Part 8

The cord that bound the seventeen provinces together was so weak that it was liable to snap at any time, and it was therefore rather to foreign assistance than to their own unaided exertions that the leading men looked to rescue the land from Spanish tyranny. They had appointed the emperor’s brother Matthias their governor-general in name, but that had not brought them the material aid which they needed. A considerable number of the nobles were now intriguing with the worthless duke of Anjou, brother of the king of France, leading him to believe that if he would bring a strong army into the field they would elect him their sovereign in place of Philippe. Even the prince of Orange favoured this scheme, and Anjou actually invaded the country and occupied Mons with a considerable force. The effect was that Queen Elizabeth of England, in her jealousy of France, gave greater assistance in men and money than before, and Anjou disbanded his troops and returned to Paris.

Don John was again helpless for want of money. Philippe had sent him nearly £400,000 from Spain with the troops under Alexander Farnese, and had promised him more, but the money was expended, and the promise was unfulfilled. Without the means of procuring the material of war he could do nothing. Then a pestilence broke out in his main army, and in a few weeks over a thousand men died. Worn out with care and anxiety, after a severe attack of illness, on the 1st of October 1578 Don John of Austria expired in his camp near Namur, after appointing on his deathbed Alexander Farnese, prince of Parma, his successor until the king’s pleasure should be known. The temporary appointment was confirmed, and the ablest of all of Philippe’s representatives was free to try what he could do towards settling the great controversy between despotism and liberty in the Netherlands.

[Sidenote: Historical Sketches.]

Alexander Farnese was the only son of the duke of Parma and Piacenza and of the regent Margaret, who preceded Alva in the administration. He was thirty-three years of age, and had been left a widower by the decease of his wife, a princess of Portugal. He found the country distracted with religious feuds, in which the Protestants were as violent as the Catholics. In Ghent the turbulence of a fanatical party was uncontrollable even by the prince of Orange, and the destruction of statues and ornaments in the churches was accompanied with such atrocious treatment of the leading adherents of the ancient faith that the Walloon provinces of the south, which were ardently Catholic, were exasperated to the last degree. On the 6th of January 1579 an alliance between Hainaut, Artois, and Lille with Douai and Orchies was entered into for the defence and exclusive maintenance of the Catholic church. The nobles in these provinces were timeservers, and Parma soon found that they could easily be bribed by offices and money to abandon the patriot interests. For this purpose Philippe could open his purse widely, though he neglected to pay his soldiers.

On the 17th of May 1579 the estates of the three provinces above named signed at Arras a formal treaty of reconciliation with the king of Spain, and were for ever lost to the Netherlands cause. Several towns in Brabant and Flanders shortly afterwards followed this example. The question of religion being settled to Philippe’s satisfaction, they were allowed to retain their charters subject to the prerogative of the sovereign.

[Sidenote: The Union of Utrecht.]

On the other hand, on the 23rd of January 1579 the foundation of the Netherlands Republic was laid by an agreement termed the Union of Utrecht, which was proclaimed on the 29th of the same month. The union was a loose one, for it left to each province and each city its own constitution unaltered, and only provided for a general assembly of deputies from the estates of the different provinces, in which each should have the same voting power, no matter how many deputies it should send. The object was defence against a common foe. It guaranteed to every man liberty of conscience, but it could not secure liberty of public worship where passion was running high, it could merely prevent inquisition whether Catholic or Protestant. It founded a new State, but the men who concluded it did not realise that this would be the result, they professed that they still adhered to the agreement with the other provinces, only making that agreement a little more binding in their own case. No supreme head was appointed, though Orange was practically in that position, and Matthias was not deprived of his title of governor-general, nor was Philippe formally deposed as sovereign of the provinces outside of Holland and Zeeland. The bishopric of Utrecht now ceased to exist.

The Union of Utrecht was signed by Count John of Nassau for himself and as stadholder of Gelderland, by the deputies of Holland, Zeeland, and Utrecht, by the deputies of the province of Groningen excluding the capital, by the deputies of Brill and the land of Voorne as a particular district though united with Holland, and further by a minority of the deputies of Friesland, the majority objecting to it. It was open to any other provinces or towns to join the Union, and on the 1st of March 1580 Overyssel gave in its adhesion, but the town of Groningen did not do so until 1595, and the complete province of Friesland not before 1598. Various nobles subsequently joined the Union, as did also the city of Ghent on the 4th of February 1579, the city of Antwerp on the 28th of July 1579, the city of Bruges on the 1st of February 1580, and several others later. Each city came to be practically an independent unit in the province in which it was situated, and could therefore make what alliances it chose. But owing to this circumstance the government of the Union was exceedingly weak, for no resolutions of the states-general were binding upon any town whose deputies did not agree to them.

[Sidenote: Historical Sketches.]

The provinces Holland, Zeeland, since enlarged by the addition of a small part of Flanders, the northern part of Gelderland including the county of Zutphen, Overyssel, Friesland, and Groningen, together with Drenthe, cover the whole territory of the present kingdom of the Netherlands except North Brabant and Limburg. Drenthe was a dependency of the bishopric of Utrecht from 1024 to 1537, when it became a direct fief to the emperor Charles V. It remained subject to the Spanish government until 1594, when it was overrun by the States forces, and thereafter it was a dependency of either Friesland or Groningen until 1813, when it became a separate province of the kingdom of the Netherlands.

III.

CONTINUATION OF THE WAR IN THE NETHERLANDS UNTIL 1606.

[Sidenote: Continuation of the War.]

The most exciting part of the scene now changes to the town of Maastricht, an important strategical position in the present province of Limburg. Maastricht contained thirty-four thousand inhabitants, and there was a garrison of a thousand soldiers within its walls. On the 12th of March 1579 Parma laid siege to the town with an army of twenty to twenty-five thousand men, and completely enclosed it. Two or three thousand peasants of both sexes, whose homes had been ravaged, managed to get in before it was surrounded, and they were of great service in the defence. The resistance was desperate, men and women fighting side by side whenever breaches were made in the walls and the soldiers tried to enter, as also in excavating passages by which the Spanish mines were destroyed. The carnage on both sides was frightful. On one occasion five hundred soldiers were hurled into the air and killed by a single explosion of a mine. An attempt to relieve the town was made by the prince of Orange, but it failed, for it was impossible to raise an army strong enough for the purpose. At last, on the 29th of June, Maastricht was taken, and then an indiscriminate massacre followed. On the first day four thousand men and women were butchered, and their dead bodies were flung into the streets. Three days the massacre continued, and then the few survivors fled from their old homes and tried to find a refuge in the country. Maastricht was depopulated, and after everything of value had been removed, it was repeopled by strangers.

Possession of Mechlin was obtained by Parma through the treachery of its governor De Bours, who introduced Spanish troops secretly, but six months later it was recovered by surprise by Van der Tympel, governor of Brussels.

[Sidenote: Historical Sketches.]

Another serious disaster befel the patriot cause in the far north. In November 1579 Joris Lalain, count of Renneberg, stadholder of Groningen and its dependency Drenthe, sold himself to Parma for office and a sum of money. During the night of the 3rd of March 1580 he caused all the leading men of the patriot party in the town of Groningen to be arrested in their beds and committed to prison, and before dawn on the 4th his adherents were in possession of the town. The States tried to recover the place, and a small army laid siege to it, but Parma sent a stronger force to the north, by which the patriots were almost annihilated. Then for some time there was a series of petty operations in the Frisian districts, in which nothing decisive was effected on either side, but much property was destroyed, and much misery was caused.

In 1580 Philippe II added Portugal to his dominions. At the time there was no thought that by this union the Portuguese possessions in the eastern seas would be laid open to conquest by the Netherlands, but that was the result. Before the close of the century the provinces within the Union of Utrecht were destined to become the foremost sea power of the world, and then the addition of Portugal to their foes was simply the addition of a vast amount of valuable spoil for them to gather. Meantime much that is interesting and instructive was to transpire in the provinces.

On the 15th of March 1580 Philippe, by advice of Cardinal Granvelle, issued a ban declaring the prince of Orange an outlaw, and offering twenty-five thousand crowns of gold, pardon for any crime however great, and a title of nobility to anyone who should assassinate him. He was regarded as the very soul of the struggle for liberty of conscience and political freedom, as indeed he was, and if he could be got out of the way, the king believed that the fourteen still defiant provinces would return like Artois, Hainaut, and Lille to the Catholic church and to perfect obedience.

[Sidenote: Election of the Duke of Anjou as Sovereign.]

This was the final grievance which led to the absolute renunciation of the sovereignty of Philippe by the disaffected provinces. Hitherto, though they were fighting against him, all acts of government were carried out in his name except in Holland and Zeeland, but on the 26th of July 1581 their estates, assembled at the Hague, formally and solemnly abjured him. His seals were broken, and every one was absolved from oaths of allegiance taken to him.

But there was no intention on the part of the people to change the form of their government, what they desired was to preserve their ancient charters, not to destroy them. The bond of union between the provinces was that one individual had been sovereign of them all, and now that Philippe had been abjured they must choose another in his stead, or break into fragments. The general choice fell upon the prince of Orange, but he emphatically refused to accept the position, because he would not have it said that personal ambition had influenced his conduct. Holland and Zeeland, however, would have no other, and after much hesitation he consented to become their head temporarily. The archduke Matthias, who was of no account, laid down his office as governor-general, and shortly afterwards retired to Germany.

By the influence of Orange the worthless duke of Anjou was chosen sovereign of the other twelve provinces. He was a brother of the king of France, who promised to assist him with money and men to defend the country against Spain. It was believed that he was about to wed Queen Elizabeth of England, and she certainly did all that she could to favour his election by the estates. He agreed to all the conditions required of him, though they bound him to constitutional government as closely as the king of England is bound to-day. He would have agreed to anything at all, in fact, but his promise, or his signature, or his oath was of no value whatever. Fortunately for England his insignificant person and his repulsive features prevented the great queen from espousing him.

[Sidenote: Historical Sketches.]

He was in England when the final arrangements were made, but on the 10th of February 1582 he arrived at Flushing with a brilliant train of English and French noblemen. The queen had requested that he might be treated with the same respect as herself, and so he was received with all possible honour. On the 17th of the same month he reached Antwerp, and was inaugurated with much ceremony as sovereign duke of Brabant. In July he was installed at Bruges as sovereign count of Flanders, and at the same time the estates of Gelderland formally accepted him as duke of that province, and those of Friesland pledged him obedience as their lord. He did not visit the other provinces in order to be installed with ceremony, but took up his residence at Antwerp, and was generally accepted as sovereign. To support him he had a strong French army, which was supposed to be a movable force, while troops raised by the States were stationed as garrisons in the towns.

The prince of Parma meantime was far from idle. Reinforcements of Spanish and Italian troops were constantly arriving, until at the end of August 1582 he was at the head of an army fully sixty thousand strong and largely composed of veteran soldiers. Using the obedient provinces of Artois and Hainaut as a base of operations, he sent out detachments to surprise cities that were not thoroughly on their guard, and as he had bribed many of the nobles, he was always well-informed on this point. So he got possession among various places of Oudenarde in Flanders on the 5th of July 1582, and a little later of Steenwyk in Friesland, of Eindhoven in Brabant, and of Nieuwpoort in Flanders.

The duke of Anjou had sworn to maintain the constitutions of the provinces and freedom of conscience, but the brother of the king of France and the son of Catherine of Medici could not long bear restraint. He wished to make himself an absolute sovereign and to suppress Protestantism, and without reflecting what the consequence must be of attempting to oppose Parma and the people of the Netherlands at the same time, on the 15th of January 1583 by his order detachments of French troops took possession of Dunkirk, Ostend, Dixmuyde, Denremonde, Alost, and Vilvoorde, and ejected the Netherlands garrisons. A similar attempt upon Bruges failed, as the city authorities closed the gates in time against the French soldiers.

[Sidenote: Treachery of Anjou.]

The duke resided in Antwerp, and at Borgerhout close by there was a camp of French troops. On the 17th of January at mid-day he rode through the gate leading to Borgerhout, when his bodyguard attacked the burgher watch, killed every man of them, and took possession of the archway and the drawbridge. Six hundred cavalry and three thousand infantry from Borgerhout then poured into the city, where they divided, and some began to plunder. But the burghers sprang quickly to arms, the leading sections of the French were overwhelmed, and those behind commenced to retreat in a panic. The burghers pressed on, killed over two thousand of the French, and made prisoners of all the others. Fewer than a hundred burghers lost their lives on this occasion.

Anjou fled with the remainder of his troops from Borgerhout, but a dyke was cut in his passage, and another thousand soldiers were drowned. He succeeded, however, in escaping to a place of safety, where he collected various scattered detachments about him, and formed a new camp. There he entered into correspondence with Parma on one side and with the States on the other, trying to make terms with each.

The position was one of extreme peril. Owing to the jealousy between the provinces and the cities and to the rivalry between Catholics and Protestants, they could not stand alone. To pursue the miscreant Anjou any further would be to incur the hostility of France, and that would most certainly bring ruin upon the country. Queen Elizabeth wrote strongly urging a reconciliation with him, and that was also in the opinion of the prince of Orange the wisest course to adopt. So an arrangement was made with him, by which on the 28th of March 1583 he surrendered the cities that he had seized, and the States released their French prisoners and restored to him the plate and furniture he had left behind in Antwerp. He was to wait at Dunkirk until some plan could be devised by which he might be restored to the dignity he had forfeited, but on the 28th of June he left to visit Paris, and never returned. He died in France on the 10th of June 1584.

[Sidenote: Historical Sketches.]

The treachery of Anjou was imitated by more than one of the Netherlands nobles. On the 22nd of September 1583 the town of Zutphen in Gelderland was betrayed to the Spaniards by Count Van den Berg, and on the 20th of May 1584 Bruges in Flanders was given up to Parma by the prince of Chimay, who was governor of that important city. Then Ypres in Flanders was besieged and forced to surrender, and as in Bruges all Protestants were expelled. Most of these took refuge in the northern provinces, so that the line of separation between the two opposing religions was constantly becoming more clearly defined.

At this critical time in the history of the provinces the great man whose name will ever be associated with all that is best and noblest in their struggle for liberty was taken from them by the pistol of an assassin. The ban of Philippe II had at last produced the effect for which it was designed. There had been many attempts to murder the prince of Orange and secure the king’s reward, but hitherto all had failed. The most serious of these took place on the 18th of March 1582, when he had been wounded, at first it was believed mortally, but he had recovered, though his wife died from the shock. And now, on the 10th of July 1584, in his own house at Delft he was shot by a fanatic Burgundian Catholic named Balthazar Gérard, who under pretence of being a Calvinist in distress had obtained admittance to his service. The Father of his Country, as he was deservedly called, expired almost immediately. The murderer was seized, and died under the most excruciating tortures that the ingenuity of man could devise, but he remained callous to the last. The sorrowing people laid the corpse of him they had such good reason to mourn for in the new church at Delft, and raised a stately tomb over it, where few Dutch speaking South Africans who visit Europe fail to pay their respects to the memory of the illustrious dead. Thus William of Orange passed away.

[Sidenote: Murder of the Prince of Orange.]

The real murderer, Philippe the Second of Spain, rewarded the parents of his tool with patents of nobility and with three seignories or rich estates in Franche Comté, taken from the confiscated property of his victim.

For a short time the country was paralysed by the death of its great leader, but soon in the northern provinces a general resolution was taken to prosecute the war more vigorously than ever. It now became almost purely a strife of religion. The prince of Orange had favoured toleration, but when he was removed the enmity between the Catholics and the Protestants showed itself so strong that a united country was no longer possible. It was not recognised at the time, but it can now be seen, that the position of the dividing line was the object striven for, and consequently the central provinces, Flanders, Brabant, Mechlin, Gelderland, and Limburg, where the Teutons and Celts were intermixed, were to be the principal scene of operations.

The states-general, exercising supreme power, appointed an executive council to raise forces and carry on the war until a sovereign should be chosen. This council consisted of eighteen members, four representing Holland, three Zeeland, three Friesland, three Brabant, two Utrecht, two Flanders, and one Mechlin. As its president the states-general appointed Maurits of Nassau, second son of the murdered prince of Orange, his eldest son Philip having long been a prisoner in Spain. It was a clumsy instrument for carrying on a war, with a president only seventeen years of age, and depending for funds upon the states-general, that it was required to convoke at least twice a year; but it was the only possible machinery that could be created at the time. The States’ movable army consisted of three thousand infantry and two thousand five hundred cavalry, the burghers being relied upon for the defence of the towns.

[Sidenote: Historical Sketches.]

On the other side was the astute and active Parma, with a field force of over eighteen thousand veterans, besides garrisons in all the towns he had taken. He was provided with gold to bribe the corrupt nobles, and he was skilful in using it. The disparity between the two parties was so great that it was not surprising that towns of mixed population should waver when plausible overtures were made to them, rather than risk being attacked and treated as Maastricht had been. Dendermonde was the first to give way. On the 17th of August 1584 it was reconciled to the Spanish king, and lost for ever to the patriot cause. The fatal example was followed by Vilvoorde on the 7th of September, and on the 17th of the same month by the all-important city of Ghent. The terms of reconciliation were that the municipal institutions were to be respected, and that the Protestants were to be allowed two years within which either to conform to the Catholic worship or to dispose of their property and go into exile. This was at least much better than to be burnt or buried alive. Emigration to Holland and Zeeland followed on a very large scale, and before the expiration of the two years Ghent in particular lost nearly half of its former inhabitants. Thus Protestantism gained in the north and Catholicism in the south of the country.

The eyes of the great powers of Europe were now more intently fixed upon the Netherlands than ever before, but it was difficult to assist them. Neither Germany, France, nor England was willing to enter openly into war with the powerful Spanish empire in order to preserve constitutional government and Calvinistic doctrine. The states actually offered the sovereignty of the provinces to the contemptible Henry III, who sat upon the throne of France, if he would pledge his word to maintain their charters and their religion, and he declined to accept the offer, though he had every reason to be hostile to Spain. Elizabeth of England favoured a joint protectorate of the Netherlands by France and herself, but was naturally unwilling to see them absorbed by her neighbour, and was not inclined to assist them alone. And so in their time of greatest need they had only themselves to depend upon.

[Sidenote: Designs of the Prince of Parma.]