Title: The Rise of the Dutch Republic — Volume 29: 1578, part III
Author: Motley, John Lothrop
Language: English
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THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC, 1578

By John Lothrop Motley

1855



PART VI.

ALEXANDER OF PARMA

1578-1584.



CHAPTER I.

     Birth, education, marriage, and youthful character of Alexander
     Farnese--His private adventures--Exploits at Lepanto and at
     Gemblours--He succeeds to the government--Personal appearance and
     characteristics--Aspect of affairs--Internal dissensions--Anjou at
     Mons--John Casimir's intrigues at Ghent--Anjou disbands his
     soldiers--The Netherlands ravaged by various foreign troops--Anarchy
     and confusion in Ghent--Imbize and Ryhove--Fate of Hessels and
     Visch--New Pacification drawn up by Orange--Representations of Queen
     Elizabeth--Remonstrance of Brussels Riots and image-breaking in
     Ghent--Displeasure of Orange--His presence implored at Ghent, where
     he establishes a Religious Peace--Painful situation of John Casimir
     --Sharp rebukes of Elizabeth--He takes his departure--His troops
     apply to Farnese, who allows them to leave the country--Anjou's
     departure and manifesto--Elizabeth's letters to the states-general
     with regard to him--Complimentary addresses by the Estates to the
     Duke--Death of Bossu--Calumnies against Orange--Venality of the
     malcontent grandees--La Motte's treason--Intrigues of the Prior of
     Renty--Saint Aldegonde at Arras--The Prior of St. Vaast's exertions
     --Opposition of the clergy in the Walloon provinces to the taxation
     of the general government--Triangular contest--Municipal revolution
     in Arras led by Gosson and others--Counter-revolution--Rapid trials
     and executions--"Reconciliation" of the malcontent chieftains--
     Secret treaty of Mount St. Eloi: Mischief made by the Prior of
     Renty--His accusations against the reconciled lords--Vengeance taken
     upon him--Counter movement by the liberal party--Union of Utrecht--
     The Act analyzed and characterized.

A fifth governor now stood in the place which had been successively
vacated by Margaret of Parma, by Alva, by the Grand Commander, and by Don
John of Austria.  Of all the eminent personages to whom Philip had
confided the reins of that most difficult and dangerous administration,
the man who was now to rule was by far the ablest and the best fitted for
his post.  If there were living charioteer skilful enough to guide the
wheels of state, whirling now more dizzily than ever through "confusum
chaos," Alexander Farnese was the charioteer to guide--his hand the only
one which could control.

He was now in his thirty-third year--his uncle Don John, his cousin Don
Carlos, and himself, having all been born within a few months of each
other.  His father was Ottavio Farnese, the faithful lieutenant of
Charles the Fifth, and grandson of Pope Paul the Third; his mother was
Margaret of Parma, first Regent of the Netherlands after the departure of
Philip from the provinces.  He was one of the twins by which the reunion
of Margaret and her youthful husband had been blessed, and the only one
that survived.  His great-grandfather, Paul, whose secular name of
Alexander he had received, had placed his hand upon the new-born infant's
head, and prophesied that he would grow up to become a mighty warrior.
The boy, from his earliest years, seemed destined to verify the
prediction.  Though apt enough at his studies, he turned with impatience
from his literary tutors to military exercises and the hardiest sports.
The din of arms surrounded his cradle.  The trophies of Ottavio,
returning victorious from beyond the Alps, had dazzled the eyes of his
infancy, and when but six years of age he had witnessed the siege of his
native Parma, and its vigorous defence by his martial father.  When
Philip was in the Netherlands--in the years immediately succeeding the
abdication of the Emperor--he had received the boy from his parents as a
hostage for their friendship.  Although but eleven years of age,
Alexander had begged earnestly to be allowed to serve as a volunteer on
the memorable day of Saint Quentin, and had wept bitterly when the amazed
monarch refused his request.--His education had been, completed at
Alcala, and at Madrid, under the immediate supervision of his royal
uncle, and in the companionship of the Infante Carlos and the brilliant
Don John.  The imperial bastard was alone able to surpass, or even to
equal the Italian prince in all martial and manly pursuits.  Both were
equally devoted to the chase and to the tournay; both longed impatiently
for the period when the irksome routine of monkish pedantry, and the
fictitious combats which formed their main recreation, should be
exchanged for the substantial delights of war.  At the age of twenty he
had been affianced to Maria of Portugal; daughter of Prince Edward,
granddaughter of King Emanuel, and his nuptials with that peerless
princess were; as we have seen, celebrated soon afterwards with much pomp
in Brussels.  Sons and daughters were born to him in due time, during his
subsequent residence in Parma.  Here, however, the fiery and impatient
spirit of the future illustrious commander was doomed for a time to fret
under restraint, and to corrode in distasteful repose.  His father, still
in the vigor of his years, governing the family duchies of Parma and
Piacenza, Alexander had no occupation in the brief period of peace which
then existed.  The martial spirit, pining for a wide and lofty sphere of
action, in which alone its energies could be fitly exercised, now sought
delight in the pursuits of the duellist and gladiator.  Nightly did the
hereditary prince of the land perambulate the streets of his capital,
disguised, well armed, alone, or with a single confidential attendant.
Every chance passenger of martial aspect whom he encountered in the
midnight streets was forced to stand and measure swords with an unknown,
almost unseen but most redoubtable foe, and many were the single combats
which he thus enjoyed, so long as his incognito was preserved.
Especially, it was his wont to seek and defy every gentleman whose skill
or bravery had ever been commended in his hearing: At last, upon one
occasion it was his fortune to encounter a certain Count Torelli, whose
reputation as a swordsman and duellist was well established in Parma.
The blades were joined, and the fierce combat had already been engaged in
the darkness, when the torch of an accidental passenger gashed full in
the face of Alexander.  Torelli, recognising thus suddenly his
antagonist, dropped his sword and implored forgiveness, for the wily
Italian was too keen not to perceive that even if the death of neither
combatant should be the result of the fray, his own position was, in
every event, a false one.  Victory would ensure him the hatred, defeat
the contempt of his future sovereign.  The unsatisfactory issue and
subsequent notoriety of this encounter put a termination to these
midnight joys of Alexander, and for a season he felt obliged to assume
more pacific habits, and to solace himself with the society of that
"phoenix of Portugal," who had so long sat brooding on his domestic
hearth.

At last the holy league was formed, the new and last crusade proclaimed,
his uncle and bosom friend appointed to the command of the united troops
of Rome, Spain, and Venice.  He could no longer be restrained.
Disdaining the pleadings of his mother and of his spouse, he extorted
permission from Philip, and flew to the seat of war in the Levant.  Don
John received him with open arms, just before the famous action of
Lepanto, and gave him an, excellent position in the very front of the
battle, with the command of several Genoese galleys.  Alexander's
exploits on that eventful day seemed those of a fabulous hero of romance.
He laid his galley alongside of the treasure-ship of the Turkish fleet, a
vessel, on account of its importance, doubly manned and armed.  Impatient
that the Crescent was not lowered, after a few broadsides, he sprang on
board the enemy alone, waving an immense two-handed sword--his usual
weapon--and mowing a passage right and left through the hostile ranks for
the warriors who tardily followed the footsteps of their vehement chief.
Mustapha Bey, the treasurer and commander of the ship, fell before his
sword, besides many others, whom he hardly saw or counted.  The galley
was soon his own, as well as another, which came to the rescue of the
treasure-ship only to share its defeat.  The booty which Alexander's crew
secured was prodigious, individual soldiers obtaining two and three
thousand ducats each.  Don John received his nephew after the battle with
commendations, not, however, unmingled with censure.  The successful
result alone had justified such insane and desperate conduct, for had he
been slain or overcome, said the commander-in-chief, there would have
been few to applaud his temerity.  Alexander gaily replied by assuring
his uncle that he had felt sustained by a more than mortal confidence,
the prayers which his saintly wife was incessantly offering in his behalf
since he went to the wars being a sufficient support and shield in even
greater danger than he had yet confronted.

This was Alexander's first campaign, nor was he permitted to reap any
more glory for a few succeeding years.  At last, Philip was disposed to
send both his mother and himself to the Netherlands; removing Don John
from the rack where he had been enduring such slow torture.  Granvelle's
intercession proved fruitless with the Duchess, but Alexander was all
eagerness to go where blows were passing current, and he gladly led the
reinforcements which were sent to Don John at the close of the year 1577.
He had reached Luxemburg, on the 18th of December of that year, in time,
as we have seen, to participate, and, in fact, to take the lead in the
signal victory of Gemblours.  He had been struck with the fatal change
which disappointment and anxiety had wrought upon the beautiful and
haughty features of his illustrious kinsman.  He had since closed his
eyes in the camp, and erected a marble tablet over his heart in the
little church.  He now governed in his stead.

His personal appearance corresponded with his character.  He had the head
of a gladiator, round; compact, combative, with something alert and
snake-like in its movements.  The black, closely-shorn hair was erect and
bristling.  The forehead was lofty and narrow.  The features were,
handsome, the nose regularly aquiline, the eyes well opened, dark
piercing, but with something dangerous and sinister in their expression.
There was an habitual look askance; as of a man seeking to parry or
inflict a mortal blow--the look of a swordsman and professional fighter.
The lower part of the face was swallowed in a bushy beard; the mouth and
chin being quite invisible.  He was of middle stature, well formed, and
graceful in person, princely in demeanor, sumptuous and stately in
apparel.  His high ruff of point lace, his badge of the Golden Fleece,
his gold-inlaid Milan armor, marked him at once as one of high degree.
On the field of battle he possessed the rare gift of inspiring his
soldiers with his own impetuous and chivalrous courage.  He ever led the
way upon the most dangerous and desperate ventures, and, like his uncle
and his imperial grandfather, well knew how to reward the devotion of his
readiest followers with a poniard, a feather, a riband, a jewel, taken
with his own hands from his own attire.

His military, abilities--now for the first time to be largely called into
employment--were unquestionably superior to those of Don John; whose name
had been surrounded with such splendor by the World-renowned battle of
Lepanto.  Moreover, he possessed far greater power for governing men,
whether in camp or cabinet.  Less attractive and fascinating, he was more
commanding than his kinsman.  Decorous and self-poised, he was only
passionate before the enemy, but he rarely permitted a disrespectful look
or word to escape condign and deliberate chastisement.  He was no schemer
or dreamer.  He was no knight errant.  He would not have crossed seas and
mountains to rescue a captive queen, nor have sought to place her crown
on his own head as a reward for his heroism.  He had a single and
concentrated kind of character.  He knew precisely the work which Philip
required, and felt himself to be precisely the workman that had so long
been wanted.  Cool, incisive, fearless, artful, he united the
unscrupulous audacity of a condottiere with the wily patience of a
Jesuit.  He could coil unperceived through unsuspected paths, could
strike suddenly, sting mortally.  He came prepared, not only to smite the
Netherlanders in the open field, but to cope with them in tortuous
policy; to outwatch and outweary them in the game to which his impatient
predecessor had fallen a baked victim.  He possessed the art and the
patience--as time was to prove--not only to undermine their most
impregnable cities, but to delve below the intrigues of their most
accomplished politicians.  To circumvent at once both their negotiators
and their men-at-arms was his appointed task.  Had it not been for the
courage, the vigilance, and the superior intellect of a single
antagonist, the whole of the Netherlands would have shared the fate which
was reserved for the more southern portion.  Had the life of William of
Orange been prolonged, perhaps the evil genius of the Netherlands might
have still been exorcised throughout the whole extent of the country.
As for religion, Alexander Farnese was, of course, strictly Catholic,
regarding all seceders from Romanism as mere heathen dogs.  Not that he
practically troubled himself much with sacred matters--for, during the
life-time of his wife, he had cavalierly thrown the whole burden of his
personal salvation upon her saintly shoulders.  She had now flown to
higher spheres, but Alexander was, perhaps, willing to rely upon her
continued intercessions in his behalf.  The life of a bravo in time of
peace--the deliberate project in war to exterminate whole cities full of
innocent people, who had different notions on the subject of image-
worship and ecclesiastical ceremonies from those entertained at Rome, did
not seem to him at all incompatible with the precepts of Jesus.  Hanging,
drowning, burning and butchering heretics were the legitimate deductions
of his theology.  He was no casuist nor pretender to holiness: but in
those days every man was devout, and Alexander looked with honest horror
upon the impiety of the heretics, whom he persecuted and massacred.  He
attended mass regularly--in the winter mornings by torch-light--and would
as soon have foregone his daily tennis as his religious exercises.
Romanism was the creed of his caste.  It was the religion of princes and
gentlemen of high degree.  As for Lutheranism, Zwinglism, Calvinism, and
similar systems, they were but the fantastic rites of weavers, brewers,
and the like--an ignoble herd whose presumption in entitling themselves
Christian, while rejecting the Pope; called for their instant
extermination.  His personal habits were extremely temperate.  He was
accustomed to say that he ate only to support life; and he rarely
finished a dinner without having risen three or four times from table to
attend to some public business which, in his opinion, ought not to be
deferred.

His previous connections in the Netherlands were of use to him, and he
knew how to turn them to immediate account.  The great nobles, who had
been uniformly actuated by jealousy of the Prince of Orange, who had been
baffled in their intrigue with Matthias, whose half-blown designs upon
Anjou had already been nipped in the bud, were now peculiarly in a
position to listen to the wily tongue of Alexander Farnese.  The
Montignys, the La Mottes, the Meluns, the Egmonts, the Aerschots, the
Havres, foiled and doubly foiled in all their small intrigues and their
base ambition, were ready to sacrifice their country to the man they
hated, and to the ancient religion which they thought that they loved.
The Malcontents ravaging the land of Hainault and threatening Ghent, the
"Paternoster Jacks" who were only waiting for a favorable opportunity and
a good bargain to make their peace with Spain, were the very instruments
which Parma most desired to use at this opening stage of his career.  The
position of affairs was far more favorable for him than it had been for
Don John when he first succeeded to power.  On the whole, there seemed
a bright prospect of success.  It seemed quite possible that it would be
in Parma's power to reduce, at last, this chronic rebellion, and to
reestablish the absolute supremacy of Church and King.  The pledges of
the Ghent treaty had been broken, while in the unions of Brussels which
had succeeded, the fatal religious cause had turned the instrument of
peace into a sword.  The "religion-peace" which had been proclaimed at
Antwerp had hardly found favor anywhere.  As the provinces, for an
instant, had seemingly got the better of their foe, they turned madly
upon each other, and the fires of religious discord, which had been
extinguished by the common exertions of a whole race trembling for the
destruction of their fatherland, were now re-lighted with a thousand
brands plucked from the sacred domestic hearth.  Fathers and children,
brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, were beginning to wrangle, and
were prepared to persecute.  Catholic and Protestant, during the
momentary relief from pressure, forgot their voluntary and most blessed
Pacification, to renew their internecine feuds.  The banished Reformers,
who had swarmed back in droves at the tidings of peace and good-will to
all men, found themselves bitterly disappointed.  They were exposed in
the Walloon provinces to the persecutions of the Malcontents, in the
Frisian regions to the still powerful coercion of the royal stadholders.

Persecution begat counter-persecution.  The city of Ghent became the
centre of a system of insurrection, by which all the laws of God and man
were outraged under the pretence of establishing a larger liberty in
civil and religious matters.  It was at Ghent that the opening scenes,
in Parma's administration took place.  Of the high-born suitors for the
Netherland bride, two were still watching each other with jealous eyes.
Anjou was at Mons, which city he had secretly but unsuccessfully
attempted to master for, his, own purposes.  John Casimir was at Ghent,
fomenting an insurrection which he had neither skill to guide, nor
intelligence to comprehend.  There was a talk of making him Count of
Flanders,--and his paltry ambition was dazzled by the glittering prize.
Anjou, who meant to be Count of Flanders himself, as well as Duke or
Count of all the other Netherlands, was highly indignant at this report,
which he chose to consider true.  He wrote to the estates to express his
indignation.  He wrote to Ghent to offer his mediation between the
burghers and the Malcontents.  Casimir wanted money for his troops.  He
obtained a liberal supply, but he wanted more.  Meantime, the mercenaries
were expatiating on their own account throughout the southern provinces;
eating up every green leaf, robbing and pillaging, where robbery and
pillage had gone so often that hardly anything was left for rapine.  Thus
dealt the soldiers in the open country, while their master at Ghent was
plunging into the complicated intrigues spread over that unfortunate city
by the most mischievous demagogues that ever polluted a sacred cause.
Well had Cardinal Granvelle, his enemy, William of Hesse, his friend and
kinsman, understood the character of John Casimir.  Robbery and pillage
were his achievements, to make chaos more confounded was his destiny.
Anjou--disgusted with the temporary favor accorded to a rival whom he
affected to despise--disbanded his troops in dudgeon, and prepared to
retire to France.  Several thousand of these mercenaries took service
immediately with the Malcontents under Montigny, thus swelling the ranks
of the deadliest foes to that land over which Anjou had assumed the title
of protector.  The states' army, meanwhile, had been rapidly dissolving.
There were hardly men enough left to make a demonstration in the field,
or properly to garrison the more important towns.  The unhappy provinces,
torn by civil and religious dissensions, were overrun by hordes of unpaid
soldiers of all nations, creeds, and tongues-Spaniards, Italians,
Burgundians, Walloons, Germans, Scotch and English; some who came to
attack and others to protect, but who all achieved nothing and agreed in
nothing save to maltreat and to outrage the defenceless peasantry and
denizens of the smaller towns.  The contemporary chronicles are full of
harrowing domestic tragedies, in which the actors are always the insolent
foreign soldiery and their desperate victims.

Ghent energetic, opulent, powerful, passionate, unruly Ghent--was now the
focus of discord, the centre from whence radiated not the light and
warmth of reasonable and intelligent liberty, but the bale-fires of
murderous licence and savage anarchy.  The second city of the
Netherlands, one of the wealthiest and most powerful cities of
Christendom, it had been its fate so often to overstep the bounds of
reason and moderation in its devotion to freedom, so often to incur
ignominious chastisement from power which its own excesses had made more
powerful, that its name was already becoming a bye-word.  It now, most
fatally and for ever, was to misunderstand its true position.  The Prince
of Orange, the great architect of his country's fortunes, would have made
it the keystone of the arch which he was laboring to construct.  Had he
been allowed to perfect his plan, the structure might have endured for
ages, a perpetual bulwark against, tyranny and wrong.  The temporary and
slender frame by which the great artist had supported his arch while
still unfinished, was plucked away by rude and ribald hands; the keystone
plunged into the abyss, to be lost for ever, and the great work of Orange
remained a fragment from its commencement.  The acts of demagogues, the
conservative disgust at licence, the jealousy of rival nobles, the
venality of military leaders, threw daily fresh stumbling-blocks in his
heroic path.  It was not six months after the advent of Farnese to power,
before that bold and subtle chieftain had seized the double-edged sword
of religious dissension as firmly as he had grasped his celebrated brand
when he boarded the galley of Muatapha Bey, and the Netherlands were cut
in twain, to be re-united nevermore.  The separate treaty of the Walloon
provinces was soon destined to separate the Celtic and Romanesque
elements from the Batavian and Frisian portion of a nationality, which;
thoroughly fused in all its parts, would have formed as admirable a
compound of fire and endurance as history has ever seen.

Meantime, the grass was growing and the cattle were grazing in the
streets of Ghent, where once the tramp of workmen going to and from their
labor was like the movement of a mighty army.  The great majority of the
burghers were of the Reformed religion, and disposed to make effectual
resistance to the Malcontents, led by the disaffected nobles.  The city,
considering itself the natural head of all the southern country, was
indignant that the Walloon provinces should dare to reassert that
supremacy of Romanism which had been so effectually suppressed, and to
admit the possibility of friendly relations with a sovereign who had been
virtually disowned.  There were two parties, however, in Ghent.  Both
were led by men of abandoned and dangerous character.  Imbize, the worse
of the two demagogues, was inconstant, cruel, cowardly, and treacherous,
but possessed of eloquence and a talent for intrigue.  Ryhove was a
bolder ruffian--wrathful, bitter, and unscrupulous.  Imbize was at the
time opposed to Orange, disliking his moderation, and trembling at his
firmness.  Ryhove considered himself the friend of the Prince.  We have
seen that he had consulted him previously to his memorable attack upon
Aerschot, in the autumn of the preceding year, and we know the result of
that conference.

The Prince, with the slight dissimulation which belonged less to his
character than to his theory of politics, and which was perhaps not to be
avoided, in that age of intrigue, by any man who would govern his fellow-
men, whether for good or evil, had winked at a project which he would not
openly approve.  He was not thoroughly acquainted, however, with the
desperate character of the man, for he would have scorned an instrument
so thoroughly base as Ryhove subsequently proved. The violence of that
personage on the occasion of the arrest of Aerschot and his colleagues
was mildness compared with the deed with which he now disgraced the cause
of freedom.  He had been ordered out from Ghent to oppose a force of
Malcontents which was gathering in the neighbourhood of Courtray; but he
swore that he would not leave the gates so long as two of the gentlemen
whom he had arrested on the twenty-eighth of the previous October, and
who yet remained in captivity, were still alive.  These two prisoners
were ex-procurator Visch and Blood-Councillor Hessels.  Hessels, it
seemed, had avowed undying hostility to Ryhove for the injury sustained
at his hands, and he had sworn, "by his grey beard," that the ruffian
should yet hang for the outrage.  Ryhove, not feeling very safe in the
position of affairs which then existed, and knowing that he could neither
trust Imbize, who had formerly been his friend, nor the imprisoned
nobles, who had ever been his implacable enemies, was resolved to make
himself safe in one quarter at least, before he set forth against the
Malcontents.  Accordingly, Hessels and Visch, as they sat together in
their prison, at chess, upon the 4th of October, 1578, were suddenly
summoned to leave the house, and to enter a carriage which stood at the
door.  A force of armed men brought the order, and were sufficiently
strong to enforce it.  The prisoners obeyed, and the coach soon rolled
slowly through the streets, left the Courtray gate, and proceeded a short
distance along the road towards that city.

After a few minutes a halt was made.  Ryhove then made his appearance at
the carriage-window, and announced to the astonished prisoners that, they
were forthwith to be hanged upon a tree which stood by the road-side.  He
proceeded to taunt the aged Hessels with his threat against himself, and
with his vow "by his grey beard."  "Such grey beard shalt thou never live
thyself to wear, ruffian," cried Hessels, stoutly-furious rather than
terrified at the suddenness of his doom.  "There thou liest, false
traitor!"  roared Ryhove in reply; and to prove the falsehood, he
straightway tore out a handful of the old man's beard, and fastened it
upon his own cap like a plume.  His action was imitated by several of his
companions, who cut for themselves locks from the same grey beard, and
decorated themselves as their leader had done.  This preliminary ceremony
having been concluded, the two aged prisoners were forthwith hanged on a
tree, without-the least pretence of trial or even sentence.

Such was the end of the famous councillor who had been wont to shout
"ad patibulum" in his sleep.  It was cruel that the fair face of civil
liberty showing itself after years of total eclipse, should be insulted
by such bloody deeds on the part of her votaries.  It was sad that the
crimes of men like Imbize and Ryhove should have cost more to the cause
of religious and political freedom than the lives of twenty thousand such
ruffians were worth.  But for the influence of demagogues like these,
counteracting the lofty efforts and pure life of Orange, the separation
might never have occurred between the two portions of the Netherlands.
The Prince had not power enough, however, nor the nascent commonwealth
sufficient consistency, to repress the disorganizing tendency of a
fanatical Romanism on the one side, and a retaliatory and cruel
ochlocracy on the other.

Such events, with the hatred growing daily more intense between the
Walloons and the Ghenters, made it highly important that some kind
of an accord should be concluded, if possible.  In the country, the
Malcontents, under pretence of protecting the Catholic clergy, were
daily abusing and plundering the people, while in Ghent the clergy were
maltreated, the cloisters pillaged, under the pretence of maintaining
liberty.  In this emergency the eyes of all honest men turned naturally
to Orange.

Deputies went to and fro between Antwerp and Ghent, Three points were
laid down by the Prince as indispensable to any arrangement--firstly,
that the Catholic clergy should be allowed the free use of their
property; secondly, that they should not be disturbed in the exercise of
their religion; thirdly, that the gentlemen kept in prison since the
memorable twenty-eighth of October should be released.  If these points
should be granted, the Archduke Matthias, the states-general, and the
Prince of Orange would agree to drive off the Walloon soldiery, and to
defend Ghent against all injury.  The two first points were granted, upon
condition that sufficient guarantees should be established for the safety
of the Reformed religion.  The third was rejected, but it was agreed that
the prisoners, Champagny, Sweveghem, and the rest--who, after the horrid
fate of Hessels and Visch, might be supposed to be sufficiently anxious
as to their own doom--should have legal trial, and be defended in the
meantime from outrage.

On the 3rd of November, 1578, a formal act of acceptance of these terms
was signed at Antwerp.  At the same time, there was murmuring at Ghent,
the extravagant portion of the liberal party averring that they had no
intention of establishing the "religious peace" when they agreed not to
molest the Catholics.  On the 11th of November, the Prince of Orange sent
messengers to Ghent in the name of the Archduke and the states-general,
summoning the authorities to a faithful execution of the act of
acceptance.  Upon the same day the English envoy, Davidson, made an
energetic representation to the same magistrates, declaring that the
conduct of the Ghenters was exciting regret throughout the world, and
affording a proof that it was their object to protract, not suppress, the
civil war which had so long been raging.  Such proceedings, he observed,
created doubts whether they were willing to obey any law or any
magistracy.  As, however, it might be supposed that the presence of John
Casimir in Ghent at that juncture was authorized by Queen Elizabeth--
inasmuch as it was known that he had received a subsidy from her--the
envoy took occasion to declare that her Majesty entirely disavowed his
proceedings.  He observed further that, in the opinion of her Majesty,
it was still possible to maintain peace by conforming to the counsels
of the Prince of Orange and of the states-general.  This, however, could
be done only by establishing the three points which he had laid down.
Her Majesty likewise warned the Ghenters that their conduct would soon
compel her to abandon the country's cause altogether, and, in conclusion,
she requested, with characteristic thriftiness, to be immediately
furnished with a city bond for forty-five thousand pounds sterling.

Two days afterwards, envoys arrived from Brussels to remonstrate, in
their turn, with the sister city, and to save her, if possible, from the
madness which had seized upon her.  They recalled to the memory of the
magistrates the frequent and wise counsels of the Prince of Orange.  He
had declared that he knew of no means to avert the impending desolation
of the fatherland save union of all the provinces and obedience to the
general government.  His own reputation, and the honor of his house, he
felt now to be at stake; for, by reason of the offices which he now held,
he had been ceaselessly calumniated as the author of all the crimes which
had been committed at Ghent.  Against these calumnies he had avowed his
intention of publishing his defence.  After thus citing the opinion of
the Prince, the envoys implored the magistrates to accept the religious
peace which he had proposed, and to liberate the prisoners as he had
demanded.  For their own part, they declared that the inhabitants of
Brussels would never desert him; for, next to God, there was no one who
understood their cause so entirely, or who could point out the remedy so
intelligently.

Thus reasoned the envoys from the states-general and from Brussels, but
even while they were reasoning, a fresh tumult occurred at Ghent.  The
people had been inflamed by demagogues, and by the insane howlings of
Peter Dathenus, the unfrocked monk of Poperingen, who had been the
servant and minister both of the Pope and of Orange, and who now hated
each with equal fervor.  The populace, under these influences, rose in
its wrath upon the Catholics, smote all their images into fragments,
destroyed all their altar pictures, robbed them of much valuable
property, and turned all the Papists themselves out of the city.  The
riot was so furious that it seemed, says a chronicler, as if all the
inhabitants had gone raving mad.  The drums beat the alarm, the
magistrates went forth to expostulate, but no commands were heeded till
the work of destruction had been accomplished, when the tumult expired at
last by its own limitation.

Affairs seemed more threatening than ever.  Nothing more excited the
indignation of the Prince of Orange than such senseless iconomachy.  In
fact, he had at one time procured an enactment by the Ghent authorities,
making it a crime punishable with death.  He was of Luther's opinion,
that idol-worship was to be eradicated from the heart, and that then the
idols in the churches would fall of themselves.  He felt too with
Landgrave William, that "the destruction of such worthless idols was ever
avenged by torrents of good human blood."  Therefore it may be well
supposed that this fresh act of senseless violence, in the very teeth of
his remonstrances, in the very presence of his envoys, met with his stern
disapprobation.  He was on the point of publishing his defence against
the calumnies which his toleration had drawn upon him from both Catholic
and Calvinist.  He was deeply revolving the question, whether it were not
better to turn his back at once upon a country which seemed so incapable
of comprehending his high purposes, or seconding his virtuous efforts.
From both projects he was dissuaded; and although bitterly wronged by
both friend and foe, although, feeling that even in his own Holland,
there were whispers against his purity, since his favorable inclinations
towards Anjou had become the general topic, yet he still preserved his
majestic tranquillity, and smiled at the arrows which fell harmless at
his feet.  "I admire his wisdom, daily more and more," cried Hubert
Languet; "I see those who profess themselves his friends causing him more
annoyance than his foes; while, nevertheless, he ever remains true to
himself, is driven by no tempests from his equanimity, nor provoked by
repeated injuries to immoderate action."

The Prince had that year been chosen unanimously by the four "members"
of Flanders to be governor of that province, but had again declined the
office.  The inhabitants, notwithstanding the furious transactions at
Ghent, professed attachment to his person, and respect for his authority.
He was implored to go to the city.  His presence, and that alone, would
restore the burghers to their reason, but the task was not a grateful
one.  It was also not unattended with danger; although this was a
consideration which never influenced him, from the commencement of his
career to its close.  Imbize and his crew were capable of resorting to
any extremity or any ambush; to destroy the man whom they feared and
hated.  The presence of John Casimir was an additional complication; for
Orange, while he despised the man, was unwilling to offend his friends.
Moreover, Casimir had professed a willingness to assist the cause, and
to, defer to the better judgment of the Prince: He had brought an army
into the field, with which, however, he had accomplished nothing except a
thorough pillaging of the peasantry, while, at the same time, he was loud
in his demands upon the states to pay his soldiers' wages.  The soldiers
of the different armies who now overran the country, indeed, vied with
each other in extravagant insolence.  "Their outrages are most
execrable," wrote Marquis Havre; "they demand the most exquisite food,
and drink Champagne and Burgundy by the bucketfull."  Nevertheless, on
the 4th of December, the Prince came to Ghent.  He held constant and
anxious conferences with the magistrates.  He was closeted daily with
John Casimir, whose vanity and extravagance of temper he managed with
his usual skill.  He even dined with Imbue, and thus, by smoothing
difficulties and reconciling angry passions, he succeeded at last in
obtaining the consent of all to a religious peace, which was published on
the 27th of December, 1578.  It contained the same provisions as those of
the project prepared and proposed during the previous summer throughout
the Netherlands.  Exercise of both religions was established; mutual
insults and irritations--whether by word, book, picture, song, or
gesture--were prohibited, under severe penalties, while all persons were
sworn to protect the common tranquillity by blood, purse, and life.  The
Catholics, by virtue of this accord, re-entered into possession of their
churches and cloisters, but nothing could be obtained in favor of the
imprisoned gentlemen.

The Walloons and Malcontents were now summoned to lay down their arms;
but, as might be supposed, they expressed dissatisfaction with the
religious peace, proclaiming it hostile to the Ghent treaty and the
Brussels union.  In short, nothing would satisfy them but total
suppression of the Reformed religion; as nothing would content Imbize
and his faction but the absolute extermination of Romanism.  A strong
man might well seem powerless in the midst of such obstinate and
worthless fanatics.

The arrival of the Prince in Ghent was, on the whole, a relief to John
Casimir.  As usual, this addle-brained individual had plunged headlong
into difficulties, out of which he was unable to extricate himself.  He
knew not what to do, or which way to turn.  He had tampered with Imbue
and his crew, but he had found that they were not the men for a person of
his quality to deal with.  He had brought a large army into the field,
and had not a stiver in his coffers.  He felt bitterly the truth of the
Landgrave's warning--"that 'twas better to have thirty thousand devils at
one's back than thirty thousand German troopers, with no money to give
them;" it being possible to pay the devils with the sign of the cross,
while the soldiers could be discharged only with money or hard knocks.
Queen Elizabeth, too, under whose patronage he had made this most
inglorious campaign, was incessant in her reproofs, and importunate in
her demands for reimbursement.  She wrote to him personally, upbraiding
him with his high pretensions and his shortcomings.  His visit to Ghent,
so entirely unjustified and mischievous; his failure to effect that
junction of his army with the states' force under Bossu, by which the
royal army was to have been surprised and annihilated; his having given
reason to the common people to suspect her Majesty and the Prince of
Orange of collusion with his designs, and of a disposition to seek their
private advantage and not the general good of the whole Netherlands; the
imminent danger, which he had aggravated, that the Walloon provinces,
actuated by such suspicions, would fall away from the "generality" and
seek a private accord with Parma; these and similar sins of omission and
commission were sharply and shrewishly set forth in the Queen's epistle.
'Twas not for such marauding and intriguing work that she had appointed
him her lieutenant, and furnished him with troops and subsidies.  She
begged him forthwith to amend his ways, for the sake of his name and
fame, which were sufficiently soiled in the places where his soldiers had
been plundering the country which they came to protect.

The Queen sent Daniel Rogers with instructions of similar import to the
states-general, repeatedly and expressly disavowing Casimir's proceedings
and censuring his character.  She also warmly insisted on her bonds.
In short, never was unlucky prince more soundly berated by his superiors,
more thoroughly disgraced by his followers.  In this contemptible
situation had Casimir placed himself by his rash ambition to prove before
the world that German princes could bite and scratch like griffins and
tigers as well as carry them in their shields.  From this position Orange
partly rescued him.  He made his peace with the states-general.  He
smoothed matters with the extravagant Reformers, and he even extorted
from the authorities of Ghent the forty-five thousand pounds bond, on
which Elizabeth had insisted with such obduracy.  Casimir repaid these
favors of the Prince in the coin with which narrow minds and jealous
tempers are apt to discharge such obligations--ingratitude.  The
friendship which he openly manifested at first grew almost immediately
cool.  Soon afterwards he left Ghent and departed for Germany, leaving
behind him a long and tedious remonstrance, addressed to the states-
general, in which document he narrated the history of his exploits, and
endeavored to vindicate the purity of his character.  He concluded this
very tedious and superfluous manifesto by observing that--for reasons
which he thought proper to give at considerable length--he felt himself
"neither too useful nor too agreeable to the provinces."  As he had been
informed, he said, that the states-general had requested the Queen of
England to procure his departure, he had resolved, in order to spare her
and them inconvenience, to return of his own accord, "leaving the issue
of the war in the high and mighty hand of God."

The estates answered this remonstrance with words of unlimited courtesy;
expressing themselves "obliged to all eternity" for his services, and
holding out vague hopes that the monies which he demanded on behalf of
his troops should ere long be forthcoming.

Casimir having already answered Queen Elizabeth's reproachful letter by
throwing the blame of his apparent misconduct upon the states-general,
and having promised soon to appear before her Majesty in person, tarried
accordingly but a brief season in Germany, and then repaired to England.
Here he was feasted, flattered, caressed, and invested with the order of
the Garter.  Pleased with royal blandishments, and highly enjoying the
splendid hospitalities of England he quite forgot the "thirty thousand
devils" whom he had left running loose in the Netherlands, while these
wild soldiers, on their part, being absolutely in a starving condition
--for there was little left for booty in a land which had been so often
plundered--now had the effrontery to apply to the Prince of Parma for
payment of their wages.  Alexander Farnese laughed heartily at the
proposition, which he considered an excellent jest.  It seemed in truth,
a jest, although but a sorry one.  Parma replied to the messenger of
Maurice of Saxony who had made the proposition, that the Germans must be
mad to ask him for money, instead of offering to pay him, a heavy sum for
permission to leave the country.  Nevertheless, he was willing to be so
far indulgent as to furnish them with passports, provided they departed
from the Netherlands instantly.  Should they interpose the least delay,
he would set upon them without further preface, and he gave them notice,
with the arrogance becoming a Spanish general; that the courier was
already waiting to report to Spain the number of them left alive after
the encounter.  Thus deserted by their chief, and hectored by the enemy,
the mercenaries, who had little stomach for fight without wages, accepted
the passports proffered by Parma.  They revenged themselves for the harsh
treatment which they had received from Casimir and from the states-
general, by singing, everywhere as they retreated, a doggerel ballad
--half Flemish, half German--in which their wrongs were expressed with
uncouth vigor.

Casimir received the news of the departure of his ragged soldiery on the
very day which witnessed his investment with the Garter by the fair hands
of Elizabeth herself.   A few days afterwards he left England,
accompanied by an escort of lords and gentlemen, especially appointed for
that purpose by the Queen.  He landed in Flushing, where he was received
with distinguished hospitality, by order of the Prince of Orange, and on
the 14th of February, 1579, he passed through Utrecht.  Here he conversed
freely at his lodgings in the "German House" on the subject of his
vagabond troops, whose final adventures and departure seemed to afford
him considerable amusement; and he, moreover, diverted his company by
singing, after supper, a few verses of the ballad already mentioned.

     O, have you been in Brabant, fighting for the states?
     O, have you brought back anything except your broken pates?
     O, I have been in Brabant, myself and all my mates.
     We'll go no more to Brabant, unless our brains were addle,
     We're coming home on foot, we went there in the saddle;
     For there's neither gold nor glory got, in fighting for the states.

The Duke of Anjou, meantime, after disbanding his troops, had lingered
for a while near the frontier.  Upon taking his final departure, he sent
his resident minister, Des Pruneaux, with a long communication to the
states-general, complaining that they had not published their contract
with himself, nor fulfilled its conditions.  He excused, as well as he
could, the awkward fact that his disbanded troops had taken refuge with
the Walloons, and he affected to place his own departure upon the ground
of urgent political business in France, to arrange which his royal
brother had required his immediate attendance.  He furthermore most
hypocritically expressed a desire for a speedy reconciliation of the
provinces with their sovereign, and a resolution that--although for their
sake he had made himself a foe to his Catholic Majesty--he would still
interpose no obstacle to so desirable a result.

To such shallow discourse the states answered with infinite urbanity,
for it was the determination of Orange not to make enemies, at that
juncture, of France and England in the same breath.  They had foes enough
already, and it seemed obvious at that moment, to all persons most
observant of the course of affairs, that a matrimonial alliance was soon
to unite the two crowns.  The probability of Anjou's marriage with
Elizabeth was, in truth, a leading motive with Orange for his close
alliance with the Duke.  The political structure, according to which he
had selected the French Prince as protector of the Netherlands, was
sagaciously planned; but unfortunately its foundation was the shifting
sandbank of female and royal coquetry.  Those who judge only by the
result, will be quick to censure a policy which might have had very
different issue.  They who place themselves in the period anterior to
Anjou's visit to England, will admit that it was hardly human not to be
deceived by the apolitical aspects of that moment.  The Queen, moreover,
took pains to upbraid the states-general, by letter, with their
disrespect and ingratitude towards the Duke of Anjou--behaviour with
which he had been "justly scandalized."  For her own part, she assured
them of her extreme displeasure at learning that such a course of conduct
had been held with a view to her especial contentment--"as if the person
of Monsieur, son of France, brother of the King, were disagreeable to
her, or as if she wished him ill;" whereas, on the contrary, they would
best satisfy her wishes by showing him all the courtesy to which his high
degree and his eminent services entitled him.

The estates, even before receiving this letter, had, however, acted in
its spirit.  They had addressed elaborate apologies and unlimited
professions to the Duke.  They thanked him heartily for his achievements,
expressed unbounded regret at his departure, with sincere hopes for his
speedy return, and promised "eternal remembrance" of his heroic virtues.
They assured him, moreover, that should the first of the following March
arrive without bringing with it an honorable peace with his Catholic
Majesty, they should then feel themselves compelled to declare that the
King had forfeited his right to the sovereignty of these provinces.  In
this case they concluded that, as the inhabitants would be then absolved
from their allegiance to the Spanish monarch, it would then be in their
power to treat with his Highness of Anjou concerning the sovereignty,
according to the contract already existing.

These assurances were ample, but the states, knowing the vanity of the
man, offered other inducements, some of which seemed sufficiently
puerile.  They promised that "his statue, in copper, should be placed in
the public squares of Antwerp and Brussels, for the eternal admiration of
posterity," and that a "crown of olive-leaves should be presented to him
every year."  The Duke--not inexorable to such courteous solicitations--
was willing to achieve both immortality and power by continuing his
friendly relations with the states, and he answered accordingly in the
most courteous terms.  The result of this interchange of civilities it
will be soon our duty to narrate.

At the close of the year the Count of Bossu died, much to the regret of
the Prince of Orange, whose party--since his release from prison by
virtue of the Ghent treaty--he had warmly espoused.  "We are in the
deepest distress in the world," wrote the Prince to his brother, three
days before the Count's death, "for the dangerous malady of M. de Bossu.
Certainly, the country has much to lose in his death, but I hope that God
will not so much afflict us."  Yet the calumniators of the day did not
scruple to circulate, nor the royalist chroniclers to perpetuate, the
most senseless and infamous fables on the subject of this nobleman's
death.  He died of poison, they said, administered to him "in oysters,"
by command of the Prince of Orange, who had likewise made a point of
standing over him on his death-bed, for the express purpose of sneering
at the Catholic ceremonies by which his dying agonies were solaced.  Such
were the tales which grave historians have recorded concerning the death
of Maximilian of Bossu, who owed so much to the Prince.  The command of
the states' army, a yearly pension of five thousand florins, granted at
the especial request of Orange but a few months before, and the profound
words of regret in the private letter jest cited, are a sufficient answer
to such slanders.

The personal courage and profound military science of Parma were
invaluable to the royal cause; but his subtle, unscrupulous, and
subterranean combinations of policy were even more fruitful at this
period.  No man ever understood the art of bribery more thoroughly
or practised it more skillfully.  He bought a politician, or a general,
or a grandee, or a regiment of infantry, usually at the cheapest price
at which those articles could be purchased, and always with the utmost
delicacy with which such traffic could be conducted.  Men conveyed
themselves to government for a definite price--fixed accurately in
florins and groats, in places and pensions--while a decent gossamer
of conventional phraseology was ever allowed to float over the nakedness
of unblushing treason.  Men high in station, illustrious by ancestry,
brilliant in valor, huckstered themselves, and swindled a confiding
country for as ignoble motives as ever led counterfeiters or bravoes to
the gallows, but they were dealt with in public as if actuated only by
the loftiest principles.  Behind their ancient shields, ostentatiously
emblazoned with fidelity to church and king, they thrust forth their
itching palms with the mendicity which would be hardly credible, were it
not attested by the monuments more perennial than brass, of their own
letters and recorded conversations.

Already, before the accession of Parma to power, the true way to dissever
the provinces had been indicated by the famous treason of the Seigneur de
la Motte.  This nobleman commanded a regiment in the service of the
states-general, and was Governor of Gravelines.  On promise of
forgiveness for all past disloyalty, of being continued in the same
military posts under Philip which he then held for the patriots, and of a
"merced" large enough to satisfy his most avaricious dreams, he went over
to the royal government.  The negotiation was conducted by Alonzo Curiel,
financial agent of the King, and was not very nicely handled.  The
paymaster, looking at the affair purely as a money transaction--which in
truth it was--had been disposed to drive rather too hard a bargain.  He
offered only fifty thousand crowns for La Motte and his friend Baron
Montigny, and assured his government that those gentlemen, with the
soldiers under their command, were very dear at the price.  La Motte
higgled very hard for more, and talked pathetically of his services and
his wounds--for he had been a most distinguished and courageous
campaigner--but Alonzo was implacable.  Moreover, one Robert Bien-Aime,
Prior of Renty, was present at all the conferences.  This ecclesiastic
was a busy intriguer, but not very adroit.  He was disposed to make
himself useful to government, for he had set his heart upon putting the
mitre of Saint Omer upon his head, and he had accordingly composed a very
ingenious libel upon the Prince of Orange, in which production, "although
the Prior did not pretend to be Apelles or Lysippus," he hoped that the
Governor-General would recognize a portrait colored to the life.  This
accomplished artist was, however, not so successful as he was picturesque
and industrious.  He was inordinately vain of his services, thinking
himself, said Alonzo, splenetically, worthy to be carried in a procession
like a little saint, and as he had a busy brain, but an unruly tongue,
it will be seen that he possessed a remarkable faculty of making himself
unpleasant.  This was not the way to earn his bishopric.  La Motte,
through the candid communications of the Prior, found himself the subject
of mockery in Parma's camp and cabinet, where treachery to one's country
and party was not, it seemed, regarded as one of the loftier virtues,
however convenient it might be at the moment to the royal cause.  The
Prior intimated especially that Ottavio Gonzaga had indulged in many
sarcastic remarks at La Motte's expense.  The brave but venal warrior,
highly incensed at thus learning the manner in which his conduct was
estimated by men of such high rank in the royal service, was near
breaking off the bargain.  He was eventually secured, however, by still
larger offers--Don John allowing him three hundred florins a month,
presenting him with the two best horses in his stable, and sending him an
open form, which he was to fill out in the most stringent language which
he could devise, binding the government to the payment of an ample and
entirely satisfactory "merced."  Thus La Motte's bargain was completed
a crime which, if it had only entailed the loss of the troops under his
command, and the possession of Gravelines, would have been of no great
historic importance.  It was, however, the first blow of a vast and
carefully sharpened treason, by which the country was soon to be cut in
twain for ever--the first in a series of bargains by which the noblest
names of the Netherlands were to be contaminated with bribery and fraud.

While the negotiations with La Notte were in progress, the government of
the states-general at Brussels had sent Saint Aldegonde to Arras.  The
states of Artois, then assembled in that city, had made much difficulty
in acceding to an assessment of seven thousand florins laid upon them by
the central authority.  The occasion was skillfully made use of by the
agents of the royal party to weaken the allegiance of the province, and
of its sister Walloon provinces, to the patriot cause.  Saint Aldegonde
made his speech before the assembly, taking the ground boldly, that the
war was made for liberty of conscience and of fatherland, and that all
were bound, whether Catholic or Protestant, to contribute to the sacred
fund.  The vote passed, but it was provided that a moiety of the
assessment should be paid by the ecclesiastical branch, and the
stipulation excited a tremendous uproar.  The clerical bench regarded
the tax as both a robbery and an affront.  "We came nearly to knife-
playing," said the most distinguished priest in the assembly, "and if we
had done so, the ecclesiastics would not have been the first to cry
enough."  They all withdrew in a rage, and held a private consultation
upon "these exorbitant and more than Turkish demands."  John Sarrasin,
Prior of Saint Yaast, the keenest, boldest, and most indefatigable of the
royal partisans of that epoch, made them an artful harangue.  This man
--a better politician than the other prior--was playing for a mitre too,
and could use his cards better.  He was soon to become the most
invaluable agent in the great treason preparing.  No one could, be more
delicate, noiseless, or unscrupulous, and he was soon recognized both by
Governor-General and King as the individual above all others to whom the
re-establishment of the royal authority over the Walloon provinces was
owing.  With the shoes of swiftness on his feet, the coat of darkness on
his back, and the wishing purse in his hand, he sped silently and
invisibly from one great Malcontent chieftain to another, buying up
centurions, and captains, and common soldiers; circumventing Orangists,
Ghent democrats, Anjou partisans; weaving a thousand intrigues,
ventilating a hundred hostile mines, and passing unharmed through the
most serious dangers and the most formidable obstacles.  Eloquent, too,
at a pinch, he always understood his audience, and upon this occasion
unsheathed the most incisive, if not the most brilliant weapon which
could be used in the debate.  It was most expensive to be patriotic, he
said, while silver was to be saved, and gold to be earned by being loyal.
They ought to keep their money to defend themselves, not give it to the
Prince of Orange, who would only put it into his private pocket on
pretence of public necessities.  The Ruward would soon be slinking back
to his lair, he observed, and leave them all in the fangs of their
enemies.  Meantime, it was better to rush into the embrace of a bountiful
king, who was still holding forth his arms to them.  They were
approaching a precipice, said the Prior; they were entering a labyrinth;
and not only was the "sempiternal loss of body and soul impending over
them, but their property was to be taken also, and the cat to be thrown
against their legs."  By this sudden descent into a very common
proverbial expression, Sarrasin meant to intimate that they were getting
themselves into a difficult position, in which they were sure to reap
both danger and responsibility.

The harangue had much effect upon his hearers, who were now more than
ever determined to rebel against the government which they had so
recently accepted, preferring, in the words of the Prior, "to be
maltreated by their prince, rather than to be barbarously tyrannized
over by a heretic."  So much anger had been excited in celestial minds
by a demand of thirty-five hundred florins.

Saint Aldegonde was entertained in the evening at a great banquet,
followed by a theological controversy, in which John Sarrasin complained
that "he had been attacked upon his own dunghill."  Next day the
distinguished patriot departed on a canvassing tour among the principal
cities; the indefatigable monk employing the interval of his absence in
aggravating the hostility of the Artesian orders to the pecuniary demands
of the general government.  He was assisted in his task by a peremptory
order which came down from Brussels, ordering, in the name of Matthias, a
levy upon the ecclesiastical property, "rings, jewels, and reliquaries,"
unless the clerical contribution should be forthcoming.  The rage of the
bench was now intense, and by the time of Saint Aldegonde's return a
general opposition had been organized.  The envoy met with a chilling
reception; there were no banquets anymore--no discussions of any kind.
To his demands for money, "he got a fine nihil," said Saint Vaast; and
as for polemics, the only conclusive argument for the country would be,
as he was informed on the same authority, the "finishing of Orange and of
his minister along with him."  More than once had the Prior intimated to
government--as so many had done before him--that to "despatch Orange,
author of all the troubles," was the best preliminary to any political
arrangement.  From Philip and his Governor-General, down to the humblest
partisan, this conviction had been daily strengthening.  The knife or
bullet of an assassin was the one thing needful to put an end to this
incarnated rebellion.

Thus matters grew worse and worse in Artois.  The Prior, busier than ever
in his schemes, was one day arrested along with other royal emissaries,
kept fifteen days "in a stinking cellar, where the scullion washed the
dishes," and then sent to Antwerp to be examined by the states-general.
He behaved with great firmness, although he had good reason to tremble
for his neck.  Interrogated by Leoninus on the part of the central
government, he boldly avowed that these pecuniary demands upon the
Walloon estates, and particularly upon their ecclesiastical branches,
would never be tolerated.  "In Alva's time," said Sarrasin, "men were
flayed, but not shorn."  Those who were more attached to their skin than
their fleece might have thought the practice in the good old times of the
Duke still more objectionable.  Such was not the opinion of the Prior and
the rest of his order.  After an unsatisfactory examination and a brief
duresse, the busy ecclesiastic was released; and as his secret labors had
not been detected, he resumed them after his return more ardently than
ever.

A triangular intrigue was now fairly established in the Walloon country.
The Duke of Alencon's head-quarters were at Mons; the rallying-point of
the royalist faction was with La Motte at Gravelines; while the
ostensible leader of the states' party, Viscount Ghent, was governor of
Artois, and supposed to be supreme in Arras.  La Motte was provided by
government with a large fund of secret-service money, and was instructed
to be very liberal in his bribes to men of distinction; having a tender
regard, however, to the excessive demands of this nature now daily made
upon the royal purse.  The "little Count," as the Prior called Lalain,
together with his brother, Baron Montigny, were considered highly
desirable acquisitions for government, if they could be gained.  It was
thought, however, that they had the "fleur-de-lys imprinted too deeply
upon their hearts," for the effect produced upon Lalain, governor of
Hainault, by Margaret of Valois, had not yet been effaced.  His brother
also had been disposed to favor the French prince, but his mind was more
open to conviction.  A few private conferences with La Motte, and a
course of ecclesiastical tuition from the Prior--whose golden opinions
had irresistible resonance--soon wrought a change in the Malcontent
chieftain's mind.  Other leading seigniors were secretly dealt with in
the same manner.  Lalain, Heze, Havre, Capres, Egmont, and even the
Viscount of Ghent, all seriously inclined their ears to the charmer, and
looked longingly and lovingly as the wily Prior rolled in his tangles
before them--"to mischief swift."  Few had yet declared themselves; but
of the grandees who commanded large bodies of troops, and whose influence
with their order was paramount, none were safe for the patriot cause
throughout the Walloon country.

The nobles and ecclesiastics were ready to join hands in support of
church and king, but in the city of Arras, the capital of the whole
country, there was a strong Orange and liberal party.  Gosson, a man of
great wealth, one of the most distinguished advocates in the Netherlands,
and possessing the gift of popular eloquence to a remarkable degree, was
the leader of this burgess faction.  In the earlier days of Parma's
administration, just as a thorough union of the Walloon provinces in
favor of the royal government had nearly been formed, these Orangists of
Arras risked a daring stroke.  Inflamed by the harangues of Gosson, and
supported by five hundred foot soldiers and fifty troopers under one
Captain Ambrose, they rose against the city magistracy, whose sentiments
were unequivocally for Parma, and thrust them all into prison.  They then
constituted a new board of fifteen, some Catholics and some Protestants,
but all patriots, of whom Gosson was chief.  The stroke took the town by
surprise; and was for a moment successful.  Meantime, they depended upon
assistance from Brussels.  The royal and ecclesiastical party was,
however, not so easily defeated, and an old soldier, named Bourgeois,
loudly denounced Captain Ambrose, the general of the revolutionary
movement, as a vile coward, and affirmed that with thirty good men-at-
arms he would undertake to pound the whole rebel army to powder--" a pack
of scarecrows," he said, "who were not worth as many owls for military
purposes."

Three days after the imprisonment of the magistracy, a strong Catholic
rally was made in their behalf in the Fishmarket, the ubiquitous Prior
of Saint Vaast flitting about among the Malcontents, blithe and busy as
usual when storms were brewing.  Matthew Doucet, of the revolutionary
faction--a man both martial and pacific in his pursuits, being eminent
both as a gingerbread baker and a swordplayer--swore he would have the
little monk's life if he had to take him from the very horns of the
altar; but the Prior had braved sharper threats than these.  Moreover,
the grand altar would have been the last place to look fox him on that
occasion.  While Gosson was making a tremendous speech in favor of
conscience and fatherland at the Hotel de Ville, practical John Sarrasin,
purse in hand, had challenged the rebel general, Ambrose to private
combat.  In half an hour, that warrior was routed, and fled from the
field at the head of his scarecrows, for there was no resisting the power
before which the Montignys and the La Mottes had succumbed.  Eloquent
Gosson was left to his fate.  Having the Catholic magistracy in durance,
and with nobody to guard them, he felt, as was well observed by an ill-
natured contemporary, like a man holding a wolf by the ears, equally
afraid to let go or to retain his grasp.

His dilemma was soon terminated.  While he was deliberating with his
colleagues--Mordacq, an old campaigner, Crugeot, Bertoul, and others--
whether to stand or, fly, the drums and trumpets of the advancing
royalists were heard.  In another instant the Hotel de Ville was swarming
with men-at-arms, headed by Bourgeois, the veteran who had expressed so
alighting an opinion as to the prowess of Captain Ambrose.  The tables
were turned, the miniature revolution was at an end, the counter-
revolution effected.  Gosson and his confederates escaped out of a back
door, but were soon afterwards arrested.  Next morning, Baron Capres, the
great Malcontent seignior, who was stationed with his regiment in the
neighbourhood, and who had long been secretly coquetting with the Prior
and Parma, marched into the city at the head of a strong detachment, and
straightway proceeded to erect a very tall gibbet in front of the Hotel
de Ville.  This looked practical in the eyes of the liberated and
reinstated magistrates, and Gosson, Crugeot, and the rest were summoned
at once before them.  The advocate thought, perhaps, with a sigh, that
his judges, so recently his prisoners, might have been the fruit for
another gallowstree, had he planted it when the ground was his own; but
taking heart of grace, he encouraged his colleagues--now his fellow-
culprits.  Crugeot, undismayed, made his appearance before the tribunal,
arrayed in a corslet of proof, with a golden hilted sword, a scarf
embroidered with pearls and gold, and a hat bravely plumaged with white,
blue, and, orange feathers--the colors of William the Silent--of all
which finery he was stripped, however, as soon as he entered the court.

The process was rapid.  A summons from Brussels was expected every hour
from the general government, ordering the cases to be brought before the
federal tribunal; and as the Walloon provinces were not yet ready for
open revolt, the order would be an inconvenient one.  Hence the necessity
for haste.  The superior court of Artois, to which an appeal from the
magistrates lay, immediately held a session in another chamber of the
Hotel de Ville while the lower court was trying the prisoners, and
Bertoul, Crugeot, Mordacq, with several others, were condemned in a few
hours to the gibbet.  They were invited to appeal, if they chose, to the
council of Artois, but hearing that the court was sitting next door, so
that there was no chance of a rescue in the streets, they declared
themselves satisfied with the sentence.  Gosson had not been tried, his
case being reserved for the morrow.

Meantime, the short autumnal day had drawn to a close.  A wild, stormy,
rainy night then set in, but still the royalist party--citizens and
soldiers intermingled--all armed to the teeth, and uttering fierce cries,
while the whole scene was fitfully illuminated with the glare of
flambeaux and blazing tar-barrels, kept watch in the open square around
the city hall.  A series of terrible Rembrandt-like nightpieces
succeeded--grim, fantastic, and gory.  Bertoul, an old man, who for years
had so surely felt himself predestined to his present doom that he had
kept a gibbet in his own house to accustom himself to the sight of the
machine, was led forth the first, and hanged at ten in the evening.  He
was a good man, of perfectly blameless life, a sincere Catholic, but a
warm partisan of Orange.

Valentine de Mordacq, an old soldier, came from the Hotel de Ville to
the gallows at midnight.  As he stood on the ladder, amid the flaming
torches, he broke forth into furious execrations, wagging his long white
beard to and fro, making hideous grimaces, and cursing the hard fate
which, after many dangers on the battle-field and in beleaguered cities,
had left him to such a death.  The cord strangled his curses.  Crugeot
was executed at three in the morning, having obtained a few hours'
respite in order to make his preparations, which he accordingly occupied
himself in doing as tranquilly as if he had been setting forth upon an
agreeable journey.  He looked like a phantom, according to eye-witnesses,
as he stood under the gibbet, making a most pious and, Catholic address
to the crowd.

The whole of the following day was devoted to the trial of Gosson.  He
was condemned at nightfall, and heard by appeal before the superior court
directly afterwards.  At midnight, of the 25th of October, 1578, he was
condemned to lose his head, the execution to take place without delay.
The city guards and the infantry under Capres still bivouacked upon the
square; the howling storm still continued, but the glare of fagots and
torches made the place as light as day.  The ancient advocate, with
haggard eyes and features distorted by wrath, walking between the sheriff
and a Franciscan monk, advanced through the long lane of halberdiers, in
the grand hall of the Town House, and thence emerged upon the scaffold
erected before the door.  He shook his fists with rage at the released
magistrates, so lately his prisoners, exclaiming that to his misplaced
mercy it was owing that his head, instead of their own, was to be placed
upon the block.  He bitterly reproached the citizens for their cowardice
in shrinking from dealing a blow for their fatherland, and in behalf of
one who had so faithfully served them.  The clerk of the court then read
the sentence amid a silence so profound that every syllable he uttered,
and, every sigh and ejaculation of the victim were distinctly heard in
the most remote corner of the square.  Gosson then, exclaiming that he
was murdered without cause, knelt upon the scaffold.  His head fell while
an angry imprecation was still upon his lips.

Several other persons of lesser note were hanged daring the week-among
others, Matthew Doucet, the truculent man of gingerbread, whose rage had
been so judiciously but so unsuccessfully directed against the Prior of
Saint Vaast.  Captain Ambrose, too, did not live long to enjoy the price
of his treachery.  He was arrested very soon afterwards by the states'
government in Antwerp, put to the torture, hanged and quartered.  In
troublous times like those, when honest men found it difficult to keep
their heads upon their shoulders, rogues were apt to meet their deserts,
unless they had the advantage of lofty lineage and elevated position.

          "Ille crucem sceleris pretium tulit, hic diadema."

This municipal revolution and counter-revolution, obscure though they
seem, were in reality of very grave importance.  This was the last blow
struck for freedom in the Walloon country.  The failure of the movement
made that scission of the Netherlands certain, which has endured till our
days, for the influence of the ecclesiastics in the states of Artois and
Hainault, together with the military power of the Malcontent grandees,
whom Parma and John Sarrasin had purchased, could no longer be resisted.
The liberty of the Celtic provinces was sold, and a few high-born
traitors received the price.  Before the end of the year (1578) Montigny
had signified to the Duke of Alencon that a prince who avowed himself too
poor to pay for soldiers was no master for him.  The Baron, therefore,
came, to an understanding with La Motte and Sarrasin, acting for
Alexander Farnese, and received the command of the infantry in the
Walloon provinces, a merced of four thousand crowns a year, together with
as large a slice of La Motte's hundred thousand florins for himself and
soldiers, as that officer could be induced to part with.

Baron Capres, whom Sarrasin--being especially enjoined to purchase him--
had, in his own language, "sweated blood and water" to secure, at last
agreed to reconcile himself with the King's party upon condition of
receiving the government-general of Artois, together with the particular
government of Hesdin--very lucrative offices, which the Viscount of Ghent
then held by commission of the states-general.  That politic personage,
however, whose disinclination to desert the liberty party which had
clothed him with such high functions, was apparently so marked that the
Prior had caused an ambush to be laid both for him and the Marquis Havre,
in-order to obtain bodily possession of two such powerful enemies, now,
at the last moment, displayed his true colors.  He consented to reconcile
himself also, on condition of receiving the royal appointment to the same
government which he then held from the patriot authorities, together with
the title of Marquis de Richebourg, the command of all the cavalry in the
royalist provinces, and certain rewards in money besides.  By holding
himself at a high mark, and keeping at a distance, he had obtained his
price.  Capres, for whom Philip, at Parma's suggestion, had sent the
commission as governor of Artois and of Hesdin, was obliged to renounce
those offices, notwithstanding his earlier "reconciliation," and the
"blood and water" of John Sarrasin.  Ghent was not even contented with
these guerdons, but insisted upon the command of all the cavalry,
including the band of ordnance which, with handsome salary, had been
assigned to Lalain as a part of the wages for his treason, while the
"little Count"--fiery as his small and belligerent cousin whose exploits
have been recorded in the earlier pages of this history--boldly taxed
Parma and the King with cheating him out of his promised reward, in order
to please a noble whose services had been less valuable than those of the
Lalain family.  Having thus obtained the lion's share, due, as he
thought, to his well known courage and military talents, as well as to
the powerful family influence, which he wielded--his brother, the Prince
of Espinoy, hereditary seneschal of Hainault, having likewise rallied to
the King's party--Ghent jocosely intimated to Parma his intention of
helping himself to the two best horses in the Prince's stables in
exchange for those lost at Gemblours, in which disastrous action he
had commanded the cavalry for the states.  He also sent two terriers
to Farnese, hoping that they would "prove more useful than beautiful."
The Prince might have thought, perhaps, as much of the Viscount's
treason.

John Sarrasin, the all-accomplished Prior, as the reward of his
exertions, received from Philip the abbey of Saint Vaast, the richest
and most powerful ecclesiastical establishment in the Netherlands.
At a subsequent period his grateful Sovereign created him Archbishop
of Cambray.

Thus the "troubles of Arras"--as they were called--terminated.  Gosson
the respected, wealthy, eloquent, and virtuous advocate; together with
his colleagues--all Catholics, but at the same time patriots and
liberals--died the death of felons for their unfortunate attempt to save
their fatherland from an ecclesiastical and venal conspiracy; while the
actors in the plot, having all performed well their parts, received their
full meed of prizes and applause.

The private treaty by which the Walloon provinces of Artois, Hainault,
Lille, Douay, and Orchies, united themselves in a separate league was
signed upon the 6th of January, 1579; but the final arrangements for the
reconciliation of the Malcontent nobles and their soldiers were not
completed until April 6th, upon which day a secret paper was signed at
Mount Saint Eloi.

The secret current of the intrigue had not, however, flowed on with
perfect smoothness until this placid termination.  On the contrary,
here had been much bickering, heart-burning, and mutual suspicions and
recriminations.  There had been violent wranglings among the claimants
of the royal rewards.  Lalain and Capres were not the only Malcontents
who had cause to complain of being cheated of the promised largess.
Montigny, in whose favor Parma had distinctly commanded La Motte to be
liberal of the King's secret-service money, furiously charged the
Governor of Gravelines with having received a large supply of gold from
Spain, and of "locking the rascal counters from his friends," so that
Parma was obliged to quiet the Baron, and many other barons in the same
predicament, out of his own purse.  All complained bitterly, too, that
the King, whose promises had been so profuse to the nobles while the
reconciliation was pending, turned a deaf ear to their petitions and left
their letters unanswered; after the deed was accomplished.

The unlucky Prior of Renty, whose disclosures to La Motte concerning the
Spanish sarcasms upon his venality, had so nearly caused the preliminary
negotiation with that seignior to fail, was the cause of still further
mischief through the interception of Alonzo Curiel's private letters.
Such revelations of corruption, and of contempt on the part of the
corrupters, were eagerly turned to account by the states' government.
A special messenger was despatched to Montigny with the intercepted
correspondence, accompanied by an earnest prayer that he would not
contaminate his sword and his noble name by subserviency to men who
despised even while they purchased traitors.  That noble, both confounded
and exasperated, was for a moment inclined to listen to the voice of
honor and patriotism, but reflection and solitude induced him to pocket
up his wrongs and his "merced" together.  The states-general also sent
the correspondence to the Walloon provincial authorities, with an
eloquent address, begging them to study well the pitiful part which La
Motte had enacted in the private comedy then performing, and to
behold as in a mirror their own position, if they did not recede ere it
was too late.

The only important effect produced by the discovery was upon the Prior of
Renty himself.  Ottavio Gonzaga, the intimate friend of Don John, and now
high in the confidence of Parma, wrote to La Motte, indignantly denying
the truth of Bien Aime's tattle, and affirming that not a word had ever
been uttered by himself or by any gentleman in his presence to the
disparagement of the Governor of Gravelines.  He added that if the Prior
had worn another coat, and were of quality equal to his own, he would
have made him eat his words or a few inches of steel.  In the same
vehement terms he addressed a letter to Bien Aime himself.  Very soon
afterwards, notwithstanding his coat and his quality, that unfortunate
ecclesiastic found himself beset one dark night by two soldiers, who left
him, severely wounded and bleeding nearly to death upon the high road,
but escaping with life, he wrote to Parma, recounting his wrongs and the
"sword-thrust in his left thigh," and made a demand for a merced.

The Prior recovered from this difficulty only to fall into another,
by publishing what he called an apologue, in which he charged that the
reconciled nobles were equally false to the royal and to the rebel
government, and that, although "the fatted calf had been killed for them,
after they had so long been feeding with perverse heretical pigs," they
were, in truth, as mutinous as ever, being bent upon establishing an
oligarchy in the Netherlands, and dividing the territory among
themselves, to the exclusion of the sovereign.  This naturally excited
the wrath of the Viscount and others.  The Seigneur d'Auberlieu, in a
letter written in what the writer himself called the "gross style of a
gendarme," charged the Prior with maligning honorable lords and--in the
favorite colloquial phrase of the day--with attempting "to throw the cat
against their legs."  The real crime of the meddling priest, however, was
to have let that troublesome animal out of the bag.  He was accordingly
waylaid again, and thrown into prison by Count Lalain.  While in durance
he published an abject apology for his apologue, explaining that his
allusions to "returned prodigals," "heretic swine," and to "Sodom and
Gomorrah," had been entirely misconstrued.  He was, however, retained in
custody until Parma ordered his release on the ground that the punishment
had been already sufficient for the offence.  He then requested to be
appointed Bishop of Saint Omer, that see being vacant.  Parma advised the
King by no means to grant the request--the Prior being neither endowed
with the proper age nor discretion for such a dignity--but to bestow some
lesser reward, in money or otherwise, upon the discomfited ecclesiastic,
who had rendered so many services and incurred so many dangers.

The states-general and the whole national party regarded, with prophetic
dismay, the approaching dismemberment of their common country.  They sent
deputation on deputation to the Walloon states, to warn them of their
danger, and to avert, if possible, the fatal measure.  Meantime, as by
the already accomplished movement, the "generality" was fast
disappearing, and was indeed but the shadow of its former self, it seemed
necessary to make a vigorous effort to restore something like unity to
the struggling country.  The Ghent Pacification had been their outer
wall, ample enough and strong enough to enclose and to protect all the
provinces.  Treachery and religious fanaticism had undermined the bulwark
almost as soon as reared.  The whole beleaguered country was in danger of
becoming utterly exposed to a foe who grew daily more threatening.  As in
besieged cities, a sudden breastwork is thrown up internally, when the
outward defences are crumbling--so the energy of Orange had been silently
preparing the Union of Utrecht, as a temporary defence until the foe
should be beaten back, and there should be time to decide on their future
course of action.

During the whole month of December, an active correspondence had been
carried on by the Prince and his brother John with various agents in
Gelderland, Friesland, and Groningen, as well as with influential
personages in the more central provinces and cities.  Gelderland, the
natural bulwark to Holland and Zealand, commanding the four great rivers
of the country, had been fortunately placed under the government of the
trusty John of Nassau, that province being warmly in favor of a closer
union with its sister provinces, and particularly with those more nearly
allied to itself in religion and in language.

Already, in December (1578), Count John, in behalf of his brother, had
laid before the states of Holland and Zealand, assembled at Gorcum, the
project of a new union with "Gelderland, Ghent, Friesland, Utrecht,
Overyssel, and Groningen."  The proposition had been favorably
entertained, and commissioners had been appointed to confer with other
commissioners at Utrecht, whenever they should be summoned by Count John.
The Prince, with the silence and caution which belonged to his whole
policy, chose not to be the ostensible mover in the plan himself.  He did
not choose to startle unnecessarily the Archduke Matthias--the cipher who
had been placed by his side, whose sudden subtraction would occasion more
loss than his presence had conferred benefit.  He did not choose to be
cried out upon as infringing the Ghent Pacification, although the whole
world knew that treaty to be hopelessly annulled.  For these and many
other weighty motives, he proposed that the new Union should be the
apparent work of other hands, and only offered to him and to the country,
when nearly completed.  January, the deputies of Gelderland and Zutfelt,
with Count John, stadholder of these provinces, at their head, met with
the deputies of Holland, Zealand, and the provinces between the Ems and
the Lauwers, early in January, 1579, and on the 23rd of that month,
without waiting longer for the deputies of the other provinces, they
agreed provisionally upon a treaty of union which was published
afterwards on the 29th, from the Town House of Utrecht.

This memorable document--which is ever regarded as the foundation of the
Netherland Republic--contained twenty-six articles.

The preamble stated the object of the union.  It was to strengthen, not
to forsake the Ghent Pacification, already nearly annihilated by the
force of foreign soldiery.  For this purpose, and in order more
conveniently to defend themselves against their foes, the deputies of
Gelderland, Zutfen, Holland, Zealand, Utrecht, and the Frisian provinces,
thought it desirable to form a still closer union.  The contracting
provinces agreed to remain eternally united, as if they were but one
province.  At the same time, it was understood that each was to retain
its particular privileges, liberties, laudable and traditionary customs,
and other laws.  The cities, corporations, and inhabitants of every
province were to be guaranteed as to their ancient constitutions.
Disputes concerning these various statutes and customs were to be decided
by the usual tribunals, by "good men," or by amicable compromise.  The
provinces, by virtue of the Union, were to defend each other "with life,
goods, and blood," against all force brought against them in the King's
name or behalf.  They were also to defend each other against all foreign
or domestic potentates, provinces, or cities, provided such defence were
controlled by the "generality" of the union.  For the expense occasioned
by the protection of the provinces, certain imposts and excises were
to be equally assessed and collected.  No truce or peace was to be
concluded, no war commenced, no impost established affecting the
"generality," but by unanimous advice and consent of the provinces.
Upon other matters the majority was to decide; the votes being taken in
the manner then customary in the assembly of states-general.  In case of
difficulty in coming to a unanimous vote when required, the matter was
to be referred to the stadholders then in office.  In case cf their
inability to agree, they were to appoint arbitrators, by whose decision
the parties were to be governed.  None of the united provinces, or of
their cities or corporations, were to make treaties with other potentates
or states, without consent of their confederates.  If neighbouring
princes, provinces, or cities, wished to enter into this confederacy,
they were to be received by the unanimous consent of the united
provinces.  A common currency was to be established for the confederacy.
In the matter of divine worship, Holland and Zealand were to conduct
themselves as they should think proper.  The other provinces of the
union, however, were either to conform to the religious peace already
laid down by Archduke Matthias and his council, or to make such other
arrangements as each province should for itself consider appropriate for
the maintenance of its internal tranquillity--provided always that every
individual should remain free in his religion, and that no man should be
molested or questioned on the subject of divine worship, as had been
already established by the Ghent Pacification.  As a certain dispute
arose concerning the meaning of this important clause, an additional
paragraph was inserted a few days afterwards.  In this it was stated that
there was no intention of excluding from the confederacy any province or
city which was wholly Catholic, or in which the number of the Reformed
was not sufficiently large to entitle them, by the religious peace, to
public worship.  On the contrary, the intention was to admit them,
provided they obeyed the articles of union, and conducted themselves
as good patriots; it being intended that no province or city should
interfere with another in the matter of divine service.  Disputes
between two provinces were to be decided by the others, or--in case
the generality were concerned--by the provisions of the ninth article.

The confederates were to assemble at Utrecht whenever summoned by those
commissioned for that purpose.  A majority of votes was to decide on
matters then brought before them, even in case of the absence of some
members of the confederacy, who might, however, send written proxies.
Additions or amendments to these articles could only be made by unanimous
consent.  The articles were to be signed by the stadholders, magistrates,
and principal officers of each province and city, and by all the train-
bands, fraternities, and sodalities which might exist in the cities or
villages of the union.

Such were the simple provisions of that instrument which became the
foundation of the powerful Commonwealth of the United Netherlands.  On
the day when it was concluded, there were present deputies from five
provinces only.  Count John of Nassau signed first, as stadholder of
Gelderland and Zutfen.  His signature was followed by those of four
deputies from that double province; and the envoys of Holland, Zealand,
Utrecht and the Frisian provinces, then signed the document.

The Prince himself, although in reality the principal director of the
movement, delayed appending his signature until May the 3rd, 1579.
Herein he was actuated by the reasons already stated, and by the hope
which he still entertained that a wider union might be established, with
Matthias for its nominal chief.  His enemies, as usual, attributed this
patriotic delay to baser motives.  They accused him of a desire to assume
the governor-generalship himself, to the exclusion of the Archduke--
an insinuation which the states of Holland took occasion formally to
denounce as a calumny.  For those who have studied the character and
history of the man, a defence against such slander is superfluous.
Matthias was but the shadow, Orange the substance.  The Archduke had
been accepted only to obviate the evil effects of a political intrigue,
and with the express condition that the Prince should be his lieutenant-
general in name, his master in fact.  Directly after his departure in the
following year, the Prince's authority, which nominally departed also,
was re-established in his own person, and by express act of the states-
general.

The Union of Utrecht was the foundation-stone of the Netherland Republic;
but the framers of the confederacy did not intend the establishment of a
Republic, or of an independent commonwealth of any kind.  They had not
forsworn the Spanish monarch.  It was not yet their intention to forswear
him.  Certainly the act of union contained no allusion to such an
important step.  On the contrary, in the brief preamble they expressly
stated their intention to strengthen the Ghent Pacification, and the
Ghent Pacification acknowledged obedience to the King.  They intended no
political innovation of any kind.  They expressly accepted matters as
they were.  All statutes, charters, and privileges of provinces, cities,
or corporations were to remain untouched.  They intended to form neither
an independent state nor an independent federal system.  No doubt the
formal renunciation of allegiance, which was to follow within two years,
was contemplated by many as a future probability; but it could not be
foreseen with certainty.

The simple act of union was not regarded as the constitution of a
commonwealth.  Its object was a single one--defence against a foreign
oppressor.  The contracting parties bound themselves together to spend
all their treasure and all their blood in expelling the foreign soldiery
from their soil.  To accomplish this purpose, they carefully abstained
from intermeddling with internal politics and with religion.  Every man
was to worship God according to the dictates of his conscience.  Every
combination of citizens, from the provincial states down to the humblest
rhetoric club, was to retain its ancient constitution.  The establishment
of a Republic, which lasted two centuries, which threw a girdle of rich
dependencies entirely round the globe, and which attained so remarkable a
height of commercial prosperity and political influence, was the result
of the Utrecht Union; but, it was not a premeditated result.  A state,
single towards the rest of the world, a unit in its external relations,
while permitting internally a variety of sovereignties and institutions--
in many respects the prototype of our own much more extensive and
powerful union--was destined to spring from the act thus signed by the
envoys of five provinces.  Those envoys were acting, however, under the
pressure of extreme necessity, and for what was believed an evanescent
purpose.  The future confederacy was not to resemble the system of the
German empire, for it was to acknowledge no single head.  It was to
differ from the Achaian league, in the far inferior amount of power which
it permitted to its general assembly, and in the consequently greater
proportion of sovereign attributes which were retained by the individual
states.  It was, on the other hand, to furnish a closer and more intimate
bond than that of the Swiss confederacy, which was only a union for
defence and external purposes, of cantons otherwise independent.  It was,
finally, to differ from the American federal commonwealth in the great
feature that it was to be merely a confederacy of sovereignties,
not a representative Republic.  Its foundation was a compact, not a
constitution.  The contracting parties were states and corporations,
who considered themselves as representing small nationalities 'dejure et
de facto', and as succeeding to the supreme power at the very instant in
which allegiance to the Spanish monarch was renounced.  The general
assembly was a collection of diplomatic envoys, bound by instructions
from independent states.  The voting was not by heads, but by states.
The deputies were not representatives of the people, but of the states;
for the people of the United States of the Netherlands never assembled--
as did the people of the United States of America two centuries later--to
lay down a constitution, by which they granted a generous amount of power
to the union, while they reserved enough of sovereign attributes to
secure that local self-government which is the life-blood of liberty.

The Union of Utrecht; narrowed as it was to the nether portion of that
country which, as a whole, might have formed a commonwealth so much more
powerful, was in origin a proof of this lamentable want of patriotism.
Could the jealousy of great nobles, the rancour of religious differences,
the Catholic bigotry of the Walloon population, on the one side,
contending with the democratic insanity of the Ghent populace on the
other, have been restrained within bounds by the moderate counsels of
William of Orange, it would have been possible to unite seventeen
provinces instead of seven, and to save many long and blighting years of
civil war.

The Utrecht Union was, however, of inestimable value.  It was time for
some step to be taken, if anarchy were not to reign until the inquisition
and absolutism were restored.  Already, out of Chaos and Night, the
coming Republic was assuming substance and form.  The union, if it
created nothing else, at least constructed a league against a foreign
foe whose armed masses were pouring faster and faster into the territory
of the provinces.  Farther than this it did not propose to go.
It maintained what it found.  It guaranteed religious liberty, and
accepted the civil and political constitutions already in existence.
Meantime, the defects of those constitutions, although visible and
sensible, had not grown to the large proportions which they were destined
to attain.

Thus by the Union of Utrecht on the one hand, and the fast approaching
reconciliation of the Walloon provinces on the other, the work of
decomposition and of construction went Land in hand.



ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Are apt to discharge such obligations--(by) ingratitude
Like a man holding a wolf by the ears
Local self-government which is the life-blood of liberty
No man ever understood the art of bribery more thoroughly
Not so successful as he was picturesque
Plundering the country which they came to protect
Presumption in entitling themselves Christian
Protect the common tranquillity by blood, purse, and life
Republic, which lasted two centuries
Throw the cat against their legs
Worship God according to the dictates of his conscience





*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Rise of the Dutch Republic — Volume 29: 1578, part III" ***

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