Chapter 7

Under sovereignty such as this was William the Silent citizen. William, Prince of Orange, was born in Nassau, April 23, 1533, and was assassinated at the convent of St. Agatha, in Delft, July 10, 1584, when a trifle over fifty-one years of age. Let us get our chronological bearings accurately: Luther died in 1546; Lepanto was fought in 1571; the Massacre of St. Bartholomew occurred in 1572; the Invincible Armada was destroyed in 1588; Philip was crowned king in October of 1555, and died at the Escurial in 1598; the Spanish Inquisition was established in 1480 by Ferdinand and Isabella; the Edict of Nantes was promulgated in 1598; Queen Elizabeth Tudor ascended her throne in 1558; America received her first permanent colony in 1585, at St. Augustine, Florida. From this assemblage of dates, we see in what a ferment of momentous civil, religious, and political events the Prince of Orange found his life cast. We may not choose our time to live, not yet our time to die; but some eras are spacious above others, not length, but achievement, making an age illustrious. William the Silent's age was a maelstrom of events, and there were no quiet waters; and this appears certain: The dominant force of those turbulent times was religious, by which I mean that religion is the key of all movements, politics being shaped by theological dogmas and purposes. These dates certify to the omnipresence of religious movement; for the Inquisition, Lepanto, the great Armada, the Edict of Nantes, the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, are all ecclesiastical in intent, by which is not at all meant they were good, but were perverted religious views, in which human wickedness, ambition, and bigotry pre-empted religion, and used it as a medium of expression, and in turn were used by the thing they had fostered. No more prevalent misconception prevails than that religion is the cause of outrageous violence, disorder, and misconduct; the truth being, rather, men's passions, under guise of religion, rush their own wanton course. In this particular era of history, all movements were religious, as has been shown; and Philip thought himself the apostle of religion, chosen of God, and was used by the Roman Catholic Church, and, as a wise historian affirms, "In fanatical enthusiasm for Catholicism, he was surpassed by no man who ever lived." His religion and his ambition were fellow-conspirators. Philip II of Spain was a Roman Catholic fanatic; Charles IX of France was a weak mind, of no definite religious conviction, but used by the Catholics to bring about the massacre of seventy thousand Huguenots; Henry IV of France was probably a Huguenot in genuine feeling, but a political trimmer, a daring and brilliant soldier, a frenzied devotee of women, religion giving him small concern, and his change from Huguenotism to Catholicism a circumstance as trifling as the exchange of his hunter's paraphernalia for court apparel; Queen Elizabeth was as nearly devoid of religious instincts as is possible for a woman, though her purposes and position in politics drove her to the Protestant cause; William of Orange was born a Protestant, reared a Catholic, first in the household of the Regent of the Low countries, and afterward at the court of Charles V, suffered revulsion of sentiment under the unthinkable atrocities of the Inquisition as carried on in the Netherlands, till at last he became a Protestant of the most pronounced and honest type.

In Prince William's time, modern Europe was in the alembic, a circumstance which makes his epoch so engrossing to the student of modern history. Protestantism became a new political, social, intellectual, and religious order. Even apart from his religious significance, Martin Luther is the marked figure of the sixteenth century. Columbus discovered a New World; Luther peopled it with civil and religious forces. Puritanism was the flower of that earlier-day Protestantism. Besides, the Walloons settled New Amsterdam; the Huguenots, the Carolinas; the Anglicans, Virginia; the Lutherans, New Sweden. From the standpoint of statesmanship, Luther was shaping peoples for a New World, and was the commanding personality of those stormy years in which, like a warrior who never knew fatigue, he fought the battles of the living God. Unquestionably, the Reformation meant liberty in conscience, intellect and citizenship, which are the quintessence of modern civilization. In those years, during which William the Silent was a prodigious force, Protestantism was troubling the waters. New religious ideas must ultimate in new political institutions, of which the Dutch Republic was a sort of first draft, and the United States of America an edited and perfected draft.

Protestantism was in justifiable revolt against Roman Catholicism, a foe to progress and liberty in religion, then and now, and now not less than then. It was intolerance run mad, whose method was the Inquisition. One can not say a good word for this system, where Jesuitism finds home and inspiration, where the end justifies the means, and any diabolism passes for saintliness if done for the advancement of the "true faith." Yet here, as always, we must be on guard, supposing this to be a fruit of religion; rather is it selfish human nature, taking an ecclesiastical system to do business in, thus availing itself of the religious impulse in the soul to work out a purely earthly interest. Early Christianity, as all pure Christianity, presses Christ's method of making appeal to the individual, impressing him with a sense of his sin and his lost estate; of the necessity of repentance; of salvation from sin by faith in a Divine Christ. When Christianity came to the throne with Constantine, when ultimately masses of people were baptized on compulsion, Christianity took on the pomp and paraphernalia of heathenism, so as to make appeal to the sensuous element in heathen nature; in a word, Christianity became as much or more heathen than Christian, and this mongrel of Christianity and heathenism is Roman Catholicism. Root, stem, and branch, it is hostile to the Word of God, and, as every such system must do, darkened the consciences of men. We may not forget, however, its essential religious and scholastic services in earlier years, nor that it has nurtured some of the saints among the centuries. Catholicism has a basis of Christianity, and, could the excrescences be hewn away, and this foundation be again discovered, then for Roman Catholicism would dawn a new and greater era. But as the system stands, it affected temporal sovereignty, it humbled kings, and gave away empires. Pope Leo X was not a bad man, being so far superior to Alexander XII as to preclude comparison. Many popes had been so vile as to have shocked even the moral indifference of those times; but Leo X, son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, heir of the traditions in companionship and the humanities which had made Florence illustrious,--Leo, cultivated, brilliant, clean in his personal life, had assembled around him men reasonably good. His aesthetic inclinations were running him deeply in debt, and to fill the bankrupt treasury, His Holiness commissioned Tetzel to sell indulgences--a practice repugnant to moral instinct, to the dignity of the Church, and the honor of our God, and yet a practice continued by Romanism in our own day and under our own eyes. To suppose that Romanism has reformed is current with intelligent persons, though no supposition could be more erroneous. All those beliefs prevalent in the days of Luther are affirmed at this hour, with the addition of the doctrine of papal infallibility and the immaculate conception. To-day indulgences are sold in the United States, noticeably so in Arizona; and a son of a bishop in the Methodist Episcopal Church, because his name chanced to have a foreign flavor, was written to and offered one year's indulgences for twenty-five dollars! Catholicism has not changed. The Inquisition was abolished in Spain by Napoleon in 1808, re-established after the Spaniards had reassumed their government, and finally abolished by the Cortes in 1820. The system of Catholicism is leprous, and in the age of William the Silent had power and political ascendency so as to command rack and fagot, and dungeons so deep as that from them no cry could reach any ear save God's; and in the person of the mean, sullen, and indefatigable Philip had apt instrument.

When the Prince of Orange was ambassador in the court of France, Henry II, supposing him to be privy to his master's plans, on a hunting-excursion, casually mentioned a private treaty with Alva to join with Philip to exterminate heresy from their joint kingdoms. Small wonder if Orange, riding beside French royalty that day, grew pitiful toward unsuspicious, doomed thousands, and pitiless toward Philip and his Spanish soldiers and followers, or that, to use his own words from the famous "Apology," "From that moment I determined in earnest to clear the Spanish venom from the land." Watch his flushed face; his eyes, like coals taken fresh from an altar of vengeance; his hand, nervously fingering his sword-hilt; his form, dilating as if for the first time he guessed he had come to manhood,--and I miss in reckoning if we are not looking on the person of a patriot. For this William of Orange and Nassau is William the Silent, keeping his dreadful secret; but keeping the secret, too, that the Inquisition and Catholicism, and Spain, and Philip have an enemy whose hostility can only be silenced by a bullet. The day the French king gave William this fatal confidence was an epoch in the life of William and of Europe.

His life divides into two periods, this dialogue between himself and Henry II closing the one and opening the other. With that fatal confidence his youth ended and his manhood began. Get a closer view of his youth. From his fifteenth to his twenty-first year he was in constant attendance at the court of Charles V, who loved, trusted, and honored him. He was at this age, rich, frivolous, spendthrift; in short, a petted nobleman of the greatest monarch in Christendom. He had evident gifts; was generous to lavishness; mortgaged his estate to gratify his luxurious tastes; was given to political expediency, caring less for conviction than popularity with his sovereign; wearing his religion, if he may be said to have possessed any, as lightly as a lady's favor; lacking in reverence, he was flippant rather than irreligious, but a youth of fashion, pleasure, and luxury. Charles V, discovering in him extraordinary parts, invested him, at the age of twenty-two, with command of the imperial forces before Marienburg, and at his abdication leaned affectionately on William's shoulder. Count Egmont alone excepted, Orange was the most distinguished Flemish nobleman who passed from Charles to Philip as part of the emperor's bequest. Early in Philip's reign, Orange was made one of the king's counselors and Knight of the Golden Fleece, at that time most coveted and honorable of any military knighthood. At the age of twenty-six, he was one of the peace commissioners between Henry II and Philip II, and at this time he came into possession of that secret which changed his life. Here ends the youth of William of Nassau. Let us get this man more clearly in the eye. He was above middle height, spare, sinewy; dark in complexion; had gentle brown eyes, auburn hair and beard; face thin, nose aquiline; head small, but well formed; his hair luxuriant, his beard trimmed to a point; about his neck the superb collar of the Golden Fleece. He is married, and his home is Breda.

Between the young king and his Flemish Stadtholder was never any warmth of feeling. When Orange, pursuant to his resolution formed in the French king's presence, spurred the States to demand the removal of the Spanish soldiers from the Netherlands, with a pertinacity dogged and changeless till the king, in sheer desperation, acquiesced in the just demand, though with a chagrin of spirit toward the instrument of his defeat which became settled hatred, and never lifted from his heart for a moment in those long succeeding years, when the king, like a recluse in the Escurial, brooded over his defeat. His troops forced from Flemish territories, Philip himself departed from a region he had never loved and had scarcely tolerated, departed, not to return any more, save by proxy of fire and sword, and cruel soldiery, and more cruel generals--the pitiless Parmas and Alvas--and departing, he embraced the other noblemen with such cold warmth as was native to him, but upbraided Orange bitterly for the action of the States, and when Orange replied the action was not his, but the States-General, Philip, beside himself with rage, cried, "Not the States, but you! you! you!" Thus King Philip passed into Spain, and the Prince of Orange into the second era of his life.

Macaulay has written the life of William III with such warmth, glow, fullness, and art as to have rendered other biographies superfluous. The history of William III was the history of England during his reign. He was England at its best. William the Silent was the Netherlands at their best. Motley has written "The Rise of the Dutch Republic," and in so doing has written a glowing narrative of the origin of the Netherland Republic; and has besides, in the same breath, given a biography of William the Silent. What nobler eulogy could be pronounced than to say a man's life was his country's history during his lifetime? Motley's thrilling narrative is the worthiest life of William written. Read Motley, and the last greatest word shall have been told you regarding this hero of the sixteenth century. In Prescott's "Philip the Second" may be found an incomplete characterization of the prince, without the unfavorable attitude toward Philip or the laudatory view of William presented in Motley. These two American historians have approached their theme with such ampleness of scholastic research and elaborate access to and use of the correspondence of Margaret, Parma, Alva, Granvelle, Don John of Austria, William, and Philip, as practically to exhaust the sources of information on this tragic reign, at the same time shutting off much of possibility from the future historian. William has at last, in Motley, found a biographer for whom any illustrious character might be thankful. So elaborate and complete were these researches that Miss Putnam, in her "William the Silent," has scarcely developed a single new fact, and has in all cases conceded the thoroughness and sufficiency of Motley's investigations. The present writer's apology for attempting what has been done so incomparably well is, that he feels an essay of moderate length, which, because of its brevity, may find an audience, is a desideratum in English literature, this essay to point out the heroic proportions of William; enough so, if may be, to lend eagerness to those who read, so they may be decoyed into perusing Motley's noble histories. I would help a reader of this essay to see the theater and actors, and to that end lift this curtain.

Philip having, on August 26, 1559, sailed from Flushing, Spainward, William's lifework properly began. At this date, his attitude has not developed, but stands as a block of marble a sculptor has chiseled enough to show a statue is intended, but not sufficiently to disclose the sculptor's purpose. One thing alone was definite and unalterable, to combat the introduction of the Inquisition and the extermination of the Protestant Netherlanders by aid from the Spanish soldiery. The first checkmate given Philip's nefarious scheme was when the States-General compelled his removal of the troops, though at this time William was still Catholic in religion and a loyal subject of Philip, being in no sense a revolutionist. He was easily the first citizen of the Netherlands; twenty-six years of age; not matured, but maturing; not faultless, but in process of being fashioned for a distinguished career of patriotism and catholicity. Our full selves bloom slowly. Our life is no mushroom, but a tree, and a tree requires long growth-periods. Orange was so. A grave, moral, and patriotic purpose in itself suffices to shape a career of grandeur and service. Had he been told he would die a Protestant and a rebel, he would have been instant to deny the charge, and this through no duplicity, but from lack of knowledge of his own soul temper, coupled with an inability to forecast a stormy future. We can not walk by sight in action and politics any more than in religion--a thing the prince found out as the turbulent years passed. He has been vehemently accused of duplicity. He has been depicted as hypocrite and plotter against his rightful sovereign. I find no marks of this on him. That he had ambition is not to be argued; but ambition is no sin if worthily directed. He did things not consonant with our ethics, belonging, in that sense, to his age, an age of diplomatic duplicity. He did not tell all he knew. He had in his pay the king's private secretary, and received a copy of any letter the king wrote; and when at last the secretary's treason was discovered, he paid the penalty of his perfidy by being torn in pieces by four horses; yet bribery of employees was common then, and was a practice of every potentate, and was what Philip did in every court in Christendom. Absolute fealty was all but unknown. Each man was believed to have his price, and the belief, in most instances, was not erroneous. Besides, William was in a state of perpetual war with Philip, and war makes its own code, and justifies the otherwise unjustifiable, and but for this subtle surveillance of the king's intention, no stand could have been made against his treachery and encroachments; for he was the sum of duplicities, deceiving everybody, those nearest to him and most intimately in his counsels no less than his foes. Duplicity was native to him as respiration. Granvelle, who in treacherous diplomacy was not inferior to Macchiavelli, him Philip deceived. Such a king, William met by finesse and deception against finesse and deception. To judge a statesman of the sixteenth century by the ethics of the nineteenth century is studied injustice. He is accused of evasion in his marriage with Anne of Saxony, and the accusation is, in my conviction, just; but probably at that juncture in his career his religious notions were in a state of ferment, himself as yet knowing not what he would be. In any case, however, to use the words of Putnam, "From the expediency of his youth he grew gradually to a high standard of honor." In the stress of the battle for liberty, when he was reduced to counting his very garments, his luxurious habits slipped from him, and disinterestedness grew upon him. Cromwell was formed when first we saw him; Orange grows before our eyes, as we have watched the blooming of some sacred flower. Orange was no saint. Who so thinks him, thinks amiss. He had manifold faults, as what man has not? But that the growing purpose of his life was heroic and single, and that he devoted a laborious manhood to the enfranchisement of his country and religion, no fair historian can deny. His career naturally oscillated between the general and the statesman, the statesman being in the ascendant. Some men are primarily soldiers; secondarily, statesmen; as was Sulla or Marlborough. In others, the statesman stands first, the soldier in them being second, as in Julius Caesar, whose widest achievements always spring out of his statesmanship as naturally as a plant out of the soil. At this point, Caesar and William the Silent touch, by which is not meant that in either field William approximates Caesar; for Julius Caesar is one of the few greatest products of the world. William fought because he must; he was statesman because he would.