ranks of each generation without quenching the hot spirit of the nation. The women were distinguished by beauty of form and vigor of constitution. Accustomed from childhood to converse freely with all classes and sexes in the daily walks of life, and to travel on foot or horseback from one town to another without escort and without fear, they had acquired manners more frank and indepen- dent than those of women in other lands, while their morals were pure and their decorum undoubted. The prominent part to be sustained by the women of Hol- land in many dramas of the revolution would thus fitly devolve upon a class enabled by nature and education to conduct themselves with courage. Within the little circle which incloses the seventeen provinces are 208 walled cities, many of them among the most stately in Christendom, 150 chartered towns, 6300 villages, with their watch-towers and steeples, besides numerous other more insignificant hamlets; the whole guarded by a belt of sixty fortresses of surpassing strength. VOL. I.— 8 114 THE EISE OF THE DUTCH EEPUBLIC XV Thus in this rapid sketch of the course and develop- ment of the Netherland nation during sixteen centuries we have seen it ever marked by one prevailing charac- teristic, one master passion— the love of liberty, the instinct of self-government. Largely compounded of the bravest Teutonic elements, Batavian and Frisian, the race ever battles to the death with tyranny, organizes extensive revolts in the age of Vespasian, maintains a partial independence even against the sagacious do- minion of Charlemagne, refuses in Friesland to accept the papal yoke or feudal chain, and throughout the dark ages struggles resolutely toward the light, wresting from a series of petty sovereigns a gradual and practical recognition of the claims of humanity. With the advent of the Burgundian family the power of the commons has reached so high a point that it is able to measure itself undaunted with the spirit of arbitrary rule, of which that engrossing and tyrannical house is the em- bodiment. For more than a century the struggle for freedom, for civic life, goes on ; Philip the Good, Charles the Bold, Mary's husband Maximilian, Charles V., in turn, assailing or undermining the bulwarks raised, age after age, against the despotic principle. The combat is ever renewed. Liberty, often crushed, rises again and again from her native earth with redoubled energy. At last, in the sixteenth century, a new and more powerful spirit, the genius of religious freedom, comes to partici- pate in the great conflict. Arbitrary power, incarnated in the second Charlemagne, assails the new combination with unscrupulous, unforgiving fierceness. Venerable RETROSPECTIVE SURVEY 115 civic magistrates, haltered, grovel in sackcloth and ashes ; innocent religious reformers burn in holocausts. By the middle of the century the battle rages more fiercely than ever. In the little Netherland territory, Humanity, bleeding but not killed, still stands at bay and defies the hunters. The two great powers have been gathering strength for centuries. They are soon to be matched in a longer and more determined combat than the world had ever seen. The emperor is about to leave the stage. The provinces, so passionate for nationality, for muni- cipal freedom, for religious reformation, are to become the property of an utter stranger, a prince foreign to their blood, their tongue, their religion, their whole habits of life and thought. Such was the political, religious, and social condition of a nation who were now to witness a new and mo- mentous spectacle. PART I PHILIP THE SECOND IN THE NETHERLANDS 1555-1559 CHAPTER I Abdication of Charles resolved upon — Brussels in the sixteenth century— Hall of the palace described— Portraits of prominent individuals present at the ceremony — Formalities of the abdi- cation—Universal emotion— Remarks upon the character and career of Charles— His retirement at Yuste. On the twenty-flfth day of October, 1555, the estates of the Netherlands were assembled in the great hall of the palace at Brussels.^ They had been summoned to be the witnesses and the guaranties of the abdication which Charles V. had long before resolved upon, and which he was that day to execute. The emperor, hke many potentates before and since, was fond of great political spectacles. He knew their influence upon the masses of mankind. Although plain even to shabbiness in his own costume, and usually attired in black,^ no one ever understood better than he how to arrange such exhibitions in a striking and artistic style. We have seen the theatrical and imposing manner in which he quelled the insurrection at Ghent and nearly crushed the life forever out of that vigorous and turbulent little 1 EmI. van Meteren, Historien der Nederlanden, i. f. 16. Pieter Bor, Nederlandshe Oorlogen, i. f. 3. 2 " niiberalior quoque quam tantmn decebat Csesarem est habitus— vestitus fere popularis, colore atro oblectabatur."— Ponti Heuteri Berum Austriaoarum Hist. (Lovanii, 1643), xiv. 346*. 119 120 THE EISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1555 commonwealth. The closing scene of his long and energetic reign he had now arranged with profound study, and with an accurate knowledge of the manner in which the requisite effects were to be produced. The termination of his own career, the opening of his beloved Philip's, were to be dramatized in a manner worthy the august character of the actors, and the importance of the great stage where they played their parts. The eyes of the whole world were directed upon that day toward Brussels ; for an imperial abdication was an event which had not, in the sixteenth century, been staled by custom. The gay capital of Brabant— of that province which rejoiced in the liberal constitution known by the cheer- ful title of the " joyful entrance"— was worthy to be the scene of the imposing show. Brussels had been a city for more than five centuries, and at that day numbered about one hundred thousand inhabitants.^ Its walls, six miles in circumference, were already two hundred years old.^ Unlike most Netherland cities, lying usually upon extensive plains, it was buUt along the sides of an abrupt promontory. A wide expanse of living verdure, cultivated gardens, shady groves, fertile corn-fields, flowed round it like a sea. The foot of the town was washed by the little river Senne, while the irregular but picturesque streets rose up the steep sides of the hiU like the semicircles and stairways of an amphitheater. Nearly in the heart of the place rose the audacious and exquisitely embroidered tower of the town house, three hundred and sixty-six feet in height, a miracle of 1 Lud. Guieeiardini, Belgii Desoript. (Amst. 1660), p. 110 sqq. 2 Ibid. Compare Les D61ices des Pays Bas, par le P6re Griffet (Lifege, 1769), i. 193 sqq. 1555] BRUSSELS 121 needlework in stone, rivaling in its intricate carving the cobweb tracery of that lace which has for centuries been synonymous with the city, and rearing itself above a facade of profusely decorated and brocaded archi- tecture. The crest of the elevation was crowned by the towers of the old ducal palace of Brabant, with its extensive and thickly wooded park on the left, and by the stately mansions of Orange, Egmont, Aremberg, Culemburg, and other Flemish grandees, on the right.i The great forest of Soignies, dotted with monasteries and convents, swarming with every variety of game, whither the citizens made their summer pilgrimages, and where the nobles chased the wild boar and the stag, extended to withia a quarter of a mile of the city walls.^ The population, as thrifty, as intelligent, as prosperous as that of any city in Europe, was divided into fifty- two gilds of artisans, among which the most important were the armorers, whose suits of mail would turn a musket-ball ; the gardeners, upon whose gentler creations incredible sums were annually lavished ; and the tapes- try-workers, whose gorgeous fabrics were the wonder of the world.^ Seven principal churches, of which the most striking was that of St. Gudule, with its twin towers, its charming facade, and its magnificently painted windows, adorned the upper part of the city. The number seven was a magic number in Brussels, and was supposed at that epoch, during which astronomy was in its infancy and astrology in its prime, to denote the seven planets which governed aU things terrestrial by their aspects and infiuences.* Seven noble families, 1 Gruicciardini. Le P&re Griffet, ubi sup. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid., p. 120. * Ibid., p. 111. Le P&re Gfifiet. 122 THE RISE OP THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1555 springing from seven ancient castles, supplied the stock from which the seven senators were selected who com- posed the upper council of the city. There were seven great squares, seven city gates, and upon the occasion of the present ceremony it was observed by the lovers of wonderful coincidences that seven crowned heads ^ would be congregated under a single roof in the liberty- loving city. The palace where the States-General were upon this occasion convened had been the residence of the dukes of Brabant since the days of John II., who had built it about the year 1300. It was a spacious and con- venient building, but not distinguished for the beauty of its architecture. In front was a large open square inclosed by an iron railing; in the rear an extensive and beautiful park, flUed with forest-trees, and con- taining gardens and labyrinths, fish-ponds and game- preserves, fountains and promenades, race-courses and archery grounds.^ The main entrance to this edifice opened upon a spacious hall, connected with a beauti- ful and symmetrical chapel. The haU was celebrated for its size, harmonious proportions, and the richness of its decorations.* It was the place where the chapters of 1 Eml. van Meteren, i. f . 17. Le Pfere Griffet, i. 196. Van der Vynokt, Nederl. Beroerten (Amst. 1823), i. 109. Guiooiardini, 110. 2 Guioc, 116 sqq. Griffet, i. 196 sqq. ' Reooeil, par foi-me de Memoires des aetes et ohoses les plus notables quy sont advennes 6s Pays Has, mis et redigfies par escript par Pasquier de la Barre, natif de Toumay. (MS. in the Royal Archives of Brussels, f . 5. ) This very curious manuscript, which we shall often have occasion to cite in the course of this volume, was discovered a few years since among some aoeount-books in the Archives of Belgium. Its author was procureur g^n^ral at Toumay until deprived of his office, in February, 1567, by Noircarmes. The 1555] HALL OF THE PALACE 123 the famous Order of tlie Golden Fleece were held.^ Its walls were liung with a magniflcent tapestry of Arras, representing the life and achievements of Gideon the Midianite, and giving particular prominence to the miracle of the " fleece of wool " vouchsafed to that re- nowned champion,^ the great patron of the Knights of the Fleece. On the present occasion there were various additional embellishments of flowers and votive gar- lands. At the western end a spacioiis platform or stage, with six or seven steps, had been constructed, below which was a range of bejiches for the deputies of the seventeen provinces.' Upon the stage itself there were rows of seats, covered with tapestry, upon the right hand and upon the left. These were respectively to accommodate the knights of the order and the guests of high distinction.* In the rear of these were other MS. is full of curious and important details for the eventful year 1566. Vide Gaehard, Notice d'un Manuserit ooncernant I'Hist. de Tournay. Com. Roy. d'Hist., t. i., No. 1, 2™= Sfirie du Compte Rendu. 1 Four days before the abdication, namely, on the 21st October, Charles had held a council of the Fleece, at which eleven knights had been present. To these personages he had made the first formal communication of his intention of conceding all his realms to his son. At the same time he intimated that, being chief of the Order of the Golden Fleece, as sovereign of Burgundy and the Neth- erlands, he -wished to divest himself of that dignity in favor of Philip. The king then retired from the council. The knights held a formal discussion upon the subject, concluding by approving unanimously the appointment. Philip then reSntered the apart- ment, and was congratulated upon his new office. Liventaire de la Toison d'Or, Brussels Archives MS., tom. i. 2 De la Barre MS., ubi sup. Judges, chap. vl. 5 Gaehard, Analectes Belgiques (Paris, 1830), pp. 70-106. < Ibid. 124 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1555 benches, for the members of the three great councils.^ In the center of the stage was a splendid canopy, deco- rated with the arms of Burgundy, beneath which were placed three gilded arm-chairs.^ All the seats upon the platform were vacant, but the benches below, assigned to the deputies of the provinces, were already filled. Numerous representatives from all the states but two— Gelderland and Overyssel— had already taken their places. Grave magistrates in chain and gown, and executive officers in the splendid civic uniforms for which the Netherlands were celebrated, already filled every seat within the space allotted. The remainder of the haU was crowded with the more favored portion of the multitude which had been fortunate enough to pro- cure admission to the exhibition. The archers and hal- berdiers of the body-guard kept watch at all the doors.^ The theater was filled, the audience was eager with expectation, the actors were yet to arrive. As the clock struck three, the hero of the scene appeared. Caesar, as he was always designated in the classic language of the day, entered, leaning on the shoulder of WiUiam of Orange.* They came from the chapel, and were imme- diately followed by Philip II. and Queen Mary of Hun- gary. The Archduke Maximilian, the Duke of Savoy, and other great personages came afterward, accom- panied by a glittering throng of warriors, councilors, governors, and Knights of the Fleece.^ 1 Gachard, Analectes Belgiques (Paris, 1830), pp. 70-106. 2 Ibid., ubi sup. 3 Ibid. Compare Pont. Heut., xiv. 336. * Ibid., ubi sup. Van Meteren, i. 16. 5 Ibid. Pont. Heut., xiv. 336. Wilhelmus Godelaevus, Histori- ola de Abdieatione Imperii k Carolo V., etc. Apud Schardii Rer. Germ. Scriptores, tom. ii. 638-654:. 1555] PROMINENT PERSONAGES 125 Many individuals of existing or future historic celeb- rity in the Netherlands, whose names are so familiar to the student of the epoch, seemed to have been grouped, as if by premeditated design, upon this imposing plat- form, where the curtain was to fall forever upon the mightiest emperor since Charlemagne, and where the opening scene of the long and tremendous tragedy of Philip's reign was to be simultaneously enacted. There was the Bishop of Arras, soon to be known throughout Christendom by the more celebrated title of Cardinal Granvelle, the serene and smiling priest whose subtle influence over the destinies of so many individuals then present, and over the fortunes of the whole land, was to be so extensive and so deadly. There was that flower of Flemish chivalry, the lineal descendant of ancient Frisian kings, already distinguished for his bravery in many fields, but not having yet won those two remark- able victories which were soon to make the name of Egmont like the sound of a trumpet throughout the whole country. Tall, magnificent in costume, with dark flowing hair, soft brown eye, smooth cheek, a slight mustache, and features of almost feminine delicacy- such was the gallant and ill-fated Lamoral Egmont.^ The Count of Horn, too, with bold, sullen face and fan-shaped beard— a brave, honest, discontented, quar- relsome, unpopular man; those other twins in doom, the Marquis Berghen and the Lord of Montigny; the Baron Berlaymont, brave, intensely loyal, insatiably greedy for offtce and wages, but who, at least, never served but one party; the Duke of Aerschot, who was 1 lu the royal gallery at Am&terdam there are very good origi- nal portraits of Egmont, Horn, Alva, Orange and all his brothers, besides many other contemporary pictures. 126 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH BEPUBLIC [1555 to serve all, essay to rule aU, and to betray aU— a splendid seignior, magnificent in cramoisie velvet, but a poor creature, who traced his pedigree from Adam,i according to the family monumental inscriptions at Louvain, but who was better known as grandnephew of the emperor's famous tutor, Chifevres; the bold, debauched Brederode, with handsome, reckless face and turbulent demeanor; the infamous Noircarmes, whose name was to be covered with eternal execration for aping toward his own compatriots and kindred as much of Alva's atrocities and avarice as he was permitted to exercise ; the distinguished soldiers Meghan and Arem- berg— these, with many others whose deeds of arms were to become celebrated throughout Europe, were all conspicuous in the brilliant crowd. There, too, was that learned Frisian, President Viglius, crafty, plausible, adroit, eloquent — a small, brisk man, with long yeUow hair, glittering green eyes, round, tumid, rosy cheeks, and flowing beard.^ Foremost among the Spanish gran- dees, and close to Plulip, stood the famous favorite. Buy Gomez, or, as he was familiarly called, "Re i Gomez "^ 1 "Amplius ibi, res mirandse : marmorea prinoipmn Croyorum monument, ibi genealogiam Duoum de Aersohot ab Adamo usque ad prsBsentes," etc.— Guioeiardini, p. 108 (art. Lovanium). 2 Vita Viglii ab Aytta Zuiohemi ab ipso Viglio Soripta. Apud Hoynok v. Papendreeht, i. 1 to 33. Levensbeschryving beroemede Ned. Mannen en Vrouwen, iv. 75 to 82. Prosopographia Viglii. Ex. Suf . Petri Decade xii. de Script. Frisiss apud Hoynck. ^ "Ma il titolo prinoipale che gli vien dato 6 di Ee i Gomez et non di Bui Gomez, perche non par che sia stato mai aloun huomo del mpndo con aloun prinbipe di tanta autorita et cosi amato dal BUG si^or com egli da questo E6."— Eelazioue del Cl™° Fed" Bado- varo Eitomato ambasciatore della Ser™* Eep' Venetiana, I'anno X5S7. MS. Bibl. de Bom-gogne, N" 6085 bis. 1555] FORMALITIES OF THE ABDICATION 127 (King and Gomez), a man of meridional aspect, with coal-black hair and beard, gleaming eyes, a face paUid with intense application, and slender but handsome fig- ure ;^ while in immediate attendance upon the emperor was the immortal Prince of Orange. Such were a few only of the most prominent in that gay throng, whose fortunes, in part, it wiU be our hum- ble duty to narrate ; how many of them passing through all this glitter to a dark and mysterious doom ! — some to perish on public scaffolds, some by midnight assassina- tion ; others, more fortunate, to fall on the battle-field ; nearly all, sooner or later, to be laid in bloody graves ! All the company present had risen to their feet as the emperor entered. By his command, all immediately afterward resumed their places. The benches at either end of the platform were accordingly filled with the royal and princely personages invited, with the Fleece Knights, wearing the insignia of their order, with the members of the three great councils, and with the gov- ernors. The emperor, the king, and the Queen of Hungary were left conspicuous in the center of the scene. As the whole object of the ceremony was to present an impressiv-e exhibition, it is worth our while to examine minutely the appearance of the two principal characters. Charles V. was then fifty-five years and eight months old; but he was already decrepit with premature old age. He was of about the middle height, and had 1 "Kuy Gromez— d'eta di 39 anni, di mediocre statiira, ha oeehi pieni di sp'o, di pelo una barba nero e riocio, di sottil ossatura, di gagliarda complessione, ma par debole forse per I'incredibiol fatiohe clie egli sostjene, le quale lo fauno molto pallido," etc.— Badovaro MS, 128 THE KISE OP THE DUTCH EEPXJBLIC [1555 been athletic and well proportioned. Broad in tlie shoul- ders, deep in the chest, thin in the flank, very muscular in the arms and legs, he had been able to match himself with aU competitors in the tourney and the ring, and to vanquish the bull with his own hand in the favorite national amusement of Spain. He had been able in the field to do the duty of captain and soldier, to endure fatigue and exposure, and every privation except fasting.^ These personal advantages were now departed. Crip- pled in hands, knees, and legs, he supported himself with difficulty upon a crutch, with the aid of an attendant's shoulder.2 In face he had always been extremely ugly, and time had certainly not improved his physiognomy. His hair, once of a light color, was now white with age, close-clipped and bristling ; his beard was gray, coarse, and shaggy. His forehead was spacious and com- manding; the eye was dark blue, with an expression both majestic and benignant. His nose was aquiline, but crooked. The lower part of his face was famous for its deformity. The imder lip, a Burgundian inheritance, as faithfully transmitted as the duchy and county, was heavy and hanging; the lower jaw protruding so far beyond the upper that it was impossible for hiTn to bring together the few fragments of teeth which still remained, or to speak a whole sentence in an intelligible voice. Eating and talking, occupations to which he was always much addicted, were becoming daily more arduous, in consequence of this original defect, which 1 Pont. Heut., xiv. Sie*. Compare Eelazione di Marino Cavalli in Alberi, aer. i. vol. ii. 209 ; Badovaro, Eelazione MS. "Hostem non semel propria manu feriens."— Pont. Heut. "Ha amazzato il tore," etc.— Marino Cavalli. 2 Ibid., xiv. 339. 1555] PHILIP II. 129 now seemed hardly human, but rather an original de- formity.^ ' ^ So much for the father. The son, Philip II., was a small, meager man, much below the middle height, with thin legs, a narrow chest, and the shrinking, timid air of an habitual invalid.^ He seemed so little, upon his first visit to his aunts, the Queens Eleanor and Mary,^ accustomed to look upon proper men in Flanders and Germany, that he was fain to win their favor by making certain attempts in the tournament,* in which his suc- cess was sufficiently problematical. "His body," says his professed panegyrist, "was but a human cage, in which, however brief and narrow, dwelt a soul to whose flight the immeasurable expanse of heaven was too 1 Pont. Heut., xiv. 346. Badovaro MS. : "Hailfronte spatioso, gli occhi celesti, il naso aquilino alquanto torto, la mascella in- feriore lunga e larga onde avviene ohe ella non pu6 con giungere i denti et nel finir le parole non h ben intesa. Ha pochi denti dinanti et fraeidi, le carni belle, la barba corta, spinosa et canuta." Comp. Gasp. Contarini apud Albert, ser. i. vol il. 60 : " Tutta la mascella inferiore e tanto Innglia che non pare naturale ma pare posticcia, onde awiene che non pu6, oMudeudo la bocca congiun- gere le denti inf eriori con li superiori, ma gli rimane spazio della grossezza d'un dente, onde nel parlare, massime nel finire della clausula, balbutiare qual che parola la quale spesso non s'intende molto bene." 2 Badovaro MS. "B di statura piccolo et membri minuti— la sua complessione 6 flemmatioa et malenoonica."— Kelazione del Mag™ M. Giovan. Michele, Venuto Ambasc'" d'Inghilterra, d'anno 1557. ". . . infermo e valetudinario non solo, perohe sia natuial- mente debile, et persona di poca, anzi di nessuno exercitio," etc. —MS. Bib. de Bourg., N° 6093. ' " Aimque les parecio pequeno de cuerpo — acostumbradas a ver los Alemannes," etc.— Cabrera, Vita de Felipe Segundo, Key de Espana (Mad. 1619), lib. i. 12. * Cabrera, ubi sup. VOL. I.— 9 130 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1555 contracted."^ The same wholesale admirer adds that " his aspect was so reverend that rustics who met him alone in a wood, without knowing him, bowed down with instinctive veneration." ^ In face he was the living image of his father,^ having the same broad forehead and blue eye, with the same aquiline, but better-pro- portioned, nose. In the lower part of the countenance the remarkable Burgundian deformity was likewise reproduced. He had the same heavy, hanging Up, with a vast mouth and monstrously protruding lower jaw.* His complexion was fair, his hair light and thin, his beard yellow, short, and pointed.* He had the aspect of a Fleming, but the loftiness of a Spaniard.® His de- meanor in public was still, silent, almost sepulchral. He looked habitually on the ground when he conversed, was chary of speech, embarrassed, and even suffering in manner.'' This was ascribed partly to a natural haugh- 1 "Como si fuera el cuerpo umana jaula que por mas breve i mas estrecha no la abita animo a ouyo buelo sea pequena la re- dondar del cielo."— Cabrera, i. 12. 2 ". . . que de los rustioos que ni le conoseleron ni vieron en compaSia e solo en una selva, juzgandole deguo de toda veneracion, era saludado con reverencia."— Ibid., i. 4. 3 " L'istessa imagine e intento dell' Imperatore suo padre, con- formissimo di came et di faoeia et lineamente con queUa boeea et labro pendente piii dall altro et con tutte I'altre qualita del Imp" ma da minor statura."— Miehele MS. * Miohele MS. and Badovaro MS. : "E labro di sotto grosso che gli desdice al quanto— fronte grande e bella, gl' oocM di color celeste et assai grande," etc. 5 " Porta la barba corta, pontuta & di pelo bianco et biondo et ha apparenza di fiamengo ma altiero perche sta su le maniere di Spagnnolo."— Badovaro MS. * Ibid. ' "Ma non guarda ordinariamente chi negoti^/ et tien gli occM bassi in terra,"— Ibid, 1555] OPENING ORATION 131 tiness which he had occasionally endeavored to overcome, and partly to habitual pains in the stomach, occasioned by his inordinate fondness for pastry.^ Such was the personal appearance of the man who was about to receive into his single hand the destinies of half the world ; whose single will was, for the future, to shape the fortunes of every individual then present, of many millions more in Europe, America, and at the ends of the earth, and of countless millions yet un- born. The three royal personages being seated upon chairs placed triangularly under the canopy,^ such of the audi- ence as had seats provided for them now took their places, and the proceedings commenced. Philibert de Bruxelles, a member of the privy council of the Nether- lands, arose at the emperor's command, and made a long oration.^ He spoke of the emperor's warm affection for the provinces, as the land of his birth ; of his deep regret that his broken health and failing powers, both of body and mind, compelled him to resign his sovereignty and to seek relief for his shattered frame in a more genial climate.* Caesar's gout was then depicted in energetic language, which must have cost him a twinge as he sat there and listened to the councilor's eloquence. "'T is 1 " Si come la natura ha fatto Sua M" di oorpo debole eosi I'ha fatto al quanto d'animo timido . . . et quanto agU effetti delle temperanza elle eccede nel mangiare quality di oibi, spetialmente intomo k pasticci."— Badovaro MS. " . . . e patisce doglie di stomaco e dei flanchi."— Ibid. "... spessissimo sotto posto alle dolori di stomaoho."— Griov. Michele MS. 2 Godelaevus, De Abdicatione, etc., p. 640. 3 Gaohard, Anal. Belg., 81-102. P. Bor, i. 3. * Bor, i. 3, 4. Pont. Heut,, xiv. 336-338. Godelaevus, 640, 642, 132 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH EEPUBLIC [1555 a most truculent executioner," said Philibert: "it in- vades the whole body, from the crown of the head to the soles of the feet, leaving nothing untouched. It con- tracts the nerves with intolerable anguish, it enters the bones, it freezes the marrow, it converts the lubricating fluids of the joints into chalk, it pauses not until, having exhausted and debilitated the whole body, it has ren- dered aU its necessary instruments useless, and con- quered the mind by immense torture." ^ Engaged in mortal struggle with such an enemy, Caesar felt himself obliged, as the councilor proceeded to inform his audi- ence, to change the scene of the contest from the humid air of Flanders to the warmer atmosphere of Spain. He rejoiced, however, that his son was both vigorous and experienced, and that his recent marriage with the Queen of England had furnished the provinces with a most valuable alliance.^ He then again referred to the em- peror's boundless love for his subjects, and concluded with a tremendous but superfluous exhortation to Philip on the necessity of maintaining the Catholic religion in its purity. After this long harangue, which has been f uUy reported by several historians who were present at the ceremony, the councilor proceeded to read the deed of cession, by which Philip, already sovereign of Sicily, Naples, Milan, and titular King of England, France, and Jerusalem, now received all the duchies, marquisates, earldoms, baronies, cities, towns, and castles of the Bur- ' Pont. Heut., 336. The historian was present at the ceremony, and gives a very full report of the speeches, all of which he heard. His imagination may have assisted his memory in the task. The other reporters of the councilor's harangue have reduced this patho- logical flight of rhetoric to a very small compass. 2 Ibid., ubi sup. 1555] WILLIAM OP ORANGE 133 gundian property, including, of course, the seventeen Netherlands.^ As De BruxeUes finished, there was a buzz of admira- tion throughout the assembly, mingled with murmurs of regret that, in the present great danger upon the fron- tiers from the belligerent King of France and his warlike and restless nation, the provinces should be left without their ancient and puissant defender .2 The emperor then rose to his feet. Leaning on his crutch, he beckoned from his seat the personage upon whose arm he had leaned as he entered the haU. A taU, handsome youth of twenty-two came forward— a man whose name from that time forward, and as long as history shall endure, has been, and will be, more familiar than any other in the mouths of Netherlanders. At that day he had rather a southern than a German or Flemish appearance. He had a Spanish cast of features, dark, well chiseled, and symmetrical. His head was small and well placed upon his shoulders. His hair was dark brown, as were also his mustache and peaked beard. His forehead was lofty, spacious, and already prematurely engraved with the anxious lines of thought. His eyes were full, brown, well opened, and expressive of profound reflec- tion.^ He was dressed in the magnificent apparel for which the Netherlanders were celebrated above aU other nations, and which the ceremony rendered necessary. His presence being considered indispensable at this great ceremony, he had been summoned but recently 1 Godelaevus, 640, 641. 2 Pont. Heut., xiv. 338 sqq. 3 The most satisfactory portrait of the prince during the early- part of his career is one belonging to the private collection of the late King of Holland, William IV., at The Hague. 134 THE RISE OP THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1555 from the camp on the frontier, where, notwithstanding his youth, the emperor had appointed him to command his army-in-chief against such antagonists as Admiral Coligny and the Due de Nevers.^ Thus supported upon his crutch and upon the shoulder of WiUiam of Orange,^ the emperor proceeded to address the states, by the aid of a closely written brief which he held in his hand.* He reviewed rapidly the progress of events from his seventeenth year up to that day. He spoke of his nine expeditions into Germany, six to Spain, seven to Italy, four to France, ten to the Netherlands, two to England, as many to Africa, and of his eleven voyages by sea. He sketched his various wars, victories, and treaties of peace, assuring his hearers that the welfare of his subjects and the security of the Roman Catholic religion had ever been the leading objects of his life. As long as God had granted him health, he con- tinued, only enemies could have regretted that Charles was living and reigning ; but now that his strength was but vanity, and life fast ebbing away, his love for do- minion, his affection for his subjects, and his regard for their interests, required his departure. Instead of a decrepit man with one foot in the grave, he presented them with a sovereign in the prime of life and the vigor of health. Turning toward Philip, he observed that for a dying father to bequeath so magnificent an empire to 1 Apologie ou Defense de trfes Illustre Prince Guillaume, Prinoe d'Orange (Sylvius, 1581), pp. 29, 30, 31. 2 "Surgens igitur, et in pede stans, dextra ob imbecillitatem soipioni, sinistra hnmero Qulielmi Nassauvii, Aurantiiprincipis." — Pont. Heut., 338. 5 "Et membranula eorum quaa ad senatum referre statuisset capite continents memoriam adjuvans."— Godelaevus, 642. 1555] THE EMPEROR'S ADPRESS 135 his son was a deed worthy of gratitude, but that when the father thus descended to the grave before his time, and by an anticipated and living burial sought to pro- vide for the welfare of his realms and the grandeur of his son, the benefit thus conferred was surely far greater. He added that the debt would be paid to him, and with usurj-^, should Philip conduct himself in his adminis- tration of the provinces with a wise and affectionate regard to their true interests. Posterity would applaud his abdication, should his son prove worthy of his bounty; and that could only be by living in the fear of God, and by maintaining law, justice, and the Cath- olic religion in all their purity, as the true foundation of the realm. In conclusion, he entreated the estates, and through them the nation, to render obedience to their new prince, to maintain concord, and to preserve invio- late the Catholic faith ; begging them, at the same time, to pardon him all errors or offenses which he might have committed toward them during his reign, and assuring them that he should unceasingly remember their obedi- ence and affection in his every prayer to that Being to whom the remainder of his life was to be dedicated.^ Such brave words as these, so many vigorous assevera- tions of attempted performance of duty, such fervent hopes expressed of a benign administration in behalf of the son, could not but affect the sensibilities of the au- dience, already excited and softened by the impressive character of the whole display. Sobs were heard through- out every portion of the hall, and tears poured profusely from every_]eye. The Fleece Knights on the platform 1 Pont. Heut., xiv. 338, 339. Godelaevua, 640-642. Gaehard, Anal. Belg., 81-102. Compare Bor, i. 4, 5; Van Meteren, i. 16; Pam. Strada de Bello Belgioo (Rom. 1653), i. 9, 7. 136 THE RISK OF THE DUTCH EEPUBLIC [1555 and the burghers in the backgronnd were all melted with the same emotion. As for the emperor himself, he sank almost fainting upon his chair as he concluded his address. An ashy paleness overspread his counte- nance, and he wept like a chUd.^ Even the icy Philip was almost softened, as he rose to perform his part in the ceremony. Dropping upon his knees before his father's feet, he reverently kissed his hand. Charles placed his hands solemnly upon his son's head, made the sign of the cross, and blessed him in the name of the Holy Trinity.^ Then raising him in his arms, he tenderly embraced him, saying, as he did so, to the great potentates around him, that he felt a sincere compassion for the son on whose shoulders so heavy a weight had just devolved, and which only a lifelong labor would enable him to support.^ Philip now uttered a few words expressive of his duty to his father and his affection for his people. Turning to the orders, he signified his regret that he was unable to address them either in the French or Flemish language, and was therefore obliged to ask their atten- tion to the Bishop of Arras, who would act as his inter- preter.* Antony Perrenot accordingly arose, and in smooth, fluent, and well-turned commonplaces expressed at great length the gi-atitude of Philip toward his fa- ther, with his firm determination to walk in the path of duty, and to obey his father's counsels and example in the future administration of the provinces.^ This long 1 Pont. Heut. Meteren, ubi sup. 2 Godelaevus, 642. 3 Ibid. * Ibid. Pont. Heut., 340. Meteren, i. 16. Bor, i. 5, 6. 5 Gachard, Anal. Belg,. ubi sup. Pont. Heut., Bor, ubi sup. Godelaerus reports tiie bishop's speech in six folio columns of the most flowing commonplace. De Abdicat., 642 sqq. 1555] OTHER BRIEF SPEECHES 137 address of the prelate was responded to at equal length, by Jacob Maas, member of the council of Brabant, a man of great learning, eloquence, and prolixity, who had been selected to reply on behalf of the States-General, and who now, in the name of these bodies, accepted the abdication in an elegant and complimentary harangued Queen Mary of Hungary, the "Christian widow" of Erasmus,^ and regent of the Netherlands during the past twenty-five years, then rose to resign her office, making a brief address expressive of her affection for the people, her regrets at leaving them, and her hopes that all errors which she might have committed during her long administration would be forgiven her. Again the redundant Maas responded, asserting in terms of fresh compliment and elegance the uniform satisfaction of the provinces with her conduct during her whole career.^ The orations and replies having now been brought to a close, the ceremony was terminated. The emperor, leaning on the shoulders of the Prince of Orange and of the Count de Buren,* slowly left the haU, followed by Philip, the Queen of Hungary, and the whole court, all in the same order in which they had entered, and by the same passage into the chapel.^ It is obvious that the drama had been completely successful. It had been a scene where heroic self-sacri- fice, touching confidence, ingenuous love of duty, pa- triotism, and paternal affection upon one side, flhal 1 Godelaevus, 642 sqq. 2 Het Leven van Desiderius Erasmus. Nederl. Mannen en Vrouwen, i. 274. 3 Pont. Heut., Godelaevus, Bor, Meteren, ubi sup. * G^delaevus, 645. ^ Gachard, Anal. Belg. 138 THE EISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1555 reverence, with a solenm regard for public duty and the highest interests of the people, on the other, were sup- posed to be the predominant sentiments. The happi- ness of the Netherlands was apparently the only object contemplated in the great transaction. All had played well their parts in the past, all hoped the best in the times which were to follow. The abdicating emperor was looked upon as a hero and a prophet. The stage was drowned in tears. There is not the least doubt as to the gentiine and universal emotion which was excited throughout the assembly. " Caesar's oration," says Sec- retary Grodelaevus, who was present at the ceremony, " deeply moved the nobility and gentry, many of whom burst into tears; even the illustrious Knights of the Fleece were melted." ^ The historian Pontus Heuterus, who, then twenty years of age, was likewise among the audience, attests that " most of the assembly were dis- solved in tears, uttering the while such sonorous sobs that they compelled his Caesarean Majesty and the queen to cry with them. My own face," he adds, " was certainly quite wet."^ The English envoy. Sir John Mason, describing in a despatch to his government the scene which he had just witnessed, paints the same pic- ture. "The emperor," he said, "begged the forgiveness of his subjects if he had ever unwittingly omitted the performance of any of his duties towards them. And here," continues the envoy, "he broke into a weeping, whereunto, besides the dolefulness of the matter, I think, he was moche provoked by seeing the whole com- ^ " Commovit ea Csesaris oratio Proeeres et multi in profusissi- mas erupervmt laehrymas etiam illustres aiirei Velleris equites." — Godel., 642. 2 Pont. Heut., xiv, 336-339. 1555] MISPLACED EMOTION 139 pany to do the lyke before ; there beyng in myne opinion not one man in the whole assemblie, stranger or another, that dewring the time of a good piece of his oration poured not out as abundantly teares, some more, some lesse. And yet he prayed them to beare with his imper- fections, proceeding of his sickly age, and of the men- tioning of so tender a matter as the departing from such a sort of dere and loving subjects." ^ And yet what was the Emperor Charles to the inhabi- tants of the Netherlands that they should weep for him ? His conduct toward them during his whole career had been one of unmitigated oppression. What to them were all these forty voyages by sea and land, these journeyings back and forth from Priesland to Tunis, from Madrid to Vienna ? What was it to them that the imperial shuttle was thus industriously flying to and fro ? The fabric wrought was but the daily growing grandeur and splendor of his imperial house; the looms were kept moving at the expense of their hardly earned treasure, and the woof was often dyed red in the blood of his bravest subjects. The interests of the Nether- lands had never been even a secondary consideration with their master. He had fulfilled no duty toward them, he had committed the gravest crimes against them. He had regarded them merely as a treasury upon which to draw, while the sums which he extorted were spent upon ceaseless and senseless wars, which were of no more interest to them than if they had been waged in another planet. Of five millions of gold annually which he derived fi-om all his realms, two millions came from 1 Extracts from this despatch are given by J. W. Burgon, Life and Times of Sir Thomas Gresham, a work which contains various documents, both rare and important. 140 THE RISE OP THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1555 these industrious and opulent provinces, while but a half -million came from Spain and another half from the Indies.^ The mines of wealth which had been opened by the hand of industry in that slender territory of ancient morass and thicket ^ contributed four times as much income to the imperial exchequer as aU the boasted wealth of Mexico and Peru. Yet the artisans, the farmers, and the merchants by whom these riches were produced were consulted about as much in the expendi- ture of the imposts upon their industry as were the savages of America as to the distribution of the mineral treasures of their soil. The rivalry of the houses of Hapsburg and Valois, this was the absorbing theme dur- ing the greater part of the reign which had just been 1 " Di tutti questi Suoi Eegni ha sua M** cinque millioni d'oro d'intrata in tempo di pace, cio6 mez della Spagna, mez dalle Indie, uno da Milano et da Sicilia, un altro di Mandra et dalli paesi bassi un aiiro."— Eelazione del CI™" M. Mich. Suriano. MS. Bib. de Bourg., N" 12, 871. "Le rendite de S. M. (dalli poesi bassi) sono al presente da un miUione et 150 scudi — ma in poeo piil da cinque anni vengono ad haver oontribuito i Fiam menghi di straordinario quasi otto migli- oni d'oro e tutto il peso si fuo dir vien portato dalla Piandra Bra- bantia, Olanda e Zelanda."— Badovaro MS. 2 Badovaro estimated the annual value of butter and cheese produced in those meadows which Holland had rescued from the ocean at eight hundred thousand crowns, a sum which, making allowance for the difference in the present value of money from that which it bore in 1557, would represent nearly eight millions. (MS. Relazione.) In agriculture, commerce, and manufactures the Netherlanders were the foremost nation in the world. The fabrics of Arras, Toumay, Brussels, Louvain, Ghent, Bruges, were entirely unrivaled. Antwerp was the great commercial metropolis of Christendom. "Aversa," says Badovaro, " e stimata la maggiore piazza del Mondo— si puo credere quanto sia la somma si afferma passare 40 millioni d'oro I'anno, quelli che ineontanto girano." 1555] FINANCIAL DEPRESSION 141 SO dramatically terminated. To gain the empire over Francis, to leave to Don Philip a richer heritage than the Dauphin could expect, were the great motives of the unparalleled energy displayed by Charles during the longer and the more successful portion of his career. To crush the Reformation throughout his dominions was his occupation afterward, till he abandoned the field in despair. It was certainly not desirable for the Nether- landers that they should be thus controlled by a man who forced them to contribute so largely to the success of schemes some of which were at best indifferent, and others entirely odious to them. They paid one million two hundred thousand crowns a year regularly; they paid in five years an extraordinary subsidy of eight mil- lions of ducats ; and the states were roundly rebuked by the courtly representatives of their despot t£ they pre- sumed to inquire into the objects of the appropriations, or to express an interest in their judicious administra- tion.^ Yet it may be supposed to have been a matter of indifference to them whether Francis or Charles had won the day at Pavia, and it certainly was not a cause of triumph to the daily increasing thousands of reli- gious reformers in Holland and Flanders that their brethren had been crushed by the emperor at Miihl- berg. But it was not alone that he drained their trea- sure and hampered their industry. He was in constant conflict with their ancient and dearly bought political liberties. Like his ancestor Charles the Bold, he was desirous of constructing a kingdom out of the provinces. He was disposed to place all their separate and individ- ual charters on a Procrustean bed, and shape them all into uniformity simply by reducing the whole to a 1 Postea. Granvelle's Complaints. 142 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1555 nullity. The difficulties in the way— the stout oppo- sition offered by burghers whose fathers had gained these charters with their blood, and his want of leisure during the vast labors which devolved upon him as the autocrat of so large a portion of the world— caused him to defer indefinitely the execution of his plan. He found time only to crush some of the foremost of the liberal institutions of the provinces in detail. He found the city of Tournay a happy, thriving, self-governed little republic in all its local affairs; he destroyed its liberties without a tolerable pretext, and reduced it to the condition of a Spanish or Italian provincial town.i His memorable chastisement of Ghent for having dared to assert its ancient rights of self -taxation is sufficiently known to the world, and has been already narrated at length.^ Many other instances might be adduced, if it were not a superfluous task to prove that Charles was not only a political despot, but most arbitrary and cruel in the exercise of his despotism. But if his sins against the Netherlands had been only those of financial and political oppression, it would be at least conceivable, although certainly not commend- able, that the inhabitants should have regretted his departure. But there are far darker crimes for which he stands arraigned at the bar of history, and it is indeed strange that the man who had committed them should have been permitted to speak his farewell amid blended plaudits and tears. His hand planted the In- quisition in the Netherlands. Before his day it is idle to say that the diabolical institution ever had a place 1 Extraits des Registres des Consaux de Tournay, 1472-1581, par M. Gachard (Bruselles, 1846), pp. 8-13. 2 Introduction to this work. 1555] CHARLES'S EDICTS REVIEWED 143 there. The isolated cases in which inqmsitors had exer- cised functions proved the absence and not the presence of the system, and will be discussed in a later chapter. Charles introduced and organized a papal inquisition side by side with those terrible " placards " of his In- vention, which constituted a masked inquisition even more cruel than that of Spain. The execution of the system was never permitted to languish. The number of Netherlanders who were burned, strangled, beheaded, or buried alive, in obedience to his edicts, and for the offenses of reading the Scriptures, of looking askance at a graven image, or of ridiculing the actual presence of the body and blood of Christ in a wafer, have been placed as high as one hundred thousand by distinguished au- thorities, and have never been put at a lower mark than fifty thousand.^ The Venetian envoy Navigero placed the number of victims in the provinces of Holland and Friesland alone at thirty thousand, and this in 1546,^ ten years before the abdication, and five before the promulgation of the hideous edict of 1550 ! The edicts and the Inquisition were the gilt of Charles to the Netherlands, in return for their wasted treasure and their constant obedience. For this, his name de- serves to be handed down to eternal infamy, not only throughout the Netherlands, but in every land where a single heart beats for political or religious freedom. To 1 "Nam post carnificata hominum. non minus centum millia, ex quo tentatum an posset ineendium hoe sanguine restingui, tanta multitudo per Belgieam insurrexerat, ut publica interdum supplieia quoties insignior reus, aut atrociores cruoiatus seditione impedi- rentuT."— Hugonis Grotii Annal., lib. i. 17 (Amst. 1658). 2 Eelazione di Cl™° Bernardo Navigero, 1546. Correspondence of Charles the Fifth, by Rev. W. Bradford (London, 1850), p. 471. 144 THE KISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1555 eradicate these institutions after they had been watered and watched by the care of his successor was the work of an eighty years' war, in the course of which millions of lives were sacrificed. Yet the abdicating emperor had summoned his faithful estates around him, and stood up before them in his imperial robes for the last time, to tell them of the affectionate regard which he had always borne them, and to mingle his tears with theirs. Could a single phantom have risen from one of the many thousand graves where human beings had been thrust alive by his decree, perhaps there might have been an answer to the question propounded by the em- peror amid all that piteous weeping. Perhaps it might have told the man who asked his hearers to be forgiven if he had ever unwittingly offended them that there was a world where it was deemed an offense to torture, strangle, burn, and drown one's innocent fellow-creatures. The usual but trifling excuse for such enormities can- not be pleaded for the emperor. Charles was no fanatic. The man whose armies sacked Rome, who laid his sacri- legious hands on Christ's vicegerent and kept the in- fallible head of the Church a prisoner to serve his own political ends, was then no bigot. He believed in no- thing, save that when the course of his imperial will was impeded, and the interests of his imperial house in jeop- ardy, pontiffs were to succumb as well as Anabaptists. It was the political heresy which lurked in the restiveness of the religious reformers under dogma, tradition, and supernatural sanction to temporal power, which he was disposed to combat to the death. He was too shrewd a politician not to recognize the connection between aspira- tions for religious and for political freedom. His hand 1555] CHAELES AND THE INQUISITION 145 was ever ready to crush both heresies in one. Had he been a true son of the Church, a faithful champion of her infallibility, he would not have submitted to the peace of Passau so long as he could bring a soldier to the field. Yet he acquiesced in the Reformation for Germany, while the fires for burning the reformers were ever blazing in the Netherlands, where it was death even to allude to the existence of the peace of Passau. Nor did he acquiesce only from compulsion, for long before his memorable defeat by Maurice he had permitted the German troops, with whose services he could not dis- pense, regularly to attend Protestant worship performed by their own Protestant chaplains. Lutheran preachers marched from city to city of the Netherlands under the imperial banner, while the subjects of those patrimonial provinces were daily suffering on the scaffold for theii- nonconformity. The influence of this garrison-preaching upon the progress of the Reformation in the Nether- lands is well known. Charles hated Lutherans, but he required soldiers, and he thus helped by his own policy to disseminate what, had he been the fanatic which he perhaps became in retirement, he would have sacrificed his life to crush. It is quite true that the growing Cal- vinism of the provinces was more dangerous, both religiously and politically, than the Protestantism of the German princes, which had not yet been formally pronounced heresy ; but it is thus the more evident that it was political rather than religious heterodoxy which the despot wished to suppress. No man, however, could have been more observant of religious rites. He heard mass daily. He listened to a sermon every Sunday and holiday. He confessed and received the sacrament four times a year. He was some- VOL. I.— 10 146 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1555 times to be seen in his tent at midnight on his knees before a crucifix, with eyes and hands uplifted. He ate no meat in Lent, and used extraordinary diligence to discover and to punish any man, whether courtier or plebeian, who failed to fast during the whole forty days.^ He was too good a politician not to know the value of broad phylacteries and long prayers. He was too nice an observer of human nature not to know how easily mint and cumin could still outweigh the "weightier matters of law, judgment, mercy, and faith " ; as if the founder of the religion which he professed, and to main- tain which he had established the Inquisition and the edicts, had never cried woe upon the Pharisees. Yet there is no doubt that the emperor was at times almost popular in the Netherlands, and that he was never as odious as his successor. There were some deep reasons for this, and some superficial ones; among others, a singularly fortunate manner. He spoke German, Spanish, Italian, French, and Flemish, and could assume the characteristics of each country as easily as he could use its language. He could be stately with Spaniards, familiar with Flemings, witty with Italians. He could 1 " . . . Ha Sua M"* in tutti i suoi ragionamenti et atti esteriori mostrate haver la fede catt™ in somma osservanza, et in tutta la vita sua ta udita la messe ogni giorno et gran tempo due et hora tre . . . et le prediehe nei giorni solenni, et in tutte le eose le feste de la quadragesima et alle volte vesperi et altri divini oficii et hora si fa ogni giorno leggere la bibbia et come ha usato di con- f esarsi et oommunicarsi ogni anno quatro volte . . . e quando alia si ritrova al Ingolstadt et avicinata al exercitio degli protestanti, /« veduta mezza notte nel suo padiglione in ginooehioni avanti un orooifisso con le mani quinte et la quadragesima innanzi feee una diligenza extraordinaria per intendere chi nelle oorte magnava oarne," etc.— Badovaro MS. 1555] ENERGY AND COURAGE 147 strike down a bull in the ring like a matador at Madrid, or win the prize in the tourney like a knight of old ; he could ride at the ring with the Flemish nobles, hit the popinjay with his crossbow among Antwerp artisans, or drink beer and exchange rude jests with the boors of Brabant. For virtues such as these, his grave crimes against God and man, against religion and chartered and solemnly sworn rights, have been palliated, as if oppression became more tolerable because the oppressor was an accomplished linguist and a good marksman. But the great reason for his popularity no doubt lay in his military genius. Charles was inferior to no gen- eral of his age. "When he was born into the world," said Alva, " he was born a soldier," ^ and the emperor confirmed the statement and reciprocated the compli- ment when he declared that " the three first captains of the age were himself first, and then the Duke of Alva and Constable Montmorency." ^ It is quite true that all his of&cers were not of the same opinion, and many were too apt to complain that his constant presence in the field did more harm than good, and that "his Majesty would do much better to stay at home." ^ There is, how- ever, no doubt that he was both a good soldier and a good general. He was constitutionally fearless, and he possessed great energy and endurance. He was ever the first to arm when a battle was to be fought, and the 1 " Pero aeuerdesele h V. E. que es hijo de tal padre, qui en naci- endo en el mundo nacio soldado."— Carta del Duque de Alba al S<" Don Juan de Austria. Dooumentos ineditos para la Historia de Espana, vol. iii. 273-283. 2 Brantome, Hommes lUustres et Grands Capitaines Estran- gers, art. Charles Quint. 3 Relatione di B" Navigero, apud Bradford Correspondence, p. 450. 148 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH EEPUBLIC [1555 last to take off ids harness.^ He commanded in person and in chief even when surrounded by veterans and crippled by the gout. He was calm in great reverses. It was said that he was never known to change color except upon two occasions : after the fatal destruction of his fleet at Algiers, and in the memorable flight from Innsbruck. He was of a phlegmatic, stoical tempera- ment, until shattered by age and disease— a man with- out a sentiment and without a tear. It was said by Spaniards that he was never seen to weep, even at the death of his nearest relatives and friends, except on the solitary occasion of the departure of Don Ferrante Gonzaga from eourt.^ Such a temperament was in- valuable in the stormy career to which he had devoted his life. He was essentially a man of action, a military chieftain. " Pray only for my health and my life," he was accustomed to say to the young officers who came to him from every part of his dominions to serve under his banners ; " for so long as I have these I wiU. never leave you idle, at least in France. I love peace no better than the rest of you. I was born and bred to arms, and must of necessity keep on my harness till I can bear it no longer." ^ The restless energy and the magnificent tranquillity of his character made him a hero among princes, an idol with his officers, a popular favorite every- where. The promptness with which, at much personal 1 "... e poi aversi voluto trovar presente alle vere e essere stato il primo ad armarsi et ultimo h spogliarsi ha dimostrato in somma d'esser gran capitano d'effetti grandi," etc.— Badovaro MS. 2 "... ho da Spagmioli sentito che ne per aleun acoidente di morte di eongionta di sangue ne di gran minlstri suoi oari e stata veduta piangere, se non alia partita delle corte di Don Ferrante Gonzaga."— Ibid. ' Brantome, Grands Capitaines, art. Charles Qmnt. 1555] LACK OP CHIVALRY 149 hazard, he descended like a thunderbolt in the midst of the Ghent insurrection ; the juvenile ardor with which the almost bedridden man arose from his sick-bed to smite the Protestants at Miihlberg; the grim stoicism with which he saw sixty thousand of his own soldiers perish in the wintry siege of Metz, all insured him a large measure of that applause which ever follows mili- tary distinction, especially when the man who achieves it happens to wear a crown. He combined the personal prowess of a knight of old with the more modern accom- plishments of a scientific tactician. He could charge the enemy in person like the most brilliant cavalry officer, and he thoroughly understood the arrangements of a campaign, the marshaling and victualing of troops, and the whole art of setting and maintaining an army in the field.i Yet, though brave and warlike as the most chivalrous of his ancestors, Gothic, Burgundian, or Suabian, he was entirely without chivalry. Fanaticism for the faith, protection for the oppressed, fidelity to friend and foe, knightly loyalty to a cause deemed sacred, the sacrifice of personal interests to great ideas, generosity of hand and heart — all those qualities which unite with courage and constancy to make up the ideal chevalier Charles not only lacked, but despised. He trampled on the weak antagonist, whether burgher or petty potentate. He was false as water. He inveigled his foes who trusted to imperial promises by arts unworthy an emperor or a 1 " Ella ha . . . messosi ad imprese non solo perieolose a diffi- cile ma che tenerano dell impossibile . . . ma nel sostenerli lia mostrato gran intelligenza e nel fare apparecchio delle cose degli eserolti, nell ordine di matter gli insieme, vedergli maroiare, far le battalie finite," etc.— Badovaro MS. 150 THE EISE OP THE DUTCH EEPUBLIC [1555 gentleman.^ He led about the unfortunate John Fred- erick of Saxony, in his own language, " like a bear in a chain," ready to be slipped upon Maurice should " the boy " prove ungrateful. He connived at the famous for- gery of the prelate of Arras, to which the Landgrave Philip owed his long imprisonment— a villainy worse than many for which humbler rogues have suffered by thousands upon the gallows.^ The contemporary world knew well the history of his frauds, on scale both colossal and minute, and called him familiarly "Charles qui triche." ^ The absolute master of realms on which the sun per- petually shone, he was not only greedy for additional dominion, but he was avaricious in small matters, and hated to part with a hundred dollars.* To the sol- dier who brought him the sword and gauntlets of Francis I. he gave a hundred crowns, when ten thousand would have been less than the customary present, so that the man left his presence full of desperation. The three soldiers who swam the Elbe, with their swords in their mouths, to bring him the boats with which he 1 "In rebus agendis traotandisque," says one of his greatest contemporary admirers, "simulator egregius, fidei liberioris, pri- vati commodi perquam studiosus, atque ut uno verbo dicam alter avus matemus Ferdinandus Catholious."— Pont. Heut., xiv. 346". 3 De Thou, Histoire Universelle (Londres, 1734), i. 267, 599. Compare Groen vaii Prinsterer, Archives et Correspondanee In6- dite de la Maison d'Orange Nassau (Leide, 1838), t. v. 63, 65, 66 ; E. H. Pfeilschmidt, Vor dreihundert Jahren : Blatter der Eriune- rung an Kurfiirst Moritz von Sachsen (Dresden, 1852), p, 10. Vide Postea. 5 Brantdme, art. Charles Quint. * " Ad alcuni della corte di S. M. ho inteso dire ella haver paruto natura tale che nel dare cento scudi ha considerato troppo minuta- mente," etc— Badovaro MS. 1555] SELFISHNESS AND DESPOTISM 151 passed to the victory of Miihlberg, received from his imperial bounty a doublet, a pair of stockings, and four crowns apiece^ His courtiers and ministers complained bitterly of his habitual niggardliness, and were fain to eke out their slender salaries by accepting bribes from every hand rich enough to bestow them. In truth, Charles was more than anything else a politician, not- withstanding his signal abilities as a soldier. If to have founded institutions which could last be the test of statesmanship, he was even a statesman; for many of his institutions have resisted the pressure of three cen- turies. But those of Charlemagne fell as soon as his hand was cold, while the works of many ordinary legis- lators have attained to a perpetuity denied to the statutes of Solon or Lycurgus. Durability is not the test of merit in human institutions. Tried by the only touchstone applicable to governments, their capacity to insure the highest welfare of the governed, we shall not find his polity deserving of much admiration. It is not merely that he was a despot by birth and inclination, nor that he naturally substituted, as far as was practi- cable, the despotic for the republican element, wherever his hand can be traced. There may be possible good in despotisms, as there is often much tyranny in democ- racy. Tried, however, according to the standard by which all governments may be measured, those laws of truth and divine justice which all Christian nations recognize, and which are perpetual, whether recognized or not, we shall find little to venerate in the Hfe-work of the emperor. The interests of his family, the secu- rity of his dynasty, these were his end and aim. The happiness or the progress of his people never furnished 1 Badovaro MS. 152 THE RISE OP THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1555 even the indirect motives of his conduct, and the result was a ba£3ed policy and a crippled and bankrupt empire at last. He knew men, especially he knew their weaknesses, and he knew how to turn them to account. He knew how much they would bear, and that little grievances would sometimes inflame more than vast and deliber- ate injustice. Therefore he employed natives mainly in the subordinate offices of his various states, and he re- peatedly warned his successor that the haughtiness of Spaniards and the incompatibility of their character with the Flemish would be productive of great difficulties and dangers.^ It was his opinion that men might be tyrannized more intelligently by their own kindred, and in this perhaps he was right. He was indefatigable in the discharge of business, and if it were possible that half a world could be administered as if it were the pri- vate property of an individual, the task would have been perhaps as well accomplished by Charles as by any man. He had not the absurdity of supposing it possible for him to attend to the details of every individual affair in every one of his realms ; and he therefore intrusted the stewardship of aU specialities to his various minis- ters and agents. It was his business to know men and to deal with affairs on a large scale, and in this he cer- tainly was superior to his successor. His correspondence was mainly in the hands of Granvelle the elder, who analyzed letters received, and frequently wrote all but the signatures of the answers. The same minister usually possessed the imperial ear, and farmed it out for his own benefit. In all this there was of course room for vast deception, but the emperor was quite aware of 1 Apologie d'Orange, 47, 48. 1555] BUSINESS HABITS I53 what was going on, and took a philosophic view of the matter as an inevitable part of Lis system.^ GranveUe grew enormously rich under his eye by trading on the imperial favor and sparing his Majesty much trouble. Charles saw it all, ridiculed his peculations, but called him his " bed of down." ^ His knowledge of human na- ture was, however, derived from a contemplation mainly of its weaknesses, and was therefore one-sided. He was often deceived, and made many a fatal blunder, shrewd politician though he was. He involved himself often in enterprises which could not be honorable or profitable, and which iniUcted damage on his greatest interests. He often offended men who might have been useful friends, and converted allies into enemies. "His Maj- esty," said a keen observer who knew him well, "has not in his career shown the prudence which was neces- sary to him. He has often offended those whose love he might have conciliated, converted friends into ene- mies, and let those perish who were his most faithful partizans." * Thus it must be acknowledged that even his boasted knowledge of human nature and his power of dealing with men was rather superficial and empirical than the real gift of genius. His personal habits during the greater part of his life were those of an indefatigable soldier. He could remain in the saddle day and night, and endure every hardship but hunger. He was addicted to vulgar and miscel- 1 Relazione di Navigero, apud Bradford, p. 445. 2 "Nous avons perdu," wrote the emperor to Philip on the elder Granvelle's death, "un lion lit de repos."— Dom I'Evesque, M6- moires pom- servir k I'Histoire du Card, de Granvelle (Paris, 1753), i. 180. 3 Badovaro MS. 154 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1555 laneous incontinence.^ He was an enormous eater. He breakfasted at five, on a fowl seethed in milk and dressed with sugar and spices. After this he went to sleep again. He dined at twelve, partaking always of twenty dishes. He supped twice ; at first soon after vespers, and the second time at midnight or one o'clock, which meal was perhaps the most solid of the four. After meat he ate a great quantity of pastry and sweet- meats, and he irrigated every repast by vast draughts of beer and wine.^ His stomach, originally a wonderful one, succumbed after forty years of such labors. His taste, but not his appetite, began to fail, and he com- plained to his majordomo that aU his food was insipid. The reply is perhaps among the most celebrated of facetiae. The cook could do nothing more unless he served his Majesty a pasty of watches. The allusion to the emperor's passion for horology was received with great applause. Charles "laughed longer than he was ever known to laugh before, and all the courtiers [of course] laughed as long as his Majesty." ^ The success of so sorry a jest would lead one to suppose that the 1 " . . . et S stato ne piaeeri venerei di non temperata volunt^ in ogni parte dove si h trovata con donne di grande et auoo di piceola conditione."— Badovaro MS. 2 " Nel magnare ha sempre S. M*° ecceso, et fino al tempo che ella parti di Piandra per Spagna, la mattina svegliate che alia era, pigliava una soatola di pistochi, Cappone con latte, zuccaro e spetiarie, dopo il quale tornava a riposare. A mezzo giorno de- sinava molto varieta di vivande, e poco di po vespro me rendava, et ad una hora di notte se n'andava k cena, magnando cose tutte da generare humori gross! e viseosi."— Ibid. Compare Navigero, Eelazione, apud Bradford, p. 365. 5 " . . . una nuova vivanda di pasticci di orologii, il che mosse & quel maggior e piu lungo riso che mai sia stato in lei et cosi risero guelli di camera," etc.— Ibid. 1555] CONCLUDING FORMALITIES 155 fooling was less admirable at the imperial court than some of the recorded quips of Tribaulet would lead us to suppose. The transfer of the other crowns and dignitaries to Philip was accomplished a month afterward, in a quiet manner.! Spain, Sicily, the Balearic Islands, America, and other portions of the globe were made over without more display than an ordinary donatio inter vivos. The empire occasioned some difficulty. It had been already signified to Ferdinand that his brother was to resign the imperial crown in his favor, and the symbols of sovereignty were accordingly transmitted to him by the hands of WiUiam of Orange.^ A deputation, moreover, of which that nobleman, Vice-Chancellor Seld, and Dr. "Wolfgang Haller were the chiefs, was despatched to signify to the electors of the empire the step which had been thus resolved upon. A delay of more than two years, however, intervened, occasioned partly by the deaths of three electors, partly by the war which so soon broke out in Europe, before the matter was formally acted upon.* In February, 1553, however, the electors, having been assembled in Frankfort, received the abdi- cation of Charles, and proceeded to the election of Fer- dinand.* That emperor was crowned in March, and immediately despatched a legation to the pope to apprise him of the fact. Nothing was less expected than any opposition on the part of the pontiff. The querulous dotard, however, who then sat in St. Peter's chair hated Charles and aU his race. He accordingly denied the validity of the whole transaction without sanction pre- 1 Godelaevus, 645 sqq. Van Meteren, i. 17. Bor, i. 6 sqq. 2 Godelaevus, 646 sqq. Pont. Heut., xiv. 645 sqq. Meteren, i. 17. 3 Godelaevus, 646 sqq. * Ibid. 156 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1555 ^dously obtained from the pope, to whom all crowns be- longed. Ferdinand, after listening, through his envoys, to much ridiculous dogmatism on the part of the pope, at last withdrew from the discussion with a formal protest, and was first recognized by Caraffa's successor, Pius IV.^ Charles had not deferred his retirement till the end of these disputes. He occupied a private house in Brus- sels, near the gate of Louvain, until August of the year 1556. On the 27th of that month he addressed a letter from Ghent to John of Osnabriick, president of the chamber of Speyer, stating his abdication in favor of Ferdinand, and requesting that in the interim the same obedience might be rendered to Ferdinand as could have been yielded to himself.^ Ten days later he ad- dressed a letter to the estates of the empire, stating the same fact ; and on the 17th September, 1556, he set sail from Zealand for Spain.^ These delays and difficulties occasioned some misconceptions. Many persons who did not admire an abdication which others, on the con- trary, esteemed as an act of unexampled magnanimity, stoutly denied that it was the intention of Charles to renounce the empire. The Venetian envoy informed his government that Ferdinand was only to be lieutenant for Charles, under strict limitations, and that the em- peror was to resume the government so soon as his health would allow.* The Bishop of Arras and Don Juan de Manrique had both assm-ed him, he said, that Charles would not, on any account, definitely abdicate.^ Manrique even asserted that it was a mere farce to believe ia any such intention.* The emperor ought to remain 1 GodelaevTis, 654 sqq. 2 Ibid., 654". 3 Ibid., 645 sqq. * Badovaro. 5 JbH, ' " . . . ohe era cosa di burla a orederlo."— Ibid. 1555] COMPAEISON WITH DIOCLETIAN 157 to protect his son, by the resources of the empire, against France, the Turks, and the heretics. His very- shadow was terrible to the Lutherans,^ and his form might be expected to rise again in stern reality from its temporary grave. Time has shown the falsity of all these imaginings, but views thus maintained by those in the best condition to know the truth prove how difficult it was for men to believe in a transaction which was then so extraordinary, and how little consonant it was in their eyes with true propriety. It was necessary to ascend to the times of Diocletian to find an example of a similar abdication of empire on so deliberate and exteasive a scale, and the great English historian of the Roman Empire has compared the two acts with each other. But there seems a vast difference between the cases. Both emperors were distinguished soldiers ; both were merciless persecutors of defenseless Christians; both exchanged unbounded empire for absolute seclu- sion. But Diocletian was born in the lowest abyss of human degradation— a slave and the son of a slave. For such a man, after having reached the highest pin- nacle of human greatness, voluntarily to descend from power, seems an act of far greater magnanimity than the retreat of Charles. Born in the purple, having ex- ercised unlimited authority from his boyhood, and having worn from his cradle so many crowns and coronets, the German emperor might well be supposed to have learned to estimate them at their proper value. Con- temporary minds were busy, however, to discover the hidden motives which could have influenced him, and the world even yet has hardly ceased to wonder. Yet 1 "Parendo loro che solo I'omlara sua sia da LuteraBi temuta." — Badovaro. 158 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH EEPUBLIC [1555 it would have been more wonderful, considering the emperor's character, had he remained. The end had not crowned the work ; it not unreasonably discrowned the workman. The earlier and indeed the greater part of his career had been one unbroken procession of tri- umphs. The cherished dream of his grandfather,^ and of his own youth,^ to add the pope's triple crown to the rest of the hereditary possessions of his family, he had indeed been obliged to resign. He had too much prac- tical Flemish sense to indulge long in chimeras, but he had achieved the empire over formidable rivals, and he had successively not only conquered but captured almost every potentate who had arrayed himself in arms against him. Clement and Francis, the dukes and landgraves of Cleves, Hesse, Saxony, and Brunswick, he had bound to his chariot-wheels, forcing many to eat the bread of humiliation and captivity during long and weary years. But the concluding portion of his reign had reversed all its previous glories. His whole career had been a failure. He had been defeated, after all, in most of his projects. He had humbled Francis, but Henry had most signally avenged his father. He had trampled upon Philip of Hesse and Frederick of Saxony, but it had been reserved for one of that German race, which he characterized as " dreamy, drunken, and incapable of intrigue," to outwit the man who had outwitted all the world, and to drive before him, in ignominious flight, the conqueror of the nations. The German lad who had learned both war and dissimulation in the court and camp of him who was so profound a master of both arts was destined to 1 Introduction to this work. 2 Brantdme, Hommes IHustres, etc., art. Charles Quint. Bayle, Diet. Hist, et Crit., art. Charles Quint. 1555] THE EMPEROR'S REVERSES 159 eclipse his teacher on the most august theater of Chris- tendom. Absorbed at Innsbruck with the deliberations of the Trent Council, Charles had not heeded the distant mutterings of the tempest which was gathering around him. While he was preparing to crush forever the Protestant Church with the arms which a bench of bish- ops were forging, lo ! the rapid and desperate Maurice, with long red beard streaming like a meteor in the wind, dashing through the mountain passes at the head of his lancers— arguments more convincing than all the dog- mas of Granvelle. Disguised as an old woman,i the emperor had attempted, on the 6th April, to escape in a peasant's wagon from Innsbruck into Flanders. Saved for the time by the mediation of Ferdinand, he had, a few weeks later, after his troops had been defeated by Maurice at Fiissen, again fled at midnight of the 22d May, almost unattended, sick in body and soul, in the midst of thunder, lightning, and rain, along the difiEicult Alpine passes from Innsbruck into Carinthia. His pupil had permitted his escape only because, in his own lan- guage, " for such a bird he had no convenient cage." ^ The imprisoned princes now owed their liberation, not to the emperor's clemency, but to his panic. The peace of Passau, in the following August, crushed the whole fabric of the emperor's toU, and laid the foundation of the Protestant Church. He had smitten the Protestants at Miihlberg for the last time. On the other hand, the man who had dealt with Eome as if the pope, not he, had been the vassal, was compelled to witness, before he 1 "... in armliclier, man sagt; sogar in Prauentracht."— Pf eil- schmidt, Vor dreiliiindert Jakren, p. 56. 2" . . . 'fiir einen solelien Vogel,' sagte er, 'habe er keinen Kafig.' "-md., 58. 160 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1555 departed, the insolence of a pontiff who took a special pride in insulting and humbling his house and tram- pling upon the pride of Charles, Philip, and Ferdinand. In France, too, the disastrous siege of Metz had taught him that in the imperial zodiac the fatal sign of Cancer had been reached^ The figure of a crab, with the words "plus citra," instead of his proud motto of "plus ultra," scrawled on the walls where he had resided during that dismal epoch, avenged more deeply, perhaps, than the jester thought the previous misfortunes of France.^ The Grand Turk, too, Solyman the Magnificent, pos- sessed most of Hungary, and held at that moment a fleet ready to sail against Naples, in cooperation with the pope and France.^ Thus the infidel, the Protestant, and the holy Church were all combined together to crush him. Toward all the great powers of the earth he stood not in the attitude of a conqueror, but of a disappointed, baffled, defeated potentate. Moreover, he had been foiled long before in his earnest attempts to secure the imperial throne for Philip. Ferdinand and Maximilian had both stoutly resisted his arguments and his blandishments. The father had represented the slender patrimony of their branch of the family, com- pared with the enormous heritage of Philip, who, being, after all, but a man, and endowed with finite powers, might sink under so great a pressure of empire as his father wished to provide for him.^ Maximilian, also, assured his uncle that he had as good an appetite for the 1 Hiatoire du Duo d'Albe, i. 369 (ed. Paris, 1698). 2 Cabrera, i. 32. ^ " . . . Prmoipem Philippnm hominem esse finitasque habere vires atque ingenlum captumque tantum humanum."— Pont. Heut., xii. 301. 1555] CAUSES OF THE ABDICATION 161 crown as Philip, and could digest the dignity quite as easily.! T^g gQ^^ ^qq^ f qj. vrhom the emperor was thus solicitous, had already, before the abdication, repaid his afEection with ingratitude. He had turned out all his father's old officials in Milan, and had refused to visit him at Brussels till assured as to the amount of cere- monial respect which the new-made king was to receive at the hands of his father.^ Had the emperor continued to live and reign, he would have found himself likewise engaged in mortal combat with that great religious movement in the Netherlands, which he would not have been able many years longer to suppress, and which he left as a legacy of blood and fire to his successor. Born in the same year with his century, Charles was a decrepit, exhausted man at fifty-five, while that glorious age in which hu- manity was to burst forever the cerements in which it had so long been buried was but awakening to a con- sciousness of its strength. Disappointed in his schemes, broken in his fortunes, with income anticipated, estates mortgaged, aU his affairs in confusion, failing in mental powers, and with a constitution hopelessly shattered, it was time for him to retire. He showed his keenness in recognizing the fact that neither his power nor his glory would be in- creased should he lag superfluous on the stage, where mortification instead of applause was likely to be his portion. His frame was indeed but a wreck. Forty 1 Brant6me, i. 49, 50. 2 Dom I'Evesque, M6m. de Granv., i. 24-26. "Get emliarras," says the Benedictine, "fut la veritable cause de son aljdication et de sa retraite dans le Convent de Ynste. La politique s'^puiseroit en vain k en cherolier una autre." VOL. I.— 11 162 THE EISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1555 years of unexampled gluttony had done their work. He was a victim to gout, asthma, dyspepsia, gravel. He was crippled in the neck, arms, knees, and hands. He was troubled with chronic cutaneous eruptions. His appetite remained, while his stomach, unable longer to perform the task still imposed upon it, occasioned him constant suffering. Physiologists, who know how im- portant a part this organ plays in the affairs of life, wiU perhaps see in this physical condition of the emperor a sufficient explanation, if explanation were requii-ed, of his descent from the throne. Moreover, it is well known that the resolution to abdicate before his death had been long a settled scheme with him. It had been formally agreed between himself and the empress that they should separate at the approach of old age, and pass the remainder of their lives in a convent and a monastery. He had, when comparatively a young man, been struck by the reply made to him by an aged officer whose rea- sons he had asked for earnestly soliciting permission to retire from the imperial service. It was, said the vet- eran, that he might put a little space of religious con- templation between the active portion of his life and the grave.^ A similar determination, deferred from time to time, Charles had now carried into execution. While he still lingered in Brussels after his abdication, a comet ap- peared, to warn him to the fulfilment of his purpose.^ Prom first to last, comets and other heavenly bodies were much connected with his evolutions and arrange- ments. There was no mistaking the motives with which this luminary had presented itself. The emperor knew very well, says a contemporary German chronicler, that 1 Strada, i. 18. ^ Godelaevus, 645. 1555] RETIREMENT AT YUSTE 163 it portended pestilence and war, together witL the ap- proaching death of mighty princes. " My fates call out," ^ he cried, and forthwith applied himself to hasten the preparations for his departure. The romantic picture of his philosophical retirement at Yuste, painted originally by Sandoval and Siguenza, reproduced by the fascinating pencil of Strada, and imitated in frequent succession by authors of every age and country, is unfortunately but a sketch of fancy. The investigations of modern writers have entirely thrown down the scaffolding on which the airy fabric, so delightful to poets and moralists, reposed. The depart- ing emperor stands no longer in a transparency robed in shining garments. His transfiguration is at an end. Every action, almost every moment of his retirement, accurately chronicled by those who shared his soUtude, have been placed before our eyes, in the most felicitous manner, by able and brilliant writers.^ The emperor, shorn of the philosophical robe in which he had been 1 " . . . ingens et lucidum sydus— flammiferum crinem trahens in octavo librae gradu conspioi coeptum— at Carolus sciens hujus ■visione magnorum principum interitus— eo conspecto. His inquit indieiis, me meafata vacant," etc.— Godelaevus, 645. 2 Stirling, The Cloister Life of Charles V. (London, 1853). Bakhuyzen van den Brink, Analyse d'Ton Manusorit Contemporain STir la Ketraite de Charles Quint (Bruxelles, 1850). The works of Mignet and Piohot on the same subject (Paris, 1854), and particu- larly the late publication of M. Gaohard, Retraite et Mort de Charles Quint (BruxeUes, 1854), in which last work the subject may be con- sidered to have been fairly exhausted, and in which the text of Siguenza and of the anonymous manuscript discovered by M. Bak- huyzen in the greffe of the Court of Appeals at Brussels are placed in full before the reader, so far as they bear on the vexed question as to the celebration by the emperor of his own obsequies. 164 THE EISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1555 conventionally arrayed for three centuries, shivers now in the cold air of reality. So far from his having immersed himself in profound and pious contemplation, below the current of the world's events, his thoughts, on the contrary, never were for a moment diverted from the political surface of the times. He read nothing but despatches; he wrote or dictated interminable ones in reply, as dull and prolix as any which ever came from his pen. He manifested a suc- cession of emotions at the course of contemporary affairs, as intense and as varied as if the world still rested in his palm. He was, in truth, essentially a man of action. He had neither the taste nor talents which make a man great in retirement. Not a lofty thought, not a generous sentiment, not a profound or acute sug- gestion in his retreat has been recorded from his lips. The epigrams which had been invented for him by fabu- lists have been all taken away, and nothing has been substituted, save a few dull jests exchanged with stupid friars. So far from having entertained and even ex- pressed that sentiment of religious toleration for which he was said to have been condemned as a heretic by the Inquisition, and for which Philip was ridiculously re- ported to have ordered his father's body to be burned and his ashes scattered to the Avinds,^ he became in re- treat the bigot effectually, which during his reign he had only been conventionally. Bitter regrets that he should have kept his word to Luther, as if he had not broken faith enough to reflect upon in his retirement; stem self-reproach for omitting to put to death, while he had him in his power, the man who had caused all the mischief of the age; fierce instructions thundered 1 Brantdme, CEuvres Completes (Paris, 1822), i. 32. 1555] A KEVOLTING SPECTACLE 165 from his retreat to the inquisitors to hasten the execu- tion of all heretics, including particularly his ancient friends, preachers, and almoners, Cazalla and Constantine de Fuente ; furious exhortations to Philip— as if Philip needed a prompter in such a work— that he should set himself to "cutting out the root of heresy with rigor and rude chastisement"— such explosions of savage bigotry as these, alternating with exhibitions of revolt- ing gluttony, with surfeits of sardine omelets, Estrema- dura sausages, eel pies, pickled partridges, fat capons, quince syrups, iced beer, and flagons of Rhenish, relieved by copious draughts of senna and rhubarb, to which his horror-stricken doctor doomed him as he ate, compose a spectacle less attractive to the imagination than the ancient portrait of the cloistered Charles. Unfortunately, it is the one which was painted from life. CHAPTER II Sketch of Philip II. —Characteristics of Mary Tudor— Portrait of Philip— His council- Rivalry of Buy Gomez and Alva— Character of Kuy Gomez— Queen Mary of Hungary— Sketch of Philibert of Savoy— Truce of Vaucellea — Secret treaty between the pope and Henry II.— Rejoicings in the Netherlands on account of the peace — Purposes of Philip— Reenactmeut of the edict of 1550— The king's dissimulation— "Request" to the provinces- Infraction of the truce in Italy— Character of Pope Paul IV. —Intrigues of Car- dinal Caraffa— War against Spain resolved upon by France— Cam- paign in Italy— Amicable siege of Rome— Peace with the pontiff —Hostilities on the Flemish border— Coligny foiled at Douai — 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 dis- banded—Campaign of the Duke of Guise— Capture of Calais— In- terview between Cardinal de Lorraine and the Bishop of Arras- Secret combinations for a league between Prance and Spain against heresy— Languid movements of Guise— Foray of De Thermes on the Flemish frontier— Battle of Gravelines— Popular- ity of Egmont— Enmity of Alva. Philip II. 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 1 Pont. Heut., xix. Godelaevus, 645. 166 1555] SKETCH OF PHILIP 167 Austria, witli the hereditary German dependencies of his father's family, had been transferred by the em- peror to his brother Ferdinand, on the occasion of the marriage of that prince with Anna, only sister of King Louis of Hungary.^ Ten years afterward, Ferdinand (King of Hungary and Bohemia since the death of Louis, slain in 1526 at the battle of Mohdcs) was elected King of the Romans, and steadily refused all the entreaties afterward made to him, in behalf of Philip, to resign his crown and his succession to the em- pire 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 SicUies ; 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 su- preme authority over them, because he represented, through the females, the " good " Philip of Burgundy, who a century before had possessed himself by inheri- tance, 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 his- tory of the man to whose hands the destiny of so many millions was now intrusted. He was born in May, 1527, and was now therefore twenty-eight years of age. At the age of sixteen he had 1 PoBt. Heut., viii. 197. 2 Ibid., x. 240. 168 THE EISE OP THE DUTCH EEPIJBLIC [1555 been united to Ms 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 at- tendants. 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 prin- cess 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 aU.' 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 Netherlands vying with each other in magnificent celebrations of the ceremonies by which Philip successively swore allegiance to the vari- ous constitutions and charters of the provinces, and 1 Cabrera, i. 8. 2 Meteren, i. f. 13. 5 Ibid., i. 13. Wagenaer, Vaderlandsche Historie (Amst. 1770), iv. 294 sqq. * Ibid., i. 13. 1555] CHARLES'S UNSCRUPULOUSNESS 169 received their oaths of future fealty in return. His oath to support all the constitutions and privileges was with- out 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 con- ciliate the good will of the people. In view of the pre- tensions which might be preferred by the Brederode famUy in Holland and by other descendants of ancient sovereign races in other provinces, the emperor, wishing to insure 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, 1 The oatli which he took in Holland was : " Well and tnUy to maintain all the privileges and freedoms of the nobles, cities, com- munities, subjects (lay and clerical) of the province of Holland and West Friesland, to them granted by my ancestors, counts and count- esses of Holland ; and, moreover, their customs, traditions, usages, and rights [^ewoonte, lierlcomen, usantien en rechten], all and sev- eral, which they now have and use." The oath in Brabant was : "To support all the privileges," etc. ; and the same form, without conditions and exceptions, was adopted in the other provinces, whereas his father and grandfather had sworn only to maintain the limited privileges conceded by the usurping house of Burgundy. Vide Groot Plakkaat Book, iv. 3, iii. 20 ; Blyde Inkommst v. Pilip, apud Mieris, Nederl. Voorst, iii. 222 ; Wagenaer, Vaderl. Hist., iv. 294-297, V. 328-341. 170 THE EISE OP THE DUTCH BEPTJBLIC [1555 and the light-hearted Flemings, Brabantines, and Wal- loons 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 cramoisie velvet," attended by lackeys in splendid liveries and followed by four thousand citizen soldiers in fuU 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 exhibi- tions of civic hilarity, as from the height of a grim and inaccessible tower. The impression made upon the Netherlanders was anything but favorable, and when he had fully experienced the futility of the projects on the empire which it was so diBficult 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 1 Meteren, i. f. 13. 2 Ibid. 1555] PHILIP'S MARRIAGE 171 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 priaces, to convert their kingdoms into a heU 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 na- tion. Philip's mock efforts in favor of certain con- demned 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 chil- dren, 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 bloodthirstiness toward her sub- jects, 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 compas- sion even for Mary Tudor when her passionate efforts to inspire him with affection are contrasted with his im- passiveness. Tyrant, bigot, murderess though she was, she was still woman, and she lavished upon her husband aU that was not ferocious in her nature. Forbidding prayers to be said for the soul of her f ather,i hating her sister and her people, burning bishops, bathing herself in the blood of heretics, to Philip she was aU submissive- ness 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 1 De Thou, ii. 419. 172 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1555 by the hands of care and evil passions stiU 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, strik- ing 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 constitu- tional sufferings, hysterical of habit, shedding floods of tears daily at Philip's coldness,* undisguised infldel- ity, and frequent absences from England — she almost 1 "E la regina Maria di statura picoola—di persona magra et delieata— adesso cavate qualche crespe causate piil dagli affanni che dall eta— ha gli ooohi vivi ohe inducono non solo riverenza ma timore verso chi li move, se bene la vista molto corta non potendo leggere ne far altro se non si mette con la vista vioinissima a quello che voglia leggere o ben diseernere — ha la voce grossa et alta quassi d'uomo, si che quando parla e sempre sentita gran pezzo di lontano."— Relazione di Griov. Michele, venuto Ambr" d'lnghilterra, 1557, MS. The envoy sums up the personal attractions of her Majesty by observing that "... even at her present age she is not entirely to be abhorred for her ugliness, without any regard to her rank of queen." "In somma e donna honesta ne mai per bru- tezza etiam in questa et^ non considerato U grkAo di regiaa d'es- sire abhorrita." As the Venetian was exceedingly disposed to be complimentary, it must be confessed that the eulogy does not appear redundant. Compare Cabrera: "Era la Regna pe- quena de ouerpo, flaea, con vista corta en vivos ojos que ponian aoatamiento— grave— mesurada— la voce gruesa mas que de mu- ger" (iv. 210). 2 "E instrutta di cinque lingue— quattro d'essi parla— nella latina farria sempre ognuno con le risposte che da et con i pro- posite che tiene intendentissima oltre I'eseroitio di lavorare d'ago in ogni sorte di ricamo, anco della musica— speoialmente sonar di manacordi et di liuto— ineanta per la velooita del mano e per la ma- niera di sonare."— Michele MS. 5 Michele, Relazione MS. : "Per rimedio non basta indogU los fogarsi come sdesso usa con le lagrime et col piangere." 1555] MAEY TUDOE 173 awakens compassion and causes a momentary oblivion of her identity. Her subjects, akeady half maddened by rehgious per- secution, were exasperated still further by the pecuniary burdens 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,i the momentary satisfaction and delu- sion of the queen was unbounded. The false intelli- gence was transmitted everywhere. Great were the joy and the festivities in the Netherlands, where people were so easily made to rejoice and keep holiday for anything. "The Regent, being in Antwerp," wrote Sir Thomas Gresham to the lords of council, "did cause the great bell to ringe to give all men to understand that the news was trewe. The Queene's highness' mere merchants caused all our Inglishe ships to shoote off with such joy and triumph, as by men's arts and polUcey coulde be devised — and the Regent sent our Inglishe maroners one hundred crownes to drynke." ^ If beU-ringing and can- non-flring could have given England a Spanish sovereign, the devoutly wished consummation would have been reached. "When the futility of the royal hopes could no 1 Burgon (Life and Times of Sir T. Gresham) commiinioates the letter from the State-Paper OfSee : "Whereas it hath pleased Almighty God of his infinite goodness to adde unto the great numljer of other his benefites bestowed upon us the gladding of us with the happy deliverie of a prince " (i. 171). 2 Ibid., i. 169. 174 THE RISE OP THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1555 longer be concealed, Philip left the country, never to return tiU 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 con- ciliatory, 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 everywhere. " 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 wed- ding-journey to England he manifested much " gentle- ness 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 con- firms the impression. " Upon his first journey," he says, " he was esteemed proud, and too greedy for the imperial succession ; but now 't is the common opinion that his humanity and modesty are aU which could be desired." * These humane qualities, however, it must be observed, 1 "Fu pooo grato ad Italiani, ingratissimo a Fiamenghi et a Tedeschi odioso." — Suriano, Relazione MS. 2 Suriano MS. 5 " Havendo persa quella altezza— con la quale usci la prima volta di Spagna et riusci cosi odiosi." — Miohele MS. * " Nel p" passagio suo in Spagna per Italia, Germania et Fiandra era stimata superba et troppo oupida d'essere eoadjutore dell' Im- perio ma hora 6 comune opinione ohe ella habbia in se tutta quelle humanitS. et modestia che dir si possa."— Badovaro MS. 1555] PORTRAIT OF PHILIP 175 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 dis- tinguished chieftains of the age, and where, says his professed panegyrist, " he broke his lances, very much 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 justs f but we may rea- sonably 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 1 " Si come la natura I'ha f atta di corpo debole cosi I'ha fatta al quanto d'animo timido." — Badovaro MS. "Non promette quella grandezza et generalita d'animo et vivezza di spirito che si oon- venga ad un principe potente come lui— e infermo e valetudinario —da natura abhorrisce molto la guerra, et andare hn persona ne mai egli vi si ridttrra se non per gran neoessita."— Michele MS. "La natura la qual inclina piu alia quiets oh' all' esseroitio piu al riposo ch' al travaglio," etc.— Suriano MS. 2 " Arrojo los tro90s muy en alto eon vozeria del pueblo, regocijo del Emperador e de las Reynas— rompiSndo sus lanzas eon gal- lardia i destreza, agradados de su valor y majestad estavan co rason supadre y Was."- Cabrera, i. 12. 3 V. ibid., i. 12, 13. 176 THE EISB OF THE DUTCH EEPUBLIC [1555 contemporaries 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 neighbors' 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 V. was thought weak and indo- lent,^ and were willing to ascribe Philip's pacific dis- position to his habitual colic and sideache, 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 distinc- tion 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 enter- prises ; Philip would avoid them. The emperor never recoiled before threats ; the son was reserved, cautious, suspicious of aU 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 " aU 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, 1 "Era havuto per sapido et adormentato."— Michele MS. 2 Ibid. 3 Suriano MS. 1555] CONSTITUTIONAL DULLNESS 177 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 con- temptible 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 aU the public and pri- vate 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. 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 wiUingly, 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 1 The character of these apostils, 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 assas- sination 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 fajon que I'on dit qu'il a ett6 tu6, sa ett6 par un Jacobin qui luy a donn^ d'un cou de pistolle dans la tayte "), he scrawled the following luminous comment upon the margin. Under- lining the word " pistolle, " he observed : ' ' This is perhaps some kind of hnife ; 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.)— Gaohard, Rapport a M. le Minist. de I'lnt^rieur, prefixed to Corresp. Philippe II., vol. i. xlix. note 1. It is obvious that a person who made such wonderful com- mentaries 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. 2 Miohele MS. ^ Badovaro MS. VOL. I.— 12 178 THE RISE OP THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1555 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 apostils. 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 program of the way it was to turn.i He was slow in deciding, slower in communi- cating 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 himseK. 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 ex- press 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 1 "De Koning," says one of the most profound and learned of modem historical writers, Bakhuyzen van den Brink, "Filipe el prudente, zoo als hij zioh gaarne hoorde noemen, beheersohte niet zijn bureau, maav zijn bureau beheersohte hem— nooit heeft hij begrepen, dat de geschiedenis niet stil stond, om op zijne besUssing te waohten, maar altoos meende hij, dat de gebeartenissen haar regt om te gebeuren verkregen door zijne hand teekening of pa- raphe."— Het HuweUjk van W. van Oranje met Anna v. Saxen (Amst. 1853), p. 108. 1555] OTHER CHARACTERISTICS 179 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 evapo- rated, 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 contin- ual reproach upon his taciturnity. His education had imbued him, too, with the antiquated international hatred 180 THE EISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1555 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 pro\dnces. 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 II. 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 meager. 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 afterward 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 Spaiu, 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. 1 De Thou, ii. 661. 2 Michele MS. "Nella sua lingua parla raramente et I'usa sempre," saysBadovaro concisely (MS.). 3 Badovaro MS. 1555] PERSONAL HABITS 181 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 becom- ing to his rank and age.^ Besides several friars who preached regularly for his instruction, he had daily dis- cussions with others on abstruse theological points.^ He consulted his confessor most minutely as to aU the ac- tions of life, inquiring anxiously whether this proceeding or that were likely to burden 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 Uliberal, but, on the contrary, it was thought that he would have been even generous had he not been straitened for money at 1 Badovaro MS. 2 " Attentissimo alle messi, alii vesperi et alle predielie com' un religiose molto piu che alio stato et etk sua a molti pare ohe si eon- venga."— Miehele MS. 3 " Oltre certi frati theologi predicant] huomini di stimo, anco altri che ogni di trattano con liii," etc.— Ibid. * Ibid. Badovaro MS.: "Dal suo confessore vuole intendere se il far queUa et questa cosa puo aggravar la sua conscienza," etc. 5 " Nelle piaceri delle donne 6 incontinente, prendendo diletta- tione d'andare in maschera la notte et nei tempi de negotii gravi," etc.— Badovaro MS. 182 THE EISE OF THE DUTCH EEPUBLIC [1555 the outset of his career. During a cold winter he dis- tributed alms to the poor of Brussels with an open hand.^ He was fond of jests in private, and would laugh im- moderately, when with a few intimate associates, at buffooneries, which he checked in pubUe 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 appro- priated to monarchs, as a prince " clement, benign, and debonair." * Time was to show the justice of his claims to such honorable epithets. The court was organized during his residence at Brus- sels 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 pre- cept 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 1 Badovaro MS. 2 Ibid. 5 Ibid. Compare Suriano MS. : "Et veste con tanta po- litezza e con tanto giuditio ohe non si puo veder alcuna cosa piu perfetta." * Vide, e. g., Arehives et Correspondance de la M. d'O., ii. 447 (note 1), 443, 448, 487. 5 Badovaro MS. « Ibid. ' Apolog. d'Orange, 47, 48. 1355] THE COUNCIL 183 no nation but the Spanish ; with Spaniards he consorted, with Spaniards he counseled, through Spaniards he governed.^ His councU consisted of five or six Spanish grandees : the famous Euy Gomez, then Count of Melito, after- ward Prince of Eboli ; the Duke of Alva, the Count de Feria, the Duke of FrancaviUa, Don Antonio Toledo, and Don Juan Manrique de Lara. The " two columns," said Suriano, "which sustain this great machine are Euy Gromez and Alva, and from their counsels 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 difilcult the situation of any man, whether foreigner or native, who had to transact business with the govern- ment. 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 ex- perience, was then entirely in the background, rarely entering the council except when summoned to give ad- vice 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 1 Suriano MS. 2 " . . . Queste sono le colonne con che si sustenta questa gran' macehina, et dal oonsiglio di questo dipende il governo di mezzo I'mondo," etc.— Ibid. 3 Ibid. * "Ma ndn val tanto aloun degli altri ne tutti insieme quanto Mon' d'Arraso solo."— Ibid. 184 THE EISE OP THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1555 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 re- markable 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 burden 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 friend- ship 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 vdth whom he was quarreling.^ 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 inci- dent was said to have laid the foundation of the re- 1 Suriano MS. Badovaro MS. "H re intrinseoamente non amava il Duea." — Badovaro. 2 "Nella guerra," says Badovaro, "mostra timidita et poca in- telligenza . . . e di puocWssimo cuore."— MS. "... troppo reservato et eauto et quasi timido nellimprese," says Suriano MS. 3 Badovaro MS. * Ibid. 1555] RUY GOMEZ 185 markable 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 cement- ing 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 permit- ting him to win the game with a far inferior hand.^ The king, learning afterward 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 connec- tion 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 councilor, 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 igno- rant. He had no experience or acquirement in the arts 1 Braiit6me, art. Philippe II. 2 " . . .ha tre cariehi del somigliar di corpo, del consiglier di stato et di eontatore maggiore."— Badovaro MS. 3 "Ha cirra di vestire e spoliare sua M*" di dormir nella sua camera, di sopravedere alle cose di oamra — et introduttione delle persone," etc.— Ibid. 186 THE EISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1555 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 prepossess- ing manners, a fluent tongue, a winning and benevolent disposition. His natural capacity for affairs was con- siderable, and his tact was so perfect that he could con- verse 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 burden of his daily functions. At the same time, by the king's desire, he appeared constantly at the fre- quent 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, and the tide of his fortunes was stiU at the flood.^ Such were the two men, the master and the favorite, to whose hands the destinies of the Netherlands were now intrusted. The Queen of Hungary had resigned the ofBce of regent of the Netherlands, as has been seen, on the occasion of the emperor's abdication. She was a woman 1 Badovaro MS. 2 "Perohfe dopo Iddio noa ha altro oggetto che la f elicits, sua," 2 Badovaro MS. Suriano MS. 1555] QUEEN MARY OF HUNGAEY, 187 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 toward 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 hope- less to oppose her retreat. As for Philip, he hated his annt, 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 him- 1 "Kegina Maria— donna di Valore— ma h odiata da popoli."— Badovaro MS. 2 Papiers d'Etat du Cardinal Granvelle, iv. 476: "Et pens affirmer a V. M. et prendre Dieu en temoing que les gouyemer m'est tant aborrible que j'aymerois mieux gaigner ma vie que de m'y meotre." 3 Ibid. * "Et il Re di Spagna odia lei, et lei lui."— Badovaro MS. 5 Gachard, Eetraite et Mort, etc., i. xl. xli. 341, 357, 417. 188 THE EISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1555 self 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 PhiHbert of Savoy, then about twenty-six or -seven years of age, was the son of the late unfortunate duke by Donna Beatrice of Por- tugal, 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 inheri- tance 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 super- sunt," 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 specu- lation, 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 after- ward at an immense advance.^ This sort of trafilc in men was frequent in that age, and was considered per- fectly honorable. Marshal Strozzi, Count Mansfeld, and other professional soldiers derived their main income from the system.^ They were naturally inclined, there- fore, to look impatiently upon a state of peace as an un- 1 Brantdme, CEuvres, i. 351 sqq. 2 n)id. ' De Thou, iii. liv. xix. 162 sqq. 1555] PHILIBEET OF SAVOY 189 natural 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 cam- paigns 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 paradox, unworthy of the slightest regard. An armis- tice, such as was concluded in 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 exe- cute 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 1 "Parla poco, dice corse buone et e aooorte et sagace molto, tiene ohiusi i suoi pensieri et ha f ama di tener oosi quel ohe li sono detti segretanente."— Badovaro MS. 190 THE EISE OF THE DUTCH KEPUBLIC [1555 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, mar- tial in bearing, " wearing his sword under his arm like a corporal," ^ because an internal malady made a belt in- convenient, 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 aU.^ It had been the desire of Charles to smooth the com- mencement 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 aU 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 dramati- cally 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 aiitumn and winter of 1555, hostilities had been virtually suspended, and languid negotiations en- sued. For several months armies confronted each other without engaging, and diplomatists fenced among them- selves 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 1 Brajit6me, i. 358. 2 Badovaro MS. 1556] TRUCE OF VAUCELLES 191 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 Prance, 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 CoUgny and Sebastian L'Aubespine ; on that of Spain, by Count de Lalain, Philibert de BruxeUes, Simon Renard, and Jean Baptiste Sciceio, a jurisconsult of Cremona.^ Dur- ing the previous 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 plight- ing 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 Span- iards entirely out of the Italian peninsida.* The king was to aid the pontiff, and, in return, was to carve thrones for his own younger children out of the confis- cated 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 Hapsburg 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 coidd certainly derive no advantage, and in which their part was to 1 De Thou, iii. 14 sqq. Meteren, i. 17. 2 Ibid. Ibid. 3 De Thou, iii. xvii. Meteren, i. 17 sqq. 192 THE EISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1556 furnisli money, soldiers, and battle-fields, witliout pros- pect of benefit from any victory, however brilliant, or any treaty, however elaborate. Manufacturing, agricul- tural, and commercial provinces, filled to the full with industrial life, could not but be injured by being con- verted into perpetual camps. All was joy in the Nether- lands, while at Antwerp, the great commercial metropolis of the provinces and of Europe, the rapture was un- bounded. 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 improb- ability 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 intentions of the contracting parties to the truce of Vaucelles were thor- oughly 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 1 Meteren, i. 17 sqq. 1556] ULTEEIOR PURPOSES 193 Netherlands. These schemes, which were to be carried out in the immediate future, caused, however, a tempo- rary delay in the great purpose to which he was to devote his life. The emperor had always desired to regard the Nether- lands 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 as- similate 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 sufftcient 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 reenact 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.i 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 sus- tained by the sagacity of past generations. Nothing could have been more subtle, as the event proved, than 1 Papiers d'lfctat du Card. Granvelle, ix. 478, 479. VOL. I. — 13 194 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH KEPUBLIC [1556 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 Inqui- sition, 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 in- terfere 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 reenacted and confirmed, and all oflce-holders were commanded faithfully to enforce it, upon pain of immediate dismissal.^ Nevertheless, it was not vigor- ously carried into effect anywhere. It was openly re- sisted 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 reli- gious persecution at the moment when he was endeavor- ing 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 1 Bor, i. 12. 2 iijid., i. 15. 3 fbid., i. 15 sqq. 1556] "BEQUEST" TO THE PEOVINCES 195 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 Flan- ders, Brabant, Holland, and aU 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 con- vinced 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 Toumon, on the part of the French government.^ Not- 1 De Thou, iii. 16, liv. xvii. Meteren. Bor. 196 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1556 withstanding 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 Spaia. Pope Paul IV., of the house of Caraffa, was, in posi- tion, the well-known counterpart of the Emperor Charles. At the very moment when the conqueror and autocrat was exchanging crown for cowl, and the proudest throne of the universe for a cell, this aged monk, as weary of scientific and religious seclusion as Charles of pomp and power, had abdicated his scholastic preeminence, and exchanged his rosary for the keys and sword. A pon- tifical Faustus, he had become disgusted with the results of a life of study and abnegation, and immediately upon his election appeared to be glowing with mundane pas- sions and inspired by the fiercest ambition of a warrior. He had rushed from the cloister as eagerly as Charles had sought it. He panted for the tempests of the great ex- ternal world as earnestly as the conqueror who had so long ridden upon the whirlwind of human affairs sighed for a haven of repose.^ None of his predecessors had been more despotic, more belligerent, more disposed to elevate and strengthen the temporal power of Kome. In the Inquisition he saw the grand machine by which this purpose could be accomplished,^ and yet found himself 1 " Qu'alors et en ce meme temps il se fit d'estranges metamor- phoses plus qu'il ne s'en soit dans celles d'Ovide. Que le plus grand mondain et ambitieux guerrier se voua et se rendit religieux et le Pape Paul IV. Caraffe, qui avoit est6 le plus austere theatin, devot et religieux, se rendit ambitieux mondain et guerrier." — Brantdme, art. Charles Quint. 2 De Thou, iii. 19. 1556] PAUL IV. 197 for a period the antagonist of Philip ! The single cir- cumstance would have been sufficient, had other proofs been wanting, to make manifest that the part which he had chosen to play was above his genius. Had his capacity been at aU commensurate with his ambition, he might have deeply influenced the fate of the world ; but fortunately no wizard's charm came to the aid of Paul Caraffa, and the triple-crowned monk sat upon the pon- tifical throne, a fierce, peevish, querulous, and quarrel- some dotard, the prey and the tool of his vigorous enemies and his intriguing relations. His hatred of Spain and Spaniards was unbounded. He raved at them as "heretics, schismatics, accursed of God, the spawn of Jews and Moors, the very dregs of the earth." ^ To play upon such insane passions was not difficult, and a skilful artist stood ever ready to strike the chords thus vibrating with age and fury. The master spirit and principal mischief-maker of the papal court was the weU- known Cardinal Caraffa, once a wild and dissolute sol- dier, nephew to the pope. He inflamed the anger of the pontifiE by his representations that the rival house of Colonna, sustained by the Duke of Alva, now viceroy of Naples, and by the whole Spanish power, thus relieved from the fear of French hostilities, would be free to wreak its vengeance upon their family.^ It was deter- mined that the court of France should be held by the secret league. Moreover, the pope had been expressly included in the treaty of VauceUes, although the troops of Spain had already assumed a hostile attitude in the 1 "Heretioi, seismatiei, et maladetti di Dio, seme A6 Griudei et de Marrani feooia del mondo."— Navigero, Eelazione MS. Bib. de Bourg., No. 6079. 2 De Thou, iii. 19 sqq. 198 THE EISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1556 south of Italy. The cardinal was for immediately pro- ceeding to Paris, there to excite the sympathy of the French monarch for the situation of himself and his uncle. An immediate rupture between Prance and Spain, a rekindling of the war flames from one end of Europe to the other, were necessary to save the credit and the interests of the Carafifas. Cardinal de Toumon, not desirous of so sudden a termination to the pacific relations between his country and Spain, succeeded in detaining him a little longer in Eome.^ He remained, but not in idleness. The restless intriguer had already formed close relations with the most important personage in France, Diana of Poitiers.^ This venerable courtezan, to the enjoyment of whose charms Henry had succeeded, with the other regal possessions, on the death of his father, was won by the flatteries of the wily Caraffa and by the assiduities of the Guise family. The best and most sagacious statesmen, the constable, and the admiral were in favor of peace, for they knew the con- dition of the kingdom. The Duke of Guise and the Cardinal Lorraine were for a rupture, for they hoped to increase their family influence by war. CoUgny had signed the treaty of VauceUes, and wished to maintain it, but the influence of the Catholic party was in the ascendant. The result was to embroil the Catholic king against the pope and against themselves. The queen was as favorably inclined as the mistress to listen to CarafiEa, for Catherine de' Medici was desirous that her cousin. Marshal Strozzi, should have honorable and prof- itable employment in some fresh Italian campaigns. In the meantime an accident favored the designs of the papal court. An open quarrel with Spain resulted 1 De Thou, iii. 19 sqq. ^ ibid,, ubi sup. 1556] INTRIGUES OP CARAFFA 199 from an insignificant circumstance. The Spanish am- bassador at Rome was in the habit of leaving the city very often, at an early hour in the morning, upon shoot- ing excursions, and had long enjoyed the privilege of ordering the gates to be opened for him at his pleasure. By accident or design, he was refused permission upon one occasion to pass through the gate as usual. Un- willing to lose his day's sport, and enraged at what he considered an indignity, his Excellency, by the aid of his attendants, attacked and beat the guard, mastered them, made his way out of the city, and pursued his morning's amusement.^ The pope was furious. Caraffa artfully inflamed his anger. The envoy was refused an audience, which he desired, for the sake of offering explanations, and the train being thus laid, it was thought that the right moment had arrived for applying the firebrand, ^he cardinal went to Paris post-haste. In his audience of the king, he represented that his Holiness had placed implicit reliance upon his secret treaty with his Majesty, that the recently concluded truce with Spain left the pontiff at the mercy of the Spaniards, that the Duke of Alva had already drawn the sword, that the pope had long since done himself the pleasure and the honor of appointing the French monarch protector of the papal chair in general and of the Caraffa family in particular, and that the moment had arrived for claiming the benefit of that protection. He assured him, moreover, as by full papal authority, that in respecting the recent truce with Spain his Maj- esty would violate both human and divine law. Reason and justice required him to defend the pontiff, now that the Spaniards were about to profit by the interval 1 De Thou, iii. liv. xvii. 19 sqq. 200 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1556 of truce to take measures for his detriment. Moreover, as the pope was included in the truce of Vaucelles, he could not be abandoned without a violation of that treaty itself.^ The arts and arguments of the cardinal proved successful ; the war was resolved upon in favor of the pope.2 The cardinal, by virtue of powers re- ceived and brought with him from his Holiness, absolved the king from all obligation to keep his faith with Spain. He also gave him a dispensation from the duty of prefacing hostilities by a declaration of war. Strozzi was sent at once into Italy, with some hastily collected troops, while the Duke of Guise waited to organize a regular army. The mischief being thus fairly afoot, and war let loose again upon Europe, the cardinal made a public entry into Paris as legate of the pope. The populace crowded about his mule as he rode at the head of a stately pro- cession through the streets. AU were anxious to receive a benediction from the holy man who had come so far to represent the successor of St. Peter and to enlist the efforts of all true believers in his cause. He appeared to answer the entreaties of the superstitious rabble with fervent blessings, while the friends who were nearest him were aware that nothing but gibes and sarcasms were falling from his lips. "Let us fool these poor creatures to their heart's content, since they will be fools," he muttered, smiling the while upon them be- nignantly, as became his holy office.^ Such were the materials of this new combination; such was the fuel with which this new blaze was lighted and maintained. Thus were the great powers of the earth— Spain, France, 1 De Thou, iii. 23-29. ^ i^id. Bor, i. 15. ' De Thou, iii. 29, xvii. 1556] CAEAFPA IN PARIS 201 England, and the papacy— embroiled, and the nations embattled against each other for several years. The preceding pages show how much national interests or principles were concerned in the struggle thus com- menced, in which thousands were to shed their life-blood, and millions to be reduced from peace and comfort to suffer all the misery which famine and rapine can inflict. It would no doubt have increased the hUarity of Caraffa, as he made his triumphant entry into Paris, could the idea have been suggested to his mind that the senti- ments or the welfare of the people throughout the great states now involved in his meshes could have any pos- sible bearing upon the question of peace or war. The world was governed by other influences. The wiles of a cardinal, the arts of a concubine, the snipe-shooting of an ambassador, the speculations of a soldier of fortune, the ill temper of a monk, the mutual venom of Italian houses, above all the perpetual rivalry of the two great historical families who owned the greater part of Europe between them as their private property— such were the wheels on which roUed the destiny of Christendom. Compared to these, what were great moral and political ideas, the plans of statesmen, the hopes of nations? Time was soon to show. Meanwhile government con- tinued to be administered exclusively for the benefit of the governors. Meanwhile a petty war for paltry mo- tives was to precede the great spectacle which was to prove to Europe that principles and peoples still existed, and that a phlegmatic nation of merchants and manu- facturers could defy the powers of the universe and risk all their blood and treasure, generation after generation, in a sacred cause. It does not belong to our purpose to narrate the de- 202 THE EISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1556 tails of the campaign in Italy; neither is this war of politics and chicane of any great interest at the present day. To the military minds of their age, the scientific duel which now took place upon a large scale, between two such celebrated captains as the dukes of Guise and Alva, was no doubt esteemed the most important of spectacles ; but the progress of mankind in the art of slaughter has stripped so antiquated an exhibition of most of its interest, even in a technical point of view. Not much satisfaction could be derived from watching an old-fashioned game of war, in which the parties sat down before each other so tranquilly, and picked up piece after piece, castle after castle, city after city, with such scientific deliberation as to make it evident that, in the opinion of the commanders, war was the only serious business to be done in the world ; that it was not to be done in a hurry, nor contrary to rule, and that when a general had a good job upon his hands he ought to know his profession much too thoroughly to hasten through it before he saw his way clear to another. From the point of time, at the close of the year 1556, when that weU-trained but not very successful soldier, Strozzi, crossed the Alps, down to the autumn of the following year, when the Duke of Alva made his peace with the pope, there was hardly a pitched battle, and scarcely an event of striking interest. Alva, as usual, brought his dilatory policy to bear upon his adversary with great effect. He had no intention, he observed to a friend, to stake the whole kingdom of Naples against a brocaded coat of the Duke of Guise.i Moreover, he had been sent to the war, as Ruy Gomez informed the Venetian am- 1 De la Rooa, Eestiltas de la Vida del Duque de Alba, p. 66. 1556] CAMPAIGN IN ITALY 203 bassador, ""with a bridle in his mouth." ^ Philip, sorely troubled in his mind at finding himself in so strange a position as this hostile attitude to the Church, had ear- nestly interrogated all the doctors and theologians with whom he habitually took counsel, whether this war with the pope would not work a forfeiture of his title of the Most Catholic King.^ The Bishop of Arras and the favorite both disapproved of the war, and encouraged with aU their influence the pacific inclinations of the monarch.^ The doctors were, to be sure, of opinion that Philip, having acted in Italy only in self-defense and for the protection of his states, ought not to be anxious as to his continued right to the title on which he valued himself so highly.* Nevertheless, such ponderings and misgivings could not but have the effect of hampering the actions of Alva. That general chafed inwardly at what he considered his own contemptible position. At the same time, he enraged the Duke of Guise stiU more deeply by the forced calmness of his proceedings. For- tresses were reduced, towns taken, one after another, with the most provoking deliberation, while his dis- tracted adversary in vain strove to defy or to delude him into trying the chances of a stricken field.^ The 1 ". . . et come mi disse il S' Ruy Gomez non si maneherS, a tal fine di usare supplicationi humili k, S. Santit^, mandandogli il Duoa d'Alva colla coreggia al collo per paoifioarla."— Bado- varo MS. 2 Miohele, Eelazione MS. 3 Badovaro MS. : " . . . non f u d'opinione che si comincia la guerra col pontefiee," etc. Compare Suriano MS.: "... non fu mai d'opinione che si movesse la guerra eon il papa per non metter in perieolo le cose d'ltalia," etc. < Michele MS. ^ De Thou, iii. 119, liv. xviii. 204 THE RISE OP THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1557 battle of St.-Quentin, the narrative of which belongs to our subject and will soon occupy our attention, at last decided the Italian operations. Egmont's briQiant triumph in Picardy rendered a victory in Italy super- fluous, and placed in Alva's hand the power of com- manding the issue of his own campaign.^ The Duke of Guise was recalled to defend the French frontier, which the bravery of the Flemish hero had imperiled, and the pope was left to make the best peace which he could. All was now prosperous and smiling, and the campaign closed with a highly original and entertaining exhibition. The pontiff's puerile ambition, sustained by the intrigues of his nephew, had involved the French monarch in a war which was contrary to his interests and inclination. Paul now found his ally too sorely beset to afford him that protection upon which he had relied when he com- menced, in his dotage, his career as a warrior. He was therefore only desirous of deserting his friend, and of relieving himself from his uncomfortable predicament by making a treaty with his Catholic Majesty upon the best terms which he could obtain. The King of France, who had gone to war only for the sake of his Holiness, was to be left to fight his own battles, while the pope was to make his peace with all the world. The result was a desirable one for Philip. Alva was accordingly instructed to afford the Holy Father a decorous and ap- propriate opportunity for carrying out his wishes. The victorious general was apprised that his master desired no fruit from his commanding attitude in Italy and the victory of St.-Quentin save a full pardon from the pope for maintaining even a defensive war against him.^ 1 De Thou, iii. 125. 2 De la Eoea, Kesultas, etc., p. 68. 1557] AMICABLE SIEGE OF ROME 205 An amicable siege of Rome was accordingly commenced, in the course of which an assatdt, or camiciata, on the holy city was arranged for the night of the 26th August, 1557. The pontifif agreed to be taken by surprise, while Alva, through what was to appear only a superabundance of his habitual discretion, was to draw off his troops at the very moment when the victorious assault was to be made.^ The imminent danger to the holy city and to his own sacred person thus furnishing the pontiff with an excuse for abandoning his own cause as well as that of his ally, the Duke of Alva was allowed, in the name of his master and himself, to make submission to the Church and his peace with Eome.^ The Spanish general, with secret indignation and disgust, was compelled to humor the vanity of a peevish but imperious old man. Nego- tiations were commenced, and so skilfully had the duke played his game during the spring and summer that when he was admitted to kiss the pope's toe he was able to bring a hundred Italian towns in his hand, as a peace-offering to his Holiness.^ These he now restored, with apparent humility and inward curses, upon the condition that the fortifications should be razed and the French alliance absolutely renounced. Thus did the fanaticism of Philip reverse the relative position of himself and his antagonist. Thus was the vanquished pontiff allowed almost to dictate terms to the victorious general. The king who could thus humble himself to a dotard, while he made himself the scourge of his sub- jects, deserved that the bull of excommunication which 1 De Thou, iii. 127-129, xviii. Cabrera, lib. iv. c. xi. 166-168. Compare Llorente, Hist. Critique de I'lnquisit., ii. 179-183; De la Koca, 68-72. 2 De Thou. Cabrera, ubi sup. ' De Thou, iii. 128. 206 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH KEPUBLIC [1557 had been prepared should have been fulminated. He, at least, was capable of feeling the scathing effects of such anathemas. The Duke of Guise, having been dismissed with the pontiff's assurance that he had done little for the inter- ests of his sovereign, less for the protection of the Church, and least of aU for his own reputation, set forth with all speed for Civitavecchia, to do what he could upon the Flemish frontier to atone for his inglori- ous campaign in Italy. The treaty between the pope and the Duke of Alva was signed ^ on the 14th Septem- ber (1557), and the Spanish general retired for the winter to MUan. Cardinal Caraffa was removed from the French court to that of Madrid, there to spin new schemes for the embroilment of nations and the advance- ment of his own family. Very little glory was gained by any of the combatants in this campaign. Spain, France, nor Paul IV., not one of them, came out of the Itahan contest in better condition than that in which they entered upon it. In fact, all were losers. Prance had made an inglorious retreat, the pope a ludicrous capitulation, and the only victorious party, the King of Spain, had, during the summer, conceded to Cosmo de' Medici the sovereignty of Siena. Had Venice shown more cordiality toward Philip and more disposition to sustain his policy, it is probable that the republic would have secured the prize which thus fell to the share of Cosmo.2 That astute and unprincipled potentate, who could throw his net so well in troubled water, had suc- cessfully duped all parties, Spain, France, and Rome. The man who had not only not participated in the contest, but who had kept all parties and all warfare away from 1 De Thou, iii. 128. 2 guriano MS. 1556] HOSTILITIES ON THE FLEMISH BORDER 207 his borders, was the only indmdual in Italy who gained territorial advantage from the war. To avoid interrupting the continuity of the narrative, the Spanish campaign has been briefly sketched until the autumn of 1557, at which period the treaty be- tween the pope and Philip was concluded. It is now necessary to go back to the close of the preceding year. Simultaneously with the descent of the French troops upon Italy, hostilities had broken out upon the Flemish border. The pains of the emperor in covering the smol- dering embers of national animosities so precipitately, and with a view rather to scenic effect than to a dehber- ate and well-considered result, were thus set at naught, and within a year from the day of his abdication hostili- ties were reopened from the Tiber to the German Ocean. The blame of first violating the truce of VauceUes was laid by each party upon the other with equal justice, for there can be but little doubt that the reproach justly belonged to both. Both had been equally faithless in their professions of amity. Both were equally respon- sible for the scenes of war, plunder, and misery which again were desolating the fairest regions of Christendom. At the time when the French court had resolved to concede to the wishes of the CarafEa famUy, Admiral Coligny, who had been appointed governor of Picardy, had received orders to make a foray upon the frontier of Flanders. Before the formal annunciation of hostil- ities, it was thought desirable to reap all the advantage possible from the perfidy which had been resolved upon. It happened that a certain banker of Lucca, an ancient gambler and debauchee, whom evil courses had reduced from afiluence to penury, had taken up his abode upon a hill overlooking the city of Douai. Here he had built 208 THE RISE OP THE DUTCH EBPUBLIC [1556 himself a hermit's cell. Clad in sackcloth, with a rosary at his waist, he was accustomed to beg his bread from door to door. His garb was aU, however, which he possessed of sanctity, and he had passed his time in contemplating the weak points in the defenses of the city with much more minuteness than those in his own heart. - Upon the breaking out of hostilities in Italy, the instincts of his old profession had suggested to him that a good speculation might be made in Flanders by turn- ing to account as a spy the observations which he had made in his character of a hermit.^ He sought an interview with Coligny, and laid his propositions before him. The noble admiral hesitated, for his sentiments were more elevated than those of many of his contem- poraries. He had, moreover, himself negotiated and signed the truce with Spain, and he shrank from violat- ing it with his own hand before a declaration of war. StUl, he was aware that a French army was on its way to attack the Spaniards in Italy ; he was under instruc- tions to take the earliest advantage which his position upon the frontier might offer him ; he knew that both theory and practice authorized a general, in that age, to break his fast, even in time of truce, if a tempting morsel should present itself ; ^ and, above all, he thoroughly understood the character of his nearest antagonist, the new governor of the Netherlands, Philibert of Savoy, whom he knew to be the most unscrupulous chieftain in Europe. These considerations decided him to take ad- vantage of the hermit-banker's communication. A day was accordingly fixed, at which, under the 1 De Thou, iii. 78, liv. xviii. P. C. Hoofd, Nederl. Historien (Amsterdam, 1642), i. 7. 2 Brantdme, art. Duo de Savoie. 1557] COLIGNY FOILED AT DOUAI 209 guidance of this newly acquired ally, a surprise should be attempted by the French forces, and the unsuspecting city of Douai given over to the pillage of a brutal sol- diery. The time appointed was the night of Epiphany, upon occasion of which festival it was thought that the inhabitants, overcome with sleep and wassail, might be easily overpowered (6th January, 1557). The plot was a good plot, but the admiral of France was destined to be foiled by an old woman. This person, apparently the only creature awake in the town, perceived the danger, ran shrieking through the streets, alarmed the citizens while it was yet time, and thus prevented the attack.^ Coligny, disappointed in his plan, recom- pensed his soldiers by a sudden onslaught upon Lens, in Artois, which he sacked and then leveled with the ground. Such was the wretched condition of frontier cities, standing, even in time of peace, with the ground undermined beneath them, and existing every moment, as it were, upon the brink of explosion.^ Hostilities having been thus fairly commenced, the French government was in some embarrassment. The Duke of Guise, with the most available forces of the kingdom, having crossed the Alps, it became necessary forthwith to collect another army. The place of ren- dezvous appointed was Pierrepont, where an army of eighteen thousand infantry and five thousand horse were assembled early in the spring.^ In the meantime, Philip, finding the war fairly afoot, had crossed to England for the purpose (exactly in contravention of all his marriage stipulations) of cajoliag his wife and browbeating her ministers iato a participation in his war with France. 1 De Thou. Hoofd, uW sup. " Ibid. Ibid. 5 De Thou, iii. 148, liv. xviii. VOL. i.—li 210 THE EISB OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1557 This was easily accomplished. The English nation found themselves accordingly engaged in a contest with which they had no concern, which, as the event proved, was very much against their interests, and in which the moving cause for their entanglement was the devotion of a weak, bad, ferocious woman for a husband who hated her. A herald sent from England arrived in France, disguised, and was presented to King Henry at Rheims. Here, dropping on one knee, he recited a list of complaints against his Majesty on behalf of the Eng- lish queen, all of them fabricated or exaggerated for the occasion, and none of them furnishing even a decorous pretext for the war which was now formally declared in consequence.^ The French monarch expressed his re- gret and surprise that the firm and amicable relations secured by treaty between the two countries should thus, without sufficient cause, be violated. In accepting the wager of warfare thus forced upon him, he bade the herald, Norris, inform his mistress that her messenger was treated with courtesy only because he represented a lady, and that, had he come from a king, the language with which he would have been greeted would have befitted the perfidy manifested on the occasion. God would punish this shameless violation of faith and this wanton interruption to the friendship of two great na- tions. With this the herald was dismissed from the royal presence, but treated with great distinction, con- ducted to the hotel of the English ambassador, and presented, on the part of the French sovereign, with a chain of gold.^ PhiUp had despatched Ruy Gomez to Spain for the 1 Hoofd, i. 7. De Thou, iii. 144. 2 De Thou. Hoofd, ubi sup. 1557] PHILIP IN ENGLAND 211 purpose of providing ways and means, while he was himself occupied with the same task in England.^ He stayed there three months. During this time he " did more," says a Spanish contemporary, "than any one could have believed possible with that proud and in- domitable nation. He caused them to declare war against France with fire and sword, by sea and land." ^ Hostilities having been thus chivakously and formally established, the queen sent an army of eight thousand men, cavalry, infantry, and pioneers, who, " aU clad in blue uniform,"* commanded by Lords Pembroke and Clinton, with the three sons of the Earl of Northumber- land, and ofBLcered by many other scions of England's aristocracy, disembarked at Calais, and shortly after- ward joined the camp before St.-Quentin.* Philip meantime had left England, and, with more bustle and activity than was usual with him, had given directions for organizing at once a considerable army. It was composed mainly of troops belonging to the Neth- erlands, with the addition of some German auxOiaries. Thirty-five thousand foot and twelve thousand horse had, by the middle of July, advanced through the prov- ince of Namur, and were assembled at Givet under the Duke of Savoy, who, as governor-general of the Nether- lands, held the chief command.^ AH the most eminent grandees of the provinces— Orange, Aerschot, Berlay- mont, Meghen, Brederode— were present with the troops, but the life and soul of the army upon this memorable occasion was the Count of Egmont. 1 Documentos Ineditos para la Hist, de Espafla, ix. 487. 2 Ibid. ' Meteren, i. 18. * Ibid., ubi sup. Hoofd, i. 8. 5 Meteren. Hoofd, ubi sup. De Thou, iii. liv. xix. 212 THE KISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1557 Lamoral, Count of Egmont, Prince of Gavre, was now in the thirty-sixth year of his age/ in the very noon of that brilliant life which was destined to be so soon and so fatally overshadowed. Not one of the dark clouds which were in the future to accumulate around him had yet roUed above his horizon. Young, noble, wealthy, handsome, valiant, he saw no threatening phan- tom in the future, and caught eagerly at the golden opportunity, which the present placed within his grasp, of winning fresh laurels on a wider and more fruitful field than any in which he had hitherto been a reaper. The campaign about to take place was likely to be an imposing if not an important one, and could not fail to be attractive to a noble of so ardent and showy a char- acter as Egmont. If there were no lofty principles or extensive interests to be contended for, as there certainly were not, there was yet much that was stately and ex- citing to the imagination in the warfare which had been so deliberately and pompously, arranged. The contend- ing armies, although of moderate size, were composed of picked troops, and were commanded by the flower of Europe's chivalry. Kings, princes, and the most illus- trious paladins of Christendom were arming for the great tournament, to which they had been summoned by herald and trumpet ; and the Batavian hero, without a crown or even a country, but with as lofty a lineage as many anointed sovereigns could boast, was ambitious to distinguish himself in the proud array. Upon the northwestern edge of the narrow peninsula of North Holland, washed by the stormy waters of the German Ocean, were -the ancient castle, town, and lord- 1 He was born in 1522. Levensb. ber. Nederl. Man. en Vr., v., art. Egmond. 1557] COUNT EGMONT 213 sMp whence Bgmont derived his family name and the title by which he was most familiarly known. He was sup- posed to trace his descent, through a line of chivalrous champions and crusaders, up to the pagan kings of the most ancient of existing Teutonic races. The eighth-cen- tury names of the Frisian Eadbold and AdgUdi among his ancestors were thought to denote the antiquity of a house whose luster had been increased in later times by the splendor of its alliances. His father, united to Fran^oise de Luxembourg, Princess of Gavre, had acquired by this marriage, and transmitted to his posterity, many of the proudest titles and richest estates of Flanders. Of the three children who survived him, the only daughter was afterward united to the Count of Vaudemont, and be- came mother of Louise de Vaudemont, queen of the French monarch, Henry HI. Of his two sons, Charles, the elder, had died young and unmarried, leaving all the estates and titles of the family to his brother. Lamoral, born in 1522, was in early youth a page of the emperor. When old enough to bear arms he demanded and ob- tained permission to follow the career of his adventurous sovereign. He served his apprenticeship as a soldier in the stormy expedition to Barbarj', where, in his nine- teenth year, he commanded a troop of light horse, and distinguished himself under the emperor's eye for his courage and devotion, doing the duty not only of a gal- lant commander but of a hardy soldier.^ Returning, 1 Levensbe. beroemd. Nederl., v. 1. 2 "Pour avoir estS nourry toute sa vie entre les armes, soubs ce grand guerrier Charles le Quint, n'estant eag6 que dix sept ans ou dix huit ans, quand il commenoa son premier apprentissage an voyage de Thunis, oonduisant une campaignie de eavaillerie legere ou il fit I'offioe non seulement de eapitaine mais aussy de 214 THE EISE OF THE DUTCH EBPUBLIC [1557 unscathed by the war, flood, or tempest of that memo- rable enterprise, he reached his country by the way of Corsica, Genoa, and Lorraine, and was three years after- ward united (in the year 1545) to Sabina of Bavaria, sister of Frederick, Elector Palatine. The nuptials had taken place at Speyer, and few royal weddings could have been more brilliant. The emperor, his brother Ferdinand, King of the Romans, with the Archduke Maximilian, all the imperial electors, and a concourse of the principal nobles of the empire, were present on the occasion. In the following year Charles invested him with the order of the Fleece at a chapter held at Utrecht. In 1553 he had been at the emperor's side during the un- lucky siege of Metz; in 1554 he had been sent at the head of a splendid embassy to England, to solicit for Philip the hand of Mary Tudor, and had witnessed the marriage in Winchester Cathedral the same year. Al- tres hardy soldat."— De la Guerre Civile des Pay? Bas, par Pontus Payen, MS. We shall often have occasion to cite this manuscript in the course of this volume. It is remarkable that so valuable and interesting a fragment of contemporaneous history should have remained unpublished. Its author, Pontus Payen, Seigneur des Essarts, was of the royal party, and a very determined Catholic. He was in close relations with many important personages of the times which he describes, and his work contains many striking sketches, eharaoteristie anecdotes, minute traits, which show the keen observer of men and things. More than any Netherlander of his day he possessed the dramatic power of setting before the eyes of his readers the men and scenes familiar to himself. His work is full of color and invaluable detail. There are several copies extant in the different libraries of the Netherlands. The one which I have used is that in the Eoyal Library of The Hague (Ponds Gerard, B. 103). 1557] HIS PEESONAL CHAEACTER 215 though one branch of his house had, iu past times, ar- rived at the sovereignty of Giielders, and another had acquired the great estates and titles of Buren, which had recently passed, by intermarriage with the heiress, into the possession of the Prince of Orange, yet the Prince of GrS,vre, Count of Egmont, was the chief of a race which yielded to none of the great Batavian or Flemish families in antiquity, wealth, or power. Personally he was dis- tinguished for his bravery, and although he was not yet the idol of the camp which he was destined to become, nor had yet commanded in chief on any important occa- sion, he was accounted one of the five principal generals in the Spanish service.^ Eager for general admiration, he was at the same time haughty and presumptuous, attempting to combine the characters of an arrogant magnate and a popular chieftain. Terrible and sudden in his wrath, he was yet of inordinate vanity, and was easily led by those who understood his weakness. With a limited education, and a slender capacity for all affairs^ except those relating to the camp, he was destined to be as vacillating and incompetent as a statesman as he was prompt and fortunately audacious in the field. A splendid soldier, his evil stars had destined him to tread, as a politician, a dark and dangerous path, in which not even genius, caution, and integrity could insure success, but in which rashness alternating with hesitation, and credulity with violence, could not fail to bring ruin. Such was Count Egmont, as he took his place at the head of the king's cavalry in the summer of 1557. The early^ operations of the Duke of Savoy were at 1 Suiiano MS. 2 " . . . peu versS aux lettres, grossier et ignorant en matiSre d'Estat police civile," etc.— Ponttis Payen MS. 216 THE EISE OF THE DUTCH KBPUBLIC [1557 first intended to deceive the enemy. The army, after advancing as far into Picardy as the town of Vervins, which they burned and pillaged, made a demonstration with their whole force upon the city of Guise. This, however, was but a feint, by which attention was directed and forces drawn off from St.-Quentin, which was to be the real point of attack. In the meantime the Con- stable of France, Montmorency, arrived upon the 28th July (1557), to take command of the French troops. He was accompanied by the Marechal de Saint Andre and by Admiral Coligny. The most illustrious names of France, whether for station or valor, were in the officers' list of this select army. Nevers and Montpensier, Bn- ghien and Conde, Vend6me and Rochefoucauld, were already there, and now the constable and the admiral came to add the strength of their experience and lofty reputation to sustain the courage of the troops. The French were at Pierrepont, a post between Champagne and Picardy, and in its neighborhood. The Spanish army was at Vervins and threatening Guise. It had been the opinion in Prance that the enemy's intention was to invade Champagne, and the Due de Nevers, governor of that province, had made a disposition of his forces suitable for such a contingency. It was the conviction of Montmorency, however, that Picardy was to be the quarter really attacked,^ and that St.-Quentin, which was the most important point at which the enemy's progress, by that route, toward Paris could be arrested, was in imminent danger. The constable's opinion was soon confirmed by advices received by Coligny. The enemy's army, he was informed, after remaining three 1 De Thou, iu. 149, xix. 1557] CITY OP ST.-QUENTIN ojy days before Guise, had withdrawn from that point, and had invested St.-Quentin with their whole fores. This wealthy and prosperous city stood upon an eleva- tion rising from the river Somme. It was surrounded by very extensive suburbs, ornamented with orchards and gardens, and including within their limits large tracts of a highly cultivated soil.^ Three sides of the place were covered by a lake, thirty yards in width, very deep at some points, in others rather resembling a morass, and extending on the Flemish side a half-mile beyond the city.^ The inhabitants were thriving and industrious ; many of the manufacturers and merchants were very rich, for it was a place of much traflac and commercial importance.^ Teiigny, son-in-law of the admiral, was in the cit}-^ with a detachment of the Dauphin's regiment ; Captain Brueuil was commandant of the town. Both informed CoUgny of the imminent peril in which they stood. They represented the urgent necessity of immediate reinforcements both of men and Supplies. The city, as the admiral well knew, was in no condition to stand a siege by such an army, and dire were the consequences which would follow the downf aU of so important a place. 1 "Batalla de San Quintin. Copiada de un eodice MS. de la Bib. del Escorial," Dooumentos Ineditos, ix. 490. The "manuscript thus published in the Madrid collection of documents is by an anonymous writer, but one who was present at the siege, which he has well described. His sketch is, however, entitled as above, "the Battle of St.-Quintin," and its most re- markable feature is that he does not once mention the name of Egmont as connected with that action. Certainly national rivalry could no further go. 2 Documentos Ineditos, 491, 492. ^ Ibid. 218 THE EISE or THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1557 It was still practicable, they wrote, to introduce succor, but every day diminished the possibility of affording effectual relief. Coligny was not the man to let the grass grow under his feet, after such an appeal in behalf of the principal place iu his government. The safety of France was dependent upon that of St.-Quentia. The bulwark overthrown, Paris was within the next stride of an adventurous enemy. The admiral instantly set out, upon the 2d of August, with strong reinforcements. It was too late. The English auxiliaries, under Lords Pembroke, Clinton, and Grey, had, in the meantime, effected their junction with the Duke of Savoy, and appeared in the camp before St.-Quentin. The route by which it had been hoped that the much-needed succor could be introduced was thus occupied and rendered im- practicable. The admiral, however, in consequence of the urgent nature of the letters received from Brueml and Teligny, had outstripped, in his anxiety, the move- ments of his troops. He reached the city almost alone and unattended. Notwithstanding the remonstrances of his ofQcers, he had listened to no voice save the desperate entreaties of the besieged garrison, and had flown before his army. He now shut himself up in the city,^ deter- mined to effect its deliverance by means of his sHU and experience, or, at least, to share its fate. As the gates closed upon Coligny, the road was blocked up for his advancing troops.^ A few days were passed in making ineffectual sorties, ordered by Coligny for the sake of reconnoitering the country and of discovering the most practicable means of introducing supplies. The constable, meantime, who 1 De Thou, iii. 251, xix. Hoofd, i. 8. a Ibid. Ibid. 1557] SIEGE OF ST.-QUENTIN 219 had advanced with his army to La Ffere, was not idle. He kept up daily communications with the beleaguered admiral, and was determined, if possible, to relieve the city. There was, however, a constant succession of dis- appointments. Moreover, the brave but indiscreet Teligny, who commanded during a temporary illness of the admiral, saw fit, against express orders, to make an imprudent sortie. He paid the penalty of his rashness with his life. He was rescued by the admiral in person, who, at imminent hazard, brought back the unfortunate officer, covered with wounds, into the city, there to die at his father's feet, imploring forgiveness for his dis- obedience.^ Meantime the garrison was daily growing weaker. Coligny sent out of the city all useless con- sumers, quartered aU the women in the cathedral and other churches, where they were locked in, lest their terror and their tears should weaken the courage of the garrison, and did all in his power to strengthen the de- fenses of the city and sustain the resolution of the in- habitants. Affairs were growing desperate. It seemed plain that the important city must soon fall, and with it most probably Paris. One of the suburbs was already in the hands of the enemy. At last Coligny discovered a route by which he believed it to be still possible to introduce reinforcements. He communicated the results of his observations to the constable. Upon one side of the city the lake, or morass, was traversed by a few difficult and narrow pathways, mostly under water, and by a running stream which could only be passed in boats. The constable, in consequence of this information re- ceived from Coligny, set out from La Fhre upon the 8th of August, with four thousand infantry and two thou- 1 De Thou, iii. 152. 220 THE EISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1557 sand horse. Halting Ms troops at the village of Bssigny, lie advanced in person to the edge of the morass, in order to reconnoiter the ground and prepare his plans. The result was a determination to attempt the intro- duction of men and supplies into the town by the mode suggested, i Leaving his troops drawn up in battle array, he returned to La Ffere for the remainder of his army and to complete his preparations.^ Cohgny in the mean- time was to provide boats for crossing the stream. Upon the 10th August, which waS' the festival of St. Lawrence, the constable advanced with four pieces of heavy artil- lery, four eulverins, and four lighter pieces, and arrived at nine o'clock in the morning near the Faubourg d'Isle, which was already in possession of the Spanish troops. The whole army of the constable consisted of twelve thousand Grerman, with fifteen companies of French infantry, making in all some sixteen thousand foot, with i five thousand Cavalry in addition. The Duke of Savoy's army lay upon the same side of the. town, widely extended, and stretching beyond the river and the morass. Montmorency's project was to be executed in full view of the enemy. Fourteen companies of Spaniards were stationed in the faubourg. Two companies had been pushed forward as far- as a water-miU, which lay in the pathway of the advancing constable; These soldiers stood their ground for a moment, but soon retreated, while a cannonade was suddenly opened by the French upon the quarters of the Duke of Savoy. The duke's tent was torn to pieces, and he had barely time to hurry on his cuirass and to take refugowith Count Egmont.^ The constable, hastening to turn this temporary advan- 1 De Thou, iii. 154. Meteren, i. 18. 2 Hoofd, i. 8. Meteren, i. 18. De Thou, iii. 157. 1557] PHILIP'S HESITATION AND TIMIDITY 221 tage to account at once, commenced the transportation of his troops across the morass. The enterprise was, however, not destined to be fortunate. The number of boats which had been provided was very inadequate ; moreover, they -were very small, and each as it left the shore was consequently so crowded with soldiers that it was in danger of being swamped. Several were over- turned, and the men perished. It was found also that the opposite bank was steep and dangerous. Many who had crossed the river were unable to effect a landing, while those who escaped drowning in the water lost then- way in the devious and impracticable paths, or perishfed miserably in the treacherous quagmires. ' Very few effected their entrance into the town, but amongithem was Andelot, brother of Coligny, with five hundred fol- lowers. Meantime a council of officers was held in Egmont's tent. Opinions were undecided as to the course to be pursued under the circumstances. Should an engagement be risked, or should the constable, who had but indifferently accomplished his project and had introduced but an insignificant number of troops into the city, be allowed to withdraw with the rest of his army? The fiery vehemence of ^Egmont carried aU before it.^ Here was an opportunity to measure arms at advantage with the great captain of the age. To relinquish the prize which the fortune of war hadnow placed within reach of their valor was a thought not to be entertained. Here was the great Constable Mont- morency, attended by princes of the royal Mood, the proudest of the nobility, the very crown and flower of the chivalry of France, and followed by an army of her bravest troops. On a desperate venture he had placed 1 Hoof d, i. 8. Meteren, i. 18. 222 THE EISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1557 himself within their grasp. Should he go thence alive and unmolested? The moral effect of destroying such an army would be greater than if it were twice its actual strength. It would be dealing a blow at the very heart of France, from which she could not recover. Was the opportunity to be resigned without a struggle of laying at the feet of Philip, in this his first campaign since his accession to his father's realms, a prize worthy of the proudest hour of the emperor's reign? The eloquence of the impetuous Batavian was irresistible, and it was determined to cut off the constable's retreat.^ Three miles from the Faubourg d'Isle, to which that general had now advanced, was a narrow pass or defile, between steep and closely hanging hills. While advan- cing through this ravine in the morning, the constable had observed that the enemy might have it in their power to intercept his return at that point. He had therefore left the Rhinegrave, with his company of mounted carbineers, to guard the passage. Being ready to commence his retreat, he now sent forward the Due de Nevers with four companies of cavalry to strengthen that important position, which he feared might be inadequately guarded. The act of caution came too late. This was the fatal point which the quick glance of Egmont had at once detected. As Nevers reached the spot, two thousand of the enemy's cavalry rode through and occupied the narrow passage. In- flamed by mortification and despair, Nevers woidd have at once charged those troops, although outnum- bering his own by nearly four to one. His officers restrained him with difficulty, recalling to his memory the peremptory orders which he had received from the 1 Hoofd. Meteren, ubi sup. 1557] THE BATTLE 223 constable to guard the passage, but on no account to hazard an engagement until sustained by the body of the army. It was a case in which rashness would have been the best discretion. The headlong charge which the duke had been about to make might possibly have cleared the path and have extricated the army, provided the constable had followed up the movement by a rapid advance upon his part. As it was, the passage was soon blocked up by freshly advancing bodies of Spanish and Flemish cavalry, while Nevers slowly and reluctantly f eU back upon the Prince of Conde, who was stationed with the light horse at the mill where the fli'st skirmish had taken place. They, were soon joined by the con- stable, with the main body of the army. The whole French force now commenced its retrograde movement. It was, however, but too evident that they were enveloped. As they approached the fatal pass through which lay their only road to La Ffere, and which was now in com- plete possession of the enemy, the signal of assault was given by Count Bgmont. That general himself, at the head of two thousand light horse, led the charge upon the left flank. The other side was assaulted by the Dukes Eric and Henry of Brunswick, each with a thou- sand heavy dragoons, sustained by Count Horn, at the head of a regiment of mounted gendarmerie. Mansfeld, Lalain, Hoogstraaten, and Vilain at the same time made a furious attack upon the front. The French cavalry wavered with the shock so vigorously given. The camp- foUowers, sutlers, and peddlers, panic-stricken, at once fled helter-skelter, and in their precipitate retreat carried confusion and dismay throughout all the ranks of the army. The rout was sudden and total. The onset and the victory were simultaneous. Nevers, riding through 224 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1557 a hollow with some companies of cavalry, in the hope of making a detour and presenting a new front to the enemy, was overwhelmed at once by the retreating French and their furious pursuers. The day was lost, retreat hardly possible ; yet, by a daring and desperate effort, the duke, accompanied by a handful of followers, cut his way through the enemy and effected his escape. The cavalry had been broken at the first onset and nearly destroyed. A portion of the infantry still held firm, and attempted to continue their retreat. Some pieces of artillery, however, now opened upon them, and biefore they reached Essigny the whole army was completely annihilated. The defeat was absolute. Half the French troops actually engaged in the enterprise lost their lives upon the field. The remainder of the army was captured or utterly disorganized. When Nevers re- viewed, at Laon, the wreck of the constable's whole force, he found some thirteen hundred French and three hundred German cavalry, with four companies of French infantry remaining out of fifteen, and four thou- sand German foot remaining of twelve thousand. Of twenty-one or twenty-two thousand remarkably fine and well-appointed troops, aUbut six thousand had been killed or made prisoners within an hour. The constable him- self, with a wound in the groin, was a captive. The Duke of Enghien, after behaving with brilliant valor and many times rallying the troops, was shot through the body, and brought into the enemy's camp only to expire. The Due de Montpensier, the Mar^chal de Saint Andr^, the Due de Longueville, Prince Ludovic of Mantua, the Baron Gorton la Roche du Mayne, the RMnegrave, the Counts de Rochefoucauld, d'Aubign6, de Roohefort, all were taken. The Due de NeverSj the 1557] PHILIP'S ARMY VICTOBIOUS 225 Prince of Oonde, -with a few others, escaped ;' although so absolute was the conviction that such an escape was impossible that it was not believed by the victorious army. When Nevers sent a trumpeter, after the battle, to the I>uke of Savoy, for the purpose of negotiating con- cerning the prisoners, the trumpeter was pronounced an impostor, and the duke's letter a forgery ; nor was it tiU after the whole field had been diligently searched for his dead body without success that Nevers could persuade the conquerors that he was still in existence.^ Of Philip's army but fifty lost their lives.^ Lewis of Brederode was smothered in his armor, and the two counts Spiegelberg and Count Waldeck were also killed ; besides these, no oflcer of distinction fell. AH the French stan- dards and aU their artillery but two pieces were taken and placed before the king, who the next day came into the camp before St.-Quentin. The prisoners of dis- tinction were likewise presented to him in long proces- sion. Rarely had a monarch of Spain enjoyed a more signar triumph than this which Philip now owed to the gallantry and promptness of Coimt Egmont.^ While the king stood reviewing the spoils of victory, a light-horseman of Don Henrico Manrique's regiment approached, and presented him with a sword. "I am the man, may it please your Majesty," said the trooper, 1 De Thou, iii. 161, 162, xix. « Ibid. 3 Hoofd, i. 8, 9. Meteren, i. 18 sqq. De Thou, iii. 157-160. Bor, i. 16. The Netherland accounts generally give at least four thousand killed of the French army. A contemporary proclamation for a thanksgiving issued by the government, fourteen days after the hat- tie, states, however, the number of killed, wounded, and prisoners on the French side at forty-eight " companies " of infantry and five thousand cavalry. Van Wyn, Byvoegsels en Anmerkingen op Wagenaer Vaderl. Hist. (Amst. 1792), vi. 13-15. VOL. I. —15 226 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1557 ■'who took the constable; here is his sword; may your Majesty be pleased to give me something to eat in my house." " I promise it," replied Philip ; upon which the soldier kissed his Majesty's hand and retired.^ It was the custom, universally recognized in that day, that the king was the king's captive, and the general the general's, but that the man, whether soldier or officer, who took the commander-in-chief was entitled to ten thousand ducats.2 Upon this occasion the constable was the prisoner of Philip, supposed to command his own army in person. A certain Spanish Captain Valenzuela, how- ever, disputed the soldier's claim to the constable's sword. The trooper advanced at once to the constable, who stood there with the rest of the illustrious prisoners. "Your Excellency is a Christian," said he; "please to declare upon your conscience and the faith of a cavaUer whether 't was I that took you prisoner. It need not surprise your Excellency that I am but a soldier, since with soldiers his Majesty must wage his wars." " Cer- tainly," replied the constable, "you took me and took my horse, and I gave you my sword. My word, however, I pledged to Captain Valenzuela." It appearing, how- ever, that the custom of Spain did not recognize a pledge given to any one but the actual captor, it was arranged that the soldier should give two thousand of his ten thousand ducats to the captain. Thus the dispute ended.^ Such was the brilliant victory of St.-Quentin, worthy 1 Batalla de San Quintin, Documentoa Ineditos, ix. 496. 2 " . . . es cosa muy antiqua entre gente de guerra que el gen- eral es del general y el Rey del Rey : pero a quien le prende le dan 10,000 diioados."-rbid. 3 Ibid., ix. 496, 497. 1557] EGMONT'S EENOWN 227 to be placed in the same list with the world-renowned combats of Crecy and Agiacourt. Like those battles, also, it derives its main interest from the personal char- acter of the leader, while it seems to have been hallowed by the tender emotions which sprang from his subse- qnent fate. The victory was but a happy move in a winning game. The players were kings, and the people were stakes— not parties. It was a chivalrous display in a war which was waged without honorable purpose, and in which no single lofty sentiment was involved. The Flemish frontier was, however, saved for the time from the misery which was now to be inflicted upon the French border. This was sufficient to cause the victory to be hailed as rapturously by the people as by the troops. From that day forth the name of the brave Hollander was like the sound of a trumpet to the army. "Egmont and St.-Quentin ! " rang through every mouth to the farthest extremity of Phihp's realms.^ A deadly blow was struck to the very heart of France. The fruits of all the victories of Francis and Henry withered. The battle, with others which were to follow it, won by the same hand, were soon to compel the signa- ture of the most disastrous treaty which had ever dis- graced the history of France. The fame and power of the constable faded, his misfortunes and captivity fell like a blight upon the ancient glory of the house of Montmorency, his enemies destroyed his influence and his popularity, while the degradation of the kingdom was simultaneous with the downfall of his illustrious name.^ On the other hand, the exultation of PhiUp was as keen as his cold and stony nature would permit. The magnificent palace- 1 Hoofd, i. 9. 3 De Thou, iii. 160. 228 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH EEPUBLIC [1557 convent of the Escurial, dedicated to the saint on whose festival the battle had been fought, and built in the shape of the gridiron on which that martyr had suffered, was soon afterward erected in pious commemoration of the event. ^ Such was the celebration of the victory. The reward reserved for the victor was to be recorded on a later page of history. The coldness and caution, not to say the pusillanimity, of Philip prevented him from seizing the golden fruits of his triumph. Ferdinand Gonzaga wished the blow to be followed up by an immediate march upon Paris.^ Such was also the feeling of all the distinguished sol- diers of the age. It was unquestionably the opinion, and would have been the deed, of Charles, had he been on the field of St.-Quentin, crippled as he was, in the place of his son. He could not conceal his rage and mortification when he found that Paris had not fallen, and is said to have refused to read the despatches which recorded that the event had not been consummated.^ There was certainly little of the conqueror in Philip's nature— nothing which would have led him to violate the safest principles of strategy. He was not the man to follow up enthusiastically the blow which had been struck; St.-Quentin, still untaken, although defended by but eight hundred soldiers, could not be left behind him ; Nevers was stiU in his front ; and although it was notorious that he commanded only the wreck of an army, 1 Hoofd, i. 9. 2 De Thou, iii. 162. 5 BrantSme, i. ii. Hist, du Duo d'Albe, ii. 140. The state- ment is, however, not corroborated by the contemporary letters of Charles. See Gachard, Eetraite et Mort de Charles Quint, i. 169 sqq. Compare Stirling, Cloister Life, 121, 122. 1557] ASSAULT UPON THE CITY 229 yet a new one might be collected, perhaps^ in time to embarrass the triumphant march to Paris. Out of his superabundant discretion, accordingly, Philip refused to advance till St.-Quen tin should be reduced.^ Although nearly driven to despair by the total over- throw of the French in the recent action, Coligny still held bravely out, being weU aware that every day by which the siege could be protracted was of advantage to his country. Again he made fresh attempts to introduce men into the city. A fisherman showed him a submerged path, covered several feet deep with water, through which he succeeded in bringing one hundred and fifty unarmed and half-drowned soldiers into the place. His garrison consisted barely of eight hundred men, but the siege was stUl sustained, mainly by his courage and sagacity, and by the spirit of his brother Andelot. The company of cavalry belonging to the Dauphin's regiment had be- haved badly, and even with cowardice, since the death of their commander Teligny. The citizens were natu- rally weary and impatient' of the siege. Mining and countermining continued tUl the 21st August. A steady cannonade was then maintained until the 27th. Upon that day, eleven breaches having been made in the walls, a simultaneous assault was ordered at four of them. The citizens were stationed upon the walls, the soldiers in the breaches. There was a short but sanguinary contest, the garrison resisting with uncommon, bravery. Suddenly an entrance was effected through a tower which had been thought sufficiently strong, and which had been left unguarded. Coligny, rushing to the spot, engaged the enemy almost single-handed. He was soon overpowered, being attended only by four men and a '- De Thou, iii. 162. Hoofd, i. 9. 230 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1557 page, was made a prisoner by a soldier named Francisco Diaz, and conducted through one of the subterranean mines into the presence of the Duke of Savoy, from whom the captor received ten thousand ducats in ex- change for the admiral's sword. The fighting still continued with great determination in the streets, the brave Andelot resisting to the last. He was, however, at last overpowered and taken prisoner. Philip, who had, as usual, arrived in the trenches by noon, armed in complete harness, with a page carrying his helmet, was met by the intelligence that the city of St.-Quentin was his own.^ To a horrible carnage succeeded a sack and a con- flagration stiU more horrible. In every house entered during the first day, every human being was butchered. The sack lasted all that day and the whole of the fol- lowing, till the night of the 28th. There was not a soldier who did not obtain an ample share of plunder, and some individuals succeeded in getting possession of two, three, and even twelve thousand ducats each.^ The women were not generally outraged, but they were stripped almost entirely naked, lest they should conceal treasure which belonged to their conquerors, and they were slashed in the face with knives, partly in sport, partly as a punishment for not giving up property which was not in their possession. The soldiers even cut off the arms of many among these wretched women,^ 1 De Thou, iii. 164-171. Hoofd, i. 10. Meteren, i. 18. Doeu- mentos Ineditos, ix. 497-513. 2 Ibid., ix. 513 sqq. * "Y porque digesen donde tenian los dineros, las daban cuchiUadoB por cara y cabeza y 4 muchas cortazon los brazos." -Ibid. 1557] CRUELTY TO THE POPULATION 231 and then turned them loose, mainaed and naked, into the blazing streets ; for the town, on the 28th, was fired in a hundred places, and was now one general conflagration. The streets were already strewn with the corpses of the butchered garrison and citizens, while the survivors were now burned in their houses. Human heads, limbs, and trunks were mingled among the bricks and rafters of the houses, which were falling on every side.^ The fire lasted day and night, without an attempt being made to extinguish it, while the soldiers dashed like devils through fiame and smoke in search of booty. Bearing lighted torches, they descended into every subterranean vault and receptacle, of which there were many in the town, and in every one of which they hoped to discover hidden treasure.^ The work of kDling, plundering, and burning lasted nearly three days and nights. The streets, meanwhile, were encumbered with heaps of corpses, not a single one of which had been buried since the capture of the town. The remains of nearly all the able-bodied male population, dismembered, gnawed by dogs,^ or blackened by fire, polluted the midsummer air. The women, meantime, had been again driven into the cathe- dral, where they had housed during the siege, and where they now crouched together in trembling expectation of their fate.* On the 29th August, at two o'clock in the afternoon, Philip issued an order that every woman, 1 Documentos Lieditos, ix. 515 : " . . . quemaron en las oasas gran eantitad de personas y muchas dellas se vieron despues de metado el fuego entre los ladrillos que de ellos son hechas todas las mejores casas, muohas cabezas de hombres quemados y liuesos." 2 Ibid., ix. 516. 2 "... y en muelios f altaban los pedazos que los cemian los perros de noche, y algunos olian mal," etc. Ibid. * Ibid., ix. 519 sqq. 232 THE EISE OP THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1557 "without an exception, should be driven out of the city into the French territory.^ St.-Quentin, which seventy years before had been a Flemish town, was to be rean- nexed, and not a single man, woman, or child who could speak the French language was to remain another hour in the place. The tongues of the men had been efEectu- aUy silenced. The women, to the number of three thousand five hundred, were now compelled to leave the cathedral and the city.^ Some were in a starving condi- tion ; others had been desperately wounded ; all, as they passed through the ruinous streets of what had been their home, were compelled to tread upon the unburied remains of their fathers, husbands^ or brethren. To none of these miserable creatures remained a living protector— hardly even a dead body which could be recognized; and thus the ghastly procession of more than three thousand women, many with gaping wounds in the face, many with their arms cut off and festering, of all ranks and ages, some numbering more than ninety years, bareheaded, with gray hair streaming upon their shoulders, others with nursing infants in their arms, all escorted by a company of heavy-armed troopers, left forever their native city. AU made the dismal journey upon foot, save that carts were allowed to transport the children between the ages of two and six years.^ The desolation and depopulation were now complete. "I 1 Documentos Ineddtos, ix. 519 sqq. ^ l^id. 5 " Cierto a los piadosos haeia demasiada lastima vellas ir,' ver 3500 mugeres. Muchas dellas Uevaban cortados los brazos, y muches con cuchilladas. Y habia entre ellas mugeres de mas de noventa anos, sin cofias las canas defuera, llenas de sangre. Las que daban a mamar Uevaban sus criaturas en sua brazos," etc. —Ibid., ix. 516. 1557] KETY AND CRtJELTY 233 wandered through the place, gazing at all this," says a Spanish soldier who was present and kept a diary of aU which occurred, "and it seemed to me that it was another destruction of Jerusalem. What most struck me was to find not a single denizen of the town left who was or who dared to caU himself French. How vain and transitory, thought I, are the things of this world ! Six days ago what riches were in the city, and now remains not one stone upon another." i The expulsion of the women had been accomplished by the express command of Philip, who, moreover, had made no effort to stay the work of carnage, pillage, and conflagration. The pious king had not forgotten, how- ever, his duty to the saints. As soon as the fire had broken out, he had sent to the cathedral, whence he had caused the body of St. Quentin to be removed and placed in the royal tent.^ Here an altar was arranged, upon one side of which was placed the cofiin of that holy personage, and upon the other the head of the " glorious St. Gregory" (whoever that glorious individual may have been in life), together with many other relics brought from the church.^ Within the sacred inelosure many masses were said daily,* while aU this devil's work was going on without. The saint who had been buried for centuries was comfortably housed and guarded by the monarch, while dogs were gnawing the carcasses of the freshly slain men of St.-Quentin, and troopers were driving into perpetual exile its desolate and muti- lated women. The most distinguished captives upon this occasion were, of course, Coligny and his brother. , Andelot was, 1 Dooumentos Ineditos, ix. 519. 2 Ibid., ix. 524. 3 i^i± i n,id. 234 THE RISE OP THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1557 however, fortunate enougli to make his escape that night under the edge of the tent in which he was confined. The admiral was taken to Antwerp. Here he lay for many weeks sick with a fever. Upon his recovery, hav- ing no better pastime, he feU to reading the Scriptures.^ The result was his conversion to Calvinism,^ and the world shudders yet at the fate in which that conversion involved him. St.-Quentin being thus reduced, Philip was not more disposed to push his fortune. The time was now wasted in the siege of several comparatively unimportant places, so that the fruits of Egmont's valor were not yet allowed to ripen. Early iu September Le Catelet was taken. On the 12th of the same month the citadel of Ham yielded, after receiving two thousand shots from Philip's artillery, while Nojon, Chanly, and some other places of less importance were burned to the ground. After all this smoke and fire upon the frontier, pro- ductive of but slender consequences, Philip disbanded his army and retired to Brussels. He reached that city on the 12th October. The English returned to their own country.^ The campaign of 1557 was closed without a material result, and the victory of St.-Quentin remained for a season barren. In the meantime the French were not idle. The army of the constable had been destroyed; but the Due de Guise, who had come post-haste from Italy after hearing the news of St.-Quentin, was very will- ing to organize another. He was burning with im- patience both to retrieve his own reputation, which had suffered some little damage by his recent Italian cam- 1 Meteren, i. 18. 2 Ibid., i. f. 18. 3 Hoofd, i. 10. De Thou, iii. 171-174, xix. 1558] GUISE AGAIN IN THE FIELD 235 paign, and to profit by the captivity of his fallen rival the constable. During the time occupied by the languid and dilatory proceedings of Philip in the autumn, the duke had accordingly recruited in Prance and Germany a considerable army. In January (1558) he was ready to take the field. It had been determined in the Prench cabinet, however, not to attempt to win back the places which they had lost in Picardy, but to carry the war into the territory of the ally. It was fated that England should bear all the losses, and PhOip appropriate all the gain and glory, which resulted from their united exertions. It was the war of the queen's husband, with which the queen's people had no concern, but in which the last trophies of the Black Prince were to be forfeited. On the 1st January, 1558, the Due de Gruise appeared before Calais. The Marshal Strozzi had previously made an expedition, in disguise, to examine the place. The result of his examination was that the garrison was weak, and that it relied too much upon the citadel. After a tremendous cannonade, which lasted a week and was heard in Antwerp, the city was taken by assault.^ Thus the key to the great Norman portal of Prance, the time-honored key which England had worn at her girdle since the eventful day of Crecy, was at last taken from her. Calais had been originally won after a siege which had lasted a twelvemonth, had been held two hundred and ten years, and was now lost in seven days. Seven days more, and ten thousand discharges from thirty-five great guns sufficed for the reduction of Guines.2 Thus the last vestige of English dominion, 1 Meteren, i. 19. De Thou, iii. 202-209, xx. Hoofd, i. 11. Bor, i. 16. 2 Meteren, De Thou, Hoofd, Bor, ubi sup. 236 THE EISE OP THE DUTCH EEPUBLIC [1558 the last substantial pretext of the English sovereign to wear the title and the lilies of France, was lost forever. King Henry visited Calais, which after two centuries of estrangement had now become a French town again, appointed Paul de Thermes governor of the place, and then returned to Paris to celebrate soon afterward the marriage of the Dauphin with the niece of the Guises, Mary, Queen of Scots.^ These events, together with the brief winter campaign of the duke, which had raised for an instant the droop- ing head of France, were destined before long to give a new face to affairs, while they secured the ascendancy of the Catholic party in the kingdom. Disastrous eclipse had come over the houses of Montmorency and Coligny, while the star of Gruise, brilliant with the conquest of Calais, now culminated to the zenith. It was at this period that the memorable interview between the two ecclesiastics, the Bishop of Arras and the Cardinal de Lorraine, took place at Peronne. From this central point commenced the weaving of that wide- spread scheme in which the fate of millions was to be involved. The Duchess Christina de Lorraine, cousin of Philip, had accompanied him to St.-Quentin. Per- mission had been obtained by the Due de Guise and his brother, the cardinal, to visit her at Peronne. The duchess was accompanied by the Bishop of Arras, and the consequence was a fall and secret negotiation be- tween the two priests.^ It may be supposed that Philip's short-lived military ardor had already exhausted itself. He had mistaken his vocation, and already recognized the false position in which he was placed. He was con- tendipg against the monarch in whom he might find the 1 De Thou, iii. 214. 2 Ibid., iii. 223. Hoofd, L 12. 1558] INTEEVIEW AT PfiRONNE 237 surest ally against the arch-enemy of both kingdoms and of the world. The French monarch held heresy in horror, while, for himself, Philip had already decided upon his life's mission. The crafty bishop was more than a match for the vain and ambitious cardinal. That prelate was assured that Philip considered the captivity of Coligny and Mont- morency a special dispensation of Providence, while the tutelar genius of France, notwithstanding the reverses sustained by that kingdom, was still preserved. The cardinal and his brother, it was suggested, now held in their hands the destiny of the kingdom and of Europe. The interests of both nations, of religion, and of hu- manity, made it imperative upon them to piit an end to this unnatural war, in order that the two monarchs might unite hand and heart for the extirpation of heresy. That hydra-headed monster had already extended its coils through France, while its pestilential breath was now wafted into Flanders from the German as well as the French border. Philip placed fuU reliance upon the wisdom and discretion of the cardinal. It was neces- sary that these negotiations should for the present remain a profound secret, but in the meantime a peace ought to be concluded with as little delay as possible— a result which, it was afiirmed, was as heartily desired by Philip as it could be by Henry. The bishop was soon aware of the impression which his artful suggestions had produced. The cardiual, inspired by the flattery thus freely administered, as well as by the promptings of his own ambition, lent a willing ear to the bishop's plans.i Thus was laid the foundation of a vast scheme, which time was to complete. A crusade with the whole 1 De Thou, iii. 223-227, xx. 238 THE -RISE OP THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1558 strength of the French and Spanish crowns was resolved upon against their own subjects. The bishop's task was accomplished. The cardinal returned to France, determined to effect a peace with Spain. He was con- vinced that the glory of his house was to be infinitely enhanced, and its power impregnably established, by a cordial cooperation with Philip in his dark schemes against religion and humanity. The negotiations were kept, however, prof oimdly secret. A new campaign and fresh humiliations were to precede the acceptance by France of the peace which was thus proffered. Hostile operations were renewed soon after the inter- view at Peronne. The Duke of Guise, who had procured five thousand cavalry and fourteen thousand infantry in Germany,^ now, at the desire of the king, undertook an enterprise against Thionville,^ a city of importance and great strength in Luxemburg, upon the river Moselle. It was defended by Peter de Quarebbe, a gentleman of Lou- vain, with a garrison of eighteen hundred men. On the 5th June thirty-five pieces of artUlery commenced the work, the mining and countermining continuing seven- teen days ; on the 22d the assault was made, and the gar- rison capitulated immediately afterward.^ It was a siege conducted in a regular and businesslike way, but the details possess no interest. It was, however, sig- nalized by the death of one of the eminent adventurers of the age, Marshal Strozzi. This brave but always unlucky soldier was slain by a musket-baU while assist- ing the Duke of Guise— whose arm was, at that instant, resting upon his shoulder— to point a gun at the fortress.* 1 Hoofd, i. 12. 2 De Thou, hi. 229. 3 Ibid., iii. 229-235. Meteren, i. 19. Hoofd, i. 12, 13. * Meteren, i. 19. 1558] FALL OF THIONVILLB ■ 239 After the fall of Thionville, the Due de Guise for a short time contemplated the siege of the city of Luxem- burg, but contented himself with the reduction of the unimportant places of Vireton and Arlon. Here he loitered seventeen days, making no exertions to follow up the success which had attended him at the opening of the campaign. The good fortune of the French was now neutralized by the same languor which had marked the movements of Philip after the victory of St.- Quentin. The time, which might have been usefully employed in following up his success, was now wasted by the duke in trivial business or in absolute torpor. This may have been the result of a treacherous under- standing with Spain, and the first-fruits of the interview at Peronne. Whatever the cause, however, the immediate consequences were disaster to the French nation and humiliation to the crown. It had been the plan of the French cabinet that Mar- shal de Thermes, who, upon the capture of Calais, had been appointed governor of the city, should take advan- tage of his position as soon as possible. Having assem- bled an army of some eight thousand foot and fifteen hundred horse,^ partly Gascons and partly Germans, he was accordingly directed to ravage the neighboring country, particularly the county of St.-Pol. In the meantime, the Due de Guise, having reduced the cities on the southern frontier, was to move in a northerly direc- tion, make a junction with the marshal, and thus extend a barrier along the whole frontier of the Netherlands. De Thermes set forth from Calais, in the beginning of June, with his newly organized army. Passing by 1 Bor, i. 16. Meteren, i. 19. Compare Hoof d, i. 13 ; De Thou, iii. 238, liv. xx. 240 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1558 Grravelines and Bourbourg, he arrived before Dunkirk on the 2d of July. The city, which was without a gar- rison, opened negotiations, during the pendency of which it was taken by assault and pillaged. The town of St.- Winochsberg shared the same fate. De Thermes, who was a martyr to the gout, was obliged at this point temporarily to resign the command to D'EstonteviUe, a ferocious soldier, who led the predatory army as far as Nieuport, burning, killing, ravishing, plundering, as they went. Meantime Philip, who was at Brussels, had di- rected the Duke of Savoy to oppose the Due de Guise with an army which had been hastUy collected and organized at Maubeuge, in the province of Namur. He now desired, if possible, to attack and cut off the forces of De Thermes before he shotdd extend the hand to Guise or make good his retreat to Calais. Flushed with victory over defenseless peasants, laden with the spoils of sacked and burning towns, the army of De Thermes was already on its homeward march. It was the moment for a sudden and daring blow. Whose arm should deal it? What general in Philip's army possessed the requisite promptness and felicitous auda- city ? who but the most brilliant of cavalry officers, the bold and rapid hero of St.-Quentin ? Egmont, in obedi- ence to the king's command, threw himself at once into the field. He hastUy collected aU the available forces in the neighborhood. These, with drafts from the Duke of Savoy's army, and with detachments under Marshal Bignicourt from the garrisons of St.-Omer, B6thune, Aire, and Bourbourg, soon amounted to ten thousand foot and two thousand horse.^ His numbers were still 1 Meteren, i. 19. Compare De Thou, iii. 239, xx. ; Bor, i. 16 ; Hoofd, i. 14. 1558] BATTLE OF GRAVELINES 241 further swollen by large bands of peasantry, both men and women, maddened by their recent injuries, and thirsting for vengeance. With these troops the energetic chieftain took up his position directly in the path of the French army. Determined to destroy De Thermes with aU his force or to sacrifice himself, he posted his army at Gravelines, a small town lying near the sea-shore, and about midway between Calais and Dunkirk. The French general was putting the finishing touch to his expedition by completing the conflagration at Dunkirk, and was moving homeward, when he became aware of the lion in his path. Although suffering from severe sickness, he mounted his horse and personally conducted his army to Grravelines. Here he found his progi-ess completely arrested. On that night, which was the 12th July, he held a council of officers. It was determined to refuse the combat offered, and, if possible, to escape at low tide along the sands toward Calais. The next morning he crossed the river Aa, below Gravelines. Egmont, who was not the man, on that occasion at least, to build a golden bridge for a flying enemy, crossed the same stream just above the town, and drew up his whole force in battle array. De Thermes could no longer avoid the conflict thus resolutely forced upon him. Courage was now his only counselor. Being not materially outnum- bered by his adversaries, he had at least an even chance of cutting his way through all obstacles and of saving his army and his treasure. The sea was on his right hand, the Aa behind him, the enemy in front. He piled his baggage and wagons so as to form a barricade upon his left, and placed his artillery, consisting of four cul- verins and three falconets, in front. Behind these he drew up his cavalry, supported at each side by the Gas- VOL. I. — 16 242 THE RISE OP THE DUTCH KEPUBLIC [1558 cons, and placed his French and German infantry in the rear. Egmont, on the other hand, divided his cavahy into five squadrons. Three of light horse were placed in advance for the first assault— the center commanded by himself, the two wings by Count Pontenals and Henrico Henriquez. The black hussars of Lazarus Schwendi and the Flemish gendarmes came next. Behind these was the infantry, divided into three nations, Spanish, German, and Flemish, and respectively commanded by Carvajal, Monchausen, and Bignicourt. Egmont, having char- acteristically selected the post of danger in the very front of battle for himself, could no longer restrain his impatience. "The foe is ours already," he shouted; " f oUow me, all who love their fatherland." With that he set spurs to his horse, and having his own regiment weU in hand, dashed upon the enemy. The Gascons received the charge with coolness, and— under cover of a murderous fire from the artOlery in front, which mowed down the foremost ranks of their assailants- sustained the whole weight of the first onset without flinching. Egmont's horse was shot under him at the commencement of the action. Mounting another, he again cheered his cavalry to the attack. The Gascons stOl maintained an unwavering front, and fought with characteristic ferocity. The courage of despair inflamed the French, the hope of a brilliant and conclusive vic- tory excited the Spaniards and Flemings. It was a wild, hand-to-hand conflict— general and soldier, cavalier and pikeman, lancer and musketeer, mingled together in one dark, confused, and struggling mass, foot to foot, breast to breast, horse to horse— a fierce, tumidtuous battle on the sands, worthy the fitful pencil of the national painter 1558] THE FRENCH DEFEATED 243 Wouvermans. For a long time it was doubtful on which side victory was to incline, but at last ten English ves- sels unexpectedly appeared in the offing, and ranging up soon afterward as close to the shore as was possible, opened their fire upon the still unbroken lines of the French. The ships were too distant, the danger of in- juring friend as well as foe too imminent, to allow of their exerting any important influence upon the result. The spirit of the enemy was broken, however, by this attack upon their seaward side, which they had thought impregnable. At the same time, too, a detachment of German cavalry, which had been directed by Egmont to make their way under the downs to the southward, now succeeded in turning their left flank. Egmont, profiting by their confusion, charged them again with redoubled vigor. The fate of the day was decided. The French cavalry wavered, broke their ranks, and in their fiight carried dismay throughout the whole army. The rout was total ; horse and foot, French, Gascon, and German fled from the field together. Fifteen hundred fell in the action, as many more were driven into the sea, while great numbers were torn to pieces by the exasperated peasants, who now eagerly washed out their recent in- juries in the blood of the dispersed, wandering, and wounded soldiers.^ The army of De Thermes was totally destroyed, and with it the last hope of France for an honorable and equal negotiation. She was now at PhUip's feet. So that this brilliant cavalry action, al- though it has been surpassed in importance by many others in respect to the numbers of the combatants and the principles involved in the contest, was still, in regard 1 Meteren, i. 19. Hoofd, i. 13, 14, 15. Bor, i. 16, 17. Com- pare Cabrera, iv. 21 ; De Thou, iii. 231-241. 244 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH EEPUBLIC [1558 to the extent both of its immediate and its permanent results, one of the most decisive and striking which have ever been fought. The French army engaged was anni- hilated. Marshal de Thermes with a wound in the head, Senarpont, Annibault, VOlefon, Morvilliers, Chanlis, and many others of high rank were prisoners. The French monarch had not much heart to set about the organization of another army,^ a task which he was now compelled to undertake. He was soon obliged to make the best terms which he could, and to consent to a treaty which was one of the most ruinous in the archives of France. The Marshal de Thermes was severely censured for having remained so long at Dunkirk and in its neighbor- hood. He was condemned still more loudly for not having at least effected his escape beyond Gravelines during the night which preceded the contest. With re- gard to the last charge, however, it may well be doubted whether any nocturnal attempt would have been Ukely to escape the vigilance of Egmont. "With regard to his delay at Dunkirk, it was asserted that he had been in- structed to await in that place the junction with the Due de Guise which had been previously arranged.^ But for the criminal and, then, inexplicable languor which characterized that commander's movements after the capture of Thionville, the honor of France might still have been saved. Whatever might have been the faults of De Thermes or of Guise, there could be little doubt as to the merit of Egmont. Thus within eleven months of the battle of St.-Quentin had the Dutch hero gained another vic- tory so decisive as to settle the fate of the war and to 1 De Thou, iii. 241, xx. 2 Hoofd, i. 15. De Thou, ubi sup. 1558] EGMONT'S PEIENDS AND FOE 245 elevate his sovereign to a position from which he might dictate the terms of a triumphant peace.^ The opening scenes of Philip's reign were rendered as brilliant as the proudest days of the emperor's career, while the prov- inces were enraptured with the prospect of early peace. To whom, then, was the sacred debt of national and royal gratitude due but to Lamoral of Egmont ? His country- men gladly recognized the claim. He became the idol of the army, the familiar hero of ballad and story, the mirror of chivalry, and the god of popular worship. Throughout the Netherlands he was hailed as the right hand of the fatherland, the savior of Flanders from devastation and outrage, the protector of the nation, the pillar of the throne.^ The victor gained many friends by his victory, and one enemy. The bitterness of that foe was likely, in the future, to outweigh all the plaudits of his friends. The Duke of Alva had strongly advised against giving battle to De Thermes. He depreciated the triumph, after it had been gained, by reflections upon the consequences which would have flowed had a defeat been suffered instead.^ He even held this language to Egmont himself after his return to Brussels. The conqueror, flushed with his glory, was not inclined to digest the criticism, nor what he considered the venomous detraction of the duke. More vain and arrogant than ever, he treated his power- ful Spanish rival with insolence, and answered his ob- servations with angry sarcasms, even in the presence of the king.* Alva was not likely to forget the altercation, nor to forgive the triumph. 1 Hoofd, De Thou, ubi sup. ^ Hoofd, i. 15. 3 Meteren, i. 19. Bor, i. 17. Hoofd, i. 15. * " . . . et provenoit la ditto ennemitifi principalement h, cause 246 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1558 There passed, naturally, much bitter censure and retort on both sides at court, between the friends and adherents of Egmont and those who sustained the party of his adversary. The battle of Grravelines was fought over daUy, amid increasing violence and recrimination, between Spaniard and Fleming, and the old international hatred flamed more fiercely than ever. Alva continued to censure the f oolhardiness which had risked so valuable an army on a single blow. Egmont's friends replied that it was easy for foreigners, who had nothing at risk in the country, to look on while the fields of the Nether- lands were laid waste, and the homes and hearths of an industrious population made desolate, by a brutal and rapacious soldiery. They who dwelt in the provinces would be ever grateful to their preserver for the result.^ They had no eyes for the picture which the Spanish party painted of an imaginary triumph of De Thermes and its effects. However the envious might cavil, now that the blow had been struck, the popular heart re- mained warm as ever, and refused to throw down the idol which had so recently been set up. de la Bataille de Grevelinge, qu'il donna contra son advis et propos haultains et superbes qu'il [Egmont] lui tint estant de retonr vic- torieux en la ville de Bruxelles en la presence du Eoy."— Pontus Payen MS., 378, 379. 1 Meteren, Bor, Hoofd, ubi sup. CHAPTER III Secret negotiations for peace— Two fresh armies assembled, but inactive— Negotiations at Cercamp— Death of Mary Tudor— Treaty of Cateau-Cambr^sis- Death of Henry 11. -Policy of Catherine de' Medici— Revelations by Henry II. to the Prince of Orange— Fu- neral of Charles V. in Brussels— Universal joy in the Netherlands at the restoration of peace— Organization of the government by Philip, and preparations for his departure— Appointment of Mar- garet of Parma as regent of the Netherlands— Three councils — The consulta— The stadholders of the different provinces— Dissat- isfaction caused by the foreign troops— Assembly of the estates at Ghent to receive the parting instructions and farewell of the king— Speech of the Bishop of Arras— Request for three millions — Fierce denunciation of heresy on the part of Philip— Strenuous enforcement of the edicts commanded— Reply by the states of Artois — Unexpected conditions— Rage of the king— Similar eon- duct on the part of the other provinces- Remonstrance in the name of the States-General against the foreign soldiery— Formal re- ply on the part of the crown— Departure of the king from the Netherlands— Autos da fe in Spain. The battle of Gravelines had decided the question. The intrigubs of the two cardinals at P^ronne having been sustained by Egmont's victory, aU parties were ready for a peace. King Henry was weary of the losing game which he had so long been playing; Philip was anxious to relieve himself from his false position and to concentrate his whole mind and the strength of his king- dom upon his great enemy, the Netherlands heresy ; while 247 248 THE RISE OP THE BUTCH HEPtlBLlC [1558 the Duke of Savoy felt that the time had at last arrived when an adroit diplomacy might stand him in stead and place him in the enjoyment of those rights which the sword had taken from him, and which his own sword had done so much toward winning back. The sovereigns were inclined to peace, and as there had never been a national principle or instinct or interest involved in the dispute, it was very certain that peace would be popular everywhere, upon whatever terms it might be concluded. Montmorency and the Prince of Orange were respec- tively empowered to open secret negotiations.^ The constable entered upon the task with alacrity, because he felt that every day of his captivity was aUke prej- udicial to his own welfare and the interests of his country.2 The Guises, who had quarreled with the Duchesse de Valentinois (Diane de Poitiers), were not yet powerful enough to resist the influence of the mis- tress ; while, rather to baffle them than from any loftier reasons, that interest was exerted in behalf of immediate peace. The Cardinal de Lorraine had by no means for- gotten the eloquent arguments used by the Bishop of Arras ; but his brother, the Due de Guise, may be sup- posed to have desired some little opportunity of redeem- ing the credit of the kingdom, and to have delayed the negotiations until his valor could secure a less inglorious termination to the war. A fresh army had, in fact, been collected under his command, and was already organized at Pierrepont. At the same time Philip had assembled a large force, consisting of thirty thousand foot and fifteen thousand cavalry, with which he had himself taken the field, en- 1 Apologie du P. d'Orange, 49. 2 De Thou, iii. 246, xx. 1558] SECRET NEGOTIATIONS 249 camping toward the middle of August upon the banks of the river Anthies, near the border of Picardy.i King Henry, on the other hand, had already arrived in the camp at Pierrepont, and had reviewed as imposing an army as had ever been at the disposal of a French mon- arch. When drawn up in battle array it covered a league and a haK of ground, while three hours were required to make its circuit on horseback.^ All this martial display was only for effect. The two kings, at the head of their great armies, stood looking at each other while the nego- tiations for peace were proceeding. An unimportant skirmish or two at the outposts, unattended with loss of Mfe, were the only military results of these great preparations. Early in the autumn aU the troops were disbanded, while the commissioners of both crowns met in open congress at the abbey of Cercamp, near Cam- bray, by the middle of October. The envoys on the part of Philip were the Prince of Orange, the Duke of Alva, the Bishop of Arras, Ruy Gomez da SUva, the president Viglius ; on that of the French monarch, the constable, the Marechal de Saint Andre, the Cardinal de Lorraine? the Bishop of Orleans, and Claude L'Aubespine.^ There were also envoys sent by the Queen of England, but as the dispute concerning Calais was found to hamper the negotiations at Cercamp, the English question was left to be settled by another congress, and was kept entirely separate from the arrangements concluded between France and Spain.* The death of Queen Mary, on the 17th November,^ 1 Bor, i. 17. Hoofd, i. 16. Meteren, i. 20. 2 De Thou, iii. 244, xx. 3 Bor, Hoofd, Meteren, ubi sup. De Thou, iii. 250, xx. * Ibid. 6 Ibid. Ibid. 250 THE RISE OP THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1559 caused a temporary suspension of the proceedings. After the widower, however, had made a fruitless effort to obtain the hand of her successor, and had been un- equivocally repulsed,^ the commissioners again met in February, 1559, at Cateau-Cambr6sis. The English difficulty was now arranged by separate commissioners, and on the 3d of April a treaty between France and Spain was concluded.^ By this important convention both kings bound them- selves to maintain the Catholic worship inviolate by all means in their power, and agreed that an ecumenical council should at once assemble, to compose the religious differences and to extinguish the increasing heresy in both kingdoms. Furthermore, it was arranged that the conquests made by each country during the preceding eight years should be restored. Thus aU the gains of Francis and Henry were annulled by a single word, and the Duke of Savoy converted by a dash of the pen from a landless soldier of fortune into a sovereign again. He was to receive back all his estates, and was moreover to marry Henry's sister Margaret, with a dowry of three hundred thousand crowns. Philip, on the other hand, now a second time a widower, was to espouse Henry's daughter Isabella, already betrothed to the Infante Don Carlos, and to receive with her a dowry of four hundred thousand crowns. The restitutions were to be com- menced by Henry, and to be completed within three months. Philip was to restore his conquests in the course of a month afterward. Most of the powers of Europe were included by both parties in this treaty: the pope, the emperor, all the 1 De Thou, iii. 254. 2 Bor, Meteren, Hoofd, De Thou. 1559] TREATY OP CATEAU-CAMBRfeSIS 251 electors, the republics of Venice, Genoa, and Switzerland, the kingdoms of England, Scotland, Poland, Denmark, Sweden, the duchies of Ferrara, Savoy, and Parma, he- sides other inferior principalities. Nearly all Christen- dom, in short, was embraced in this most amicable compact, as if Philip were determined that, henceforth and forever, Calvinists and Mohammedans, Turks and Flemings, should be his only enemies. The King of France was to select four hostages from among Philip's subjects, to accompany him to Paris as pledges for the execution of all the terms of the treaty. The royal choice fell upon the Prince of Orange, the Duke of Alva, the Duke of Aerschot, and the Count of Egmont. Such was the treaty of Cateau-Cambr^sis.^ Thus was a termination put to a war between Prance and Spain, which had been so wantonly undertaken. Marshal Monluc wrote that a treaty so disgraceful and disastrous had never before been ratified by a French monarch.^ It would have been difficult to point to any one more unfortunate upon her previous annals— if any treaty can be called unfortunate by which justice is done and wrongs repaired, even under coercion. The accumulated plunder of years which was now disgorged by France was equal in value to one third of that king- dom. One hundred and ninety-eight fortified towns were surrendered, making, with other places of greater or less importance, a total estimated by some writers as high as four hundred.^ The principal gainer was the 1 De Thou, iii. 350-355. Hoofd, i. 19, 20. Bor, i. 17, 18. Me- teren, i. 23. 2 De Thou. Meursii Gulielmus Auriacus (Leyd. 1621), p. 6. 3 Hoofd, i. 20. De Thou, iii. 20. Joan. Meursii Gul. Aur., p. 6. 252 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH EEPUBLIC [1559 Duke of Savoy, who, after so many years of knight-er- rantry, had regained his duehy, and found himself the brother-in-law of his ancient enemy. The well-known tragedy by which the solemnities of this pacification were abruptly concluded in Paris bore with it an impressive moral. The monarch who, in violation of his plighted word and against the interests of his nation and the world, 'had entered precipitately into a causeless war, now lost his life in fictitious combat at the celebration of peace. On the 10th of July Henry II. died of the wound inflicted by Mont- gomery in the tournament held eleven days before.^ Of this weak and worthless prince aU that even his flatter- ers could favorably urge was his great fondness for war, as if a sanguinary propensity, even when unaccompanied by a spark of miUtary talent, were of itself a virtue. Yet with his death the kingdom fell into even more pernicious hands, and the fate of Christendom grew darker than ever. The dynasty of Diane de Poitiers was succeeded by that of Catherine de' Medici; the courtezan gave place to the dowager ; and France— dur- ing the long and miserable period in which she lay bleeding in the grasp of the Italian she-wolf and her litter of cowardly and sanguinary princes — might even lament the days of Henry and his Diana. Charles IX., Henry III., Francis of AlenQon, last of the Valois race —how large a portion of the fearful debt which has not yet been discharged by half a century of revolution and massacre was of their accumulation ! The Duchess of Valentinois had quarreled latterly with the house of Guise, and was disposed to favor Montmorency. The king, who was but a tool in her 1 De Thou, iii. 367. 1559] DEATH OF HENRY H. 253 hands, might possibly have been induced, had he lived, to regard Coligny and his friends with less aversion. This is, however, extremely problematical, for it was Henry II. who had concluded that memorable arrange- ment with his royal brother of Spain, to arrange for the Huguenot chiefs throughout both realms a "Sicilian Vespers " upon the first favorable occasion. His death and the subsequent policy of the queen-regent deferred the execution of the great scheme tiU fourteen years later. Henry had lived long enough, however, after the conclusion of the secret agreement to reveal it to one whose life was to be employed in thwarting this foul conspiracy of monarchs against their subjects. Wil- liam of Orange, then a hostage for the execution of the treaty of Cateau-Cambr^sis, was the man with whom the king had the unfortunate conception to confer on the subject of the plot.^ The prince, who had already gained the esteem of Charles V. by his habitual discre- tion, knew how to profit by the intelligence and to bide his time ; but his hostility to the poUey of the French and Spanish courts was perhaps dated from that hour.^ Pending the peace negotiations, Philip had been called upon to mourn for his wife and father. He did not affect grief for the death of Mary Tudor, but he honored the emperor's departure with stately obsequies at Brus- sels. The ceremonies lasted two days (the 29th and 30th December, 1558). In the grand and elaborate procession which swept through the streets upon the first day the most conspicuous object was a ship floating appa- rently upon the waves, and drawn by a band of Tritons who disported at the bows. The masts, shrouds, and sails of the vessel were black; it was covered with 1 Apologie d'Orange, 53, 54. 2 rbj^. 254 THE RISE OP THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1559 heraldic achievements, banners, and emblematic memen- tos of the emperor's various expeditions, while the flags of Turks and Moors trailed from its sides in the waves below. Three allegorical personages composed the crew. Hope, " all clothyd in brown, with anker in hand," stood at the prow; Faith, with sacramental chalice and red cross, clad in white garment, with her face veiled " with white tiffany," sat on a "stool of estate" before the mizzenmast ; while Charity, " in red, holding in her hand a burning heart," was at the helm to navigate the vessel.^ Hope, Faith, and Love were thought the most appro- priate symbols for the man who had invented the edicts, introduced the Inquisition, and whose last words, in- scribed by a hand already trembling with death, had adjured his son, by his love, allegiance, and hope of sal- vation, to deal to all heretics the extreme rigor of the law, " without respect of persons and without regard to any plea in their favor." ^ The rest of the procession, in which marched the Duke of Alva, the Prince of Orange, and other great person- ages, carrying the sword, the globe, the scepter, and the "crown imperial," contained no emblems or imagery worthy of being recorded. The next day the king, dressed in mourning and attended by a solemn train of high oflcers and nobles, went again to the church. A contemporary letter mentions a somewhat singular incident as forming the concluding part of the ceremony. " And the service being done," wrote Sir Richard Clough to Sir Thomas Gresham, " there went a nobleman into 1 Hoofd, i. 18. De Thou, iii. xx. Brantdme, CEuvres, i. 35-38. Sir Richard Clough's letter to Sir T. Gresham in Burgon's Life and Times, i. 247-254. 2 StirHng, Cloister Life of Charles V. (Lond. 1853), 217. 1559] REJOICINGS AT ANTWEEP 255 the herse (so far as I colde understande, it was the Prince of Orange), who, standing before the herse, struck with his hand upon the chest and sayd, 'He is ded.' Then standing styll awhile, he sayd, ' He shall remayn ded.' And then resting awhile, he struck again and sayd, ' He is ded, and there is another rysen up in his place greater than ever he was.' Whereupon the Kynge's hoode was taken off and the Kynge went home without his hoode." i If the mourning for the dead emperor was but a mum- mery and a masquerade, there was, however, heartiness and sincerity in the rejoicing which now burst forth like a sudden illumination throughout the Netherlands upon the advent of peace. All was joy in the provinces, but at Antwerp, the metropolis of the land, the enthusiasm was unbounded. Nine days were devoted to festivities. Bells rang their merriest peals, artillery thundered, beacons blazed, the splendid cathedral spire flamed nightly with three hundred burning cressets, the city was strewn with flowers and decorated with triumphal arches, the gilds of rhetoric amazed the world with their gorgeous processions, glittering dresses, and bom- bastic versification, the burghers all, from highest to humblest, were feasted and made merry, wine flowed in the streets and oxen were roasted whole, prizes on poles were climbed for, pigs were hunted blindfold, men and women raced in sacks, and, in short, for nine days long there was one universal and spontaneous demonstration of hilarity in Antwerp and throughout the provinces.^ But with this merry humor of his subjects the sover- eign had but little sympathy. There was nothing in his character or purposes which owed affinity with any mood of this jocund and energetic people. Philip had 1 Burgon, i. 254. ^ Meteren, i. 23, 24. 256 THE EISE OF THE DUTCH EBPUBLIC [1559 not made peace with all the world that the Netherlanders might cHmb on poles or ring bells or strew flowers in his path for a little holiday-time, and then return to their industrious avocations again. He had made peace with aU the world that he might be free to combat heresy ; and this arch-enemy had taken up its stronghold in the provinces. The treaty of Cateau-Cambresis left him at Uberty to devote himself to that great enterprise. He had never loved the Netherlands, a residence in these constitutional provinces was extremely irksome to him, and he was therefore anxious to return to Spaiu. Prom the depths of his cabinet he felt that he should be able to direct the enterprise he was resolved upon, and that his presence in the Netherlands would be superfluous and disagreeable. The early part of the year 1559 was spent by Philip in organizing the government of the provinces and in making the necessary preparations for his departure. The Duke of Savoy, being restored to his duchy, had, of course, no more leisure to act as regent of the Nether- lands, and it was necessary, therefore, to fix upon his successor in this important post at once. There were several candidates. The Duchess Christina of Lorraine had received many half-promises of the appoiatment, which she was most anxious to secure; the emperor was even said to desire the nomination of the Archduke Maximilian, a step which would have certainly argued more magnanimity upon Philip's part than the world could give him credit for ; and besides these regal per- sonages the high nobles of the land, especially Orange and Egmont, had hopes of obtaining the dignity. The Prince of Orange, however, was too sagacious to deceive himself long, and became satisfied very soon that no 1559] MARGARET OF PARMA AS REGENT 257 Netherlander was likely to be selected for regent. He therefore threw his rafluence in favor of the Duchess Christina, whose daughter, at the suggestion of the Bish- op of Arras, he was desirous of obtaining in marriage. The king favored for a time, or pretended to favor, both the appointment of Madame de Lorraine and the mar- riage project of the prince.^ Afterward, however, and in a manner which was accounted both sudden and mys- terious, it appeared that the duchess and Orange had both been deceived, and that the king and bishop had decided in favor of another candidate, whose claims had not been considered before very prominent.^ This was the Duchess Margaret of Parma, natural daughter of Charles V.^ A brief sketch of this important personage, so far as regards her previous career, is reserved for the following chapter. For the present it is sufficient to state the fact of the nomination. In order to afford a full view of Philip's political arrangements before his final departure from the Netherlands, we defer until the same chapter an account of the persons who composed the boards of council organized to assist the new regent in the government. These bodies themselves were three in number — a state and privy council and one of finance.* They were not new institutions, having been originally established by the emperor, and were now arranged by his successor upon the same nominal basis upon which 1 Vide Bakhuyzen v. d. Brink, Het Huwelijk van W. van Oranje, 7 sqq. Reiffenberg, Correspondanoe de Marguerite d'An- triche (Bruxelles, 1842), p. 272. 2 Bakhuyzen, p. 8. Compare Flor. Van der Haer de initiis tumul- tuum Belgioorum (Lovanii, 1640), i. p. 127; Strada de Bell. Belg., i. 34, 35-42; Meteren, i. 24. ^ Strada, Van der Haer, Meteren, ubi sup. * Meteren, i. 24. Hoofd, i. 23. VOL. I.— 17 258 THE RISE OP THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1559 they had before existed. The finance council, which had superintendence of all matters relating to the royal domains and to the annual budgets of the government, was presided over by Baron Berlaymont.^ The privy council, of which Viglius was president, was composed of ten or twelve learned doctors, and was especially intrusted with the control of matters relating to law, pardons, and the general administration of justice. The state council, which was far the most important of the three boards, was to superintend all high affairs of gov- ernment, war, treaties, foreign intercourse, internal and interprovineial affairs. The members of this council were the Bishop of Arras, Viglius, Berlaymont, the Prince of Orange, Coimt Egmont, to which number were afterward added the Seigneur de Glayon, the Duke of Aerschot, and Count Horn.^ The last-named nobleman, who was admiral of the provinces, had, for the present, been appointed to accompany the king to Spain, there to be specially intrusted with the adminis- tration of affairs relating to the Netherlands.' He was destined, however, to return at the expiration of two years. With the object, as it was thought, of curbing the power of the great nobles, it had been arranged that the three councils should be entirely distinct from each other, that the members of the state council should have no participation in the affairs of the two other bodies, but, on the other hand, that the finance and privy councilors, as well as the Knights of the Fleece, should have access to the deliberations of the state council.* In 1 Meteren, Hoofd, Van der Vynckt. 2 Hoofd, i. 23. Meteren, i. 24. 5 Van der Vynckt, i. 149. * Hoofd, Meteren, ubi sup, 1559] THREE COUNCILS 259 the course of events, however, it soon became evident that the real power of the government was exclusively in the hands of the consulta, a committee of three mem- bers of the state council, by whose deliberations the regent was secretly instructed to be guided on all im- portant occasions. The three, Viglius, Berlaymont, and Arras, who composed the secret conclave or cabinet, were in reality but one. The Bishop of Arras was in aU three, and the three together constituted only the Bishop of Arras. There was no especial governor or stadholder ap- pointed for the province of Brabant, where the regent was to reside and to exercise executive functions in person. The stadholders for the other provinces were, for Flanders and Artois, the Count of Egmont ; for Hol- land, Zealand, and Utrecht, the Prince of Orange ; for Gruelders and Ziitphen, the Count of Meghen ; for Fries- land, Groningen, and Overyssel, Count Aremberg; for Hainault, Valenciennes, and Cambray, the Marquis of Berghen ; for Tournay and Tournaisis, Baron Montigny ; for Namur, Baron Berlaymont ; for Luxemburg, Count Mansfeld; for Ryssel, Douai, and Orchies, the Baron CourMres.^ All these stadholders were commanders-in- chief of the military forces in their respective provinces. "With the single exception of Count Egmont, in whose province of Flanders the stadholders were excluded from the administration of justice,^ aU were likewise supreme judges in the civil and criminal tribunals.^ The military force of the Netherlands in time of peace was small, for the provinces were jealous of the presence of soldiery. The only standing army which then legally 1 Meteren, i. 24. Hoofd, i. 22. 2 Ibid., i. 22. ^ Meteren, i. 24. 260 THE KISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1559 existed in the Netherlands were the Bandes d'Ordon- nance, a body of mounted gendarmerie, amounting in all to three thousand men, which ranked among the most accomplished and best-disciplined cavalry of Eu- rope.i They were divided into fourteen squadrons, each under the command of a stadholder or of a distinguished noble. Besides these troops, however, there still re- mained in the provinces a foreign force amounting in the aggregate to four thousand men.^ These soldiers were the remainder of those large bodies which year after year had been quartered upon the Netherlands during the constant warfare to which they had been exposed. Living upon the substance of the country, paid out of its treasury, and as offensive by their licen- tious and ribald habits of life as were the enemies against whom they were enrolled, these troops had become an intolerable burden to the people. They were now dis- posed in different garrisons, nominally to protect the frontier. As a firm peace, however, had now been con- cluded between Spain and France, and as there was no pretext for compelling the provinces to accept this pro- tection, the presence of a foreign soldiery strengthened a suspicion that they were to be used in the onslaught which was preparing against the religious freedom and the political privileges of the country. They were to be the nucleus of a larger army, it was believed, by which the land was to be reduced to a state of servile subjec- tion to Spain. A low, constant, but generally unheeded murmur of dissatisfaction and distrust upon this subject was already perceptible throughout the Netherlands,^ a warning presage of the coming storm. 1 Meteren, i. 24. 2 Bor, i. 19. Meteren. » Ibid. Ibid., i. 24. 1559] THE ASSEMBLAGE AT GHENT 261 All the provinces were now convoked for tlie 7th of August (1559) at Ghent, there to receive the parting communication and farewell of the king.^ Previously to this day, however, Philip appeared in person upon several solemn occasions, to impress upon the country the necessity of attending to the great subject with which his mind was exclusively occupied.^ He came before the G-reat Council of Mechlin,^ in order to ad- dress that body with his own lips upon the necessity of supporting the edicts to the letter, and of trampling out every vestige of heresy, wherever it should appear, by the immediate immolation of all heretics, whoever they might be. He likewise caused the estates of Flanders to be pri- vately assembled, that he might harangue them upon the same great topic. In the latter part of July he pro- ceeded to Ghent, where a great concourse of nobles, citizens, and strangers had already assembled. Here, in the last week of the month, the twenty-third chapter of the Golden Fleece was held with much pomp, and with festivities which lasted three days. The fourteen vacan- cies which existed were filled with the names of various distinguished personages. With this last celebration the public history of Philip the Good's ostentatious and ambitious order of knighthood was closed. The subse- quent nominations were made ex induUu apostolico, and without the assembling of a chapter.* 1 Meteren, i. 24. 2 Joacli. Hoppenis, Eeoueil et Memorial des Troubles des Pays Bas (apud Hoynckt, ii.), p. 20. 5 Ibid. Compare Gachard, Collection des Dootiinents Iri6dits concernant I'Histoire de la Belgique (Brux. 1833), i. 313-337. * Van der Vynokt, i. 135. 262 THE RISE OP THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1559 The estates having duly assemhled upon the day pre- scribed, Philip, attended by Margaret of Parma, the Duke of Savoy, and a stately retinue of ambassadors and grandees, made his appearance before them. After the customary ceremonies had been performed, the Bishop of Arras arose and delivered, in the name of his sovereign, an elaborate address of instructions and fare- wells. In this important harangue the states were in- formed that the king had convened them in order that they might be informed of his intention of leaving the Netherlands immediately. He woidd gladly have re- mained longer in his beloved provinces, had not circum- stances compelled his departure. His father had come hither for the good of the country in the year 1543, and had never returned to Spain, except to die. Upon the king's accession to the sovereignty he had arranged a truce of five years, which had been broken through by the faithlessness of France. He had there- fore been obHged, notwithstanding his anxiety to return to a country where his presence was so much needed, to remain in the provinces till he had conducted the new war to a triumphant close. In doing this he had been solely governed by his intense love for the Netherlands and by his regard for their interests. AU the money which he had raised from their coffers had been spent for their protection. Upon this account his Majesty expressed his confidence that the estates would pay an earnest attention to the " Request " which had been laid before them, the more so as its amount, three millions of gold florins, would all be expended for the good of the provinces. After his return to Spain he hoped to be able to make a remittance. The Duke of Savoy, he con- tinued, being obliged, in consequence of the fortunate 1559] PHILIPS FAREWELL ADDRESS 268 cliange in his affairs, to resign tlie government of the Netherlands, and his own son, Don Carlos, not yet being sufficiently advanced in years to succeed to that impor- tant post, his Majesty had selected his sister, the Duch- ess Margaret of Parma, daughter of the emperor, as the most proper person for regent. As she had been born in the Netherlands and had always entertained a pro- found affection for the provinces, he felt a firm con- fidence that she would prove faithful both to their interests and his own. As at this moment many coun- tries, and particularly the lands in the immediate neighborhood, were greatly infested by various "new, reprobate, and damnable sects " ; as these sects, proceed- ing from the foul fiend, father of discord, had not failed to keep those kingdoms in perpetual dissension and misery, to the manifest displeasure of God Almighty; as his Majesty was desirous to avert such terrible evils from his own realms, according to his duty to the Lord God, who would demand reckoning from him hereafter for the well-being of the provinces; as all experience proved that change of religion ever brought desolation and confusion to the commonweal; as low persons, beggars and vagabonds, under color of religion, were accustomed to traverse the land for the purpose of plunder and disturbance; as his Majesty was most de- sirous of following in the footsteps of his lord and father ; as it would be well remembered what the emperor had said to him upon the memorable occasion of his abdi- cation, therefore his Majesty had commanded the regent Margaret of Parma, for the sake of religion and the glory of God, accurately and exactly to cause to he enforced the edicts and decrees made by Ms imperial Majesty, and renewed by his present Majesty, for the extirpation of all 264 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH EEPUBLIC [1559 sects and heresies. All governors, councilorfe, and others having authority were also instructed to do their utmost to accomplish this great end.^ The great object of the discourse was thus announced in the most impressive manner, and with all that con- ventional rhetoric of which the Bishop of Arras was considered a consummate master. Not a word was said on the subject which was nearest the hearts of the Nether- landers— the withdrawal of the Spanish troops.^ Not a hint was held out that a reduction of the taxation un- der which the provinces had so long been groaning was likely to take place ; but, on the contrary, the king had demanded a new levy of considerable amount. A few well-turned paragraphs were added on the subject of the administration of justice— "without which the republic was a dead body without a soul"— in the bishop's most approved style, and the discourse concluded with a fer- vent exhortation to the provinces to trample heresy and heretics out of existence, and with the hope that the 1 See the speech in Bor, i. 19, 20, 21. Compare Gaohard, Doeum. In^d., i. 313-322. 2 Bentivoglio, Guerra di Fiandra, i. 9 (Opere, Parigi, 1648), gives a different report, which ends with a distinct promise on the part of the king to dismiss the troops as soon as possible : "... in segno di ohe spetialmente havrebbe quanto prima, e fatti usoire i presidij stranieri dalle f ortezze e levata ogn' insolita contribu- tione al paese." It is almost superfluous to state that the cardinal is no authority for speeches, except, indeed, for those which were never made. Long orations by generals upon the battle-field, by royal personages in their cabinets, by conspirators in secret con- clave, are reported by him with much minuteness, and none can gainsay the accuracy with which these harangues, which never had any existence except in the author's imagination, are placed before the reader. Bentivoglio's stately and graceful style, elegant de- scriptions, and general acquaintance with his subject will always 1559] EEPLY OP THE STATES OP AETOIS 265 Lord God, in such case, would bestow upon the Nether- lands health and happiness.^ After the address had been concluded, the deputies, according to ancient form, requested permission to ad- journ, that the representatives of each province might deliberate among themselves on the point of granting or withholding the request for the three millions.^ On the following day they again assembled in the presence of the king, for the purpose of returning their separate answers to the propositions.^ The address first read was that of the estates of Artois.* The chairman of the deputies from that prov- ince read a series of resolutions, drawn up, says a con- temporary, " with that elegance which characterized all the public acts of the Artesians, bearing witness to the vivacity of their wits." ^ The deputies spoke of the ex- treme affection which their province had always borne to his Majesty and to the emperor. They had proved it by the constancy with which they had endured the calamities of war so long, and they now cheerfully con- sented to the request, so far as theii* contingent went. They were willing to place at his Majesty's disposal not make his works attractive, hut the classic and conventional system of inventing long speeches for historical characters has fortunately gone out of fashion. It is very interesting to know what an impor- tant personage really did say or write upon remarkable occasions ; but it is less instructive to be told what the historian thinks might have been a good speech or epistle for him to utter or indite. 1 Bor, ubi sup. 2 Pontus Payen MS., 14^18. 3 Ibid. i Ibid. 5 "... en termes fort elegans comme sont ordinairement les actes et depeches qui se font aux assemblies desdiots Etats rendans bon tesmoignage de la vivacity des esprits d'Artois."— Ibid. 266 THE EISE OP THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1559 only the remains of their property, but even the last drop of their blood. As the eloquent chairman reached this point in his discourse, Philip, who was standing with his arm rest- ing upon Egmont's shoulder, listening eagerly to the Artesian address, looked upon the deputies of the prov- ince with a smiling face,^ expressing by the unwonted benignity of his countenance the satisfaction which he received from these loyal expressions of affection and this dutiful compliance with his request.^ The deputy, however, proceeded to an unexpected conclusion, by earnestly entreating his Majesty, as a compensation for the readiness thus evinced in the royal service, forthwith to order the departure of all foreign troops then in the Netherlands. Their presence, it was added, was now rendered completely superfluous by the ratification of the treaty of peace so fortunately ar- ranged with all the world. At this sudden change in the deputy's language, the king, no longer smUing, threw himself violently upon his chair of state, where he remained, brooding with a gloomy countenance upon the language which had been addressed to him. It was evident, said an eye-witness, that he was deeply offended. He changed color fre- quently, so that all present "could remark, from the working of his face, how much his mind was agitated." * The rest of the provinces were even more explicit than the deputies of Artois. All had voted their contingents to the request, but all had made the withdrawal of the troops an express antecedent condition to the payment of their respective quotas.* 1 Pontus Payen MS., 14-18. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid. * Ibid. 1559] UNEXPECTED CONDITIONS 267 The king did not affect to conceal his rage at these conditions, exclaiming bitterly to Count Egmont and other seigniors near the throne that it was very easy to estimate by these proceedings the value of the protes- tations made by the provinces of their loyalty and affec- tion.^ Besides, however, the answers thus addressed by the separate states to the royal address, a formal remon- strance had also been drawn up in the name of the States- G-eneral, and signed by the Prince of Orange, Count Eg- mont, and many of the leading patricians of the Nether- lands. This document, which was formally presented to the king before the adjournment of the assembly, repre- sented the infamous " pillaging, insults, and disorders " daily exercised by the foreign soldiery ; stating that the burden had become intolerable, and that the inhabitants of Marienburg and of many other large towns and aoI- lages had absolutely abandoned their homes rather than remain any longer exposed to such insolence and op- pression.2 The king, already enraged, was furious at the presen- tation of this petition. He arose from his seat and rushed impetuously from the assembly, demanding of the members, as he went, whether he too, as a Spaniard, was expected immediately to leave the land and to resign aU authority over it.^ The Duke of Savoy made 1 Pontus Payen MS. Compare Van der Haer, i. 108, 109, 110 ; Wagenaer, Vaderl. Hist., vi. 52. 2 Meteren, i. 24. Bor, i. 22. Wagenaer, vi. 48-52. "Remon- tranee addressee an roy par les etats generaulx pour le renvoi des troupes etrangeres et pour que les affaires fussent administr^es de I'avis des Seigneurs."— Gaehard, Documents In^dits, i. 323-325. 3 Wagenaer, vi. 52. Compare Van der Haer, "Subiratum de sede Regem sur rexisse et eo digresso," etc.— viii. 110. 268 THE EISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1559 use of this last occasion in wliicli lie appeared in public as regent violently to rebuke the estates for the indignity thus offered to their sovereign.^ It could not be forgotten, however, by nobles and burghers, who had not yet been crushed by the long course of oppression which was in store for them, that there had been a day when Philip's ancestors had been more humble in their deportment in the face of the provincial authorities. His great-grandfather, Maximil- ian, kept in durance by the citizens of Bruges; his great-grandmother, Mary of Burgundy, with streaming eyes and disheveled hair, supplicating in the market- place for the lives of her treacherous ambassadors, were wont to hold a less imperious language to the delegates of the states. This burst of iU temper on the part of the monarch was, however, succeeded by a different humor. It was still thought advisable to dissemble, and to return rather an expostulatory than a peremptory answer to the re- monstrance of the States-General. Accordingly, a paper of a singular tone was, after the delay of a few days, sent in to the assembly. In this message it was stated that the king was not desirous of placing strangers in the gov- ernment—a fact which was proved by the appointment of the Duchess Margaret ; that the Spanish infantry was necessary to protect the land from invasion ; that the remnant of foreign troops only amounted to three or four thousand men, who claimed considerable arrears of pay, but that the amount due would be forwarded to them immediately after his Majesty's return to Spain. It was suggested that the troops would serve as an escort for Don Carlos when he should arrive in the Netherlands, 1 Van der Haer, nbi sup. 1559] PHILIP'S ORDERS AS TO HERESY 269 although the king would have been glad to carry them to Spain in his fleet, had he known the wishes of the estates in time. He wotdd, however, pay for their sup- port himself, although they were to act solely for the good of the provinces. He observed, moreover, that he had selected two seigniors of the provinces, the Prince of Orange and Count Egmont, to take command of these foreign troops, and he promised faithfully that, in the course of three or four months at furthest, they should aJl be withdrawn.^ On the same day iu which the estates had assembled at Ghent, Philip had addressed an elaborate letter to the Grand Council of Mechlin, the Supreme Court of the prov- inces, and to the various provincial councils and tribunals of the whole country .^ The object of the communication was to give his final orders on the subject of the edicts, and for the execution of all heretics in the most uni- versal and summary manner. He gave stringent and unequivocal instructions that these decrees for burn- ing, strangling, and burying alive should be f uLBlled to the letter. He ordered aU judicial ofiicers and magis- trates " to be curious to inquire on all sides as to the execution of the placards," stating his intention that "the utmost rigor should be employed without any respect of persons," and that not only " the transgres- sors should be proceeded against, but also the judges who should prove remiss in their prosecution of heretics." ^ 1 "Reponse du Roy h la Remontrance," etc. —Documents In- 6ms, i. 326-329. 2 "Lettre de Phil. II. au grand oonseil de Malines par laquelle il lui fait connaitre son intention sur le fait de la religion et de I'extir- pation des heresies, 8 Aout, 1559."— Ibid., i. 332-339. ' ". . . que vous soyez curietdx pour tous enquerir si h tons 270 THE EISE OF THE DUTCH EEPUBLIC [1559 He alluded to a false opinion wMcli had gained currency that the edicts were only intended against Anabaptists. Correcting this error, he stated that they were to be " enforced against aU sectaries, without any distinction or mercy, who might be spotted merely with the errors introduced by Luther." ^ The king, notwithstanding the violent scenes in the assembly, took leave of the estates at another meeting with apparent cordiality. His dissatisfaction was suffi- ciently manifest, but it expressed itself principally against individuals. His displeasure at the course pur- sued by the leading nobles, particidarly by the Prince of Orange, was already no secret. Philip, soon after the adjournment of the assembly, had completed the preparations for his departure. At Middelburg he was met by the agreeable intelligence that the pope had consented to issue a bull for the crea- tion of the new bishoprics which he desired for the Netherlands.^ This important subject will be resumed in another chapter ; for the present we accompany the king to Flushing, whence the fleet was to set sail for Spain. He was escorted thither by the duchess regent, the Duke of Savoy, and by many of the most eminent personages of the provinces.* Among others, WUliam costelz I'execution se fera oontre oeulx qui y centre viendront la- quelle execution nous entendons et voulons se face avec toute rigueur et sans y respecter personne qui que ce soit, et de proceder non seullement centre les transgresseurs mais aussi centre las juges qui vouldroient user de dissimulation et connivance," etc.— Docu- ments In^dits, i. 355. 1 " . . . centre ceulx qui pourroient estre seullement entachez des articles et erreurs intredmtz et soustenus par le diet Luthere." —Ibid., 337. 2 Hopper, Eec. et Mem., p. 21, c. ii. ' Van der Vynokt, i. 140. 1559] WILLIAM OF ORANGE PUBLICLY INSULTED 271 of Orange was in attendance to witness the final depar- ture of the king and to pay him his farewell respects. As Philip was proceeding on board the ship which was to bear him forever from the Netherlands, his eyes lighted upon the prince. His displeasure could no longer be restrained. With angry face he turned upon him, and bitterly reproached him for having thwarted aU his plans by means of his secret intrigues. William repHed with humility that everything which had taken place had been done through the regular and natural movements of the states. Upon this the king, boiling with rage, seized the prince by the wrist, and shaking it violently, exclaimed in Spanish, "No los estados, mas vos, vos, vos ! " (" Not the estates, but you, you, you ! "), repeating thrice the word vos, which is as disrespectful and uncourteous in Spanish as toi in French.^ After this severe and public insult the Prince of Orange did not go on board Ms Majesty's vessel, but contented himself with wishing Philip, from the shore,^ a fortunate journey. It may be doubted, moreover, whether he would not have made a sudden and compul- sory voyage to Spain had he ventured his person in the ship, and whether, under the circumstances, he would have been Mkely to effect as speedy a return. His cau- tion served him then as it was destined to do on many future occasions, and Philip left the Netherlands with this parting explosion of hatred against the man who, as he perhaps instinctively felt, was destined to circum- vent his measures and resist his tyranny to the last. 1 M^moires de I'Auliery du Maurier (Maurier, 1680), p. 9, who relates the anecdote upon the authority of his father, who had it from a gentleman present at the scene, a friend of the Prince of Orange. Ibid. 272 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1559 The fleet, which consisted of ninety vessels, so well provisioned that, among other matters, fifteen thou- sand capons were put on board, aceordiag to the Ant- werp chronicler,^ set sail upon the 26th August (1559) from Flushing.^ The voyage proved tempestuous, so that much of the rich tapestry and other merchandise which had been accumulated by Charles and Philip was lost. Some of the vessels foundered; to save others it was necessary to lighten the cargo and "to enrobe the roaring waters with the silks " for which the Netherlands were so famous, so that it was said that Philip and his father had impoverished the earth only to enrich the ocean.^ The fleet had been laden with much valuable property, because the king had determined to fix for the future the wandering capital of his dominions in Spain. Philip landed in safety, however, at Laredo, on the 8th September.* His escape from imminent peril confirmed him in the great purpose to which he had consecrated his existence. He believed himself to have been reserved from shipwreck only because a mighty mission had been confided to him, and lest his enthusiasm against heresy should languish, his eyes were soon feasted, upon his arrival in his native country, with the spectacle of an auto da fe. Early in January of this year the king, being per- suaded that it was necessary everywhere to use addi- tional means to check the alarming spread of Lutheran opinions, had written to the pope for authority to in- crease, if that were possible, the stringency of the Spanish Inquisition. The pontiff, nothing loath, had 1 Meteren, i. 25. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid. Hoofd, i. 27. Compare Cabrera, v. 235. * Bor, i. 22. 1559] AUTOS DA FE IN SPAIN 273 accordingly issued a bull directed to the inquisitor- general, Yaldez, by "which he was instructed to consign to the flames all prisoners whatever, even those who were not accused of having "relapsed."^ Great prep- arations had been made to strike terror into the hearts of heretics by a series of horrible exhibitions, in the course of which the numerous victims, many of them persons of high rank, distinguished learning, and ex- emplary lives, who had long been languishing in the dungeons of the Holy Office, were to be consigned to the flames.^ The first auto da fe had been consummated at Valladolid on the 21st May (1559), in the absence of the king, of course, but in the presence of the royal family and the principal notabilities, civU, ecclesiastical, and military. The princess regent, seated on her throne, close to the scaffold, had held on high the holy sword. The Archbishop of Seville, followed by the ministers of the Inquisition and by the victims, had arrived in solemn procession at the cadahalso, where, after the usual ser- mon in praise of the Holy Office and ii denunciation of heresy, he had administered the oath to the Infante, who had duly sworn upon the crucifix to maintain forever the sacred Inquisition and the apostolic decrees. The archbishop had then cried aloud, " So may God prosper your Highnesses and your estates," ^ after which the men and women who formed the object of the show had been cast into the flames.* It being afterward ascertained that the king himself would soon be enabled to return 1 "Had the king and the inquisitor never committed any other evil," says Llorente, "this alone would be sufficient to consign their names to eternal infamy." 2 Cabrera, v. 235 sqq. Llorente, Hist. Crit. de I'lnquis., ii. xviii. 3 Cabrera, iv. 209. * Ibid. VOL. I.— 18 274 THE EISB OF THE DUTCH EEPUBLIC [1559 to Spain, the next festival was reserved as a fitting celebration for his arrival. Upon the 8th October, accordingly, another auto da f e took place at VaUadolid. The king, with his sister and his son, the high officers of state, the foreign ministers, and aU the nobility of the kingdom, were present, together with an immense con- course of soldiery, clergy, and populace. The sermon was preached by the Bishop of Cuenca. When it was finished, Inquisitor-General Valdez cried with a loud voice, "0 God, make speed to help us ! " ^ The king then drew his sword. Valdez, advancing to the platform upon which PhUip was seated, proceeded to read the protestation : " Your Majesty swears by the cross of the sword, whereon your royal hand reposes, that you will give all necessary favor to the Holy Office of the Inquisition against here- tics, apostates, and those who favor them, and will denounce and inform against all those who, to your royal knowledge, shall act or speak against the faith." ^ The king answered aloud, " I swear it," and signed the paper. The oath was read to the whole assembly by an officer of the Inquisition. Thirteen distinguished victims were then burned before the monarch's eyes, besides one body which a friendly death had snatched from the hands of the Holy Office, and the effigy of another person who had been condemned, although not yet tried or even apprehended. Among the sufferers was Carlos de Sessa, a young noble of distinguished character and abilities, who said to the king as he passed by the throne to the stake, " How can you thus look on and permit me to be burned ? " Philip then made the memorable reply, care- fully recorded by his historiographer and panegyrist: i "Domine, adjuva nos."— Cabrera, v. 235. 2 Ibid. 1559] PHILIP'S MAREIAGE WITH ISABELLA 275 " I would carry the wood to burn my own son withal, were he as wicked as you." ^ In Seville, immediately afterward, another auto da f e was held, in which fifty living heretics were burned, besides the bones of Dr. Constantine Ponce da la Fuente, once the friend, chaplain, and almoner of Philip's father. This learned and distinguished ecclesiastic had been released from a dreadful dungeon by a fortimate fever. The Holy OfBice, however, not content with punish- ing his corpse, wreaked also an impotent and ludicrous malice upon his effigy. A stuffed figure, attired in his robes and with its arms extended in the attitude which was habitual with him in prayer, was placed upon the scaffold among the living victims, and then cast into the flames, that bigotry might enjoy a fantastic triumph over the grave. * Such were the religious ceremonies with which Philip celebrated his escape from shipwreck, and his mairiage with Isabella of France, immediately afterward solem- nized. These human victims, chained and burning at the stake, were the blazing torches which lighted the monarch to his nuptial couch.^ 1 " Yo traer^ lena para quemar a mi hijo si fuere tan malo como vos."— Cabrera, v. 236. 2 HooM, i. 27. Meteren, i. 25. Bor, i. 23. De Thou, iii. 410- 413, xxiii. Cabrera, iv. 209, v. 235 sqq. Compare Llorente (Hist. Crit. de I'Inquis., ii. xvii. xx. and xxi.), wlio has corrected many- errors made by preceding historians. PAET II ADMINISTRATION OF THE DUCHESS MARGARET 1559-1567 CHAPTER I Biographical sketch and portrait of Margaret of Parma— The state coimcil—Berlaymont—Viglius— Sketch of William the Silent- Portrait of Anthony Perrenot, afterward Cardinal Granvelle— General view of the poUtioal, social, and religious condition of the Netherlands— Habits of the aristocracy- Emulation in extrava- gance — Pecuniary embarrassments— Sympathy for the Beforma- tion, steadily increasing among the people, the true cause of the impending revolt— Measures of the government— Edict of 1550 described — Papal bulls granted to Philip for increasing the num- ber of bishops in the Netherlands— Necessity for retaining the Spanish troops to enforce the policy of persecution. Margaret of Parma, newly appointed regent of the Netherlands, was the natural daughter of Charles V., and his eldest-born child. Her mother, of a respectable family called Van der G-enst, in Oudenarde, had been adopted and brought up by the distinguished house of Hoog- straaten. Peculiar circumstances, not necessary to relate at length, had palliated the fault to which Margaret owed her imperial origin, and gave the child almost a legiti- mate claim upon its father's protection. The claim was honorably acknowledged. Margaret was in her infancy placed by the emperor in the charge of his paternal aunt, Margaret of Savoy, then regent of the provinces. Upon the death of that princess, the child was intrusted to the care of the emperor's sister, Mary, Queen Dowa- ger of Hungary, who had succeeded to the government, 279 280 THE RISE OP THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1559 and who occupied it until the abdication. The huntress- queen communicated her tastes to her youthful niece, and Margaret soon outrivaled her instructress. The ardor with which she pursued the stag, and the coura- geous horsemanship which she always displayed, proved her, too, no degenerate descendant of Mary of Burgundy. Her education for the distiaguished position in which she had somewhat surreptitiously been placed was at least not neglected in this particular. When, soon after the memorable sack of Rome, the pope and the emperor had been reconciled, and it had been decided that the Medici family should be elevated upon the ruins of Florentine libertj'', Margaret's hand was conferred in marriage upon the pontiff's nephew Alexander. The wretched profligate who was thus selected to mate with the emperor's eldest-born child and to appropriate the fair demesnes of the Tuscan republic was nominally the offspring of Lorenzo de' Medici by a Moorish slave, al- though generally reputed a bastard of the pope himself. The nuptials were celebrated with great pomp at Naples, where the emperor rode at the tournament in the guise of a Moorish warrior. At Florence splendid festivities had also been held, which were troubled with omens believed to be highly unfavorable. It hardly needed, however, preternatural appearances in heaven or on earth to proclaim the marriage Hi-starred which united a child of twelve years with a worn-out debauchee of twenty-seven. Fortunately for Margaret, the funereal portents proved true. Her husband, within the first year of their wedded life, fell a victim to his own prof- ligacy, and was assassinated by his kinsman, Lorenzino de' Medici. Cosmo, his successor in the tyranny of Florence, was desirous of succeeding to the hand of 1559] SKETCH OF THE DTJCHESS REGENT 281 Margaret ; but the politic emperor, thinking that he had ali-eady done enough to conciliate that house, was in- clined to bind to his interests the family which now- occupied the papal throne. Margaret was accordingly a few years afterward united to Ottavio Farnese, nephew of Paul III. It was stiU her fate to be unequally matched. Having while still a chUd been wedded to a man of more than twice her years, she was now, at the age of twenty, united to an immature youth of thirteen. She conceived so strong an aversion to her new husband that it became impossible for them to live together in peace. Ottavio accordingly went to the wars, and in 1541 accompanied the emperor in his memorable expedition to Barbary. Rumors of disaster by battle and tempest reaching Europe before the results of the expedition were accu- rately known, reports that the emperor had been lost in a storm, and that the young Ottavio had perished with him, awakened remorse in the bosom of Margaret. It seemed to her that he had been driven forth by domestic inclemency to fall a victim to the elements. When, however, the truth became known, and it was ascertained that her husband, although still living, was lying danger- ously ill in the charge of the emperor, the repugnance which had been founded upon his extreme youth changed to passionate fondness. His absence, and his faithful military attendance upon her father, caused a revulsion in her feelings and awakened her admiration. When Ottavio, now created Duke of Parma and Piacenza, re- turned to Rome, he was received by his wife with open arms. Their union was soon blessed with twins, and but for a certain imperiousness of disposition which Margaret had inherited from her father, and which she 282 THE EISE OP THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1559 was too apt to exercise even upon her husband, the mar- riage would have been sufficiently fortunate.^ Various considerations pointed her out to Philip as a suitable person for the office of regent, although there seemed some mystery about the appointment which de- manded explanation. It was thought that her birth would make her acceptable to the people ; but perhaps the secret reason with Philip was that she alone of aU other candidates would be amenable to the control of the churchman in whose hand he intended placing the real administration of the provinces. Moreover, her husband was very desirous that the citadel of Piacenza, still garrisoned by Spanish troops, should be surrendered to him. Philip was disposed to conciliate the duke, but unwilling to give up the fortress. He felt that Ottavio would be flattered by the nomination of his wife to so important an office, and be not too much dissatisfied at finding himself relieved for a time from her imperious fondness. Her residence in the Netherlands would guarantee domestic tranquillity to her husband, and peace in Italy to the king. Margaret would be a hostage for the fidelity of the duke, who had, moreover, given his eldest son to Philip to be educated in his service. She was about thirty-seven years of age when she arrived in the Netherlands, with the reputation of pos- sessing high talents and a proud and energetic ehar- acter.2 She was an enthusiastic Catholic, and had sat at the feet of Loyola, who had been her confessor and spiritual guide. She felt a greater horror for heretics than for any other species of malefactors, and looked up to her father's bloody edicts as if they had been special revelations from on high. She was most strenuous in » Strada, i. 35-44. 2 Ibid., i. 42. 1559] PERSONAL APPEARANCE 283 her observance of Roman rites, and was accnstomed to wash the feet of twelve virgins every Holy Week, and to endow them in marriage afterward.^ Her acquirements, save that of the art of horsemanship, were not remark- able. Caref uUy educated in the Machiavellian and Medicean school of politics, she was versed in that " dissimulation " to which liberal Anglo-Saxons give a shorter name, but which formed the main substance of statesmanship at the court of Charles and Philip. In other respects her accomplishments were but meager, and she had little acquaintance with any language but Italian. Her per- sonal appearance, which was masculine, but not without a certain grand and imperial fascination, harmonized with the opinion generally entertained of her character. The famous mustache upon her upper lip ^ was supposed to indicate authority and virility of purpose, an impres- sion which was confirmed by the circumstance that she was liable to severe attacks of gout, a disorder usually considered more appropriate to the sterner sex.' Such were the previous career and public reputation of the Duchess Margaret. It remains to be unfolded whether her character and endowments, as exemplified in her new position, were to justify the choice of PhUip. The members of the state council, as already observed, were Berlaymont, Viglius, Arras, Orange, and Egmont. The first was, likewise, chief of the finance depart- ment. Most of the Catholic writers described him as a noble of loyal and highly honorable character. Those 1 Strada, i. 42. 2 "Neo deerat aliqua mento superiorique lalsello barbula, ex qua virilis ei non magis species quam auotoritas conoilialDatur."— Ibid. ' Ibid. 284 THE RISE OP THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1559 of the Protestant party, on the contrary, uniformly denounced him as greedy, avaricious, and extremely sanguinary. That he was a brave and devoted soldier, a bitter papist, and an inflexible adherent to the royal cause, has never been disputed. The baron himself, with his four courageous and accomplished sons, were ever in the front ranks to defend the crown against the nation. It must be confessed, however, that fanatical loyalty loses most of the romance with which genius and poetry have so often hallowed the sentiment, when the " legitimate " prince for whom the sword is drawn is not only an alien in tongue and blood, but filled with undis- guised hatred for the land he claims to rule. Viglius van Aytta van Zuichem was a learned Frisian, bom, according to some writers, of " boors' degree, but having no inclination for boorish work."i According to other authorities, which the president himself favored, he was of noble origin ; but, whatever his race, it is cer- tain that, whether gentle or simple, it derived its first and only historical illustration from his remarkable talents and acquirements. These in early youth were so great as to acquire the commendation of Erasmus. He had studied in Louvain, Paris, and Padua, had refused the tutorship of Philip when that prince was still a child, and had afterward filled a professorship at Ingolstadt. After rejecting several offers of promotion from the emperor, he had at last accepted, in 1542, a seat in the council of Mechlin, of which body he had become presi- dent in 1545. He had been one of the peace commis- sioners to France in 1558, and was now president of the privy council, a member of the state council, and of the inner and secret committee of that board, called the 1 Levensbesch. Nederl. Man. en Vrouwen, iv. 75. 1559] SKETCH OF VIGLIUS 285 consulta. Much odium was attached to his name for his share in the composition of the famous edict of 1550. The rough draft was usually attributed to his pen, but he complained bitterly, in letters written at this time, of injustice done him in this respect, and maintained that he had endeavored, without success, to induce the emperor to mitigate the severity of the edict. One does not feel very strongly inclined to accept his excuses, however, when his general opinions on the subject of religion are remembered. He was most bigoted in pre- cept and practice. ReUgious liberty he regarded as the most detestable and baleful of doctrines ; heresy he de- nounced as the most unpardonable of crimes. From no man's mouth flowed more bitter or more elegant commonplaces than from that of the learned president against those blackest of malefactors, the men who claimed within their own walls the right to worship God according to theii- own consciences. For a common person, not learned in law or divinity, to enter into his closet, to shut the door, and to pray to Him who seeth in secret, was, in his opinion, to open wide the gate of destruction for all the land, and to bring in the father of evil at once to fly away with the whole population, body and soul. " If every man," said he to Hopper, " is to believe what he likes in his own house, we shall have hearth'gods and tutelar divinities ^ again, the country will swarm with a thousand errors and sects, and very few there will be, I fear, who will allow themselves to be inclosed in the sheepfold of Christ. I have ever con- sidered this opinion," continued the president, " the most pernicious of all. They who hold it have a contempt for all religion, and are neither more nor less than atheists. 1 ". . . lares lemuresque," etc.— Bp. ad Hopp., 421. 286 THE RISE OP THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1559 This vague, fireside liberty should be by every possible means extirpated; therefore did Christ institute shep- herds to drive his wandering sheep back into the fold of the true church ; thus only can we guard the lambs against the ravening wolves, and prevent their being carried away from the flock of Christ to the flock of Belial. Liberty of religion, or of conscience, as they call it, ought never to be tolerated." ^ This was the cant with which Viglius was ever ready to feed not only his faithful Hopper, but aU the world besides. The president was naturally anxious that the fold of Christ should be intrusted to none but regular shepherds, for he looked forward to taking one of the most lucrative crooks into his own hand when he should retire from his secular career. It is now necessary to say a few introductory words concerning the man who, from this time forth, begins to rise upon the history of his country with daily increasing grandeur and influence. William of Nassau, Prince of Orange, although still yoimg in years, is already the central personage about whom the events and the char- acters of the epoch most naturally group themselves, destined as he is to become more and more with each succeeding year the vivifying source of light, strength, and national life to a whole people. The Nassau family first emerges into distinct existence in the middle of the eleventh century. It divides itself almost as soon as known into two great branches. The elder remained in Germany, ascended the imperial throne 1 Viglii Epist. ad Joach. Hopperum, pp. 421, 422. Compare Vit. Viglii ab ipso Viglio Script, (apud Hoynck, i. ), 1-33 ; Viglii Epist. Select, ad Diversos, cxlviii. ; Levensb. Nederl. Man. en Vronw., iv. 75-82; Van der Vynekt, i. 127. 1559] THE HOUSE OP NASSAU 287 in the thirteenth century in the person of Adolph of Nassau, and gave to the country many electors, bishops, and generals. The younger and more Olustrious branch retained the modest property and petty sovereignty of Nassau-DiHenburg, but at the same time transplanted itself to the Netherlands, where it attained at an early period to great power and large possessions. The an- cestors of WiQiam, as dukes of Gruelders, had begun to exercise sovereignty in the provinces four centuries before the advent of the house of Burgundy.^ That over- shadowing family afterward numbered the Netherland Nassaus among its most stanch and powerful adherents. Engelbert II. was distinguished in the turbulent councils and in the battle-fields of Charles the Bold, and was afterward the unwavering supporter of Maximilian in court and camp. Dying childless, he was succeeded by his brother John, whose two sons, Henry and William of Nassau, divided the great inheritance after their father's death. WiUiam succeeded to the German estates, became a convert to Protestantism, and intro- duced the Reformation into his dominions. Henry, the eldest son, received the family possessions and titles in Luxemburg, Brabant, Flanders, and HoUand, and dis- tinguished himself as much as his uncle Engelbert in the service of the Burgundo- Austrian house. The con- fidential friend of Charles V., whose governor he had been in that emperor's boyhood, he was ever his most efficient and reliable adherent. It was he whose influ- ence placed the imperial crown upon the head of Charles.^ i Apologie d'Orange, 42. 2 " . . . c'est lui qtd a mis la eouronne imperiale sur la teste de I'Empereur . . . il persuada les electeurs de preferer rEmpereur au Boi de France. . . . Et comme il est notoire fi. un chacun que 288 THE EISE OP THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1559 In 1515 he espoused Claudia de ChSlons, sister of Prince Philibert of Orange, " in order," as he wrote to his father, " to be obedient to his imperial Majesty, to please the King of France, and more particularly for the sake of his own honor and profit." ^ His son Rene de Nassau-ChSlons succeeded Philibert. The little principality of Orange, so pleasantly situated between Provence and Dauphiny, but in such dangerous proximity to the seat of the " Baby- lonian captivity " of the popes at Avignon, thus passed to the family of Nassau. The title was of high antiquity. Already in the reign of Charlemagne, GuiHaume au Court-Nez, or "WiUiam with the Short Nose," had de- fended the little town of Orange against the assaults of the Saracens. The interest and authority acquired in the demesnes thus preserved by his valor became exten- sive, and in process of time hereditary in his race. The principality became an absolute and free sovereignty,^ and had already descended, in defiance of the Salic law, through the three distinct famihes of Orange, Baux, and Chilons. In 1544 Prince Ren6 died at the emperor's feet in the trenches of St.-Dizier. Having no legitimate children, he left all his titles and estates to his cousin german, William of Nassau, son of his father's brother WiUiam, ceste couronne imperiale a est6 le pont qui par apres a faict pas- sage h, I'Empereur pour tant de oonquestes," etc.— Apologie, 23. 1 ". . . om geeoirsam te zyn der Keis. Maj. ende ooc om te wille te zyn den Conic van Vranoryk ende souderling om myner eeren en de prouffyts wille."— Arnoldi, Hist. Denk., p. 187. Groen V. Prinsterer, Archives, etc., i. 64*, note 2. 2 ". . . et moins m'a il (I'Empereui") pen favoiiser en mon principatiltfi d'Orange, ou il n'avoit rien a veoir ni lui ni prince quelconque, le tenant en souverainet^ nue et absolue, ce que peu d'autres seigneurs pourront dire."— Apologie, 15. 1559] PARENTS OF WILLIAM 289 who thus at the age of eleven years became WiUiam IX. of Orange. For this child, whom the future was to summon to such high destinies and such heroic sacrifices, the past and present seemed to have gathered riches and power together from many sources. He was the descen- dant of the Othos, the Engelberts, and the Henrys of the Netherlands ; the representative of the PhOiberts and the Renes of France ; the chief of a house humbler in resources and position in Germany, but still of high rank, and which had already done good service to hu- manity by being among the first to embrace the great principles of the Reformation. His father, younger brother of the emperor's friend Henry, was called "William the Rich. He was, however, only rich in children. Of these he had five sons and seven daughters by his wife Juliana of Stolberg. She was a person of most exemplary character and unaffected piety. She instilled into the minds of all her children the elements of that devotional sentiment which was her own striking characteristic, and it was destined that the seed sown early should increase to an abundant harvest. Nothing can be more tender or more touching than the letters which still exist from her hand, written to her illustrious sons in hours of anxiety or anguish, and to the last recommending to them, with as much earnest simplicity as if they were stiU little children at her knee, to rely always, in the midst of the trials and dangers which were to beset their paths through life, upon the great hand of God. Among the mothers of great men Juliana of Stolberg deserves a foremost place, and it is no slight eulogy that she was worthy to have been the mother of William of Orange and of Lewis, Adolphus, Henry, and John of Nassau. VOL. I.— 19 290 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1559 At the age of eleven years, William, having thus unex- pectedly succeeded to such great possessions, was sent from his father's roof to be educated in Brussels. No destiay seemed to lie before the young prince but an education at the emperor's court, to be followed by mili- tary adventures, embassies, viceroyalties, and a life of luxury and magnificence. At a very early age he came, accordingly, as a page into the emperor's family. Charles recognized with his customary quickness the remarkable character of the boy. At fifteen WUliam was the intimate, almost confidential friend of the em- peror, who prided himself, above all other gifts, on his power of reading and of using men. The youth was so constant an attendant upon his imperial chief that even when interviews with the highest personages, and upon the gravest affairs, were taking place, Charles would never suffer him to be considered superfluous or intru- sive. There seemed to be no secrets which the emperor held too high for the comprehension or discretion of his page. His perceptive and reflective faculties, naturally of remarkable keenness and depth, thus acquired a pre- cocious and extraordinary development. He was brought up behind the curtain of that great stage where the world's dramas were daily enacted. The machinery and the masks which produced the grand delusions of history had no deceptions for him. Carefully to observe men's actions, and silently to ponder upon their motives, was the favorite occupation of the prince during his appren- ticeship at court. As he advanced to man's estate, he was selected by the emperor for the highest duties. Charles, whose only merit, so far as the provinces were concerned, was in having been born in Ghent, and that by an ignoble accident, was glad to employ this repre- 1559] WILLIAM'S EARLY DISTINCTION 291 sentative of so many great Netherland houses in the defense of the land. Before the prince was twenty-one he was appointed gena:al-in-chief of the army on the French frontier, in the absence of the Duke of Savoy. The post was coveted by many most distinguished sol- diers—the Counts of Buren, Bossu, Lalain, Aremberg, Meghen, and particularly by Count Egmont ; ^ yet Charles showed his extraordinary confidence in the Prince of Orange by selecting him for the station, al- though he had hardly reached maturity, and was, more- over, absent in France. The young prince acquitted himself of his high command in a manner which justi- fied his appointment. It was the prince's shoulder upon which the emperor leaned at the abdication, the prince's hand which bore the imperial insignia of the discrowned monarch to Ferdinand at Augsburg. With these duties his rela- tions with Charles were ended and those with Philip begun. He was with the army during the hostilities which were soon after resumed in Picardy ; he was the secret negotiator of the preliminary arrangement with France, soon afterward confirmed by the triumphant treaty of AprU, 1559. He had conducted these initiatory conferences with the Constable Montmorency and Mare- chal de Saint Andr6 with great sagacity, although hardly a man in years, and by so doing he had laid Philip under deep obligations. The king was so inexpressibly anxious for peace that he would have been capable of conducting a treaty upon almost any terms. He assured the prince that " the greatest service he could render him in this world was to make peace, and that he desired to have it at any price whatever, so eager was he to return to 1 Apologie, 29. 292 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1559 Spain." 1 To the envoy Suriano, Philip had held the same language. "Oh, ambassador," said he, "I wish peace on any terms, and if the King of Prance had not sued for it, I would have begged for it myself." ^ With such impatience on the part of the sovereign it certainly manifested diplomatic abilities of a high character in the prince that the treaty negotiated by him amounted to a capitulation by Prance. He was one of the hostages selected by Henry for the due exe- cution of the treaty, and while in France made that remarkable discovery which was to color his life. While hunting with the king in the forest of Vincennes, the prince and Henry found themselves alone together, and separated from the rest of the company. The Prench monarch's mind was full of the great scheme which had just secretly been formed by Philip and himself, to ex- tirpate Protestantism by a general extirpation of Prot- estants. Philip had been most anxious to conclude the public treaty with Prance, that he might be the sooner able to negotiate that secret convention by which he and his Most Christian Majesty were solemnly to bind them- selves to massacre all the converts to the new religion in Prance and the Netherlands. This conspiracy of the two kings against their subjects was the matter nearest the hearts of both. The Duke of Alva, a fellow-hostage with William of Orange, was the plenipotentiary to con- duct this more important arrangement. The Prench 1 Apologie d'Orange, 49. 2 " . . . Se ben era cosi pooo honorevole f u gran cosa quella oh' io serissi al Settembre passato ohe mi disse S. M'", nell' esercito con queste parole 6 simili ; o Imbasoiatore, io voglio pace in ogni modo e s'il Re di Prancia no I'havesse domandata, la domanderei io."— Suriano MS. 1559] THE SILENT PEINCE 293 monarcli, somewhat imprudently imagining that the prince was also a party to the plot, opened the whole subject to him without reserve. He complained of the constantly increasing numbers of sectaries in his king- dom, and protested that his conscience would never be easy, nor his state secure, until his realm should be de- livered of " that accursed vermin." A civil revolution, under pretext of a religious reformation, was his con- stant apprehension, particularly since so many notable personages in the realm, and even princes of the blood, were already tainted with heresy. Nevertheless, with the favor of Heaven and the assistance of his son and his brother Philip, he hoped soon to be master of the rebels. The king then proceeded, with cynical minuteness, to lay before his discreet companion the particulars of the royal plot, and the manner in which aU heretics, whether high or humble, were to be discovered and massacred at the most convenient season. For the furtherance of the scheme in the Netherlands it was understood that the Spanish regiments would be exceedingly efficient. The prince, although horror-struck and indignant at the royal revelations, held his peace and kept his countenance. The king was not aware that, in opening this delicate negotiation to Alva's colleague and Philip's plenipoten- tiary, he had given a warning of inestimable value to the man who had been born to resist the machinations of Philip and of Alva. "WiUiam of Orange earned the surname of "the Silent" from the manner in which he received these communications of Henry without reveal- ing to the monarch, by word or look, the enormous blunder which he had committed. His purpose was fixed from that hour. A few days afterward he ob- tained permission to visit the Netherlands, where he 294 THE EISE OP THE DUTCH EEPUBLIC [1559 took measures to excite, with all his influence, the strong- est and most general opposition to the continued presence of the Spanish troops,* of which forces, much against his will, he had been, in conjunction with Egmont, ap- pointed chief. He already felt, in his own language, that "an inquisition for the Netherlands had been re- solved upon more cruel than that of Spain, since it would need but to look askance at an image to be cast into the flames." ^ Although having as yet no spark of religious sympathy for the reformers, he could not, he said, "but feel compassion for so many virtuous men and women thus devoted to massacre,"' and he deter- mined to save them if he could. At the departure of Philip he had received instructions, both patent and secret, for his guidance as stadholder of Holland, Fries- land, and Utrecht. He was ordered " most expressly to correct and extirpate the sects reprobated by our Holy Mother Church; to execute the edicts of his imperial Majesty, renewed by the king, with absolute rigor. He was to see that the judges carried out the edicts mthout infraction, alteration, or moderation, since they were there to enforce, not to make or to discuss, the law." In his secret instructions he was informed that the execution of the edicts was to be with all rigor, and without any respect of persons. He was also reminded that, whereas some persons had imagined the severity of the law "to be only intended against Anabaptists, on the contrary, the edicts were to be enforced on Lutherans and all other sectaries without distinction." * Moreover, in one of his last interviews with Philip the king had given him the 1 Pontus Payen MS., 8-13. ^ Apologie, 54. 3 Ibid., 53. * ArchiveB et Correspondance, i. 41, 42. 1559] FAMILY OF WILLIAM OF ORANGE 295 names of several "excellent persons suspected of the new religion," and had commanded him to have them put to death. This, however, he not only omitted to do, but, on the contrary, gave them warning, so that they might effect their escape, " thinking it more necessary to obey God than man." ^ William of Orange, at the departure of the king for Spain, was in his twenty-seventh year. He was a wid- ower, his first wife, Anne of Bgmont, having died in 1558, after seven years of wedlock. This lady, to whom he had been united when they were both eighteen years of age, was the daughter of the celebrated general. Count de Buren, and the greatest heiress in the Netherlands. WiUiam had thus been faithful to the family traditions, and had increased his possessions by a wealthy alliance. He had two children, Philip and Mary. The marriage had been more amicable than princely marriages ar- ranged for convenience often prove. The letters of the prince to his wife indicate tenderness and contentment.^ At the same time he was accused, at a later period, of " having murdered her with a dagger." * The ridiculous tale was not even credited by those who reported it, but it is worth mentioning as a proof that no calumny was too senseless to be invented concerning the man whose character was from that hour forth to be the mark of slander, and whose whole life was to be its signal, al- though often unavailing, refutation.* 1 Apologie, 80. 2 Archives et Correspondanoe, i. 1-29. 5 Wilhelms von Oranien Ehe mit Anna v. Saohsen, von Dr. K. W. Bottiger (Leipzig, 1836). * For the history of William of Orange up to the period of Philip's departure from the Netherlands, see Groen v. Prinsterer, 1-30, 54* ; Gachard, Corresp. de Guillaume le Taeiturne (Bru- 296 THE KISE OP THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1559 Yet we are not to regard William of Orange, thus on the threshold of his great career, by the light diffused from a somewhat later period. In no historical charac- ter more remarkably than in his is the law of constant development and progress illustrated. At twenty-six he is not the pater patrice, the great man struggling upward and onward against a host of enemies and ob- stacles almost beyond human strength, and along the dark and dangerous path leading through conflict, priva- tion, and ceaseless labor to no repose but death. On the contrary, his foot was hardly on the first step of that difficult ascent which was to rise before him all his life- time. He was still among the primrose paths. He was rich, powerful, of sovereign rank. He had only the germs within him of what was thereafter to expand into moral and intellectual greatness. He had small sympathy for the religious reformation of which he was to be one of the most distingxiished champions. He was a Cathohc, nominally and in outward observance. With doctrines he troubled himself but little. He had given orders to enforce conformity to the ancient Church, not with bloodshed, yet with comparative strictness, in his prin- cipality of Orange.^ Beyond the compliance with rites and forms thought indispensable in those days to a personage of such high degree, he did not occupy him- self with theology. He was a Catholic, as Bgmont and Horn, Berlaymont and Mansfeld, Montigny and even Brederode, were Catholic. It was only tanners, dyers, xelles), tome i. ; Apologie d'Orange, 1-54 ; Van der Haer, cap. xv. 183 sqq. Compare Strada, ii. 75-84; Bentivoglio, Guerra di Piandra, i. 5, 6 ; Hoofd, i. 22 ; Joa. Meursii Otvl. Aur., 1-7 ; Le- vensb. Nederl. Man. et Vr., vi. 172-179. 1 Archives et Corresp., i. 203*. 1559] PERSONAL CHAEACTEBISTICS 297 and apostate priests who were Protestants at that day in the Netherlands. His determination to protect a multi- tude of his harmless inferiors from horrible deaths diql not proceed from sympathy with their religious senti- ments, but merely from a generous and manly detesta- tion of murder. He carefully averted his mind from sacred matters. If, indeed, the seed implanted by his pious parents were really the germ of his future conver- sion to Protestantism, it must be confessed that it lay dormant a long time. But his mind was in other pur- suits. He was disposed for an easy, joyous, luxurious, princely life. Banquets, masquerades, tournaments, the chase, interspersed with the routine of offlcial duties, civil and military, seemed likely to fill out his life. His hospitality, like his fortune, was almost regal. While the king and the foreign envoys were stUl in the Nether- lands, his house, the splendid Nassau palace of Brussels, was ever open. He entertained for the monarch, who was, or who imagined himself to be, too poor to dis- charge his own duties in this respect, but he entertained at his own expense.^ This splendid household was still continued. Twenty-four noblemen and eighteen pages of gentle birth officiated regularly in his family. His establishment was on so extensive a scale that upon one day twenty-eight master cooks were dismissed for the purpose of diminishing the family expenses, and there was hardly a princely house in Germany which did not send cooks to learn their business in so magnificent a kitchen.2 The reputation of his table remained undi- minished for years. We find at a later period that Philip, in the course of one of the nominal reconciliations which took place several times between the monarch 1 Apologie, 26, 27. 2 Van der Haer, 182. 298 THE RISE OF THE btJTCH EEPTJBLIC [1559 and William of Orange, wrote that, his head cook being dead, he begged the prince to "make him a present of his chief cook, Master Herman, who was understood to be very skilful." ^ In this hospitable mansion the feasting continued night and day. Prom early morning till noon, the breakfast-tables were spread with wines and luxurious viands in constant succession, to all comers and at every moment.^ The dinner and supper were daily banquets for a multitude of guests. The highest nobles were not those alone who were entertained. Men of lower degree were welcomed with a charming hospitality which made them feel themselves at their ease.^ Contemporaries of all parties unite in eulogizing the winning address and gentle manners of the prince. "Never," says a most bitter Catholic historian, " did an arrogant or indiscreet word fall from his lips. He upon no occasion mani- fested anger to his servants, however much they might be in fault, but contented himself with admonishing them graciously, without menace or insult. He had a gentle and agreeable tongue, with which he could turn all the gentlemen at court any way he liked. He was beloved and honored by the whole community." * His manner was graceful, familiar, caressing, and yet digni- fied. He had the good breeding which comes from the heart, refined into an inexpressible charm from his con- 1 Corresp. de Gviill. le Tacit., ii. 89. 2 Van der Haer, 182. ' "A la v6rit6 c'estoit un personage d'une merveilleuse vivacity d'esprit, lequel sur tons autres tenoit table magnifique, oi. les petits oompagnons estoyent autant bienveniis que les grands."— Pontus Payen MS. * Ibid. 1559] DEBTS OF WILLIAM 299 stant intercourse, almost from his cradle, with mankind of all ranks. It may be supposed that this train of living was at- tended with expense. Moreover, he had various other establishments in town and country, besides his almost royal residence in Brussels. He was ardently fond of the chase, particularly of the knightly sport of falconry. In the country he "consoled himself by taking every day a heron in the clouds." ^ His falconers alone cost him annually fifteen hundred florins, after he had re- duced their expenses to the lowest possible point.^ He was much in debt, even at this early period and with his princely fortune. " We come of a race," he wrote care- lessly to his brother Louis, "who are somewhat bad managers in our young days, but when we grow older we do better, like our late father : sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper et in secula seculorum. My greatest difficulty," he adds, " as usual, is on account of the fal- coners." ^ His debts already amounted, according to GrranveUe's statement, to eight or nine hundred thousand florins.* He had embarrassed himself not only through his splendid extravagance, by which all the world about him were made to partake of his wealth, but by accept- ing the high offices to which he had been appointed. When general-in-chief on the frontier, his salary was three hundred florins monthly; "not enough," as he said, " to pay the servants in his tent," ^ his necessary expenses being twenty-five hundred fiorins, as appears 1 Letter to Count Louis de Nassau, Archives, etc., i. 179. 2 Archives et Correspondanoe, i. 196. ^ Ibid. * Papiers d'fitat, vii. 51. Archives, etc., i. 38. 5 Apologie, 27. 300 THE EISB OP THE DUTCH EEPtTBLIC [1559 by a letter to his -wife.^ His embassy to carry the crown to Ferdinand, and his subsequent residence as a hostage for the treaty in Paris, were also very onerous, and he received no salary, according to the economical system in this respect pursued by Charles and Philip. In these two embassies or missions alone, together with the enter- tainments offered by him to the court and to foreigners after the peace at Brussels, the prince spent, according to his own estimate, one million five hundred thousand florins.^ He was, however, although deeply, not desper- ately involved, and had already taken active measures to regulate and reduce his establishment. His revenues were vast, both in his own right and in that of his deceased wife. He had large claims upon the royal treasury for service and expenditure. He had besides ample sums to receive from the ransoms of the prisoners of St.-Quentin and GraveUnes, having served in both , campaigns. The amount to be received by individuals from this source may be estimated from the fact that I Count Horn, by no means one of the most favored in [the victorious armies, had received from L6onor d'Or- 16ans, Due de LongueviUe, a ransom of eighty thousand ' crowns.^ The sum due, if payment were enforced, from the prisoners assigned to Egmont, Orange, and others, must have been very large. Granvelle estimated the whole amount at two millions; adding, characteristi- 1 Archives et Correspondanoe, i. 16. 2 Apologie, 27. 3 " . . . de iRan50ns des prisonniers franjois, prisomders prins aux batailles de St.-Quintin et Gravelinges qui porterent k une in- finite des denieis, entre lesquels Messire L6onor d'Orlfians Due de LongueviUe paia comptaut au Compte de Homes quatre-viiiigt mil Eseus— peusez maintemant si de Compte d'Egmont avoit eu moyen de faire ses besoignes," etc.— Pontus Payen MS. 1559] REVENUES AND RESOURCES 301 cally, that "this kind of speculation was a practice" which our good old fathers, lovers of virtue, would not have found laudable. ^ In this the churchman was right, but he might have added that the "lovers of virtue" would have found it as little "laudable" for ecclesiastics to dispose of the sacred offices in their gift for carpets, tapestry, and annual payments of certain percentages upon the cure of souls.^ If the profits respectively gained by military and clerical speculators in that day should be compared, the disadvantage would hardly be found to lie with those of the long robe. Such, then, at the beginning of 1560, was William of Orange— a generous, stately, magnificent, powerful grandee. As a military commander, he had acqidtted himself very creditably of highly important functions at an early age. Nevertheless, it was the opinion of many persons that he was of a timid temperament.* He was even accused of having manifested an unseemly panic at . PhiUppeville, and of having only been restrained by the expostulations of his officers from abandoning both that fortress and Charlemont to Admiral Coligny, who had made his appearance in the neighborhood merely at the head of a reconnoitering party.* If the story were true, it would be chiefly important as indicating that the Prince of Orange was one of the many historical char- acters, originally of an excitable and even timorous 1 ". . . chose k la v6rit6 mal s^ant^, et que noz bons vieux pferes, amateurs de la vertu, n'eussent trouv§ louable."— Arohlves et Correspondanoe, i. 38. 2 V. Gachard, Correspondanoe de Philippe II. sur les affaires des Pays-Bas (Brux. 1848), i. 318-320. 3 ". . . d'un naturel craintif, comme il aToit souyentes fois monstrS durant la guerre de Prance."— Pontus Payen MS. 4 Ibid. 302 THE RISE OP THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1559 physical organization, whom moral courage and a strong wiU have afterward converted into dauntless heroes. Certain it is that he was destined to confront open danger in every form, that his path was to lead through perpetual ambush, yet that his cheerful confidence and tranquil courage were to become not only unquestionable but proverbial.^ It may be safely asserted, however, that the story was an invention to be classed with those fic- tions which made him the mxirderer of his first wife, a common conspirator against Philip's crown and person, and a crafty malefactor in general, without a single virtue. It must be remembered that even the terrible Alva, who lived in harness almost from the cradle to the grave, was, so late as at this period, censured for timidity, and had been accused in youth of flat cowar- dice.^ He despised the insinuation, which for him had no meaning. There is no doubt, too, that caution was a predominant characteristic of the prince. It was one of the chief sources of his greatness. At that period, per- haps at any period, he would have been incapable of such brilliant and dashing exploits as had made the name of Egmont so famous. It had even become a proverb, " the counsel of Orange, the execution of Eg- mont " ; ^ yet we shall have occasion to see how far this physical promptness which had been so felicitous upon the battle-field was likely to avail the hero of St.-Quentin in the great political combat which was approaching. As to the talents of the prince, there was no differ- ence of opinion. His enemies never contested the sub- 1 "Soevis tranquillus in tmdis," was the motto often engraved upon the medals struck at different periods in his honor. 2 Badovaro MS. Suriano MS. * Pontus Payen MS. 1559] ANTHONY PBEEBNOT 303 tlety and breadth of his intellect, his adroitness and capacity in conducting state affairs, his knowledge of human nature, and the profoundness of his views. In many respects it must be confessed that his surname of " the Silent," like many similar appellations, was a mis- nomer. William of Orange was neither "silent" nor "taciturn," yet these are the epithets which wiU be for- ever associated with the name of a man who, in private, was the most affable, cheerful, and delightful of com- panions, and who on a thousand great public occasions was to prove himself, both by pen and by speech, the most eloquent man of his age. His mental accomplish- ments were considerable. He had studied history with attention, and he spoke and wrote with facility Latin, French, German, Flemish, and Spanish. The man, however, in whose hands the administration of the Netherlands was in reality placed was Anthony Perrenot, then Bishop of Arras, soon to be known by the more celebrated title of Cardinal Granvelle. He was the chief of the consulta, or secret council of three, by whose deliberations the duchess regent was to be governed. His father, Nicholas Perrenot, of an obscure family in Burgundy, had been long the favorite minister and man of business to the Emperor Charles. Anthony, the eldest of thirteen children, was born in 1517. He was early distinguished for his talents. He studied at D61e, Padua, Paris, and Louvain. At the age of twenty he spoke seven languages with perfect facility, while his acquaintance with civil and ecclesiastical laws was con- sidered prodigious. At the age of twenty-three he be- came a canon of Lifege Cathedral. The necessary eight quarters of gentility produced upon that occasion have accordingly been displayed by his panegyrists in trj- 304 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1559 umphant refutation of that theory which gave him a blacksmith for his grandfather.^ At the same period, although he had not reached the requisite age, the rich bishopric of Arras had already been prepared for him by his father's care. Three years afterward, in 1543, he distinguished himself by a most learned and brilliant harangue before the Council of Trent, by which display he so much charmed the emperor that he created him councilor of state. A few years afterward he rendered the unscrupulous Charles still more valuable proofs of devotion and dexterity by the part he played in the memorable imprisonment of the Landgrave of Hesse and the Saxon dukes. He was thereafter constantly em- ployed in embassies and other ofiices of trust and profit. There was no doubt as to his profound and varied learning, nor as to his natural quickness and dexterity. He was ready-witted, smooth and fluent of tongue, fer- tile in expedients, courageous, resolute. He thoroughly understood the artof managing men, particularly his superiors. He knew how to govern under the appear- ance of obeying. He possessed exquisite tact in appre- ciating the characters of those far above him in rank and beneath him in intellect. He could accommodate himself with great readiness to the idiosyncrasies of sovereigns. He was a chameleon to the hand which fed him. In his intercourse with the king he colored himself, as it were, with the king's character. He was not himself, but Philip ; not the sullen, hesitating, con- fused Philip, however, but Philip endowed with elo- quence, readiness, facility. The king ever found himself anticipated with the most delicate obsequiousness, beheld 1 Dom I'Evesque, M6moires pour servir a I'Histoire du Cardinal Crranvelle (Paris, 1753), ii. 146-293. Compare Strada, ii. 60. 1559] HIS QUICKNESS AND TACT 305 Ms struggling ideas change into winged words without ceasing to be his own. No flattery could be more adroit. The bishop accommodated himself to the king's episto- lary habits. The silver-tongued and ready debater sub- stituted protocols for conversations, in deference to a monarch who could not speak. He corresponded with Philip, with Margaret of Parma, with every one. He wrote folios to the duchess when they were in the same palace. He would write letters forty pages long to the king, and send off another courier on the same day with two or three additional despatches of identical date. Such prolixity enchanted the king, whose greediness for business epistles was insatiable. The painstaking mon- arch toiled, pen in hand, after his wonderfvd minister in vain. Philip was only fit to be the bishop's clerk, yet he imagined himself to be the directing and governing power. He scrawled apostils in the margins to prove that he had read with attention, and persuaded himself that he suggested when he scarcely even comprehended. The bishop gave advice and issued instructions when he seemed to be only receiving them. He was the substance while he affected to be the shadow. These tactics were comparatively easy and likely to be triumphant so long as he had only to deal with inferior intellects like those of Philip and Margaret. When he should be matched against political genius and lofty character combined, it was possible that his resources might not prove so aU- sufQcient. His political principles were sharply defined in reality, but smoothed over by a conventional and decorous be- nevolence of language, which deceived vulgar minds. He was a strict absolutist. His deference to arbitrary power was profound and slavish. God and " the master," yoii. I.— 20 306 THE RISE OP THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1559 as he always called Philip, he professed to serve with equal humility. " It seems to me," said he, in a letter of this epoch, " that I shall never be able to fulfil the obli- gation of slave which I owe to your Majesty, to whom I am bound by so firm a chain ; at any rate, I shall never fail to struggle for that end with sincerity." ^ As a matter of course, he was a firm opponent of the national rights of the Netherlands, however artfully he disguised the sharp sword of violent absolutism under a garland of flourishing phraseology. He had strenu- ously warned Philip against assembling the States- General before his departiire for the sake of asking them for supplies. He earnestly deprecated allowing the constitutional authorities any control over the expendi- tures of the government, and averred that this practice under the Eegent Mary had been the cause of endless trouble.^ It may easily be supposed that other rights were as little to his taste as the claim to vote the sub- sidies, a privilege which was in reality indisputable- Men who stood forth in defense of the provincial con- stitutions were, in his opinion, mere demagogues and hypocrites, their only motive being to curry favor with the populace. Yet these chai'ters were, after all, suffi- ciently limited. The natural rights of man were topics which had never been broached. Man had only natural wrongs. None ventured to doubt that sovereignty was heaven-born, anointed of God. The rights of the Nether- 1 " Y jamas me pareeera que bastaria para que yo puedo oum- plir con la obligacion de esclavo en que me ha puesto V. M. atando me con tan firme catena ; Jl lo menos s6 que no me f alta ny me fal- tarsl— de acertar en las cosas del servioio . . . con limpieza y amor," etc.— Papiers d'Btat, vi. 96. 2 Ibid., vi. 27. 1559] PEREENOT'S POLITICAL VIEWS 307 lands were special, not general; plural, not singular; liberties, not liberty; "privileges," not maxims. They were practical, not theoretical ; historical, not philosoph- ical. Still, such as they were, they were facts, acquisi- tions. They had been purchased by the blood and toil of brave ancestors; they amounted— however open to criticism upon broad humanitarian grounds, of which few at that day had ever dreamed— to a solid, substantial dike against the arbitrary power which was ever chafing and fretting to destroy its barriers. No men were more subtle or more diligent in corroding the foundation of these bulwarks than the disciples of GranveUe. Yet one would have thought it possible to tolerate an amount of practical freedom so different from the wild social speculations which, in later days, have made both tyrants and reasonable lovers of our race tremble with appre- hension. The Netherlanders claimed, mainly, the right to vote the money which was demanded in such enor- mous profusion from their painfuUy acquired wealth; they were also unwilling to be burned alive if they ob- jected to transubstantiation. Grranvelle was most dis- tinctly of an opposite opinion upon both topics. He strenuously deprecated the interference of the states with the subsidies, and it was by his advice that the remorseless edict of 1550, the emperor's ordinance of blood and fire, was reenacted as the very first measure of Philip's reign. J^ Such were his sentiments as to na- tional and popular rights by representation. For the people itself— "that vile and mischievous animal called the people," ^ as he expressed it— he entertained a cheer- ful contempt. 1 Papiers d'Etat, ix. 478, 479. 2 " ■ . . tan ruin animal como es el pueblo."— Ibid., vii. 367. 308 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH EEPUBLIC [1559 His aptitude for managing men was very great, his capacity for affairs incontestable, but it must be always understood as the capacity for the affairs of absolutism. He was a clever, scheming politician, an adroit manager ; it remained to be seen whether he had a claim to the character of a statesman. His industry was enormous. He could write fifty letters a day with his own hand. He could dictate to half a dozen amanuenses at once, on as many different subjects, in as many different lan- guages, and send them all away exhausted. He was already rich. His income from his see and other livings was estimated, in 1557, at ten thousand dollars ; his property in ready money, " furniture, tapes- try, and the like," at two himdred and fifty thousand dollars.^ When it is considered that, as compared with our times, these sums represent a revenue of a hundred thousand, and a capital of two millions and a half in addition, it may be safely asserted that the prelate had at least made a good beginning. Besides his regular income, moreover, he had handsome receipts from that simony which was reduced to a system, and which gave him a liberal profit, generally in the shape of an annuity, upon every benefice which he conferred. He was, how- ever, by no means satisfied. His appetite was as bound- less as the sea ; he was still a shameless mendicant of pecuniary favors and lucrative of&ces. Already, in 1552, the emperor had roundly rebuked his greediness. " As to what you say of getting no merced nor ayuda de 1 "Vive honoratamente— la puo fare, havendo tra I'entrata temporale chi se ritrova nelle Borgogna e quelle del vesoovado et altri benefitij piu di ^ seudi di entrata, e tra gioje, argento, tap- pezzerie eon altri mobili e denari contauti piu di ^f^ seudi, et 6 opinione d6 giuditiosi che riuscii-a Cardinale," etc.— Badovaro MS. 1559] HIS RICHES 309 costa," said lie, " 't is merced and ayuda de costa quite sufficient when one has fat benefices, pensions, and salaries, with which a man might manage to support himself." ^ The bishop, however, was not easily abashed, and he was, at the epoch which now occupies us, ear- nestly and successfully soliciting from Philip the lucra- tive abbey of St. Armand. Not that he would have ac- cepted this preferment "could the abbey have been annexed to any of the new bishoprics " j^ on the con- trary, he assured the king that "to carry out so holy a work as the erection of those new sees, he would will- ingly have contributed even out of his own miserable pittance."^ It not being considered expedient to con- fiscate the abbey to any partieidar bishop, Philip accord- ingly presented it to the prelate of Arras, together with a handsome sum of money in the shape of an ayuda de costa besides. The thrifty bishop, who foresaw the advent of troublous times in the Netherlands, however, took care, in the letters by which he sent his thanks, to instruct the king to secure the money upon crown prop- erty in Aragon, Naples, and SicUy, as matters in the provinces were beginning to look very precarious.* Such, at the commencement of the Duchess Margaret's administration, were the characters and the previous histories of the persons into whose hands the Netherlands were intrusted. None of them have been prejudged. We have contented ourselves with stating the facts with regard to all, up to the period at which we have arrived. 1 Groen v. Prinsterer, Archives, etc., i. 189*. 2 Papiers d'Etat, Ti. 31. 3 " . . . mas que de la miseria que yo tengo holgaria que se to- masse para eumplimento de tan sanota obra."— Ibid. * Ibid. 310 THE EISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1559 Their characters have been sketched, not according to subsequent developments, but as they appeared at the opening of this important epoch. The aspect of the country and its inhabitants offered many sharp contrasts and revealed many sources of future trouble. The aristocracy of the Netherlands was excessively extravagant, dissipated, and already considerably em- barrassed in circumstances. It had been the policy of the emperor and of Philip to confer high of&ces, civil, military, and diplomatic, upon the leading nobles, by which enormous expenses were entailed upon them, without any corresponding salaries. The case of Orange has been already alluded to, and there were many other nobles less able to afford the expense who had been indulged with these ruinous honors. During the war there had been, however, many chances of bettering broken fortunes. Victory brought immense prizes to the leading officers. The ransoms of so many illustrious prisoners as had graced the triumphs of St.-Quentin and Gravelines had been extremely profitable. These sources of wealth had now been cut off; yet, on the departure of the king from the Netherlands, the luxury increased instead of diminishing. "Instead of one court," said a contemporary, " you would have said that there were fifty." ^ Nothing could be more sumptuous than the modes of life in Brussels. The household of Orange has been already painted. That of Egmont was almost as magnificent. A rivalry in hospitality and in display began among the highest nobles, and extended to those less able to maintain themselves in the contest. During the war there had been the valiant emulation of 1 Pontus Payen MS. 1559] EifTRAVAGAi^Cte OP THE ARISTOCRACY 311 the battle-field ; gentlemen had vied with each other how best to illustrate an ancient name with deeds of desperate valor, to repair the fortunes of a ruined house with the spoils of war. They now sought to surpass each other in splendid extravagance. It was an eager competition who should build the stateliest palaces, have the greatest number of noble pages and gentlemen in waiting, the most gorgeous liveries, the most hospitable tables, the most scientific cooks. There was, also, much depravity as well as extravagance. The morals of high society were loose. Gaming was practised to a frightful extent. Drunkenness was a prevailing characteristic of the higher classes. Even the Prince of Orange himself, at this period, although never addicted to habitual excess, was extremely convivial in his tastes, tolerating scenes and companions not likely at a later day to find much favor in his sight. "We kept St. Martin's joyously," he wrote, at about this period, to his brother, " and in the most jovial company. Brederode was one day in such a state that I thought he would certainly die, but he has now got over it." ^ Count Brederode, soon after- ward to become so conspicuous in the early scenes of the revolt, was, in truth, most notorious for his per- formances in these banqueting scenes. He appeared to have vowed as uncompromising hostility to cold water as to the Inquisition, and always denounced both with the same fierce and ludicrous vehemence. Their con- stant connection with Germany at that period did not improve the sobriety of the Netherlands nobles. The aristocracy of that country, as is well known, were most " potent at potting." " When the German finds himself sober," said the bitter Badovaro, "he believes himself to 1 Archives et Correspondanoe, i. 185. 312 THE EISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1559 be ill." Grladly, since the peace, they had welcomed the opportunities affoi-ded for many a deep carouse with their Netherlands cousins. The approaching marriage of the Prince of Orange with the Saxon princess— an episode which will soon engage our attention— gave rise to tremendous orgies. Count Schwarzburg, the prince's brother-in-law, and one of the negotiators of the mar- riage, found many occasions to strengthen the bonds of harmony between the countries by indulgence of these common tastes. " I have had many princes and counts at my table," he wrote to Orange, " where a good deal more was drunk than eaten. The Ehinegrave's brother fell down dead after drinking too much malmsey; but we have had him balsamed and sent home to his family." ^ These disorders among the higher ranks were in reality so extensive as to justify the biting remark of the Ve- netian. "The gentlemen intoxicate themselves every day," said he, " and the ladies also, but much less than the men."^ His remarks as to the morality, in other respects, of both sexes were equally sweeping and not more complimentary. If these were the characteristics of the most distin- guished society, it may be supposed that they were reproduced with more or less intensity throughout all the more remote but concentric circles of life, as far as the seductive splendor of the court could radiate. The lesser nobles emulated the grandees, and vied with each other in splendid establishments, banquets, masquerades, and equipages. The natural consequences of such ex- travagance followed. Their estates were mortgaged, 1 Archives et Correspondance, i. 93. " ". . . ma nel 'here s'imbriacono ogni giorno, et le dcaine an- oora, ma molto meno degli nomiiu,".eto. 1559] BROKEN FORTUNES 313 deeply and more deeply ; then, after a few years, sold I to the merchants, or rich advocates and other gentlemen f of the robe, to whom they had been pledged. The more ' closely ruin stared the victims in the face, the more heedlessly did they plunge into excesses. " Such were the circumstances," moralizes a Cathohc writer, "to which, at an earlier period, the affairs of CatUiae, » Cethegus, Lentulus, and others of that faction had been reduced, when they undertook to overthrow the Roman republic." ^ Many of the nobles being thus embarrassed, and some even desperate, in their condition, it was thought that they were desirous of creating disturb- « ances in the commonwealth, that the payment of just debts might be avoided, that their mortgaged lands might be wrested by main force from the low-born indi- viduals who had become possessed of them, that, in particular, the rich abbey lands held by idle priests might be appropriated to the use of impoverished gentlemen who could turn them to so much better account.^ It is quite probable that interested motives such as these were not entirely inactive among a comparatively small class of gentlemen. The religious reformation in every land of Europe derived a portion of its strength from the opportunity it afforded to potentates and great nobles for helping themselves to church property. No doubt many Netherlanders thought that their fortunes might be improved at the expense of the monks, and for the bene- fit of religion. Even without apostasy from the mother Church, they looked with longing eyes on the wealth of her favored and indolent children. They thought that the king would do well to carve a round number of handsome military commanderies out of the abbey 1 Pontus Payen MS. ^ Ibid. 314 THE RISE OP THE DUTCH EEPUBLIC [1559 lands, whose possessors should be bound to military service after the ancient manner of fiefs, so that a splen- did cavalry, headed by the gentlemen of the country, should be ever ready to mount and ride at the royal pleasure, in place of a horde of lazy epicureans, telling beads and indulging themselves in luxurious ^'ice.l Such views were entertained, such language often held. These circumstances and sentiments had their influence among the causes which produced the great revolt now impending. Care should be taken, however, not to exaggerate that influence. It is a prodigious mistake to refer this great historical event to sources so insufflcient as the ambition of a few great nobles and the embarrassments of a larger number of needy gentle- men. The Netherlands revolt was not an aristocratic, but a popular, although certainly not a democratic, movement. It was a great episode— the longest, the darkest, the bloodiest, the most important episode in the history of the religious reformation in Europe. The nobles so conspicuous upon the surface at the out- break only drifted before a storm which they neither caused nor controlled. Even the most powerful and the most sagacious were tossed to and fro by the surge of great events, which, as they roUed more and more tumultuously around them, seemed to become both irre- sistible and unfathomable. For the state of the people was very different from the condition of the aristocracy. The period of martyr- 1 " . . . ne tenoient autres propos h. table que de reformer I'es- tat, ecolesiastique, signamment les riolies abbayes, seavoir vous convient, leur ostant les grands biens qui estoyent cause, si qu'ils disoyent, de leur mauvaise vie et les eriger en oroisades que I'on poldroit oonferer k ime infinite des pauvres gentilhommes, qui 1559] CONDITION OP THE PEOPLE 315 dom had lasted long, and was to last longer ; but there were symptoms that it might one day be succeeded by a more active stage of popular disease. The tumults of the Netherlands were long in ripening ; when the final outbreak came it would have been more philosophical to inquire, not why it had occurred, but how it could have been so long postponed. During the reign of Charles the sixteenth century had been advancing steadily in strength as the once omnipotent emperor lapsed into decrepitude. That extraordinary century had not dawned upon the earth only to increase the strength of absolutism and superstition. The new world had not been discovered, the ancient world recon- quered, the printing-press perfected, only that the In- quisition might reign undisturbed over the fairest portions of the earth, and chartered hypocrisy fatten upon its richest lands. It was impossible that the most energetic and quick-witted people of Europe should not feel sympathy with the great effort made by Christendom to shake off the incubus which had so long paralyzed her hands and brain. In the Netherlands, where the attachment to Rome had never been intense, where in the old times the bishops of Utrecht had been rather Ghibelline than Guelf, where all the earlier sects of dissenters— Waldenses, LoUards, Hussites— had found numerous converts and thousands of martyre, it was inevitable that there should be a response from the popular heart to the deeper agitation which now reached to the very core of Christendom. In those provinces, so seraient tenus de fairs service . . . au lieu d'ung tas de fakieans vivans k I'epicurienne, I'on auroit toujours une belle cavallerie & la main . . . au proffiet du Roy et soulagement du pays," etc.— Pontus Payen MS. 316 THE EISE OP THE DUTCH EEPtJBLlC [1559 industrious and energetic, the disgust was likely to be most easily awakened for a system under which so many friars battened in luxury upon the toils of others, con- tributing nothing to the taxation nor to the military defense of the country, exercising no productive avoca- tion except their trade in indulgences, and squandering in taverns and brothels the annual sums derived from their traffic in licenses to commit murder, incest, and every other crime known to humanity. The people were numerous, industrious, accustomed for centuries to a state of comparative civil freedom and to a lively foreign trade, by which their minds were saved from the stagnation of bigotry. It was natural that they should begin to generalize, and to pass from the concrete images presented them in the Flemish monasteries to the abstract character of Rome itself. The Flemish, above all their other qualities, were a commercial nation. Commerce was the mother of their freedom, so far as they had acquired it, in civil matters. It was struggling to give birth to a larger liberty, to freedom of conscience. The provinces were situated in the very heart of Europe. The blood of a world-wide traffic was daily coursing through the thousand arteries of that water-inwoven territory. There was a mutual exchange between the Netherlands and all the world, and ideas were as liberally interchanged as goods. Truth was imported as freely as less precious mer- chandise. The psalms of Marot were as current as the drugs of Molucca or the diamonds of Borneo. The prohibitory measures of a despotic government could not annihilate this intellectual trade, nor could bigotry devise an effective quarantine to exclude the religious 1559] ADVANCE THROUGH PERSECUTION 317 pest wMcli lurked in every bale of merchandise and was wafted on every breeze from east and west. The edicts of the emperor had been endured, but not accepted. The horrible persecution under which so many thousands had sunk had produced its inevitable result. Fertilized by all this innocent blood, the soil of the Netherlands became as a watered garden, in which liberty, civil and religious, was to flourish perennially. The scaffold had its daily victims, but did not make a single convert. The statistics of these crimes will per- haps never be accurately adjusted, nor wiU it be ascer- tained whether the famous estimate of Grrotius was an exaggerated or an inadequate calculation. Those who love horrible details may find ample material. The chronicles contain the lists of these obscure martyrs; but their names, hardly pronounced in their lifetime, sound barbarously in our ears, and will never ring through the trumpet of fame. Yet they were men who dared and suffered as much as men can dare and suffer in this world, and for the noblest cause which can in- spire humanity. Fanatics they certainly were not, if fanaticism consists in show, without corresponding sub- stance. For them all was terrible reality. The emperor and his edicts were realities, the ax, the stake, were realities, and the heroism with which men took each other by the hand and walked into the flames, or with which women sang a song of triumph while the grave- digger was shoveling the earth upon their living faces, was a reality also. Thus the people of the Netherlands were already pervaded, throughout the whole extent of the country, with the expanding spirit of religious reformation. It 318 THE BISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1559 was inevitable that sooner or later an explosion was to arrive. They were placed between two great countries where the new principles had already taken root. The Lutheranism of Germany and the Calvinism of Prance had each its share in producing the Netherland revolt, but a mistake is perhaps often made in estimating the relative proportion of these several influences. The Eef- ormation first entered the provinces, not through the Augsburg, but the Huguenot gate. The fiery field- preachers from the south of France first inflamed the excitable hearts of the kindred population of the south- western Netherlands. The Walloons were the first to rebel against and the first to reconcile themselves with papal Rome, exactly as their Celtic ancestors, fifteen centuries earlier, had been foremost in the revolt against imperial Rome, and precipitate in their sub- mission to her overshadowing power. The Batavians, slower to be moved, but more steadfast, retained the impulse which they received from the same source which was already agitating their "Welsh" compa- triots. There were already French preachers at Valen- ciennes and Tournay, to be followed, as we shall have occasion to see, by many others. Without undervaluing the influence of the German churches, and particularly of the garrison-preaching of the German military chap- lains in the Netherlands, it may be safely asserted that the early reformers of the provinces were mainly Hugue- nots in their belief. The Dutch Church became, accord- ingly, not Lutheran, but Calvinistic, and the founder of the commonwealth hardly ceased to be a nominal Cath- olic before he became an adherent to the same creed. In the meantime, it is more natural to regard the great movement, psychologically speaking, as a whole, 1559] PROGRESS OF THE REFORMATION 319 whether it revealed itseK in France, Germany, the Netherlands, England, or Scotland. The policy of governments, national character, individual interests, and other collateral circumstances, modified the result ; but the great cause was the same ; the source of all the movements was elemental, natural, and single. The Reformation in Germany had been adjourned for half a century by the Augsburg religious peace, just concluded. It was held in suspense in France through the Mach- iavellian policy which Catherine de' Medici had just adopted, and was for several years to prosecute, of balancing one party against the other, so as to neutralize aU power but her own. The great contest was accord- ingly transferred to the Netherlands, to be fought out for the rest of the century, while the whole of Christen- dom were to look anxiously for the result. From the east and from the west the clouds rolled away, leaving a comparatively bright and peaceful atmosphere, only that they might concentrate themselves with portentous blackness over the devoted soil of the Netherlands. In Germany, the princes, not the people, had conquered Rome, and to the princes, not the people, were secured the benefits of the victory— the spoils of churches, and the right to worship according to conscience. The people had the right to conform to their ruler's creed, or to depart from his land. Still, as a matter of fact, many of the princes being reformers, a large mass of the population had acquired the privilege for their own generation and that of their children to practise that religion which they actually approved. This was a fact, and a more comfortable one than the necessity of choos- ing between what they considered wicked idolatry and the stake— the only election left to their Netherland 320 THE EISE OP THE DUTCH EEPUBLIC [1559 brethren. In France the accidental splinter from Mont- gomery's lance had deferred the Huguenot massacre for a dozen years. During the period in which the queen regent was resolved to play her fast-and-loose policy, all the persuasions of PhUip and the arts of Alva were powerless to induce her to carry out the scheme which Henry had revealed to Orange in the forest of Vincennes. When the crime came at last, it was as blundering as it was bloody; at once premeditated and accidental; the isolated execution of an interregal conspiracy, existing for half a generation, yet exploding without concert ; a wholesale massacre, but a piecemeal plot. The aristocracy and the masses being thus, from a variety of causes, in this agitated and dangerous condi- tion, what were the measures of the government ? The edict of 1550 had been reenacted immediately after Philip's accession to sovereignty. It is necessary that the reader should be made acquainted with some of the leading provisions of this famous document, thus laid down above all the constitutions as the organic law of the land. A few plain facts, entirely without rhetori- cal varnish, will prove more impressive in this case than superfluous declamation. The American will judge whe- ther the wrongs inflicted by Laud and Charles upon his Puritan ancestors were the severest which a people has had to undergo, and whether the Dutch Republic does not track its source to the same high religious origin as that of our own commonwealth. "No one," said the edict,i "shall print, write, copy, keep, conceal, sell, buy, or give, in churches, streets, or other places, any book or writing made by Martin Luther, John Ecolampadius, Ulrich Zuinglius, Martin Bucer, 1 The text of tlie edict is given. \>j Bor, i. 7-12. 1559] EDICT OF 1550 321 Jolm Calvin, or other heretics reprobated by the Holy Chiirch ; . . . nor break or otherwise injure the images of the Holy Virgin or canonized saints ; . . • nor in his house hold conventicles or illegal gatherings, or be present at any such in which the adherents of the above- mentioned heretics teach, baptize, and form conspiracies against the Holy Church and the general welfare. . . . Moreover, we forbid," continues the edict, in the name of the sovereign, " all lay persons to converse or dispute concerning the Holy Scriptures, openly or secretly, espe- cially on any doubtful or difficult matters, or to read, teach, or expound the Scriptures, unless they have duly studied theology and been approved by some renowned university ; ... or to preach secretly or openly, or to entertain any of the opinions of the above-mentioned here- tics ; ... on pain, should any one be found to have contravened any of the points above mentioned, as per- turbators of our state and of the general quiet, to be punished in the following manner." And how were they to be punished? "What was the penalty inflicted upon the man or woman who owned a hymn-book, or who hazarded the opinion in private that Luther was not quite wrong in doubting the power of a monk to sell for money the license to commit murder or incest ; or upon the parent, not being a Roman Catholic doctor of divin- ity, who should read Christ's Sermon on the Mount to his children in his own parlor or shop? How were crimes like these to be visited upon the transgressor ? Was it by reprimand, fine, imprisonment, banishment, or by branding on the forehead, by the cropping of the ears or the slitting of nostrils, as was practised upon the Puritan fathers of New England for their noncon- formity ? It was by a sharper chastisement than any of VOL. I. —31 322 THE EISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1559 these methods. The Puritan fathers of the Dutch Re- public had to struggle against a darker doom. The edict went on to provide : " That such perturbators of the general quiet are to be executed, to wit : the men with the sword and the women to be buried alive, if they do not persist in their errors ; if they do persist in them, then they are to be executed with fire ; all their property in both cases being confiscated to the crown." Thus the clemency of the sovereign permitted the repentant heretic to be beheaded or buried alive, instead of being burned. The edict further provided against all misprision of heresy^ by making those who failed to betray the sus- pected liable to the same punishment as if suspected or convicted themselves. " We forbid," said the decree, " all persons to lodge, entertain, furnish with food, fire, or clothing, or otherwise to favor any one holden or notori- ously suspected of being a heretic ; ■ ■ ■ and any one failing to denounce any such we ordain shall be liable to the above-mentioned punishments." The edict went on to provide "that if any person, being not convicted of heresy or error, but greatly sus- pected thereof, and therefore condemned by the spiritual judge to abjure such heresy, or by the secular magistrate to make public fine and reparation, shall again become suspected or tainted with heresy, although it should not appear that he has contravened or violated any one of our above-mentioned commands, nevertheless, we do will and ordain that such person shall be considered as relapsed, and, as such, be punished ivith loss of life and property, without any hope of moderation or mitigation of the above-mentioned penalties." 1559] ITS LEADING PROVISIONS 323 Furthermore, it was decreed that "the spiritual judges, desiring to proceed against any one for the crime of heresy, shall request any of our sovereign courts or provincial councils to appoint any one of their college, or such other adjunct as the council shall select, to preside over the proceedings to be instituted against the suspected. All who know of any person tainted with heresy are required to denounce and give them up to all judges, of&cers of the bishops, or others having authority on the premises, on pain of being punished according to the pleasure of the judge. Likewise, all shall be obliged, who know of any place where such heretics keep themselves, to declare them to the author- ities, on pain of being held as accomplices, and punished as such heretics themselves would be if apprehended." In order to secure the greatest number of arrests by a direct appeal to the most ignoble but not the least powerful principle of human nature, it was ordained "that the informer, in case of conviction, should be en- titled to one half the property of the accused, if not more than one hundred pounds Flemish ; if more, then ten per cent, of aU such excess." Treachery to one's friends was encouraged by the provision " that if any man, being present at any secret conventicle, shall afterward come forward and betray his fellow-members of the congregation, he shall receive full pardon." In order that neither the good people of the Nether- lands nor the judges and inquisitors should delude themselves with the notion that these fanatic decrees were only intended to inspire terror, not for practical execution, the sovereign continued to ordain— "to the end that the judges and officers may have no reason, 324 THE EISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1559 under pretext that the penalties are too great and heavy and only devised to terrify delinquents, to punish them less severely than they deserve— that the culprits be really punished by the penalties above declared ; forbid- ding all judges to alter or moderate the penalties in any manner ; forbidding any one, of whatsoever condition, to aslc of us, or of any one having authority, to grant pardon, or to present any petition in favor of such heretics, exiles, or fugitives, on penalty of being declared forever incapable of civil and military of&ce, and of being arbi- trarily punished besides." Such were the leading provisions of this famous edict, originally promulgated in 1550 as a recapitulation and condensation of all the previous ordinances of the em- peror upon religious subjects. By its style and title it was a perpetual edict, and, according to one of its clauses, was to be published forever, once in every six months, in every city and village of the Netherlands. It had been promulgated at Augsburg, where the emperor was holding a diet, upon the 25th of September. Its severity had so appalled the Dowager Queen of Hungary that she had made a journey to Augsburg expressly to procure a mitigation of some of its provisions.^ The principal alteration which she was able to obtain of the emperor was, however, in the phraseology only. As a concession to popular prejudice, the words "spiritual judges" were substituted for "inquisitors" wherever that expression had occiirred in the original draft.^ The edict had been reenacted by the express advice of 1 Viglii Bpist. ad diversos, oxlviii. Brandt, Historie der Ee- formatie in en omtrent de Nederlanden (Amst. 1677), i. 163, b. iii. Grotii Ann., i. 17. 2 Brandt, Reformatie, ubi sup. Bor, i. 7-12. 1559] ITS EEENACTMENT 325 the Bishop of Arras, immediately on the accession of Philip. The prelate knew the value of the emperor's name; he may have thought, also, that it would be difiBcult to increase the sharpness of the ordinances. " I advised the king," says Granvelle, in a letter written a few years later, " to make no change in the placards, but to proclaim the text drawn up by the emperor, repub- lishing the whole as the king's edict, with express inser- tion of the phrase, ' Carolus,' etc. I recommended this lest men should calumniate his Majesty as wishing to introduce novelties in the matter of religion." ^ This edict, containing the provisions which have been laid before the reader, was now to be enforced with the utmost rigor; every official personage, from the stad- holders down, having received the most stringent in- structions to that effect, under Philip's own hand. This was the first gift of Philip and of Granvelle to the Netherlands ; of the monarch who said of himself that he had always, "from the beginning of his government, followed the path of clemency, according to his natural disposition, so well known to all the world " ; ^ of the prelate who said of himself " that he had ever combated the opinion that anything could be accomplished by terror, death, and violence." ^ During the period of the French and papal war it has been seen that the execution of these edicts had been permitted to slacken. It was now resumed with redoubled fury. Moreover, a new measure had in- creased the disaffection and dismay of the people, already sufficiently filled with apprehension. As an additional 1 Papiers d'fetat, ix. 478, 479. 2 Grroen v. Prinst., Archives, etc., ix. 46. 3 Archives, etc., i. 187*. 32G THE RISE OP THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1559 security for the supremacy of. the ancient religion, it had been thought desirable that the number of bishops should be increased. There were but four sees in the Netherlands, those of Arras, Cambray, Tournay, and Utrecht. That of Utrecht was within the archiepiscopate of Cologne ; the other three were within that of Rheims.^ It seemed proper that the prelates of the Netherlands should owe no extraprovincial allegiance. It was like- wise thought that three millions of souls required more than four spiritual superintendents. At any rate, what- ever might be the interest of the flocks, it was certain that those broad and fertile pastures would sustain more than the present number of shepherds. The wealth of the religious houses in the provinces was very great. The abbey of Afflighem alone had a revenue of fifty thou- sand florins, and there were many others scarcely inferior in wealth.2 But these institutions were comparatively independent both of king and pope. Electing their own superiors from time to time, in no wise desirous of any change by which their ease might be disturbed and their riches endangered, the honest friars were not likely to engage in any very vigorous crusade against heresy, nor, for the sake of introducing or strengthening Spanish institutions, which they knew to be abominated by the people, to take the risk of driving aU their disciples into revolt and apostasy. Comforting themselves with an Erasmian philosophy, which they thought best suited to the times, they were as little likely as the sage of Rot- terdam himself, would have been to make martyrs of themselves for the sake of extirpating Calvinism. The abbots and monks were, in political matters, very much under the influence of the great nobles, in whose com- 1 Wagenaer, vi. 62, 63. « Bor, i. 23. 1559] BULL OP THE BISHOPRICS 327 pany they occupied tlie benches of the upper house of the States-General. Dr. Francis Sonnius had been sent on a mission to the pope for the purpose of representing the necessity of an increase in the episcopal force of the Netherlands. Just as the king was taking his departure, the commis- sioner arrived, bringing with him the bull of Paul IV., dated May 18, 1559. This was afterward confirmed by that of Pius IV., in January of the following year.^ The document stated ''■ that " Paul IV., slave of slaves, wishing to provide for the welfare of the provinces and the eter- nal salvation of their inhabitants, had determined to plant in that fruitful field several new bishoprics. The enemy of mankind being abroad," said the buU, "in so many forms at that particular time, and the Netherlands, then under the sway of that beloved son of his Holiness, Philip the Catholic, being compassed about with heretic and schismatic nations, it was believed that the eternal welfare of the land was in great danger. At the period of the original establishment of cathedral churches, the provinces had been sparsely peopled ; they had now be- come filled to overflowing, so that the original ecclesi- astical arrangement did not sufQce. TAe harvest was plentiful, but the laborers were few." In consideration of these and other reasons, three archbishoprics were accordingly appointed. That of Mechlin was to be principal, under which were consti- tuted six bishoprics, those, namely, of Antwerp, Bois-le- Duc, Roermond, Ghent, Bruges, and Ypres. That of Cambray was second, with the four subordinate dio- ceses of Tournay, Arras, St.-Omer, and Namur. The 1 Bor, i. 24 sqq. 2 See the doeument in Bor, i. 24-26. 328 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH EEPUBLIC [1559 third archbishopric was that of Utrecht, with the five sees of Haarlem, Middelburg, Leeuwarden, Groningen, and Deventer.i The nomination to these important ofBees was granted to the king, subject to confirmation by the pope. More- over, it was ordained by the bull that "each bishop should appoint nine additional prebendaries, who were to assist him in the matter of the Inquisition throughout his bishopric, two of whom were themselves to be inquisitors." To sustain these two great measures, through which Philip hoped once and forever to extinguish the Nether- land heresy, it was considered desirable that the Spanish troops still remaining in the provinces should be kept there indefinitely.^ The force was not large, amounting hardly to four thousand men, but they were unscrupulous and admi- rably disciplined. As the entering wedge by which a military and ecclesiastical despotism was eventually to be forced into the very heart of the land, they were in- valuable. The moral effect to be hoped from the regu- lar presence of a Spanish standing army during a time of peace in the Netherlands could hardly be exaggerated. Philip was therefore determined to employ every argu- ment and subterfuge to detain the troops. 1 Bor, i. 24^26. Bentivoglio, i. 10. 2 Pontus Payen MS. CHAPTER II Agitation in the Netherlands— The ancient charters resorted to as barriers against the measures of government — " Joyous entrance " of Brabant— Constitution of Holland— Growing unpopularity of Anthony Perrenot, Archbishop of Mechlin- Opposition to the new bishoprics by Orange, Egmont, and other influential nobles- Fury of the people at the continued presence of the foreign sol- diery — Orange resigns the command of the legion— The troops recalled- Philip's personal attention to the details of persecution —Perrenot becomes Cardinal de Grranvelle— All the jwwer of government in his hands — His increasing unpopularity— Ani- mosity and violence of Egmont toward the cardinal — Relations between Orange and Granvelle— Ancient friendship gradually changing to enmity— Renewal of the magistracy at Antwerp- Quarrel between the prince and cardinal— Joint letter of Orange and Egmont to the king — Answer of the king — Indignation of Philip against Count Horn — Secret correspondence between the king and cardinal — Remonstrances against the new bishoprics- Philip's private financial statements— Penury of the exchequer in Spain and in the provinces— Plan for debasing the coin— Marriage of William the Silent with the Princess of Lorraine circumvented — Negotiations for his matrimonial alliance with Princess Anna of Saxony— Correspondence between Granvelle and Philip upon the subject — Opposition of Landgrave Philip and of Philip II.— Char- acter and conduct of Elector Augustus— Mission of Count Schwarz- burg— Communications of Orange to the king and to Duchess Margaret — Characteristic letter of Philip — Artful conduct of Gran- velle and of the regent— Visit of Orange to Dresden— Proposed "note" of Elector Augustus— Refusal of the prince— Protest of the landgrave against the marriage— Preparations for the wedding at Leipsic— Notarial instrument drawn up on tJie marriage day— 329 330 THE RISE OP THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1560 Wedding ceremonies and festivities— Entrance of Granvelle into Mechlin as archbishop — Compromise in Brabant between the ab- beys and bishops. The years 1560 and 1561 were mainly occupied with the agitation and dismay produced by the causes set forth in the preceding chapter. Against the arbitrary policy embodied in the edicts, the new bishoprics, and the foreign soldiery, the Nether- landers appealed to their ancient constitutions. These charters were called handvests in the vernacular Dutch and Flemish, because the sovereign made them fast with his hand. As already stated, Philip had made them faster than any of the princes of his house had ever done, so far as oath and signature could accomplish that purpose, both as hereditary prince in 1549 and as monarch in 1555. The reasons for the extensive and unconditional manner in which he swore to support the provincial charters have been already indicated. Of these constitutions, that of Brabant, known by the title of the joyeuse entr de, hlyde inkomst, or blithe en- trance, furnished the most decisive barrier against the present wholesale tyranny. First and foremost, the " joyous entry " provided " that the prince of the land should not elevate the clerical state higher than of old has been customary and by former princes settled ; un- less by consent of the other two estates, the nobility and the cities." ^ Again, " the prince can prosecute no one of his sub- jects, nor any foreign resident, civilly or criminally, 1 Die Blyde Inkomste dem Hertoehdom v. Brabant, bij FhUippus, Conink v. Hispanien solennlick gesohworen. Gedruckt tot Cuelen, 1564. Compare Bor, i. 19 ; Meteren, i. 28. 1560] VIOLATION 01* THE CONSTITUTION 331 except in the ordinary and open courts of justice in the province, where the accused may answer and defend himself with the help of advocates." ^ Further, " the prince shaU appoint no foreigners to office in Brabant." ^ Lastly, "should the prince, by force or otherwise, violate any of these privileges, the inhabitants of Bra- bant, after regular protest entered, are discharged of their oaths of allegiance, and, as free, independent, and unbound people, may conduct themselves exactly as seems to them best." ^ Such were the leading features, so far as they re- garded the points now at issue, of that famous constitu- tion which was so highly esteemed in the Netherlands that mothers came to the province in order to give birth to their children, who might thus enjoy, as a birthright, the privileges of Brabant. Yet the charters of the other provinces ought to have been as effective against the arbitrary course of the government.* "No foreigner," said the constitution of HoUand, "is eligible as coun- cilor, financier, magistrate, or member of a court. Justice can be administered only by the ordinary tribu- nals and magistrates. The ancient laws and customs shall remain inviolable. Should the prince infringe any of these provisions, no one is bound to obey him." ^ These provisions from the Brabant and Holland charters are only cited as illustrative of the general spirit of the provincial constitutions. Nearly all the provinces possessed privileges equally ample, duly 1 See note on p. 330. 2 ibid. 3 Ibid. Compare Apologie d'Orange, 69, 70. * Bor, ubi sup. Meteren, i. 28, 29. 5 Ibid. Ibid. 332 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1560 signed and sealed. So far as ink and sealing-wax could defend a land against sword and fire, the Netherlands were impregnable against the edicts and the renewed episcopal Inquisition. Unfortunately, all history shows how feeble are barriers of paper or lambskin, even when hallowed with a monarch's oath, against the torrent of regal and ecclesiastical absolutism. It was on the re- ception in the provinces of the new and confirmatory bull concerning the bishoprics, issued in January, 1560, that the measure became known and the dissatisfaction manifest. The discontent was inevitable and universal. The ecclesiastical establishment, which was not to be enlarged or elevated but by consent of the estates, was suddenly expanded into three archiepiscopates and fifteen bishoprics. The administration of justice, which was only allowed in free and local courts, distinct for each province, was to be placed, so far as regarded the most important of human interests, in the hands of bishops and their creatures, many of them foreigners and most of them monks. The lives and property of the whole population were to be at the mercy of these utterly irresponsible conclaves. AH classes were out- raged. The nobles were offended because ecclesiastics, perhaps foreign ecclesiastics, were to be empowered to sit in the provincial estates and to control their proceed- ings in place of easy, indolent, ignorant abbots and friars, who had generally accepted the infiuenee of the great seigniors.^ The priests were enraged because the reli- gious houses were thus taken out of their control and confiscated to a bench of bishops, usurping the places of those superiors who had formally been elected by and among themselves. The people were alarmed because 1 Papiers d'Etat, v. 309. 1560] ALL CLASSES ALARMED 333 the monasteries, although not respected nor popular, were at least charitable 1 and without ambition to exer- cise ecclesiastical cruelty ; while, on the other hand, by the new episcopal arrangements, a force of thirty new inquisitors was added to the apparatus for enforcing orthodoxy already established. The odium of the mea- sure was placed upon the head of that churchman already appointed Archbishop of Mechlin, and soon to be known as Cardinal Granvelle. From this time forth, this prelate began to be regarded with a daily increasing aversion. He was looked upon as the incarnation of aU the odious measures which had been devised; as the source of that policy of absolutism which revealed itself more and more rapidly after the king's departure from the country. It was for this reason that so much stress was laid by popular clamor upon the clause prohibiting fox*eigners from of&ce. Granvelle was a Burgundian; his father had passed most of his active life in Spain, while both he and his more distinguished son were identified in the general mind with Spanish politics. To this prelate, then, were ascribed the edicts, the new bishoprics, and the continued presence of the foreign troops. The people were right as regarded the first accusation. They were mistaken as to the other charges. The king had not consulted Anthony Perrenot with regard to the creation of the new bishoprics. The mear sure, which had been successively contemplated by Philip the Good, by Charles the Bold, and by the Emperor Charles, had now been carried out by Philip II., without the knowledge of the new Archbishop of Mechlin. The king had for once been able to deceive the astuteness of the prelate, and had concealed from 1 Hoofd, i. 29, 30. Bor, i. 19. Meteren, i. 28. 334 THE RISE OP THE DUTCH BEPUBLIC [1560 him the intended arrangement until the arrival of Son- nius with the bulls. Granvelle gave the reasons for this mystery with much simplicity. "His Majesty knew," he said, " that I should oppose it, as it was more honor- able and lucrative to be one of four than one of eigh- teen." 1 In fact, according to his own statement, he lost money by becoming Archbishop of Mechlin and ceasing to be Bishop of Arras.^ For these reasons he decUned, more than once, the proffered dignity, and at last only accepted it from fear of giving offense to the king, and after having secured compensation for his alleged losses. In the same letter (of 29th May, 1560) in which he thanked Philip for conferring upon him the rich abbey of St. Armand, which he had solicited, in addition to the merced in ready money, concerning the safe in- vestment of which he had already sent directions, he observed that he was now willing to accept the arch- bishopric of Mechlin. Notwithstanding the odium at- tached to the measure, notwithstanding his feeble powers, and notwithstanding that, during the life of the Bishop of Tournay, who was then in rude health, he could only receive three thousand ducats of the revenue, giving up Arras and gaining nothing in Mechlin— not- withstanding all this, and a thousand other things 1 " . . . et I'on a voulu persuader ancuns que je fusse auteur de ceste nouvellit^ . . . et par sa lettre sa M. me dit que I'on me faisoit grand tort, confessant que en ceste negotiation elle s'estoit cach6 de moy . . . d'aultant que les aultres et trois evesques que nous estions lors et moy le oontredisions, eomme il estoit vray- semblable, pour que il est plus honorable estre un de quatre que ung de dix-sept."— Memoir of Granvelle in Groen v. Prinst., Ar- chives, etc., i. 76. See also Archives, etc., viii. 54. 2 " . . . et quant au prouffit je feroy apparoir qu'an revenu que je y ay leq^n perte notable."— Ibi4, 1560] GRANVELLE'S COURSE 335 besides, he assured his Majesty that, " since the royal desire was so strong that he should accept, he would consider nothing so difficult that he would not at least attempt it." ^ Having made up his mind to take the see and support the new arrangements, he was resolved that his profits should be as large as possible. We have seen how he had already been enabled to indemnify himself. We shall find him soon afterward importuning the king for the abbey of Afflighem, the enormous rev- enue of which the prelate thought would make another handsome addition to the rewards of his sacrifices. At the same time, he was most anxious that the people, and particularly the great nobles, should not ascribe the new establishment to him, as they persisted in doing. " They say that the episcopates were devised to gratify my am- bition," he wrote to Philip two years later; "whereas your Majesty knows how steadily I refused the see of Mechlin, and that I only accepted it in order not to Uve in idleness, doing nothing for God and your Majesty." ^ He therefore instructed Philip, on several occasions, to make it known to the government of the regent, to the seigniors, and to the country generally, that the measure had been arranged without his knowledge; that the Marquis Berghen had known of it first, and that the prelate had, in truth, been kept in the dark on the sub- ject until the arrival of Sonnius with the buUs. The kiQg, always docile to his minister, accordingly wrote to the duchess the statements required, in almost the exact phraseology suggested, taking pains to repeat the dec- larations on several occasions, both by letter and by word of mouth, to many infiuential persons.' 1 Papiers d'fetat, vi. 96-98. 2 Papiers d'Etat, vi. 552-562. s Correspondance de Phil. II., t. i. 207. 336 THE EISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1560 The people, however, persisted in identifyiag the bishop with the scheme. They saw that he was the head of the new institutions, that he was to receive the lion's share of the confiscated abbeys, and that he was foremost in defending and carrying through the measure in spite of all opposition. That opposition waxed daily more bitter, till the cardinal, notwithstand- ing that he characterized the arrangement to the king as " a holy work," ^ and warmly assured Secretary Perez that he would contribute his fortune, his blood, and his life to its success,^ was yet obliged to exclaim in the bitterness of his spirit, " Would to God that the erection of these new sees had never been thought of ! Amen ! Amen ! " ' Foremost in resistance was the Prince of Orange. Although a Catholic, he had no relish for the horrible persecution which had been determined upon. The new bishoprics he characterized afterward as parts " of one grand scheme for establishing the cruel Inquisition of Spain ; the said bishops to serve as inquisitors, burners of bodies, and tyrants of conscience, two prebendaries in each see being actually constituted inquisitors."* For this reason he omitted no remonstrance on the sub- ject to the duchess, to Granvelle, and by direct letters to the king. His efforts were seconded by Egmont, Berg- hen, and other influential nobles. Even Berlaymont was at first disposed to side with the opposition, but upon the argument used by the duchess, that the bishop- i " Tan sancta obra."— Papiers d'fitat, vi. 3. '^ Correspondance de Philippe II., i. 189. ' Papiers d'Etat, vi. 341. "... plugilra h Dios que jamas se huvierapensado en esta erection destasyglesias. Amen! Amen!" 4 Apologie, 92, 93. 1560] ORANGE LEADS THE OPPOSITION 337 rics and prebends would furnisli excellent places for his sons and other members of the aristocracy, he began warmly to support the measure.^ Most of the labor, however, and all the odium of the business fell upon the bishop's shoulders. There was still a large fund of loyalty left in the popular mind, which not even forty years of the emperor's dominion had consumed, and which Philip was destined to draw upon as prodigally as if the treasure had been inexhaustible. For these reasons it still seemed most decorous to load all the hatred upon the minister's back, and to retain the con- solatory formula that Philip was a prince "clement, benign, and debonair." The bishop, true to his habitual conviction that words, with the people, are much more important than things, was disposed to have the word " inquisitor " taken out of the text of the new decree. He was anxious at this juncture, to make things pleasant, and he saw no reason why men should be unnecessarily startled. If the In- quisition could be practised and the heretics burned, he was in favor of its being done comfortably. The word "inquisitor" was unpopular, almost indecent. It was better to suppress the term and retain the thing. " People are afraid to speak of the new bishoprics," he wrote to Perez, "on account of the clause providing that of nine canons one shaU be inquisitor. Hence people fear the Spanish Inquisition."^ He therefore had written to the king to suggest instead that the canons or graduates should be obliged to assist the bishop according as he might command. Those terms would suffice, because, although not expressly stated, it 1 Papiers d'Etat, vi. 332. 2 Correspondanee de Philippe 11., i. 200. VOL. I. —22 338 THE EISB OF THE DUTCH EEPUBLIC [1560 was clear that the bishop was an ordinary inquisitor; hut it was necessary to expunge words that gave offense.^ It was difficult, however, with all the bishop's elo- quence and dexterity, to construct an agreeable inquisi- tion. The people did not like it in any shape, and there were indications, not to be mistaken, that one day there would be a storm which it would be beyond human power to assuage. At present the people directed their indignation only upon a part of the machinery devised for their oppression. The Spanish troops were con- sidered as a portion of the apparatus by which the new bishoprics and the edicts were to be forced into execu- tion. Moreover, men were weary of the insolence and the pillage which these mercenaries had so long exer- cised in the land. "When the king had been first re- quested to withdraw them, we have seen that he had burst into a violent passion. He had afterward dis- sembled. Promising, at last, that they should all be sent from the country within three or four months after his departure, he had determined to use every artifice to detain them in the provinces. He had suc- ceeded, by various subterfuges, in keeping them there fourteen months ; but it was at last evident that their presence would no longer be tolerated. Toward the close of 1560 they were quartered in Walcheren and BriU. The Zealanders, however, had become so exas- perated by their presence that they resolutely refused to lay a single hand upon the dikes, which, as usual at that season, required great repairs.^ Rather than see 1 " Pues aunque no ae diga, olaro es que el obispo es inquisidor ordmarlo, sino que es menester quitar las palabras que ofenden."— Correspondanoe de Philippe H., i. 200. 2 Bor, i. 18-22. Strada, iii. 87. 1560] HE RESIGNS AS COMMANDER 339 their native soil profaned any longer by these hated foreign mercenaries, they would see it sunk forever in the ocean. They swore to perish— men, women, and children together— in the waves rather than endure longer the outrages which the soldiery daily inflicted. Such was the temper of the Zealanders that it was not thought wise to trifle with their irritation. The bishop felt that it was no longer practicable to detain the troops, and that all the pretexts devised by Philip and his gov- ernment had become ineffectual. In a session of the state council, held on the 25th October, 1560,^ he repre- sented in the strongest terms to the regent the necessity' for the final departure of the troops. Viglius, who knew the character of his countrymen, strenuously seconded the proposal. Orange briefly but firmly expressed the same opinion, declining any longer to serve as com- mander of the legion, an office which, in conjunction with Egmont, he had accepted provisionally, with the best of motives, and on the pledge of Philip that the soldiers should be withdrawn. The duchess urged that the order should at least be deferred until the arrival of Count Egmont, then in Spain, but the proposition was unanimously negatived.^ Letters were accordingly written, in the name of the regent, to the king. It was stated that the measure could no longer be delayed, that the provinces all agreed in this point ; that so long as the foreigners remained not a stiver should be paid into the treasury ; that if they had once set sail, the necessary amount for their arrears would be furnished to the government ; but that if they should return it was probable that they would be resisted 1 See a prods verbal of this session in Gaohard, Documents In- ^dits, i. 330, 331. ^ ibid. 340 THE KISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1560 by the inhabitants with main force, and that they would only be allowed to enter the cities through a breach in their wall.^ It was urged, moreover, that three or four thousand Spaniards would not be sufficient to coerce aU the provinces, and that there was not money enough in the royal exchequer to pay the wages of a single com- pany of the troops.^ " It cuts me to the heart," wrote the bishop to PhUip, " to see the Spanish infantry leave us ; but go they must. Would to God that we could de- vise any pretext, as your Majesty desires, under which to keep them here ! We have tried aU means humanly possible for retaining them, but I see no way to do it without putting the provinces in manifest danger of sudden revolt." ^ Fortunately for the dignity of the government, or for the repose of the country, a respectable motive was found for employing the legion elsewhere. The important loss which Spain had recently met with in the capture of Jerba made a reinforcement necessary in the army en- gaged in the southern service. Thus the disaster in Barbary at last relieved the Netherlands of the pest which had aflicted them so long.* For a brief breathing- space the country was cleared of foreign mercenaries. 1 Archives et Correspondance, i. 62. 2 Meteren, i. 24. Bor, i. 18-22. Strada, iii. 87-89. 3 " En el alma siento ver partir la inf anteria Espanola."— Papiers d'fitat, vi. 25. " Conf eri! con su Alt. sobre el negooio de la quedada aqui de los Espafioles, y se han intendado todas las vias humanamente possi- biles, mas enfin no veo forma ny camino que, sin poner estos estados en manifiesto peligro de subita rebuelta, se puede diferir la execu- cion de su yda, si el tiempo lo oonsiente."— Groen v. Prinst., Ar- chives, etc., i. 61. * Meteren, i. 24. Bor, i. 18-22. Strada, iii. 87-89. 1560] THE INQUISITOR-KING 341 The growing unpopularity of the royal government, still typified, however, in the increasing hatred enter- tained for the bishop, was not materially diminished by the departure of the Spaniards. The edicts and the bishoprics were stiU there, even if the soldiers were gone. The churchman worked faithfully to accomplish his master's business. Philip, on his side, was indus- trious to bring about the consummation of his measures. Ever occupied with details, the monarch, from his palace in Spain, sent frequent informations against the humblest individuals in the Netherlands. It is curious to observe the minute reticulations of tyranny which he had begun already to spin about a whole people, while, cold, venom- ous, and patient, he watched his victims from the center of his web. He forwarded particular details to the duchess and cardinal concerning a variety of men and women, sending their names, ages, personal appearance, occu- pations, and residence, together with directions for their immediate immolation.^ Even the inquisitors of Seville were set to work to increase, by means of their branches or agencies in the provinces, the royal information on this all-important subject. "There are but few of us left in the world," he moralized in a letter to the bishop, 1 Strada, iv. 142: "... gubernatrieem doceret rationem hrereticos intercipiendi ; eormn tanquam vestigia et oubilia ipse monstraret : etiam indices (quos habeo regiis Utteris indusos) ea dili- gentia confectos, ita cujusque conditione, vicinia, mtate, statura ad ungiiem explieatis." The Jesuit can hardly find words strong enough to express his admiration for the diUgenee thus displayed by the king: "ut miro profeeto sit," he continues, "prinoipem in tarn multas distractum diversumque Eegnorum ouras, huic rei quasi per otium vacasse: inquirendisque liominibus plerumq. obscuris, solUci- tudine etiam in privato cive admiranda eogitationem manumque flexisse." Compare Hoofd, i. 38. 342 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1560 " wlio care for religion. 'T is necessary, therefore, for us to take the greater heed for Christianity. We must lose oiu' all, if need be, in order to do our duty ; in fine," added he, with his usual tautology, " it is right that a man should do his duty." ^ GranveUe— as he must now be called, for his elevation to the cardinalship will be immediately alluded to — wrote to assure the king that every pains would be taken to ferret out and execute the individuals complained of .^ He bewailed, however, the want of heartiness on the part of the Netherland inquisitors and judges. " I find," said he, " that aU judicial oflcers go into the matter of executing the edicts with reluctance, which I believe is caused by their fear of displeasing the populace. When they do act they do it but languidly, and when these matters are not taken in hand with the necessary liveliness, the fruit desired is not gathered. We do not fail to exhort and to command them to do their work." ^ He added that Viglius and Berlaymont displayed laud- able zeal, but that he could not say as much for the council of Brabant. Those councilors "were forever prating," said he, " of the constitutional rights of then- province, and deserved much less commendation." * The popularity of the churchman, not increased by these desperate exertions to force an inhuman policy upon an unfortunate nation, received likewise no addi- 1 "... y quan pocos ay ya en el mundo que ouren della reli- gion y assi los poeos que quedamos es menester que tengamos mas ouydado de la Christiandad y si f uere menester lo perdamos todo por hazer en esto lo que devemos ; pero en fin es tien que hombre haga lo que deve."— Papiers d'fitat, vi. 149. 2 Ibid., xi. 208-210. 3 Ibid. * "Con alegar k cada passo su joyeuse entree."— Ibid. 1561] PEEEENOT MADE CARDINAL 343 tion from his new elevation in rank. During the latter part of the year 1560, Margaret of Parma, who still en- tertained a profound admiration of the prelate, and had not yet begun to chafe under his smooth but imperious dominion, had been busy in preparing for him a delight- ful surprise. Without either his knowledge or that of the king, she had corresponded with the pope, and suc- ceeded in obtaining, as a personal favor to herself, the cardinal's hat for Anthony Perrenot.^ In February, 1561, Cardinal Borromeo wrote to announce that the coveted dignity had been bestowed.^ The duchess has- tened, with joyous alacrity, to communicate the intelli- gence to the bishop, but was extremely hurt to find that he steadily refused to assume his new dignity until he had written to the king to announce the appointment, and to ask his permission to accept the honor.^ The duchess, justly wounded at his refusal to accept from her hands the favor which she, and she only, had ob- tained for him, endeavored in vain to overcome his pertinacity. She represented that although Philip was not aware of the application or the appointment, he was certain to regard it as an agreeable surprise.* She urged, moreover, that his temporary refusal would be misconstrued at Rome, where it would certainly excite ridicule, and very possibly give offense in the highest quarter.^ The bishop was inexorable. He feared, says his panegyrist, that he might one day be on worse terms than at present with the duchess, and that then she 1 Strada, iii. 92. Dom I'Evesque, M^moires, i. 256-264. 2 Papiers d'etat, vi. 296, 297. 3 Strada, iii. 93. Dom I'Evesque, i. 258. * Ibid., ibid., ubi sup. 8 Dom I'Evesque, i. 258. 344 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1561 might reproach him with her former benefits.^ He feared also that the king might, in consequence of the step, not look with satisfaction upon him at some future period, when he might stand in need of his favors.^ He wrote, accordingly, a most characteristic letter to Philip, in which he informed him that he had been honored with the cardinal's hat. He observed that many persons were already congratulating him, but that, be- fore he made any demonstration of accepting or refusing, he waited for his Majesty's orders: upon his will he wished ever to depend. He also had the coolness, under the circumstances, to express his conviction that "it was his Majesty who had secretly procured this favor from his Holiness." ' The king received the information very graciously, observing in reply that although he had never made any suggestion of the kind, he had " often thought upon the subject."* The royal command was of course at once transmitted that the dignity should be accepted. By special favor, moreover, the pope dispensed the new cardinal from the duty of going to Rome in person, and despatched his chamberlain, Theophilus Priso,to Brussels with the red hat and tabard.^ The prelate, having thus reached the dignity to which he had long aspired, did not grow more humble in his deportment, or less zealous in the work through which he had already gained so much wealth and preferment. His conduct with regard to the edicts and bishoprics had already brought him into relations which were far 1 Dom I'Evesqtie, i. 258. 2 Ibid. 3 Papiers d'Etat, vi. 296, 297. « Dom I'Evesque, i. 256-264. Papiers d'Etat, vi. 302, 303. 5 Dom I'Evesque- 1561] GEANVELLE'S GEOWINa INSOLENCE 345 from amicable with his colleagues in the councU. More and more he began to take the control of affairs into his own hand. The consulta, or secret committee of the state council, constituted the real government of the country. Here the most important affairs were decided upon without the concurrence of the other seigniors, Orange, Egmont, and Glayon, who, at the same time, were held responsible for the action of government. The cardinal was smooth in manner, plausible of speech, generally even-tempered, but he was overbearing and blandly insolent. Accustomed to control royal person- ages under the garb of extreme obsequiousness, he be- gan, in his intercourse with those of less exalted rank,i to omit a portion of the subserviency while claiming a stUl more undisguised authority. To nobles like Eg- mont and Orange, who looked down upon the son of Nicholas Perrenot and Nichola Bonvalot as a person immeasurably beneath themselves in the social hier- archy, this conduct was sufficiently irritating. The cardinal, placed as far above Philip, and even Mar- . garet, in mental power as he was beneath them in 1 worldly station, found it comparatively easy to deal with them amicably. With such a man as Egmont it was\ impossible for the churchman to maintain friendly rela- \ tions. The count, who, notwithstanding his romantic ' appearance, his brilliant exploits, and his interesting destiny, was but a commonplace character, soon con- / ceived a mortal aversion to Granvelle. A rude soldier, entertaining no respect for science or letters, ignorant and overbearing, he was not the man to submit to the airs of superiority which pierced daily more and more decidedly through the conventional exterior of the car- dinal. Granvelle, on the other hand, entertained a 346 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1561 gentle contempt for Bgmont, which manifested itself in aU his private letters to the king, and was sufficiently obvious in his deportment. There had also been distinct causes of animosity between them. The governorship of Hesdin having become vacant, Egmont, backed by Orange and other nobles, had demanded it for the Count de Roeulx, a gentleman of the Croy family, who, as well as his father, had rendered many important services to the crown.i The appointment was, however, be- stowed, through Grranvelle's influence, upon the Seigneur d'Helfault,^ a gentleman of mediocre station and char- acter, who was thought to possess no claims whatever to the office. Egmont, moreover, desired the abbey of TruUe for a poor relation of his own ; but the cardinal, to whom nothing in this way ever came amiss, had already obtained the king's permission to appropriate the abbey to himself.* Egmont was now furious against the prelate, and omitted no opportunity of expressing his aversion, both in his presence and behind his back. On one occasion, at least, his wrath exploded in some- thing more than words. Exasperated by Granvelle's polished insolence in reply to his own violent language, he drew his dagger upon him in the presence of the regent herself, "and," says a contemporary, "would certainly have sent the cardinal into the next world had he not been forcibly restrained by the Prince of Orange and other persons present, who warmly represented to him that such griefs were to be settled by deliberate advice, not by choler." * At the same time, while scenes 1 Pontus Payen MS. 2 Ibid. ' Dom I'Evesque, M^moires, i. 231. * Pontus Payen MS. Van der Eaer alludes to but discredits a similar story, according to which Egmont gave the cardinal pub- 1561] GRANVELLE'S RELATIONS WITH ORANGE 347 like these were occurring in the very bosom of the state council, Granvelle, in his confidential letters to Secretary- Perez, asserted warmly that all reports of a want of harmony between himself and the other seigniors and councilors were false, and that the best relations existed among them all. It was not his intention, before it should be necessary, to let the king doubt his ability to govern the council according to the secret commission with which he had been invested. His relations with Orange were longer in changing from friendship to open hostility. In the prince the cardinal met his match. He found himself confronted by an intellect as subtle, an experience as fertile in expedients, a temper as even, and a disposition some- times as haughty as his own. He never affected to undervalue the mind of Orange. " 'T is a man of pro- found genius, vast ambition— dangerous, acute, politic," he wrote to the king at a very early period. The original relations between himself and the prince had been very amicable. It hardly needed the prelate's great pene- tration to be aware that the friendship of so exalted a personage as the youthful heir to the principality of Orange and to the vast possessions of the ChSlons- Nassau house in Burgundy and the Netherlands would be advantageous to the ambitious son of the Burgundian councilor Granvelle. The young man was the favorite of the emperor from boyhood ; his high rank and his remarkable talents marked him indisputably for one of the foremost men of the coming reign. Therefore it was politic in Perrenot to seize every opportunity of liely a box on the ear : "ut vulgi sermonibus diu fama valuerit, quee Cardinalem ab Egmondane alapl. pereussum mentiretur."— i. 180, 181, De Initiis Turn. Belg. 348 THE EISE OP THE DUTCH EEPUBLIC [1561 making himself useful to the prince. He busied him- self with securing, so far as it might be necessary to secure, the succession of William to his cousin's prin- cipality. It seems somewhat ludicrous for a merit to be made, not only for Grranvelle but for the emperor, that the prince should have been allowed to take an inheri- tancewhich the will of Ren6deNassau most unequivocally conferred, and which no living creature disputed.^ Yet, because some of the crown lawyers had propounded the dogma that " the son of a heretic ought not to succeed," it was gravely stated as an immense act of clemency upon the part of Charles V. that he had not confiscated the whole of the young prince's heritage. In return Granvelle's brother Jerome had obtained the governor- ship of the youth, upon whose majority he had received an honorable military appointment from his attached pupil. The prelate had afterward recommended the marriage with the Count de Buren's heiress, and had used his influence with the emperor to overcome certain objections entertained by Charles that the prince, by this great accession of wealth, might be growing too powerful.^ On the other hand, there were always many poor relations and dependents of Granvelle, eager to be benefited by Orange's patronage, who lived in the prince's household or received handsome appointments from his generosity.^ Thus there had been great inti- macy, founded upon various benefits mutually conferred ; 1 Apologie d'Orange, 15-20. 2 Pontus Payen MS. 3 ". . . vous eussiez veil lors a sa maison un Abbfi de Saverney frere dudt. Cardinal le servir de maistre d'hotel, xlr Bordet son cousin, son grand ecuyer autre une infinite de communications secretes et familieres."— Ibid. 1561] GKANVBLLE'8 RELATIONS WITH ORANGE 349 for it could hardly be asserted that the debt of friend- ship was wholly upon one side. When Orange arrived in Brussels from a journey, he would go to the bishop's before alighting at his own house.^ When the churchman visited the prince, he entered his bedchamber without ceremony before he had risen ; for it was William's custom through life to receive intimate acquaintances, and even to attend to important negotiations of state, while still iu bed. The show of this intimacy had lasted longer than its substance. Granvelle was the most politic of men, and the prince had not served his apprenticeship at the court of Charles V. to lay himself bare prematurely to the criticism or the animosity of the cardinal with the reck- lessness of Horn and Bgmont. An explosion came at last, however, and very soon after an exceedingly ami- cable correspondence between the two upon the subject of an edict of rehgious amnesty which Orange was \ preparing for his principality, and which Granvelle had recommended him not to make too lenient.^ A few weeks after this, the Antwerp magistracy was to be renewed. The prince, as hereditary burgrave of that/ city, was entitled to a large share of the appointing power in these political arrangements, which at the moment were of great importance. The citizens of Antwerp were in a state of excitement on the subject of the new bishops. They openly and in the event successfully resisted the installation of the new prelate for whom their city had been constituted a diocese. The prince was known to be opposed to the measure, and to the whole system of ecclesiastical persecution. 1 Hoofd, i. 21, 22. 2 Correspondanoe de Guill. le Tacit., ii. 15-22. 350 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPimLIC [1561 When the nominations for the new magistracy came before the regent, she disposed of the whole matter in /the secret constdta, without the knowledge and in a manner opposed to the views of Orange. He was then furnished with a list of the new magistrates, and was informed that he had been selected as commissioner i along with Count Aremberg to see that the appoint- ments were carried into effect. The indignation of the prince was extreme. He had already taken offense at some insolent expressions upon this topic which the cardinal had permitted himself. He now sent back the commission to the duchess, adding, it was said, that he was not her lackey, and that she might send some one else with her errands. The words were repeated in the state council. There was a violent altercation, Orange vehemently resenting his appointment merely to carry out decisions in which he claimed an original voice. His ancestors, he said, had often changed the whole of the Antwerp magistracy by their own authority. It was a little too much that this matter, as well as every other state affair, should be controlled by the secret committee of which the cardinal was the chief. Gran- veUe, on his side, was also in a rage. He flung from the council-chamber, summoned the chancellor of Brabant, and demanded, amid bitter execrations against Orange, what common and obscure gentleman there might be whom he could appoint to execute the commission thus ' refused by the prince and by Aremberg. He vowed that in all important matters he would, on future occa- sions, make use of nobles less inflated by pride and more tractable than such grand seigniors. The chan- cellor tried in vain to appease the churchman's wrath, representing that the city of Antwerp would be highly 1561] JOINT LETTER TO THE KING 351 offended at the turn things were taking, and offering his services to induce the withdrawal, on the part of the prince, of the language which had given so much offense. The cardinal was inexorable and peremptory. "1 will have nothing to do with the prince. Master Chan- cellor," said he, " and these are matters which concern you not." Thus the conversation ended, and thus began the open state of hostilities between the great nobles and the cardinal which had been brooding so long.^ On the 23d July, 1561, a f ew weeks after th e, scenes lately- described, the Count of Egmont and the Prince of Orange addressed a joint letter to the king. They re- minded him in this despatch that they had originally been reluctant to take office in the state council, on account of their previous experience of the manner in which business had been conducted during the adminis- tration of the Duke of Savoy. They had feared that important matters of state might be transacted without their concurrence. The king had, however, assured them, when in Zealand, that all affairs would be uniformly treated in full council. If the contrary should ever prove the case, he had desired them to give him infor- mation to that effect, that he might instantly apply the remedy. They accordingly now gave him that infor- mation. They were consulted upon small matters ; mo- mentous affairs were decided upon in their absence. Still, ! they would not even now have complained had not Car- ; dinal GranveUe declared that all the members of the L state council were to be held responsible for its measures, • whether they were present at its decisions or not. Not.' liking such responsibility, they requested the king either 1 Bakh. V. d. Brink, "Het Huweliik van W. v. Oranje," etc., pp. 47, 48. 352 THE EISE OF THE DUTCH BEPUBLIC [1561 to accept their resignation or to give orders that all affairs should be communicated to the whole board and deliberated upon by all the councilors.^ In a private letter, written some weeks later (August 15), Bgmont begged Secretary Erasso to assure the king that their joint letter had not been dictated by passion, but by zeal for his service. It was impossible, he said, to imagine the insolence of the cardinal, or to form an idea of the absolute authority which he arrogated.^ In truth, GranveUe, with all his keenness, could not see that Orange, Egmont, Berghen, Montigny, and the rest were no longer pages and young captains of cavalry, while he was the politician and the statesman.^ By six or seven years the senior of Egmont, and by sixteen years of Orange, he did not divest himself of the super- ciliousness of superior wisdom, not unjust nor so irri- tating when they had all been boys. In his deportment toward them, and in the whole tone of his private cor- respondence with Philip, there was revealed, almost in spite of himself, an affectation of authority, against which Bgmont rebelled, and which the prince was not the man to acknowledge. Philip answered the letter of the two nobles in his usual procrastinating manner. The Count of Horn, who was about leaving Spain (whither he had accompanied the king) for the Netherlands, would be intrusted with the resolution which he should think proper to take upon the subject suggested. In the mean- time he assured them that he did not doubt their zeal in his service.* As to Count Horn, GranveUe had already prejudiced 1 Correspondance de Phil. H., i. 195, 196. 2 Ibid. 3 Bakliuyzeii, 44, 45. * Correspondance de Philippe H., i. 197. 1561] PHILIPS WRATH AGAINST HORN 353 the king against him. Horn and the cardinal had never been friends. A brother of the prelate had been an aspirant for the hand of the admiral's sister, and had been somewhat contemptuously rejected.^ Horn, a bold vehement, and not very good-tempered personage, had long kept no terms with GranveUe, and did not pretend a friendship which he had never felt. Granvelle had just written to instruct the king that Horn was opposed bitterly to that measure which was nearest the king's heart— the new bishoprics. He had been using strong language, according to the cardinal, in opposition to the scheme, while stiU. in Spain. He therefore advised that his Majesty, concealing, of coiirse, the source of the infor- mation, and speaking as it were out of the royal mind itself, should expostiilate with the admiral upon the subject.^ Thus prompted, Philip was in no gracious humor when he received Count Horn, then about to leave Madrid for the Netherlands, and to take with him the king's promised answer to the communication of Orange and Egmont. His Majesty had rarely been known to exhibit so much anger toward any person as he manifested upon that occasion. After a few words from the admiral, in which he expressed his sympathy with the other Netherland nobles and his aversion to Granvelle, in general terms and in reply to Philip's interrogatories, the king fiercely interrupted him. "What, miserable man!" he vociferated, "you aU complain of this cardinal, and always in vague lan- guage. Not one of you, in spite of all my questions, can give me a single reason for your dissatisfaction." * 1 La deduction de I'mnoeence du Comte de Home. 2 Papiers d'Etat, vi. 332. 3 " Quoi, malheureux ! Vous vous plaignez tous de oet homme, VOL. I.— 23 354 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1561 With this the royal wrath boiled over in such unequivocal terms that the admiral changed color, and was so con- fused with indignation and astonishment that he was scarcely able to find his way out of the room.^ This was the commencement of Granvelle's long mor- tal combat with Egmont, Horn, and Orange. This was the first answer which the seigniors were to receive to their remonstrances against the churchman's arrogance. Philip was enraged that any opposition should be made to his coercive measures, particularly to the new bish- oprics, the "holy work" which the cardinal was ready to "consecrate his fortune and his blood" to advance. Granvelle fed his master's anger by constant communi- cations as to the efforts made by distinguished individ- uals to delay the execution of the scheme. Assonville had informed him, he wrote, that much complaint had been made on the subject by several gentlemen, at a supper of Count Egmont's. It was said that the king ought to have consulted them all, and the state coun- cilors especially. The present nominees to the new episcopates were good enough, but it would be found, they said, that very improper personages would be after- ward appointed. The estates ought not to permit the execution of the scheme. In short, continued G-ranveUe, " there is the same Mnd of talk which brought about the recall of the Spanish troops.^' ^ A few months later, he wrote to inform Philip that a petition against the new bishoprics was about to be drawn up by "the two lords." They had two motives, according to the cardinal, for this step : et n'y a personne quoy que je demande qui m'en saiohe dire la cause." — Papiers d'fitat, viii. 443. 1 Ibid. 2 Ibid., vi. 261. 1561] GEANTELLE'S ADVICES TO PHILIP 355 first, to let the king know that he could do nothing without their permission ; secondly, because in the states' assembly they were then the cocks of the walk?- They did not choose, therefore, that in the clerical branch of the estates any body should be above the abbots, whom they could frighten into doing whatever they chose.^ At the end of the year Granvelle again wrote to instruct his sovereign how to reply to the letter which was about to be addressed to him by the Prince of Orange and the Marquis Berghen on the subject of the bishoprics. They would tell him, he said, that the incorporation of the Brabant abbeys into the new bishoprics was contrary to the constitution of the "joyful entrance." Philip was, however, to make answer that he had consulted the uni- versities and those learned in the laws, and had satis- fled himself that it was entirely constitutional. He was therefore advised to send his command that the prince and marquis should use all their influence to promote the success of the measure.^ Thus fortified, the king was enabled not only to deal with the petition of the nobles, but also with the deputies from the estates of Brabant, who arrived about this time at Madrid. To these envoys, who asked for the appointment of royal commissioners, with whom they might treat on the subject of the bish- oprics, the abbeys, and the " joyful entrance," the king answered proudly that " in matters which concerned the service of God he was his own commissioner."* He 1 "Como son los gallos de los estados." — Papiers d'fltat, vi. 307. 2 "No querrian que en el primer bra90 que es el de los prelados huviesse quien entendiesse y las osasse contradecir, que hazen de los abades frayles lo que quieren, poniendo les miedo." — Ibid. 3 Ibid., vi. 463, 464. * " Yo les mandfe responder que per ser del servicio de Dios, lo queria yo mesmo." — Ibid., vi. 504. 356 THE RISE OP THE DUTCH EEPUBLIC [1561 afterward, accordingly, recited to them, witli great accuracy, the lesson which he had privately received from the ubiquitous cardinal. Philip was determined that no remonstrance from great nobles or from private citizens shoidd interfere with the thorough execution of the grand scheme on which he was resolved, and of which the new bishoprics formed an important part. Opposition irritated him more and more, till his hatred of the opponents became deadly ; but it at the same time confirmed him in his purpose. " 'T is no time to temporize," he wrote to Gran- velle; "we must inflict chastisement with full rigor and severity. These rascals can only be made to do right through fear, and not always even by that means." ^ At the same time, the royal finances did not admit of any very active measures, at the moment, to enforce obedience to a policy which was already so bitterly op- posed. A rough estimate, made in the king's own hand- writing, of the resources and obligations of his exchequer, a kind of balance-sheet for the years 1560 and 1561, drawn up much in the same manner as that in which a simple individual would make a note of his income and expenditure, gave but a dismal picture of his pecuniary condition. It served to show how intelligent a financier is despotism, and how httle available are the resources of a mighty empire when regarded merely as private property, particularly when the owner chances to have the vanity of attending to all details himself. " Twenty '^ "... en las de la religion no se ^ufre temporizar sine casti- garlos con todo rigor y serenidad, que estos vellacos sine es por miedo no hazen cosa buena y aim con el, no todas vezes." — Papiers d'fitat, vi. 421. 1561] ROYAL IMPECUNIOSITY 357 millions of ducats," began the memorandum/ "will be required to disengage my revenues. But of this," added the king, with whimsical pathos for an account-book, " we win not speak at present, as the matter is so entirely impossible." 2 He then [proceeded to enter the various items of expense which were to be met during the two years ; such as so many millions due to the Puggers (the Rothschilds of the sixteenth century), so many to mer- chants in Flanders, Seville, and other places, so much for Prince Doria's galleys, so much for three years' pay due to his guards, so much for his household expendi- ture, so much for the tuition of Don Carlos and Don Juan d' Austria, so much for salaries of ambassadors and councilors— mixing personal and state expenses, petty items and gi'eat loans, in one singular jumble, but ar- riving at a total demand upon his purse of ten million nine hundred and ninety thousand ducats. To meet this expenditure he painfully enumerated the funds upon which he could reckon for the two years. His ordinary rents and taxes being aU deeply pledged, he could only calculate from that source upon two hun- dred thousand ducats. The Indian revenue, so called, was nearly spent ; still, it might yield him four hundred and twenty thousand ducats. The quicksilver-mines would produce something, but so little as hardly to re- quire mentioning. As to the other mines, they were equally unworthy of notice, being so very uncertain, and not doing as weU as they were wont. The licenses ac- 1 The document is in tlie Papiers d'feat de Granvelle (Yi. 156- 165), and is entitled "Memorial de las Finan5as de Espana en los anos 1560 et 1561." 2 " . . . pero desto non se traota agora como de cosa tan im- possibile." — Ibid. 358 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1561 corded by the crown to carry slaves to America were put down at fifty thousand ducats for the two years. The product of the crozada and cuarta, or money paid to him in small sums by individuals, with the per- mission of his Holiness, for the liberty of abstaining from the church fasts, was estimated at five hundred thousand ducats. These and a few more meager items only sufficed to stretch his income to a total of one mil- lion three hundred and thirty thousand for the two years, against an expenditure calculated at near eleven millions. " Thus there are nine millions, less three thousand du- cats, deficient," he concluded ruefully {and mahing a mistake in Ms figures in his own favor of six hundred and sixty-three thousand besides), " which I may look for in the sky, or try to raise by inventions already ex- hausted." Thus the man who owned all America and half of Europe could only raise a million ducats a year from his estates. The possessor of all Peru and Mexico could reckon on " nothing worth mentioning" from his mines, and derived a precarious income mainly from permis- sions granted his subjects to carry on the slave-trade and to eat meat on Fridays. This was certainly a gloomy condition of affairs for a monarch on the threshold of a war which was to outlast his own life and that of his children ; a war in which the mere army expenses were to be half a million florins monthly, in which about seventy per cent, of the annual disbursements was to be regularly embezzled or appropriated by the hands through which it passed, and in which for every four 1 " Que se han de busoar del ayre y de invenoiones que estan ya tan buseadas como alia,." — Papiers d'fitat, vi. 156-165. 1561] FIRMNESS OF THE STATES 359 men on paper, enrolled and paid for, only one, according to the average, was brought into the fleld.^ Granvelle, on the other hand, gave his master but little consolation from the aspect of financial affairs in the provinces. He assured him that " the government was often in such embarrassment as not to know where to look for ten ducats." ^ He complained bitterly that the states would meddle with the administration of money matters and were slow in the granting of sub- sidies. The cardinal felt especially outraged by the in- terference of these bodies with the disbursement of the sums which they voted. It has been seen that the states had already compelled the government to withdraw the troops, much to the regret of Granvelle. They continued, however, to be intractable on the subject of supplies. "These are very vile things," he wrote to PhUip, "this authority which they assume, this audacity with which they say whatever they think proper, and these im- pudent conditions which they affix to every proposition for subsidies." ^ The cardinal protested that he had in vain attempted to convince them of their error, but that they remained perverse. It was probably at this time that the plan for debasing the coin, suggested to Philip some time before by a skil- ful chemist named Malen, and always much approved of 1 Simon Styl, De Opkomst en Bloei der Vereenigde Neder- landen (Amst. 1778), p. 119. Compare Reidani Belgartun Annales (Lugd. Bat. 1633), Ub. ii. 2 Papiers d'fetat, vi. 180. 3 " . . . y es tambien muy ruin cosa le authoridad que ban tornado y la osada de dezir lo que se les antoja y de proponer oon- dioiones tan desaforadas k que se los va oponiendo quanto se puede," etc.— Ibid., vi. 178-180. 360 THE EISE OP THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1561 both by himself and Ruy Gomez, recurred to his mind. "Another and an extraordinary source of revenue, although perhaps not a very honorable one," wi'ote Suriano, "has hitherto been kept secret, and on account of differences of opinion between the king and his con- fessor has been discontinued." This source of revenue, it seemed, was found in " a certain powder, of which one ounce mixed with six ounces of quicksilver would make six ounces of silver." The composition was said to stand the test of the ham»er, but not of the fire. Partly in consequence of theological scruples and partly on ac- count of opposition from the states, a project formed by the king to pay his army with this kind of silver was reluctantly abandoned. The invention, however, was so very agreeable to the king, and the inventor had received such liberal rewards, that it was supposed, according to the envoy, that in time of scarcity his Majesty would make use of such coin without reluctance. i It is necessary, before concluding this chapter, which relates the events of the years 1560 and 1561, to allude 1 " . . . n'e un altra straordinaria laqual perioeli6 h poeo hono- revole ha pero tenuta secreta— quest h una industria che fu prin- eipiata gia due anni et piu con titolo di zecea ben conosoiuta d'aleuni di questa citta ma non fu continuata essendo oeoorsi oerti dispareri fra lui (Phil" 2°) et il oonfessore per le mani del quale passo tutto questa prattica. Si trovi poi per un Tedesoo Malines che le messe in opera et con un onoia di oerta sua polvere et sei d'ar- gento vivo fa sei oncie d'argento che sta al toeoo et al martello ma non al fuoco et fa qualehe opinione di valersene di quella sorts d'argento in pagar I'esseroito : ma li stati non hanno voluto eon- sentire perche eon quest occasione tutto il buono oro si saria por- tato in altri paesi . . . ma quest iuventione e molto grata al Ee et a, Buy Gomez, viene presentato largamente quello eh' 1' ha rittrovato, si puo credere eh' in tempo di qualehe stretteza, sua M** se ne Va- leria senza rispetto." — Suriano MS. 1561] MARRIAGE PLANS FOR ORANGE 361 to an important affair wMcli occupied much attention during the whole of this period. This is the celebrated marriage of the Prince of Orange with the Princess Anna of Saxony. By many superficial writers a mov- ing cause of the great Netherland revolt was found in the connection of the great chieftain with this distin- guished Lutheran house. One must have studied the characters and the times to very little purpose, however, to believe it possible that much influence could be exerted on the mind of WiUiam of Orange by such natures as those of Anna of Saxony, or of her uncle, the Elector Augustus, surnamed " the Pious." The prince had become a widower in 1558, at the age of twenty-five. Granvelle, who was said to have been influential in arranging his first marriage, now proposed to him, after the year of mourning had expired, an aUi- aneewith Mademoiselle Ren6e,i daughter of the Duch- ess de Lorraine, and granddaughter of Christian III. of Denmark and his wife Isabella, sister of the Emperor Charles V. Such a connection, not only with the royal house of Spain but with that of Prance,— for the young Duke of Lorraine, brother of the lady, had espoused the daughter of Henry II.,— was considered highly de- sirable by the prince. Philip and the Duchess Margaret of Parma both approved, or pretended to approve, the match. At the same time the Dowager Duchess of Lor- raine, mother of the intended bride, was a candidate, and a very urgent one, for the regency of the Netherlands. Being a woman of restless ambition and intriguing char- acter, she naturally saw in a man of WiUiam's station and talents a most desirable ally in her present and future schemes. On the other hand, Philip— who had 1 Pontus Payen MS. 362 THE EISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1561 made open protestation of Hs desire to connect the prince thus closely with his own blood/ and had warmly recommended the match to the young lady's mother — soon afterward, while walking one day with the prince in the park at Brussels,^ announced to him that the Duchess of Lorraine had declined his proposals.* Such a result astonished the prince, who was on the best of terms with the mother, and had been urging her ap- pointment to the regency with all his influence, having entirely withdrawn his own claims to that office. No satisfactory explanation was ever given of this singular conclusion to a courtship begun with the apparent con- sent of all parties. It was hinted that the young lady did not fancy the prince ;* but, as it was not known that a word had ever been exchanged between them, as the prince, in appearance and reputation, was one of the most brilliant cavaliers of the age, and as the approval of the bride was not usually a matter of primary conse- quence in such marriages of state, the mystery seemed to require a further solution. The priaee suspected Granvelle and the king, who were believed to have held mature and secret deliberation together, of insincerity. The bishop was said to have expressed the opinion that although the friendship he bore the prince would induce 1 " . . . que V. M^ m'eust esoript, par ses lettres, le desir que icelle avoit toujouis eu de sa grandeur . . . et que, dfisirant I'allier plus pr&s de son sang, icelle avoit instance, telle qu'il scavoit, pour procvirer son mariage avec la fiUe ain^e de M''™' de Lorraine, comme il se pouvoit souvenir." — Letter of Margaret of Parma in Keiffen- berg, Correspondance de Margt* d'Autriehe, pp. 271, 272. 2 EeifEenberg, pp. 273, 274. 3 it,id. * " . . . mais comme I'afEaire trainait en longueur et comme auciins disent qu'il n'estoit k la bonne grace de la demoiselle." — Pontus Payen MS. 1561] DOUBLE DEALING OF PHILIP ^ 363 him to urge the marriage, yet his duty to his master made him think it questionable whether it were right to advance a personage already placed so high by birth, wealth, and popularity, still higher by so near an alliance with his Majesty's family.^ The king, in consequence, secretly instructed the Duchess of Lorraine to decline the proposal, while at the same time he continued openly to advocate the connection.^ The prince is said to have discovered this double dealing, and to have found in it the only reasonable explanation of the whole transaction.^ Moreover, the Duchess of Lorraine, finding herself equally duped, and her own ambitious scheme equally foiled by her unscrupulous cousin, — who now, to the surprise of every one, appointed Margaret of Parma to be regent, with the bishop for her prime minister, — had as little reason to be satisfied with the combinations of royal and ecclesiastical intrigue as the Prince of Orange himself. Soon after this unsatisfactory mystification William turned his attentions to Glermany. Anna of Saxony, daughter of the celebrated Elector Maurice, lived at the court of her uncle, the Elector Augustus. A musket-ball, perhaps a traitorous one, in an obscure 1 " Granvelle antwoordde, dat de vriendsehap de hy den Prinse droegh, hem dryven zoude, om het aan te raaden indien de trouw, die liy zynen meester sclmldigh was, niet bedenkelyk vond een per- soonadje, ondersteunt von oovergroote adibaarheit, en gimst der Landtzaaten, door 't behuwen van zoo naa een bloedt verwandt- schap zyner Majesteit, in top te trekken." — Hoofd, i. 35. This was precisely the same argument used by the Emperor Charles against the marriage with Mademoiselle de Buren, and successfully com- bated by Granvelle. ^ Ibid. ' Ibid. Compare Bakhuyzen v. d. Brink, Het Huwelijk, etc., 8, 9, 10, to whose publication on this most intricate subject every candid historical student must feel the deepest sense of obligation. 364 THE EISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1561 action with Albert of Brandenburg, had closed the ad- venturous career of her father seven years bef ore.^ The young lady, who was thought to have inherited much of his restless, stormy character, was sixteen years of age. She was far from handsome, was somewhat de- formed, and limped.^ Her marriage portion was deemed, for the times, an ample one ; she had seventy thousand rix-dollars in hand, and the reversion of thirty thousand on the death of John Frederick II., who had married her mother after the death of Maurice.^ Her rank was accounted far higher in Germany than that of William of Nassau, and in this respect, rather than for pecuni- ary considerations, the marriage seemed a desii-able one for him. The man who held the great Nassau-ChSlons property, together with the heritage of Count Maximilian de Buren, could hardly have been tempted by one hun- dred thousand thalers. His own provision for the chil- dren who might spring from the proposed marriage was to be a settlement of seventy thousand florins annually.* The fortune which permitted of such liberality was not one to be very materially increased by a dowry which might seem enormous to many of the pauper princes of Germany. " The bride's portion," says a contemporary, " after aU, scarcely paid for the banquets and magnifi- cent festivals which celebrated the marriage. When the wedding was paid for, there was not a thaler remaining of the whole sum."^ Nothing, then, could be more 1 Pfeilschmidt, p. 64. July 9-11, 1553. 2 " . . . ungesoliickten Leibes, wahrsoheinlieli etwas hinkend." — Bottiger, p. 87. 3 Ibid., p. 86. * Ibid., p. 93. Compare Bakhuyzen, p. 15. ^ " Cest© AUemande qui ne luy avoit port6 en mariage que cent 1561] OPPOSITION OF PHILIP OP HESSE 365 puerile than to accuse the prince of mercenary motives in seeking this alliance— an accusation, however, which did not fail to be brought. There were difficulties on both sides to be arranged before this marriage could take place. The bride was a Lutheran, the prince was a Catholic. With regard to the religion of Orange not the slightest doubt existed, nor was any deception attempted. Granvelle himself gave the most entire attestation of the prince's orthodoxy. " This proposed marriage gives me great pain," he wrote to Philip, " but I have never had reason to suspect his principles."! In another letter he observed that he wished the marriage could be broken oflf, but that he hoped so much from the virtue of the prince that nothing could suffice to separate him from the true religion.^ On the other side there was as little doubt as to his creed. Old Landgrave Philip of Hesse, grandfather of the young lady, was bitterly opposed to the match. " 'T is a papist," said he, " who goes to mass, and eats no meat on fast-days."^ He had no great objection to his character, but insurmountable ones to his religion. "Old Count William," said he, "was an evangelical lord to his dying day. This man is a papist." * The a six vingt miUe daldres, qui a grande peine avoit eu peu suffir povir payer les banquets, festins et magnificences de ees nopoes pay^s lui estoit rest6 boni pas un dalder tant seulement du dot et portement de sa femme." — Pontus Payen MS. i Groen v. Prinst., Archives, etc., i. 52. 2 Archives, etc., i. 70: "Yo todavia espero de la bondad y virtud del principe que no bastara todo esto para apartarle de la verdadera religion." 3 Bakhuyzen, 34. * V. Rommel, Philipp der Grosmilthige, iii. 319 sqq. ; cited by Groen van Prinsterer, i. 59, 366 THE RISE OP THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1561 marriage, then, was to be a mixed marriage. It is neces- sary, however, to beware of anachronisms upon the subject. Lutherans were not yet formally denounced as heretics. On the contrary, it was exactly at this epoch that the pope was inviting the Protestant princes of Germany to the Trent Council, where the schism was to be closed, and aU the erring lambs to be received again into the bosom of the fold. So far from mani- festing an outward hostility, the papal demeanor was conciliating. The letters of invitation from the pope to the princes were sent by a legate, each commencing with the exordium, " To my beloved son," and were all sent back to his Holiness, contemptuously, with the coarse jest for answer, "We believe our mothers to have been honest women, and hope that we had better fathers."^ The great council had not yet given its decisions. Marriages were of continual occurrence, espe- cially among princes and potentates, between the ad- herents of Rome and of the new religion. Even Philip had been most anxious to marry the Protestant Eliza- beth, whom, had she been a peasant, he woidd unques- tionably have burned, if in his power. Throughout Germany, also, especially in high places, there was a disposition to cover up the religious controversy,^ to abstain from disturbing the ashes where devastation stiU glowed and was one day to rekindle itself. It was ex- ceedingly difficult for any man, from the Archduke Maximilian down, to define his creed. A marriage, therefore, between a man and woman of discordant views upon this topic was not startling, although in general not considered desirable. 1 Groen v. Prinst., ArcMves, etc., i. 92. 2 Bakhuyzen, 26-28. 1561] SPECIAIi REASONS FOB OPPOSITION 367 There were, however, especial reasons why this alliance should be distasteful, both to Philip of Spain upon one side, and to the Landgrave Philip of Hesse on the other. The bride was the daughter of the Elector Maurice. In that one name were concentrated nearly all the disasters, disgrace, and disappointment of the emperor's reign. It was Maurice who had hunted the emperor through the Tyrolean mountains ; it was Maurice who had compelled the peace of Passau ; it was Maurice who had overthrown the Catholic Church in Germany ; it was Maurice who had frustrated Philip's election as King of the Romans. If William of Orange must seek a wife among the pagans, could no other bride be found for him than the daughter of such a man ? Anna's grandfather, on the other hand. Landgrave PhUip, was the celebrated victim to the force and fraud of Charles V. He saw in the proposed bridegroom a youth who had been from childhood the petted page and confidant of the hated emperor, to whom he owed his long imprisonment. He saw in him, too, the intimate friend and ally— for the brooding quarrels of the state council were not yet patent to the world— of the stiU more deeply detested GrranveUe, the crafty priest whose substitution of einig for ewig had inveigled him into that terrible captivity. These considerations alone would have made him rmfriendly to the prince, even had he not been a CathoUe. The Elector Augustus, however, uncle and guardian to the bride, was not only well disposed but eager for the marriage, and determined to overcome all obstacles, including the opposition of the landgrave, without whose consent he was long pledged not to bestow the hand of Anna. For this there was more than one rea- 368 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1561 son. Augustus, who, in the words of one of the most acute historical critics of our day, was "a Byzantine emperor of the lowest class, reappearing in electoral hat and mantle,"^ was not firm in his rights to the dignity he held. He had inherited from his brother, but his brother had dispossessed John Frederick. Mau- rice, when turning against the emperor, who had placed him in his cousin's seat, had not thought it expedient to restore to the rightful owner the rank which he himself owed to the violence of Charles. Those claims might be revindicated, and Augustus be degraded in his turn, by a possible marriage of the Princess Anna with some turbulent or intriguing German potentate. Out of the land she was less likely to give trouble. The alliance, if not particularly desirable on the score of rank, was, in other worldly respects, a most brilliant one for his niece. As for the religious point, if he could overcome or circumvent the scruples of the landgrave, he foresaw little difficulty in conquering his own conscience. The Prince of Orange, it is evident, was placed in such a position that it would be difficult for him to satisfy aU parties. He intended that the marriage, like aU marriages among persons in high places at that day, should be upon the uti possidetis principle, which was the foundation of the religious peace of Germany. His wife, after marriage and removal to the Netherlands, would " live CatholicaUy " ; she would be considered as belonging to the same church with her husband, was to give no offense to the government, and bring no suspi- cion upon himself, by violating any of the religious decencies. Further than this, WiUiam, who at that day was an easy, indifferent Catholic, averse to papal perse- 1 Baklmyzen, Het Huwelijk, etc., p. 14, 1561] MISSION OP COUNT SCHWARZBUEG 369 cutions, but almost equally averse to long, puritanical prayers and faces, taking far more pleasure in worldly matters than in ecclesiastical controversies, was not disposed to advance in this thorny path. Having a stern bigot to deal with in Madrid, and another in Cas- sel, he soon convinced himself that he was not likely entirely to satisfy either, and thought it wiser simply to satisfy himself. Early in 1560, Count Gunther de Schwarzburg, be- trothed to the prince's sister Catherine, together with Colonel George von HoU, were despatched to Germany to open the marriage negotiations. They found the Elector Augustus already ripe and anxious for the con- nection. It was easy for the envoys to satisfy all his requirements on the religious question. If, as the elector afterward stated to the landgrave, they really promised that the young lady should be allowed to have an evangelical preacher in her own apartments, together with the befitting sacraments,^ it is very certain that they traveled a good way out of their instructions, for such concessions were steadily refused by William ^ in person. It is, however, more probable that Augustus, whose slippery feet were disposed to slide smoothly and swiftly over this dangerous ground, had represented the prince's communications under a favorable gloss of his own. At any rate, nothing in the subsequent proceedings justified the conclusions thus hastily formed. The Landgrave Philip, from the beginning, manifested his repugnance to the match. As soon as the proposition had been received by Augustus, that potentate despatched Hans von Carlowitz to the grandfather at Cassel. The 1 Groen v. Prinst., Archives, etc., 82, 83. 2 Ibid. VOL. I.— 21 370 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH EEPXJBLIG [1561 Prince of Orange, it was represented, was young, hand- some, wealthy, a favorite of the Spanish monarch; the Princess Anna, on the other hand, said her uncle, was not likely to grow straighter or better proportioned in body, nor was her crooked and perverse character likely to improve with years. It was therefore desirable to find a settlement for her as soon as possible.^ The elector, however, would decide upon nothing without the landgrave's consent. To this frank and not very flattering statement, so far as the young lady was concerned, the landgrave answered stoutly and characteristically. The prince was a Spanish subject, he said, and would not be able to protect Anna in her belief, who would sooner or later become a fugitive ; he was but a count in Germany, and no fitting match for an elector's daughter ;"^ more- over, the lady herself ought to be consulted, who had not even seen the prince. If she were crooked in body, as the elector stated, it was a shame to expose her ; to conceal it, however, was questionable, as the prince might complain afterward that a straight princess had been promised, and a crooked one fraudulently substi- tuted;* and so on, through a good deal more of such 1 " Hans von Karlowitz soUte vorstellen dasz die Prinzessin in ihrem Alter sehwerlieh an geradem Wuehse uud Proportion des Leibes zunehmen werde, dabei von einer seltsamen Gemiithsart nnd hartem Sinne sei, und man daher billig auf ihre Versorgung bedacht sein miisse." — Bottiger, 93. 2 Ibid., 94. 3 " Da nun aber der Kurf iirst melde, dasz sie einen tmgesohiekten Leib hatte, so w^re es schimpflicli, ihni sololies sehen zu lassen, zu verbergen aber um deswillen bedenklioh, weil er alsdann sagen dtlrf te, dasz man ihm eine wohlgebildete Prinzessin angertihmt, eine imgesehickte aber Ustigerweise angehangt hatte," etc. — Ibid. 1561] OEAN&E INFORMS THE KING 371 quaint casuistry, in whicli the landgrave was accom- plished. The amount of his answer, however, to the marriage proposal was an unequivocal negative, from which he never wavered. In consequence of this opposition, the negotiations were for a time suspended. Augustus implored the prince not to abandon the project, promising that every effort should be made to gain over the landgrave, hint- ing that the old man might " go to his long rest soon," and even suggesting that, if the worst came to the worst, he had bound himself to do nothing without the Icnow- ledge of the landgrave, but was not obliged to wait for his consent.^ On the other hand, the prince had communicated to the King of Spain the fact of the proposed marriage. He had also held many long conversations with the regent and with Granvelle. In all these interviews he had uniformly used one language : his future wife was to "live as a Catholic,"^ and if that point were not conceded, he would break off the negotiations. He did not pretend that she was to abjure her Protestant faith. The duchess, in describing to PhUip the conditions as sketched to her by the prince, stated expressly that Augustus of Saxony was to consent that his niece " should live Catholically after the marriage," ■* but that 1 " . . . dan im vortragk stuade nichts anders dan ohne vor- wissen, und nicht ohne vorwilligung, derwegen die vorwilligung bei iir Ch. Gu. allein stunde," etc. — Archives et Correspondance, i. 88. "Ce raisonnement," observes M. Groen van Prinsterer, very judiciously, "a I'air d'un subterfuge peu honorable." — Ibid. 2 "De sorte que le prince fust asseur6 d'eulx qu'elle vivroit catholicquement, se mariant aveo lui." — Letter of Marg'= of Parma, Keifflenb., 261. 3 Ibid. 372 THE EISE OF THE DUTCH EEPUBLIC [1561 it was quite improbable that "before the nuptials she would be permitted to abjure her errors and receive necessary absolution, according to the rules of the Church." 1 The duchess, while stating her full confi- dence in the orthodoxy of the prince, expressed at the same time her fears that attempts might be made in the future by his new connections " to pervert him to their depraved opinions." ^ A silence of many months ensued on the part of the sovereign, during which he was going through the laborious process of making up his mind, or rather of having it made up for him by people a thousand miles off. In the autumn Granvelle wrote to say that the prince was very much surprised to have been kept so long waiting for a definite reply to his communications, made at the beginning of the year, concerning his in- tended marriage, and to learn at last that his Majesty had sent no answer, upon the ground that the match had been broken off, the fact being that the negotiations were proceeding more earnestly than ever.^ Nothing could be more helpless and more characteristic than the letter which Philip sent, thus pushed for a de- cision. " You wrote me," said he, " that you had hopes that this matter of the prince's marriage would go no further, and seeing that you did not write oftener on the subject, I thought certainly that it had been termi- nated. This pleased me not a little, because it was the best thing that could be done. Likewise," continued the most tautological of monarchs, " I was much pleased that it should be done. Nevertheless," he added, " if the marriage is to be proceeded with, I really don't hnow what 1 Eeiffenberg, 264. 2 Ibid., 265. 3 Papiers d'Etat, vi. 169, 170. 1561] ARTFUL CONDUCT OF GEANVELLE 373 to say about it, except to refer it to my sister, inasmuch as a person being upon the spot can see better what can be done with regard to it ; whether it be possible to pre- vent it, or whether it be best, if there be no remedy, to give permission. But if there be a remedy, it would be better to take it, because," concluded the king, patheti- cally, " I don't see how the prince could think of marrying with the daughter of the man who did to his Majesty, now in glory, that which Duke Maurice did." ^ Armed with this luminous epistle, which, if it meant anything, meant a reluctant aflrmation to the demand of the prince for the royal consent, the regent and Granvelle proceeded to summon William of Orange, and to catechize him in a manner most galling to the pride, and with a latitude not at all justified by any reasonable interpretation of the royal instructions.^ They even informed him that his Majesty had assembled " certain persons learned in cases of conscience and versed in theology," according to whose advice a final decision, not yet possible, would be given at some future period.^ This assembly of learned conscience-keepers and theo- 1 "Vos me scrivistes que teniades esperanga que no passaria adelante la platioa del casamiento del Principe d'Orange, y con ver que no se me sorivia mas della, yo pens6 oierto que havia cessado, de que no holgava poco por que fuera lo mejor y lo que yo holgaria harto que se hiziesse : mas si todavia passa adelante no se que me dezir en ello, sino remitirlo & mi hermana, pues como quien esta sobre el negooio, vera mejor lo que se podra liazer en el, o si se podra estorvar, y quando no huviere otro remedio, dar la liceneia : mas quando le huviesse, seria lo mejor tomar le porque no s6 como pueda parecer easarse el prinoipe con Mja del que hize con su ma- jestad, que liaya gloria, lo que el Duque Mauricio." — Papiers d'Etat, vl. 175, 176. 2 Bakhuyzen, 41, 42. » Ibid. 374 THE EISE OF THE DUTCH EEPUBLIC [1561 logians had no existence save in the imaginations of Granvelle and Margaret. The king's letter, blind and blundering as it was, gave the duchess the right to decide in the affirmative on her own responsibility ; yet fictions like these formed a part of the " dissimulation " which was accounted profound statesmanship by the disciples of Machiavelli. The prince, however irritated, main- tained his steadiness, assured the regent that the nego- tiations had advanced too far to be abandoned, and repeated his assurance that the future Princess of Orange was to " live as a Catholic." In December, 1560, William made a visit to Dresden, where he was received by the elector with great cor- diality. This visit was conclusive as to the marriage. The appearance and accomplishments of the distin- guished suitor made a profound impression upon the lady. Her heart was carried by storm. Fiuding or fancying herself very desperately enamoured of the pro- posed bridegroom, she soon manifested as much eager- ness for the marriage as did her uncle, and expressed herself frequently with the violence which belonged to her character. " What God had decreed," she said, " the devil should not hinder." ^ The prince was said to have exhibited much diligence in his attention to the services of the Protestant Church during his visit at Dresden.^ As that visit lasted, how- ever, but ten or eleven days, there was no great oppor- tunity for showing much zeal.^ At the same period one WiUiam Knuttel was des- patched by Orange on the forlorn hope of gaining the 1 " Was Gott ausersehen werde der Teuf el nieht wehren." — Bot- tiger, 101. 2 Ibid., 95. 3 Bakhuyzen, 62. 1561] THE ELECTOR'S NOTE 375 old landgrave's consent without making any vital con- cessions. "Will the prince," asked the landgrave, "per- mit my granddaughter to have an evangelical preacher in the house ? " " No," answered Knuttel. " May she at least receive the sacrament of the Lord's Supper in her own chamber, according to the Lutheran form ? " " No," answered Knuttel, " neither in Breda, nor anywhere else in the Netherlands. If she imperatively requires such sacraments, she must go over the border for them, to the nearest Protestant sovereign." ^ Upon the 14th April, 1561, the elector, returning to the charge, caused a little note to be drawn up on the religious point, which he forwarded, in the hope that the prince would copy and sign it. He added a promise that the memorandum should never be made public to the signer's disadvantage.^ At the same time he observed to Count Louis, verbally, that "he had been satisfied with the declarations made by the prince, when in Dres- den, upon aU points except that concerning religion. He therefore felt obliged to beg for a little agreement in writing." ^ " By no means ! by no means ! " interrupted Louis, promptly, at the very first word ; " the prince can give your Electoral Highness no such assurance. 'T would be risking life, honor, and fortune to do so, as your Grace is well aware." * The elector protested that the declara- tion, if signed, should never come into the Spanish mon- 1 Bakhuyzen, 63. 2 Archives et Correspondanee, i. 98. 3 " So viel die piincten belangt do sieh der Printz gegen mioh erkleret tat allhie zu Dresden, bin ioh mit im gar wol zu friden und lasz es auch darbey bleiben ausgenomnien so viel die religion be- langet, so musz ich eine kleine versehreibung von im haben." — Archives, etc., i. 100, Letter of Louis de Nassau. * Archives et Correspondanee, i. 100, 101. 376 THE RISE OP THE DUTCH EEPUBLIC [1561 arch's hands, and insisted upon sending it to the prince.^ Louis, in a letter to his brother, characterized the docu- ment as "singular, prolix, and artful," and strongly advised the prince to have nothing to do with it.^ This note, which the prince was thus requested to sign, and which his brother Louis thus strenuously- advised him not to sign, the prince never did sign. Its tenor was to the following effect : " The princess, after marriage, was, neither by menace nor persuasion, to be turned from the true and pure Word of God, or the use of the sacrament according to the doctrines of the Augs- burg Confession. The prince was to allow her to read books written in accordance with the Augsburg Confes- sion. The prince was to permit her, as often annually as she required it, to go out of the Netherlands to some place where she could receive the sacrament according to the Augsburg Confession. In case she were in sick- ness or perils of childbirth, the prince, if necessary, would caU to her an evangelical preacher, who might administer to her the holy sacrament in her chamber. The children who might spring from the marriage were to be instructed as to the doctrines of the Augsburg Confession." * Even if executed, this celebrated memorandum would hardly have been at variance with the declarations made by the prince to the Spanish government. He had never pretended that his bride was to become a Catholic, but only to live as a Catholic. AH that he had promised, or 1 AroHves et Correspondance, i. 100, 101. 2 Ibid. 5 The note has been often published •.\.,e.g., Groen v. Prinst., Archives et Correspondance, i. 102, 103; Bakhuyzen, Het Huwe- lijk, etc., 75, 76. 1561] THE NOTE REJECTED 377 was expected to promise, was that his wife should con- form to the law in the Netherlands. The paper, in a general way, recognized that law. In case of absolute necessity, however, it was stipulated that the princess should have the advantage of private sacraments. This certainly would have been a mortal offense in a Calvinist or Anabaptist, but for Lutherans the practice had never been so strict. Moreover, the prince already repudiated the doctrines of the edicts, and rebelled against the com- mand to administer them within his government. A general promise, therefore, made by him privately, in the sense of the memorandum drawn up by the elector, would have been neither hypocritical nor deceitful, but worthy the man who looked over such groveling heads as Granvelle and Philip on the one side, or Augustus of Saxony on the other, and estimated their religious pre- tenses at exactly what they were worth. A formal docu- ment, however, technically according aU these demands made by the elector, would certainly be regarded by the Spanish government as a very culpable instrument. The prince never signed the note,i but, as we shall have 1 This has always been a disputed question. The opinion more generally entertained, particularly by the enemies of William, is that he did sign it. M. Bakhuyzen (82 sqq.), almost alone, main- tains the contrary, against many distinguished publicists; and, after a strong chain of circumstantial evidence to make his position as firm as a negative usually can be made, arrives at the conclu- sion that a signed and sealed document to that effect never wiU be found (p. 86). I am fortunately able to attest the accuracy of his a priori argument, and to prove the negative by positive and indis- putable evidence. I subjoin in the appendix to this volume the text of the notarial instrument by which, on the 24th of August, 1561, between 4 and 5 P. m., just before the marriage ceremony, the elector testified that the prince never would and never did consent to make such an holographic, signed and sealed instrument as the 378 THE RISE OP THE DUTCH KEPDBLIC [1561 occasion to state in its proper place, he gave a verbal declaration, favorable to its tenor, but in very vague and brief terms, before a notary, on the day of the marriage. If the reader be of opinion that too much time has been expended upon the elucidation of this point, he should remember that the character of a great and good man is too precious a possession of history to be lightly abandoned. It is of no great consequence to ascertain the precise creed of Augustus of Saxony, or of his niece ; it is of comparatively little moment to fix the point at which William of Orange ceased to be an honest but liberal Catholic, and opened his heart to the light of the Reformation ; but it is of very grave interest that his name should be cleared of the charge of deliberate fraud and hypocrisy. It has therefore been thought necessary to prove conclusively that the prince never gave, in Dresden or Cassel, any assurance inconsistent with his assertions to king and cardinal. The whole tone of his language and demeanor on the religious subject was exhibited in his reply to the electress, who, immediately after the marriage, entreated that he would not pervert her niece from the paths of the true religion. "She shall not be troubled," said the prince, " with such mel- ancholy things. Instead of Holy Writ she shall read 'Amadis de Gaule,' and such books of pastime which discourse de amove; and instead of knitting and sewing she shall learn to dance a galliarde, and such courtoisies as are the mode of our country and suitable to her rank." ^ one in question. Whatever may be the opinion formed as to the general nature of the transaction, no one henceforth can pretend that the Prince of Orange executed the document in the manner in ■which he was requested to execute it. V. Postea, pp. 314, 315. 1 Extracts from this letter (of Landgrave William, son of Philip) 1561] FLIPPANT ANSWER OF ORANGE 379 The reply was careless, flippant, almost contemptuous. It is very certain that William of Orange was not yet the "Father William " he was destined to become— grave, seU-sacriflcing, deeply religious, heroic ; but it was equally evident from this language that he had small sympathy, either in public or private, with Lutheranism or theo- logical controversy. Landgrave William was not far from right when he added, in his quaint style, after re- calling this well-known reply, " Your Grace will observe, therefore, that when the abbot has dice in his pocket, the convent will play." ^ So great was the excitement at the little court of Cassel that many Protestant princes and nobles declared that "they would sooner give their daughters to a boor or a swineherd than to a papist." ^ The landgrave was equally vigorous in his protest, drawn up in due form on the 26th April, 1561. He was not used, he said, " to flatter or to tickle with a foxtail." ^ He was sorry if his have been published by Bottiger and others. I quote from the original in the Royal Archives at Dresden, partly in the handwrit- ing of the landgrave : " Was er nun darauff E. L. Gemahlin geant- wortett das ist beydenn E. L. bewusst, nemblich, das er sie mit den melaneolischen Dingen nieht bemuhen woUte, sondem das sie ann statt der heyligen schrift Amadis de Gaule und dergleichen Kurzweilige Biicher, die de Amore traetirten leseun, und an statt striekens undt nahenns ein Galliarde tantzenn lernen solte und dergleichen curtoisie, wie solehe etwa der Landt preuchlich undt wol stendig." 1 MS., Dresden Archives: "Nunn haben E. L. zuerachten, wann der Aptt werffel tregtt, das dem convent das spielenn er- leubtt." The landgrave was always as full of homely proverbs as Sancho Panza. 2 V. Rommel in Bottiger, 102. 3 " -^Vir nit gewondt sein zue fuchsschwentzen oder zue sehmei- cheln."— Bottiger, 104. 380 THE EISE OP THE DUTCH EEPUBLIC [1561 language gave offense ; nevertheless, " the marriage was odious, and that was enough."^ He had no especial objection to the prince, "who before the world was a brave and honorable man." He conceded that his estates were large, although he hinted that his debts also were ample; allowed that he lived in magnificent style, had even heard " of one of his banquets, where aU the table- cloths, plates, and everything else were made of sugar," ^ but thought he might be even a little too extravagant ; concluding, after a good deal of skimble-scamble of this nature, with "protesting before God, the world, and aU pious Christians, that he was not responsible for the marriage, but only the Elector Augustus and others, who therefore would one day have to render account thereof to the Lord." 3 Meantime the wedding had been fixed to take place on Sunday, the 24th August, 1561. This was St. Bar- tholomew's, a nuptial day which was not destined to be a happy one in the sixteenth century. The landgrave and his family declined to be present at the wedding, but a large and brilliant company were invited. The King of Spain sent a bill of exchange to the regent, that she might purchase a ring worth three thousand crowns, as a present on his part to the bride.* Besides this liberal evidence that his opposition to the marriage was with- drawn, he authorized his sister to appoint envoys from among the most distinguished nobles to represent him on the occasion. The Baron de Montigny, accordingly, with a brilliant company of gentlemen, was deputed by 1 "Es ist aber Odiosirm, darmnb woUen wirs dissmals bleiben lassen." — Bottiger, 104. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid., 106. * Correspondanoe de Marguerite d'Autriche, 184. 1561] THE WEDDING-DAY SET 381 the duchess, although she declined sending all the gov- ernors of the provinces, according to the request of the prince.^ The marriage was to take place at Leipsic. A slight picture of the wedding festivities, derived entirely from unpublished sources, may give some insight into the manners and customs of high life in Germany and the Netherlands at this epoch.^ The kings of Spain and Denmark were invited, and were represented by special ambassadors. The dukes of Brunswick, Lauenburg, Mecklenburg, the Elector and margraves of Brandenburg, the Archbishop of Cologne, the Duke of Cleves, the bishops of Naumburg, Merse- burg, Meissen, with many other potentates, accepted the invitations, and came generally in person, a few only being represented by envoys. The town councils of Erfurt, Leipsic, Magdeburg, and other cities were also bidden. The bridegroom was personally accompanied by his brothers John, Adolphus, and Louis; by the Burens, the Leuchtenbergs, and various other distin- guished personages. As the electoral residence at Leipsic was not com- pletely finished, separate dwellings were arranged for each of the sovereign families invited, in private houses, mostly on the market-place. Here they were to be fur- nished with provisions by the elector's officials, but they were to cook for themselves. For this purpose all the princes had been requested to bring their own cooks 1 Correspondance de Marguerite d'Autriohe, 288. 3 There are many papers and documents in the Royal Archives of Dresden relating to this celebrated marriage. The collection which I have principally consulted for the following account is entitled "Acta des Printzen tzu Oranien und Prawlein Annen tzu Saxen Beylager, 1561." It is entirely unpublished. 382 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1561 and butlers, together with their plate and kitchen utensils. The sovereigns themselves were to dine daily with the elector at the town house, but the attendants and suite were to take their meals in their own lodgings. A brilliant collection of gentlemen and pages, appointed by the elector to wait at his table, were ordered to assemble at Leipsic on the 22d, the guests having been aU invited for the 23d. Many regulations were given to these noble youths, that they might discharge their duties with befitting decorum. Among other orders, they re- ceived particular injunctions that they were to abstain from aU drinking among themselves, and from all riotous conduct whatever, while the sovereigns and potentates should be at dinner. " It would be a shameful indecency," it was urged, " if the great people sitting at table should be unable to hear themselves talk on account of the screaming of the attendants." ^ This provision did not seem unreasonable. They were also instructed that if invited to drink by any personage at the great tables they were respectfully to decline the challenge, and to explain the cause after the repast. Particular arrangements were also made for the safety of the city. Besides the regular guard of Leipsic, two hundred and twenty harquebusiers, spearmen, and hal- berdmen were ordered from the neighboring towns. These were to be all dressed in uniform ; one arm, side, 1 "Dasz dieselben in dem Essgemaohe auf dem Rathhause des Zutrinkens und alien Geschcrei wahrend der ordentlichen MaUzeiten sioh. enthalten soUten, indem dies nioht allein Unordnung und Mangel in der Anfwartung verursaclie, sondern audi es ein schimpf- Ucher Uibelstand sei, wenn die fremden Herrschaften an der Tafel vor dem Geschrei der Umstehenden ihr eignes wort nioht horen konn- ten," etc. — MS., Dresden Aroliives, ubi sup. 1561] LEIPSIC IN COMMOTION 383 and leg in black, and the other in yellow, according to a painting distributed beforehand to the various authori- ties. As a mounted patrol, Leipsio had a regjjlar force of two men. These were now increased to ten, and re- ceived orders to ride with their lanterns up and down all the streets and lanes, to accost aU persons whom they might find abroad without lights in their hands, to ask them their business in courteous language, and at the same time to see generally to the peace and safety of the town.i Fifty harquebusiers were appointed to protect the town house, and a burgher watch of six hundred was distributed in different quarters, especially to guard against fire. * On Saturday, the day before the wedding, the guests had aU arrived at Leipsic, and the Prince of Orange, with his friends, at Merseburg. On Sunday, the 24th August, the elector, at the head of his guests and at- tendants, in splendid array, rode forth to receive the bridegroom. His cavalcade numbered four thousand. William of Orange had arrived, accompanied by one thousand mounted men. The whole troop now entered the city together, escorting the prince to the town house. Here he dismounted, and was received on the staircase by the Princess Anna, attended by her ladies. She im- mediately afterward withdrew to her apartments. It was at this point, between 4 and 5 p.m., that the * " Als Eeuterwaohe hatte der Eath zu Leipzig zwei Mann, diese WTirden bis auf zehen mann gebraolit, tmi mit ihren Leuchten die eine Gasse auf die andere ab zu reiten und die sioh auf den Gassen ohne Liiclit treffen lassen mit glimpflichen Worten zu Bede zu stellen, dabei auch auf das Feuer gute Acht zu haben." — MS., Dresden Archives, ubi sup. The regulations have a remarkable resemblance to Dogberry's instructions for his watch. 384 THE RISE OP THE DUTCH EEPUBLIC [1561 elector and electress, with the bride and bridegroom, accompanied also by the Dame Sophia von Miltitz and the councilors Hans von Ponika and Ulrich Wolters- dorfE upon one side, and by Count John of Nassau and Heinrich von Wiltberg upon the other, as witnesses, appeared before Wolf Seidel, notary, in a corner room of the upper story of the town house. One of the coun- cilors, on the part of the elector, then addressed the bridegroom. He observed that his Highness would re- member, no doubt, the contents of a memorandum or billet sent by the elector on the 14th April of that year, by the terms of which the prince was to agree that he would neither by threat nor persuasion prevent his fu- ture wife from continuing in the Augsburg Confession ; that he would allow her to go to places where she might receive the Augsburg sacraments; that in case of ex- treme need she should receive them in her chamber ; and that the children who might spring from the marriage should be instructed as to the Augsburg doctrines. As, however, continued the councilor, his Highness the Prince of Orange has, for various reasons, declined giving any such agreement in writing, as therefore it had been arranged that before the marriage ceremony the prince should, in the presence of the bride and of the other witnesses, make a verbal promise on the subject, and as the parties were now to be immediately united in mar- riage, therefore the elector had no doubt that the prince would make no objection in presence of those witnesses to give his consent to maintain the agreements comprised in the memorandum or note. The note was then read. Thereupon the prince answered verbally: "Gracious Elector : I remember the writing which you sent me on the 14th April. All the points just narrated by the 1561] THE MEANING OF THE PROMISE 385 doctor were contained in it. I now state to your High- ness that I will keep it all as becomes a prince, and con- form to it." Thereupon he gave the elector his hand.^ What now was the amount and meaning of this prom- ise on the part of the prince ? Almost nothing. He would conform to the demands of the elector, exactly as he had hitherto said he would conform to them. Taken in con- nection with his steady objections to sign and seal any instrument on the subject, with his distinct refusal to the landgrave (through Knuttel) to allow the princess an evangelical preacher or to receive the sacraments in the Netherlands, with the vehement, formal, and public protest, on the part of the landgrave, against the mar- riage, with the prince's declarations to the elector at Dresden, which were satisfactory on all points save the religious point, what meaning could this verbal promise have save that the prince would do exactly as much with regard to the religious question as he had always promised, and no more? This was precisely what did happen. There was no pretense on the part of the elector, afterward, that any other arrangement had been contemplated. The princess lived catholicaUy from the moment of her marriage, exactly as Orange had stated to the Duchess Margaret, and as the elector knew would be the case. The first and the following children born of the marriage were baptized by Catholic priests, with very elaborate Catholic ceremonies, and this with 1 "Gnediger ohurfurst, ioh. kann miohdes schreibena das mir, e. g., dieser saohen halben under obebemeltem dato gaben freundt- liob und wol erinnem, das alle die pimet so der her Doctor itzunt erzelt dorinne begriff en, und thn, e.g., hiemit zue sagenndas ich solobs alles furstlich wil halden und dem naoh kommen, und hat solchs hierauf S. Oh. G. mit hand gebenden treu bewilligtt und zugesagt." VOL. I.— 25 386 THE RISE OP THE DUTCH KEPUBLIC [1561 the full consent of the elector, who sent deputies and officiated as sponsor on one remarkable occasion. Who of all those guileless lambs, then, Philip of Spain, the Elector of Saxony, or Cardinal Granvelle, had been deceived by the language or actions of the prince ? Not one. It may be boldly asserted that the prince, placed in a transition epoch, both of the age and of his own character, surrounded by the most artful and intriguing personages known to history, and involved in a network of most intricate and difficult circumstances, acquitted himself in a manner as honorable as it was prudent. It is difficult to regard the notarial instrument otherwise than as a memorandum filed rather by Augustus than by wise WUliam, in order to put upon record for his own justification his repeated though unsuccessful efforts to procure from the prince a regularly signed, sealed, and holographic act upon the points stated in the fa- mous note. After the delay occasioned by these private formalities, the bridal procession, headed by the court musicians, followed by the court marshals, councilors, great officers of state, and the electoral family, entered the grand hall of the town house. The nuptial ceremony was then per- formed by "the superintendent, Dr. Pfeffinger." Im- mediately afterward, and in the same haU, the bride and bridegroom were placed publicly upon the splendid, gilded bed, with gold- embroidered curtains, the princess being conducted thither by the elector and electress. Confects and spiced drinks were then served to them and to the assembled company. After this ceremony they were conducted to their separate chambers, to dress for dinner. Before they left the hall, however, Mar- grave Hans of Brandenburg, on part of the Elector of FESTIVITIES AT THE-MARRIAGE OF WILLIAM OF ORANGE AND THE PRINCESS ANNA OF SAXONY Drawing by E. ThieL 1561] THE LUTHERAN CEREMONY 387 Saxony, solemnly recommended the bride to her hus- band, exhorting him to cherish her with faith and affec- tion, and "to leave her undisturbed in the recognized truth of the holy gospel and the right use of the sacra- ments." ^ Five round tables were laid in the same hall immedi- ately afterward, each accommodating ten guests. As soon as the first course of twenty-five dishes had been put upon the chief table, the bride and bridegroom, the elector and electress, the Spanish and Danish envoys, and others, were escorted to it, and the banquet began. During the repast the elector's choir and aU the other bands discoursed the "merriest and most ingenious music." The noble vassals handed the water, the nap- kins, and the wine, and everything was conducted de- corously and appropriately. As soon as the dinner was brought to a close, the tables were cleared away, and the ball began in the same apartment. Dances, previously arranged, were performed, after which "confects and drinks " were again distributed, and the bridal pair were then conducted to the nuptial chamber. The wedding, accoi-ding to the Lutheran custom of the epoch, had thus taken place, not in a church,^ but in a private dwelluig, the hall of the town house repre- senting, on this occasion, the elector's own saloons. On the following morning, however, a procession was formed at seven o'clock to conduct the newly married couple to 1 " . . . sie bei der erkannten Wahrheit des heiligen Evangelii und dem reohten Brauch imd Genuss der hocliwiirdigeu Saoramente unverhinderlicli bleiben lassen wolle." — MS., Dresden Archives, Acta des P. z. Oranien und Prawlein Annen tzu Saxen Beylager, 1561. 2 Ibid. 388 THE EISB OP THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1561 the Church of St. Nicholas, there to receive an additional exhortation and benediction.^ Two separate companies of gentlemen, attended by a great number of "fifers, drummers, and trumpeters," escorted the bride and the bridegroom ; " twelve counts, wearing each a scarf of the Princess Anna's colors, with golden garlands on their heads and lighted torches in their hands," preceding her to the choir, where seats had been provided for the more illustrious portion of the company. The church had been magnificently decked in tapestry, and, as the com- pany entered, a full orchestra performed several fine mottettos. After listening to a long address from Dr. Pfefftnger, and receiving a blessing before the altar, the Prince and Princess of Orange returned, with their attendant processions, to the town house. After dinner, upon the same and the three following days, a tournament was held. The lists were on the market-place, on the side nearest the town house, the electress and the other ladies looking down from bal- cony and window to "rain influence and adjudge the prize." The chief hero of these justs, according to the accounts in the archives, was the Elector of Sax- ony. He "comported himself with such especial chiv- alry" that his far-famed namesake and remote suc- cessor, Augustus the Strong, could hardly have evinced 1 Bottiger, in his instructive and able work, has fallen into an error upon this point in stating that the marriage (Trauung) took place in the Nicholas Chnrch upon the 25th of August. The mar- riage, as we have seen, was in the city hall, upon the preceding day. The bridal pair went upon the Monday following to the church, for the benediction. That day was called the " hoohzeit- liohe Ehrentag," the day in honor of the wedding. — MS., Dresden Archives, Acta des P. z. Oranien, etc., Beylager, 1561. Compare Bottiger, 109. 1561] A THREE-DAY TOURNAMENT 389 more knightly prowess. On the first day he encoun- tered George von Wiedebach, and unhorsed him so handsomely that the discomfited cavalier's shoulder was dislocated. Oh the following day he tilted with Michael von Denstedt, and was again victorious, hitting his ad- versary full in the target, and "bearing him off over his horse's tail so neatly that the knight came down heels over head upon the earth." ^ On Wednesday there was what was called the pallia- toumey.2 The Prinqe of Orange, at the head of six bands, amounting in all to twenty-nine men ; the Mar- grave George of Brandenburg, with seven bands, com- prising thirty-four men, and the Elector Augustus, with one land of four men, besides himself, all entered the lists. Lots were drawn for the "gate of honor," and gained by the margrave, who accordingly defended it with his band. Twenty courses were then run between these champions and the Prince of Orange with his men. The Brandenburgs broke seven lances, the prince's party only six, so that Orange was obliged to leave the lists discomfited. The ever-victorious Augustus then took the -field, and ran twenty courses against the de- fenders, breaking fourteen spears to the Brandenburgs' ten. The margrave, thus defeated, surrendered the gate of honor to the elector, who maiutained it the rest of the day against all comers. It is fair to suppose, although the fact is not recorded, that the elector's original band had received some reinforcement. Other- wise it would be difficult to account for these constant 1 " . . . Tind ihn so gesotwind ledig Mntern Sohwantz herab- gerannt das er eher mit dem Ropfe als mit dem Fuessen zur Erde gekommen ist." — MS., Dresde AreMves, ubi sup. 2 "PamaBennen."— Ibid. 390 THE RISE OP THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1561 victories, except by ascribing more than mortal strength, as well as valor, to Augustus and his four champions. His party broke one hundred and fifty-six lances, of which number the elector himself broke thirty-eight and a half. He received the first prize, but declined other guerdons adjudged to him. The reward for the hardest hitting was conferred on "Wolf von Schonberg, "who thrust Kurt von Arnim clean out of the saddle, so that he fell against the barriers." ^ On Thursday was the riding at the ring. The knights who partook of this sport wore various strange garbs over their armor. Some were disguised as hussars, some as miners, some as lansquenets; others as Tar- tars, pilgrims, fools, bird-catchers, hunters, monks, peasants, or Netherland cuirassiers. Each party was attended by a party of musicians, attired in similar costume. Moreover, Count Gunther von Schwarzburg made his appearance in the lists, accompanied " by five remarkable giants of wonderful proportions and appear- ance, very ludicrous to behold, who performed aU kind of odd antics on horseback." The next day there was a foot-tourney, followed in the evening by "mummeries," or masquerades. These masks were repeated on the following evening, and afforded great entertainment. The costumes were magnificent, "with golden and pearl embroidery," the dances were very merry and artistic, and the musicians who formed a part of the company exhibited remarkable talent. These mummeries had been brought by William of Orange from the Netherlands, at the express request of the elector, on the ground that such matters were much better understood in the provinces than in Germany. J MS., Dresden Archives, ubi sup. 1561] GRANVELLE ENTERS MECHLIN 391 Such is a slight sketch of the revels by which this iU-fated Bartholomew marriage was celebrated. While WiUiam of Orange was thus employed in Germany, GranveUe seized the opportunity to make his entry into the city of Mechlin as archbishop, believing that such a step would be better accomplished in the absence of the prince from the country.^ The cardinal found no one in the city to welcome him. None of the great nobles were there.^ The people looked upon the pro- cession with sUent hatred. No man cried, " God bless him ! " He wrote to the king that he should push forward the whole matter of the bishoprics as fast as possible, adding the ridiculous assertion that the opposition came entirely from the nobility, and that " if the seigniors did not talk so much, not a man of the people would open his mouth on the subject." ^ The remonstrance offered by the three estates of Brabant against the scheme had not influenced Philip. He had replied in a peremptory tone. He had assured them that he had no intention of receding, and that the province of Brabant ought to feel itself indebted to him for having given them prelates instead of abbots to take care of their eternal interests, and for having erected their religious houses into episcopates.* The abbeys made what resistance they could, but were soon fain to come to a compromise with the bishops, who, according to the arrangement thus made, were to receive a certain portion of the abbey revenues, while the remainder was 1 Papiers d'fitat, vi. 332. 2 Hopper, Rec. et Mem., ciii. 24. 3 Papiers d'ifitat, vi. 332 : " Si no hablaran tanto los senores, no haWar^ hombre del pueblo nada." * Bor, i. 28. 392 THE RISE OP THE DUTCH EEPUBLIC [1561 • to belong to the institutions, together with a continu- ' ance of their right to elect their own chiefs, subordinate, . however, to the approbation of the respective prelates [ of the diocese.^ Thus was the episcopal matter settled in Brabant. In many of the other bishoprics the new dignitaries were treated with disrespect as they made their entrance into their cities, while they experienced endless opposition and annoyance on attempting to take possession of the revenue assigned to them. 1 Hoofd, i. 37. Bor. Hopper, 29. CHAPTER III The Inquisition', the great cause of the revolt — The three varieties of the institution — The Spanish Inquisition described — The epis- copal Inquisition in the Netherlands — The papal Inquisition estab- lished in the provinces by Charles V. — His instructions to the inquisitors — They are renewed by Philip — Inquisitor Titelmann — Instances of his manner of proceeding — Spanish and Nether- land inquisitions compared — Conduct of Granvelle — Faveau and Mallart condemned at Valenciennes — " JournSe des maubrul6s " — Severe measures at Valenciennes — Attack of the rhetoric clubs upon Granvelle— -Granvelle's insinuations against Egmont and Simon Eenard — Timidity of Viglius — Universal hatred toward the cardinal — Buffoonery of Brederode and Lumey — Courage of Gran- velle — Philip taxes the Netherlands for the suppression of the Huguenots in France — ^Meeting of the Knights of the Fleece — Assembly at the house of Orange — Demand upon the estates for supplies — Montigny appointed envoy to Spain — Open and deter- mined opposition to Granvelle — Secret representations by the cardinal to Philip concerning Egmont and other seigniors — Line of conduct traced out for the king — Montigny's representations in Spain — Unsatisfactory result of his mission. The great cause of the revolt which, within a few years, was to break forth throughout the Netherlands'! was the Inquisition. It is almost puerile to look further or deeper when such a source of convulsion lies at the very outset of any investigation. During the war there had been, for reasons already indicated, an occasional pause in the religious persecution. Philip had now 393 394 THE EISE OF THE DUTCH EEPUBLIC [1561 returned to Spain, having arranged witli great preci- sion a comprehensive scheme for exterminating that religious belief which was already accepted by a very large portion of his Netherland subjects. From afar there rose upon the provinces the prophetic vision of a coming evil stiU more terrible than any which had yet oppressed them. As across the bright plains of Sicily, when the sun is rising, the vast pyramidal shadow of Mount Etna is definitely and visibly projected,— the phantom of that ever-present enemy which holds fire and devastation in its bosom,— so, in the morning hour of Philip's reign, the shadow of the Inquisition was cast from afar across those warm and smiling provinces— a specter menacing fiercer flames and wider desolation than those which mere physical agencies could ever compass. There has been a good deal of somewhat superfluous discussion concerning the different kinds of inquisition. The distinction drawn between the papal, the episcopal, and the Spanish inquisitions did not, in the sixteenth i century, convince many unsophisticated minds of the merits of the establishment in any of its shapes. How- ever classified or entitled, it was a machine for inquiring into a man's thoughts, and for burning him if the result was not satisfactory. The Spanish Inquisition, strictly so called, that is to say, the modern or later institution established by Pope Alexander VI. and Ferdinand the Catholic, was doubt- less invested with a more complete apparatus for inflict- ing human misery and for appalling human imagination than any of the other less artf uUy arranged inquisitions, whether papal or episcopal. It had been originally devised for Jews or Moors, whom the Christianity of 1561] THE SPAi^ISH INQUISITION 395 the age did not regard as human beings, but who could not be banished without depopulating certain districts. It was soon, however, extended from pagans to heretics. The Dominican Torquemada was the first Moloch to be placed upon this pedestal of blood and fire, and from that day forward the "Holy Office" was almost exclu- sively in the hands of that band of brothers. In the eighteen years of Torquemada's administration, ten thou- sand two hundred and twenty individuals were burned alive, and ninety-seven thousand three hundred and twenty-one punished with infamy, confiscation of prop- erty, or perpetual imprisonment, so that the total mimber of families destroyed by this one friar alone amounted to one hundred and fourteen thousand four hundred and one.^ In course of time the jurisdiction of the office was extended. It taught the savages of India and America to shudder at the name of Christianity. The fear of its introduction froze the earlier heretics of Italy, France, and Germany into orthodoxy. It was a court owning allegiance to no temporal authority, superior to all other tribunals. It was a bench of monks without appeal, having its familiars in every house, diving into the secrets of every fireside, judging and executing its horrible decrees without responsibility. It condemned not deeds, but thoughts. It affected to descend into individual conscience, and to punish the crimes which it pretended to discover. Its process was reduced to a horrible simplicity. It arrested on suspicion, tortured tOl confession, and then punished by fire. Two wit- nesses, and those to separate facts, were sufficient to consign the victim to a loathsome dungeon. Here he was sparingly supplied with food, forbidden to speak, 1 Llorente, i. 280. 396 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH EBPUBLIC [1561 or even to sing,— to wliieli pastime it could tardly be thought he would feel much inclination,— and then left to himself till famine and misery should break his spirit. When that time was supposed to have arrived he was examined. Did he confess and forswear his heresy, whether actually innocent or not, he might then assume the sacred shirt, and escape with confiscation of all his property. Did he persist in the avowal of his innocence, two witnesses sent him to the stake, one wit- ness to the rack. He was informed of the testimony against him, but never confronted with the witness. That accuser might be his son, father, or the wife of his bosom ; for all were enjoined, under the death-penalty, to inform the inquisitors of every suspicious word which might fall from their nearest relatives. The indictment being thus supported, the prisoner was tried by torture. The rack was the court of justice; the criminal's only advocate was his fortitude— for the nominal counselor, who was permitted no communication with the prisoner and was furnished neither with documents nor with power to procure evidence, was a puppet, aggravating the lawlessness of the proceedings by the mockery of legal forms. The torture took place at midnight, in a gloomy dungeon, dimly lighted by torches. The victim— whether man, matron, or tender virgin— was stripped naked, and stretched upon the wooden bench. Water, weights, fires, pulleys, screws— all the apparatus by which the sinews could be strained without cracking, the bones crushed without breaking, and the body racked exquisitely without giving up its ghost, was now put into operation. The executioner, enveloped in a black robe from head to foot, with his eyes glaring at his victim through holes cut in the hood which muffled 1561] AUTOS DA FE 397 his face, practised successively all the forms of torture which the devilish ingenuity of the monks had invented. The imagination sickens when striving to keep pace with these dreadful realities. Those who wish to in- dulge their curiosity concerning the details of the system may easily satisfy themselves at the present day. The flood of light which has been poured upon the subject more than justifies the horror and the rebellion of the Netherlanders. The period during which torture might be inflicted from day to day was unlimited in duration. It could only be terminated by confession, so that the scaffold was the sole refuge from the rack. Individuals have borne the torture and the dungeon fifteen years, and have been burned at the stake at last. Execution followed confession, but the number of condemned prisoners was allowed to accumulate, that a multitude of victims might grace each great gala-day. The auto da f e was a solemn festival. The monarch, the high functionaries of the land, the reverend clergy, the populace, regarded it as an inspiring and delightful recreation. When the appointed morning arrived, the victim was taken from his dungeon. He was then attired in a yellow robe without sleeves, Kke a herald's coat, embroidered all over with black figures of devils. A large conical paper miter was placed upon his head, upon which was represented a human being in the midst of flames, surrounded by imps. His tongue was then painfully gagged, so that he could neither open nor shut his mouth. After he was thus accoutred, and just as he was leaving his cell, a breakfast, consisting of every delicacy, was placed before him, and he was urged, with ironical politeness, to satisfy his hunger. He was then 398 THE KISE OF THE DUTCH EEPUBLIC [1561 led forth into the public square. The procession was formed with great pomp. It was headed by the little school-children, who were immediately followed by the band of prisoners, each attired in the horrible yet ludi- crous manner described. Then came the magistrates and nobility, the prelates and other dignitaries of the Church. The holy inquisitors, with their officials and familiars, followed, all on horseback, with the blood-red flag of the " Sacred Office " waving above them, blazoned upon either side with the portraits of Alexander and of Ferdinand, the pair of brothers who had established the institution. After the procession came the rabble. When aU had reached the neighborhood of the scaffold, and had been arranged in order, a sermon was preached to the assembled multitude. It was filled with lauda- tions of the Inquisition, and with blasphemous revilings against the condemned prisoners. Then the sentences were read to the individual victims. Then the clergy chanted the Fifty-first Psalm, the whole vast throng uniting in one tremendous miserere. If a priest hap- pened to be among the culprits, he was now stripped of the canonicals which he had hitherto worn, whUe his hands, lips, and shaven crown were scraped with a bit of glass, by which process the oil of his consecration was supposed to be removed. He was then thrown into the common herd. Those of the prisoners who were reconciled, and those whose execution was not yet appointed, were now separated from the others. The rest were compelled to mount a scaffold, where the exe- cutioner stood ready to conduct them to the fire. The inquisitors then delivered them into his hands, with an ironical request that he would deal with them tenderly, and without blood-letting or injury. Those who re- 1561] A TRIBUNAL WITHOUT APPEAL 399 mained steadfast to tlie last were then burned at the stake; they who in the last extremity renounced their faith were strangled before being thrown into the flames. Such was the Spanish Inquisition, technically so caUed. It was, according to the biographer of Philip II., a " heavenly remedy, a guardian angel of paradise, a lions' den in which Daniel and other just men could sustain no injury, but in which perverse sinners were torn to pieces." ^ It was a tribunal superior to all human law, without appeal, and certainly owing no allegiance to the powers of earth or heaven. No rank, high or hum- ble, was safe from its jurisdiction. The royal family were not sacred, nor the pauper's hovel. Even death afforded no protection. The Holy Office invaded the prince in his palace and the beggar in his shroud. The corpses of dead heretics were mutilated and burned. The in- quisitors preyed upon carcasses and rifled graves. A gorgeous festival of the Holy Office had, as we have seen, welcomed Philip to his native land. The news of these tremendous autos da f e, in which so many illustri- ous victims had been sacrificed before their sovereign's eyes, had reached the Netherlands almost simultaneously with the buUs creating the new bishoprics in the prov- inces. It was not likely that the measure would be ren- dered more palatable by this intelligence of the royal amusements.^ 1 "Lago de los leones de Daniel que a los justos no hazen mal, si despeda9an los obstinados impenitentes pecadores, remedio del eieloi Angel de la guarda del Paraiso," etc.— Cabrera, v. 236. 2 Bor, iii. 113-119, who had used the works of his contempora- ries, Gronsalvo Montano and Griorgio Nigrino. Hoofd, i. 30-34. Compare Llorente, Hist. Crit. de I'lnquis., particularly i. c. 8 and 9, and iv. c. 46 ; Van der Vynckt, i. 200-238 ; Hopper, p. ii. c. 9; Grot. Ann., i. 14, 15. 400 THE RISE OP THE DUTCH KEPUBLIC [1561 The Spanish Inquisition had never flourished in any soil but that of the Peninsula. It is possible that the king and Granvelle were sincere in their protestations of entertaining no intention of introducing it into the Netherlands, although the protestations of such men are entitled to but little weight. The truth was that the Inquisition existed already in the provinces. It was the main object of the government to confirm and ex- tend the institution. The episcopal Inquisition, as we have already seen, had been enlarged by the enormous increase in the number of bishops, each of whom was to be head inquisitor in his diocese, with two special inquisitors under him. With this apparatus and with the edicts, as already described, it might seem that enough had already been done for the suppression of heresy. But more had been done. A regular papal inquisition also existed in the Netherlands. This estab- lishment, like the edicts, was the gift of Charles V. A word of introduction is here again necessary— nor let the reader deem that too much time is devoted to this painful subject. On the contrary, no definite idea can be formed as to the character of the Netherland revolt without a thorough understanding of this great cause— the religious persecution in which the country had lived, breathed, and had its being for half a century, and in which, had the rebellion not broken out at last, the population must have been either exterminated or en- tirely embruted. The few years which are immediately to occupy us in the present and succeeding chapter present the country in a daily increasing ferment from the action of causes which had existed long before, but which received an additional stimulus as the policy of the new reign developed itself. 1561] PAPAL INQUISITION IN THE PROVINCES 401 Previously to the accession of Cliarles V. it cannot be said that an inquisition had ever been established in the provinces. Isolated instances to the contrary, ad- duced by the canonists who gave their advice to Mar- garet of Parma, rather proved the absence than the existence of the system.^ In the reign of Philip the Good, the vicar of the inquisitor-general gave sentence against some heretics, who were burned in LiUe (1448). In 1459, Pierre Troussart, a Jacobin monk, condemned many Waldenses, together with some leading citizens of Artois, accused of sorcery and heresy. He did this, however, as inquisitor for the Bishop of Arras, so that it was an act of episcopal and not papal inquisition.^ In general, when inquisitors were wanted in the prov- 1 Histoire des causes de la disunion, r^voltes et alterations des Pays-Bas depuis I'abdioation de Cliarles Quint en 1555 jusqu'^ la mort du Prince de Parme en 1592. Par Messire Beuom de France, Chevalier, Seigneur de Noyelles, President d' Artois. MS., Bibl. de Bourgogne, i. chap. 5 et 7. This important historical work, by a noble of the Walloon prov- inces, and a contemporary of the events he describes, has never been published. The distinguished M. Dumortier, of the Com- mission Eoyale d'Histoire, has long promised an edition, which cannot fail to be as satisfactory as learning and experience can make it. The work is of considerable length, in five manuscript folio volumes. It was written mainly from the papers of Councilor d'AssonleviUe. The almost complete revelation of state secrets in the inestimable publications of the Simancas Correspondence, by M. Gachard, has deprived the work, however, of a large portion of its value. On the subject of national politics and the general con- dition of the country, the writer cannot for a moment be compared to Bor in erudition, patience, or fullness of detail. He is a warm Catholic, but his style has not a tithe of the vividly descriptive and almost dramatic power of Pontus Payen, another contemporary Catholic historian, who well deserves publication. 2 Eenom de France MS., ubi sup. VOL. I.— 26 402 THE EISE OP THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1561 inces, it was necessary to borrow them from France or Germany. Tlie exigencies of persecution making a domestic staff desirable, Cbarles V., in the year 1522, applied to Ms ancient tutor, whom he had placed on the papal throne.^ Charles had, however, already in the previous year appointed Francis van der Hulst to be inquisitor-general for the Netherlands.^ This man, whom Erasmus called a "wonderful enemy to learning," was also provided with a coadjutor, Nicholas of Bgmond by name, a CarmeUte monk, who was characterized by the same authority as "a madman armed with a sword." The inquisitor-general received full powers to cite, arrest, imprison, torture heretics without observing the ordinary forms of law, and to cause his sentences to be executed without appeal.^ He was, however, in pronouncing def- inite judgments, to take the advice of Laurens, president of the Grand Council of Mechlin, a coarse, cruel, and ignorant man, who "hated learning with a more than deadly hatred," * and who might certainly be relied upon to sustain the severest judgments which the inquisitor might fulminate. Adrian, accordingly, commissioned Van der Hulst to be universal and general inquisitor for all the Netherlands.^ At the same time it was expressly stated that his functions were not to supersede those exercised by the bishops as inquisitors in their own sees. 1 Renom de France MS., ubi sup. Introduction to Gachard, Correspondanee de Philippe II., vol. i. 2 By commission, April 23, 1522. Gachard, Introduction, Phi- lippe II., cix. 3 Ibid. * Expression of Erasmus. Brandt, Reformatie, i. 93. 5 By brief , June, 1523. Gachard, Introd., Phil. II., i. cxi. 1561] EARLY FUNCTIONARIES 403 Thus the papal Inquisition was estahHshed in the prov- inces. Van der Hulst, a person of infamous character, was not the man to render the institution less odious than it was by its nature. Before he had fulfilled his duties two years, however, he was degraded from his office by the emperor for having forged a document.^ In 1525, Buedens, Houseau, and Coppin were confirmed by Clement VII. as inquisitors in the room of Van der Hulst. In 1537 Ruard Tapper and Michael Drutius were appointed by Paul III., on the decease of Coppin, the other two remaining in office. The powers of the papal inquisitors had been gradually extended, and they were, by 1545, not only entirely independent of the ■» episcopal Inquisition, but had acquired right of jurisdic- tion over bishops and archbishops, whom they were empowered to arrest and imprison. They had also re- ceived and exercised the privilege of appointing dele- gates, or subinquisitors, on their own authority. Much of the work was, indeed, performed by these officials, the most notorious of whom were Barbier, De Monte, Titelmann, Fabry, Campo de Zon, and Stryen.^ In 1545, and again in 1550, a stringent set of instructions were drawn up by the emperor for the guidance of these papal inquisitors. A glance at their context shows that the establishment was not intended to be an empty form. They were empowered to inquire, proceed against, and chastise all heretics, all persons suspected of heresy, and their protectors.^ Accompanied by a notary, they were to collect wi-itten information concerning every person in the provinces "infected or vehemently sus- 1 Gaehard, Introd., PMl. II., i. oxi. 2 Ibid., i. cxiv. 3 See tlie instructions in Van der Haer, i. 161-175. 404 THE KISE OF THE DUTCH EEPUBLIC [1561 pected." They were authorized to summon all subjects of his Majesty, whatever their rank, quality, or station, and to compel them to give evidence or to communicate suspicions. They were to punish all who pertinaciously refused such depositions with death. The emperor com- manded his presidents, judges, sheriffs, and all other judicial and executive oflcers to render all "assistance to the inquisitors and their familiars in their holy and pious Inquisition, whenever required so to do," on pain of being punished as encQuragers of heresy, that is to say, with death. Whenever the inquisitors should be satisfied as to the heresy of any individual, they were to order his arrest and detention by the judge of the place, or by others arbitrarily to be selected by them. The judges or persons thus chosen were enjoined to fuMl the order, on pain of being punished as protectors of heresy, that is to say, with death, by sword or fire. If the prisoner were an ecclesiastic, the inquisitor was to deal summarily with the case, " without noise or form in the process, selecting an imperial councilor to render the sentence of absolution or condemnation."^ If the prisoner were a lay person, the inquisitor was to order his punishment, according to the edicts, by the council of the province. In case of lay persons suspected but not convicted of heresy, the inquisitor was to proceed to their chastisement, "with the advice of a counselor or some other expert." In conclusion, the emperor ordered the "inquisitors to make it known that they were not doing their own work, but that of Christ, and to persuade aU persons of this fact." ^ This clause of 1 " Summatim et de piano sine figura et strepitu judlcii et pro- oessu instructo," etc.— Vander Haer, 168. 2 " Id. hoe preeoipue laborabunt dioti inquisitores . . . ut omni- 1561] IMPBEIAL INSTRUCTIONS 405 their instructions seemed difficult of accomplishment, for no reasonable person could doubt that Christ, had he reappeared in human form, -would have been instantly crucified again or burned alive in any place within the dominions of Charles or Philip. The blasphemy with which the name of Jesus was used by such men to sanc- tify all these nameless horrors is certainly not the least of their crimes. In addition to these instructions, a special edict had been issued on the 26th April, 1550, according to which \ aU judicial officers, at the requisition of the inquisitors, were to render them aU assistance in the execution of their office, by arresting and detaining aU persons sus- pected of heresy, according to the instructions issued to said inquisitors, and this notwithstanding any privileges^ or charters to the contrary} In short, the inquisitors I P were not subject to the civU authority, but the civil au- thority to them. The imperial edict empowered them " to chastise, degrade, denounce, and deliver over heretics to the secular judges for punishment; to make use of jails, and to make arrests, without ordinary warrant, but merely with notice given to a single counselor, who i was obliged to give sentence according to their desire, without ' application to the ordinary judge." ^ These instructions to the inquisitors had been renewed and confirmed by Philip in the very first month of his j reign ^ (November 28, 1555). As in the case of the edicts, it had been thought desirable by Granvelle to make use bus persuadeant, se non qu8B sua sunt, sed quae sunt Christi quserere, hoe solum conartes." — Van der Haer, 173. i Brandt, Hist. Refonnatie, i. 158. 2 Meteren, ii. 37. ' Van der Haer, 175. 406 THE RISE OP THE DUTCH EBPUBLIC [1561 of the supposed magic of tlie emperor's name to hallow the whole machiiiery of persecution. The action of the system during the greater part of the imperial period had been terrible. Suffered for a time to languish dur- ing the French war, it had lately been renewed with additional vigor. Among all the inquisitors the name of Peter Titelmann was now preeminent. He executed his infamous functions throughout Flanders, Douai, and Tournay, the most thriving and populous portions of the Netherlands, with a swiftness, precision, and even with a jocularity which hardly seemed human. There was a kind of grim humor about the man. The woman who, according to Lear's fool, was wont to thrust her live eels into the hot paste, "rapping them o' the cox- combs with a stick and crying reproachfully. Wantons, lie down ! " had the spirit of a true inquisitor. Even so dealt Titelmann with his heretics writhing on the rack or in the flames. Contemporary chronicles give a picture of him as of some grotesque yet terrible goblin, career- ing through the country by night or day, alone, on horseback, smiting the trembling peasants on the head with a great club, spreading dismay far and wide, drag- ging suspected persons from their firesides or their beds, and thrusting them into dungeons, arresting, torturing, strangling, burning, with hardly the shadow of warrant, information, or process.^ The secular sheriff, familiarly called Red Rod, from the color of his wand of ofQce, meeting this inquisitor Titelmann one day upon the highroad, thus wonderingly 1 Brandt, i. 228, 168 et passim. Kok, Vaderl. "Woordenboek, art. Titelmann. Compare the brilliantly written episode of Pro- fessor Altmeyer: "Une sucoursale du tribunal de sang" (Brux. 1853), pp. 37, 38. 1561] PETER TITELMANN'S EXPLOITS 407 addressed him : " How can you venture to go about alone, or at most with an attendant or two, arresting people on every side, while I dare not attempt to execute my office except at the head of a strong force armed in proof, and then only at the perU of my life ? " " Ah, Eed Rod," answered Peter, jocosely, " you deal with bad people. I have nothing to fear, for I seize only the innocent and virtuous, who make no resistance and let themselves be taken like lambs." "Mighty well," said the other; "but if you arrest all the good people and I all the bad, 't is difficult to say who in the world is to escape chastisement." ^ The reply of the inquisitor has not been recorded, but there is no doubt that he proceeded like a strong man to run his day's course. He was the most active of all the agents in the reli- gious persecution at the epoch of which we are now treating, but he had been inquisitor for many years. The martyrology of the provinces reeks with his mur- ders. He burned men for idle words or suspected thoughts ; he rarely waited, according to his frank con- fession, for deeds. Hearing once that a certain school- master, named Geleyn de Muler, of Oudenarde, "was addicted to reading the Bible," he summoned the culprit before him and accused him of heresy. The school- master claimed, if he were guilty of any crime, to be tried before the judges of his town. "You are my prisoner," said Titelmann, " and are to answer me and none other." The inquisitor proceeded accordingly to catechize him, and soon satisfied himself of the school- master's heresy. He commanded him to make immedi- ate recantation. The schoolmaster refused. "Do you 1 Brandt, Hist, der Eeformatie, i. 228. 408 THE EISE OP THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1561 not love your wife and children ? " asked the demoniac Titelmann. "God knows," answered the heretic, "that if the whole world were of gold, and my own, I would give it aU only to have them with me, even had I to live on' bread and water and in bondage." " You have then," answered the inquisitor, " only to renounce the error of your opinions." " Neither for wife, children, nor all the world can I renounce my God and religious truth," answered the prisoner. Thereupon Titelmann sen- tenced him to the stake. He was strangled and then thrown into the flames.^ At about the same time, Thomas Calberg, tapestry- weaver, of Tournay, within the jurisdiction of this same inquisitor, was convicted of having copied some hymns from a book printed in Geneva. He was burned alive.^ Another man, whose name has perished, was hacked to death with seven blows of a rusty sword, in presence of his wife, who was so horror-stricken that she died on the spot before her husband.^ His crime, to be sure, was Anabaptism, the most deadly offense in the calendar. In the same year one Walter Kapell was burned at the stake for heretical opinions.* He was a man of some property, and beloved by the poor people of Dixmude, in Flanders, where he resided, for his many charities. A poor idiot, who had been often fed by his bounty, called out to the inquisitor's subalterns, as they bound his patron to the stake, " Ye are bloody murderers ; that man has done no wrong, but has given me bread to eat." With these words, he cast himself headlong into 1 Hist, des Martyrs, f . 227, olxvii. ; apud Brandt, i. 168. 2 Brandt, i. 169. ' Hist, der Doopsg. Mart., p. 229; apud Brandt, i. 167. * Ibid. 1561] WALTER KAPELL 409 the flames to perisli with his protector, but was with difficulty rescued by the officers.^ A day or two after- ward he made his way to the stake, where the half- burnt skeleton, of "Walter Eapell still remained, took the body upon his shoulders, and carried it through the streets to the house of the chief burgomaster, where several other magistrates happened then to be in session. Forcing his way into their presence, he laid his burden at their feet, crying, " There, murderers ! ye have eaten his flesh, now eat his bones ! " ^ It has not been re- corded whether Titelmann sent him to keep company with his friend in the next world. The fate of so obscure a victim could hardly find room on the crowded pages of the Netherland martyrdom. This kind of work, which went on daily, did not in- crease the love of the people for the Inquisition or the edicts. It terrified many, but it inspired more with that noble resistance to oppression, particularly to religious oppression, which is the sublimest instinct of human nature. Men confronted the terrible inquisitors with a courage equal to their cruelty. At Tournay, one of the chief cities of Titelmann's district, and almost before his eyes, one Bertrand Le Bias, a velvet-manufacturer, committed what was held an almost incredible crime. Having begged his wife and children to pray for a blessing upon what he was about to undertake, he went on Christmas day to the cathedral of Tournay and stationed himself near the altar. Having awaited the moment in which the priest held on high the consecrated host, Le Bias then forced his way through the crowd, snatched the wafer from the hands of the 1 Hist, der Doopsg. Mart., 229, ii. 849 ; apud Brandt, i. 167. 2 Ibid. 410 THE KISE OF THE DUTCH EEPUBLIC [1561 astonislied ecclesiastic, and broke it into bits, crying aloud, as he did so, "Misguided men, do ye take this thing to be Jesus Christ, your Lord and Saviour?" With these words, he threw the fragments on the ground and trampled them with his feet.^ The amazement and horror were so universal at such an appalling offense that not a finger was raised to arrest the criminal. Priests and congregation were alike paralyzed, so that he would have found no difficulty in making his escape. He did not stir, however ; he had come to the church determined to execute what he con- sidered a sacred duty, and to abide the consequences. After a time he was apprehended. The inquisitor demanded if he repented of what he had done. He protested, on the contrary, that he gloried in the deed, and that he would die a hundred deaths to rescue from such daily profanation the name of his Redeemer, Christ. He was then put thrice to the torture, that he might be forced to reveal his accomplices. It did not seem in human power for one man to accomplish such a deed of darkness without confederates. Bertrand had none, 1 Histoire des Martyrs, f. 356, exev. ; apud Brandt, i. 171, 172. It may be well supposed that this would be regarded as a crime of almost ineonoeivable magnitude. It was death even to refuse to kneel in the streets when the wafer was carried by. Thus, for ex- ample, a, poor huckster named Simon, at Bergen-op-Zoom, who neglected to prostrate himself before his booth at the passage of the host, was immediately burned. Instances of the same punish- ment for that offense might be multiplied. In this particular case it is recorded that the sheriff who was present at the execution was so much affected by the courage and fervor of the simple-minded victim that he went home, took to his bed, became delirious, cry- ing constantly, "Ah, Simon! Simon!" and died miserably, "not- withstanding all that the monks could do to console him." — Hist, der Doopsg. Mart., ii. 849, ccxxx. ; apud Brandt, i. 167. 1561] HORRID DEATH OP LE BLAS 411 however, and could denounce none. A frantic sentence was then devised as a feeble punishment for so much wickedness. He was dragged on a hurdle, with his mouth closed with an iron gag, to the market-place. Here his right hand and foot were burned and twisted ofE between two red-hot irons. His tongue was then torn out by the roots, and because he stiU endeavored to call upon the name of God, the iron gag was again applied. With his arms and legs fastened together behind his back, he was then hooked by the middle of his body to an iron chain, and made to swing to and fro over a slow fire till he was entirely roasted. His life lasted almost to the end of these ingenious tortures, but his fortitude lasted as long as his life.^ In the next year Titelmann caused one Robert Ogier of Ryssel, in Flanders, to be arrested, together with his wife and two sons. Their crime consisted in not going to mass, and in practising private worship at home. They confessed the offense, for they protested that they could not endure to see the profanation of their Saviour's name in the idolatrous sacraments. They were asked what rites they practised in their own house. One of the sons, a mere boy, answered : " We fall on our knees, and pray to God that he may enlighten our hearts and forgive our sins. We pray for our sovereign, that his reign may be prosperous and his life peaceful. We also pray for the magistrates and others in authority, that God may protect and preserve them all." The boy's simple eloquence drew tears even from the eyes of some of his judges ; for the inquisitor had placed the 1 Hist, des Martyrs, 356, excv. ; apud Brandt, i. 171, 172. De la Barre, Reeueil des aetes et choses plus notables qui sont adve- nues 6s Pays-Bas, MS. in the Brussels Archives, f. 16. 412 THE EISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1562 case before the civil tribunal. The father and eldest son were, however, condemned to the flames. "O God," prayed the youth at the stake, " Eternal Father, accept the sacrifice of our lives, in the name of thy beloved Son." " Thou liest, scoundrel ! " fiercely interrupted a monk, who was lighting the fire ; " God is not your father ; ye are the devil's children." As the flames rose about them, the boy cried out once more : " Look, my father, all heaven is opening, and I see ten hundred thousand angels rejoicing over us. Let us be glad, for we are dying for the truth." " Thou liest ! thou liest ! " again screamed the monk ; " all heU is opening, and you see ten thousand devils thrusting you into eternal fire." Eight days afterward the wife of Ogier and his other son were burned, so that there was an end of that family.! Such are a few isolated specimens of the manner of proceeding hi a single district of the Netherlands. The inquisitor Titelmann certaialy deserved his terrible reputation. Men called him Saul the persecutor, and it was well known that he had been originally tainted with the heresy which he had for so many years been furiously chastising.^ At the epcich which now engages our attention, he felt stimulated by the avowed policy of the government to fresh exertions, by which all his previous achievements should be cast into the shade. In one day he broke into a house in Eyssel, seized John de Swarte, his wife and four children, together with two newly married couples and two other persons, convicted i Hist, des Martyrs, 385, 233, 387, 388 ; apud Brandt, i. 193- 197. 2 Jacobus Kok, Vaderlandsche Woordenboek, t. 27, art. Titel- mann. 1562] CAUSE AND EFFECT 413 them of reading the Bible and of praying in their own doors, and had them all immediately burned.^ Are these things related merely to excite superfluous horror? Are the sufferings of these obscure Christians beneath the dignity of history ? Is it not better to deal with murder and oppression in the abstract, without entering into trivial details ? The answer is that these things are the history of the Netherlands at this epoch ; that these hideous details furnish the causes of that immense movement out of which a great republic was born and an ancient tyranny destroyed ; and that Car- dinal Granvelle was ridiculous when he asserted that the people would not open their mouths if the seigniors did not make such a noise. Because the great lords " owed their very souls," ^ because convulsions might help to pay their debts and furnish forth their masquerades and banquets, because the Prince of Orange was ambitious, and Bgmont jealous of the cardinal, therefore super- ficial writers found it quite natural that the country should be disturbed, although that " vUe and mischiev- ous animal, the people," might have no objection to a continuance of the system which had been at work so long. On the contrary, it was exactly because the move- ment was a popular and a religious movement that it win always retain its place among the most important events of history. Dignified documents, state papers, solemn treaties, are often of no more value than the lambskin on which they are engrossed. Ten thousand nameless victims in the cause of religious and civil freedom may build up great states and alter the aspect of whole continents. 1 Brandt, i. 259. 2 Papiers d'Etat, vii. 51 : "Deven todos el alma." 414 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH EEPUBLIC [1562 The nobles, no doubt, were conspicuous, and it was well for the cause of the right that, as in the early hours of English liberty, the crown and miter were opposed by the baron's sword and shield. Had all the i seigniors made common cause with Philip and Gran- velle, instead of setting their breasts against the Inquisi- ] tion, the cause of truth and liberty would have been still more desperate. Nevertheless, they were directed and controlled, under Providence, by humbler but more powerful agencies than their own. The nobles were but the gUded hands on the outside of the dial; the hour to strike was determined by the obscure but weighty movements within. Nor is it, perhaps, always better to rely upon abstract phraseology to produce a necessary impression. Upon some minds declamation concerning liberty of con- science and religious tyranny makes but a vague im- pression, while an effect may be produced upon them, for example, by a dry, concrete, cynical entry in an account-book, such as the following, taken at hazard from the register of municipal expenses at Tournay, during the years with which we are now occupied :^ " To Mr. Jacques Barra, executioner, for having tor- tured twice Jean de Lannoy, ten sous. " To the same, for having executed by fire said Lan- noy, sixty sous. For having thrown his cinders into the river, eight sous." ^ This was the treatment to which thousands and tens of thousands had been subjected in the provinces. Men, women, and children were burned, and their " cinders " thrown away, for idle words against Rome, spoken years 1 Gachard, Eapport oonoernant les AroUves de Lille, 87. 2 Ibid. 1562] DISTINCTION WITHOUT DIFFERENCE 415 before/ for praying alone in their closets, for not kneel- ing to a wafer when they met it in the streets,^ for thoughts to which they had never given utterance, but which, on inquiry, they were too honest to deny. Cer- tainly with this work going on year after year in every city in the Netherlands, and now set into renewed and vigorous action by a man who wore a crown only that he might the better torture his fellow-creatures, it was time that the very stones in the streets should be moved to mutiny. Thus it may be seen of how much value were the prot- estations of Philip and of GranveUe, on which much stress has latterly been laid, that it was not their in- tention to introduce the Spanish Inquisition. With the edicts and the Netherland Inquisition, such as we have described them, the step was hardly necessary. In fact, the main difference between the two institu- tions consisted in the greater efficiency of the Spanish in discovering such of its victims as were disposed to deny their faith. Devised originally for more timorous and less conscientious infidels, who were often disposed to skulk in obscure places and to renounce without really abandoning their errors, it was provided with a set of venomous familiars who glided through every chamber and coUed themselves at every fireside. The secret details of each household in the realm being therefore known to the Holy OfB.ce and to the monarch, no infidel or heretic could escape discovery. This invisible ma- chinery was less requisite for the Netherlands. There was comparatively little difficulty in ferreting out the " vermin," ^— to use the expression of a "Walloon his- 1 Brandt, i. 243. ^ ibid., i. passim. s Eenom de France, i. 13, MS. 416 THE EISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1562 torian of that age,— so that it was only necessary to maintain in good working order the apparatus for de- stroying the noxious creatures when unearthed. The heretics of the provinces assembled at each other's houses to practise those rites described in such simple language by Baldwin Ogier, and denounced under such horrible penalties by the edicts. The inquisitorial system of Spain was hardly necessary for men who had but little prudence in concealing, and no inclination to disavow, their creed. " It is quite a laughable matter," wrote Granvelle, who occasionally took a comic view of the Inquisition, "that the king should send us deposi- tions made in Spain by which we are to hunt for heretics here, as if we did not know of thousands already. Would that I had as many doubloons of annual income," he added, " as there are public and professed heretics in the provinces." i No doubt the Inquisition was in such eyes a most desirable establishment. "To speak without passion," says the Walloon, "the Inquisition well ad- ministered is a laudable institution, and not less necessary than all the other of&ces of spirituality and temporality belonging both to the bishops and to the commissioners of the Roman see."^ The papal and episcopal establishments, in cooperation with the edicts, were enough, if thoroughly exercised and completely' extended. The edicts alone were sufficient. "The edicts and the Inquisition are one and the same thing," ^ 1 " Si lo osasse dezir, es cosa de risa embiarnos deposioiones que se hazen ay delante, etc. . . . y tuviesse yo tantos doblones de k 10 de renta como los hay publieos hereges," etc. — Papiers d'Etat, vii. 105-107. 2 Renom de France, i. 8, MS. ' Groen v. P., ArcMves et Correspondanee, iii. 29. 1562] A PITHY QUERY 417 said the Prince of Orange. The circumstance that the civil authorities were not as entirely superseded by the Netherland as by the Spanish system was rather a difference of form than of fact. We have seen that the secular oflcers of justice were at the command of the inquisitors. Sheriff, jailer, judge, and hangman were all required, under the most terrible penalties, to do their bidding. The reader knows what the edicts were. He knows also the instructions to the corps of papal inquisitors delivered by Charles and PhUip. He knows that Philip, both in person and by letter, had done his utmost to sharpen those instructions during the latter portion of his sojourn in the Netherlands. Fourteen new bishops, each with two special inquisitors under him, had also been appointed to carry out the great work to which the sovereign had consecrated his exis- tence. The manner in which the hunters of heretics performed their office has been exemplified by slightly sketching the career of a single one of the subinquisi- tors, Peter Titelmann. The monarch and his minister scarcely needed, therefore, to transplant the Peninsular exotic. Why should they do so ? Philip, who did not often say a great deal in a few words, once expressed the whole truth of the matter in a single sentence. "Wherefore introduce the Spanish Inquisition?" said he ; " the Inquisition of the, Netherlands is much more piti- less than that of Spain." ^ Such was the system of religious persecution com- menced by Charles and perfected by Philip. The king could not claim the merit of the invention, which justly 1 "D'ailleurs I'inquisition des Pays-Bas est plus impitoyable que celle d'Espagne." — Letter to Margaret of Parma, Correspondance de Philippe II., i. 207. VOL. I.— 27 418 THE EISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1562 belonged to the emperor. At the same time, his respon- sibility for the unutterable woe caused by the continu- ance of the scheme is not a jot diminished. There was a time when the whole system had fallen into compara- tive desuetude. It was utterly abhorrent to the institu- tions and the manners of the Netherlanders. Even a great number of the Catholics in the provinces were averse to it. Many of the leading grandees, every one of whom was Catholic, were foremost in denouncing its continuance. In short, the Inquisition had been par- tially endured, but never accepted. Moreover, it had ,; never been introduced into Luxemburg or Groningen.^ I In Gelderland it had been prohibited by the treaty^ \ through which that province had been annexed to the emperor's dominions, and it had been uniformly and successfully resisted in Brabant. Therefore, although Philip, taking the artful advice of Granvelle, had shel- tered himself under the emperor's name by reenacting, word for word, his decrees and reissuing his instruc- tions, he cannot be allowed any such protection at the bar of history. Such a defense for crimes so enormous is worse than futile. In truth, both father and son recognized instinctively the intimate connection between ^ ideas of religious and of civil freedom. " The authority of God and the supremacy of his Majesty" was the for- mula used with perpetual iteration to sanction the con- stant recourse to scaffold and funeral pile. Philip, bigoted in religion and fanatical in his creed of the absolute power of kings, identified himself wUlingly with the Deity, that he might more easily punish crimes against his own sacred person. Granvelle carefully 1 Gacliard, Introduction to Philippe H., i. 123, iv. 2 Ibid. 1562] STATE OF THE PROVINCES 419 sustained him in these convictions, and fed his suspi- cions as to the motives of those who opposed his mea- sures. The minister constantly represented the great seigniors as influenced by ambition and pride. TheyV had only disapproved of the new bishoprics, he insinu- ated, because they were angry that his Majesty should dare to do anything without their concurrence, and because their own influence in the states would be / diminished. It was their object, he said, to keep the Mug "in tutelage," to make him "a shadow and a cipher," while they should themselves exercise aE au- thority in the provinces. It is impossible to exaggerate the effect of such suggestions upon the duU and gloomy mind to which they were addressed. It is easy, how- ever, to see that a minister with such views was likely to be as congenial to his master as he was odious to the people. For already, iu the beginning of 1562, GranveUe was extremely unpopular. "The cardinal is hated of all men," wrote Sir Thomas Gresham.i The great struggle between him and the leading nobles had already commenced. The people justly identified him with the whole infamous machinery of persecution, which he had either originated or warmly made his own, Vighus and Berlaymont were his creatures. With thei other members of the state council, according to their solemn statement, already recorded, he did not deign to consult, while he affected to hold them responsible for the measures of the administration. Even the regent herself complained that the cardinal took affairs quite out of her hands, and that he decided upon many im- portant matters without her cognizance.^ She already 1 Burgon, ii. 267. 2 Papiers d'fitat, vi. 543-545. 420 THE RISE OP THE DUTCH KEPUBLIC [1562 began to feel herself the puppet which it had been in- tended she should become ; she already felt a diminution of the respectful attachment for the ecclesiastic which had inspired her when she procui-ed his red hat. Granvelle was, however, most resolute in carrying out the intentions of his master. We have seen how vigor- ously he had already set himself to the inauguration of the new bishoprics, despite of opposition and obloquy. He was now encouraging or rebuking the inquisitors in their " pious offtce " throughout all the provinces. Not- withstanding his exertions, however, heresy continued to spread. In the Walloon provinces the infection was most prevalent, while judges and executioners were appalled by the mutinous demonstrations which each successive sacrifice provoked. The victims were cheered on their way to the scaffold. The hymns of Marot were sung in the very faces of the inquisitors. Two ministers, Faveau and MaUart, were particularly conspicuous at ithis moment at Valenciennes. The governor of the flprovince. Marquis Berghen, was constantly absent, for !/he hated with his whole soul the system of persecution. For this negligence Granvelle denounced him secretly and perpetually to PhiHp.^ " The marquis says openly," said the cardinal, "that 't is not right to shed blood for matters of faith. With such men to aid us, your Maj- esty can judge how much progress we can make." ^ It was, however, important, in GranveUe's opinion, that these two ministers at Valenciennes should be at once put to death. They were avowed heretics, and they preached to their disciples, although they certainly were not doctors of divinity. Moreover, they were accused, ~ ' 1 Dom I'Eveaque, M6moires, i. 302-308. 2 Papiers d'Etat, vii. 75. 1562] WALLOON VICTIMS 421 most absurdly, no doubt, of pretending to work mii-acles. It was said that, in presence of several witnesses, tbey bad undertaken to cast out devils ; and tbey bad been apprehended on an accusation of this nature.^ Their offense really consisted in reading the Bible to a few of their friends, Granvelle sent Philibert de Bruxelles to Valenciennes to procure their immediate condemnation and execution.^ He rebuked the judges and inquisitors, he sent express orders to Marquis Berghen to repair at once to the scene of his duties. The prisoners were condemned in the autumn of 1561. The magistrates were, however, afraid to carry the sentence into effect.^ Granvelle did not cease to censure them for their pusil- lanimity, and wrote almost daily letters accusing the magistrates of being themselves the cause of the tumults by which they were appalled. The popular commotion was, however, not lightly to be braved. Six or seven months long the culprits remained in confinement, while daily and nightly the people crowded the streets, hurling threats and defiance at the authorities, or pressed about 1 " Histoire des etoses les plus m^morables qui se sont pass^es en la ville et Compt6 de Valenciennes depuis Is commenoement des troubles des Pays-Bas sous le rfegne de Phil. II., jusqu'i l'ann6e 1621," MS. (CoUect. Gerard). This is a oontemporary manuscript belonging to the Gerard collection in the Royal Library at The Hague. Its author was a citizen of Valenciennes, and a personal witness of most of the events which he describes. He appears to have attained to a great age, as he ' minutely relates, from personal observation, many scenes which occurred before 1566, and his work is continued till the year 1621. It is a mere sketch, without much literary merit, but containing many local anecdotes of interest. Its anonymous author was a very sincere Catholic. 2 Dom I'Evesque, i. 302-308. 2 Ibid. Valenciennes MS. 422 THE EISE OP THE DUTCH EEPUBLIC [1562 the prison windows, encouraging their beloved ministers, and promising to rescue them in case the attempt should be made to fulfil the sentence.^ At last Granvelle sent down a peremptory order to execute the culprits by fire. On the 27th of April, 1562, Faveau and Mallart were accordingly taken from their jail and carried to the market-place, where arrangements had been made for burning them. Simon Faveau, as the executioner was binding him to the stake, uttered the invocation, " Eternal Father ! " ^ A woman in the crowd, at the same instant, took ofE her shoe and threw it at the funeral pile.^ This was a preconcerted signal. A movement was at once visible in the crowd. Men in great numbers dashed upon the barriers which had been erected in the square around the place of execution. Some seized the fagots, which had been already lighted, and scattered them in every direction; some tore up the pavements ; others broke in pieces the barriers. The executioners were prevented from carrying out the sentence, but the guard were enabled, with great celerity and determination, to bring off the culprits and to place them in their dungeon again. The authorities were in doubt and dismay. The inquisitors were for putting the ministers to death in prison, and hurling their heads upon the street. Evening approached while the officials were still pondering. The people who had been chant- ing the psalms of David through the town, without having decided what should be their course of action, at last determined to rescue the victims. A vast throng, after much hesitation, accordingly directed their steps to the prison. " You should have seen this vile popu- 1 Dom I'Evesque, i. 302-308. Valenciennes MS. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid. 1562] UNEXPECTED RESISTANCE 423 lace," says an eye-witness/ " moving, pausing, recoiling, sweeping forward, swaying to and fro like the waves of the sea when it is agitated by contending winds." The attack was vigorous, the defense was weak; for the authorities had expected no such fierce demonstration, notwithstanding the menacing language which had been so often uttered. The prisoners were rescued, and suc- ceeded in maldng their escape from the city. The day in which the execution had been thus prevented was called, thenceforward, the "day of the iU-burned"^ {journie des mau-hrulez). One of the ministers, how- ever, Simon Paveau, not discouraged by this near ap- proach to martyrdom, persisted in his heretical labors, and was a few years afterward again apprehended. " He was then," says the chronicler, cheerfully, " burned well and finally" in the same place whence he had formerly been rescued.^ This desperate resistance to tyranny was for a moment successful, because, notwithstanding the murmurs and menaces by which the storm had been preceded, the authorities had not believed the people capable of pro- ceeding to such lengths. Had not the heretics — in the words of Inquisitor Titelmann— allowed themselves, year after year, to be taken and slaughtered like lambs 1 The consternation of the magistrates was soon succeeded by anger. The government at Brussels was in a frenzy of rage when informed of the occurrence. A bloody vengeance was instantly prepared, to vindicate the insult to the Inquisition. On the 29th of April, detachments 1 Valenoieniies MS. ^ Ibid. 3 "Le 28 Mars, 1568. Simon Faveau qui avait est6 un des ' maitr-druUz,' a,j3Jit est6 rattrapp6 fust brul6 bien et fteawa Valen- tiermes." — Ibid. 424 THE EISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1562 of Bossu's and of Berghen's " Bande d'Ordonnance " were sent into Valenciennes, together witli a company of the Duke of Aerschot's regiment. The prisons were in- stantly filled to overflowing with men and women arrested for actual or suspected participation in the tumult. Orders had been sent down from the capital to make a short process and a sharp execution for all the criminals. On the 16th of May the slaughter com- menced. Some were burned at the stake, some were beheaded : the number of victims was frightful. " No- thing was left undone by the magistrates," says an eye- witness, with great approbation, " which could serve for the correction and amendment of the poor people." ^ It was long before the judges and hangmen rested from their labors. When at last the havoc was complete, it might be supposed that a sufficient vengeance had been taken for the " day of the ill-burned," and an adequate amount of "amendment" provided for the "poor people." Such scenes as these did not tend to increase the loyalty of the na,tion nor the popularity of the govern- ment. On GranveUe's head was poured a daUy increas- ing torrent of hatred. He was looked upon in the provinces as the impersonation of that religious oppres- sion which became every moment more intolerable. The king and the regent escaped much of the odium which belonged to them, because the people chose to bestow all their maledictions upon the cardinal. There was, however, no great injustice in this embodiment. Gran- veUe was the government. As the people of that day were extremely reverent to royalty, they vented all their rage upon the minister, while maintaining stiU a con- 1 Valenciennes MS. 2 =3 "O u a o I- ss 1562] "RHETORIC CHAMBERS" 425 ventional respect for the sovereign. The prelate had already become the constant butt of the "rhetoric chambers." These popular clubs for the manufacture of homespun poetry and street farces out of the raw material of public sentiment occupied the place which has been more effectively filled in succeeding ages and in free countries by the daily press. Before the inven- tion of that most tremendous weapon, which liberty has ever wielded against tyranny, these humble but influential associations shared with the pulpit the only power which existed of moving the passions or direct- ing the opinions of the people. They were eminently liberal in their tendencies. The authors and the actors of their comedies, poems, and pasquils were mostly artisans or tradesmen, belonging to the class out of which proceeded the early victims and the later soldiers of the Reformation. Their bold farces and truculent satire had already effected much in spreading among the people a detestation of church abuses. They were particularly severe upon monastic licentiousness. "These corrupt comedians, called rhetoricians," says the "Walloon contemporary already cited, "afforded much amusement to the people. Always some poor little nuns or honest monks were made a part of the farce. It seemed as if the people could take no pleasure except in ridiculing God and the Church." ^ The people, however, persisted in the opinion that the ideas of a monk and of God were not inseparable. Certainly the piety of the early reformers was suflciently fervent, and had been proved by the steadiness with which they confronted torture and death ; but they knew no measure in the ridicule which they heaped upon the men by 1 Renom de Prance MS., i. c. 5. 426 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH EEPUBLIC [1562 wliom they were daily murdered in droves. The rhet- oric comedies were not admirable in an esthetic point of view, but they were wrathful and sincere. Therefore they cost many thousand lives, but they sowed the seed of resistance to religious tyranny, to spring up one day in a hundredfold harvest. It was natural that the authorities should have long sought to suppress these perambulating dramas. "There was at that tyme," wrote honest Richard Clough to Sir Thomas Gresham, " syche playes (of Reteryke) played thet hath cost many a 1000 man's lyves, for in these plays was the Word of God first opened in thys country. Weche playes were and are forbidden moche more strictly than any of the bookes of Martin Luther." ^ These rhetoricians were now particularly inflamed against Granvelle. They were personally excited against him, because he had procured the suppression of their religious dramas. " These rhetoricians who make farces and street plays," wrote the cardinal to Philip, "are particularly angry with me, because two years ago I prevented them from ridiculing the Holy Scriptures." ^ Nevertheless, these institutions continued to pursue their opposition to the course of the government. Their uncouth gambols, their awkward but stunning blows, rendered daily service to the cause of religious freedom. Upon the newly appointed bishops ^ they poured out an endless succession of rhymes and rebuses, epigrams, caricatures, and extravaganzas. Poems were pasted upon the walls of every house, and passed from hand to hand. Farces were enacted in every street, the odious ecclesiastics figuring as the principal buffoons. 1 Burgon, i. 377-391. 2 Papiers d'iltat, vi. 552-562. 3 Hoofd, i. 38. 1562] TRAGEDY AND PAECE 427 These representations gave so much offense that re- newed edicts were issued to suppress them.^ The pro- hibition was resisted and even ridiculed in many- provinces, particularly in Holland.^ The tyranny which was able to drown a nation in blood and tears was powerless to prevent them from laughing most bitterly at their oppressors. The tanner Cleon was never be- labored more soundly by the wits of Athens than the prelate by these Flemish "rhetoricians." With in- finitely less Attic salt, but with as much heartiness as Aristophanes could have done, the popular rhymers gave the minister aihple opportunity to understand the position which he occupied in the Netherlands. One day a petitioner placed a paper in his hand and vanished. It contained some scurrilous verses upon himself, to- gether with a caricature of his person. In this he was represented as a hen seated upon a pile of eggs, out of which he was hatching a brood of bishops. Some of these were clipping the shell, some thrusting forth an arm, some a leg, while others were running about with miters on their heads, all bearing whimsical resemblance to various prelates who had been newly appointed. Above the cardinal's head the devil was represented hovering, with these words issuing from his mouth : " This is my beloved son ; listen to him, my people." ^ There was another lampoon of a similar nature, which was so well executed that it especially excited Gran- velle's anger. It was a rhymed satire of a general nature, like the rest, but so delicate and so stinging that the cardinal ascribed it to his old friend and 1 Repert. der Plakaten, Bl. 96. Wagenaer, vi. 76. 2 Wagenaer, vi. 76 sqq. 3 "Hie est filius mens, ilium audite," ete. — ^Hoofd, ii. 42. 428 THE EISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1562 present enemy, Simon Renard. This man, a Bur- gundian by birth and college associate of Granvelle, had been befriended both by himself and his father.^ Aided by their patronage and his own abilities, he had arrived at distinguished posts, having been Span- ish envoy both in France and England, and one of the negotiators of the truce of Vaucelles. He had latterly been disappointed in his ambition to become a councilor of state, and had vowed vengeance upon the cardinal, to whom he attributed his ill success. He was certainly guilty of much ingratitude, for he had been under early obligations to the man in whose side he now became a perpetual thorn.^ It must be confessed, on the other hand, that Granvelle repaid the enmity of his old associate with a malevolence equal to his own, and if Renard did not 'lose his head as well as his political station, it was not for want of sufficient insinuation on the part of the minister.^ Especially did Granvelle denounce him to " the master " as the perverter of Eg- mont, while he usually described that nobleman him- self as weak, vain, "a friend of smoke,"* easily mis- guided, but in the main well intentioned and loyal. At the same time, with all these vague commendations, he never omitted to supply the suspicious king with an account of every fact or every rumor to the count's dis- credit. In the case of this particular satire, he informed Philip that he could swear it came from the pen of Renard, although, for the sake of deception, the rhetoric 1 Groen v. Prinsterer, Archives et Correspondanee, i. 177* sqq. Dom I'Evesque, M6moires, etc., i. 97 sqq. 2 Dom I'Evesque, vihi sup. 3 Papiers d'fitat, vi. 568, 569, 552-562. * "Es amigo de humo." — Ibid., vli. 115. 1562] THE CUNNING OF EENARD 429 comedians had been employed.^ He described the pro- duction as filled with " false, abominable, and infernal things," 2 and as treating not only himself, but the pope and the whole ecclesiastical order, with as much con- tumely as could be showed in Germany. He then pro- ceeded to insinuate, in the subtle manner which was peculiarly his own, that Egmont was a party to the publication of the pasquU. Renard visited at that house, he said, and was received there on a much more intimate footing than was becoming. Eight days before the satire was circulated there had been a conversation in Egmont's house of a nature exactly similar to the substance of the pamphlet. The man in whose hands it was first seen, continued Granvelle, was a sword- cutler, a godson of the count.' This person said that he had torn it from the gate of the city haU, but God gi-ant, prayed the cardinal, tliat it was not he who had first posted it up there. 'T is said that Egmont andli Mansfeld, he added, have sent many times to the cutler! to procure copies of the satire, aU which augments the suspicion against them.* With the nobles he was on no better terms than with E the people. The great seigniors. Orange, Egmont,« Horn, and others, openly avowed their hostility to him, ^ and had already given their reasons to the king. Mans- 1 f eld and his son at that time were both with the oppo- 1 sition. Aerschot and Aremberg kept aloof from the league which was forming against the prelate, but had \ small sympathy for his person. Even Berlaymont began ^ 1 Papiers d'Etat, vi. 552-562. 2 "Cosas falsas, abominables y infemales." — Ibid. 3 "Un espadero aMjado de M. d'Egmont," etc. — Ibid. * Ibid. 430 THE RISE OP THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1562 to listen to overtures from the leading nobles, wlio, among other inducements, promised to supply his children with bishoprics. There were none truly faith- ful and submissive to the cardinal but such men as the |Prev6t MoriUon, who had received much advancement ifrom him. This distinguished pluralist was popularly called "double a-b-c," to indicate that he had twice as many benefices as there were letters in the alphabet.^ He had, however, no objection to more, and was faith- ful to the dispensing power. The same course was pursued by Secretary Bave, Esquire Bordey, and other expectants and dependents. Viglius, always remarkable for his pusillanimity, was at this period already anxious to retire. The erudite and opulent Frisian preferred a less tempestuous career. He was in favor of the edicts, but he trembled at the uproar which their literal execu- tion was daily exciting, for he knew the temper of his countrymen. On the other hand, he was too sagacious not to know the inevitable consequence of opposition to the will of Philip. He was therefore most eager to escape the dUemma. He was a scholar, and could find more agreeable employment among his books. He had accumulated vast wealth, and was desirous to retain it as long as possible. He had a learned head, and was I anxious to keep it upon his shoulders. These simple objects could be better attained in a life of privacy. The post of president of the privy council and member of the consulta was a dangerous one. He knew that the king was sincere in his purposes. He foresaw that the people would one day be terribly in earnest. Of ancient Frisian blood himself, he knew that the spirit 1 Letter of Duchess of Parma to Philip, Correspondanoe de PhUippe II., i. 318-320. 1562] THE QUARREL GROWS HOTTER 431 of tLe ancient Batavians and Frisians had not wliolly deserted their descendants. He knew that they were not easily roused, that they were patient, but that they would strike at last and would endure. He urgently solicited the king to release him, and pleaded his in- firmities of body in excuse. ^ Philip, however, would not listen to his retirement, and made use of the most convincing arguments to induce him to remain. Four hundred and fifty annual florins, secured by good re- claimed swamps in Friesland, two thousand more in hand, with a promise of stiU larger emoluments when the king should come to the Netherlands, were reasons which the learned doctor honestly confessed himself unable to resist.^ Fortified by these arguments, he re- mained at his post, continued the avowed friend and adherent of Granvelle, and sustained with magnanimity the invectives of nobles and people. To do him justice, he did what he could to conciliate antagonists and to compromise principles. If it had ever been possible to find the exact path between right and wrong, the presi- dent would have found it, and walked in it with respec- tability and complacency. In the council, however, the cardinal continued to carry it with a high hand, turning his back on Orange and Bgmont, and retiring with the duchess and the presi- dent to consult after every session. Proud and im- portant personages, like the prince and the count, could ill brook such insolence ; moreover, they suspected the cardinal of prejudicing the mind of their sovereign against them. A report was very current, and obtained almost universal belief, that Granvelle had expressly advised his Majesty to take off the heads of at least half 1 Vit. Viglii, Ixxvi. p. 36. 2 Ibid. 432 THE EISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1562 a dozen of the principal nobles in the land. This was an error. " These two seigniors," wrote the cardinal to Philip, " have been informed that I have written to your Majesty that you will never be master of these prov- inces without taking off at least half a dozen heads, and that because it would be difftcult, on account of the probable tumults which such a course would occasion, , to do it here, your Majesty means to call them to Spain and do it there. Your Majesty can judge whether such a thing has ever entered my thoughts. I have laughed at it as a ridiculous invention. This gross forgery is one of Renard's." ^ The cardinal further stated to his Majesty that he had been informed by these same nobles that the Duke of Alva, when a hostage for the treaty of Cateau-Cambresis, had negotiated an alliance between the crowns of Prance and Spain for the extirpation of heresy by the sword. He added that he intended to deal with the nobles with all gentleness, and that he should do his best to please them. The only thing which he could not yield was the authority of his Majesty ; to sustain that, he would sacrifice his life, if necessary.^ At the same time GranveUe carefully im- pressed upon the king the necessity of contradicting the report alluded to, a request which he took care should also be made through the regent in person.^ He had already, both in his own person and in that of the duchess, begged for a formal denial, on the king's part, that there was any intention of introducing the Spanish Inquisition into the Netherlands, and that 1 Papiera d'Etat, vi. 568, 569. Compare Correspondance de Philippe 11., i. 202, 203. 2 Correspondance de Philippe II., i. 204, 205. 3 Ibid., i. 202, 203. 1562] GEANVELLE'S OPPOSEES 433 the cardinal had counseled, originally, the bishoprics.^ Thus instructed, the king accordingly wrote to Mar- garet of Parma to furnish the required contradictions. In so doing, he made a pithy remark. " The cardinal had not counseled the cutting off the half a dozen heads," said the monarch, " Mt perhaps it would not be so bad to do it!"^ Time was to show whether Philip was hkely to profit by the hint conveyed in the cardinal's disclaimer, and whether the factor "half-dozen" were to be used or not as a simple multiplier in the terrible account preparing. The contradictions, however sincere, were not believed by the persons most interested. Nearly aU the nobles continued to regard the cardinal with suspicion and aversion. Many of the ruder and more reckless class vied with the rhetoricians and popular caricaturists in the practical jests which they played off almost daily against the common foe. Especially Count Brederode, " a madman, if there ever were one," ^ as a contemporary expressed himself, was most untiring in his efforts to '^ make GranveUe ridiculous. He went almost nightly to masquerades, dressed as a cardinal or a monk ■* and as he was rarely known to be sober on these or any other occasions, the wildness of his demonstrations may easily be imagined. He was seconded on all these occasions by his cousin Robert de la Marck, Seigneur de Lumey, a worthy descendant of the famous "Wild Boar of Ardennes"— a man brave to temerity, but utterly de- 1 Correspondanee de PhiUppe n., i. 202, 207. 2 "Aunque quiza no seria mal hazello."— -Correspondanee de Philippe II., i. 207. 3 "Personage esoervellfe si oncques en fut." — Pontus Payen MS. < Ibid. VOL. I.— 28 434 THE EISE OP THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1562 praved, licentious, and sanguinary. These two men, both to be widely notorious from their prominence in many of the most striking scenes by which the great revolt was ushered in, had vowed the most determined animosity to the cardinal, which was manifested in the reckless, buffooning way which belonged to their char- acters. Besides the ecclesiastical costumes in which they always attired themselves at their frequent festiv- ities, they also wore foxtails in their hats instead of plumes.^ They decked their servants also with the same ornaments, openly stating that by these symbols they meant to signify that the old fox GranveUe, and his cubs, Yiglius, Berlaymont, and the rest, should soon be hunted down by them, and the brush placed in their hats as a trophy .^ Moreover, there is no doubt that frequent threats of personal violence were made against the cardinal. Granvelle informed the king that his life was continually menaced by the nobles, but that he feared them little, for he believed them too prudent to attempt anything of the kind.^ There is no doubt, when his position with regard to the upper and lower classes in the country is considered, that there was enough to alarm a timid man; but GranveUe was constitutionally brave. He was accused of wearing a secret shirt of mail,* of living in perpetual trepidation, of having gone on his knees to Egmont and Orange,^ of having sent Richardot, Bishop of Arras, to intercede for him in the same humiliating manner with Egmont.^ All these stories were fables. 1 Pontus Payen MS. 2 Ibid. 3 Papiers d'Etat, vi. 552-562. * Ibid., vii. 426. 5 Ev. Keydani Ann., i. 4. 6 Papiers d'Etat, vii. 449, 450. 1562] PRIVATE LIFE OF GEANVELLE 435 Bold as he was arrogant, he affected at this time to look down with a forgiving contempt on the animosity of the nobles. He passed much of his time alone, writing his eternal despatches to the king. He had a country house, called La Fontaine, surrounded by beautiful gardens, a little way outside the gates of Brussels, where he generally resided, and whence, notwithstanding the re- monstrances of his friends, he often returned to town, after sunset, alone, or with but a few attendants.'- He avowed that he feared no attempts at assassination, for, if the seigniors took his life, they would destroy the best friend they ever had. This villa, where most of his plans were matured and his state papers drawn up, was called by the people, in derision of his supposed ancestry, " The Smithy." ^ Here, as they believed, was the anvU upon which the chains of their slavery were forging ; here, mostly deserted by those who had been his earlier associates, he assumed a philosophical de- meanor which exasperated, without deceiving, his adver- saries. Over the great gate of his house he had placed the marble statue of a female. It held an empty wine- cup in one hand, and an urn of flowing water in the other.* The single word " Durate " was engraved upon the pedestal.^ By the motto, which was his habitual device, he' was supposed, in this apphcation, to signify that his power would outlast that of the nobles, and 1 Pontus Payen MS. 2 " Respondit constamment aveeq une face joifeuse, k quel propos voul^s vous que je me garde des seigueui'S, il n'y a pas un d'entre pn-y a qui je n'ay fait plaisir et service. S'ils me tuent, au nom de Dieu, je serai quicte de yivre, et eux d'un tres bon amy, qu'ils regretteront un jour lamentalDlement." — Ibid. 2 Van der Vynekt, 1. 164. i Hoofd, i. 39. 5 Ibid. 436 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1562 that, perennial and pure as living water, it would flow tranquilly on, long after the wine of their life had been drunk to the lees. The fiery extravagance of his adversaries, and the calm and limpid moderation of his own character, thus symbolized, were supposed to convey a moral lesson to the world. The hieroglyphics, thus interpreted, were not relished by the nobles ; all avoided his society and declined his invitations. He consoled r himself with the company of the lesser gentry,^ a class which he now began to patronize, and which he urgently recommended to the favor of the king,^ hinting that military and civil oflces bestowed upon their inferiors would be a means of lowering the pride of the grandees.^ He also affected to surround himself with even humbler individuals. " It makes me laugh," he wrote to Philip, " to see the great seigniors absenting themselves from my dinners; nevertheless, I can always get plenty of guests at my table, gentlemen and councilors. I some- times invite even citizens, in order to gain their good will." * The regent was well aware of the anger excited in the breasts of the leading nobles by the cool manner in which they had been thrust out of their- share in the administration of affairs. She defended herself with acrimony in her letters to the king,^ although a defense was hardly needed in that quarter for implicit obedience to the royal commands. She confessed her unwilling- ness to consult with her enemies.^ She avowed her H 1 Papiers d'Etat, ubi sup. 2 Dom I'Evesque, ii. 53. 3 i^id. * "Y aim burgeses que yo llamo per ganarles la voluntad." — Papiers d'Etat, vi. 552-562. 5 Strada, iii. 116, 117. « Ibid. 1562] INDIGNATION IN THE PROVINCES 437 determination to conceal the secrets of the government from those who were capable of abusing her confidence. She represented that there were members of the council who would willingly take advantage of the trepidation which she really felt, and which she should exhibit if she expressed herself without reserve before them.i For this reason she confined herself, as Philip had always intended, exclusively to the consulta.^ It was not difficult to recognize the hand which wrote the letter thus signed by Margaret of Parma. Both nobles and people were at this moment irritated by another circumstance. The civil war having again broken out in Prance, Philip, according to the promise made by him to Catherine de' Medici when he took her daughter in marriage, was called upon to assist the CathoUc party with auxiliaries. He sent three thousand infantry, accordingly, which he had levied in Italy, as many more collected in Spain, and gave immediate orders that the Duchess of Parma should despatch at least two thousand cavalry from the Netherlands.^ Great was the indignation in the council when the com- mands were produced. Sore was the dismay of Margaret. It was impossible to obey the king. The idea of send- ing the famous mounted gendarmerie of the provinces to fight against the French Huguenots could not be tolerated for an instant. The " Bandes d'Ordonnance " were very few in number, and were to guard the frontier. They were purely for domestic purposes. It formed no part of their duty to go upon crusades in foreign lands; still less to take a share in a religious 1 Strada, iii. 116, 117. 2 Ibid. Compare Groen v. Prinsterer, AreHves, i. 117, 118. 3 Strada, iii. 102, 103. 438 THE EISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1562 quarrel, and least of all to assist a monarch against a nation. These views were so cogently presented to the duchess in council that she saw the impossibility of complying with her brother's commands. She wrote to Philip to that effect. Meantime another letter arrived out of Spain, chiding her delay, and impatiently calling upon her to furnish the required cavalry at once.i The duchess was in a dUemma. She feared to provote another storm in the council, for there was already sufBcient wrangling there upon domestic subjects. She knew it was impossible to obtain the consent even of Berlaymont and Viglius to such an odious measure as the one proposed. She was, however, in great trepida- tion at the peremptory tone of the king's despatch. Under the advice of Granvelle, she had recourse to a trick. A private and confidential letter of Philip was read to the council, but with alterations suggested and interpolated by the cardinal. The king was represented as being furious at the delay, but as willing that a sum of money should be furnished instead of the cavalry, as originally required.^ This compromise, after consider- able opposition, was accepted. The duchess wrote to Philip, explaining and apologizing for the transaction. The king received the substitution with as good a grace as could have been expected, and sent fifteen hundred troopers from Spain to his Medicean mother-in-law, drawing upon the Duchess of Parma for the money to pay their expenses. Thus was the industry of the Neth- erlands taxed that the French might be persecuted by their own monarch.* The regent had been forbidden by her brother to convoke the States-General, a body which the Prince of 1 Strada, iii. 104. 2 Ibid. 3 ibid. I 1562] KNIGHTS OF THE FLEECE ASSEMBLED 439 Orange, sustained by Berghen, Montigny, and other nobles, was desirous of having assembled. It may be easily understood that GranveUe would take the best care that the royal prohibition should be enforced. The duchess, however, who, as already hinted, was beginning to feel somewhat uncomfortable under the cardinal's dominion, was desirous of consulting some larger council than that with which she held her daily deliberations. A meeting of the Knights of the Fleece was accordingly summoned. They assembled in Brussels ^ in the month of May, 1562.1 ijijjg learned Viglius ad- dressed them in a long and eloquent speech, in which he discussed the troubled and dangerous condition of the provinces, alluded to some of its causes, and sug- gested various remedies. It may be easily conceived, however, that the Inquisition was not stated among the causes, nor its suppression included among the remedies. A discourse in which the fundamental topic was thus conscientiously omitted was not likely, with aU its con- cinnities, to make much impression iipon the disaffected knights, or to exert a soothing influence upon the people. The orator was, however, delighted with his own per- formance. He informs us, moreover, that the duchess was equally charmed, and that she protested she had never in her whole life heard anything " more delicate, more suitable, or more eloquent." ^ The Prince of Orange, however, did not sympathize with her admira- tion. The president's elegant periods produced but little effect upon his mind. The meeting adjourned after a few additional words from the duchess, in which she begged the knights to ponder well the causes of the 1 Strada, iii. 118. Vit. VigUi, 36. 2 Ibid. 440 THE EISE OP THE DUTCH EEPUBLIC [1562 increasing discontent, and to meet her again, prepared to announce what, in their opinion, would be the course best adapted to maintain the honor of the king, the safety of the provinces, and the glory of God.^ Soon after the separation of the assembly, the Prince of Orange issued invitations to most of the knights to meet at his house for the purpose of private delibera- tion.2 The president and cardinal were not included in these invitations. The meeting was, iu fact, what we should call a caucus, rather than a general gathering. Nevertheless, there were many of the government party present — men who differed from the prince and were inclined to support Granvelle. The meeting was a stormy one. Two subjects were discussed. The first was the proposition of the duchess to investigate the general causes of the popular dissatisfaction ; the second was an inquiry how it could be rendered practicable to discuss political matters in future— a proceeding now impossible, in consequence of the perverseness and arrogance of certain functionaries, and one which, whenever attempted, always led to the same inevitable result. This direct assault upon the cardinal produced a furious debate. His enemies were delighted with the opportunity of venting their long-suppressed spleen. They indtdged in savage invectives against the man Ijwhom they so sincerely hated. His adherents, on the 'other hand,— Bossu, Berlaymont, Courfeires, — were as / warm in his defense. They replied by indignant denials of the charge against him, and by bitter insinuations 'i against the Prince of Orange. They charged him with ' nourishing the desire of being appointed governor of 1 Hopper, Rec. et M6m., iv. 25. 2 Hoofd, i. 40. Vit. Viglii, Hopper, ubi sup. 1562] CAUCUS OF THE NOBLES 441 Brabant, an office considered inseparable from the general V stadbolderate of all tbe provinces.^ They protested for themselves that they were actuated by no ambitious designs— that they were satisfied with their own posi- tion, and not inspired by jealousy of personages more powerful than themselves.^ It is obvious that such charges and recriminations could excite no healing result, and that the line between cardinalists and their opponents would be defined in consequence more sharply than ever. The adjourned meeting of the Chevaliers of the Fleece took place a few days after- ward.^ The duchess exerted herself as much as pos- sible to reconcile the contending factions, without being able, however, to apply the only remedy which could be effective. The man who was already fast becoming the great statesman of the country knew that the evil was beyond healing, unless by a change of purpose on the part of the government. The regent, on the other hand, who, it must be confessed, never exhibited any remarkable proof of intellectual ability during the period of her residence in the Netherlands, was often inspired by a feeble and indefinite hope that the matter might be arranged by a compromise between the views of conflicting parties. Unfortunately, the Inquisition was not a fit subject for a compromise. Nothing of radical importance was accomplished by the assembly of the Fleece. It was decided that an application should be made to the different states for a grant of money,* and that, furthermore, a special envoy 1 Groen v. Prinst., i. 147 sqq. Strada. 2 Hoofd, i. 40, 41. Hopper, Vit. Viglii, ubi sup. ' HoBDer. Vit. Vielii. uM sut). " Moota, 1. 4U, 4JL. Jiopper, v ' Hopper, Vit. Viglii, uM sup. < Ibid.. 36. 442 THE EISE OF THE DUTCH KEPUBLIC [1562 should be despatched to Spain. It was supposed by the duchess and her advisers that more satisfactory infor- mation concerning the provinces could be conveyed to Philip by word of mouth than by the most elaborate epistles.^ The meeting was dissolved after these two measures had been agreed upon. Dr. Viglius, upon whom devolved the duty of making the report and petition to the states, proceeded to draw up the neces- sary application. This he did with his customary elegance, and, as usual, very much to his own satisfac- tion.2 On returning to his house, however, after having discharged this duty, he was very much troubled at finding that a large mulberry-tree which stood in his garden had been torn up by the roots in a violent hur- ricane. The disaster was considered ominous by the president, and he was accordingly less surprised than mortified when he found, subsequently, that his demand upon the orders had remained as fruitless as his ruined tree.^ The tempest which had swept his garden he con- sidered typical of the storm which was soon to rage through the land, and he felt increased anxiety to reach a haven while it was yet comparatively calm. The estates rejected the request for supplies on various grounds, among others that the civil war was drawing to a conclusion in France, and that less danger was to be apprehended from that source than had lately been the case. Thus the " cup of bitterness " of which Granvelle had already complained was again commended to his lips, and there was more reason than ever for the government to regret that the national representatives 1 Strada, iii. 119. 2 Vit. VigUi, ubi sup. ' Ibid. 1562] AN ENVOY TO SPAIN SELECTED 443 had contracted the habit of meddling with financial matters.^ Florence de Montmorency, Seigneur de Montigny, was selected by the regent for the mission which had been decided upon for Spain. This gentleman was brother to Count Horn, but possessed of higher talents and a more amiable character than those of the admiral. He was a warm friend of Orange and a bitter enemy to Granvelle. He was a sincere Catholic, but a determined foe to the Inquisition. His brother had declined to act as envoy.^ This refusal can excite but little surprise when Philip's wrath at their parting interview is re- called, and when it is also remembered that the new mission would necessarily lay bare fresh complaints against the cardinal, stUl more extensive than those which had produced the former explosion of royal indignation. Montigny, likewise, would have preferred to remain at home, but he was overruled. It had been written in his destiny that he should go twice into the angry lion's den, and that he should come forth once alive. Thus it has been shown that there was an open, avowed hostility on the part of the grand seigniors and most of the lesser nobility to the cardinal and his measures. The people fully and enthusiastically sus- tained the Prince of Orange in his course. There was nothing underhand in the opposition made to the govern- ment. Th> Netherlands did not constitute an absolute monarchy. They did not even constitute a monarchy. There was no king in the provinces. Philip was King 1 Pa piers d'Etat, vi. 543-545 and 27. 2 Correspoadanee de Philippe II., i. 202, 203 (note). 444 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1562 of Spain, Naples, Jerusalem, but he was only Duke of Brabant, Count of Flanders, Lord of Friesland, hered- itary chief, in short, under various titles, of seventeen states, each one of which, although not republican, pos- sessed constitutions as sacred as, and much more ancient than, the crown.^ The resistance to the absolutism of Grranvelle and Philip was, therefore, logical, legal, con- stitutional. It was no cabal, no secret league, as the cardinal had the effrontery to term it, but a legitimate exercise of powers which belonged of old to those who wielded them, and which only an unrighteous innova- tion could destroy. Granvelle's course was secret and subtle. During the whole course of the proceedings which have just been described, he was in daily confidential correspondence with the king, besides being the actual author of the multitudinous despatches which were sent with the sig- nature of the duchess. He openly asserted his right to monopolize all the powers of the government; he did his utmost to force upon the reluctant and almost rebellious people the odious measures which the king had resolved upon, whUe in his secret letters he uni- formly represented the nobles who opposed him as be- ing influenced, not by an honest hatred of oppression and attachment to ancient rights, but by resentment, and jealousy of their own importance. He assumed, in his letters to his master, that the absolutism already 1 "On respondia qu'il est Roi : et je dis au oo^^trai^e que ee nom de Roi m'est inoognu. Qu'il le soit en Castille on Arragon, h Naples, aux Indes et par tout ou il eommande k plalsir : qu'il le soit s'il vault en Jerusalem, paisible Dominateur en Asie et Afrique, tant y a que je ne cognoi en ce pais qu'un Duo et un (jJompte, du- quel la puissance est limit^e selon nos privileges lesqufels il a jur6 k la joieuse entree," etc. — Apologia d'Oranga, 39, 40. 1562] GRANVELLE'S LETTERS TO PHILIP 445 existed of right and in fact which it was the intention of Philip to establish. While he was depriving the nobles, the states, and the nation of their privileges, and even of their natural rights (a slender heritage in those days), he assured the king that there was an evident determination to reduce his authority to a cipher. The estates, he wrote, had usurped the whole adminis- tration of the finances,^ and had farmed it out to An- thony van Stralen and others, who were making enor- mous profits in the business.^ " The seigniors," he said,'\ "declare at their dinner-parties that I wish to make\ them subject to the absolute despotism of your Majesty. In point of fact, however, they really exercise a great deal more power than the governors of particular provinces ever did before ; and it lacks but little that Madame and your Majesty should become mere ciphers, while the grandees monopolize the whole power .^ This," he continued, "is the principal motive of their opposi- j tion to the new bishoprics. They were angry that your / Majesty should have dared to solicit such an arrangement / at Rome without first obtaining their consent.*^ They wish to reduce your Majesty's authority to so low a point that you can do nothing unless they desire it. Their object is the destruction of the royal authority and of the ad- ministration of justice, in order to avoid the payment of their debts, telling their creditors constantly that they have spent their all in your Majesty's service, and 1 " Por haver usurpado los de los estados la administracion de los dineros." — Papiers d'Etat, vi. 543-545. 2 Ibid 3 " Y no nos faltaria otra cosa sine q Madama y aunque V. M.V estuviessen aqni por cifra, j que ellos hizifesen todo." — Ibid.,\ vi. 553-562. * Ibid. / f: 446 THE EISE OF THE DUTCH KEPUBLIC [1562 that they have never received recompense or salary. This they do to make your Majesty odious." ^ As a matter of course, he attributed the resistance on the part of the great nobles, every man of whom was Catholic, to base motives. They were mere demagogues, who refused to burn their fellow-creatures, not from any natural repugnance to the task, but in order to gain favor with the populace. " This talk about the Inquisi- tion," said he, " is all a pretext. 'T is only to throw dust in the eyes of the vulgar and to persuade them iato ji tumultuous demonstrations, while the real reason is that they choose that your Majesty should do nothing with- out their permission and through their hands." ^ He assumed sometimes, however, a tone of indulgence toward the seigniors — who formed the main topics of his letters— an affectation which might, perhaps, have offended them almost as much as more open and sincere denunciation. He could forgive offenses against him- self. It was for Philip to decide as to their merits or crimes so far as the crown was concerned. His language often was befitting a wise man who was speaking of very little children. " AssonleviUe has told me, as com- ing from Egmont," he wrote, " that many of the nobles are dissatisfied with me, hearing from Spain that I am endeavoring to prejudice your Majesty against them." Certainly the tone of the cardinal's daily letters would have justified such suspicion, could the nobles have seen 1 Papiers d'fitat, vi. 552-562. 2 " No es Sino color para el vulgo h, quien persuaden estar eosas para procurar alboroto, pero la verdadera causa de los que pre- sumen entender mas es, que arriba digo y no querer que V. M. pueda nada sino con su participaoion y per su mano." — Ibid., Yi. 569, 570. 1562] GRANVELLE'S ESTIMATE OP EGMONT 447 them. Granvelle begged the king, however, to disabuse them upon this point. " Would to God," said he, piously, " that they all would decide to sustain the authority of your Majesty, and to procure such measures as tend to the service of God and the security of the states. May I cease to exist if I do not desire to render ^ood service to the very least of these gentlemen. Your Majesty knows that, when they do anything for the benefit of your service, I am never silent. Nevertheless, thus they are constituted. I hope, however, that this flurry will blow over, and that when your Majesty comes they will all be found to deserve rewards of merit." ^ Of Egmont, especially, he often spoke in terms of vague but somewhat condescending commendation. He never manifested resentment in his letters, although, as already stated, the count had occasionally indulged not only in words, but in deeds of extreme violence against him. But the cardinal was too forgiving a Christian or too keen a politician not to pass by such offenses, so long as there was a chance of so great a noble's remaining or becoming his friend. He, accord- ingly, described him, in general, as a man whose prin- ciples, in the main, were good, but who was easUy led by his own vanity and the perverse counsels of others. He represented him as having been originally a warm supporter of the new bishoprics, and as having expressed satisfaction that two of them, those of Bruges and Ypres, should have been within his own stadholderate.^ He regretted, however, to inform the king that the count was latterly growing lukewarm, perhaps from fear of finding himself separated from the other nobles.^ On the whole, he was tractable enough, said the car- 1 Papiers d'fitat, vi. 535. 2 njia.^ 533. 3 ibid. 448 THE KISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1562 dinal, if he were not easily persuaded by the vile ; but one day, perhaps, he might open his eyes again.^ Not- withstanding these vague expressions of approbation which GranveUe permitted himself in his letters to Philip, he never failed to transmit to the monarch every fact, every rumor, every innuendo which might prejudice the royal mind against that nobleman or against any of the noblemen, whose characters he at the same time protested he was most unwilling to injure. It is true that he dealt mainly by insinuation, while he was apt to conclude his statements with disclaimers upon his own part, and with hopes of improvement in the con- duct of the seigniors. At this particular point of time he furnished Philip with a long and most circumstantial account of a treasonable correspondence which was thought to be going on between the leading nobles and the future emperor, Maximilian." The narrative was a good specimen of the masterly style of innuendo in which the cardinal excelled, and by which he was often enabled to convince his master of the truth of certain statements while affecting to discredit them. He had heard a story, he said, which he felt bound to communi- cate to his Majesty, although he did not himself implicitly believe it. He felt himself the more bound to speak upon the subject because it tallied exactly with intelligence which he had received from another source. The story was^ that one of these seigniors (the cardinal did not Tcnow which, for he had not yet thought proper to inves- tigate the matter) had said that rather than consent that the king should act in this matter of the bishoprics against the privileges of Brabant, the nobles would elect 1 Papiers d'fitat, vii. 45, 46. 2 Ibid., vi. 535 sqq. » Ibid. 15621 DAMNABLE INSINUATIONS 449 for their sovereign some other prince of the blood. This, said the cardinal, was perhaps a fantasy rather than an actual determination. Count Egmont, to be sure, he said, was constantly exchanging letters with the King of Bohemia (Maximilian), and it was supposed, therefore, that he was the prince of the blood who was to be elected to govern the provinces. It was determined that he should be chosen King of the Romans, by fair means or by force, that he should assemble an army to attack the Netherlands, that a corresponding movement should be made within the states, and that the people should be made to rise by giving them the reins in the matter of religion. The cardinal, after recounting aU the particulars of this fiction with great minuteness, added, with apparent frankness, that the correspondence between Egmont and Maximilian did not astonish him, because there had been much intimacy between them in the time of the late emperor. He did not feel con- vinced, therefore, from the frequency of the letters ex- changed, that there was a scheme to raise an army to attack the provinces and to have him elected by force. On the contrary, Maximilian could never accomplish such a scheme without the assistance of his imperial father the emperor, who, Grranvelle was convinced, would rather die than be mixed up with such vOlainy against PhUip.^ Moreover, unless the people should become still more corrupted by the bad counsels con- stantly given them, the cardinal did not believe that any of the great nobles had the power to dispose in this way of the provinces at their pleasure. Therefore he concluded that the story was to be rejected as improb- 1 " Y antes eUgeria S. M. C™ el morir que intentar tanta vella- queria contra V. M." — Papiers d'Etat, vi. 535 sqq. VOL. 1.— 29 450 THE KISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1562 able, although it had come to him directly from the house of the said Count Egmont.^ It is remarkable that, at the commencement of his narrative, the cardinal had expressed his ignorance of the name of the seignior who was hatching all this treason, while at the end of it he gave a local habitation to the plot in the palace of Egmont. It is also quite characteristic that he should add that, after all, he considered that nobleman one of the most honest of all, if appearances did not deceive? It may be supposed, however, that all these details of a plot which was quite imaginary were likely to produce more effect upon a mind so narrow and so suspicious as that of Philip than could the vague assertions of the cardinal that, in spite of all, he would dare be sworn that he thought the count honest, and that men should be what they seemed. Notwithstanding the conspiracy which, according to GrranveUe's letters, had been formed against him, not- withstanding that his life was daily threatened, he did not advise the king at this period to avenge him by any public explosion of wrath. He remembered, he piously observed, that vengeance belonged to God, and that he would repay .^ Therefore he passed over insults meekly, because that comported best with his Majesty's service. Therefore, too, he instructed Philip to make no demon- stration at that time, in order not to damage his own affairs. He advised him to dissemble, and to pretend not to know what was going on in the provinces.* 1 " . . . aunque me dezian que salia de la casa propria del dicho oonde." — Papiers d'Etat, vi. 535 sqq. 2 " Por uno de los mas claros y de qtiien pudiesse V. M. mas oonfiar si las aparencias no me enganan." — Ibid. 3 Ibid., vi. 552-562. * Ibid. 1562] MASTER AND PUPIL 451 Knowing that his master looked to him daily for instruc- tions, always obeyed them with entire docility, and, in fact, could not move a step in Netherland matters with- out them, he proceeded to dictate to him the terms in which he was to write to the nobles, and especially laid down rules for his guidance in his coming interviews with the Seigneur de Montigny.^ Philip, whose only talent consisted in the capacity to learn such lessons with laborious effort, was at this juncture partictilarly in need of tuition. The cardinal instructed him, ac- cordingly, that he was to disabuse all men of the im- pression that the Spanish Inquisition was to be intro- duced into the provinces. He was to write to the seigniors, promising to pay them their arrears of salary ; he was to exhort them to do all in their power for the advancement of religion and maintenance of the royal authority ; and he was to suggest to them that, by his answer to the Antwerp deputation, it was proved that there was no intention of establishing the Inquisition of Spain under pretext of the new bishoprics.^ The king was, furthermore, to signify his desire that all the nobles should exert themselves to efface this false impression from the popular mind. He was also to express himself to the same effect concerning the Spanish Inquisition, the bishoprics, and the religious question, in the public letters to Madame de Parma, which were to be read in full council.^ The cardinal also renewed his instruc- tions to the king as to the manner in which the Ant- werp deputies were to be answered, by giving them, namely, assurances that to transplant the Spanish Inqui- sition into the provinces would be as hopeless as to at- 1 Papiers d'fitat, vi. 552-562. Correspondanee de Philippe II., i. 219. .2 Ibid. 3 Ibid. 452 THE EISE OF THE DUTCH EEPUBLIC [1562 tempt its establishment in Naples.^ He renewed his de- sire that Philip should contradict the story about the half-dozen heads,^ and he especially directed him to in- form Montigny that Berghen had known of the new bishoprics before the cardinal. This, urged GranveUe, was particularly necessary, because the seigniors were irritated that so important a matter shoiild have been decided upon without their advice, and because the Marquis Berghen was now the " cock of the opposition." ^ At about the same time, it was decided by GranveUe and the regent, in conjunction with the king, to sow distrust and jealousy among the nobles by giving greater mercedes to some than to others, although large sums were really due to aU. In particular, the attempt was made in this paltry manner to humiliate William of Orange.* A considerable sum was paid to Egmont, and a trifling one to the prince, in considera- tion of their large claims upon the treasury. Moreover, the Duke of Aerschot was selected as envoy to the Frankfort Diet, where the King of the Romans was to be elected, with the express intention, as Margaret wrote to Philip, of creating divisions among the nobles, as he had suggested.^ The duchess at the same time in- formed her brother that, according to Berlaymont, the 1 Papiers d'fitat, vi. 564. 2 " . . . que yo haya eseripto a V. M. que no eortando les las cabe9as y k otros liasta media dozena no sera senor destos estados . . . y V. M. pueda juzgar si jamas tel cosa me deve haver pasado por el pensamiento." — Ibid., vi. 568, 569. 2 Correspondanoe de PMlippe II., i. 219. * Strada, iii. 121. Dom I'Evesque, ii. 41-45. 5 Dom I'Evesque, Strada, ubi sup. Correspondanoe de Philippe n., i. 225. 1562] MONTIGNY IN SPAIN 453 Prince of Orange was revolving some great design prejudicial to his Majesty's service.^ Philip, who already began to suspect that a man who thought so much must be dangerous, was eager to find out the scheme over which "William the Silent was sup- posed to be brooding, and wrote for fresh intelligence to the duchess. Neither Margaret nor the cardinal, however, could discover anything against the prince— who, meantime, although disappointed of the mission to Frankfort, had gone to that city in his private capa- city—saving that he had been heard to say, " One day we shall be the stronger." ^ GranveUe and Madame de Parma both communicated this report upon the same day, but this was all that they were able to discover of the latent plot.^ In the autumn of this year (1562) Montigny made his«i visit to Spain as confidential envoy from the regent. ^ The king, being fully prepared as to the manner in which he was to deal with him, received the ambassador with great cordiality. He informed him in the course of their interviews that GranveUe had never attempted' to create prejudice against the nobles, that he was in-; capable of the malice attributed to him, and that even were it otherwise, his evil representations against other public servants would produce no effect.* The king\ furthermore protested that he had no intention of in- troducing the Spanish Inquisition into the Netherlands, and that the new bishops were not intended as agents 1 Dom I'Evesque, Strada, ubi sup. Correspondance de Philippe II., i. 225. 2 "Que aigun dia serian los mas fuertes." — Papiers d'Etat, vii. 5. Correspondance de Philippe II., i. 241, 242. 3 Ibid. Ibid. * Correspondance de Philippe II., i. 230. Strada, ii. 122, 123. 454 THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1562 for such a design, but had been appointed solely with a view of smoothing religious difficulties in the provinces and of leading his people back into the fold of the faithful. He added that, as long ago as his visit to England for the purpose of espousing Queen Mary, he had entertained the project of the new episcopates, as the Marquis Berghen, with whom he had conversed freely upon the subject, could bear witness.^ With regard to the connection of GrranveUe with the scheme, he assured Montigny that the cardinal had not been previously consulted, but had first learned the plan after the mission of Sonnius.^ Such was the purport of the king's communications to the envoy, as appears from memoranda in the royal handwriting and from the correspondence of Margaret of Parma. Philip's exactness in conforming to his instructions is sufBciently apparent on comparing his statements with the letters previously received from the omnipresent cardinal. Beyond the limits of those directions the king hardly hazarded a syllable. He was merely the plenipotentiary of the cardinal, as Montigny was of the regent. So long as Granvelle's power lasted, he was absolute and infallible. Such, then, was the amount of satisfaction derived from the mission of Montigny. There was to be no diminution of the re- ligious persecution, but the people were assured upon royal authority that the Inquisition by which they were daily burned and beheaded could not be logically de- nominated the Spanish Inquisition. In addition to the comfort, whatever it might be, which the nation could derive from this statement, they were also consoled with 1 Correspondance de PMlippe II., i. 230. Strada, ii. 122, 123. 2 Ibid. 1562] RESULTS OF HIS MISSION 455 the information that Granvelle was not the inventor of the bishoprics. Although he had violently supported the measure as soon as published, secretly denouncing as traitors and demagogues all those who lifted their voices against it, although he was the originator of the renewed edicts, although he took, daily, personal pains that this Netherland Inquisition, " more pitiless than the Spanish," should be enforced in its rigor, and although he, at the last, opposed the slightest mitigation of its horrors, he was to be represented to the nobles and the people as a man of mild and unprejudiced character, incapable of injuring even his enemies. "I will deal with the seigniors most blandly," the cardinal had written to Philip, " and wUl do them pleasure, even if they do not wish it, for the sake of God and your Maj- esty."^ It was in this light, accordingly, that Philip drew the picture of his favorite minister to the envoy. Montigny, although somewhat influenced by the king's hypocritical assurances of the benignity with which he regarded the Netherlands, was, nevertheless, not to be deceived by this flattering portraiture of a man whom he^ knew so weU and detested so cordially as he did GranveUe. Solicited by the king, at their parting in- terview, to express his candid opinion as to the causes of the dissatisfaction in the provinces, Montigny very frankly and most imprudently gave vent to his private animosity toward the cardinal. He spoke of his licen- tiousness, greediness, ostentation, despotism, and assured the monarch that nearly all the inhabitants of the Nether- lands entertained the same opinion concerning him. He 1 "To usar^ con ellos toda Wandura, y les har& plazer en quanto pndiere aunque no qnieran para servicio de Dios it de V. M." — Papiers d'Etat, vi. 573. 456 THE EISB OP THE DUTCH REPUBLIC [1562 then dilated upon the general horror inspired by the Inquisition and the great repugnance felt to the estah- Jishment of the new episcopates. These three evils,— [Granvelle, the Inquisition, and the bishoprics, — he main- tained, were the real and sufficient causes of the increas- 'ing popular discontent.^ Time was to reveal whether the open-hearted envoy was to escape punishment for his frankness, and whether vengeance for these crimes against Granvelle and Philip were to be left wholly, as the cardinal had lately suggested, in the hands of the Lord. Montigny returned late in December.^ His report concerning the results of his mission was made in the state council, and was received with great indignation.^ The professions of benevolent intentions on the part of the sovereign made no impression on the mind of Orange, who was already in the habit of receiving secret information from Spain with regard to the intentions of the government. He knew very well that the plot re- vealed to him by Henry II. in the wood of Vincennes was stOl the royal program, so far as the Spanish mon- arch was concerned. Moreover, his anger was height- ened by information received from Montigny that the names of Orange, Egmont, and their adherents were cited to him, as he passed through Prance, as the avowed defenders of the Huguenots in politics and religion.* The prince, who was stiU a sincere Catholic, while he hated the persecutions of the Inquisition, was furious at the statement. A violent scene occurred in the coun- cil. Orauge openly denounced the report as a new slander of Granvelle, while Margaret defended the 1 Strada, iii. 122, 123. Correspondance de Philippe H., i. 232. 8 Strada, iii. 123. s Ibid. * Ibid. 1562] HIS RECEPTION BY THE NOBLES 457 cardinal and denied the accusation, but at the same time endeavored with the utmost earnestness to rec- oncile the conflicting parties.^ It had now become certain, however, that the govern- ment could no longer be continued on its present foot- ing. Either Granvelle or the seigniors must succumb. The Prince of Orange was resolved that the cardinal y should fall or that he would himself withdraw from aU participation in the affairs of government. In this de- / cision he was sustained by Egmont, Horn, Montigny, Berghen, and the other leading nobles. 1 Strada, iii. 123. NOTARIAL INSTRUMENT CONCERNING THE MARRIAGE OF ORANGE "WITH ANNA OF SAXONY MS., EOYAL ARCHIVES, DRESDEN Jm nahmen der heyligen vntzurteilten Dreifaltigkeit, Grottes Vaters, Gottes Sones vnnd Gottes heyligen Geistes Amen. Naeh der Geburt vnsers ainigen Heylandes vnd Seligmaehers Jesu Christi. Jm funfftzehenliundert vnd ain vnd seottzigsten Jare, der virdeu Eomer tzinstzal, zu latein Jndiction gnant, Bey Regir- ung des aller durchlauclitigsten grosmechtigsten fursten vnd her- i-en hern Ferdinauden erwelten Eomisehen Kaisers, zou alien zeiten mehrem des Eeiehs, Jn Germanien zu Vngern Behem Dalmaoien Croacien vnd Selavonien Konigk vnd Infant zu Hispanien, Ertz- hertzog ozu Osterreieh Hertzog ozu Burgundt zeu Steier Kernten Krain vnnd Wirttenbergk GraflEen ezu Tiroll vnd vnsers allergnedig- sten Herren, seiner Kay. Mt. Eegirung der Eomischen, 31. vnd der andernn jm 35., Sonntags am tage Bartholomei Apostoli, wel- cher war der 24. monatstag Augusti, naeh beschehnem Stadtliehem eiuzoug, vff das furstliohe beylager zwusohen den durchlauohtigen hochgebornen fursten vnd fiirstin. Hern Wilhelmen Printzen ozu Vranien Graffen zw Nassau Katzenelnbogen Vianden vnd Titz Hern zu Bredau Gubemator in Burgundie HoUandt, Selandt vnd Vtrieht, als des Breutigams, vnd freulein Anna, Geborne Herzogin czu Sachsen vnd Churfurst Moritz hoohloblioher gedechtnus einigen toehter, als der Braut. Seint zu Leiptzig vfm Eathaus vflEm Ober- sten Sal in einer Brker Stuben zwusohen vier vnd funff horen naoh Mittag in meiner ofEenbaren Notarieu, vnd zu ende benanten geozeugen Kegenwart erschienen Die obbemelten zwee furstUehen personen, Als der Breutigam vnd Braut, vnd doneben die Duroh- 459 460 NOTAEIAL INSTRUMENT CONCERNING THE lauchtigsten Hochgebornen Fursten vnd Furstin, Her Augustus Hertzog ozu Saohsen, des heiligen Ro. Reiohs Ertz Marschalh vnd ChurfuTst Landtgraff jn Duringen Marggraff czu Meissen vnd Burggraff ezu Magdeburgk sampt Frauen Annen gebomen aus komgliohem Stam czu Denmarken Hertzogin vnd Churfurstm zou Saclisen vnd Vnnd hat aldo Hoehgedaohter Churf urst, Hoohgedaoh.- tem printzen als dem Breutigam diese muentUche anzoeigung thun lassen. Sein Furstliohe gnad wurden sieli freuntlict wissen zu erjnnern, Das in vorlauJEEener Heuradtshandlung zwuschen S. F. gl. hoehermett Praiilein als derselbigen kunftigen ehegemahl bey dem reinen lautern wort Gottes, aueh. dem branch der hochwirdigen Sacrament Jnhalts der heiligen Apostolischen schrifft vnd jn sun- derheit wie solche Christliche lehr in der Augspurgischen Confes- sion vorf asset, [dorinne aueh jre f . g. ertzogen, vnd durch vorleihimg des Almechtigen bestendiglich zuvorharren gedenkt.] jder zceit vnvorhindert soUen bleiben lassen, vnd von soleher jrer Cristlichen Eelligion der Augspurgischen Confession, weder mit gewalt be- drauung noch beredung abfuren oder wendig maehen, Jrer F. G. aueh vorstatten vnd freuntlich nachlasse das sie zu jrer selbst not- durfft vnd gelegenheit, die Biieher dorinne solche Christliche Relli- gion der Augspurgischen Confession vorfasset vngeseheucht lesen zung vnsers Seligmachers des Hem Cristi gebrauchen woUen, das s. f. g. so offte solchs jm jare begert wiirde, jre P. G. an die ortte brengen woUen lassen do sie das Sacrament des leibs vnd bluts vnsers Hern Cristi nach desselben einsetzung, vnd also vnder beider gestallt sicher vnnd one gefahr gebrauchen vnd entpfahen konne. Vnnd do jre F. G. mit leibs schwacheit befiele, oder kindesnoten were, das s. f. g., vffl denselben fall, einen Evangelisehen predi- canten zu jren F. G. wollen forden lassen, der jre F. G. mit Gotes wort trostet vnd das heiUg Sacrament, wie obgemelt, jn jrem zimer reiche, Aueh die kinder so s. f. gl., mit hoohermeltem Fraulein, zceugen wurden, jn soleher Lahr der Augspurgischen Confession treulich soUen vnderwiesen werdenn AUes f emers Jnnhalts einer Nottel So. s. c. f. gl. vnder dem Dato Dresden den virtzehenden ApriUs dieses laufendenn ein vnnd sechtzigsten jares dem Herren printzen zugeschickt. Weil aber s. f. g., aus etzlichen vorgewah- tenn vrsaohenn bedenken gehapt, Solchs in Sehrifften vorfaSsen zcu lassen, unnd es entlieh dohin vorgliohen, das s. f. g. solchs Alles also festiglich zu halden Hochgedachtem Churfui-sten ezu Saclisen vnd als des Praiileins neehst bluts vorwaiitem Vettefn MARRIAGE OP ORANGE WITH ANNA OP SAXONY 461 vnnd Vater vor der vortrewuiing vnd beysetzutg, jn kegenweaf ti- keit des Frauleins -vnd anderer beidefseits jvet Chto vnnd Furst- liohen gnaden Redten vnd dienere zcusagen solten. Deiue allem nach, vnd well es durch gnedige Sohikunge des Almeohtlgeil so weit khommen, das hochgemelt Praiilem jtzunt hochgedaolitem Printzen offentlich Ehelieh vortrauet vnd beygesetzt Sol werden als stellet Hochgedaohter Churfurst in keinen zweifEel S. P. G. werden solche zeusage [nemlieh das tsie das Fraulein von del? waren Christlioben Relligion, wie dieselbige in der Augspiirgischen Con- fession vorfasset vnd dorinne jre F. G. er^cogen vnd vnderwiesen wurden, wider mit bedrauung noeh berhednng, abhalten, sundern bey derselbenn vnvorhindert bleiben) auch die biiolier dotinnen solche Cristliohe Relligion vorfasset, vngesoheuoht zou lesen vor- statten desgleiohen so ofEte es jre P. G. begem an die orte bringen woUen lassen do sie das hoobwirdige Sacrament, nach der elnsetz- ung des Seligmaohers vnsers Hern Jesu Christi, entpfahen moge, vnd do sie mit leibs schwacheit befiele J. F. G. einen Evange- lisohen predicanten vorschafEen woUen, der sie mit gotes wort, vnd reichung des Sacraments, naoh des Hern Cristi einsetzting troste. Das auch s. f . g. die kiudere, so sie nach dem willen des almech- tigen mit dem Freulein erzeugen werden jn solcher Christlichen Relligion der Augspurgischen Confession treulich woUen vnder- weiseii lasseu.] jtzundt allhier jn beisein des frenleins vnd der Churf urstin Hoffmeisterin Prauen Soffien von Miltitz witwen, auch beiderseits Redte, als nemlieh auf des Churfursten teil Hans von Ponika vfE Pomsen, Her Vlrioh Mordeisen vff Woltersdorff der Rechtenn Doctor vnd .Ordinarius zu Leiptzigk, und vif des Hern Printzen seite der Wolgeborue Her Johann Graff zu Nassaw^ vnd Heiurich von Wiltperg Hoffmeister, sein churfufstliohen Gnaden, mit hand vnd munde zcu thun vnbesohwert sein vnnd demselbigen auch f iirstlich vnd treuUch nachsetzen. Solchs gereicht zu f orderst dem.Almechtigen Got zu Ehren, vnnd S. P. G. thun doran derselb- ten vortrantem" hochgedachtem Preulein Anna, ein freuntlich angenhemes gefallen. Vnd Sein Churf. Ge. weren es hinwider umb S. P. G. freuntlich zubeschuldenn gantz geneigt vnnd willigk. Vfi solch besohehen muntlich vorhalten hat hoohgedacter Printz sich mit diesen worten vnd antwort vornehmen lassen vnd selbst miintlioh also geredt Gnediger Churfiirst loh kann mieh des schreib- ens das mir o. g. diesersachen halben vnder obebemeltem dato getan freuntlich vnd wol erjnnern, das alle die punct so der hev 462 NOTARIAL IN8TEUMENT doctor itzimt erzelt dorinne begriffen, vnd thu eur. g. hirmit zou sagenn das ieh solohs alles furstlioh wil halden vnd dem nach. khommen, vnd hat solohs hirauf S. Ch. Gr. mit hant gebenden treuen bewilligt vnd zugesagt. Hirauff s. oh. g. mioh Wolfflen Seidehi als- balde Amptswegen requiriren lassen, vnd gnedig gesonnen, das ich hiruber eins oder mehr offene Jnstrumenta vorfertigen soUe, hirumb ioh dan die edlen emuesten vnd hoohgelartl Hansen von ponika vfi pomsen vnd hem Vlrichen Mordeissen vfi woltersdorf der Eeohten doctor vnd Ordinarien zu Leiptzig, beide hochermelts Churfiir- sten geheimpte Camerredte zu gezeugen requirit vnd erbetten. Gesohehensein diese ding alia, Jm Jar Monat tag stunde vnd stelle wie oben vormeldet. Vnd ioh "Wolff Seidell von Sanot Annaberge Meisnisohen Bisehtums Clericus von beiden gewal- ten offenbar Sehreiber erkunde das ieh bey solehem vortragen vnd dorauf ervolgter antwort vnd besohener zusage, zwusohenn obgemelten ohur vnd furstliehen personen selbst personlich gewest vnd solohs also gesehen vnd angehort hirumb ich dan dis offen Jnstrument zum Zeugnus der warheit vorf ertiget vnnd mit meiner eigenen hant geschriben, Auch mit vndersohreibung meines namens vnd zunhamens, vnd meines gewonlichen No- tariatzeiohens auotorisirt vnd beoref tiget. Zou dem aUem ich in Sunderheit requirirt wurden. This instrument, duly stamped and authenticated, is engrossed upon a large sheet of parchment, nearly three feet square.