CHAPTER XIII
JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY
1814-1877
One day in the year 1827, a boy of thirteen first entered the chapel of Harvard College to take his seat there as a student. His schoolfellows looked at him curiously first, because of his remarkable beauty, and second because of his reputation as a linguist, a great distinction among boys who looked upon foreign tongues as so many traps for tripping their unlucky feet in the thorny paths of learning. He had come to Harvard from Mr. Bancroft's school at Northampton, where he was famous as a reader, writer, and orator, and was more admired, perhaps, than is good for any boy. Both pupils and masters recognized his talents and overlooked his lack of industry. But neither dreamed that their praise was but the first tribute to the genius of the future historian, John Lothrop Motley.
Motley was born in Dorchester, a suburb of Boston, April 15, 1814. As a child he was delicate, a condition which fostered his great natural love for reading. He devoured books of every kind, history, poetry, plays, orations, and particularly the novels of Cooper and Scott. Not satisfied with reading about heroes, he must be a hero himself, and when scarcely eight he bribed a younger brother with sweetmeats to lie quiet, wrapped in a shawl, while he, mounted upon a stool, delivered Mark Antony's oration over the dead body of Cæsar. At eleven he began a novel, the scene of which was laid in the Housatonic Valley, because that name sounded grand and romantic. On Saturday afternoon he and his playmates, among whom was Wendell Phillips, would assemble in the garret of the Motley house, and in plumed hats and doublets enact tragedies or stirring melodramas. Comedy was too frivolous for these entertainments, in which Motley was always the leading spirit; the chief bandit, the heavy villain, the deadliest foe.
In the school-room also Motley led by divine right, and expected others to follow. Thus, in spite of his dislike for rigid rules of study, he was always before the class as one to be deferred to and honored wherever honor might be given. While still at college Motley seems to have had some notion of a literary career. His writing-desk was constantly crammed with manuscripts of plays, poetry, and sketches of character, which never found their way to print, and which were burned to make room for others when the desk became too full. With the exception of a few verses published in a magazine, this work of his college days served only for pastime. Graduated from Harvard at seventeen, Motley spent the next two years at a German university, where he lived the pleasant, social life of the German student, one of his friends and classmates being young Bismarck, afterward the great Chancellor, who was always fond of the handsome young American, whose wit was the life of the student company and whose powers of argument surpassed his own.
Coming back to America, Motley studied law until 1841, when, in his twenty-seventh year, he received the appointment of Secretary of Legation to St. Petersburg.
His friends now looked forward to a brilliant diplomatic career for him, but the unfavorable climate soon led him to resign the appointment and return to America. But the St. Petersburg visit was not fruitless, for three years afterward he published an essay in the North American Review which showed a keen appreciation of Russian political conditions. The article was called "A Memoir of the Life of Peter the Great," and its appearance surprised the critics who had justly condemned a novel previously published by the young author. His essay portrayed the character of the great Peter, half king and half savage. It showed a full appreciation of the difficulties that hindered the establishment of a great monarchy, and paid due honor to that force of will, savage courage, and ideal patriotism that laid the foundations of Russia's greatness. The reader is made to see this fiery Sclav, building up a new Russia from his ice-fields and barren valleys; a Russia of great cities, imperial armies, vast commerce, and splendid hopes. It was a brilliant and scholarly narrative of the achievement of a great man, and it placed Motley among the writers of highest promise.
A year later he began collecting materials for the serious work of his life. For his subject he chose the story of the old Frisians or Hollanders who rescued from the sea a few islands formed by the ooze and slime of ages, and laid thereon the foundations of a great nation. They raised dykes to keep back the sea, built canals to serve as roads, turned bogs into pasture-lands and morasses into grain-fields, fought with the Romans, founded cities, laid the foundations of the vast maritime commerce of to-day, and finally, in the sixteenth century, when the wealth of their merchants, the power of their cities, and the progress of their arts were the wonder of the world, met their worst foe in the person of their own king, Philip II.
From the beginning the Hollanders or Netherlanders had cherished a savage independence which commanded respect even in barbarous ages, and this characteristic insured a quarrel between them and their ruler. Philip II. was King of Spain and of Sicily as well as of Holland. Born in Spain, he could not speak a word of Dutch. He was haughty, overbearing, and unscrupulous, and he resolved to make the Hollanders see in him a master as well as a king. Already in his father's reign there had been trouble because of the growing Protestantism which many of the Hollanders favored. Already some of the chief Dutch cities had been punished for resisting the Emperor's authority, and their burghers sentenced to kneel in sackcloth and beg him to spare their homes from destruction. These things happened in his father's time and had made an impression upon Philip II., who saw that in every case the royal power had been triumphant, and he believed himself invincible.
Motley painted the life of Philip from the day of his inauguration through all the years of revolt, bloodshed, and horror which marked his reign. He saw that this rebellion of the Hollanders meant less the discontent of a people with their king than the growth of a great idea, the idea that civil and religious liberty is the right of all men and nations. To Motley's mind the struggle seemed like some old battle between giants and Titans. Unlike other historians, who looked over the world for a subject, rejecting first one and then another, Motley's subject took possession of him and would not be rejected. His work was born, as a great poem or picture is born, from a glimpse of things hidden from other eyes.
But at once he discovered that Prescott had already in contemplation a history of Philip II. This was a severe blow to all his hopes. But he resolved to see Prescott, lay the matter before him, and abide by his decision, feeling that the master of history, who was the author of the Conquest of Mexico and the Conquest of Peru, would be the best adviser of a young and unknown writer.
Prescott received the idea with the most generous kindness, advised Motley to undertake the work, and placed at his disposal all the material which he himself had collected for his own enterprise.
After several years the book appeared in 1856, under the title The Rise of the Dutch Republic.
To write this book Motley dwelt for years in the world of three hundred years ago, when the whole of Europe was shaken by the new Protestantism, when Raleigh and Drake were sailing the Atlantic and adding the shores of the new world to English dominion, the French settling Canada and the Mississippi Valley, Spain sending her mission priests to California, and the Huguenots establishing themselves in Florida. Thus the foundations of the American Republic were being laid, while Philip was striving to overthrow the freedom of the Netherlands.
Leaving the nineteenth century as far behind him as he could, Motley established himself successively at Berlin, Dresden, The Hague, and Brussels, in order to consult the libraries and archives of state which contained documents relating to the revolt of the Netherlands against Philip II. In speaking of his work in the libraries of Brussels, he says that at this time only dead men were his familiar friends, and that he was at home in any country, and he calls himself a worm feeding on musty mulberry leaves out of which he was to spin silk. Day after day, year after year, he haunted the old libraries, whose shadows held so many secrets of the past, until the personalities of those great heroes who fought for the liberty of Holland were as familiar as the faces of his own children. William of Orange, called the Silent, the Washington of Dutch independence, Count Egmont, Van Horn, and all that band of heroes who espoused the cause of liberty, came to be comrades.
And the end rewarded the years of toil. Out of old mouldy documents and dead letters Motley recreated the Netherlands of the sixteenth century. Again were seen the great cities with their walls miles in extent, their gay streets, their palaces and churches, and public buildings, and the great domains of the clergy, second to none in Europe. The nobles possessed magnificent estates and entertained their guests with jousts and tourneys like the great lords of England and France. The tradespeople and artisans who comprised the population of the cities were divided into societies or guilds, which were so powerful that no act of state could be passed without their consent, and so rich that to their entertainments the proudest nobles came as guests, to see a luxuriousness which vied with that of kings. The Dutch artists were celebrated for their noble pictures, for their marvellous skill in wood and stone carving, and for the wonderful tapestries which alone would have made Dutch art famous.
In the midst of this prosperity Philip II. came to the throne, and soon after his coronation the entire Netherlands were in revolt. Motley has described this struggle like an eye-witness. We see the officers of the Inquisition dragging their victims daily to the torture-chamber, and the starved and dying rebels defending their cities through sieges which the Spanish army made fiendish in suffering. Motley's description of the siege of Leyden, and his portrait of William the Silent, are among the finest specimens of historical composition.
The work ends with the death of the Prince of Orange, this tragic event forming a fitting climax to the great revolution which had acknowledged him its hope and leader.
Motley carried the completed manuscript of The Rise of the Dutch Republic to London, but failing to find a publisher willing to undertake such a work by an unknown author, he was obliged to produce it at his own expense. It met with the most flattering reception, and the reviews which appeared in England, France, and America placed Motley's name among the great historians. The book was soon translated into Dutch, German, and Russian.
Motley's two other great works were similar in character to the first. The second work, called The History of the United Netherlands, began with the death of William the Silent, and ended with the period known as the Twelve Years' Truce, when by common consent the independence of the Netherlands was recognized throughout Europe.
This work consists of four volumes, the first two having been published in 1860, and the remaining two in 1867.
These volumes embrace much of the history of England, which became the ally and friend of Holland, and are full of the great events which made up that epoch of English history. The names of Queen Elizabeth, the Duke of Leicester, Lord Burghley, and the noble and chivalrous Sir Philip Sidney, who lost his life on one of the battle-fields of this war, figure as largely in its pages as those of the Dutch themselves. The war had ceased to be the revolt of Holland against Spain, and had become a mighty battle for the liberty of Europe. Every nation was interested in its progress, and all men knew that upon its success or failure would depend the fate of Europe for many centuries. In this work Motley's pen lost none of its art. The chapters follow one another in harmonious succession, the clear and polished style giving no hint of the obscurities of diplomatic letters, the almost illegible manuscripts, and the contradictory reports which often made up the original materials.
Like its predecessor, it was at once classed among the great histories of the world. The Life of John of Barneveld, who shares with William of Orange the glory of achieving Dutch independence, was the subject of Motley's next and last work. The book is not in a strict sense a biography. It is rather a narrative of the quarrel of the Netherlands among themselves over theological questions. The country was now Protestant, and yet the people fought as fiercely over the different points of doctrine as when they were struggling for their independence. The book appeared in 1874, completing the series, which the author called The History of the Eighty Years' War for Independence.
During this period of literary work Motley was twice appointed to represent the United States at foreign courts. He was Minister to Austria from 1861 to 1866, and during the stormy period of the Civil War showed his powers as a statesman in his diplomatic relations with the Austrian Court, which honored him always both as a diplomatist and as a patriot, his devotion to his country being a proverb among his fellows.
In 1868 he was appointed Minister to England, but held the office only two years. On both these occasions Motley proved his ability to meet and master questions of state, and there is no doubt that, had fortune led him into active political life, he would have made a brilliant reputation.
He died in May, 1877, and was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery, near London, England.