The Story of Dutch Painting

by Charles H. Caffin

be retained in the country at the expense of the Estates. The latter and the cities remonstrated, and the troops were withdrawn, though the Inquisition continued its fell work. So matters drifted until 1566, a memorable year in the story of the rise and growth of Holland.

The Flemish nobles, though Roman Catholic to a man, drew up a “Compromise” and pledged themselves to resist the Inquisition. William of Orange, also a Catholic, though he had married a Protestant princess, Anna of Saxony, and would later change his profession of faith, instituted a secret system of espionage in Madrid over the acts and counsels of Philip. Then the League of Nobles, Orange assisting in the wording of the document, presented a “Request” to the vice-regent, praying that the edicts against heresy and the Inquisition might be withdrawn and the management of affairs restored to the Estates-General. Its presentation drew from one of the vice-regent’s counselors, Berlaymont, the expression: “Is it possible that your Highness can be afraid of these beggars?”

Three days later the dissentient nobles were entertained at a feast by Brederode. When the enthusiasm was at its height, and the guests were debating on a name and a watchword, the host let drop among them Berlaymont’s contemptuous phrase. At the same moment he produced a beggar’s wallet and bowl; and, slinging the one over his shoulder and filling the other with wine, called upon all present to drink to the Beggars. The word was caught up, and from man to man the wallet and bowl were passed round, until all had enrolled themselves in the Beggars’ ranks. Then, at the height of the excitement, the counts Orange, Horn, and Egmont entered the room. They were compelled to drink to the pledge and, although they immediately retired, were henceforth marked for Philip’s special revenge.

Later in the same year the “Image-breaking” occurred in Antwerp. It was unpremeditated and in its occurrence unguided: the spontaneous explosion of latent passions smoldering in the mob; the spark that kindled it, the annual procession and parade of the image of the Virgin. Scoffs and ribaldry were succeeded by horse-play, which involved a rough-and-tumble fight among some of the mob that filled the cathedral. The excitement grew. The mob, surging in and out of the building, began to mock an old woman who sold images of the Virgin at the cathedral door. She retaliated in kind, and from the bandying of words the mob and their victim proceeded to the hurling of missiles. A riot was averted for the moment by the arrival of the margrave and senators; but, when evening came, the cathedral was still occupied by a mob, now bent on mischief. The image of the Virgin was the first object of its fury, which, however, soon spread to a wholesale wrecking and desecration. The sacred vessels, the glory of stained glass, and the intricate beauty of carved work—every object of beauty that had made this one of the richest shrines of religious art in Christendom—were irretrievably destroyed. The blind, unreasoning fury, thus aroused, spread to other cities. Philip retaliated with another fury, coldly and calculatingly horrible. Alva was despatched with ten thousand troops, and the so-called Spanish Fury was inaugurated.

Its first victims were the counts Horn and Egmont, William of Orange escaping into exile. A Council of Troubles, or, as the Netherlanders called it, of Blood, was established, and in the six years of Alva’s stay eighteen thousand six hundred persons were put to death. These were irrespective of those who fell in armed resistance. For in 1572 the Beggars of the sea took Brill, and a little later drove the Spanish garrison out of Flushing. It was the signal for revolt. Nearly all the cities of Holland and Zeeland declared for William of Orange, and, in an assembly of the Estates at Dort, voted funds for a war, directed, however, even then, not against the sovereignty of Philip, but to the expulsion of his soldiery. The fortunes of the patriots were checkered with more defeats than victories, but meanwhile the Spanish operations were impeded by lack of money; the troops depending upon the pillage of an impoverished country and the occasional sack of a city, while the treasure-ships of Spain were being intercepted and her commerce continually harassed by the Beggars of the sea. So Philip sparred for breath, and through his vice-regent agreed to the withdrawal of his troops, a treaty to this effect being signed at Brussels in 1577.

William, however, was too convinced of the duplicity of Philip to be a party to the treaty, and persuaded the northern provinces to refuse their assent. The struggle was continued, punctuated by the Union of Utrecht, in which the Estates agreed upon a Dutch republic; by Philip’s rejoinder in the shape of a ban declared against the life of Orange, with a price of twenty-five thousand golden crowns upon his head; and by the counter-movement of the patriots. This was the declaration of Dutch independence, formally issued at The Hague on the 26th of July, 1581.

To ideas that had been slowly but steadily accumulating under the pressure of dire facts a formulation had at last been discovered and a name given. A new word had been uttered in the world, that was, as the centuries advanced, to be echoed and reëchoed and to be fruitful in newly advancing ideas. Comparable only to it, in modern history, was the word spoken sixty years before by Luther at the Diet of Worms. And now the doctrine of the responsibility to itself of the conscience, with its allied doctrine of religious freedom, had been completed by the political doctrine of the responsibility of government to the governed, and its allied doctrine of a nation’s right to the choice of its own form of government. But, just as the idea must be in labor until the word for it is delivered, so the word itself is but a battle-cry, the fruits of which are painfully and slowly won. The labor of Holland’s actual independence, begun fifteen years before, had yet to be protracted sixty-seven years.

Hitherto all the hope of the patriots had centered in William of Orange. In declaring their independence, they offered him the crown. Partly to prove the disinterestedness of his motives, still more perhaps because he believed that the final release from Spain could be effected only by putting the new state under the protection of France or England, he refused the dignity. Fortunately, however, France continued to be a reed on which no dependence could be placed, and the English help, when it did come, was indirect. Meanwhile, Philip’s ban was still out against the Stadtholder, and an attempt was made upon his life. He was shot in the face, but recovered from the wound, to fall a victim, however, two years later, to the pistol of one Balthasar Gerard. The tragedy occurred on July 10, 1584.

It had removed the chief obstacle to Philip’s success. Maurice would worthily succeed his father in the generalship of the war; but the brain and conscience, the unswerving patience and unselfishness, that had given some reality of union to the rival elements of the United Provinces, were buried with William the Silent. The exaggerated individualism of the several provinces and cities would have put them at the mercy of Philip, had he not himself been distracted from any singleness of purpose by the same cause. His own exaggerated egoism, inflated with the ambition to be a world-power, prevented him from concentrating his efforts upon the subjugation of the republic. He still strove to force his influence upon the affairs of France, and meanwhile made preparations to subdue England.

Thus Elizabeth, much as her Tudor instinct may have shrunk from the idea of encouraging rebellion against kingship, was induced by her advisers to make common cause with the Dutch against Spain. She refused their offer of the crown, but lent them money and some troops under the command of Leicester. He proved inefficient as a general, and, while a few names, such as that of Sir Philip Sidney, stand out heroically, England’s real contribution to Dutch independence was indirect. It was Drake’s incessant harrying of Spanish ships and ports and the destruction of the two Armadas that distracted Spain, broke her power of offense, and hastened the exhaustion of her waning resources. Thus the struggle with the provinces continued on land, but became more desultory, while of the sea the Dutch had practically undisputed mastery. The result was an accession of adventurous spirit that, while it failed in the attempt to discover a Northwest Passage, established settlements in the East Indies, wore down the competition of the Spaniards in the trade of those regions, and inaugurated a condition of extraordinary commercial prosperity.