Part 23

Ghent, saved twice by the policy, the eloquence, the self-sacrifices of Orange, fell within three months of his murder into the hands of Parma. The loss of this most important city, followed in the next year by the downfall of Antwerp, sealed the fate of the southern Netherlands. Had the prince lived, how different might have been the country’s fate! If seven provinces could dilate, in so brief a space, into the powerful commonwealth which the republic soon became, what might not have been achieved by the united seventeen--a confederacy which would have united the adamantine vigor of the Batavian and Frisian races with the subtler, more delicate, and more graceful national elements in which the genius of the Frank, the Roman, and the Romanized Celt were so intimately blended. As long as the father of the country lived, such a union was possible. His power of managing men was so unquestionable that there was always a hope, even in the darkest hour; for men felt implicit reliance as well on his intellectual resources as on his integrity.

This power of dealing with his fellow-men he manifested in the various ways in which it has been usually exhibited by statesmen. He possessed a ready eloquence--sometimes impassioned, oftener argumentative, always rational. His influence over his audience was unexampled in the annals of that country or age; yet he never condescended to flatter the people. He never followed the nation, but always led her in the path of duty and of honor, and was much more prone to rebuke the vices than to pander to the passions of his hearers. He never failed to administer ample chastisement to parsimony, to jealousy, to insubordination, to intolerance, to infidelity, wherever it was due, nor feared to confront the states or the people in their most angry hours, and to tell them the truth to their faces. This commanding position he alone could stand upon, for his countrymen knew the generosity which had sacrificed his all for them, the self-denial which had eluded rather than sought political advancement, whether from king or people, and the untiring devotion which had consecrated a whole life to toil and danger in the cause of their emancipation.

While, therefore, he was ever ready to rebuke, and always too honest to flatter, he at the same time possessed the eloquence which could convince or persuade. He knew how to reach both the mind and the heart of his hearers. His orations, whether extemporaneous or prepared; his written messages to the states-general, to the provincial authorities, to the municipal bodies; his private correspondence with men of all ranks, from emperors and kings down to secretaries, and even children, all show an easy flow of language, a fullness of thought, a power of expression rare in that age, a fund of historical allusion, a considerable power of imagination, a warmth of sentiment, a breadth of view, a directness of purpose, a range of qualities, in short, which would in themselves have stamped him as one of the master-minds of his century, had there been no other monument to his memory than the remains of his spoken or written eloquence.

The bulk of his performances in this department was prodigious. Not even Philip was more industrious in the cabinet. Not even Granvelle held a more facile pen. He wrote and spoke equally well in French, German, or Flemish; and he possessed, besides, Spanish, Italian, Latin. The weight of his correspondence alone would have almost sufficed for the common industry of a lifetime; and although many volumes of his speeches and letters have been published, there remain in the various archives of the Netherlands and Germany many documents from his hand which will probably never see the light. If the capacity for unremitted intellectual labor in an honorable cause be the measure of human greatness, few minds could be compared to the “large composition” of this man. The efforts made to destroy the Netherlands by the most laborious and painstaking of tyrants were counteracted by the industry of the most indefatigable of patriots.

He went through life bearing the load of a people’s sorrows upon his shoulders with a smiling face. Their name was the last word upon his lips, save the simple affirmative, with which the soldier who had been battling for the right all his lifetime commended his soul in dying “to his great captain, Christ.” The people were grateful and affectionate, for they trusted the character of their “Father Wiliam,” and not all the clouds which calumny could collect ever dimmed to their eyes the radiance of that lofty mind to which they were accustomed, in their darkest calamities, to look for light. As long as he lived he was the guiding star of a whole brave nation, and when he died the little children cried in the streets.

JOHN KNOX.

BY JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE.

[The greatest of the Scotch religious reformers, born in 1505, died 1572, distinguished for a stern fanaticism as intolerant as that of the Roman Church, against which he battled. He had suffered bitterly from persecution during his earlier life, and for lengthened periods been an exile from Scotland, but remained always the head and front of the new propaganda till the establishment of the Reformed religion in 1560, which carried with it the interdiction of Roman Catholicism. On the arrival of the young queen Mary Stuart from France, in 1561, Knox soon became the sharpest critic of her life and policy. His unsparing antagonism and influence with the Protestant lords did much to make Mary’s position a very difficult one, and to precipitate the events which finally drove her from Scotland and made her an English prisoner. Knox was known to have been an ardent advocate of Mary’s death long prior to the queen’s execution at Fotheringay.]

Our primary characteristic of a hero, that he is sincere, applies emphatically to Knox. It is not denied anywhere that this, whatever might be his other qualities or faults, is among the truest of men. With a singular instinct he holds to the truth and fact; the truth alone is there for him, the rest a mere shadow and a deceptive nonentity. However feeble, forlorn the reality may seem, on that and that only _can_ he take his stand. In the galleys of the river Loire--whither Knox and the others, after their castle of St. Andrews was taken, had been sent as galley-slaves--some officer or priest one day presented them an image of the Virgin Mother, requiring that they, the blasphemous heretics, should do it reverence. “Mother? Mother of God?” said Knox, when the turn came to him: “This is no Mother of God; this is a _pented bredd_--a piece of wood, I tell you, with paint on it! She is fitter for swimming, I think, than for being worshiped,” added Knox, and flung the thing into the river. It was not very cheap jesting there; but come of it what might, this thing to Knox was and must continue nothing other than the real truth; it was a _pented bredd_: worship it he would not.

He told his fellow-prisoners, in this darkest time, to be of courage; the cause they had was a true one, and must and would prosper; the whole world could not put it down. Reality is of God’s making; it is alone strong. How many _pented bredds_, pretending to be real, are fitter to swim than to be worshiped! This Knox can not live but by fact: he clings to reality as the shipwrecked sailor to the cliff. He is an instance to us how a man by sincerity itself becomes heroic; it is the grand gift he has. We find in Knox a good, honest, intellectual talent, no transcendent one; a narrow, inconsiderable man as compared with Luther, but in heartfelt, instinctive adherence to truth, in _sincerity_, as we say, he has no superior; nay, one might ask, What equal he has? The heart of him is of the true prophet cast. “He lies there,” said the Earl of Morton at his grave, “who never feared the face of man.” He resembles, more than any of the moderns, an old Hebrew prophet. The same inflexibility, intolerance, rigid, narrow-looking adherence to God’s truth, stern rebuke in the name of God to all that forsake truth; an old Hebrew prophet in the guise of an Edinburgh minister of the sixteenth century. We are to take him for that; not require him to be other.

Knox’s conduct to Queen Mary, the harsh visits he used to make in her own palace to reprove her there, have been much commented upon. Such cruelty, such coarseness fill us with indifference. On reading the actual narrative of the business, what Knox said and what Knox meant, I must say one’s tragic feeling is rather disappointed. They are not so coarse, these speeches; they seem to me about as fine as the circumstances would permit. Knox was not there to do the courtier; he came on another errand. Whoever, reading these colloquies of his with the queen, thinks they are vulgar insolences of a plebeian priest to a delicate high lady, mistakes the purport and essence of them altogether. It was unfortunately not possible to be polite with the Queen of Scotland, unless one proved untrue to the nation and cause of Scotland.

A man who did not wish to see the land of his birth made a hunting-field for intriguing, ambitious Guises, and the cause of God trampled under foot of falsehoods, formulas, and the devil’s cause, had no method of making himself agreeable. “Better that women weep,” said Morton, “than that bearded men be forced to weep.” Knox was the constitutional opposition party in Scotland; the nobles of the country, called by their station to take that post, were not found in it; Knox had to go, or no one. The hapless queen--but still the more hapless country, if _she_ were made happy! Mary herself was not without sharpness enough, among her other qualities. “Who are you,” said she once, “that presume to school the nobles and sovereign of this realm?” “Madam, a subject born within the same,” answered he. Reasonably answered! If the “subject” have truth to speak, it is not the “subject’s” footing that will fail him here.

We blame Knox for his intolerance. Well, surely it is good that each of us be as tolerant as possible. Yet, at bottom, after all the talk there is and has been about it, what is tolerance? Tolerance is to tolerate the unessential, and to see well what that is. Tolerance has to be noble, measured, just in its very wrath, when it can tolerate no longer. But, on the whole, we are not altogether here to tolerate. We are here to resist, to control, and vanquish withal. We do not “tolerate” falsehoods, thieveries, iniquities, when they fasten on us; we say to them, Thou art false! thou art not tolerable! We are here to extinguish falsehoods, and to put an end to them in some wise way. I will not quarrel so much with the way; the doing of the thing is our great concern. In this sense Knox was, full surely, intolerant.

A man sent to row in the French galleys, and such like, for teaching the truth in his own land, can not always be in the mildest humor. I am not prepared to say that Knox had a soft temper, nor do I know that he had what we call an ill temper. An ill nature he decidedly had not. Kind, honest affections dwell in the much-enduring, hard-worn, ever-battling man. That he _could_ rebuke queens, and had such weight among those proud, turbulent nobles--proud enough, whatever else they were--and could maintain to the end a kind of virtual presidency and sovereignty over that wild realm, he who was only “a subject born within the same”; this of itself will prove to us that he was found, close at hand, to be no mean, acrid man, but at heart a healthful, strong, sagacious man. Such alone can bear rule in that kind. They blame him for pulling down cathedrals, and so forth, as if he were a seditious, rioting demagogue; precisely the reverse is seen to be the fact in regard to cathedrals and the rest of it, if we examine. Knox wanted no pulling down of stone edifices; he wanted leprosy and darkness thrown out of the lives of men. Tumult was not his element. It was the tragic feature of his life that he was forced to dwell so much in that. Every such man is the born enemy of disorder--hates to be in it; but what then? Smooth falsehood is not order. It is the general sum-total of _dis_order. Order is _truth_--each thing standing on the basis that belongs to it. Order and falsehood can not subsist together.

Withal, unexpectedly enough, this Knox has a vein of drollery in him, which I like much, in combination with his other qualities. He has a true eye for the ridiculous. His history, with its rough earnestness, is curiously enlivened with this. When the two prelates, entering Glasgow Cathedral, quarrel about precedence, march rapidly up, take to hustling one another, twitching one another’s rochets, and at last flourishing their crosiers like quarter-staves, it is a great sight for him every way. Not mockery, scorn, bitterness alone, though there is enough of that too; but a true, loving, illuminating laugh mounts up over the earnest visage; not a loud laugh; you would say a laugh in the _eyes_ most of all. An honest-hearted, brotherly man; brother to the high, brother also to the low; sincere in his sympathy with both. He had his pipe of Bordeaux too, we find, in that old Edinburgh house of his--a cheery, social man, with faces that loved him. They go far wrong who think this Knox was a gloomy, spasmodic, shrieking fanatic. Not at all; he is one of the solidest of men. Practical, cautious, hopeful, patient; a most shrewd, observing, quietly discerning man. In fact, he has very much the type of character we assign to the Scotch at present. A certain sardonic taciturnity is in him; insight enough, and a stouter heart than he himself knows of. He has the power of holding his peace over many things which do not vitally concern him--“They, what are they?” But the thing which does vitally concern him, that thing he will speak of, and in a tone the whole world shall be made to hear, all the more emphatic for his long silence.

This prophet of the Scotch is to me no hateful man. He had a sore fight of an existence; wrestling with popes and principalities; in defeat, contention, life-long struggle; rowing as a galley-slave, wandering as an exile. A sore fight; but he won it. “Have you hope?” they asked him in his last moment, when he could no longer speak. He lifted his finger, “pointed upward with his finger,” and so died. Honor to him. His works have not died. The letter of his work dies, as of all men’s, but the spirit of it never.

DUKE OF ALVA.

BY JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY.

[Ferdinando Alvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alva, a Spanish statesman and general, born 1508, died 1582. From his earliest years a soldier, the dominating passion of his soul was hatred of heretics and infidels. He bore a distinguished part in the wars and negotiations of Charles V’s splendid reign, and on the accession of Philip II was equally honored by that monarch. On the outbreak of the rebellion in the Netherlands, Alva was sent thither with an army, as viceroy. His six years of rule was one of the most bloody and atrocious episodes in modern history. His great opponent was the Prince of Orange. Utterly failing in stamping out the rebellion, he was recalled by his master in 1573.]

Ferdinando Alvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alva, was the most successful and experienced general of Spain, or of Europe. No man studied more deeply, or practiced more constantly the military science. In the most important of all arts at that epoch, he was the most consummate artist. In the only honorable profession of the age, he was the most thorough and the most pedantic professor. Since the days of Demetrius Poliorcetes, no man had besieged so many cities. Since the days of Fabius Cunctator, no general had avoided so many battles, and no soldier, courageous as he was, ever attained to a more sublime indifference to calumny or depreciation. Having proved in his boyhood, at Fontarabia, and in his maturity, at Mühlberg, that he could exhibit heroism and headlong courage, when necessary, he could afford to look with contempt upon the witless gibes which his enemies had occasionally perpetrated at his expense. Conscious of holding his armies in his hand, by the power of an unrivalled discipline, and the magic of a name illustrated by a hundred triumphs, he could bear with patience and benevolence the murmurs of his soldiers when their battles were denied them.

He was born in 1508, of a family which boasted imperial descent. A Palæologus, brother of a Byzantine emperor, had conquered the city of Toledo, and transmitted its appellation as a family name. The father of Ferdinando, Don Garcia, had been slain on the Isle of Gerbes, in battle with the Moors, when his son was but four years of age. The child was brought up by his grandfather, Don Frederic, and trained from his tenderest infancy to arms. Hatred to the infidel, and a determination to avenge his father’s blood crying to him from a foreign grave, were the earliest of his instincts. As a youth he was distinguished for his prowess. His maiden sword was fleshed at Fontarabia, where, although but sixteen years of age, he was considered by his constancy in hardship, by his brilliant and desperate courage, and by the example of military discipline which he afforded to the troops, to have contributed in no small degree to the success of the Spanish arms.

In 1530 he accompanied the emperor in his campaign against the Turks. Charles, instinctively recognizing the merit of the youth who was destined to be the life-long companion of his toils and glories, distinguished him with his favor at the opening of his career. Young, brave, and enthusiastic, Ferdinando de Toledo at this period was as interesting a hero as ever illustrated the pages of Castilian romance. His mad ride from Hungary to Spain and back again, accomplished in seventeen days, for the sake of a brief visit to his newly-married wife, is not the least attractive episode in the history of an existence which was destined to be so dark and sanguinary. In 1535 he accompanied the emperor on his memorable expedition to Tunis. In 1546 and 1547 he was generalissimo in the war against the Smalcaldian league. His most brilliant feat of arms--perhaps the most brilliant exploit of the emperor’s reign--was the passage of the Elbe and the battle of Mühlberg, accomplished in spite of Maximilian’s bitter and violent reproaches, and the tremendous possibilities of a defeat. That battle had finished the war.

The gigantic and magnanimous John Frederic, surprised at his devotions in the church, fled in dismay, leaving his boots behind him, which for their superhuman size were ridiculously said afterward to be treasured among the trophies of the Toledo house. The rout was total. “I came, I saw, and God conquers,” said the emperor, in pious parody of his immortal predecessor’s epigram. Maximilian, with a thousand apologies for his previous insults, embraced the heroic Don Ferdinand over and over again, as, arrayed in a plain suit of blue armor, unadorned save with the streaks of his enemies’ blood, he returned from pursuit of the fugitive. So complete and so sudden was the victory, that it was found impossible to account for it save on the ground of miraculous interposition. Like Joshua in the vale of Ajalon, Don Ferdinand was supposed to have commanded the sun to stand still for a season, and to have been obeyed. Otherwise, how could the passage of the river, which was only concluded at six in the evening, and the complete overthrow of the Protestant forces, have all been accomplished within the narrow space of an April twilight?

The reply of the duke to Henry II of France, who questioned him subsequently upon the subject, is well known. “Your Majesty, I was too much occupied that evening with what was taking place on the earth beneath, to pay much heed to the evolutions of the heavenly bodies.” Spared as he had been by his good fortune from taking any part in the Algerine expedition, or in witnessing the ignominious retreat from Innspruck, he was obliged to submit to the intercalation of the disastrous siege of Metz in the long history of his successes. Doing the duty of a field-marshal and a sentinel, supporting his army by his firmness and his discipline when nothing else could have supported them, he was at last enabled, after half the hundred thousand men with whom Charles had begun the siege had been sacrificed, to induce his imperial master to raise the siege before the remaining fifty thousand had been frozen or starved to death.

The culminating career of Alva seemed to have closed in the mist which gathered around the setting star of the empire. Having accompanied Philip to England in 1554, on his matrimonial expedition, he was destined in the following year, as viceroy and generalissimo of Italy, to be placed in a series of false positions. A great captain engaged in a little war, the champion of the cross in arms against the successor of St. Peter, he had extricated himself at last with his usual adroitness, but with very little glory. To him had been allotted the mortification, to another the triumph. The luster of his own name seemed to sink in the ocean, while that of a hated rival, with new spangled ore, suddenly “flamed in the forehead of the morning sky.” While he had been paltering with a dotard, whom he was forbidden to crush, Egmont had struck down the chosen troops of France and conquered her most illustrious commanders. Here was the unpardonable crime which could only be expiated by the blood of the victor. Unfortunately for his rival, the time was now approaching when the long-deferred revenge was to be satisfied.

On the whole, the Duke of Alva was inferior to no general of his age. As a disciplinarian, he was foremost in Spain, perhaps in Europe. A spendthrift of time, he was an economist of blood, and this was, perhaps, in the eyes of humanity, his principal virtue. “Time and myself are two,” was a frequent observation of Philip, and his favorite general considered the maxim as applicable to war as to politics. Such were his qualities as a military commander. As a statesman, he had neither experience nor talent. As a man, his character was simple. He did not combine a great variety of vices, but those which he had were colossal, and he possessed no virtues. He was neither lustful nor intemperate, but his professed eulogists admitted his enormous avarice, while the world has agreed that such an amount of stealth and ferocity, of patient vindictiveness and universal bloodthirstiness, were never found in a savage beast of the forest, and but rarely in a human bosom. His history was now to show that his previous thrift of human life was not derived from any love of his kind. Personally he was stern and overbearing. As difficult of access as Philip himself, he was even more haughty to those who were admitted to his presence.