Barbara Blomberg — Volume 10

by Georg Ebers

But how much easier was the part of the leader of the enemy, who in Brussels had escaped the fate of Egmont, than the King's kindly disposed governor! When Barbara chanced to hear the men of the people talking with each other, and they spoke of "Father William," they meant the Prince of Orange; and with what abuse, both verbally and in handbills, King Philip and the Spanish Government were loaded!

To Barbara, as well as to the members of her party, William of Orange, whom she often heard called the "Antichrist" and "rebel chief," was an object of hatred. Now he frustrated the kind Requesens's attempt at mediation, and it was also his fault that two provinces had publicly revolted from the Holy Church. The Protestant worship of God was now exercised as freely there as in Ratisbon. Like William of Orange, most of the citizens professed the doctrine of Calvin, but there was no lack of Lutherans, and the clergyman whose sermons attracted the largest congregations was Erasmus Eckhart, Barbara's old acquaintance, Dr. Hiltner's foster-son, who during the Emperor Charles's reign had come to the Netherlands as an army chaplain, and, amid great perils, was said to have lured thousands from the Catholic Church. Deeply as her sentiments rebelled, here, too, Barbara had become his preserver; for when the Bloody Council had sentenced him to the gallows, she had succeeded, with great difficulty, through her manifold relations to the heads of the Spanish party, in obtaining his pardon. A grateful letter from Frau Sabina Hiltner had abundantly repaid her for these exertions.

The boldness with which William of Orange, who was himself the most dangerous heretic and rebel, protested that he was willing to grant every one full religious liberty, had no desire to injure the Catholic Church in any way, and was even ready to acknowledge the supremacy of the King, could not fail to enrage every pious Catholic and faithful subject of King Philip.

To spoil a Requesens's game was no difficult task for the man who, though by no means as harmless as the dove, was certainly as wise as the serpent; but that the Duke of Alba, the tried, inflexible commander, had been obliged to yield and retire vanquished before the little, merry, industrious, thoroughly peaceful nation which intrusted itself to the leadership of William of Orange, had been too much for her and, when it happened, seemed like a miracle.

What spirits were aiding the Prince of Orange to resist the King and the power of the Church so successfully? He was in league with hell, her old confessor said, and there were rumours that his Majesty was trying to have the abominable mischief-maker secretly put out of the world. But this would have been unworthy of a King, and Barbara would not believe it.

In the northern provinces the Spanish power was only a shadow, but in the southern ones also hatred of the Spaniards was already bursting into flames, and Requesens was too weak to extinguish them.

The King and Barbara's political friends perceived that Alba's pitiless, murderous severity had injured the cause of the crown and the Church far more than it had benefited them. Personally, he had treated her on the whole kindly, but he had inflicted two offences which were hard to conquer. In the first place, he urged her to leave Brussels and settle in Mons; and, secondly, he had refused to receive her Conrad, who had grown up into a steady, good-looking, but in no respect remarkable young man, in one of his regiments, with the prospect of promotion to the rank of officer.

In both cases she had not remained quiet and, at the second audience which the duke gave her, her hot blood, though it had grown so much cooler, played her a trick, and she became involved in a vehement argument with him. In the course of this he had been compelled to be frank, and she now knew that Alba had persuaded her to change her residence at the King's desire, and why it was done.

She afterward learned from acquaintances that the duke had said one was apt to be the loser in a dispute with her; yet she had yielded, though solely and entirely to benefit her John, but she could not help confessing to herself that her residence in the capital could not be agreeable to him. The highest Spanish officials and military commanders lived there, as well as the ambassadors of foreign powers, and it was not desirable to remind them of the maternal descent of the general who now belonged to the King's family.

The case was somewhat similar, as Alba himself had confessed to her, with regard to her son Conrad's promotion to the rank of an officer; for if he attained that position he might, as the brother of Don John of Austria, make pretensions which threatened to place the hero of Lepanto in a false, nay, perhaps unpleasant position. This, too, she did not desire. But in removing from Brussels she had possibly rendered Don John a greater service than she admitted to herself, for, since her son's brilliant successes had made her happy and her external circumstances had permitted it, she had emerged from the miserable seclusion of former years.