CHAPTER XX
POLITICAL DECADENCE UNDER SPAIN
Though the seven Northern provinces could be considered as definitely lost after the failure of Farnese's last attempt to reconquer them, the Spanish Netherlands still included, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the three duchies of Brabant, Limburg (with its dependencies beyond the Meuse, Daelhem, Fauquemont and Rolduc), Luxemburg and a small part of Gelder with Ruremonde; four counties, Flanders, Artois, Hainault and Namur, and the two seigneuries of Malines and Tournai. When, in 1715, the Southern Netherlands passed under Austrian sovereignty, they had lost Maestricht and part of Northern Limburg, Northern Brabant, Zeeland Flanders, Walloon Flanders and Artois, and various small enclaves, most of their fortified towns being further obliged to receive foreign garrisons, maintained at the expense of the State. Antwerp remained closed, and the efforts made during the first years of the seventeenth century to restore the economic situation through industrial and agricultural activity were practically annihilated by incessant wars.
This situation was evidently caused by the weakness of Spain, which, though clinging to its Northern possessions, did not possess the means to defend them against the ambition of European Powers, more especially France. It was due also to the policy of the United Provinces, who considered Belgium as a mere buffer State which they could use for their own protection and whose ruin, through the closing of Antwerp, was one of the conditions of their own prosperity. Up to the War of the Spanish Succession, England played a less prominent part in the various conflicts affecting the Southern Netherlands, but she succeeded, on several occasions, in checking the annexationist projects of France, whose presence along the Belgian coast was a far greater danger than that of a weak and impoverished Spain.
WEAKNESS OF BELGIUM
There is no better illustration of the paramount importance of a strong and independent Belgium to the peace of Europe than the series of wars which followed each other in such rapid succession during the seventeenth century. It is true that, in nearly every instance, the new situation created in the Netherlands cannot be given as the direct cause of these various conflicts, resulting from territorial ambitions, dynastic susceptibilities and even, as in the case of the Thirty Years' War, from circumstances quite independent of those prevalent on the Meuse and the Scheldt. But, whatever the nominal cause of these wars may have been, they certainly acquired a more widespread character from the fact that the Spanish Netherlands lay as an easy prey at the mercy of the invader and constituted a kind of open arena where European armies could meet and carry on their contests on enemy ground. It is not a mere chance that the separation of the Southern and Northern provinces coincided with a remarkable recrudescence of the warlike spirit all over Europe. The contrast between the fifteenth century, when the Seventeen Provinces constituted a powerful State under the dukes of Burgundy, and the seventeenth, when the greater part of it was ruined and undefended, at the mercy of foreign invasion, is particularly enlightening. All through the Middle Ages first Flanders, later the Burgundian Netherlands, had exerted their sobering and regulating influence between France, on one side, and England or Germany on the other. The Belgian princes were directly interested in maintaining peace, and, in most cases, only went to war when their independence, and incidentally the peace of Europe, was threatened by the increasing ambition of one of their neighbours. The system of alliances concluded with this object could not possibly prevent conflicts, but it certainly limited their scope and preserved Europe from general conflagration, the combination of the Netherlands with one Power being usually enough to keep a third Power in order. The weakening of the Southern provinces under Spanish rule thus caused an irreparable gap in the most sensitive and dangerous spot on the political map of Europe. Triple and Quadruple Alliances were entered into and inaugurated the system of Grand Alliances which was henceforth to characterize almost every European conflict and increase on such a large scale the numbers of opposed forces and the devastations accompanying their warlike operations.
DUTCH POLICY
It may be said that the United Provinces might have played the part formerly filled by the Burgundian Netherlands and the county of Flanders, but, in spite of their amazing maritime expansion and of the prosperity of their trade, they did not enjoy the same military prestige on land. Besides, they did not care to undertake such a heavy responsibility, and pursued most of the time a narrowly self-centred policy. Though they had some excellent opportunities of reconstituting the unity of the Low Countries, and though some of their statesmen contemplated such a step, the United Provinces never embarked upon a definite policy of reconstitution. They played for safety first and were far too wary to sacrifice solid material advantages for a problematic European prestige. Unification would have meant the reopening of the Scheldt and the resurrection of Antwerp, whose rivalry was always dreaded by the Northern ports. It would have meant the admission of a far more numerous population on an equal footing, with religious freedom, to the privileges of the Republic. It would have implied the sacrifice of an extraordinarily strong strategic situation and the risks involved by the defence of weak and extended frontiers. The maintenance of a weak buffer State, as a glacis against any attacks from the South, seemed far more advantageous, especially if its fortified positions were garrisoned with Dutch forces. It gave all the same strategic advantages which unification might have given, without any of its risks and inconveniences. "It is far better," wrote a Dutch Grand Pensioner, at the time, "to defend oneself in Brussels or Antwerp than in Breda or Dordrecht." Such an attitude was perfectly justified as long as Holland did not claim the advantages attached to the position of a moderating central Power and ask for the reward without having taken the risks.