The duke of Alencon, now created duke of Anjou, by which title we shall hereafter distinguish him, had repaired to England, in hopes of completing his project of marriage with Elizabeth. After three months of almost confident expectation, the virgin queen, at this time fifty years of age, with a caprice not quite justifiable, broke all her former engagements; and, happily for herself and her country, declined the marriage. Anjou burst out into all the violence of his turbulent temper, and set sail for the Netherlands. Elizabeth made all the reparation in her power, by the honors paid him on his dismissal. She accompanied him as far as Canterbury, and sent him away under the convoy of the earl of Leicester, her chief favorite; and with a brilliant suite and a fleet of fifteen sail. Anjou was received at Antwerp with equal distinction; and was inaugurated there on the 19th of February as duke of Brabant, Lothier, Limburg, and Guelders, with many other titles, of which he soon proved himself unworthy. When the Prince of Orange, at the ceremony, placed the ducal mantle on his shoulders, Anjou said to him, "Fasten it so well, prince, that they cannot take it off again!"

During the rejoicings which followed this inauspicious ceremony, Philip's proscription against the Prince of Orange put forth its first fruits. The latter gave a grand dinner in the chateau of Antwerp, which he occupied, on the 18th of March, the birthday of the duke of Anjou; and, as he was quitting the dining-room, on his way to his private chamber, a young man stepped forward and offered a pretended petition, William being at all times of easy access for such an object. While he read the paper, the treacherous suppliant discharged a pistol at his head: the ball struck him under the left ear, and passed out at the right cheek. As he tottered and fell, the assassin drew a poniard to add suicide to the crime, but he was instantly put to death by the attendant guards. The young Count Maurice, William's second son, examined the murderer's body; and the papers found on him, and subsequent inquiries, told fully who and what he was. His name was John Jaureguay, his age twenty-three years; he was a native of Biscay, and clerk to a Spanish merchant of Antwerp, called Gaspar Anastro. This man had instigated him to the crime; having received a promise signed by King Philip, engaging to give him twenty-eight thousand ducats and other advantages, if he would undertake to assassinate the Prince of Orange. The inducements held out by Anastro to his simple dupe, were backed strongly by the persuasions of Antony Timmerman, a Dominican monk; and by Venero, Anastro's cashier, who had from fear declined becoming himself the murderer. Jaureguay had duly heard mass, and received the sacrament, before executing his attempt; and in his pockets were found a catechism of the Jesuits, with tablets filled with prayers in the Spanish language; one in particular being addressed to the Angel Gabriel, imploring his intercession with God and the Virgin, to aid him in the consummation of his object. Other accompanying absurdities seem to pronounce this miserable wretch to be as much an instrument in the hands of others as the weapon of his crime was in his own. Timmerman and Venero made a full avowal of their criminality, and suffered death in the usual barbarous manner of the times. The Jesuits, some years afterward, solemnly gathered the remains of these three pretended martyrs, and exposed them as holy relics for public veneration. Anastro effected his escape.

The alarm and indignation of the people of Antwerp knew no bounds. Their suspicions at first fell on the duke of Anjou and the French party; but the truth was soon discovered; and the rapid recovery of the Prince of Orange from his desperate wound set everything once more to rights. But a premature report of his death flew rapidly abroad; and he had anticipated proofs of his importance in the eyes of all Europe, in the frantic delight of the base, and the deep affliction of the good. Within three months, William was able to accompany the duke of Anjou in his visits to Ghent, Bruges, and the other chief towns of Flanders; in each of which the ceremony of inauguration was repeated. Several military exploits now took place, and various towns fell into the hands of the opposing parties; changing masters with a rapidity, as well as a previous endurance of suffering, that must have carried confusion and change on the contending principles of allegiance into the hearts and heads of the harassed inhabitants.

The duke of Anjou, intemperate, inconstant, and unprincipled, saw that his authority was but the shadow of power, compared to the deep-fixed practices of despotism which governed the other nations of Europe. The French officers, who formed his suite and possessed all his confidence, had no difficulty in raising his discontent into treason against the people with whom he had made a solemn compact. The result of their councils was a deep-laid plot against Flemish liberty; and its execution was ere-long attempted. He sent secret orders to the governors of Dunkirk, Bruges, Termonde, and other towns, to seize on and hold them in his name; reserving for himself the infamy of the enterprise against Antwerp. To prepare for its execution, he caused his numerous army of French and Swiss to approach the city; and they were encamped in the neighborhood, at a place called Borgerhout.

On the 17th of January, 1583, the duke dined somewhat earlier than usual, under the pretext of proceeding afterward to review his army in their camp. He set out at noon, accompanied by his guard of two hundred horse; and when he reached the second drawbridge, one of his officers gave the preconcerted signal for an attack on the Flemish guard, by pretending that he had fallen and broken his leg. The duke called out to his followers, "Courage, courage! the town is ours!" The guard at the gate was all soon despatched; and the French troops, which waited outside to the number of three thousand, rushed quickly in, furiously shouting the war-cry, "Town taken! town taken! kill! kill!" The astonished but intrepid citizens, recovering from their confusion, instantly flew to arms. All differences in religion or politics were forgotten in the common danger to their freedom. Catholics and Protestants, men and women, rushed alike to the conflict. The ancient spirit of Flanders seemed to animate all. Workmen, armed with the instruments of their various trades, started from their shops and flung themselves upon the enemy. A baker sprang from the cellar where he was kneading his dough, and with his oven shovel struck a French dragoon to the ground. Those who had firearms, after expending their bullets, took from their pouches and pockets pieces of money, which they bent between their teeth, and used for charging their arquebuses. The French were driven successively from the streets and ramparts, and the cannons planted on the latter were immediately turned against the reinforcements which attempted to enter the town. The French were everywhere beaten; the duke of Anjou saved himself by flight, and reached Termonde, after the perilous necessity of passing through a large tract of inundated country. His loss in this base enterprise amounted to one thousand five hundred; while that of the citizens did not exceed eighty men. The attempts simultaneously made on the other towns succeeded at Dunkirk and Termonde; but all the others failed.

The character of the Prince of Orange never appeared so thoroughly great as at this crisis. With wisdom and magnanimity rarely equalled and never surpassed, he threw himself and his authority between the indignation of the country and the guilt of Anjou; saving the former from excess, and the latter from execration. The disgraced and discomfited duke proffered to the states excuses as mean as they were hypocritical; and his brother, the king of France, sent a special envoy to intercede for him. But it was the influence of William that screened the culprit from public reprobation and ruin, and regained for him the place and power which he might easily have secured for himself, had he not prized the welfare of his country far above all objects of private advantage. A new treaty was negotiated, confirming Anjou in his former station, with renewed security against any future treachery on his part. He in the meantime retired to France, to let the public indignation subside; but before he could assume sufficient confidence again to face the country he had so basely injured his worthless existence was suddenly terminated, some thought by poison—the common solution of all such doubtful questions in those days—in the month of June in the following year. He expired in his twenty-ninth year.

A disgusting proof of public ingratitude and want of judgment was previously furnished by the conduct of the people of Antwerp against him who had been so often their deliverer from such various dangers. Unable to comprehend the greatness of his mind, they openly accused the Prince of Orange of having joined with the French for their subjugation, and of having concealed a body of that detested nation in the citadel. The populace rushed to the place, and having minutely examined it, were convinced of their own absurdity and the prince's innocence. He scorned to demand their punishment for such an outrageous calumny; but he was not the less afflicted at it. He took the resolution of quitting Flanders, as it turned out, forever; and he retired into Zealand, where he was better known and consequently better trusted.

In the midst of the consequent confusion in the former of these provinces, the prince of Parma, with indefatigable vigor, made himself master of town after town; and turned his particular attention to the creation of a naval force, which was greatly favored by the possession of Dunkirk, Nieuport, and Gravelines. Native treachery was not idle in this time of tumult and confusion. The count of Renneberg, governor of Friesland and Groningen, had set the basest example, and gone over to the Spaniards. The prince of Chimay, son of the duke of Arschot, and governor of Bruges, yielded to the persuasions of his father, and gave up the place to the prince of Parma. Hembyse also, amply confirming the bad opinion in which the Prince of Orange always held him, returned to Ghent, where he regained a great portion of his former influence, and immediately commenced a correspondence with the prince of Parma, offering to deliver up both Ghent and Termonde. An attempt was consequently made by the Spaniards to surprise the former town; but the citizens were prepared for this, having intercepted some of the letters of Hembyse; and the traitor was seized, tried, condemned, and executed on the 4th of August, 1584. He was upward of seventy years of age. Ryhove, his celebrated colleague, died in Holland some years later.

But the fate of so insignificant a person as Hembyse passed almost unnoticed, in the agitation caused by an event which shortly preceded his death.

From the moment of their abandonment by the duke of Anjou, the United Provinces considered themselves independent; and although they consented to renew his authority over the country at large, at the solicitation of the Prince of Orange, they were resolved to confirm the influence of the latter over their particular interests, which they were now sensible could acquire stability only by that means. The death of Anjou left them without a sovereign; and they did not hesitate in the choice which they were now called upon to make. On whom, indeed, could they fix but William of Nassau, without the utmost injustice to him, and the deepest injury to themselves? To whom could they turn, in preference to him who had given consistency to the early explosion of their despair; to him who first gave the country political existence, then nursed it into freedom, and now beheld it in the vigor and prime of independence? He had seen the necessity, but certainly overrated the value, of foreign support, to enable the new state to cope with the tremendous tyranny from which it had broken. He had tried successively Germany, England and France. From the first and the last of these powers he had received two governors, to whom he cheerfully resigned the title. The incapacity of both, and the treachery of the latter, proved to the states that their only chance for safety was in the consolidation of William's authority; and they contemplated the noblest reward which a grateful nation could bestow on a glorious liberator. And is it to be believed that he who for twenty years had sacrificed his repose, lavished his fortune, and risked his life, for the public cause, now aimed at absolute dominion, or coveted a despotism which all his actions prove him to have abhorred? Defeated bigotry has put forward such vapid accusations. He has been also held responsible for the early cruelties which, it is notorious, he used every means to avert, and frequently punished. But while these revolting acts can only be viewed in the light of reprisals against the bloodiest persecution that ever existed, by exasperated men driven to vengeance by a bad example, not one single act of cruelty or bad faith has ever been made good against William, who may be safely pronounced one of the wisest and best men that history has held up as examples to the species.

The authority of one author has been produced to prove that, during the lifetime of his brother Louis, offers were made to him by France of the sovereignty of the northern provinces, on condition of the southern being joined to the French crown. That he ever accepted those offers is without proof; that he never acted on them is certain. But he might have been justified in purchasing freedom for those states which had so well earned it, at the price even of a qualified independence under another power, to the exclusion of those which had never heartily struggled against Spain. The best evidence, however, of William's real views is to be found in the Capitulation, as it is called; that is to say, the act which was on the point of being executed between him and the states, when a base fanatic, instigated by a bloody tyrant, put a period to his splendid career. This capitulation exists at full length, but was never formally executed. Its conditions are founded on the same principles, and conceived in nearly the same terms, as those accepted by the duke of Anjou; and the whole compact is one of the most thoroughly liberal that history has on record. The prince repaired to Delft for the ceremony of his inauguration, the price of his long labors; but there, instead of anticipated dignity, he met the sudden stroke of death.

On the 10th of July, as he left his dining-room, and while he placed his foot on the first step of the great stair leading to the upper apartments of his house, a man named Balthazar Gerard (who, like the former assassin, waited for him at the moment of convivial relaxation), discharged a pistol at his body. Three balls entered it. He fell into the arms of an attendant, and cried out faintly, in the French language, "God pity me! I am sadly wounded—God have mercy on my soul, and on this unfortunate nation!" His sister, the countess of Swartzenberg, who now hastened to his side, asked him in German if he did not recommend his soul to God? He answered, "Yes," in the same language, but with a feeble voice. He was carried into the dining-room, where he immediately expired. His sister closed his eyes; his wife, too, was on the spot—Louisa, daughter of the illustrious Coligny, and widow of the gallant count of Teligny, both of whom were also murdered almost in her sight, in the frightful massacre of St. Bartholomew. We may not enter on a description of the afflicting scene which followed; but the mind is pleased in picturing the bold solemnity with which Prince Maurice, then eighteen years of age, swore—not vengeance or hatred against his father's murderers—but that he would faithfully and religiously follow the glorious example he had given him.

Whoever would really enjoy the spirit of historical details should never omit an opportunity of seeing places rendered memorable by associations connected with the deeds, and especially with the death, of great men; the spot, for instance, where William was assassinated at Delft; the old staircase he was just on the point of ascending; the narrow pass between that and the dining-hall whence he came out, of scarcely sufficient extent for the murderer to held forth his arm and his pistol, two and a half feet long. This weapon, and its fellow, are both preserved in the museum of The Hague, together with two of the fatal bullets, and the very clothes which the victim wore. The leathern doublet, pierced by the balls and burned by the powder, lies beside the other parts of the dress, the simple gravity of which, in fashion and color, irresistibly brings the wise, great man before us, and adds a hundred-fold to the interest excited by a recital of his murder.

There is but one important feature in the character of William which we have hitherto left untouched, but which the circumstances of his death seemed to sanctify, and point out for record in the same page with it. We mean his religious opinions; and we shall despatch a subject which is, in regard to all men, so delicate, indeed so sacred, in a few words. He was born a Lutheran. When he arrived, a boy, at the court of Charles V., he was initiated into the Catholic creed, in which he was thenceforward brought up. Afterward, when he could think for himself and choose his profession of faith, he embraced the doctrine of Calvin. His whole public conduct seems to prove that he viewed sectarian principles chiefly in the light of political instruments; and that, himself a conscientious Christian, in the broad sense of the term, he was deeply imbued with the spirit of universal toleration, and considered the various shades of belief as subservient to the one grand principle of civil and religious liberty, for which he had long devoted and at length laid down his life. His assassin was taken alive, and four days afterward executed with terrible circumstances of cruelty, which he bore as a martyr might have borne them. He was a native of Burgundy, and had for some months lingered near his victim, and insinuated himself into his confidence by a feigned attachment to liberty, and an apparent zeal for the reformed faith. He was nevertheless a bigoted Catholic and, by his own confession, he had communicated his design to, and received encouragement to its execution from, more than one minister of the sect to which he belonged. But his avowal criminated a more important accomplice, and one whose character stands so high in history that it behooves us to examine thoroughly the truth of the accusation, and the nature of the collateral proofs by which it is supported. Most writers on this question have leaned to the side which all would wish to adopt, for the honor of human nature and the integrity of a celebrated name. But an original letter exists in the archives of Brussels, from the prince of Parma himself to Philip of Spain, in which he admits that Balthazar Gerard had communicated to him his intention of murdering the Prince of Orange some months before the deed was done; and he mixes phrases of compassion for "the poor man" (the murderer) and of praise for the act; which, if the document be really authentic, sinks Alexander of Parma as low as the wretch with whom he sympathized.



CHAPTER XIII

TO THE DEATH OF ALEXANDER, PRINCE OF PARMA

A.D. 1584—1592

The death of William of Nassau not only closes the scene of his individual career, but throws a deep gloom over the history of a revolution that was sealed by so great a sacrifice. The animation of the story seems suspended. Its events lose for a time their excitement. The last act of the political drama is performed. The great hero of the tragedy is no more. The other most memorable actors have one by one passed away. A whole generation has fallen in the contest; and it is with exhausted interest, and feelings less intense, that we resume the details of war and blood, which seem no longer sanctified by the grander movements of heroism. The stirring impulse of slavery breaking its chains yields to the colder inspiration of independence maintaining its rights. The men we have now to depict were born free; and the deeds they did were those of stern resolve rather than of frantic despair. The present picture may be as instructive as the last, but it is less thrilling. Passion gives place to reason; and that which wore the air of fierce romance is superseded by what bears the stamp of calm reality.

The consternation caused by the news of William's death soon yielded to the firmness natural to a people inured to suffering and calamity. The United Provinces rejected at once the overtures made by the prince of Parma to induce them to obedience. They seemed proud to show that their fate did not depend on that of one man. He therefore turned his attention to the most effective means of obtaining results by force which he found it impossible to secure by persuasion. He proceeded vigorously to the reduction of the chief towns of Flanders, the conquest of which would give him possession of the entire province, no army now remaining to oppose him in the field. He soon obliged Ypres and Termonde to surrender; and Ghent, forced by famine, at length yielded on reasonable terms. The most severe was the utter abolition of the reformed religion; by which a large portion of the population was driven to the alternative of exile; and they passed over in crowds to Holland and Zealand, not half of the inhabitants remaining behind. Mechlin, and finally Brussels, worn out by a fruitless resistance, followed the example of the rest; and thus, within a year after the death of William of Nassau, the power of Spain was again established in the whole province of Flanders, and the others which comprise what is in modern days generally denominated Belgium.

But these domestic victories of the prince of Parma were barren in any of those results which humanity would love to see in the train of conquest. The reconciled provinces presented the most deplorable spectacle. The chief towns were almost depopulated. The inhabitants had in a great measure fallen victims to war, pestilence and famine. Little inducement existed to replace by marriage the ravages caused by death, for few men wished to propagate a race which divine wrath seemed to have marked for persecution. The thousands of villages which had covered the face of the country were absolutely abandoned to the wolves, which had so rapidly increased that they attacked not merely cattle and children, but grown-up persons. The dogs, driven abroad by hunger, had become as ferocious as other beasts of prey, and joined in large packs to hunt down brutes and men. Neither fields, nor woods, nor roads, were now to be distinguished by any visible limits. All was an entangled mass of trees, weeds, and grass. The prices of the necessaries of life were so high that people of rank, after selling everything to buy bread, were obliged to have recourse to open beggary in the streets of the great towns.

From this frightful picture, and the numerous details which imagination may readily supply, we gladly turn to the contrast afforded by the northern states. Those we have just described have a feeble hold upon our sympathies; we cannot pronounce their sufferings to be unmerited. The want of firmness or enlightenment, which preferred such an existence to the risk of entire destruction, only heightens the glory of the people whose unyielding energy and courage gained them so proud a place among the independent nations of Europe.

The murder of William seemed to carry to the United Provinces conviction of the weakness as well as the atrocity of Spain; and the indecent joy excited among the royalists added to their courage. An immediate council was created, composed of eighteen members, at the head of which was unanimously placed Prince Maurice of Nassau (who even then gave striking indications of talent and prudence); his elder brother, the count of Beuren, now Prince of Orange, being still kept captive in Spain. Count Hohenloe was appointed lieutenant-general; and several other measures were promptly adopted to consolidate the power of the infant republic. The whole of its forces amounted but to five thousand five hundred men. The prince of Parma had eighty thousand at his command. With such means of carrying on his conquests, he sat down regularly before Antwerp, and commenced the operations of one of the most celebrated among the many memorable sieges of those times. He completely surrounded the city with troops; placing a large portion of his army on the left bank of the Scheldt, the other on the right; and causing to be attacked at the same time the two strong forts of Liefkinshoek and Lillo. Repulsed on the latter important point, his only hope of gaining the command of the navigation of the river, on which the success of the siege depended, was by throwing a bridge across the stream. Neither its great rapidity, nor its immense width, nor the want of wood and workmen, could deter him from this vast undertaking. He was assisted, if not guided, in all his projects on the occasion, by Barroccio, a celebrated Italian engineer sent to him by Philip; and the merit of all that was done ought fairly to be, at least, divided between the general and the engineer. If enterprise and perseverance belonged to the first, science and skill were the portion of the latter. They first caused two strong forts to be erected at opposite sides of the river; and adding to their resources by every possible means, they threw forward a pier on each side of, and far into, the stream. The stakes, driven firmly into the bed of the river and cemented with masses of earth and stones, were at a proper height covered with planks and defended by parapets. These estoccades, as they were called, reduced the river to half its original breadth; and the cannon with which they were mounted rendered the passage extremely dangerous to hostile vessels. But to fill up this strait a considerable number of boats were fastened together by chain-hooks and anchors; and being manned and armed with cannon, they were moored in the interval between the estoccades. During these operations, a canal was cut between the Moer and Calloo; by which means a communication was formed with Ghent, which insured a supply of ammunition and provisions. The works of the bridge, which was two thousand four hundred feet in length, were constructed with such strength and solidity that they braved the winds, the floods, and the ice of the whole winter.

The people of Antwerp at first laughed to scorn the whole of these stupendous preparations; but when they found that the bridge resisted the natural elements, by which they doubted not it would have been destroyed, they began to tremble in the anticipation of famine; yet they vigorously prepared for their defence, and rejected the overtures made by the prince of Parma even at this advanced stage of his proceedings. Ninety-seven pieces of cannon now defended the bridge; besides which thirty large barges at each side of the river guarded its extremities; and forty ships of war formed a fleet of protection, constantly ready to meet any attack from the besieged. They, seeing the Scheldt thus really closed up, and all communication with Zealand impossible, felt their whole safety to depend on the destruction of the bridge. The states of Zealand now sent forward an expedition, which, joined with some ships from Lillo, gave new courage to the besieged; and everything was prepared for their great attempt. An Italian engineer named Giambelli was at this time in Antwerp, and by his talents had long protracted the defence. He has the chief merit of being the inventor of those terrible fire-ships which gained the title of "infernal machines"; and with some of these formidable instruments and the Zealand fleet, the long-projected attack was at length made.

Early on the night of the 4th of April, the prince of Parma and his army were amazed by the spectacle of three huge masses of flame floating down the river, accompanied by numerous lesser appearances of a similar kind, and bearing directly against the prodigious barrier, which had cost months of labor to him and his troops, and immense sums of money to the state. The whole surface of the Scheldt presented one sheet of fire; the country all round was as visible as at noon; the flags, the arms of the soldiers, and every object on the bridge, in the fleet, or the forts, stood out clearly to view; and the pitchy darkness of the sky gave increased effect to the marked distinctness of all. Astonishment was soon succeeded by consternation, when one of the three machines burst with a terrific noise before they reached their intended mark, but time enough to offer a sample of their nature. The prince of Parma, with numerous officers and soldiers rushed to the bridge, to witness the effects of this explosion; and just then a second and still larger fire-ship, having burst through the flying bridge of boats, struck against one of the estoccades. Alexander, unmindful of danger, used every exertion of his authority to stimulate the sailors in their attempts to clear away the monstrous machine which threatened destruction to all within its reach. Happily for him, an ensign who was near, forgetting in his general's peril all rules of discipline and forms of ceremony, actually forced him from the estoccade. He had not put his foot on the river bank when the machine blew up. The effects were such as really baffle description. The bridge was burst through; the estoccade was shattered almost to atoms, and, with all that it supported—men, cannon, and the huge machinery employed in the various works—dispersed in the air. The cruel marquis of Roubais, many other officers, and eight hundred soldiers, perished in all varieties of death—by flood, or flame, or the horrid wounds from the missiles with which the terrible machine was overcharged. Fragments of bodies and limbs were flung far and wide; and many gallant soldiers were destroyed, without a vestige of the human form being left to prove that they had ever existed. The river, forced from its bed at either side, rushed into the forts and drowned numbers of their garrisons; while the ground far beyond shook as in an earthquake. The prince was struck down by a beam, and lay for some time senseless, together with two generals, Delvasto and Gajitani, both more seriously wounded than he; and many of the soldiers were burned and mutilated in the most frightful manner. Alexander soon recovered; and by his presence of mind, humanity, and resolution, he endeavored with incredible quickness to repair the mischief, and raised the confidence of his army as high as ever. Had the Zealand fleet come in time to the spot, the whole plan might have been crowned with success; but by some want of concert, or accidental delay, it did not appear; and consequently the beleaguered town received no relief.

One last resource was left to the besieged; that which had formerly been resorted to at Leyden, and by which the place was saved. To enable them to inundate the immense plain which stretched between Lillo and Strabrock up to the walls of Antwerp, it was necessary to cut through the dike which defended it against the irruptions of the eastern Scheldt. This plain was traversed by a high and wide counter-dike, called the dike of Couvestien; and Alexander, knowing its importance, had early taken possession of and strongly defended it by several forts. Two attacks were made by the garrison of Antwerp on this important construction; the latter of which led to one of the most desperate encounters of the war. The prince, seeing that on the results of this day depended the whole consequences of his labors, fought with a valor that even he had never before displayed, and he was finally victorious. The confederates were forced to abandon the attack, leaving three thousand dead upon the dike or at its base; and the Spaniards lost full eight hundred men.

One more fruitless attempt was made to destroy the bridge and raise the siege, by means of an enormous vessel bearing the presumptuous title of The End of the War. But this floating citadel ran aground, without producing any effect; and the gallant governor of Antwerp, the celebrated Philip de Saint Aldegonde, was forced to capitulate on the 16th of August, after a siege of fourteen months. The reduction of Antwerp was considered a miracle of perseverance and courage. The prince of Parma was elevated by his success to the highest pinnacle of renown; and Philip, on receiving the news, displayed a burst of joy such as rarely varied his cold and gloomy reserve.

Even while the fate of Antwerp was undecided, the United Provinces, seeing that they were still too weak to resist alone the undivided force of the Spanish monarchy, had opened negotiations with France and England at once, in the hope of gaining one or the other for an ally and protector. Henry III. gave a most honorable reception to the ambassadors sent to his court, and was evidently disposed to accept their offers, had not the distracted state of his own country, still torn by civil war, quite disabled him from any effective co-operation. The deputies sent to England were also well received. Elizabeth listened to the proposals of the states, sent them an ambassador in return, and held out the most flattering hopes of succor. But her cautious policy would not suffer her to accept the sovereignty; and she declared that she would in nowise interfere with the negotiations, which might end in its being accepted by the king of France. She gave prompt evidence of her sincerity by an advance of considerable sums of money, and by sending to Holland a body of six thousand troops, under the command of her favorite, Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester; and as security for the repayment of her loan, the towns of Flushing and Brille, and the castle of Rammekins, were given up to her.

The earl of Leicester was accompanied by a splendid retinue of noblemen, and a select troop of five hundred followers. He was received at Flushing by the governor, Sir Philip Sidney, his nephew, the model of manners and conduct for the young men of his day. But Leicester possessed neither courage nor capacity equal to the trust reposed in him; and his arbitrary and indolent conduct soon disgusted the people whom he was sent to assist. They had, in the first impulse of their gratitude, given him the title of governor and captain-general of the provinces, in the hope of flattering Elizabeth. But this had a far contrary effect: she was equally displeased with the states and with Leicester; and it was with difficulty that, after many humble submissions, they were able to appease her.

To form a counterpoise to the power so lavishly conferred on Leicester, Prince Maurice was, according to the wise advice of Olden Barnevelt, raised to the dignity of stadtholder, captain-general, and admiral of Holland and Zealand. This is the first instance of these states taking on themselves the nomination to the dignity of stadtholder, for even William has held his commission from Philip, or in his name; but Friesland, Groningen, and Guelders had already appointed their local governors, under the same title, by the authority of the states-general, the archduke Mathias, or even of the provincial states. Holland had now also at the head of its civil government a citizen full of talent and probity, who was thus able to contend with the insidious designs of Leicester against the liberty he nominally came to protect. This was Barnevelt, who was promoted from his office of pensionary of Rotterdam to that of Holland, and who accepted the dignity only on condition of being free to resign it if any accommodation of differences should take place with Spain.

Alexander of Parma had, by the death of his mother, in February, 1586, exchanged his title of prince for the superior one of duke of Parma, and soon resumed his enterprises with his usual energy and success; various operations took place, in which the English on every opportunity distinguished themselves; particularly in an action near the town of Grave, in Brabant; and in the taking of Axel by escalade, under the orders of Sir Philip Sidney. A more important affair occurred near Zutphen, at a place called Warnsfeld, both of which towns have given names to the action. On this occasion the veteran Spaniards, under the marquis of Guasto, were warmly attacked and completely defeated by the English; but the victory was dearly purchased by the death of Sir Philip Sidney, who was mortally wounded in the thigh, and expired a few days afterward, at the early age of thirty-two years. In addition to the valor, talent, and conduct, which had united to establish his fame, he displayed, on this last opportunity of his short career, an instance of humanity that sheds a new lustre on even a character like his. Stretched on the battlefield, in all the agony of his wound, and parched with thirst, his afflicted followers brought him some water, procured with difficulty at a distance, and during the heat of the fight. But Sidney, seeing a soldier lying near, mangled like himself, and apparently expiring, refused the water, saying, "Give it to that poor man; his sufferings are greater than mine."

Leicester's conduct was now become quite intolerable to the states. His incapacity and presumption were every day more evident and more revolting. He seemed to consider himself in a province wholly reduced to English authority, and paid no sort of attention to the very opposite character of the people. An eminent Dutch author accounts for this, in terms which may make an Englishman of this age not a little proud of the contrast which his character presents to what it was then considered. "The Englishman," says Grotius, "obeys like a slave, and governs like a tyrant; while the Belgian knows how to serve and to command with equal moderation." The dislike between Leicester and those he insulted and misgoverned soon became mutual. He retired to the town of Utrecht; and pushed his injurious conduct to such an extent that he became an object of utter hatred to the provinces. All the friendly feelings toward England were gradually changed into suspicion and dislike. Conferences took place at The Hague between Leicester and the states, in which Barnevelt overwhelmed his contemptible shuffling by the force of irresistible eloquence and well-deserved reproaches; and after new acts of treachery, still more odious than his former, this unworthy favorite at last set out for England, to lay an account of his government at the feet of the queen.

The growing hatred against England was fomented by the true patriots, who aimed at the liberty of their country; and may be excused, from the various instances of treachery displayed, not only by the commander-in-chief, but by several of his inferiors in command. A strong fort, near Zutphen, under the government of Roland York, the town of Deventer, under that of William Starily, and subsequently Guelders, under a Scotchman named Pallot, were delivered up to the Spaniards by these men; and about the same time the English cavalry committed some excesses in Guelders and Holland, which added to the prevalent prejudice against the nation in general. This enmity was no longer to be concealed. The partisans of Leicester were, one by one, under plausible pretexts, removed from the council of state; and Elizabeth having required from Holland the exportation into England of a large quantity of rye, it was firmly but respectfully refused, as inconsistent with the wants of the provinces.

Prince Maurice, from the caprice and jealousy of Leicester, now united in himself the whole power of command, and commenced that brilliant course of conduct which consolidated the independence of his country and elevated him to the first rank of military glory. His early efforts were turned to the suppression of the partiality which in some places existed for English domination; and he never allowed himself to be deceived by the hopes of peace held out by the emperor and the kings of Denmark and Poland. Without refusing their mediation, he labored incessantly to organize every possible means for maintaining the war. His efforts were considerably favored by the measures of Philip for the support of the league formed by the House of Guise against Henry III. and Henry IV. of France; but still more by the formidable enterprise which the Spanish monarch was now preparing against England.

Irritated and mortified by the assistance which Elizabeth had given to the revolted provinces, Philip resolved to employ his whole power in attempting the conquest of England itself; hoping afterward to effect with ease the subjugation of the Netherlands. He caused to be built, in almost every port of Spain and Portugal, galleons, carricks, and other ships of war of the largest dimensions; and at the same time gave orders to the duke of Parma to assemble in the harbors of Flanders as many vessels as he could collect together.

The Spanish fleet, consisting of more than one hundred and forty ships of the line, and manned by twenty thousand sailors, assembled at Lisbon under the orders of the duke of Medina Sidonia; while the duke of Parma, uniting his forces, held himself ready on the coast of Flanders, with an army of thirty thousand men and four hundred transports. This prodigious force obtained, in Spain, the ostentatious title of the Invincible Armada. Its destination was for a while attempted to be concealed, under pretext that it was meant for India, or for the annihilation of the United Provinces; but the mystery was soon discovered. At the end of May, the principal fleet sailed from the port of Lisbon; and being reinforced off Corunna by a considerable squadron, the whole armament steered its course, for the shores of England.

The details of the progress and the failure of this celebrated attempt are so thoroughly the province of English history that they would be in this place superfluous. But it must not be forgotten that the glory of the proud result was amply shared by the new republic, whose existence depended on it. While Howard and Drake held the British fleet in readiness to oppose the Spanish Armada, that of Holland, consisting of but twenty-five ships, under the command of Justin of Nassau, prepared to take a part in the conflict. This gallant though illegitimate scion of the illustrious house, whose name he upheld on many occasions, proved himself on the present worthy of such a father as William, and such a brother as Maurice. While the duke of Medina Sidonia, ascending the Channel as far as Dunkirk, there expected the junction of the duke of Parma with his important reinforcement, Justin of Nassau, by a constant activity, and a display of intrepid talent, contrived to block up the whole expected force in the ports of Flanders from Lillo to Dunkirk. The duke of Parma found it impossible to force a passage on any one point; and was doomed to the mortification of knowing that the attempt was frustrated, and the whole force of Spain frittered away, discomfited, and disgraced, from the want of a co-operation, which he could not, however, reproach himself for having withheld. The issue of the memorable expedition, which cost Spain years of preparation, thousands of men, and millions or treasure, was received in the country which sent it forth with consternation and rage. Philip alone possessed or affected an apathy which he covered with a veil of mock devotion that few were deceived by. At the news of the disaster, he fell on his knees, and rendering thanks for that gracious dispensation of Providence, expressed his joy that the calamity was not greater.

The people, the priests, and the commanders of the expedition were not so easily appeased, or so clever as their hypocritical master in concealing their mortification. The priests accounted for this triumph of heresy as a punishment on Spain for suffering the existence of the infidel Moors in some parts of the country. The defeated admirals threw the whole blame on the duke of Parma. He, on his part, sent an ample remonstrance to the king; and Philip declared that he was satisfied with the conduct of his nephew. Leicester died four days after the final defeat and dispersion of the Armada.

The war in the Netherlands had been necessarily suffered to languish, while every eye was fixed on the progress of the Armada, from formation to defeat. But new efforts were soon made by the duke of Parma to repair the time he had lost, and soothe, by his successes, the disappointed pride of Spain. Several officers now came into notice, remarkable for deeds of great gallantry and skill. None among those was so distinguished as Martin Schenck, a soldier of fortune, a man of ferocious activity, who began his career in the service of tyranny, and ended it by chance in that of independence. He changed sides several times, but, no matter who he fought for, he did his duty well, from that unconquerable principle of pugnacity which seemed to make his sword a part of himself.

Schenck had lately, for the last time, gone over to the side of the states, and had caused a fort to be built in the isle of Betewe—that possessed of old by the Batavians—which was called by his name, and was considered the key to the passage of the Rhine. From this stronghold he constantly harassed the archbishop of Cologne, and had as his latest exploit surprised and taken the strong town of Bonn. While the duke of Parma took prompt measures for the relief of the prelate, making himself master in the meantime of some places of strength, the indefatigable Schenck resolved to make an attempt on the important town of Nimeguen. He with great caution embarked a chosen body of troops on the Wahal, and arrived under the walls of Nimeguen at sunrise on the morning chosen for the attack. His enterprise seemed almost crowned with success; when the inhabitants, recovering from their fright, precipitated themselves from the town; forced the assailants to retreat to their boats; and, carrying the combat into those overcharged and fragile vessels, upset several, and among others that which contained Schenck himself, who, covered with wounds, and fighting to the last gasp, was drowned with the greater part of his followers. His body, when recovered, was treated with the utmost indignity, quartered, and hung in portions over the different gates of the city.

The following year was distinguished by another daring attempt on the part of the Hollanders, but followed by a different result. A captain named Haranguer concerted with one Adrien Vandenberg a plan for the surprise of Breda, on the possession of which Prince Maurice had set a great value. The associates contrived to conceal in a boat laden with turf (which formed the principal fuel of the inhabitants of that part of the country), and of which Vandenberg was master, eighty determined soldiers, and succeeded in arriving close to the city without any suspicion being excited. One of the soldiers, named Matthew Helt, being suddenly afflicted with a violent cough, implored his comrades to put him to death, to avoid the risk of a discovery. But a corporal of the city guard having inspected the cargo with unsuspecting carelessness, the immolation of the brave soldier became unnecessary, and the boat was dragged into the basin by the assistance of some of the very garrison who were so soon to fall victims to the stratagem. At midnight the concealed soldiers quitted their hiding-places, leaped on shore, killed the sentinels, and easily became masters of the citadel. Prince Maurice, following close with his army, soon forced the town to submit, and put it into so good a state of defence that Count Mansfield, who was sent to retake it, was obliged to retreat after useless efforts to fulfil his mission.

The duke of Parma, whose constitution was severely injured by the constant fatigues of war and the anxieties attending on the late transactions, had snatched a short interval for the purpose of recruiting his health at the waters of Spa. While at that place he received urgent orders from Philip to abandon for a while all his proceedings in the Netherlands, and to hasten into France with his whole disposable force, to assist the army of the League. The battle of Yvri (in which the son of the unfortunate Count Egmont met his death while fighting in the service of his father's royal murderer) had raised the prospects and hopes of Henry IV. to a high pitch; and Paris, which he closely besieged, was on the point of yielding to his arms. The duke of Parma received his uncle's orders with great repugnance; and lamented the necessity of leaving the field of his former exploits open to the enterprise and talents of Prince Maurice. He nevertheless obeyed; and leaving Count Mansfield at the head of the government, he conducted his troops against the royal opponent, who alone seemed fully worthy of coping with him.

The attention of all Europe was now fixed on the exciting spectacle of a contest between these two greatest captains of the age. The glory of success, the fruit of consummate skill, was gained by Alexander; who, by an admirable manoeuvre, got possession of the town of Lagny-sur-Seine, under the very eyes of Henry and his whole army, and thus acquired the means of providing Paris with everything requisite for its defence. The French monarch saw all his projects baffled, and his hopes frustrated; while his antagonist, having fully completed his object, drew off his army through Champagne, and made a fine retreat through an enemy's country, harassed at every step, but with scarcely any loss.

But while this expedition added greatly to the renown of the general, it considerably injured the cause of Spain in the Low Countries. Prince Maurice, taking prompt advantage of the absence of his great rival, had made himself master of several fortresses; and some Spanish regiments having mutinied against the commanders left behind by the duke of Parma, others, encouraged by the impunity they enjoyed, were ready on the slightest pretext to follow their example. Maurice did not lose a single opportunity of profiting by circumstances so favorable; and even after the return of Alexander he seized on Zutphen, Deventer, and Nimeguen, despite all the efforts of the Spanish army. The duke of Parma, daily breaking down under the progress of disease, and agitated by these reverses, repaired again to Spa, taking at once every possible means for the recruitment of his army and the recovery of his health, on which its discipline and the chances of success now so evidently depended.

But all his plans were again frustrated by a renewal of Philip's peremptory orders to march once more into France, to uphold the failing cause of the League against the intrepidity and talent of Henry IV. At this juncture the emperor Rodolf again offered his mediation between Spain and the United Provinces. But it was not likely that the confederated States, at the very moment when their cause began to triumph, and their commerce was every day becoming more and more flourishing, would consent to make any compromise with the tyranny they were at length in a fair way of crushing.

The duke of Parma again appeared in France in the beginning of the year 1592; and, having formed his communications with the army of the League, marched to the relief of the city of Rouen, at that period pressed to the last extremity by the Huguenot forces. After some sharp skirmishes—and one in particular, in which Henry IV. suffered his valor to lead him into a too rash exposure of his own and his army's safety—a series of manoeuvres took place, which displayed the talents of the rival generals in the most brilliant aspect. Alexander at length succeeded in raising the siege of Rouen, and made himself master of Condebec, which commanded the navigation of the Seine. Henry, taking advantage of what appeared an irreparable fault on the part of the duke, invested his army in the hazardous position he had chosen; but while believing that he had the whole of his enemies in his power, he found that Alexander had passed the Seine with his entire force—raising his military renown to the utmost possible height by a retreat which it was deemed utterly impossible to effect.

On his return to the Netherlands, the duke found himself again under the necessity of repairing to Spa, in search of some relief from the suffering which was considerably increased by the effects of a wound received in this last campaign. In spite of his shattered constitution, he maintained to the latest moment the most active endeavors for the reorganization of his army; and he was preparing for a new expedition into France, when, fortunately for the good cause in both countries, he was surprised by death on the 3d of December, 1592, at the abbey of St. Vaast, near Arras, at the age of forty-seven years. As it was hard to imagine that Philip would suffer anyone who had excited his jealousy to die a natural death, that of the duke of Parma was attributed to slow poison.

Alexander of Parma was certainly one of the most remarkable, and, it may be added, one of the greatest, characters of his day. Most historians have upheld him even higher perhaps than he should be placed on the scale; asserting that he can be reproached with very few of the vices of the age in which he lived. Others consider this judgment too favorable, and accuse him of participation in all the crimes of Philip, whom he served so zealously. His having excited the jealousy of the tyrant, or even had he been put to death by his orders, would little influence the question; for Philip was quite capable of ingratitude or murder, to either an accomplice or an opponent of his baseness. But even allowing that Alexander's fine qualities were sullied by his complicity in these odious measures, we must still in justice admit that they were too much in the spirit of the times, and particularly of the school in which he was trained; and while we lament that his political or private faults place him on so low a level, we must rank him as one of the very first masters in the art of war in his own or any other age.



CHAPTER XIV

TO THE INDEPENDENCE OF BELGIUM AND THE DEATH OF PHILIP II.

A.D. 1592—1599

The duke of Parma had chosen the count of Mansfield for his successor, and the nomination was approved by the king. He entered on his government under most disheartening circumstances. The rapid conquests of Prince Maurice in Brabant and Flanders were scarcely less mortifying than the total disorganization into which those two provinces had fallen. They were ravaged by bands of robbers called Picaroons, whose audacity reached such a height that they opposed in large bodies the forces sent for their suppression by the government. They on one occasion killed the provost of Flanders, and burned his lieutenant in a hollow tree; and on another they mutilated a whole troop of the national militia, and their commander, with circumstances of most revolting cruelty.

The authority of governor-general, though not the title, was now fully shared by the count of Fuentes, who was sent to Brussels by the king of Spain; and the ill effects of this double viceroyalty was soon seen, in the brilliant progress of Prince Maurice, and the continual reverses sustained by the royalist armies. The king, still bent on projects of bigotry, sacrificed without scruple men and treasure for the overthrow of Henry IV. and the success of the League. The affairs of the Netherlands seemed now a secondary object; and he drew largely on his forces in that country for reinforcements to the ranks of his tottering allies. A final blow was, however, struck against the hopes of intolerance in France, and to the existence of the League, by the conversion of Henry IV. to the Catholic religion; he deeming theological disputes, which put the happiness of a whole kingdom in jeopardy, as quite subordinate to the public good.

Such was the prosperity of the United Provinces, that they had been enabled to send a large supply, both of money and men, to the aid of Henry, their constant and generous ally. And notwithstanding this, their armies and fleets, so far from suffering diminution, were augmented day by day. Philip, resolved to summon up all his energy for the revival of the war against the republic, now appointed the archduke Ernest, brother of the emperor Rodolf, to the post which the disunion of Mansfield and Fuentes rendered as embarrassing as it had become inglorious. This prince, of a gentle and conciliatory character, was received at Brussels with great magnificence and general joy; his presence reviving the deep-felt hopes of peace entertained by the suffering people. Such were also the cordial wishes of the prince; but more than one design, formed at this period against the life of Prince Maurice, frustrated every expectation of the kind. A priest of the province of Namur, named Michael Renichon, disguised as a soldier, was the new instrument meant to strike another blow at the greatness of the House of Nassau, in the person of its gallant representative, Prince Maurice; as also in that of his brother, Frederic Henry, then ten years of age. On the confession of the intended assassin, he was employed by Count Berlaimont to murder the two princes. Renichon happily mismanaged the affair, and betrayed his intention. He was arrested at Breda, conducted to The Hague, and there tried and executed on the 3d of June, 1594. This miserable wretch accused the archduke Ernest of having countenanced his attempt; but nothing whatever tends to criminate, while every probability acquits, that prince of such a participation.

In this same year a soldier named Peter Dufour embarked in a like atrocious plot. He, too, was seized and executed before he could carry it into effect; and to his dying hour persisted in accusing the archduke of being his instigator. But neither the judges who tried, nor the best historians who record, his intended crime, gave any belief to this accusation. The mild and honorable disposition of the prince held a sufficient guarantee against its likelihood; and it is not less pleasing to be able fully to join in the prevalent opinion, than to mark a spirit of candor and impartiality break forth through the mass of bad and violent passions which crowd the records of that age.

But all the esteem inspired by the personal character of Ernest could not overcome the repugnance of the United Provinces to trust to the apparent sincerity of the tyrant in whose name he made his overtures for peace. They were all respectfully and firmly rejected; and Prince Maurice, in the meantime, with his usual activity, passed the Meuse and the Rhine, and invested and quickly took the town of Groningen, by which he consummated the establishment of the republic, and secured its rank among the principal powers of Europe.

The archduke Ernest, finding all his efforts for peace frustrated, and all hopes of gaining his object by hostility to be vain, became a prey to disappointment and regret, and died, from the effects of a slow fever, on the 21st of February, 1595; leaving to the count of Fuentes the honors and anxieties of the government, subject to the ratification of the king. This nobleman began the exercise of his temporary functions by an irruption into France, at the head of a small army; war having been declared against Spain by Henry IV., who, on his side, had despatched the Admiral de Villars to attack Philip's possessions in Hainault and Artois. This gallant officer lost a battle and his life in the contest; and Fuentes, encouraged by the victory, took some frontier towns, and laid siege to Cambray, the great object of his plans. The citizens, who detested their governor, the marquis of Bologni, who had for some time assumed an independent tyranny over them, gave up the place to the besiegers; and the citadel surrendered some days later. After this exploit Fuentes returned to Brussels, where, notwithstanding his success, he was extremely unpopular. He had placed a part of his forces under the command of Mondragon, one of the oldest and cleverest officers in the service of Spain. Some trifling affairs took place in Brabant; but the arrival of the archduke Albert, whom the king had appointed to succeed his brother Ernest in the office of governor-general, deprived Fuentes of any further opportunity of signalizing his talents for supreme command. Albert arrived at Brussels on the 11th of February, 1596, accompanied by the Prince of Orange, who, when count of Beuren, had been carried off from the university of Louvain, twenty-eight years previously, and held captive in Spain during the whole of that period.

The archduke Albert, fifth son of the emperor Maximilian II., and brother of Rodolf, stood high in the opinion of Philip, his uncle, and merited his reputation for talents, bravery, and prudence. He had been early made archbishop of Toledo, and afterward cardinal; but his profession was not that of these nominal dignities. He was a warrior and politician of considerable capacity; and had for some years faithfully served the king, as viceroy of Portugal. But Philip meant him for the more independent situation of sovereign of the Netherlands, and at the same time destined him to be the husband of his daughter Isabella. He now sent him, in the capacity of governor-general, to prepare the way for the important change; at once to gain the good graces of the people, and soothe, by this removal from Philip's too close neighborhood, the jealousy of his son, the hereditary prince of Spain. Albert brought with him to Brussels a small reinforcement for the army, with a large supply of money, more wanting at this conjuncture than men. He highly praised the conduct of Fuentes in the operations just finished; and resolved to continue the war on the same plan, but with forces much superior.

He opened his first campaign early; and, by a display of clever manoeuvring, which threatened an attempt to force the French to raise the siege of La Fere, in the heart of Picardy, he concealed his real design—the capture of Calais; and he succeeded in its completion almost before it was suspected. The Spanish and Walloon troops, led on by Rone, a distinguished officer, carried the first defences: after nine days of siege the place was forced to surrender; and in a few more the citadel followed the example. The archduke soon after took the towns of Ardres and Hulst; and by prudently avoiding a battle, to which he was constantly provoked by Henry IV., who commanded the French army in person, he established his character for military talent of no ordinary degree.

He at the same time made overtures of reconciliation to the United Provinces, and hoped that the return of the Prince of Orange would be a means of effecting so desirable a purpose. But the Dutch were not to be deceived by the apparent sincerity of Spanish negotiation. They even doubted the sentiments of the Prince of Orange, whose attachments and principles bad been formed in so hated a school; and nothing passed between them and him but mutual civilities. They clearly evinced their disapprobation of his intended visit to Holland; and he consequently fixed his residence in Brussels, passing his life in an inglorious neutrality.

A naval expedition formed in this year by the English and Dutch against Cadiz, commanded by the earl of Essex, and Counts Louis and William of Nassau, cousins of Prince Maurice, was crowned with brilliant success, and somewhat consoled the provinces for the contemporary exploits of the archduke. But the following year opened with an affair which at once proved his unceasing activity, and added largely to the reputation of his rival, Prince Maurice. The former had detached the count of Varas, with about six thousand men, for the purpose of invading the province of Holland; but Maurice, with equal energy and superior talent, followed big movements, came up with him near Turnhout, on the 24th of January, 1597; and after a sharp action, of which the Dutch cavalry bore the whole brunt, Varas was killed, and his troops defeated with considerable loss.

This action may be taken as a fair sample of the difficulty with which any estimate can be formed of the relative losses on such occasions. The Dutch historians state the loss of the royalists, in killed, at upward of two thousand. Meteren, a good authority, says the peasants buried two thousand two hundred and fifty; while Bentivoglio, an Italian writer in the interest of Spain, makes the number exactly half that amount. Grotius says that the loss of the Dutch was four men killed. Bentivoglio states it at one hundred. But, at either computation, it is clear that the affair was a brilliant one on the part of Prince Maurice.

This was in its consequences a most disastrous affair to the archduke. His army was disorganized, and his finances exhausted; while the confidence of the states in their troops and their general was considerably raised. But the taking of Amiens by Portocarrero, one of the most enterprising of the Spanish captains, gave a new turn to the failing fortunes of Albert. This gallant officer, whose greatness of mind, according to some historians, was much disproportioned to the smallness of his person, gained possession of that important town by a well-conducted stratagem, and maintained his conquest valiantly till he was killed in its defence. Henry IV. made prodigious efforts to recover the place, the chief bulwark on that side of France; and having forced Montenegro, the worthy successor of Portocarrero, to capitulate, granted him and his garrison most honorable conditions. Henry, having secured Amiens against any new attack, returned to Paris and made a triumphal entry into the city.

During this year Prince Maurice took a number of towns in rapid succession; and the states, according to their custom, caused various medals, in gold, silver, and copper, to be struck, to commemorate the victories which had signalized their arms.

Philip II., feeling himself approaching the termination of his long and agitating career, now wholly occupied himself in negotiations for peace with France. Henry IV. desired it as anxiously. The pope, Clement VIII., encouraged by his exhortations this mutual inclination. The king of Poland sent ambassadors to The Hague and to London, to induce the states and Queen Elizabeth to become parties in a general pacification. These overtures led to no conclusion; but the conferences between France and Spain went on with apparent cordiality and great promptitude, and a peace was concluded between these powers at Vervins, on the 2d of May, 1598.

Shortly after the publication of this treaty, another important act was made known to the world, by which Philip ceded to Albert and Isabella, on their being formally affianced—a ceremony which now took place—the sovereignty of Burgundy and the Netherlands. This act bears date the 6th of May, and was proclaimed with all the solemnity due to so important a transaction. It contained thirteen articles; and was based on the misfortunes which the absence of the sovereign had hitherto caused to the Low Countries. The Catholic religion was declared that of the state, in its full integrity. The provinces were guaranteed against dismemberment. The archdukes, by which title the joint sovereigns were designated without any distinction of sex, were secured in the possession, with right of succession to their children; and a provision was added, that in default of posterity their possessions should revert to the Spanish crown. The infanta Isabella soon sent her procuration to the archduke, her affianced husband, giving him full power and authority to take possession of the ceded dominions in her name as in his own; and Albert was inaugurated with great pomp at Brussels, on the 22d of August. Having put everything in order for the regulation of the government during his absence, he set out for Spain for the purpose of accomplishing his spousals, and bringing back his bride to the chief seat of their joint power. But before his departure he wrote to the various states of the republic, and to Prince Maurice himself, strongly recommending submission and reconciliation. These letters received no answer; a new plot against the life of Prince Maurice, by a wretched individual named Peter Pann, having aroused the indignation of the country, and determined it to treat with suspicion and contempt every insidious proposition from the tyranny it defied.

Albert placed his uncle, the cardinal Andrew of Austria, at the head of the temporary government, and set out on his journey; taking the little town of Halle in his route, and placing at the altar of the Virgin, who is there held in particular honor, his cardinal's hat as a token of his veneration. He had not made much progress when he received accounts of the demise of Philip II., who died, after long suffering, and with great resignation, on the 13th of September, 1598, at the age of seventy-two. Albert was several months on his journey through Germany; and the ceremonials of his union with the infanta did not take place till the 18th of April, 1599, when it was finally solemnized in the city of Valencia in Spain.

This transaction, by which the Netherlands were positively erected into a separate sovereignty, seems naturally to make the limits of another epoch in their history. It completely decided the division between the northern and southern provinces, which, although it had virtually taken place long previous to this period, could scarcely be considered as formally consummated until now. Here then we shall pause anew, and take a rapid review of the social state of the Netherlands during the last half century, which was beyond all doubt the most important period of their history, from the earliest times till the present.

It has been seen that when Charles V. resigned his throne and the possession of his vast dominions to his son, arts, commerce, and manufactures had risen to a state of considerable perfection throughout the Netherlands. The revolution, of which we have traced the rise and progress, naturally produced to those provinces which relapsed into slavery a most lamentable change in every branch of industry, and struck a blow at the general prosperity, the effects of which are felt to this very day. Arts, science, and literature were sure to be checked and withered in the blaze of civil war; and we have now to mark the retrograde movements of most of those charms and advantages of civilized life, in which Flanders and the other southern states were so rich.

The rapid spread of enlightenment on religious subjects soon converted the manufactories and workshops of Flanders into so many conventicles of reform; and the clear-sighted artisans fled in thousands from the tyranny of Alva into England, Germany, and Holland—those happier countries, where the government adopted and went hand in hand with the progress of rational belief. Commerce followed the fate of manufactures. The foreign merchants one by one abandoned the theatre of bigotry and persecution; and even Antwerp, which had succeeded Bruges as the great mart of European traffic, was ruined by the horrible excesses of the Spanish soldiery, and never recovered from the shock. Its trade, its wealth, and its prosperity, were gradually transferred to Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and the towns of Holland and Zealand; and the growth of Dutch commerce attained its proud maturity in the establishment of the India Company in 1596, the effects of which we shall have hereafter more particularly to dwell on.

The exciting and romantic enterprises of the Portuguese and Spanish navigators in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries roused all the ardor of other nations for those distant adventures; and the people of the Netherlands were early influenced by the general spirit of Europe. If they were not the discoverers of new worlds, they were certainly the first to make the name of European respected and venerated by the natives.

Animated by the ardor which springs from the spirit of freedom and the enthusiasm of success, the United Provinces labored for the discovery of new outlets for their commerce and navigation. The government encouraged the speculations of individuals, which promised fresh and fertile sources of revenue, so necessary for the maintenance of the war. Until the year 1581 the merchants of Holland and Zealand were satisfied to find the productions of India at Lisbon, which was the mart of that branch of trade ever since the Portuguese discovered the passage by the Cape of Good Hope. But Philip II., having conquered Portugal, excluded the United Provinces from the ports of that country; and their enterprising mariners were from that period driven to those efforts which rapidly led to private fortune and general prosperity. The English had opened the way in this career; and the states-general having offered a large reward for the discovery of a northwest passage, frequent and most adventurous voyages took place. Houtman, Le Maire, Heemskirk, Ryp, and others, became celebrated for their enterprise, and some for their perilous and interesting adventures.

The United Provinces were soon without any rival on the seas. In Europe alone they had one thousand two hundred merchant ships in activity, and upward of seventy thousand sailors constantly employed. They built annually two thousand vessels. In the year 1598, eighty ships sailed from their ports for the Indies or America. They carried on, besides, an extensive trade on the coast of Guinea, whence they brought large quantities of gold-dust; and found, in short, in all quarters of the globe the reward of their skill, industry, and courage.

The spirit of conquest soon became grafted on the habits of trade. Expedition succeeded to expedition. Failure taught wisdom to those who did not want bravery. The random efforts of individuals were succeeded by organized plans, under associations well constituted and wealthy; and these soon gave birth to those eastern and western companies before alluded to. The disputes between the English and the Hanseatic towns were carefully observed by the Dutch, and turned to their own advantage. The English manufacturers, who quickly began to flourish, from the influx of Flemish workmen under the encouragement of Elizabeth, formed companies in the Netherlands, and sent their cloths into those very towns of Germany which formerly possessed the exclusive privilege of their manufacture. These towns naturally felt dissatisfied, and their complaints were encouraged by the king of Spain. The English adventurers received orders to quit the empire; and, invited by the states-general, many of them fixed their residence in Middleburg, which became the most celebrated woollen market in Europe.

The establishment of the Jews in the towns of the republic forms a remarkable epoch in the annals of trade. This people, so outraged by the loathsome bigotry which Christians have not blushed to call religion, so far from being depressed by the general persecution, seemed to find it a fresh stimulus to the exertion of their industry. To escape death in Spain and Portugal they took refuge in Holland, where toleration encouraged and just principles of state maintained them. They were at first taken for Catholics, and subjected to suspicion; but when their real faith was understood they were no longer molested.

Astronomy and geography, two sciences so closely allied with and so essential to navigation, flourished now throughout Europe. Ortilius of Antwerp, and Gerard Mercator of Rupelmonde, were two of the greatest geographers of the sixteenth century; and the reform in the calendar at the end of that period gave stability to the calculations of time, which had previously suffered all the inconvenient fluctuations attendant on the old style.

Literature had assumed during the revolution in the Netherlands the almost exclusive and repulsive aspect of controversial learning. The university of Douay, installed in 1562 as a new screen against the piercing light of reform, quickly became the stronghold of intolerance. That of Leyden, established by the efforts of the Prince of Orange, soon after the famous siege of that town in 1574, was on a less exclusive plan—its professors being in the first instance drawn from Germany. Many Flemish historians succeeded in this century to the ancient and uncultivated chroniclers of preceding times; the civil wars drawing forth many writers, who recorded what they witnessed, but often in a spirit of partisanship and want of candor, which seriously embarrasses him who desires to learn the truth on both sides of an important question. Poetry declined and drooped in the times of tumult and suffering; and the chambers of rhetoric, to which its cultivation had been chiefly due, gradually lost their influence, and finally ceased to exist.

In fixing our attention on the republic of the United Provinces during the epoch now completed, we feel the desire, and lament the impossibility, of entering on the details of government in that most remarkable state. For these we must refer to what appears to us the best authority for clear and ample information on the prerogative of the stadtholder, the constitution of the states-general, the privileges of the tribunals and local assemblies, and other points of moment concerning the principles of the Belgic confederation.[4]

[Footnote 4: See Cerisier, Hist. Gen. des Prov. Unies.]



CHAPTER XV

TO THE CAMPAIGN OF PRINCE MAURICE AND SPINOLA

A.D. 1599—1604

Previous to his departure for Spain, the archduke Albert had placed the government of the provinces which acknowledged his domination in the hands of his uncle, the cardinal Andrew of Austria, leaving in command of the army Francisco Mendoza, admiral of Aragon. The troops at his disposal amounted to twenty-two thousand fighting men—a formidable force, and enough to justify the serious apprehensions of the republic. Albert, whose finances were exhausted by payments made to the numerous Spanish and Italian mutineers, had left orders with Mendoza to secure some place on the Rhine, which might open a passage for free quarters in the enemy's country. But this unprincipled officer forced his way into the neutral districts of Cleves and Westphalia; and with a body of executioners ready to hang up all who might resist, and of priests to prepare them for death, he carried such terror on his march that no opposition was ventured. The atrocious cruelties of Mendoza and his troops baffle all description: on one occasion they murdered, in cold blood, the count of Walkenstein, who surrendered his castle on the express condition of his freedom; and they committed every possible excess that may be imagined of ferocious soldiery encouraged by a base commander.

Prince Maurice soon put into motion, to oppose this army of brigands, his small disposable force of about seven thousand men. With these, however, and a succession of masterly manoeuvres, he contrived to preserve the republic from invasion, and to paralyze and almost destroy an army three times superior in numbers to his own. The horrors committed by the Spaniards, in the midst of peace, and without the slightest provocation, could not fail to excite the utmost indignation in a nation so fond of liberty and so proud as Germany. The duchy of Cleves felt particularly aggrieved; and Sybilla, the sister of the duke, a real heroine in a glorious cause, so worked on the excited passions of the people by her eloquence and her tears that she persuaded all the orders of the state to unite against the odious enemy. Some troops were suddenly raised; and a league was formed between several princes of the empire to revenge the common cause. The count de la Lippe was chosen general of their united forces; and the choice could not have fallen on one more certainly incapable or more probably treacherous.

The German army, with their usual want of activity, did not open the campaign till the month of June. It consisted of fourteen thousand men; and never was an army so badly conducted. Without money, artillery, provisions, or discipline, it was at any moment ready to break up and abandon its incompetent general; and on the very first encounter with the enemy, and after a loss of a couple of hundred men, it became self-disbanded; and, flying in every direction, not a single man could be rallied to clear away this disgrace.

The states-general, cruelly disappointed at this result of measures from which they had looked for so important a diversion in their favor, now resolved on a vigorous exertion of their own energies, and determined to undertake a naval expedition of a magnitude greater than any they had hitherto attempted. The force of public opinion was at this period more powerful than it had ever yet been in the United Provinces; for a great number of the inhabitants, who, during the life of Philip II., conscientiously believed that they could not lawfully abjure the authority once recognized and sworn to, became now liberated from those respectable, although absurd, scruples; and the death of one unfeeling despot gave thousands of new citizens to the state.

A fleet of seventy-three vessels, carrying eight thousand men, was soon equipped, under the order of Admiral Vander Goes; and, after a series of attempts on the coasts of Spain, Portugal, Africa, and the Canary Isles, this expedition, from which the most splendid results were expected, was shattered, dispersed, and reduced to nothing by a succession of unheard-of mishaps.

To these disappointments were now added domestic dissensions in the republic, in consequence of the new taxes absolutely necessary for the exigencies of the state. The conduct of Queen Elizabeth greatly added to the general embarrassment: she called for the payment of her former loans; insisted on the recall of the English troops, and declared her resolution to make peace with Spain. Several German princes promised aid in men and money, but never furnished either; and in this most critical juncture, Henry IV. was the only foreign sovereign who did not abandon the republic. He sent them one thousand Swiss troops, whom he had in his pay; allowed them to levy three thousand more in France; and gave them a loan of two hundred thousand crowns—a very convenient supply in their exhausted state.

The archdukes Albert and Isabella arrived in the Netherlands in September, and made their entrance into Brussels with unexampled magnificence. They soon found themselves in a situation quite as critical as was that of the United Provinces, and both parties displayed immense energy to remedy their mutual embarrassments. The winter was extremely rigorous; so much so as to allow of military operations being undertaken on the ice. Prince Maurice soon commenced a Christmas campaign by taking the town of Wachtendenck; and he followed up his success by obtaining possession of the important forts of Crevecoeur and St. Andrew, in the island of Bommel. A most dangerous mutiny at the same time broke out in the army of the archdukes; and Albert seemed left without troops or money at the very beginning of his sovereignty.

But these successes of Prince Maurice were only the prelude to an expedition of infinitely more moment, arranged with the utmost secrecy, and executed with an energy scarcely to be looked for from the situation of the states. This was nothing less than an invasion poured into the very heart of Flanders, thus putting the archdukes on the defence of their own most vital possessions, and changing completely the whole character of the war. The whole disposable troops of the republic, amounting to about seventeen thousand men, were secretly assembled in the island of Walcheren, in the month of June; and setting sail for Flanders, they disembarked near Ghent, and arrived on the 20th of that month under the walls of Bruges. Some previous negotiations with that town had led the prince to expect that it would have opened its gates at his approach. In this he was, however, disappointed; and after taking possession of some forts in the neighborhood, he continued his march to Nieuport, which place he invested on the 1st of July.

At the news of this invasion the archdukes, though taken by surprise, displayed a promptness and decision that proved them worthy of the sovereignty which seemed at stake. With incredible activity they mustered, in a few days, an army of twelve thousand men, which they passed in review near Ghent. On this occasion Isabella, proving her title to a place among those heroic women with whom the age abounded, rode through the royalist ranks, and harangued them in a style of inspiring eloquence that inflamed their courage and secured their fidelity. Albert, seizing the moment of this excitement, put himself at their head, and marched to seek the enemy, leaving his intrepid wife at Bruges, the nearest town to the scene of the action he was resolved on. He gained possession of all the forts taken and garrisoned by Maurice a few days before; and pushing forward with his apparently irresistible troops, he came up on the morning of the 2d of July with a large body of those of the states, consisting of about three thousand men, sent forward under the command of Count Ernest of Nassau to reconnoitre and judge of the extent of this most unexpected movement: for Prince Maurice was, in his turn, completely surprised; and not merely by one of those manoeuvres of war by which the best generals are sometimes deceived, but by an exertion of political vigor and capacity of which history offers few more striking examples. Such a circumstance, however, served only to draw forth a fresh display of those uncommon talents which in so many various accidents of war had placed Maurice on the highest rank for military talent. The detachment under Count Ernest of Nassau was chiefly composed of Scottish infantry; and this small force stood firmly opposed to the impetuous attack of the whole royalist army—thus giving time to the main body under the prince to take up a position, and form in order of battle. Count Ernest was at length driven back, with the loss of eight hundred men killed, almost all Scottish; and being cut off from the rest of the army, was forced to take refuge in Ostend, which town was in possession of the troops of the states.

The army of Albert now marched on, flushed with this first success and confident of final victory. Prince Maurice received them with the courage of a gallant soldier and the precaution of a consummate general. He had caused the fleet of ships of war and transports, which had sailed along the coast from Zealand, and landed supplies of ammunition and provisions, to retire far from the share, so as to leave to his army no chance of escape but in victory. The commissioners from the states, who always accompanied the prince as a council of observation rather than of war, had retired to Ostend in great consternation, to wait the issue of the battle which now seemed inevitable. A scene of deep feeling and heroism was the next episode of this memorable day, and throws the charm of natural affection over those circumstances in which glory too seldom leaves a place for the softer emotions of the heart. When the patriot army was in its position, and firmly waiting the advance of the foe, Prince Maurice turned to his brother, Frederick Henry, then sixteen years of age, and several young noblemen, English, French, and German, who like him attended on the great captain to learn the art of war: he pointed out in a few words the perilous situation in which he was placed; declared his resolution to conquer or perish on the battlefield, and recommended the boyish band to retire to Ostend, and wait for some less desperate occasion to share his renown or revenge his fall. Frederick Henry spurned the affectionate suggestion, and swore to stand by his brother to the last; and all his young companions adopted the same generous resolution.

The army of the states was placed in order of battle, about a league in front of Nieuport, in the sand hills with which the neighborhood abounds, its left wing resting on the seashore. Its losses of the morning, and of the garrisons left in the forts near Bruges, reduced it to an almost exact equality with that of the archduke. Each of these armies was composed of that variety of troops which made them respectively an epitome of the various nations of Europe. The patriot force contained Dutch, English, French, German, and Swiss, under the orders of Count Louis of Nassau, Sir Francis and Sir Horace Vere, brothers and English officers of great celebrity, with other distinguished captains. The archduke mustered Spaniards, Italians, Walloons, and Irish in his ranks, led on by Mendoza, La Berlotta, and their fellow-veterans. Both armies were in the highest state of discipline, trained to war by long service, and enthusiastic in the several causes which they served; the two highest principles of enthusiasm urging them on—religious fanaticism on the one hand, and the love of freedom on the other. The rival generals rode along their respective lines, addressed a few brief sentences of encouragement to their men, and presently the bloody contest began.

It was three o'clock in the afternoon when the archduke commenced the attack. His advanced guard, commanded by Mendoza and composed of those former mutineers who now resolved to atone for their misconduct, marched across the sand-hills with desperate resolution. They soon came into contact with the English contingent under Francis Vere, who was desperately wounded in the shock. The assault was almost irresistible. The English, borne down by numbers, were forced to give way; but the main body pressed on to their support. Horace Vere stepped forward to supply his brother's place. Not an inch of ground more was gained or lost; the firing ceased, and pikes and swords crossed each other in the resolute conflict of man to man. The action became general along the whole line. The two commanders-in-chief were at all points. Nothing could exceed their mutual display of skill and courage. At length the Spanish cavalry, broken by the well-directed fire of the patriot artillery, fell back on their infantry and threw it into confusion. The archduke at the same instant was wounded by a lance in the cheek, unhorsed, and forced to quit the field. The report of his death, and the sight of his war-steed galloping alone across the field, spread alarm through the royalist ranks. Prince Maurice saw and seized on the critical moment. He who had so patiently maintained his position for three hours of desperate conflict now knew the crisis for a prompt and general advance. He gave the word and led on to the charge, and the victory was at once his own.

The defeat of the royalist army was complete. The whole of the artillery, baggage, standards, and ammunition, fell into the possession of the conquerors. Night coming on saved those who fled, and the nature of the ground prevented the cavalry from consummating the destruction of the whole. As far as the conflicting accounts of the various historians may be compared and calculated on, the royalists had three thousand killed, and among them several officers of rank; while the patriot army, including those who fell in the morning action, lost something more than half the number. The archduke, furnished with a fresh horse, gained Bruges in safety; but he only waited there long enough to join his heroic wife, with whom he proceeded rapidly to Ghent, and thence to Brussels. Mendoza was wounded and taken prisoner, and with difficulty saved by Prince Maurice from the fury of the German auxiliaries.

The moral effect produced by this victory on the vanquishers and vanquished, and on the state of public opinion throughout Europe, was immense; but its immediate consequences were incredibly trifling. Not one result in a military point of view followed an event which appeared almost decisive of the war. Nieuport was again invested three days after the battle; but a strong reinforcement entering the place saved it from all danger, and Maurice found himself forced for want of supplies to abandon the scene of his greatest exploit. He returned to Holland, welcomed by the acclamations of his grateful country, and exciting the jealousy and hatred of all who envied his glory or feared his power. Among the sincere and conscientious republicans who saw danger to the public liberty in the growing influence of a successful soldier, placed at the head of affairs and endeared to the people by every hereditary and personal claim, was Olden Barneveldt, the pensionary; and from this period may be traced the growth of the mutual antipathy which led to the sacrifice of the most virtuous statesman of Holland, and the eternal disgrace of its hitherto heroic chief.

The states of the Catholic provinces assembled at Brussels now gave the archdukes to understand that nothing but peace could satisfy their wishes or save the country from exhaustion and ruin. Albert saw the reasonableness of their remonstrances, and attempted to carry the great object into effect. The states-general listened to his proposals. Commissioners were appointed on both sides to treat of terms. They met at Berg-op-Zoom; but their conferences were broken up almost as soon as commenced. The Spanish deputies insisted on the submission of the republic to its ancient masters. Such a proposal was worse than insulting; it proved the inveterate insincerity of those with whom it originated, and who knew it could not be entertained for a moment. Preparations for hostilities were therefore commenced on both sides, and the whole of the winter was thus employed.

Early in the spring Prince Maurice opened the campaign at the head of sixteen thousand men, chiefly composed of English and French, who seemed throughout the contest to forget their national animosities, and to know no rivalry but that of emulation in the cause of liberty. The town of Rhinberg soon fell into the hands of the prince. His next attempt was against Bois-le-duc; and the siege of this place was signalized by an event that flavored of the chivalric contests now going out of fashion. A Norman gentleman of the name of Breaute, in the service of Prince Maurice, challenged the royalist garrison to meet him and twenty of his comrades in arms under the walls of the place. The cartel was accepted by a Fleming named Abramzoom, but better known by the epithet Leckerbeetje (savory bit), who, with twenty more, met Breaute and his friends. The combat was desperate. The Flemish champion was killed at the first shock by his Norman challenger; but the latter falling into the hands of the enemy, they treacherously and cruelly put him to death, in violation of the strict conditions of the fight. Prince Maurice was forced to raise the siege of Bois-le-duc, and turn his attention in another direction.