William summoned his brother Louis, the Counts Egmont, Horn, and Hoogstraeten, to a secret conference at Termonde; and he there submitted to them this letter of Alava's, with others which he had received from Spain, confirmatory of his worst fears. Louis of Nassau voted for open and instant rebellion; William recommended a cautious observance of the projects of government, not doubting but a fair pretext would be soon given to justify the most vigorous overt acts of revolt; but Egmont at once struck a death-blow to the energetic project of one brother, and the cautious amendment of the other, by declaring his present resolution to devote himself wholly to the service of the king, and on no inducement whatever to risk the perils of rebellion. He expressed his perfect reliance on the justice and the goodness of Philip when once he should see the determined loyalty of those whom he had hitherto had so much reason to suspect; and he extorted the others to follow his example. The two brothers and Count Horn implored him in their turn to abandon this blind reliance on the tyrant; but in vain. His new and unlooked-for profession of faith completely paralyzed their plans. He possessed too largely the confidence of both the soldiery and the people to make it possible to attempt any serious measure of resistance in which he would not take a part. The meeting broke up without coming to any decision. All those who bore a part in it were expected at Brussels to attend the council of state; Egmont alone repaired thither. The stadtholderess questioned him on the object of the conference at Termonde: he only replied by an indignant glance, at the same time presenting a copy of Alava's letter.

The stadtholderess now applied her whole efforts to destroy the union among the patriot lords. She, in the meantime, ordered levies of troops to the amount of some thousands, the command of which was given to the nobles on whose attachment she could reckon. The most vigorous measures were adopted. Noircarmes, governor of Hainault, appeared before Valenciennes, which, being in the power of the Calvinists, had assumed a most determined attitude of resistance. He vainly summoned the place to submission, and to admit a royalist garrison; and on receiving an obstinate refusal, he commenced the siege in form. An undisciplined rabble of between three thousand and four thousand Gueux, under the direction of John de Soreas, gathered together in the neighborhood of Lille and Tournay, with a show of attacking these places. But the governor of the former town dispersed one party of them; and Noircarmes surprised and almost destroyed the main body—their leader falling in the action. These were the first encounters of the civil war, which raged without cessation for upward of forty years in these devoted countries, and which is universally allowed to be the most remarkable that ever desolated any isolated portion of Europe. The space which we have already given to the causes which produced this memorable revolution, now actually commenced, will not allow us to do more than rapidly sketch the fierce events that succeeded each other with frightful rapidity.

While Valenciennes prepared for a vigorous resistance, a general synod of the Protestants was held at Antwerp, and De Brederode undertook an attempt to see the stadtholderess, and lay before her the complaints of this body; but she refused to admit him into the capital. He then addressed to her a remonstrance in writing, in which he reproached her with her violation of the treaties; on the faith of which the confederates had dispersed, and the majority of the Protestants laid down their arms. He implored her to revoke the new proclamations, by which she prohibited them from the free exercise of their religion; and, above all things, he insisted on the abandonment of the siege of Valenciennes, and the disbanding of the new levies. The stadtholderess's reply was one of haughty reproach and defiance. The gauntlet was now thrown down; no possible hope of reconciliation remained; and the whole country flew to arms. A sudden attempt on the part of the royalists, under Count Meghem, against Bois-le-duc, was repulsed by eight hundred men, commanded by an officer named Bomberg, in the immediate service of De Brederode, who had fortified himself in his garrison town of Vienen.

The Prince of Orange maintained at Antwerp an attitude of extreme firmness and caution. His time for action had not yet arrived; but his advice and protection were of infinite importance on many occasions. John de Marnix, lord of Toulouse, brother of Philip de St. Aldegonde, took possession of Osterweel on the Scheldt, a quarter of a league from Antwerp, and fortified himself in a strong position. But he was impetuously attacked by the Count de Lannoy with a considerable force, and perished, after a desperate defence, with full one thousand of his followers. Three hundred who laid down their arms were immediately after the action butchered in cold blood. Antwerp was on this occasion saved from the excesses of its divided and furious citizens, and preserved from the horrors of pillage, by the calmness and intrepidity of the Prince of Orange. Valenciennes at length capitulated to the royalists, disheartened by the defeat and death of De Marnix, and terrified by a bombardment of thirty-six hours. The governor, two preachers, and about forty of the citizens were hanged by the victors, and the reformed religion prohibited. Noircarmes promptly followed up his success. Maestricht, Turnhout, and Bois-le-duc submitted at his approach; and the insurgents were soon driven from all the provinces, Holland alone excepted. Brederode fled to Germany, where he died the following year.

The stadtholderess showed, in her success, no small proofs of decision. She and her counsellors, acting under orders from the king, were resolved on embarrassing to the utmost the patriot lords; and a new oath of allegiance, to be proposed to every functionary of the state, was considered as a certain means for attaining this object without the violence of an unmerited dismissal. The terms of this oath were strongly opposed to every principle of patriotism and toleration. Count Mansfield was the first of the nobles who took it. The duke of Arschot, Counts Meghem, Berlaimont, and Egmont followed his example. The counts of Horn, Hoogstraeten, De Brederode, and others, refused on various pretexts. Every artifice and persuasion was tried to induce the Prince of Orange to subscribe to this new test; but his resolution had been for some time formed. He saw that every chance of constitutional resistance to tyranny was for the present at an end. The time for petitioning was gone by. The confederation was dissolved. A royalist army was in the field; the Duke of Alva was notoriously approaching at the head of another, more numerous. It was worse than useless to conclude a hollow convention with the stadtholderess of mock loyalty on his part and mock confidence on hers. Many other important considerations convinced William that his only honorable, safe, and wise course was to exile himself from the Netherlands altogether, until more propitious circumstances allowed of his acting openly, boldly, and with effect.

Before he put this plan of voluntary banishment into execution, he and Egmont had a parting interview at the village of Willebroek, between Antwerp and Brussels. Count Mansfield, and Berti, secretary to the stadtholderess, were present at this memorable meeting. The details of what passed were reported to the confederates by one of their party, who contrived to conceal himself in the chimney of the chamber. Nothing could exceed the energetic warmth with which the two illustrious friends reciprocally endeavored to turn each other from their respective line of conduct; but in vain. Egmont's fatal confidence in the king was not to be shaken; nor was Nassau's penetrating mind to be deceived by the romantic delusion which led away his friend. They separated with most affectionate expressions; and Nassau was even moved to tears. His parting words were to the following effect: "Confide, then, since it must be so, in the gratitude of the king; but a painful presentiment (God grant it may prove a false one!) tells me that you will serve the Spaniards as the bridge by which they will enter the country, and which they will destroy as soon as they have passed over it!"

On the 11th of April, a few days after this conference, the Prince of Orange set out for Germany, with his three brothers and his whole family, with the exception of his eldest son Philip William, count de Beuren, whom he left behind a student in the University of Louvain. He believed that the privileges of the college and the franchises of Brabant would prove a sufficient protection to the youth; and this appears the only instance in which William's vigilant prudence was deceived. The departure of the prince seemed to remove all hope of protection or support from the unfortunate Protestants, now left the prey of their implacable tyrant. The confederation of the nobles was completely broken up. The counts of Hoogstraeten, Bergen, and Culembourg followed the example of the Prince of Orange, and escaped to Germany; and, the greater number of those who remained behind took the new oath of allegiance, and became reconciled to the government.

This total dispersion of the confederacy brought all the towns of Holland into obedience to the king. But the emigration which immediately commenced threatened the country with ruin. England and Germany swarmed with Dutch and Belgian refugees; and all the efforts of the stadtholderess could not restrain the thousands that took to flight. She was not more successful in her attempts to influence the measures of the king. She implored him, in repeated letters, to abandon his design of sending a foreign army into the country, which she represented as being now quite reduced to submission and tranquillity. She added that the mere report of this royal invasion (so to call it) had already deprived the Netherlands of many thousands of its best inhabitants; and that the appearance of the troops would change it into a desert. These arguments, meant to dissuade, were the very means of encouraging Philip in his design. He conceived his project to be now ripe for the complete suppression of freedom; and Alva soon began his march.

On the 5th of May, 1567, this celebrated captain, whose reputation was so quickly destined to sink into the notoriety of an executioner, began his memorable march; and on the 22d of August he, with his two natural sons, and his veteran army consisting of about fifteen thousand men, arrived at the walls of Brussels. The discipline observed on this march was a terrible forewarning to the people of the Netherlands of the influence of the general and the obedience of the troops. They had little chance of resistance against such soldiers so commanded.

Several of the Belgian nobility went forward to meet Alva, to render him the accustomed honors, and endeavor thus early to gain his good graces. Among them was the infatuated Egmont, who made a present to Alva of two superb horses, which the latter received with a disdainful air of condescension. Alva's first care was the distribution of his troops—several thousands of whom were placed in Antwerp, Ghent, and other important towns, and the remainder reserved under his own immediate orders at Brussels. His approach was celebrated by universal terror; and his arrival was thoroughly humiliating to the duchess of Parma. He immediately produced his commission as commander-in-chief of the royal armies in the Netherlands; but he next showed her another, which confided to him powers infinitely more extended than any Marguerite herself had enjoyed, and which proved to her that the almost sovereign power over the country was virtually vested in him.

Alva first turned his attention to the seizure of those patriot lords whose pertinacious infatuation left them within his reach. He summoned a meeting of all the members of the council of state and the knights of the order of the Golden Fleece, to deliberate on matters of great importance. Counts Egmont and Horn attended, among many others; and at the conclusion of the council they were both arrested (some historians assert by the hands of Alva and his eldest son), as was also Van Straeten, burgomaster of Antwerp, and Casambrot, Egmont's secretary. The young count of Mansfield appeared for a moment at this meeting; but, warned by his father of the fate intended him, as an original member of the confederation, he had time to fly. The count of Hoogstraeten was happily detained by illness, and thus escaped the fate of his friends. Egmont and Horn were transferred to the citadel of Ghent, under an escort of three thousand Spanish soldiers. Several other persons of the first families were arrested; and those who had originally been taken in arms were executed without delay.



The next measures of the new governor were the reestablishment of the Inquisition, the promulgation of the decrees of the Council of Trent, the revocation of the duchess of Parma's edicts, and the royal refusal to recognize the terms of her treaties with the Protestants. He immediately established a special tribunal, composed of twelve members, with full powers to inquire into and pronounce judgment on every circumstance connected with the late troubles. He named himself president of this council, and appointed a Spaniard, named Vargas, as vice-president—a wretch of the most diabolical cruelty. Several others of the judges were also Spaniards, in direct infraction of the fundamental laws of the country. This council, immortalized by its infamy, was named by the new governor (for so Alva was in fact, though not yet in name), the Council of Troubles. By the people it was soon designed the Council of Blood. In its atrocious proceedings no respect was paid to titles, contracts, or privileges, however sacred. Its judgments were without appeal. Every subject of the state was amenable to its summons; clergy and laity, the first individuals of the country, as well as the most wretched outcasts of society. Its decrees were passed with disgusting rapidity and contempt of form. Contumacy was punished with exile and confiscation. Those who, strong in innocence, dared to brave a trial were lost without resource. The accused were forced to its bar without previous warning. Many a wealthy citizen was dragged to trial four leagues' distance, tied to a horse's tail. The number of victims was appalling. On one occasion, the town of Valenciennes alone saw fifty-five of its citizens fall by the hands of the executioner. Hanging, beheading, quartering and burning were the every-day spectacles. The enormous confiscations only added to the thirst for gold and blood by which Alva and his satellites were parched. History offers no example of parallel horrors; for while party vengeance on other occasions has led to scenes of fury and terror, they arose, in this instance, from the vilest cupidity and the most cold-blooded cruelty.

After three months of such atrocity, Alva, fatigued rather than satiated with butchery, resigned his hateful functions wholly into the hands of Vargas, who was chiefly aided by the members Delrio and Dela Torre. Even at this remote period we cannot repress the indignation excited by the mention of those monsters, and it is impossible not to feel satisfaction in fixing upon their names the brand of historic execration. One of these wretches, called Hesselts, used at length to sleep during the mock trials of the already doomed victims; and as often as he was roused up by his colleagues, he used to cry out mechanically, "To the gibbet! to the gibbet!" so familiar was his tongue with the sounds of condemnation.

The despair of the people may be imagined from the fact that, until the end of the year 1567, their only consolation was the prospect of the king's arrival! He never dreamed of coming. Even the delight of feasting in horrors like these could not conquer his indolence. The good duchess of Parma—for so she was in comparison with her successor—was not long left to oppose the feeble barrier of her prayers between Alva and his victims. She demanded her dismissal from the nominal dignity, which was now but a title of disgrace. Philip granted it readily, accompanied by a hypocritical letter, a present of thirty thousand crowns, and the promise of an annual pension of twenty thousand more. She left Brussels in the month of April, 1568, raised to a high place in the esteem and gratitude of the people, less by any actual claims from her own conduct than by its fortuitous contrast with the infamy of her successor. She retired to Italy, and died at Naples in the month of February, 1586.

Ferdinand Alvarez de Toledo, duke of Alva, was of a distinguished family in Spain, and even boasted of his descent from one of the Moorish monarchs who had reigned in the insignificant kingdom of Toledo. When he assumed the chief command in the Netherlands, he was sixty years of age; having grown old and obdurate in pride, ferocity, and avarice. His deeds must stand instead of a more detailed portrait, which, to be thoroughly striking, should be traced with a pen dipped in blood. He was a fierce and clever soldier, brought up in the school of Charles V., and trained to his profession in the wars of that monarch in Germany, and subsequently in that of Philip II. against France. In addition to the horrors acted by the Council of Blood, Alva committed many deeds of collateral but minor tyranny; among others, he issued a decree forbidding, under severe penalties, any inhabitant of the country to marry without his express permission. His furious edicts against emigration were attempted to be enforced in vain. Elizabeth of England opened all the ports of her kingdom to the Flemish refugees, who carried with them those abundant stores of manufacturing knowledge which she wisely knew to be the elements of national wealth.

Alva soon summoned the Prince of Orange, his brothers, and all the confederate lords, to appear before the council and answer to the charge of high treason. The prince gave a prompt and contemptuous answer, denying the authority of Alva and his council, and acknowledging for his judges only the emperor, whose vassal he was, or the king of Spain in person, as president of the order of the Golden Fleece. The other lords made replies nearly similar. The trials of each were, therefore, proceeded on, by contumacy; confiscation of property being an object almost as dear to the tyrant viceroy as the death of his victims. Judgments were promptly pronounced against those present or absent, alive or dead. Witness the case of the unfortunate marquess of Bergues, who had previously expired at Madrid, as was universally believed, by poison; and his equally ill-fated colleague in the embassy, the Baron Montigny, was for a while imprisoned at Segovia, where he was soon after secretly beheaded, on the base pretext of former disaffection.

The departure of the duchess of Parma having left Alva undisputed as well as unlimited authority, he proceeded rapidly in his terrible career. The count of Beuren was seized at Louvain, and sent prisoner to Madrid; and wherever it was possible to lay hands on a suspected patriot, the occasion was not neglected. It would be a revolting task to enter into a minute detail of all the horrors committed, and impossible to record the names of the victims who so quickly fell before Alva's insatiate cruelty. The people were driven to frenzy. Bands of wretches fled to the woods and marshes; whence, half famished and perishing for want, they revenged themselves with pillage and murder. Pirates infested and ravaged the coast; and thus, from both sea and land, the whole extent of the Netherlands was devoted to carnage and ruin. The chronicles of Brabant and Holland, chiefly written in Flemish by contemporary authors, abound in thrilling details of the horrors of this general desolation, with long lists of those who perished. Suffice it to say, that, on the recorded boast of Alva himself, he caused eighteen thousand inhabitants of the Low Countries to perish by the hands of the executioner, during his less than six years' sovereignty in the Netherlands.

The most important of these tragical scenes was now soon to be acted. The Counts Egmont and Horn, having submitted to some previous interrogatories by Vargas and others, were removed from Ghent to Brussels, on the 3d of June, under a strong escort. The following day they passed through the mockery of a trial before the Council of Blood; and on the 5th they were both beheaded in the great square of Brussels, in the presence of Alva, who gloated on the spectacle from a balcony that commanded the execution. The same day Van Straeten, and Casambrot shared the fate of their illustrious friends, in the castle of Vilvorde; with many others whose names only find a place in the local chronicles of the times. Egmont and Horn met their fate with the firmness expected from their well-proved courage.

These judicial murders excited in the Netherlands an agitation without bounds. It was no longer hatred or aversion that filled men's minds, but fury and despair. The outbursting of a general revolt was hourly watched for. The foreign powers, without exception, expressed their disapproval of these executions. The emperor Maximilian II., and all the Catholic princes, condemned them. The former sent his brother expressly to the king of Spain, to warn him that without a cessation of his cruelties he could not restrain a general declaration from the members of the empire, which would, in all likelihood, deprive him of every acre of land in the Netherlands. The princes of the Protestant states held no terms in the expression of their disgust and resentment; and everything seemed now ripe, both at home and abroad, to favor the enterprise on which the Prince of Orange was determined to risk his fortune and his life. But his principal resources were to be found in his genius and courage, and in the heroic devotion partaken by his whole family in the cause of their country. His brother, Count John, advanced him a considerable sum of money; the Flemings and Hollanders, in England and elsewhere, subscribed largely; the prince himself, after raising loans in every possible way on his private means, sold his jewels, his plate, and even the furniture of his houses, and threw the amount into the common fund.

Two remarkable events took place this year in Spain, and added to the general odium entertained against Philip's character throughout Europe. The first was the death of his son Don Carlos, whose sad story is too well known in connection with the annals of his country to require a place here; the other was the death of the queen. Universal opinion assigned poison as the cause; and Charles IX. of France, her brother, who loved her with great tenderness, seems to have joined in this belief. Astonishment and horror filled all minds on the double denouement of this romantic tragedy; and the enemies of the tyrant reaped all the advantages it was so well adapted to produce them.

The Prince of Orange, having raised a considerable force in Germany, now entered on the war with all the well-directed energy by which he was characterized. The queen of England, the French Huguenots, and the Protestant princes of Germany, all lent him their aid in money or in men; and he opened his first campaign with great advantage. He formed his army into four several corps, intending to enter the country on as many different points, and by a sudden irruption on that most vulnerable to rouse at once the hopes and the co-operation of the people. His brothers Louis and Adolphus, at the head of one of these divisions, penetrated into Friesland, and there commenced the contest. The count of Aremberg, governor of this province, assisted by the Spanish troops under Gonsalvo de Bracamonte, quickly opposed the invaders. They met on the 24th of May near the abbey of Heiligerlee, which gave its name to the battle; and after a short contest the royalists were defeated with great loss. The count of Aremberg and Adolphus of Nassau encountered in single combat, and fell by each other's hands. The victory was dearly purchased by the loss of this gallant prince, the first of his illustrious family who have on so many occasions, down to these very days, freely shed their blood for the freedom and happiness of the country which may be so emphatically called their own.

Alva immediately hastened to the scene of this first action, and soon forced Count Louis to another at a place called Jemminghem, near the town of Embden, on the 21st of July. Their forces were nearly equal, about fourteen thousand on either side; but all the advantage of discipline and skill was in favor of Alva; and the consequence was, the total rout of the patriots with a considerable loss in killed and the whole of the cannon and baggage. The entire province of Friesland was thus again reduced to obedience, and Alva hastened back to Brabant to make head against the Prince of Orange. The latter had now under his command an army of twenty-eight thousand men—an imposing force in point of numbers, being double that which his rival was able to muster. He soon made himself master of the towns of Tongres and St. Trond, and the whole province of Liege was in his power. He advanced boldly against Alva, and for several months did all that manoeuvring could do to force him to a battle. But the wily veteran knew his trade too well; he felt sure that in time the prince's force would disperse for want of pay and supplies; and he managed his resources so ably that with little risk and scarcely any loss he finally succeeded in his object. In the month of October the prince found himself forced to disband his large but undisciplined force; and he retired into France to recruit his funds and consider on the best measures for some future enterprise.

The insolent triumph of Alva knew no bounds. The rest of the year was consumed in new executions. The hotel of Culembourg, the early cradle of De Brederode's confederacy, was razed to the ground, and a pillar erected on the spot commemorative of the deed; while Alva, resolved to erect a monument of his success as well as of his hate, had his own statue in brass, formed of the cannons taken at Jemminghem, set up in the citadel of Antwerp, with various symbols of power and an inscription of inflated pride.

The following year was ushered in by a demand of unwonted and extravagant rapacity; the establishment of two taxes on property, personal and real, to the amount of the hundredth penny (or denier) on each kind; and at every transfer or sale ten per cent on personal and five per cent for real property. The states-general, of whom this demand was made, were unanimous in their opposition, as well as the ministers; but particularly De Berlaimont and Viglius. Alva was so irritated that he even menaced the venerable president of the council, but could not succeed in intimidating him. He obstinately persisted in his design for a considerable period; resisting arguments and prayers, and even the more likely means tried for softening his cupidity, by furnishing him with sums from other sources equivalent to those which the new taxes were calculated to produce. To his repeated threats against Viglius the latter replied, that "he was convinced the king would not condemn him unheard; but that at any rate his gray hairs saved him from any ignoble fear of death."

A deputation was sent from the states-general to Philip explaining the impossibility of persevering in the attempted taxes, which were incompatible with every principle of commercial liberty. But Alva would not abandon his design till he had forced every province into resistance, and the king himself commanded him to desist. The events of this and the following year, 1570, may be shortly summed up; none of any striking interest or eventual importance having occurred. The sufferings of the country were increasing from day to day under the intolerable tyranny which bore it down. The patriots attempted nothing on land; but their naval force began from this time to acquire that consistency and power which was so soon to render it the chief means of resistance and the great source of wealth. The privateers or corsairs, which began to swarm from every port in Holland and Zealand, and which found refuge in all those of England, sullied many gallant exploits by instances of culpable excess; so much so that the Prince of Orange was forced to withdraw the command which he had delegated to the lord of Dolhain, and to replace him by Gislain de Fiennes: for already several of the exiled nobles and ruined merchants of Antwerp and Amsterdam had joined these bold adventurers; and purchased or built, with the remnant of their fortunes, many vessels, in which they carried on a most productive warfare against Spanish commerce through the whole extent of the English Channel, from the mouth of the Embs to the harbor of La Rochelle.

One of those frightful inundations to which the northern provinces were so constantly exposed occurred this year, carrying away the dikes, and destroying lives and properly to a considerable amount. In Friesland alone twenty thousand men were victims to this calamity. But no suffering could affect the inflexible sternness of the duke of Alva; and to such excess did he carry his persecution that Philip himself began to be discontented, and thought his representative was overstepping the bounds of delegated tyranny. He even reproached him sharply in some of his despatches. The governor replied in the same strain; and such was the effect of this correspondence that Philip resolved to remove him from his command. But the king's marriage with Anne of Austria, daughter of the emperor Maximilian, obliged him to defer his intentions for a while; and he at length named John de la Cerda, duke of Medina-Celi, for Alva's successor. Upward of a year, however, elapsed before this new governor was finally appointed; and he made his appearance on the coast of Flanders with a considerable fleet, on the 11th of May, 1572. He was afforded on this very day a specimen of the sort of people he came to contend with; for his fleet was suddenly attacked by that of the patriots, and many of his vessels burned and taken before his eyes, with their rich cargoes and considerable treasures intended for the service of the state.

The duke of Medina-Celi proceeded rapidly to Brussels, where he was ceremoniously received by Alva, who, however, refused to resign the government, under the pretext that the term of his appointment had not expired, and that he was resolved first to completely suppress all symptoms of revolt in the northern provinces. He succeeded in effectually disgusting La Cerda, who almost immediately demanded and obtained his own recall to Spain. Alva, left once more in undisputed possession of his power, turned it with increased vigor into new channels of oppression. He was soon again employed in efforts to effect the levying of his favorite taxes; and such was the resolution of the tradesmen of Brussels, that, sooner than submit, they almost universally closed their shops altogether. Alva, furious at this measure, caused sixty of the citizens to be seized, and ordered them to be hanged opposite their own doors. The gibbets were actually erected, when, on the very morning of the day fixed for the executions, he received despatches that wholly disconcerted him and stopped their completion.

To avoid an open rupture with Spain, the queen of England had just at this time interdicted the Dutch and Flemish privateers from taking shelter in her ports. William de la Marck, count of Lunoy, had now the chief command of this adventurous force. He was distinguished by an inveterate hatred against the Spaniards, and had made a wild and romantic vow never to cut his hair or beard till he had avenged the murders of Egmont and Horn. He was impetuous and terrible in all his actions, and bore the surname of "the wild boar of the Ardennes." Driven out of the harbors of England, he resolved on some desperate enterprise; and on the 1st of April he succeeded in surprising the little town of Brille, in the island of Voorn, situate between Zealand and Holland. This insignificant place acquired great celebrity from this event, which may be considered the first successful step toward the establishment of liberty and the republic.

Alva was confounded by the news of this exploit, but with his usual activity he immediately turned his whole attention toward the point of greatest danger. His embarrassment, however, became every day more considerable. Lunoy's success was the signal of a general revolt. In a few days every town in Holland and Zealand declared for liberty, with the exception of Amsterdam and Middleburg, where the Spanish garrisons were too strong for the people to attempt their expulsion.

The Prince of Orange, who had been ou the watch for a favorable moment, now entered Brabant at the head of twenty thousand men, composed of French, German, and English, and made himself master of several important places; while his indefatigable brother Louis, with a minor force, suddenly appeared in Hainault, and, joined by a large body of French Huguenots under De Genlis, he seized on Mons, the capital of the province, on the 25th of May.

Alva turned first toward the recovery of this important place, and gave the command of the siege to his son Frederic of Toledo, who was assisted by the counsels of Noircarmes and Vitelli; but Louis of Nassau held out for upward of three months, and only surrendered on an honorable capitulation in the month of September; his French allies having been first entirely defeated, and their brave leader De Genlis taken prisoner. The Prince of Orange had in the meantime secured possession of Louvain, Ruremonde, Mechlin, and other towns, carried Termonde and Oudenarde by assault, and made demonstrations which seemed to court Alva once more to try the fortune of the campaign in a pitched battle. But such were not William's real intentions, nor did the cautious tactics of his able opponent allow him to provoke such a risk. He, however, ordered his son Frederic to march with all his force into Holland, and he soon undertook the siege of Haerlem. By the time that Mons fell again into the power of the Spaniards, sixty-five towns and their territories, chiefly in the northern provinces, had thrown off the yoke. The single port of Flessingue contained one hundred and fifty patriot vessels, well armed and equipped; and from that epoch may be dated the rapid growth of the first naval power in Europe, with the single exception of Great Britain.

It is here worthy of remark, that all the horrors of which the people of Flanders were the victims, and in their full proportion, had not the effect of exciting them to revolt; but they rose up with fury against the payment of the new taxes. They sacrificed everything sooner than pay these unjust exactions—_Omnia_dabant_, _ne_decimam_darant_. The next important event in these wars was the siege of Haerlem, before which place the Spaniards were arrested in their progress for seven months, and which they at length succeeded in taking with a loss of ten thousand men.

The details of this memorable siege are calculated to arouse every feeling of pity for the heroic defenders, and of execration against the cruel assailants. A widow, named Kenau Hasselaer, gained a niche in history by her remarkable valor at the head of a battalion of three hundred of her townswomen, who bore a part in all the labors and perils of the siege. After the surrender, and in pursuance of Alva's common system, his ferocious son caused the governor and the other chief officers to be beheaded; and upward of two thousand of the worn-out garrison and burghers were either put to the sword, or tied two and two and drowned in the lake which gives its name to the town. Tergoes in South Beveland, Mechlin, Naerden, and other towns, were about the same period the scenes of gallant actions, and of subsequent cruelties of the most revolting nature as soon as they fell into the power of the Spaniards. Strada, with all his bigotry to the Spanish cause, admits that these excesses were atrocious crimes rather than just punishments: _non_poena,_sed_flagitium_. Horrors like these were sure to force reprisals on the part of the maddened patriots. De la Marck carried on his daring exploits with a cruelty which excited the indignation of the Prince of Orange, by whom he was removed from his command. The contest was for a while prosecuted with a decrease of vigor proportioned to the serious losses on both sides; money and the munitions of war began to fail; and though the Spaniards succeeded in taking The Hague, they were repulsed before Alkmaer with great loss, and their fleet was almost entirely destroyed in a naval combat on the Zuyder Zee. The count Bossu, their admiral, was taken in this fight, with about three hundred of his best sailors.

Holland was now from one end to the other the theatre of the most shocking events. While the people performed deeds of the greatest heroism, the perfidy and cruelty of the Spaniards had no bounds. The patriots saw more danger in submission than in resistance; each town, which was in succession subdued, endured the last extremities of suffering before it yielded, and victory was frequently the consequence of despair. This unlooked-for turn in affairs decided the king to remove Alva, whose barbarous and rapacious conduct was now objected to even by Philip, when it produced results disastrous to his cause. Don Luis Zanega y Requesens, commander of the order of Malta, was named to the government of the Netherlands. He arrived at Brussels on the 17th of November, 1573; and on the 18th of that following month, the monster whom he succeeded set out for Spain, loaded with the booty to which he had waded through oceans of blood, and with the curses of the country, which, however, owed its subsequent freedom to the impulse given by his intolerable cruelty. He repaired to Spain; and after various fluctuations of favor and disgrace at the hands of his congenial master, he died in his bed, at Lisbon, in 1582, at the advanced age of seventy-four years.



CHAPTER X

TO THE PACIFICATION OF GHENT

A.D. 1573—1576

The character of Requesens was not more opposed to that of his predecessor, than were the instructions given to him for his government. He was an honest, well-meaning, and moderate man, and the king of Spain hoped that by his influence and a total change of measures he might succeed in recalling the Netherlands to obedience. But, happily for the country, this change was adopted too late for success; and the weakness of the new government completed the glorious results which the ferocity of the former had prepared.

Requesens performed all that depended on him, to gain the confidence of the people. He caused Alva's statue to be removed; and hoped to efface the memory of the tyrant by dissolving the Council of Blood and abandoning the obnoxious taxes which their inventor had suspended rather than abolished. A general amnesty was also promulgated against the revolted provinces; they received it with contempt and defiance. Nothing then was left to Requesens but to renew the war; and this he found to be a matter of no easy execution. The finances were in a state of the greatest confusion; and the Spanish troops were in many places seditious, in some openly mutinous, Alva having left large arrears of pay due to almost all, notwithstanding the immense amount of his pillage and extortion. Middleburg, which had long sustained a siege against all the efforts of the patriots, was now nearly reduced by famine, notwithstanding the gallant efforts of its governor, Mondragon. Requesens turned his immediate attention to the relief of this important place; and he soon assembled, at Antwerp and Berg-op-Zoom, a fleet of sixty vessels for that purpose. But Louis Boisot, admiral of Zealand, promptly repaired to attack this force; and after a severe action he totally defeated it, and killed De Glimes, one of its admirals, under the eyes of Requesens himself, who, accompanied by his suite, stood during the whole affair on the dike of Schakerloo. This action took place the 29th of January, 1574; and, on the 19th of February following, Middleburg surrendered, after a resistance of two years. The Prince of Orange granted such conditions as were due to the bravery of the governor; and thus set an example of generosity and honor which greatly changed the complexion of the war. All Zealand was now free; and the intrepid Admiral Boisot gained another victory on the 30th of May—destroying several of the Spanish vessels, and taking some others, with their Admiral Von Haemstede. Frequent naval enterprises were also undertaken against the frontiers of Flanders; and while the naval forces thus harassed the enemy on every vulnerable point, the unfortunate provinces of the interior were ravaged by the mutinous and revolted Spaniards, and by the native brigands, who pillaged both royalists and patriots with atrocious impartiality.

To these manifold evils was now added one more terrible, in the appearance of the plague, which broke out at Ghent in the month of October, and devastated a great part of the Netherlands; not, however, with that violence with which it rages in more southern climates.

Requesens, overwhelmed by difficulties, yet exerted himself to the utmost to put the best face on the affairs of government. His chief care was to appease the mutinous soldiery: he even caused his plate to be melted, and freely gave the produce toward the payment of their arrears. The patriots, well informed of this state of things, labored to turn it to their best advantage. They opened the campaign in the province of Guelders, where Louis of Nassau, with his younger brother Henry, and the prince Palatine, son of the elector Frederick III., appeared at the head of eleven thousand men; the Prince of Orange prepared to join him with an equal number; but Requesens promptly despatched Sanchez d'Avila to prevent this junction. The Spanish commander quickly passed the Meuse near Nimeguen; and on the 14th of April he forced Count Louis to a battle, on the great plain called Mookerheyde, close to the village of Mook. The royalists attacked with their usual valor; and, after two hours of hard fighting, the confederates were totally defeated. The three gallant princes were among the slain, and their bodies were never afterward discovered. It has been stated, on doubtful authority, that Louis of Nassau, after having lain some time among the heaps of dead, dragged himself to the side of the river Meuse, and while washing his wounds was inhumanly murdered by some straggling peasants, to whom he was unknown. The unfortunate fate of this enterprising prince was a severe blow to the patriot cause, and a cruel affliction to the Prince of Orange. He had now already lost three brothers in the war; and remained alone, to revenge their fate and sustain the cause for which they had perished.

D'Avila soon found his victory to be as fruitless as it was brilliant. The ruffian troops, by whom it was gained, became immediately self-disbanded; threw off all authority; hastened to possess themselves of Antwerp; and threatened to proceed to the most horrible extremities if their pay was longer withheld. The citizens succeeded with difficulty in appeasing them, by the sacrifice of some money in part payment of their claims. Requesens took advantage of their temporary calm, and despatched them promptly to take part in the siege of Leyden.

This siege formed another of those numerous instances which became so memorable from the mixture of heroism and horror. Jean Vanderdoes, known in literature by the name of Dousa, and celebrated for his Latin poems, commanded the place. Valdez, who conducted the siege, urged Dousa to surrender; when the latter replied, in the name of the inhabitants, "that when provisions failed them, they would devour their left hands, reserving the right to defend their liberty." A party of the inhabitants, driven to disobedience and revolt by the excess of misery to which they were shortly reduced, attempted to force the burgomaster, Vanderwerf, to supply them with bread, or yield up the place. But he sternly made the celebrated answer, which, cannot be remembered without shuddering—"Bread I have none; but if my death can afford you relief, tear my body in pieces, and let those who are most hungry devour it!"

But in this extremity relief at last was afforded by the decisive measures of the Prince of Orange, who ordered all the neighboring dikes to be opened and the sluices raised, thus sweeping away the besiegers on the waves of the ocean: the inhabitants of Leyden were apprised of this intention by means of letters intrusted to the safe carriage of pigeons trained for the purpose. The inundation was no sooner effected than hundreds of flat-bottomed boats brought abundance of supplies to the half-famished town; while a violent storm carried the sea across the country for twenty leagues around, and destroyed the Spanish camp, with above one thousand soldiers, who were overtaken by the flood. This deliverance took place on the 3d of October, on which day it is still annually celebrated by the descendants of the grateful citizens.

It was now for the first time that Spain would consent to listen to advice or mediation, which had for its object the termination of this frightful war. The emperor Maximilian II. renewed at this epoch his efforts with Philip; and under such favorable auspices conferences commenced at Breda, where the counts Swartzenberg and Hohenloe, brothers-in-law of the Prince of Orange, met, on the part of the emperor, the deputies from the king of Spain and the patriots; and hopes of a complete pacification were generally entertained. But three months of deliberation proved their fallacy. The patriots demanded toleration for the reformed religion. The king's deputies obstinately refused it. The congress was therefore broken up; and both oppressors and oppressed resumed their arms with increased vigor and tenfold desperation.

Requesens had long fixed his eyes on Zealand as the scene of an expedition by which he hoped to repair the failure before Leyden; and he caused an attempt to be made on the town of Zuriczee, in the island of Scauwen, which merits record as one of the boldest and most original enterprises of the war.

The little islands of Zealand are separated from each other by narrow branches of the sea, which are fordable at low water; and it was by such a passage, two leagues in breadth, and till then untried, that the Spanish detachment of one thousand seven hundred and fifty men, under Ulloa and other veteran captains, advanced to their exploit in the midst of dangers greatly increased by a night of total darkness. Each man carried round his neck two pounds of gunpowder, with a sufficient supply of biscuit for two days; and holding their swords and muskets high over their heads, they boldly waded forward, three abreast, in some places up to their shoulders in water. The alarm was soon given; and a shower of balls was poured upon the gallant band, from upward of forty boats which the Zealanders sent rapidly toward the spot. The only light afforded to either party was from the flashes of their guns; and while the adventurers advanced with undaunted firmness, their equally daring assailants, jumping from their boats into the water, attacked them with oars and hooked handspikes, by which many of the Spaniards were destroyed. The rearguard, in this extremity, cut off from their companions, was obliged to retreat; but the rest, after a considerable loss, at length reached the land, and thus gained possession of the island, on the night of the 28th of September, 1575.

Requesens quickly afterward repaired to the scene of this gallant exploit, and commenced the siege of Zuriczee, which he did not live to see completed. After having passed the winter months in preparation for the success of this object which he had so much at heart, he was recalled to Brussels by accounts of new mutinies in the Spanish cavalry; and the very evening before he reached the city he was attacked by a violent fever, which carried him off five days afterward, on the 5th of March, 1516.

The suddenness of Requesen's illness had not allowed time for even the nomination of a successor, to which he was authorized by letters patent from the king. It is believed that his intention was to appoint Count Mansfield to the command of the army, and De Berlaimont to the administration of civil affairs. The government, however, now devolved entirely into the hands of the council of state, which was at that period composed of nine members. The principal of these was Philip de Croi, duke of Arschot; the other leading members were Viglius, Counts Mansfield and Berlaimont; and the council was degraded by numbering, among the rest, Debris and De Roda, two of the notorious Spaniards who had formed part of the Council of Blood.

The king resolved to leave the authority in the hands of this incongruous mixture, until the arrival of Don John of Austria, his natural brother, whom he had already named to the office of governor-general. But in the interval the government assumed an aspect of unprecedented disorder; and widespread anarchy embraced the whole country. The royal troops openly revolted, and fought against each other like deadly enemies. The nobles, divided in their views, arrogated to themselves in different places the titles and powers of command. Public faith and private probity seemed alike destroyed. Pillage, violence and ferocity were the commonplace characteristics of the times.

Circumstances like these may be well supposed to have revived the hopes of the Prince of Orange, who quickly saw amid this chaos the elements of order, strength, and liberty. Such had been his previous affliction at the harrowing events which he witnessed and despaired of being able to relieve, that he had proposed to the patriots of Holland and Zealand to destroy the dikes, submerge the whole country, and abandon to the waves the soil which refused security to freedom. But Providence destined him to be the savior, instead of the destroyer, of his country. The chief motive of this excessive desperation had been the apparent desertion by Queen Elizabeth of the cause which she had hitherto so mainly assisted. Offended at the capture of some English ships by the Dutch, who asserted that they carried supplies for the Spaniards, she withdrew from them her protection; but by timely submission they appeased her wrath; and it is thought by some historians that even thus early the Prince of Orange proposed to place the revolted provinces wholly under her protection. This, however, she for the time refused; but she strongly solicited Philip's mercy for these unfortunate countries, through the Spanish ambassador at her court.

In the meantime the council of state at Brussels seemed disposed to follow up as far as possible the plans of Requesens. The siege of Zuriczee was continued; but speedy dissensions among the members of the government rendered their authority contemptible, if not utterly extinct, in the eyes of the people. The exhaustion of the treasury deprived them of all power to put an end to the mutinous excesses of the Spanish troops, and the latter carried their licentiousness to the utmost bounds. Zuriczee, admitted to a surrender, and saved from pillage by the payment of a large sum, was lost to the royalists within three months, from the want of discipline in its garrison; and the towns and burghs of Brabant suffered as much from the excesses of their nominal protectors as could have been inflicted by the enemy. The mutineers at length, to the number of some thousands, attacked and carried by force the town of Alost, at equal distances between Brussels, Ghent, and Antwerp, imprisoned the chief citizens, and levied contributions on all the country round. It was then that the council of state found itself forced to proclaim them rebels, traitors, and enemies to the king and the country, and called on all loyal subjects to pursue and exterminate them wherever they were found in arms.

This proscription of the Spanish mutineers was followed by the convocation of the states-general, and the government thus hoped to maintain some show of union and some chance of authority. But a new scene of intestine violence completed the picture of executive inefficiency. On the 4th of September, the grand bailiff of Brabant, as lieutenant of the Baron de Hesse, governor of Brussels, entered the council chamber by force, and arrested all the members present, on suspicion of treacherously maintaining intelligence with the Spaniards. Counts Mansfield and Berlaimont were imprisoned, with some others. Viglius escaped this indignity by being absent froth indisposition. This bold measure was hailed by the people with unusual joy, as the signal for that total change in the government which they reckoned on as the prelude to complete freedom.

The states-general were all at this time assembled, with the exception of those of Flanders, who joined the others with but little delay. The general reprobation against the Spaniards procured a second decree of proscription; and their desperate conduct justified the utmost violence with which they might be pursued. They still held the citadels of Ghent and Antwerp, as well as Maestricht, which they had seized on, sacked, and pillaged with all the fury which a barbarous enemy inflicts on a town carried by assault. On the 3d of November, the other body of mutineers, in possession of Alost, marched to the support of their fellow brigands in the citadel of Antwerp; and both, simultaneously attacking this magnificent city, became masters of it in all points, in spite of a vigorous resistance on the part of the citizens. They then began a scene of rapine and destruction unequalled in the annals of these desperate wars. More than five hundred private mansions and the splendid town-house were delivered to the flames: seven thousand citizens perished by the sword or in the waters of the Scheldt. For three days the carnage and the pillage went on with unheard-of fury; and the most opulent town in Europe was thus reduced to ruin and desolation by a few thousand frantic ruffians. The loss was valued at above two million golden crowns. Vargas and Romero were the principal leaders of this infernal exploit; and De Roda gained a new title to his immortality of shame by standing forth as its apologist.

The states-general, assembled at Ghent, were solemnly opened on the 14th of September. Being apprehensive of a sudden attack from the Spanish troops in the citadel, they proposed a negotiation, and demanded a protecting force from the Prince of Orange, who immediately entered into a treaty with their envoy, and sent to their assistance eight companies of infantry and seventeen pieces of cannon, under the command of the English colonel, Temple. In the midst of this turmoil and apparent insecurity, the states-general proceeded in their great work, and assumed the reins of government in the name of the king. They allowed the council of state still nominally to exist, but they restricted its powers far within those it had hitherto exercised; and the government, thus absolutely assuming the form of a republic, issued manifestoes in justification of its conduct, and demanded succor from all the foreign powers. To complete the union between the various provinces, it was resolved to resume the negotiations commenced the preceding year at Breda; and the 10th of October was fixed for this new congress to be held in the town-house of Ghent.

On the day appointed, the congress opened its sittings; and rapidly arriving at the termination of its important object, the celebrated treaty known by the title of "The Pacification of Ghent" was published on the 8th of November, to the sound of bells and trumpets; while the ceremony was rendered still more imposing by the thunder of the artillery which battered the walls of the besieged citadel. It was even intended to have delivered a general assault against the place at the moment of the proclamation; but the mutineers demanded a capitulation and finally surrendered three days afterward. It was the wife of the famous Mondragon who commanded the place in her husband's absence; and by her heroism gave a new proof of the capability of the sex to surpass the limits which nature seems to have fixed for their conduct.

The Pacification contained twenty-five articles. Among others, it was agreed:

That a full amnesty should be passed for all offences whatsoever.

That the estates of Brabant, Flanders, Hainault, Artois, and others, on the one part; the Prince of Orange, and the states of Holland and Zealand and their associates, on the other; promised to maintain good faith, peace, and friendship, firm and inviolable; to mutually assist each other, at all times, in council and action; and to employ life and fortune, above all things, to expel from the country the Spanish soldiers and other foreigners.

That no one should be allowed to injure or insult, by word or deed, the exercise of the Catholic religion, on pain of being treated as a disturber of the public peace.

That the edicts against heresy and the proclamations of the duke of Alva should be suspended.

That all confiscations, sentences, and judgments rendered since 1566 should be annulled.

That the inscriptions, monuments, and trophies erected by the duke of Alva should be demolished.

Such were the general conditions of the treaty; the remaining articles chiefly concerned individual interests. The promulgation of this great charter of union, which was considered as the fundamental law of the country, was hailed in all parts of the Netherlands with extravagant demonstrations of joy.



CHAPTER XI

TO THE RENUNCIATION OF THE SOVEREIGNTY OF SPAIN AND THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

A.D. 1576—1580

On the very day of the sack of Antwerp, Don John of Austria arrived at Luxemburg. This ominous commencement of his viceregal reign was not belied by the events which followed; and the hero of Lepanto, the victor of the Turks, the idol of Christendom, was destined to have his reputation and well-won laurels tarnished in the service of the insidious despotism to which he now became an instrument. Don John was a natural son of Charles V., and to fine talents and a good disposition united the advantages of hereditary courage and a liberal education. He was born at Ratisbon on the 24th of February, 1543. His reputed mother was a young lady of that place named Barbara Blomberg; but one historian states that the real parent was of a condition too elevated to have her rank betrayed; and that, to conceal the mystery, Barbara Blomberg had voluntarily assumed the distinction, or the dishonor, according to the different constructions put upon the case. The prince, having passed through France, disguised, for greater secrecy or in a youthful frolic, as a negro valet to Prince Octavo Gonzaga, entered on the limits of his new government, and immediately wrote to the council of state in the most condescending terms to announce his arrival.

Nothing could present a less promising aspect to the prince than the country at the head of which he was now placed. He found all its provinces, with the sole exception of Luxemburg, in the anarchy attendant on a ten years' civil war, and apparently resolved on a total breach of their allegiance to Spain. He found his best, indeed his only, course to be that of moderation and management; and it is most probable that at the outset his intentions were really honorable and candid.

The states-general were not less embarrassed than the prince. His sudden arrival threw them into great perplexity, which was increased by the conciliatory tone of his letter. They had now removed from Ghent to Brussels; and first sending deputies to pay the honors of a ceremonious welcome to Don John, they wrote to the Prince of Orange, then in Holland, for his advice in this difficult conjuncture. The prince replied by a memorial of considerable length, dated Middleburg, the 30th of November, in which he gave them the most wise and prudent advice; the substance of which was to receive any propositions coming from the wily and perfidious Philip with the utmost suspicion, and to refuse all negotiation with his deputy, if the immediate withdrawal of the foreign troops was not at once conceded, and the acceptance of the Pacification guaranteed in its most ample extent.

This advice was implicitly followed; the states in the meantime taking the precaution of assembling a large body of troops at Wavre, between Brussels and Namur, the command of which was given to the count of Lalain. A still more important measure was the despatch of an envoy to England, to implore the assistance of Elizabeth. She acted on this occasion with frankness and intrepidity; giving a distinguished reception to the envoy, De Sweveghem, and advancing a loan of one hundred thousand pounds sterling, on condition that the states made no treaty without her knowledge or participation.

To secure still more closely the federal union that now bound the different provinces, a new compact was concluded by the deputies on the 9th of January, 1577, known by the title of The Union of Brussels, and signed by the prelates, ecclesiastics, lords, gentlemen, magistrates, and others, representing the estates of the Netherlands. A copy of this act of union was transmitted to Don John, to enable him thoroughly to understand the present state of feeling among those with whom he was now about to negotiate. He maintained a general tone of great moderation throughout the conference which immediately took place; and after some months of cautious parleying, in the latter part of which the candor of the prince seemed doubtful, and which the native historians do not hesitate to stigmatize as merely assumed, a treaty was signed at Marche-en-Famenne, a place between Namur and Luxemburg, in which every point insisted on by the states was, to the surprise and delight of the nation, fully consented to and guaranteed. This important document is called The Perpetual Edict, bears date the 12th of February, 1577, and contains nineteen articles. They were all based on the acceptance of the Pacification; but one expressly stipulated that the count of Beuren should be set at liberty as soon as the Prince of Orange, his father, had on his part ratified the treaty.

Don John made his solemn entry into Brussels on the 1st of May, and assumed the functions of his limited authority. The conditions of the treaty were promptly and regularly fulfilled. The citadels occupied by the Spanish soldiers were given up to the Flemish and Walloon troops; and the departure of these ferocious foreigners took place at once. The large sums required to facilitate this measure made it necessary to submit for a while to the presence of the German mercenaries. But Don John's conduct soon destroyed the temporary delusion which had deceived the country. Whether his projects were hitherto only concealed, or that they were now for the first time excited by the disappointment of those hopes of authority held out to him by Philip, and which his predecessors had shared, it is certain that he very early displayed his ambition, and very imprudently attempted to put it in force. He at once demanded from the council of state the command of the troops and the disposal of the revenues. The answer was a simple reference to the Pacification of Ghent; and the prince's rejoinder was an apparent submission, and the immediate despatch of letters in cipher to the king, demanding a supply of troops sufficient to restore his ruined authority. These letters were intercepted by the king of Navarre, afterward Henry IV. of France, who immediately transmitted them to the Prince of Orange, his old friend and fellow-soldier.

Public opinion, to the suspicions of which Don John had been from the first obnoxious, was now unanimous in attributing to design all that was unconstitutional and unfair. His impetuous character could no longer submit to the restraint of dissimulation, and he resolved to take some bold and decided measure. A very favorable opportunity was presented in the arrival of the queen of Navarre, Marguerite of Valois, at Namur, on her way to Spa. The prince, numerously attended, hastened to the former town under pretence of paying his respects to the queen. As soon as she left the place, he repaired to the glacis of the town, as if for the mere enjoyment of a walk, admired the external appearance of the citadel, and expressed a desire to be admitted inside. The young count of Berlaimont, in the absence of his father, the governor of the place, and an accomplice in the plot with Don John, freely admitted him. The prince immediately drew forth a pistol, and exclaimed that "that was the first moment of his government"; took possession of the place with his immediate guard, and instantly formed them into a devoted garrison.

The Prince of Orange immediately made public the intercepted letters; and, at the solicitation of the states-general, repaired to Brussels; into which city he made a truly triumphant entry on the 23d of September, and was immediately nominated governor, protector or ruward of Brabant—a dignity which had fallen into disuse, but was revived on this occasion, and which was little inferior in power to that of the dictators of Rome. His authority, now almost unlimited, extended over every province of the Netherlands, except Namur and Luxemburg, both of which acknowledged Don John.

The first care of the liberated nation was to demolish the various citadels rendered celebrated and odious by the excesses of the Spaniards. This was done with an enthusiastic industry in which every age and sex bore a part, and which promised well for liberty. Among the ruins of that of Antwerp the statue of the duke of Alva was discovered; dragged through the filthiest streets of the town; and, with all the indignity so well merited by the original, it was finally broken into a thousand pieces.

The country, in conferring such extensive powers on the Prince of Orange, had certainly gone too far, not for his desert, but for its own tranquillity. It was impossible that such an elevation should not excite the discontent and awaken the enmity of the haughty aristocracy of Flanders and Brabant; and particularly of the House of Croi, the ancient rivals of that of Nassau. The then representative of that family seemed the person most suited to counterbalance William's excessive power. The duke of Arschot was therefore named governor of Flanders; and he immediately put himself at the head of a confederacy of the Catholic party, which quickly decided to offer the chief government of the country, still in the name of Philip, to the archduke Mathias, brother of the emperor Rodolf II., and cousin-german to Philip of Spain, a youth but nineteen years of age. A Flemish gentleman named Maelsted was intrusted with the proposal. Mathias joyously consented; and, quitting Vienna with the greatest secrecy, he arrived at Maestricht, without any previous announcement, and expected only by the party that had invited him, at the end of October, 1577.

The Prince of Orange, instead of showing the least symptom of dissatisfaction at this underhand proceeding aimed at his personal authority, announced his perfect approval of the nomination, and was the foremost in recommending measures for the honor of the archduke and the security of the country. He drew up the basis of a treaty for Mathias's acceptance, on terms which guaranteed to the council of state and the states-general the virtual sovereignty, and left to the young prince little beyond the fine title which had dazzled his boyish vanity. The Prince of Orange was appointed his lieutenant, in all the branches of the administration, civil, military, or financial; and the duke of Arschot, who had hoped to obtain an entire domination over the puppet he had brought upon the stage, saw himself totally foiled in his project, and left without a chance or a pretext for the least increase to his influence.

But a still greater disappointment attended this ambitious nobleman in the very stronghold of his power. The Flemings, driven by persecution to a state of fury almost unnatural, had, in their antipathy to Spain, adopted a hatred against Catholicism, which had its source only in political frenzy, while the converts imagined it to arise from reason and conviction. Two men had taken advantage of this state of the public mind and gained over it an unbounded ascendency. They were Francis de Kethulle, lord of Ryhove, and John Hembyse, who each seemed formed to realize the beau-ideal of a factious demagogue. They had acquired supreme power over the people of Ghent, and had at their command a body of twenty thousand resolute and well-armed supporters. The duke of Arschot vainly attempted to oppose his authority to that of these men; and he on one occasion imprudently exclaimed that "he would have them hanged, even though they were protected by the Prince of Orange himself." The same night Ryhove summoned the leaders of his bands; and quickly assembling a considerable force, they repaired to the duke's hotel, made him prisoner, and, without allowing him time to dress, carried him away in triumph. At the same time the bishops of Bruges and Ypres, the high bailiffs of Ghent and Courtrai, the governor of Oudenarde, and other important magistrates, were arrested—accused of complicity with the duke, but of what particular offence the lawless demagogues did not deign to specify. The two tribunes immediately divided the whole honors and authority of administration; Ryhove as military, and Hembyse as civil, chief.

The latter of these legislators completely changed the forms of the government; he revived the ancient privileges destroyed by Charles V., and took all preliminary measures for forcing the various provinces to join with the city of Ghent in forming a federative republic. The states-general and the Prince of Orange were alarmed, lest these troubles might lead to a renewal of the anarchy from the effects of which the country had but just obtained breathing-time. Ryhove consented, at the remonstrance of the Prince of Orange, to release the duke of Arschot; but William was obliged to repair to Ghent in person, in the hope of establishing order. He arrived on the 29th of December, and entered on a strict inquiry with his usual calmness and decision. He could not succeed in obtaining the liberty of the other prisoners, though he pleaded for them strongly. Having severely reprimanded the factious leaders, and pointed out the dangers of their illegal course, he returned to Brussels, leaving the factious city in a temporary tranquillity which his firmness and discretion could alone have obtained.

The archduke Mathias, having visited Antwerp, and acceded to all the conditions required of him, made his public entry into Brussels on the 18th of January, 1578, and was installed in his dignity of governor-general amid the usual fetes and rejoicings. Don John of Austria was at the same time declared an enemy to the country, with a public order to quit it without delay; and a prohibition was issued against any inhabitant acknowledging his forfeited authority.

War was now once more openly declared; some fruitless negotiations having afforded a fair pretext for hostilities. The rapid appearance of a numerous army under the orders of Don John gave strength to the suspicions of his former dissimulation. It was currently believed that large bodies of the Spanish troops had remained concealed in the forests of Luxemburg and Lorraine; while several regiments, which had remained in France in the service of the League, immediately re-entered the Netherlands. Alexander Farnese, prince of Parma, son of the former stadtholderess, came to the aid of his uncle, Don John, at the head of a large force of Italians; and these several reinforcements, with the German auxiliaries still in the country, composed an army of twenty thousand men. The army of the states-general was still larger; but far inferior in point of discipline. It was commanded by Antoine de Goignies, a gentleman of Hainault, and an old soldier of the school of Charles V.

After a sharp affair at the village of Riminants, in which the royalists had the worst, the two armies met at Gemblours, on the 31st of January, 1578; and the prince of Parma gained a complete victory, almost with his cavalry only, taking De Goignies prisoner, with the whole of his artillery and baggage. The account of his victory is almost miraculous. The royalists, if we are to credit their most minute but not impartial historian, had only one thousand two hundred men engaged; by whom six thousand were put to the sword, with the loss of but twelve men and little more than an hour's labor.

The news of this battle threw the states into the utmost consternation. Brussels being considered insecure, the archduke Mathias and his council retired to Antwerp; but the victors did not feel their forces sufficient to justify an attack upon the capital. They, however, took Louvain, Tirlemont, and several other towns; but these conquests were of little import in comparison with the loss of Amsterdam, which declared openly and unanimously for the patriot cause. The states-general recovered their courage, and prepared for a new contest. They sent deputies to the diet of Worms, to ask succor from the princes of the empire. The count palatine John Casimir repaired to their assistance with a considerable force of Germans and English, all equipped and paid by Queen Elizabeth. The duke of Alencon, brother of Henry III. of France, hovered on the frontiers of Hainault with a respectable army; and the cause of liberty seemed not quite desperate.

But all the various chiefs had separate interests and opposite views; while the fanatic violence of the people of Ghent sapped the foundations of the pacification to which the town had given its name. The Walloon provinces, deep-rooted in their attachment to religious bigotry, which they loved still better than political freedom, gradually withdrew from the common cause; and without yet openly becoming reconciled with Spain, they adopted a neutrality which was tantamount to it. Don John was, however, deprived of all chance of reaping any advantage from these unfortunate dissensions. He was suddenly taken ill in his camp at Bougy; and died, after a fortnight's suffering, on the 1st of October, 1578, in the thirty-third year of his age.

This unlooked-for close to a career which had been so brilliant, and to a life from which so much was yet to be expected, makes us pause to consider for a moment the different opinions of his times and of history on the fate of a personage so remarkable. The contemporary Flemish memoirs say that he died of the plague; those of Spain call his disorder the purple fever. The examination of his corpse caused an almost general belief that he was poisoned. "He lost his life," says one author, "with great suspicion of poison." "Acabo su vida, con gran sospecho de veneno."—Herrera. Another speaks of the suspicious state of his intestines, but without any direct opinion. An English historian states the fact of his being poisoned, without any reserve. Flemish writers do not hesitate to attribute his murder to the jealousy of Philip II., who, they assert, had discovered a secret treaty of marriage about to be concluded between Don John and Elizabeth of England, securing them the joint sovereignty of the Netherlands. An Italian historian of credit asserts that this ambitious design was attributed to the prince; and admits that his death was not considered as having arisen from natural causes. "E quindi nacque l'opinione dispersa allora, ch'egli mancasse di morte aiutata piu tosto che naturale."—Bentivoglio. It was also believed that Escovedo, his confidential secretary, being immediately called back to Spain, was secretly assassinated by Antonio Perez, Philip's celebrated minister, and by the special orders of the king. Time has, however, covered the affair with impenetrable mystery; and the death of Don John was of little importance to the affairs of the country he governed so briefly and so ingloriously, if it be not that it added another motive to the natural hatred for his assumed murderer.

The prince of Parma, who now succeeded, by virtue of Don John's testament, to the post of governor-general in the name of the king, remained intrenched in his camp. He expected much from the disunion of his various opponents; and what he foresaw very quickly happened. The duke of Alencon disbanded his troops and retired to France; and the prince Palatine, following his example, withdrew to Germany, having first made an unsuccessful attempt to engage the queen of England as a principal in the confederacy. In this perplexity, the Prince of Orange saw that the real hope for safety was in uniting still more closely the northern provinces of the union; for he discovered the fallacy of reckoning on the cordial and persevering fidelity of the Walloons. He therefore convoked a new assembly at Utrecht; and the deputies of Holland, Guelders, Zealand, Utrecht, and Groningen, signed, on the 29th of January, 1579, the famous act called the Union of Utrecht, the real basis or fundamental pact of the republic of the United Provinces. It makes no formal renunciation of allegiance to Spain, but this is virtually done by the omission of the king's name. The twenty-six articles of this act consolidate the indissoluble connection of the United Provinces; each preserving its separate franchises, and following its own good pleasure on the subject of religion. The towns of Ghent, Antwerp, Bruges, and Ypres, soon after acceded to and joined the union.

The prince of Parma now assumed the offensive, and marched against Maestricht with his whole army. He took the place in the month of June, 1579, after a gallant resistance, and delivered it to sack and massacre for three entire days. About the same time Mechlin and Bois-le-duc returned to their obedience to the king. Hembyse having renewed his attempts against the public peace at Ghent, the Prince of Orange repaired to that place, re-established order, frightened the inveterate demagogue into secret flight, and Flanders was once more restored to tranquillity.

An attempt was made this year at a reconciliation between the king and the states. The emperor Rodolf II. and Pope Gregory XIII. offered their mediation; and on the 5th of April a congress assembled at Cologne, where a number of the most celebrated diplomatists in Europe were collected. But it was early seen that no settlement would result from the apparently reciprocal wish for peace. One point—that of religion, the main, and indeed the only one in debate—was now maintained by Philip's ambassador in the same unchristian spirit as if torrents of blood and millions of treasure had never been sacrificed in the cause. Philip was inflexible in his resolution never to concede the exercise of the reformed worship; and after nearly a year of fruitless consultation, and the expenditure of immense sums of money, the congress separated on the 17th of November, without having effected anything. There were several other articles intended for discussion, had the main one been adjusted, on which Philip was fully as determined to make no concession; but his obstinacy was not put to these new tests.

The time had now arrived for the execution of the great and decisive step for independence, the means of effecting which had been so long the object of exertion and calculation on the part of the Prince of Orange. He now resolved to assemble the states of the United Provinces, solemnly abjure the dominion of Spain, and depose King Philip from the sovereignty he had so justly forfeited. Much has been written both for and against this measure, which involved every argument of natural rights and municipal privilege. The natural rights of man may seem to comprise only those which he enjoys in a state of nature; but he carries several of those with him into society, which is based upon the very principle of their preservation. The great precedent which so many subsequent revolutions have acknowledged and confirmed is that which we now record. The states-general assembled at Antwerp early in the year 1580; and, in spite of all the opposition of the Catholic deputies, the authority of Spain was revoked forever, and the United Provinces declared a free and independent state. At the same time was debated the important question as to whether the protection of the new state should be offered to England or to France. Opinions were divided on this point; but that of the Prince of Orange being in favor of the latter country, from many motives of sound policy, it was decided to offer the sovereignty to the duke of Alencon. The archduke Mathias, who was present at the deliberations, was treated with little ceremony; but he obtained the promise of a pension when the finances were in a situation to afford it. The definite proposal to be made to the duke of Alencon was not agreed upon for some months afterward; and it was in the month of August following that St. Aldegonde and other deputies waited on the duke at the chateau of Plessis-le-Tours, when he accepted the offered sovereignty on the proposed conditions, which set narrow bounds to his authority, and gave ample security to the United Provinces. The articles were formally signed on the 29th day of September; and the duke not only promised quickly to lead a numerous army to the Netherlands, but he obtained a letter from his brother, Henry III., dated December 26th, by which the king pledged himself to give further aid, as soon as he might succeed in quieting his own disturbed and unfortunate country. The states-general, assembled at Delft, ratified the treaty on the 30th of December; and the year which was about to open seemed to promise the consolidation of freedom and internal peace.



CHAPTER XII

TO THE MURDER OF THE PRINCE OF ORANGE

A.D. 1580—1584

Philip might be well excused the utmost violence of resentment on this occasion, had it been bounded by fair and honorable efforts for the maintenance of his authority. But every general principle seemed lost in the base inveteracy of private hatred. The ruin of the Prince of Orange was his main object, and his industry and ingenuity were taxed to the utmost to procure his murder. Existing documents prove that he first wished to accomplish this in such a way as that the responsibility and odium of the act might rest on the prince of Parma; but the mind of the prince was at that period too magnanimous to allow of a participation in the crime. The correspondence on the subject is preserved in the archives, and the date of Philip's first letter (30th of November, 1579) proves that even before the final disavowal of his authority by the United Provinces he had harbored his diabolical design. The prince remonstrated, but with no effect. It even appears that Philip's anxiety would not admit of the delay necessary for the prince's reply. The infamous edict of proscription against William bears date the 15th of March; and the most pressing letters commanded the prince of Parma to make it public. It was not, however, till the 15th of June that he sent forth the fatal ban.

This edict, under Philip's own signature, is a tissue of invective and virulence. The illustrious object of its abuse is accused of having engaged the heretics to profane the churches and break the images; of having persecuted and massacred the Catholic priests; of hypocrisy, tyranny, and perjury; and, as the height of atrocity, of having introduced liberty of conscience into his country! For these causes, and many others, the king declares him "proscribed and banished as a public pest"; and it is permitted to all persons to assail him "in his fortune, person, and life, as an enemy to human nature." Philip also, "for the recompense of virtue and the punishment of crime," promises to whoever will deliver up William of Nassau, dead or alive, "in lands or money, at his choice, the sum of twenty-five thousand golden crowns; to grant a free pardon to such person for all former offences of what kind soever, and to invest him with letters patent of nobility."

In reply to this brutal document of human depravity, William published all over Europe his famous "Apology," of which it is enough to say that language could not produce a more splendid refutation of every charge or a more terrible recrimination against the guilty tyrant. It was attributed to the pen of Peter de Villiers, a Protestant minister. It is universally pronounced one of the noblest monuments of history. William, from the hour of his proscription, became at once the equal in worldly station, as he had ever been the superior in moral worth, of his royal calumniator. He took his place as a prince of an imperial family, not less ancient or illustrious than that of the House of Austria; and he stood forward at the supreme tribunal of public feeling and opinion as the accuser of a king who disgraced his lineage and his throne.

By a separate article in the treaty with the states, the duke of Alencon secured to William the sovereignty of Holland and Zealand, as well as the lordship of Friesland, with his title of stadtholder, retaining to the duke his claim on the prince's faith and homage. The exact nature of William's authority was finally ratified on the 24th of July, 1581; on which day he took the prescribed oath, and entered on the exercise of his well-earned rights.

Philip now formed the design of sending back the duchess of Parma to resume her former situation as stadtholderess, and exercise the authority conjointly with her son. But the latter positively declined this proposal of divided power; and he, consequently, was left alone to its entire exercise. Military affairs made but slow progress this year. The most remarkable event was the capture of La Noue, a native of Bretagne, one of the bravest, and certainly the cleverest, officers in the service of the states, into which he had passed after having given important aid to the Huguenots of France. He was considered so important a prize that Philip refused all proposals for his exchange, and detained him in the castle of Limburg for five years.

The siege of Cambray was now undertaken by the prince of Parma in person; while the duke of Alencon, at the head of a large army and the flower of the French nobility, advanced to its relief, and soon forced his rival to raise the siege. The new sovereign of the Netherlands entered the town, and was received with tumultuous joy by the half-starved citizens and garrison. The prince of Parma sought an equivalent for this check in the attack of Tournay, which he immediately afterward invested. The town was but feebly garrisoned; but the Protestant inhabitants prepared for a desperate defence, under the exciting example of the princess of Epinoi, wife of the governor, who was himself absent. This remarkable woman furnishes another proof of the female heroism which abounded in these wars. Though wounded in the arm, she fought in the breach sword in hand, braving peril and death. And when at length it was impossible to hold out longer, she obtained an honorable capitulation, and marched out, on the 29th of November, on horseback, at the head of the garrison, with an air of triumph rather than of defeat.