The same intensification of the contrast between the two spirits is seen in comparing Montaigne with Rabelais. It is true that Rabelais ridiculed all positive religion, but nevertheless it fascinated him. His theological learning is remarkable. But Montaigne ignored religion as far as possible. [Sidenote: Montaigne's aloofness] Nourished from his earliest youth on the great classical writers, he had no interest apart from "the kingdom of man." He preferred to remain in the old faith because that course caused him the least trouble. He had no sympathy with the Protestants, but he did not hate them, as did Ronsard. During the wars of religion, he maintained friendly relations with the leaders of both parties. And he could not believe that creed was the real cause of the civil strife. "Take from the Catholic army," said he, "all those actuated by pure zeal for the church or for the king and country, and you will not have enough men left to form one company." It is strange that beneath the evil passions and self-seeking of the champions of each party he could not see the fierce flame of popular heroism and fanaticism; but that he, and thousands of men like him, could not do so, and could not enter, even by imagination, into the causes {233} which, but a half century earlier, had set the world on fire, largely explains how the religious issue had lost its savour and why Protestantism failed in France.
[1] "The king my son will never have entire obedience."
[2] "That no one may embroil us in the friendship in which I desire that these two kingdoms shall remain during my lifetime."
{234}
[Sidenote: The Netherlands]
The Netherlands have always been a favorite topic for the speculation of those philosophers who derive a large part of national character from geographical conditions. A land that needed reclaiming from the sea by hard labor, a country situated at those two great outlets of European commerce, the mouths of the Rhine and the Scheldt, a borderland between German and Latin culture, naturally moulded a brave, stubborn, practical and intelligent people, destined to play in history a part seemingly beyond their scope and resources.
The people of the Netherlands became, to all intents, a state before they became a nation. The Burgundian dukes of the fourteenth and fifteenth century added to their fiefs counties, dukedoms and bishoprics, around the nucleus of their first domain, until they had forged a compact and powerful realm. [Sidenote: Philip the Good, 1419-67] Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy and lord, under various titles, of much of the Netherlands, deserved the title ofConditor Belgiiby his successful wars on France and by his statesmanlike policy of centralization. To foster unity he created the States General—borrowing the name and function thereof from France—in which all of the seventeen provinces[1] of the Netherlands were represented on great occasions. Continually increasing {235} in power with reference to the various localities, it remained subordinate to the prince, who had the sole right of initiating legislation. At first it met now in one city, then in another, but after 1530 always convened at Brussels, and always used the French language officially.
[Sidenote: Charles the Bold, 1467-77]
Charles the Bold completed and yet endangered the work of Philip, for he was worsted in mortal strife with Louis XI of France and, dying in battle, left his dominions to his daughter, Mary. [Sidenote: Maximilian, 1477-93] Her husband, the Emperor Maximilian, and her son, Philip the Handsome, [Sidenote: Philip the Handsome, 1493-1506] added to her realms those vast dominions that made her grandson, Charles, the greatest potentate in Europe. Born in Ghent, reared in the Netherlands, and speaking only the French of the Walloons, Charles was always regarded by his subjects as one of themselves. He almost completed the unification of the Burgundian state by the conquest of Tournay from France (1521), and the annexation of the independent provinces of Friesland (1523), Overyssel and Utrecht (1528), Groningen (1536) and Guelders (1543). Liège still remained a separate entity under its prince-bishops. But even under Charles, notwithstanding a general feeling of loyalty to the house of Hapsburg, each province was more conscious of its own individuality than were the people as a whole of common patriotism. Some of the provinces lay within the Empire, others were vassals of France, a few were independent. Dutch was regarded as a dialect of German. The most illustrious Netherlander of the time, Erasmus, in discussing his race, does not even contemplate the possibility of there being a nation composed of Dutch and Flemish men. The only alternative that presents itself to him is whether he is French or German and, having been born at Rotterdam, he decides in favor of the latter.
{236}
[Sidenote: Classes]
The Burgundian princes found their chief support in the nobility, in a numerous class of officials, and in the municipal aristocracies. The nobles, transformed from a feudal caste to a court clique, even though they retained, as satellites of the monarch, much wealth and power, had relatively lost ground to the rising pretensions of the cities and of the commercial class. The clergy, too, were losing their old independence in subservience to a government which regulated their tithes and forbade their indulgence-trade. In 1515 Charles secured from Leo X and again in 1530 from Clement VII the right of nomination to vacant benefices. He was able to make of the bishops his tools and to curtail the freedom, jurisdiction, and financial privileges of the clergy considerably because the spiritual estate had lost favor with the people and received no support from them.
As the two privileged classes surrendered their powers to the monarch, the third estate was coming into its own. Not until the war of independence, however, was it able to withstand the combination of bureaucracy and plutocracy that made common cause with the central government against the local rights of the cities and the customary privileges of the gilds. Almost everywhere the prince was able, with the tacit support of the wealthier burghers, to substitute for the officers elected by the gilds his own commissioners. [Sidenote: Revolt of Ghent] But this usurpation, together with a variety of economic ills for which the commoners were inclined, quite wrongly, to blame the government, caused general discontent and in one case open rebellion. The gilds of Ghent, a proud and ancient city, suffering from the encroachments of capitalism and from the decline of the Flemish cloth industry, had long asserted among their rights that of each gild to refuse to pay one of the taxes, any one it chose, levied by the government. [Sidenote: 1539] The attempt {237} of the government to suppress this privilege caused a rising which took the characteristically modern form of a general strike. The regent of the Netherlands, Mary, yielded at first to the demands of the gilds, as she had no means of coercion convenient. Charles was in Spain at the time, but hurried northward, being granted free passage through France by the king who felt he had an interest in aiding his fellow monarch to put down rebellious subjects. Early in 1540 Charles entered Ghent at the head of a sufficient army. He soon meted out a sanguinary punishment to the "brawlers" as the strikers were called, humbled the city government, deprived it of all local privileges, suppressed all independent corporations, asserted the royal prerogative of nominating aldermen, and erected a fortress to overawe the burghers. Thus the only overt attempt to resist the authority of Charles V, apart from one or two insignificant Anabaptist riots, was crushed.
In matters of foreign policy the people of the Netherlands naturally wished to be guided in reference to their own interests and not to the larger interests of the emperor's other domains. Wielding immense wealth—during the middle decades of the sixteenth century Antwerp was both the first port and the first money-market of Europe—and cherishing the sentiment that Charles was a native of their land, they for some time sweetly flattered themselves that their interests were the center around which gravitated the desires and needs of the Empire and of Spain. Indeed, the balance of these two great states, and the regency of Margaret of Austria, [Sidenote: Margaret of Austria, Regent, 1522-31] a Hapsburg determined to give the Netherlands their due, for a time allowed them at least the semblance of getting their wishes. But when Charles's sister, Mary of Hungary, succeeded Margaret as regent, she was too entirely {238} dependent on her brother, and he too determined to consult larger than Burgundian interests, to allow the Netherlands more than the smallest weight in larger plans. The most that she could do was to unify, centralize and add to the provinces, and to get what commercial advantages treaties could secure. Thus, she redeemed Luxemburg from the Margrave of Baden to whom Maximilian had pawned it. Thus, also, she negotiated fresh commercial treaties with England and unified the coinage. But with all these achievements, distinctly advantageous to the people she governed, her efforts to increase the power of the crown and the necessity she was under of subordinating her policy to that of Germany and Spain, made her extremely unpopular.
The relationship of the Netherlands to the Empire was a delicate and important question. Though the Empire was the feudal suzerain of most of the Burgundian provinces, Charles felt far more keenly for his rights as an hereditary, local prince than for the aggrandizement of his Empire, and therefore tried, especially after he had left Austria to his brother Ferdinand, [Sidenote: September 7, 1522] to loosen rather than to strengthen the bond. Even as early as 1512, when the Imperial Diet demanded that the "common penny" be levied in the Netherlands, Charles's council aided and abetted his Burgundian subjects in refusing to pay it. In 1530 the Netherlands, in spite of urgent complaints from the Diet, completely freed itself from imperial jurisdiction in the administration of justice. Matters became still more complicated when Utrecht, Friesland, Groningen and Guelders, formerly belonging to the Westphalian district of the Empire, were annexed by Charles as Burgundian prince. Probably he would not have been able to vindicate these acts of power, had not his victory at Mühlberg [Sidenote: 1547] freed him from the {239} restraints of the imperial constitution. A convention was made at the next Diet of Augsburg, [Sidenote: Convention of June 26, 1548] providing that henceforth the Netherlands should form a separate district, the "Burgundian circle," of the Empire, and that their prince, as such, should be represented in the Diet and in the Imperial Supreme Court. Taxes were so apportioned that in time of peace the Netherlands should contribute to the imperial treasury as much as did two electors, and in time of war as much as three. This treaty nominally added to the Empire two new counties, Flanders and Artois, and it gave the whole Netherlands the benefit of imperial protection. But, though ratified by the States General promptly, the convention remained almost a dead letter, and left the Netherlands virtually autonomous. As long as they were unmolested the Netherlands forgot their union entirely, and when, under the pressure of Spanish rule, they later remembered and tried to profit by it, they found that the Empire had no wish to revive it.
[Sidenote: Reformation]
The general causes of the religious revolution were the same in the Low Countries as in other lands. The ground was prepared by the mystics of the earlier ages, by the corruption of and hatred for the clergy, and buy the Renaissance. The central situation of the country made it especially open to all currents of European thought. Printing was early introduced from Germany and expanded so rapidly in these years [Sidenote: 1525-55] that no less than fifty new publishing houses were erected. As Antwerp was the most cosmopolitan of cities, so Erasmus was the most nearly the citizen of the world in that era. The great humanist, who did so much to prepare for the Reformation, spent in his native land just those early years of its first appearance when he most favored Luther.
{240} A group to take up with the Wittenberg professor's doctrines were the Augustinians, many of whom had been in close relations with the Saxon friaries. One of them, James Probst, had been prior of Wittenberg where he learned to know Luther well [Sidenote: 1515] and when he became prior of the convent at Antwerp he started a rousing propaganda in favor of the reform. [Sidenote: 1518] Another Augustinian, Henry of Zütphen, made his friary at Dordrecht the center of a Lutheran movement. Hoen at the Hague, Hinne Rode at Utrecht, Gerard Lister at Zwolle, Melchior Miritzsch at Ghent, were soon in correspondence with Luther and became missionaries of his faith. His books, which circulated among the learned in Latin, were some of them translated into Dutch as early as 1520.
The German commercial colony at Antwerp was another channel for the infiltration of the Lutheran gospel. [Sidenote: 1520-1] The many travelers, among them Albert Dürer, brought with them tidings of the revolt and sowed its seeds in the soil of Flanders and Holland. Singularly enough, the colony of Portuguese Jews, the Marranos as they were called, became, if not converts, at least active agents in the dissemination of Lutheran works.
[Sidenote: Catholic answers]
A vigorous counter-propaganda was at once started by the partisans of the pope. This was directed against both Erasmus and Luther and consisted largely, according to the reports of the former, in the most violent invective. Nicholas of Egmont, "a man with a white pall but a black heart" stormed in the pulpit against the new heretics. Another man interspersed a sermon on charity with objurgations against those whom he called "geese, asses, stocks, and Antichrists." [Sidenote: 1533] One Dominican said he wished he could fasten his teeth in Luther's throat, for he would not fear to go to the Lord's supper with that blood on his {241} mouth. It was at Antwerp, a little later, that were first coined, or at least first printed, the so celebrated epigrams that Erasmus was Luther's father, that Erasmus had laid the eggs and Luther had hatched the chickens, and that Luther, Zwingli, Oecolampadius and Erasmus were the four soldiers who had crucified Christ.
The principal literary opposition to the new doctrines came from the University of Louvain. Luther's works were condemned by Cologne, and this sentence was ratified by Louvain. [Sidenote: August 30, 1519] A number of the leading professors wrote against him, [Sidenote: November 7] among them the ex-professor Adrian of Utrecht, recently created Bishop of Tortosa and cardinal, and soon to be pope.
The conservatives, however, could do little but scold until the arrival of Charles V in June 1520, and of the papal nuncio Aleander in September. The latter saw Charles immediately at Antwerp and found him already determined to resist heresy. Acting under the edict procured at that time, though not published until the following March 22, Aleander busied himself by going around and burning Lutheran works in various cities and preaching against the heresy. [Sidenote: October, 1520] He found far more opposition than one would think probable, and the burning of the books, as Erasmus said, removed them from the bookstores only, not from the hearts of the people. The nuncio even discovered, he said, at this early date, heretics who denied the real presence in the eucharist: evidently independent spirits like Hoen who anticipated the doctrine later taken up by Carlstadt and Zwingli.
The validity of the Edict of Worms was affirmed for the Burgundian provinces. The edict was read publicly at Antwerp [Sidenote: July 13, 1521] while four hundred of Luther's books were burnt, three hundred confiscated from the shops and one hundred brought by the people. {242} Whereas spiritual officers were at first employed, civil magistrates now began to act against the innovators. In the beginning, attention was paid to municipal privileges, but these soon came to be disregarded, and resistance on any pretext was treated as rebellion and treason. The first persons to be arrested were the Prior of Antwerp, Probst, [Sidenote: 1522] who recanted, but later escaped and relapsed, and two other intimate friends of Erasmus.
[Sidenote: The Inquisition]
Charles wished to introduce the Spanish inquisition, but his councillors were all against it. Under a different name, however, it was exactly imitated when Francis van der Hulst was appointed chief inquisitor by the state, [Sidenote: April 23, 1522] and was confirmed by a bull of Adrian VI. [Sidenote: June 1, 1523] The original inquisitorial powers of the bishops remained, and a supreme tribunal of three judges was appointed in 1524.
[Sidenote: Martyrs, July 1, 1523]
The first martyrs, Henry Voes and John Esch of Brussels, said Erasmus, made many Lutherans by their death. Luther wrote a hymn on the subject and published an open letter to the Christians of the Netherlands. [Sidenote: 1524] Censorship of the press was established in Holland in vain, for everything goes to show that Lutheranism rapidly increased. Popular interest in the subject seemed to be great. Every allusion to ecclesiastical corruption in speeches or in plays was applauded. Thirty-eight laborers were arrested at Antwerp for assembling to read and discuss the gospel. [Sidenote: 1525] Iconoclastic outbreaks occurred in which crucifixes were desecrated. In the same year an Italian in Antwerp wrote that though few people were openly Lutheran many were secretly so, and that he had been assured by leading citizens that if the revolting peasants of Germany approached Antwerp, twenty thousand armed men would rise in the city to assist them. [Sidenote: July 31] When a Lutheran was drowned in the Scheldt, {243} the act precipitated a riot. In 1527 the English ambassador wrote Wolsey from the Netherlands that two persons out of three "kept Luther's opinions," and that while the English New Testament was being printed in that city, repeated attempts on his part to induce the magistrates to interfere came to nothing. Protestant works also continued to pour from the presses. The Bible was soon translated into Dutch, and in the course of eight years four editions of the whole Bible and twenty-five editions of the New Testament were called for, though the complete Scriptures had never been printed in Dutch before.
[Sidenote: October 14, 1529]
Alarmed by the spread of heresy, attributed to too great mildness, the government now issued an edict that inaugurated a reign of terror. Death was decreed not only for all heretics but for all who, not being theologians, discussed articles of faith, or who caricatured God, Mary, or the saints, and for all who failed to denounce heretics known to them. While the government momentarily flattered itself that heresy had been stamped out, at most it had been driven under ground. One of the effects of the persecution was to isolate the Netherlands from the Empire culturally and to some small extent commercially.
But heresy proved to be a veritable hydra. From one head sprang many daughters, the Anabaptists, [Sidenote: Anabaptists] harder to deal with than their mother. For while Lutheranism stood essentially for passive obedience, and flourished nowhere save as a state church, Anabaptism was frankly revolutionary and often socialistic. Melchior Hoffmann, the most striking of their early leaders, a fervent and uneducated fanatic, driven from place to place, wandered from Sweden and Denmark to Italy and Spain [Sidenote: 1530-1533] preaching chiliastic and communistic ideas. Only for three years was he much in the Netherlands, but it was there that he won his greatest {244} successes. Appealing, as the Anabaptists always did, to the lower classes, he converted thousands and tens of thousands of the very poor—beggars, laborers and sailors—who passionately embraced the teaching that promised the end of kings and governments and the advent of the "rule of the righteous." Mary of Hungary was not far wrong when she wrote that they planned to plunder all churches, nobles, and wealthy merchants, in short, all who had property, and from the spoil to distribute to every individual according to his need. [Sidenote: October 7, 1531] A new and severer edict would have meant a general massacre, had it been strictly enforced, but another element entered into the situation. The city bourgeoisies that had previously resisted the government, now supported it in this one particular, persecution of the Anabaptists. When at Amsterdam [Sidenote: 1534] the sectaries rose and very nearly mastered the city, death by fire was decreed for the men, by water for the women. From Antwerp they were banished by a general edict especially aimed at them supplemented by massacres in the northern provinces. [Sidenote: June 24, 1535] After the crisis at Münster, though the Anabaptists continued to be a bugbear to the ruling classes, their propaganda lost its dangerously revolutionary character. Menno Simons of Friesland, after his conversion in 1536, became the leader of the movement and succeeded in gathering the smitten people into a large and harmless body. The Anabaptists furnished, however, more martyrs than did any other sect.
Lutheranism also continued to spread. The edict of 1540 confesses as much while providing new and sterner penalties against those who even interceded for heretics. The fact is that the inquisition as directed against Lutherans was thoroughly unpopular and was resisted in various provinces on the technical ground of local privileges. The Protestants managed {245} to keep unnoticed amidst a general intention to connive at them, and though they did not usually flinch from martyrdom they did not court it. The inquisitors were obliged to arrest their victims at the dead of night, raiding their houses and hauling them from bed, in order to avoid popular tumult. [Sidenote: 1543] When Enzinas printed his Spanish Bible at Antwerp the printer told him that in that city the Scriptures had been published in almost every European language, doubtless an exaggeration but a significant one. Arrested and imprisoned at Brussels for this cause, Enzinas received while under duress visits from four hundred citizens of that city who were Protestants. To control the book trade an oath was exacted of every bookseller [Sidenote: 1546] not to deal in heretical works and the first "Index of prohibited books," drawn up by the University of Louvain, was issued. A censorship of plays was also attempted. This was followed by an edict of 1550 requiring of every person entering the Netherlands a certificate of Catholic belief. As Brabant and Antwerp repudiated a law that would have ruined their trade, it remained, in fact, a dead letter.
Charles's policy of repression had been on the whole a failure, due partly to the cosmopolitan culture of the Netherlands and their commercial position making them open to the importation of ideas as of merchandise from all Europe. It was due in part to the local jealousies and privileges of the separate provinces, and in part to the strength of certain nobles and cities. The persecution, indeed, had a decidedly class character, for the emperor well knew Protestant nobles whom he did not molest, while the poor seldom failed to suffer. And yet Charles had accomplished something. Even the Protestants were loyal, strange to say, to him personally. The number of martyrs in his reign has been estimated at barely one thousand, {246} but it must be remembered that for every one put to death there were a number punished in other ways. And the body of the people was still Catholic, even in the North. It is noteworthy that the most popular writer of this period, as well as the first to use the Dutch tongue with precision and grace, was Anna Bijns, a lay nun, violently anti-Lutheran in sentiment. [Sidenote: Anna Bijns, 1494-1575]
[1] Brabant, Limburg, Luxemburg, Guelders, Flanders, Artois, Hainaut, Holland, Zeeland, Malines, Namur, Lille, Tournay, Friesland, Utrecht, Overyssel and Groningen.
When Charles V, weary of the heaviest scepter ever wielded by any European monarch from Charlemagne to Napoleon, sought rest for his soul in a monk's cell, he left his great possessions divided between his brother Ferdinand and his son Philip. To the former went Austria and the Empire, to the latter the Burgundian provinces and Spain with its vast dependencies in the New World.
[Sidenote: Spain and the Netherlands]
The result of this was to make the Netherlands practically a satellite of Spain. Hitherto, partly because their interests had largely coincided with those of the Empire, partly because by balancing Germany against Spain they could manage to get their own rights, they had found prosperity and had acquired a good deal of national power. Indeed, with their wealth, their central position, and growing strength as province after province was annexed, and their consciousness that their ruler was a native of Flanders, their pride had been rather gratified than hurt by the knowledge that he possessed far larger dominions. [Sidenote: Abdication of Charles] But when Charles, weeping copiously and demanding his subjects' pardon, descended from the throne supported by the young Prince of Orange, [Sidenote: October 25, 1555] and when his son Philip II had replied to his father in Spanish, even those present had an uneasy feeling that the situation had changed for the worse, and that the Netherlands were being handed over from a Burgundian to a Spanish ruler. From {247} this time forth the interests and sentiments of the two countries became more and more sharply divergent, and, as the smaller was sacrificed to the larger, a conflict became inevitable. The revolt that followed within ten years after Philip had permanently abandoned the Netherlands to make his home in Spain [Sidenote: 1559] was first and foremost a nationalist revolt. Contrasted with the particularistic uprising of 1477 it evinced the enormous growth, in the intervening century, of a national self-consciousness in the Seventeen Provinces.
[Sidenote: Religious issue]
But though the catastrophe was apparently inevitable from political grounds, it was greatly complicated and intensified by the religious issue. Philip was determined, as he himself said, either to bring the Netherlands back to the fold of Rome or "so to waste their land that neither the natives could live there nor should any thereafter desire the place for habitation." And yet the means he took were even for his purpose the worst possible, a continual vacillation between timid indulgence and savage cruelty. Though he insisted that his ministers should take no smallest step without his sanction, he could never make up his mind what to do, waited too long to make a decision and then, with fatal fatuity, made the wrong one.
[Sidenote: Calvinism]
At the same time the people were coming under the spell of a new and to the government more dangerous form of Protestantism. Whereas the Lutherans had stood for passive obedience and the Anabaptists for revolutionary communism, the Calvinists appealed to the independent middle classes and gave them not only the enthusiasm to endure martyrdom but also—what the others had lacked—the will and the power to resist tyranny by force. Calvin's polity, as worked out in Geneva, was a subordination of the state to the church. His reforms were thorough and consciously social and political. Calvinism in all lands aroused {248} republican passions and excited rebellion against the powers that be. This feature was the more prominent in the Netherlands [Sidenote: 1545] in that its first missionaries were French exiles who irrigated the receptive soil of the Low Countries with doctrines subversive of church and state alike. The intercourse with England, partly through the emigration from that land under Mary's reign, partly through the coming and going of Flemings and Walloons, also opened doors to Protestant doctrine.
At first the missionaries came secretly, preaching to a few specially invited to some private house or inn. People attended these meetings disguised and after dark. First mentioned in the edict of 1550, nine years later the Calvinists drew up aConfessio Belgica, as a sign and an aid to union. Calvin's French writings could be read in the southern provinces in the original. Though as early as 1560 some nobles had been converted, the new religion undoubtedly made its strongest appeal, as a contemporary put it, "to those who had grown rich by trade and were therefore ready for revolution." It was among the merchants of the great cities that it took strongest root and from the middle class spread to the laborers; influenced not only by the example of their masters, but sometimes also by the policy of Protestant employers to give work only to co-religionists. In a short time it had won a very considerable success, though perhaps not the actual majority of the population. Many of the poor, hitherto Anabaptists, thronged to it in hopes of social betterment. Many adventurers with no motive but to stir the waters in which they might fish joined the new party. But on the whole, as its appeal was primarily moral and religious, its constituency was the more substantial, progressive, and intelligent part of the community.
The greatest weakness of the Protestants was their {249} division. Lutheran, Calvinist, and Anabaptist continued to compete for the leadership and hated each other cordially. The Calvinists themselves were divided into two parties, the "Rekkelijken" or "Compromisers" and the "Preciesen" or "Stalwarts." Moreover there were various other shades of opinion, not amounting quite to new churches. The pure Erasmians, under Cassander, advocated tolerance. More pronounced was the movement of Dirck Volckertszoon Coornheert [Sidenote: Coornheert, 1522-90] a merchant of Amsterdam who, in addition to advising his followers to dissimulate their views rather than to court martyrdom, rejected the Calvinist dogma of predestination and tried to lay the emphasis in religion on the spirit of Jesus rather than on either dogma or ritual.
Though the undertow was slowly but surely carrying the Low Countries adrift from Spain, for the moment their new monarch, then at the age of twenty-eight, seemed to have the winds and waves of politics all in his favor. He was at peace with France; he had nothing to fear from Germany; his marriage with Mary of England made that country, always the best trader with the Netherlands, an ally. His first steps were to relieve Mary of Hungary of her regency and to give it to Emanuel Philibert, to issue a new edict against heresy and to give permission to the Jesuits to enter the Low Countries. [Sidenote: 1556]
The chief difficulties were financial. The increase in the yield of the taxes in the reign of Charles had been from 1,500,000 guilders[1] to 7,000,000 guilders. In addition to this, immense loans had exhausted the credit of the government. The royal domain was mortgaged. As the floating debt of the Provinces rose rapidly the {250} government was in need of a grant to keep up the army. The only way to meet the situation was to call the States General. [Sidenote: March, 1556] When they met, they complained that they were taxed more heavily than Spain and demanded the removal of the Spanish troops, a force already so unpopular that William of Orange refused to take command of it. In presenting their several grievances one province only, Holland, mentioned the religious question to demand that the powers of the inquisitors be curtailed. To obtain funds Philip was obliged to promise, against his will, to withdraw the soldiers. This was only done, under pressure, on January 10, 1561.
[Sidenote: 1559]
Philip had left the Netherlands professing his intention of returning, but hoping and resolving in his heart never to do so. His departure made easier the unavoidable breach, but the struggle had already begun. Wishing to leave a regent of royal blood Philip appointed Margaret of Parma, a natural daughter of Charles V. Born in 1522, she had been married at the age of fourteen to Alexander de' Medici, a nephew of Clement VII; becoming a widow in the following year she was in 1538 married to Ottavio Farnese, a nephew of Paul III, at that time only fourteen years old. Given as her dower the cities of Parma and Piacenza, she had become thoroughly Italian in feeling.
[Sidenote: Anthony Perrenot Cardinal Granvelle, 1517-86]
To guide her Philip left, besides the Council of State, a special "consulta" or "kitchen cabinet" of three members, the chief of whom was Granvelle. The real fatherland of this native of the Free County of Burgundy was the court. As a passionate servant of the crown and a clever and knowing diplomat, he was in constant correspondence with Philip, recommending measures over the head of Margaret. His acts made her intensely unpopular and her attempts to coax and cozen public opinion only aroused suspicion.
{251}
[Sidenote: Egmont, 1522-68]
Three members in the Council of State, Granvelle and two others, were partisans of the crown; three other members may be said to represent the people. One of them was Lamoral Count of Egmont, the most brilliant and popular of the high nobility. Though a favorite of Charles V on account of his proved ability as a soldier, his frankness and generosity, he was neither a sober nor a weighty statesman. The popular proverb, "Egmont for action and Orange for counsel," well characterized the difference between the two leading members of the Council of State. William, prince of Orange, lacking the brilliant qualities of Egmont, far surpassed him in acumen and in strength of character. From his father, William Count of Nassau-Dillenburg, [Sidenote: William the Silent, 1533-84] he inherited important estates in Germany near the Netherlands, and by the death of a cousin he became, at the age of eleven, Prince of Orange—a small, independent territory in southern France—and Lord of Breda and Gertruidenberg in Holland. With an income of 150,000 guilders per annum he was by far the richest man in the Netherlands, Egmont coming next with an income of 62,000. William was well educated. Though he spoke seven languages and was an eloquent orator, he was called "the Silent" because of the rare discretion that never revealed a secret nor spoke an imprudent word. In religion he was indifferent, being first a Catholic, then a Lutheran, then a Calvinist, and always a man of the world. His broad tolerance found its best, or only, support in the Erasmian tendencies of Coornheert. His second wife, Anne of Saxony, having proved unfaithful to him, he married, while she was yet alive, Charlotte of Bourbon. This act, like the bigamy of Philip of Hesse, was approved by Protestant divines. Behind them Egmont and Orange had the hearty support of the patriotic and well educated native nobility. {252} The rising generation of the aristocracy saw only the bad side of the reign of Charles; they had not shared in his earlier victories but had witnessed his failure to conquer either France or Protestantism.
[Sidenote: New bishoprics]
In order to deal more effectively with the religious situation Granvelle wished to bring the ecclesiastical territorial divisions into harmony with the political. Hitherto the Netherlands had been partly under the Archbishop of Cologne, partly under the Archbishop of Rheims. But as these were both foreigners Granvelle applied for and secured a bull creating fourteen new bishoprics and three archbishoprics, [Sidenote: March 12, 1559] Cambrai, Utrecht, and Malines, of which the last held the primacy. His object was doubtless in large part to facilitate the extirpation of heresy, but it was also significant as one more instance of the nationalization of the church, a tendency so strong that neither Catholic nor Protestant countries escaped from it. In this case all the appointments were to be made by the king with consent of the pope. The people resented the autocratic features of a plan they might otherwise have approved; a cry was raised throughout the provinces that their freedom was infringed upon, and that the plan furnished a new instrument to the hated inquisition.
[Sidenote: February, 1561]
Granvelle, more than ever detested when he received the cardinal's hat, was dubbed "the red devil," "the archrascal," "the red dragon," "the Spanish swine," "the pope's dung." In July Egmont and Orange sent their resignations from the Council of State to Philip, saying that they could no longer share the responsibility for Granvelle's policy, especially as everything was done behind their backs. Philip, however, was slow to take alarm. For the moment his attention was taken up with the growth of the Huguenot party in France and his efforts centered on helping the French Catholics against them. But the Netherlands were {253} importunate. In voicing the wishes of the people the province of Brabant, with the capital, Brussels, the metropolitan see, Malines, and the university, Louvain, took as decided a lead as the Parlement of Paris did in France. The estates of Brabant demanded that Orange be made their governor. The nobles began to remember that they were legally a part of the Empire. The marriage of Orange, on August 26, 1561, with the Lutheran Anne of Saxony, was but one sign of therapprochment. Though the prince continued to profess Catholicism, he entertained many Lutherans and emphasized as far as possible his position as vassal of the Empire. Philip, indeed, believed that the whole trouble came from the wounded vanity of a few nobles.
But Granvelle saw deeper. [Sidenote: 1561] When the Estates of Brabant stopped the payment of the principal tax or "Bede," [2] and when the people of Brussels took as a party uniform a costume derived from the carnival, a black cloak covered with red fool's heads, the cardinal, whose red hat was caricatured thereby, stated that nothing less than a republic was aimed at. This was true, though in the anticipation of the nobles, at least, the republic should have a decidedly aristocratic character. But Granvelle had no policy to propose but repression. In order to prevent condemned heretics from preaching and singing on the scaffold a gag was put into their mouths. How futile a measure! The Calvinists no longer disguised, but armed—a new and significant fact—thronged to their conventicles. Emigration continued on a large scale. By 1556 it was estimated that thirty thousand Protestants from the Low Countries were settled in or near London. Elizabeth encouraged them to come, assigning them {254} Norwich as a place of refuge. [Sidenote: 1563] She also began to tax imports from the Netherlands, a blow to which Philip replied by forbidding all English imports.
[Sidenote: Revolt]
Hitherto the resistance to the government had been mostly passive and constitutional. But from 1565 may be dated the beginning of the revolt that did not cease until it had freed the northern provinces forever from Spanish tyranny. The rise of the Dutch Republic is one of the most inspiring pages in history. Superficially it has many points of resemblance with the American War of Independence. In both there was the absentee king, the national hero, the local jealousies of the several provinces, the economic grievances, the rising national feeling and even the religious issue, though this had become very small in America. But the difference was in the ferocity of the tyranny and the intensity of the struggle. The two pictures are like the same landscape as it might be painted by Millet and by Turner: the one is decent and familiar, the other lurid and ghastly. With true Anglo-Saxon moderation the American war was fought like a game or an election, with humanity and attention to rules; but in Holland and Belgium was enacted the most terrible frightfulness in the world; over the whole land, mingled with the reek of candles carried in procession and of incense burnt to celebrate a massacre, brooded the sultry miasma of human blood and tears. On the one side flashed the savage sword of Alva and the pitiless flame of the inquisitor Tapper; on the other were arrayed, behind their dykes and walls, men resolved to win that freedom which alone can give scope and nobility to life.
[Sidenote: The Intellectuals]
And in the melée those suffered most who would fain have been bystanders, the humanists. Persecuted by both sides, the intellectuals, who had once deserted the Reform now turned again to it as the lesser of the two {255} evils. They would have been glad to make terms with any church that would have left them in liberty, but they found the whips of Calvin lighter than the scorpions of Philip. Even those who, like Van Helmont, wished to defend the church and to reconcile the Tridentine decrees with philosophy, found that their labors brought them under suspicion and that what the church demanded was not harmony of thought but abnegation of it.
The first act of the revolt may be said to be a secret compact, known as the Compromise, [Sidenote: The Compromise, 1565] originally entered into by twenty nobles at Brussels and soon joined by three hundred other nobles elsewhere. The document signed by them denounced the Edicts as surpassing the greatest recorded barbarity of tyrants and as threatening the complete ruin of the country. To resist them the signers promised each other mutual support. In this as in subsequent developments the Calvinist minority took the lead, but was supported by strong Catholic forces. Among the latter was the Prince of Orange, not yet a Protestant. His conversion really made little difference in his program; both before and after it he wanted tolerance or reconciliation on Cassander's plan of compromise. He would have greatly liked to have seen the Peace of Augsburg, now the public law of the Empire, extended to the Low Countries, but this was made difficult even to advocate because the Peace of Augsburg provided liberty only for the Lutheran confession, whereas the majority of Protestants in the Netherlands were now Calvinists. For the same reason little help could be expected from the German princes, for the mutual animosity that was the curse of the Protestant churches prevented their making common cause against the same enemy.
As the Huguenots—for so they began to be called in Brabant as well as in France—were as yet too few {256} to rebel, the only course open was to appeal to the government once more. A petition to make the Edicts milder was presented to Margaret in 1566. One of her advisers bade her not to be afraid of "those beggars." Originating in the scorn of enemies, like so many party names, the epithet "Beggars" (Gueux) presently became the designation and a proud one, of the nobles who had signed the Compromise and later of all the rebels.
Encouraged by the regent's apparent lack of power to coerce them, the Calvinist preachers became daily bolder. Once again their religion showed its remarkable powers of organization. Lacking nothing in funds, derived from a constituency of wealthy merchants, the preachers of the Reformation were soon able to forge a machinery of propaganda and party action that stood them in good stead against the greater numbers of their enemies. Especially in critical times, discipline, unity, and enthusiasm make headway against the deadly hatred of enemies and the deadlier apathy and timidity of the mass of mankind. It is true that the methods of the preachers often aroused opposition.
[Sidenote: Iconoclasm]
The zeal of the Calvinists, inflamed by oppression and encouraged by the weakness of the government, burst into an iconoclastic riot, [Sidenote: August 11, 1566] first among the unemployed at Armentières, but spreading rapidly to Antwerp, Brussels, Ghent, and then to the northern provinces, Holland and Zeeland. The English agent at Brussels wrote: "Coming into Oure Lady Church, yt looked like hell wher were above 1000 torches brannyng and syche a noise as yf heven and erth had gone together with fallyng of images and fallyng down of costly works." Books and manuscripts as well as pictures were destroyed. The cry "Long live the Beggars" resounded from one end of the land to the {257} other. But withal there was no pillage and no robbery. The gold in the churches was left untouched. Margaret feared ajacqueriebut, lacking troops, had to look on with folded hands at least for the moment. By chance there arrived just at this time an answer from Philip to the earlier petition of the Beggars. The king promised to abolish the Spanish inquisition and to soften the edicts. Freedom of conscience was tacitly granted, but the government made an exception, as soon as it dared, of those who had committed sacrilege in the recent riots. These men were outlawed.
[Sidenote: Civil war]
No longer fearing a religious war the Calvinists started it themselves. Louis of Nassau, a brother of Prince William, hired German mercenaries and invaded Flanders, where he won some slight successes. In Amsterdam the great Beggar Brederode entered into negotiations with Huguenots and English friends. The first battle between the Beggars and the government troops, [Sidenote: March 13, 1567] near Antwerp, ended in a rout for the former.
Philip now ordered ten thousand Spanish veterans, led by Alva, to march from Italy to the Netherlands. Making their way through the Free County of Burgundy and Lorraine they entered Brussels on August 9, 1567. [Sidenote: Alva 1508-83] Ferdinand Alvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alva, had won experience and reputation as a soldier in the German wars. Though self-controlled and courtly in manner, his passionate patriotism and bigotry made him a fit instrument to execute Philip's orders to make the Netherlands Spanish and Catholic. He began with no uncertain hand, building forts at Antwerp and quartering his troops at Brussels where their foreign manners and Roman piety gave offence to the citizens. On September 9 he arrested the counts of Egmont and Horn, next to Orange the chief leaders of the patriotic party. Setting up a tribunal, called the Council of {258} Troubles, to deal with cases of rebellion and heresy, he inaugurated a reign of terror. He himself spent seven hours a day in this court trying cases and signing death-warrants. Not only heretics were punished but also agitators and those who had advocated tolerance. Sincere Catholics, indeed, noted that the crime of heresy was generally the mere pretext for dealing with patriots and all those obnoxious to the government. [Sidenote: Executions] For the first time we have definite statistics of the numbers executed. For instance, on January 4, 1568, 48 persons were sentenced to death, on February 20, 37; on February 21, 71; on March 20, 55; and so on for day after day, week in and week out. On March 3 at the same hour throughout the whole land 1500 men were executed. The total number put to death during the six years of Alva's administration has been variously estimated at from 6,000 to 18,000. The lower number is probably nearer the truth, though not high enough. Emigration on a hitherto unknown scale within the next thirty or forty years carried 400,000 persons from the Netherlands. Thousands of others fled to the woods and became freebooters. The people as a whole were prostrated with terror. The prosperity of the land was ruined by the wholesale confiscations of goods. Alva boasted that by such means he had added to the revenues of his territories 500,000 ducats per annum.
William of Orange retired to his estates at Dillenburg not to yield to the tyrant but to find apoint d'appuifrom which to fight. Wishing to avoid anything that might cause division among the people he kept the religious issue in the background and complained only of foreign tyranny. He tried to enlist the sympathies of the Emperor Maximilian II and to collect money and men. William's friend Villiers invaded the Burgundian State near Maastricht and Louis of Nassau marched with troops into Friesland. {259} [Sidenote: April, 1568] By this time Alva had increased his army by 10,000 German cavalry and both the rebel leaders were severely defeated.
This triumph was followed by an act of power and defiance on Alva's part sometimes compared to the execution of Louis XVI by the French Republicans. Hitherto the sufferers from his reign of blood had not in any case been men of the highest rank. The first execution of nobles took place at Brussels on June 1, that of the captured Villiers followed on June 2, and that of Egmont and Horn on June 5.
Orange himself now took the field with 25,000 troops, a motley aggregate of French, Flemish, and Walloon Huguenots and of German mercenaries. But he had no genius for war to oppose to the veterans of Alva. Continually harassed by the Spaniards he was kept in fear for his communications, dared not risk a general engagement and was humiliated by seeing his retreat, in November, turned into a rout.
[Sidenote: July 16, 1570]
Finding that severity did not pacify the provinces, Alva issued a proclamation that on the face of it was a general amnesty with pardon for all who submitted. But he excepted by name several hundred emigrants, all the Protestant clergy, all who had helped them, all iconoclasts, all who had signed petitions for religious liberty, and all who had rebelled. As these exceptions included the greater portion of those who stood in need of pardon the measure proved illusory as a means of reconciliation. Coupled with it were other measures, including the prohibition to subjects to attend foreign universities, intended to put a check on free trade in ideas.
[Sidenote: Taxation]
Alva's difficulties and the miseries of the unhappy land entrusted to his tender mercies were increased by want of money. Notwithstanding the privilege of {260} granting their own taxes the States General were summoned [Sidenote: March 21, 1569] and forced to accept new imposts of one per cent. on all property real and personal, ten per cent. on the sale of all movable goods and five per cent. on the sale of real estate. These were Spanish taxes, exorbitant in any case but absolutely ruinous to a commercial people. A terrible financial panic followed. Houses at Antwerp that had rented for 300 gulden could now be had for 50 gulden. Imports fell off to such an extent that at this port they yielded but 14,000 gulden per annum instead of 80,000 as formerly. The harbor was filled with empty boats; the market drugged with goods of all sorts that no one would buy.
[Sidenote: Beggars of the Sea]
The cause of the patriots looked hopeless. Orange, discredited by defeat, had retired to Germany. At one time, to avoid the clamors of his troops for pay, he was obliged to flee by night from Strassburg. But in this dark hour help came from the sea. Louis of Nassau, not primarily a statesman like his brother but a passionate crusader for Protestantism, had been at La Rochelle and had there seen the excellent work done by privateers. In emulation of his French brethren he granted letters of marque to the sailors of Holland and Zeeland. Recruits thronged to the ships, Huguenots, men from Liège, and the laborers of the Walloon provinces thrown out of work by the commercial crisis. These men promptly won striking successes in preying on Spanish commerce. Their many and rich prizes were taken to England or to Emden and sold. Often they landed on the coasts and attacked small Catholic forces, or murdered priests. On the night of March 31-April 1, 1572, these Beggars of the Sea seized the small town of Brielle on a large island at the mouth of the Meuse not far from the Hague. This success was immediately followed by the insurrection of Rotterdam and Flushing. The war was conducted with combined {261} heroism and frightfulness. Receiving no quarter the Beggars gave none, and to avenge themselves on the unspeakable wrongs committed by Alva they themselves at times massacred the innocent. But their success spread like wildfire. The coast towns "fell away like beads from a rosary when one is gone." Fortifications in all of them were strengthened and, where necessary, dykes were opened. Reinforcements also came from England.
[Sidenote: Revolution]
By this time the revolt had become a veritable revolution. It found its battle hymn in the Wilhelmuslied and its Washington in William of Orange. As all the towns of Holland save Amsterdam were in his hands, in June the provincial Estates met—albeit illegally, for there was no one authorized to convene them—assumed sovereign power and made William their Stat-holder. They voted large taxes and forced loans from rich citizens, and raised money from the sale of prizes taken at sea. All defect in prescriptive and legal power was made up by the popularity of the prince, deeply loved by all classes, not only on account of his affability to all, even the humblest, but still more because of confidence in his ability. Never did his versatility, patience and skill in management shine more brightly. Among the troops raised by the patriots he kept strict discipline, thus making by contrast more lurid the savage pillage by the Spaniards. He kept far from fanatics and swashbucklers of whom there were plenty attracted to the revolt. His master idea was to keep the Netherlands together and to free them from the foreigner. Complete independence of Spain was not at first planned, but it soon became inevitable.
For a moment there was a prospect of help from Coligny's policy of prosecuting a war with Spain, but these hopes were destroyed by the defeat of the French Huguenots near Mons [Sidenote: July 17, 1572] and by the massacre of Saint {262} Bartholomew. [Sidenote: August 24, 1572] Freed from menace in this quarter and encouraged by his brilliant victory, Alva turned north with an army now increased to 40,000 veterans. First he took Malines and delivered it to his soldiers for "the most dreadful and inhuman sack of the day" as a contemporary wrote. The army then marched to Guelders and stormed Zutphen under express orders from their general "not to leave one man alive or one building unburnt." "With the help of God," as Alva piously reported, the same punishment was meted out to Naarden. Then he marched to the still royalist Amsterdam from which base he proceeded to invest Haarlem. The siege was a long and hard one for the Spaniards, harassed by the winter weather and by epidemics. Alva wrote Philip that it was "the bloodiest war known for long years" and begged for reinforcements. [Sidenote: July 12, 1573] At last famine overcame the brave defenders of the city and it capitulated. Finding that his cruelty had only nerved the people to the most desperate resistance, and wishing to give an example of clemency to a city that would surrender rather than await storming, Alva contented himself with putting to death to the last man 2300 French, English, and Walloon soldiers of the garrison, and five or six citizens. He also demanded a ransom of 100,000 dollars[3] in lieu of plunder. Not content with this meager largess the Spanish troops mutinied, and only the promise of further cities to sack quieted them. The fortunes of the patriots were a little raised by the defeat of the Spanish fleet in the Zuiderzee by the Beggars on October 12, 1573.
[Sidenote: Requesens]
For some time Philip had begun to suspect that Alva's methods were not the proper ones to win back the affectionate loyalty of his people. Though he hesitated long he finally removed him late in 1573 and {263} appointed in his stead Don Louis Requesens. Had Philip come himself he might have been able to do something, for the majority professed personal loyalty to him, and in that age, as Shakespeare reminds us, divinity still hedged a king. But not having the decision to act in person Philip picked out a favorite, known from his constant attendance on his master as "the king's hour-glass," in whom he saw the slavishly obedient tool that he thought he wanted. The only difference between the new governor and the old was that Requesens lacked Alva's ability; he had all the other's narrowly Spanish views, his bigotry and absolutism.
Once arrived in the provinces committed to his charge, he had no choice but to continue the war. But on January 27, 1574, Orange conquered Middelburg and from that date the Spanish flag ceased to float over any portion of the soil of Holland or Zeeland. In open battle at Mook, however, [Sidenote: April 14, 1574] the Spanish veterans again achieved success, defeating the patriots under Louis of Nassau, who lost his life. The beginning of the year saw the investment of Leyden in great force. The heroism of the defence has become proverbial. When, in September, the dykes were cut to admit the sea, so that the vessels of the Beggars were able to sail to the relief of the city, the siege was raised. It was the first important military victory for the patriots and marks the turning-point of the revolt. Henceforth the Netherlands could not be wholly subdued.
Requesens summoned the States General and offered a pardon to all who would submit. But the people saw in this only a sign of weakness. A flood of pamphlets calling to arms replied to the advances of the government. Among the pamphleteers the ablest was Philip van Marnix, [Sidenote: Marnix, 1538-98] a Calvinist who turned his powers of satire against Spain and the Catholic {264} church. William of Orange, now a Protestant, living at Delft, inspired the whole movement. Requesens, believing that if he were out of the way the revolt would collapse, like Alva offered public rewards for his assassination. That there was really no common ground was proved at a conference between the two foes, broken off without result. In the campaign of 1575 the Spanish army again achieved great things, taking Oudewater, Schoonhoven and other places. But the rebels would not give up.
[Sidenote: March 5, 1576]
The situation was changed by the death of Requesens. Before his successor could be appointed events moved rapidly. After taking Zierikzee on June 29, the Spanish army turned to Aalst, quartered the soldiers on the inhabitants, and forced the loyal city to pay the full costs of their maintenance. If even the Catholics were alienated by this, the Protestants went so far as to preach that any Spaniard might be murdered without sin. In the concerted action against Spain the Estates of Brabant now took the leading part; meeting at Brussels they intimidated the Council of State and raised an army of 3000 men. By this time Holland and Zeeland were to all intents and purposes an independent state. The Calvinists, strong among the native population, were recruited by a vast influx of immigrants from other Provinces until theirs became the dominant religion. Holland and Zeeland pursued a separate military and financial policy. Alone among the provinces they were prosperous, for they had command of the rich sea-borne commerce.
The growth of republican theory kept pace with the progress of the revolt. Orange was surrounded by men holding the free principles of Duplessis-Mornay and corresponding with him. Dutchmen now openly voiced their belief that princes were made for the sake of their subjects and not subjects for the sake {265} of princes. Even though they denied the equal rights of the common people they asserted the sovereignty of the representative assembly. The Council of State, having assumed the authority of the viceroy during the interim, was deluged with letters petitioning them to shake off the Spanish yoke entirely. But, as the Council still remained loyal to Philip, on September 4 its members were arrested, acoup d'étatplanned in the interests of Orange and doubtless with his knowledge. It was, of course, tantamount to treason. The Estates General now seized sovereign powers. Still protesting their loyalty to the monarch's person and to the Catholic religion, they demanded virtual independence and the withdrawal of the Spanish troops. To enforce their demands they collected an army and took possession of several forts. But the Spanish veterans never once thought of giving way. Gathering at Antwerp where they were besieged by the soldiers of the States General, [Sidenote: November 4, 1576] they attacked and then scattered the bands sent against them and proceeded to sack Antwerp like a captured town. In one dreadful day 7000 of the patriots, in part soldiers, in part noncombatants, perished. The wealth of the city was looted. The army of occupation boasted as of a victory of this deed of blood, known to the Netherlanders as "the Spanish fury."
Naturally, such a blow only welded the provinces more firmly together and steeled their temper to an even harder resistance. Its immediate result was a treaty, known as the Pacification of Ghent, between the provinces represented in the States General on the one hand and Holland and Zeeland on the other, for the purposes of union and of driving out the foreigner. The religious question was left undecided, save that the northern provinces agreed to do nothing for the present against the Roman church. But, as {266} heretofore, the Calvinists, now inscribing "Pro fide et patria" on their banners, were the more active and patriotic party.
[Sidenote: Don John, 1547-78]
On May 1, 1577, the new Governor-General, Don John of Austria, entered Brussels. A natural son of Charles V, at the age of twenty-four he had made himself famous by the naval victory of Lepanto, and his name still more celebrated in popular legend on account of his innumerable amours. That he had some charm of manner must be assumed; that he had ability in certain directions cannot be denied; but his aristocratic hauteur, his contempt for a nation of merchants and his disgust at dealing with them, made him the worst possible person for the position of Governor. Philip's detailed instructions left nothing to the imagination: the gist of them was to assure the Catholic religion and obedience of his subjects "as far as possible," to speak French, and not to take his mistresses from the most influential families, nor to alienate them in any other way. After force had been tried and failed the effect of gentleness was to be essayed. Don John was to be a dove of peace and an angel of love.
But even if a far abler man had been sent to heal the troubles in the Netherlands, the breach was now past mending. In the States General, as in the nation at large, there were still two parties, one for Orange and one for Philip, but both were determined to get rid of the devilish incubus of the Spanish army. The division of the two parties was to some extent sectional, but still more that class division that seems inevitable between conservatives and liberals. The king still had for him the clergy, the majority of the nobles and higher bourgeoisie; with William were ranged the Calvinists, the middle and lower classes and most of the "intellectuals", lawyers, men of learning and those publicists known as the "monarchomachs." Many of {267} these were still Catholics who wished to distinguish sharply between the religious and the national issue. At the very moment of Don John's arrival the Estates passed a resolution to uphold the Catholic faith.
[Sidenote: February, 1577]
Even before he had entered his capital Don John issued the "Perpetual Edict" agreeing to withdraw the Spanish troops in return for a grant of 600,000 guilders for their pay. He promised to respect the privileges of the provinces and to free political prisoners, including the son of Orange. In April the troops really withdrew. The small effect of these measures of conciliation became apparent when the Estates General voted by a majority of one only to recognize Don John as their Statholder. [Sidenote: May 12] So little influence did he have that he felt more like a prisoner than a governor; he soon fled from his capital to the fortress of Namur whence he wrote urging his king to send back the troops at once and let him "bathe in the blood of the traitors."
William was as much pleased as John was enraged at the failure of the policy of reconciliation. While the majority of the states still hoped for peace William was determined on independence at all costs. In August he sent a demand to the representatives to do their duty by the people, for he did not doubt that they had the right to depose the tyrant. Never did his prospects look brighter. Help was offered by Elizabeth and the tide of republican feeling began to rise higher. In proportion as the laborers were drawn to the party of revolt did the doctrine of the monarchomachs become liberal. No longer satisfied with the democracy of corporations and castes of the Middle Ages, the people began to dream of the individualistic democracy of modern times.
The executive power, virtually abandoned by Don John, now became centered in a Committee of {268} Eighteen, nominally on fortifications, but in reality, like the French Committee of Public Safety, supreme in all matters. This body was first appointed by the citizens of Brussels, but the States General were helpless against it. It was supported by the armed force of the patriots and by the personal prestige of Orange. His power was growing, for, with the capitulation of the Spanish garrison at Utrecht he had been appointed Statholder of that province. When he entered Brussels on September 23, he was received with the wild acclamations of the populace. Opposition to him seemed impossible. And yet, even at this high-water mark of his power, his difficulties were considerable. Each province was jealous of its rights and, as in the American Revolution, each province wished to contribute as little as possible to the common fund. Moreover the religious question was still extremely delicate. Orange's permission to the Catholics to celebrate their rites on his estates alienated as many Protestant fanatics as it conciliated those of the old religion.
[Sidenote: Archduke Matthew]
The Netherlands were not yet strong enough to do without powerful foreign support, nor was public opinion yet ripe for the declaration of an independent republic. Feeling that a statholder of some sort was necessary, the States General petitioned Philip to remove Don John and to appoint a legitimate prince of the blood. This petition was perhaps intentionally impossible of fulfilment in a way agreeable to Philip, for he had no legitimate brother or son. But a prince of the House of Hapsburg offered himself in the person of the Archduke Matthew, a son of the Emperor Maximilian, recently deceased. [Sidenote: October 12, 1576] Though he had neither ability of his own nor support from his brother, the Emperor Rudolph II, and though but nineteen years old, he offered his services to the Netherlands and immediately went thither. With high statecraft William {269} drew Matthew into his policy, for he saw that the dangers to be feared were anarchy and disunion. In some cities, notably Ghent, where another Committee of Eighteen was appointed on the Brussels model, the lowest classes assumed a dictatorship analagous to that of the Bolsheviki in Russia. At the same time the Patriots' demand that Orange should be made Governor of Brabant was distasteful to the large loyalist element in the population. William at once saw the use that might be made of Matthew as a figure-head to rally those who still reverenced the house of Hapsburg and who saw in monarchy the only guarantee of order at home and consideration abroad. Promptly arresting the Duke of Aerschot, a powerful noble who tried to use Matthew's name to create a separate faction, Orange induced the States General first to decree Don John an enemy of the country [Sidenote: December 7, 1577] and then to offer the governorship of the Netherlands to the archduke, at the same time begging him, on account of his youth, to leave the administration in the hands of William. After Matthew's entry into Brussels [Sidenote: January 18, 1578] the States General swore allegiance to this puppet in the hands of their greatest statesman.
Almost immediately the war broke out again. Both sides had been busy raising troops. At Gembloux Don John with 20,000 men defeated about the same number of Patriot troops. [Sidenote: January 31] But this failed to clarify a situation that tended to become ever more complicated. Help from England and France came in tiny dribblets just sufficient to keep Philip's energies occupied in the cruel civil war. But the vacancy, so to speak, on the ducal throne of the Burgundian state, seemed to invite the candidacy of neighboring princes and a chance of seriously interesting France came when the ambition of Francis, Duke of Anjou, was stirred to become ruler of the Low Countries. William attempted also to make {270} use of him. In return for the promise to raise 12,000 troops, Anjou received from the States General the title of "Defender of the Freedom of the Netherlands against the tyranny of the Spaniards and their allies." The result was that the Catholic population was divided in its support between Matthew and Anjou, and that Orange retained the balance of influence.
[Sidenote: Protestant schism]
The insuperable difficulty in the way of success for the policy of this great man was still the religious one. Calvinism had been largely drawn off to Holland and Zeeland, and Catholicism remained the religion of the great majority of the population in the other provinces. At first sight the latter appeared far from being an intractable force. In contrast with the fiery zeal of the Calvinists on the one hand and of the Spaniards on the other, the faith of the Catholic Flemings and Walloons seemed lukewarm, an old custom rather than a living conviction. Most were shocked by the fanaticism of the Spaniards, who thus proved the worst enemies of their faith, and yet, within the Netherlands, they were very unwilling to see the old religion perish. When the lower classes at Ghent assumed the leadership they rather forced than converted that city to the Calvinist confession. Their acts were taken as a breach of the Pacification of Ghent and threatened the whole policy of Orange by creating fresh discord. To obviate this, William proposed to the States General a religious peace on the basis of thestatus quowith refusal to allow further proselyting. [Sidenote: July, 1578] But this measure, acceptable to the Catholics, was deeply resented by the Calvinists. It was said that one who changed his religion as often as his coat must prefer human to divine things and that he who would tolerate Romanists must himself be an atheist.
[Sidenote: Division of the Netherlands]
It was therefore, a primarily religious issue, and no difference of race, language or material interest, {271} that divided the Netherlands into two halves. For a time the common hatred of all the people for the foreigner welded them into a united whole; but no sooner was the pressure of the Spanish yoke even slightly relaxed than the mutual antipathy of Calvinist and Catholic showed itself. If we look closely into the causes why the North should become predominantly Protestant while the South gradually reverted to an entirely Catholic faith, we must see that the reasons were in part racial, in part geographical and in part social. Geographically and linguistically the Northern provinces looked for their culture to Germany, and the Southern provinces to France. Moreover the easy defensibility of Holland and Zeeland, behind their moats, made them the natural refuge of a hunted sect and, this tendency once having asserted itself, the polarization of the Netherlands naturally followed, Protestants being drawn and driven to their friends in the North and Catholics similarly finding it necessary or advisable to settle in the South. Moreover in the Southern provinces the two privileged classes, clergy and nobility, were relatively stronger than in the almost entirely bourgeois and commercial North. And the influence of both was thrown into the scale of the Roman church, the first promptly and as a matter of course, the second eventually as a reaction from the strongly democratic tendency of Calvinism. In some of the Southern cities there ensued at this time a desperate struggle between the Protestant democracy and the Catholic aristocracy. The few Protestants of gentle birth in the Walloon provinces felt ill at ease in company with their Dutch co-religionists and were called by them "Malcontents" because they looked askance at the political principles of the North.
[Sidenote: January 1579]
The separatist tendencies on both sides crystallized as some of the Southern provinces signed a league at {272} Arras on January 5 for the protection of the Catholic religion. On the 29th this was answered by the Union of Utrecht, signed by the representatives of Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Friesland, Guelders, Zutphen, and the city of Ghent, binding the said provinces to resist all foreign tyranny. Complete freedom of worship was granted, a matter of importance as the Catholic minority was, and has always remained, large. By this act a new state was born. Orange still continued to labor for union with the Southern provinces, but he failed. A bitter religious war broke out in the cities of the South. At Ghent the churches were plundered anew. [Sidenote: 1581] At Brussels and Antwerp the Protestant proletariat won a temporary ascendancy and Catholic worship was forbidden in both cities. A general emigration from them ensued. Under the stress of the religious war which was also a class war, the last vestiges of union perished. The States General ceased to have power to raise taxes or enforce decrees, and presently it was no more regarded.
Even William of Orange now abandoned his show of respect for the monarch and became wholly the champion of liberty and of the people. [Sidenote: 1580] The States General recognized Anjou as their prince, but at the same time drew up a very republican constitution. The representatives of the people were given not only the legislative but also the executive powers, including the direction of foreign affairs. The States of the Northern Provinces formally deposed Philip, [Sidenote: Deposition of Philip, 1581] who could do nothing in reply. A proclamation had already been issued offering 25,000 dollars and a patent of nobility to anyone who would assassinate Orange who was branded as "a traitor and rascal" and as "the enemy of the human race."