WILLIAM THE SILENT
The position of William at Brussels after his triumphant entry, September 23, 1577, was by no means an easy one. His main support was derived from a self-elected Council of Eighteen, containing representatives of the gilds and of the citizens. This Council controlled an armed municipal force and was really master in the city. In these circumstances the States-General did not venture upon any opposition to the popular wishes, in other words to William, whose influence with the masses was unbounded. The States-General, therefore, under pressure from the Eighteen, informed Don John, October 8, that they no longer recognised him as governor-general; and the Estates of Brabant appointed the prince to the office of Ruward or governor of the province. Meanwhile a fresh factor of disturbance had been introduced into the troubled scene. Certain of the Catholic nobles opposed to Spanish rule, but suspicious of Orange, had invited the twenty year old Archduke Matthias, brother of the emperor, to accept the sovereignty of the Netherlands. Matthias, who was of an adventurous spirit, after some parleying agreed. He accordingly left Vienna secretly, and at the end of October arrived in the Netherlands. Not content with this counter-stroke, Aerschot went to Ghent to stir up opposition to the appointment of William as Ruward of Brabant. The populace however in Ghent was Orangist, and, rising in revolt, seized Aerschot and a number of other Catholic leaders and threw them into prison. They were speedily released, but the breach between the Catholic nobles and the Calvinist stadholder of Holland was widened. William himself saw in the coming of Matthias a favourable opportunity for securing the erection of the Netherlands into a constitutional State under the nominal rule of a Habsburg prince. By his influence, therefore, the States-General entered into negotiations with the Archduke; and Matthias finally was recognised (December 8) as governor on condition that he accepted the Union of Brussels, He was also induced to place the real power in the[pg.70] hands of Orange with the title of Lieutenant-General. Matthias made his state entry into Brussels, January 18, 1578. His position appeared to be strengthened by a treaty concluded with the English queen (January 7) by which Elizabeth promised to send over a body of troops and to grant a subsidy to the States, for the repayment of which the towns of Middelburg, Bruges and Gravelines were to be pledges.
The news however of the step taken by Matthias had had more effect upon Philip II than the despairing appeals of his half-brother. A powerful army of tried Spanish and Italian troops under the command of Alexander Farnese, Prince of Parma, son of the former regent Margaret, was sent to Flanders. Farnese was Don John's nephew, and they had been brought up together at Madrid, being almost of the same age. Already Philip had determined to replace Don John, whose brilliance as a leader in the field did not compensate for his lack of statesmanlike qualities. In Farnese, whether by good fortune or deliberate choice, he had at length found a consummate general who was to prove himself a match even for William the Silent in all the arts of political combination and intrigue. At Gembloux, January 31, Don John and Parma fell upon the levies of the States and gained a complete and almost bloodless victory. Had Philip supplied his governor-general with the money he asked for, Don John might now have conquered the whole of the southern Netherlands, but without funds he could achieve little.
Meanwhile all was confusion. The States-General withdrew from Brussels to Antwerp; and William, finding that Matthias was useless, began negotiations with France, England and Germany in the hope of finding in this emergency some other foreign prince ready to brave the wrath of Philip by accepting the suzerainty of the Netherlands. The Duke of Anjou, brother of the French king, was the favoured candidate of the Catholic party; and William, whose one aim was to secure the aid of a powerful protector in the struggle against Spain, was ready to accept him. Anjou at the head of an army of 15,000 men crossed the frontier at Mons, July 12; and, on the following August 13, a treaty was agreed upon between him and the States-General, by which the French duke, with the title of Defender of the Liberties of the Netherlands, undertook to help the States to expel the Spaniards from the Low Countries. But, to[pg.71] add to the complications of the situation, a German force under the command of John Casimir, brother of the Elector Palatine, and in the pay of Queen Elizabeth, invaded the hapless provinces from the east. The advent of John Casimir was greeted with enthusiasm by the Calvinist party; and it required all the skill and sagacity of the Prince of Orange to keep the peace and prevent the rival interests from breaking out into open strife in the face of the common enemy. But Don John was helpless, his repeated appeals for financial help remained unanswered, and, sick at heart and weary of life, he contracted a fever and died in his camp at Namur, October 1, 1578. His successor in the governor-generalship was Alexander of Parma, who had now before him a splendid field for the exercise of his great abilities.
The remainder of the year 1578 saw a violent recrudescence of religious bitterness. In vain did Orange, who throughout his later life was a genuine and earnest advocate of religious toleration, strive to the utmost of his powers and with untiring patience to allay the suspicions and fears of the zealots. John Casimir at Ghent, in the fervour of his fanatical Calvinism, committed acts of violence and oppression, which had the very worst effect in the Walloon provinces. In this part of the Netherlands Catholicism was dominant; and there had always been in the provinces of Hainault, Artois, and in the southern districts generally, a feeling of distrust towards Orange. The upholding of the principle of religious toleration by a man who had twice changed his faith was itself suspect; and Farnese left no means untried for increasing this growing anti-Orange feeling among the Catholic nobles. A party was formed, which bore the name of "The Malcontents," whose leaders were Montigny, Lalaing and La Motte. With these the governor-general entered into negotiations, with the result that an alliance was made between Hainault, Artois, Lille, Douay and Orchies (January 6, 1579), called the Union of Arras, for the maintenance of the Catholic faith, by which these Walloon provinces and towns expressed their readiness to submit to the king on condition that he were willing to agree to uphold their rights and privileges in accordance with the provisions of the Pacification of Ghent. The Union of Arras did not as yet mean a complete reconciliation with the Spanish sovereign, but it did mean the beginning of a breach between the Calvinist north and the Catholic south, which the[pg.72] statecraft of Parma gradually widened into an impossible chasm. Before this took place, Anjou, Matthias and John Casimir had alike withdrawn from the scene of anarchic confusion, in which for a brief time each had been trying to compass his own ambitious ends in selfish indifference to the welfare of the people they were proposing to deliver from the Spanish yoke. The opening of the year 1579 saw Orange and Parma face to face preparing to measure their strength in a grim struggle for the mastery.
In the very same month as witnessed the signing of the Union of Arras, a rival union had been formed in the northern Netherlands, which was destined to be much more permanent. The real author however of the Union of Utrecht was not Orange, but his brother, John of Nassau. In March, 1578, John had been elected Stadholder of Gelderland. He, like William, had devoted himself heart and soul to the cause of Netherland freedom, but his Calvinism was far more pronounced than his brother's. From the moment of his acceptance of the stadholdership he set to work to effect a close union between Holland, Zeeland and Utrecht with Gelderland and the adjoining districts which lay around the Zuyder Zee. It was a difficult task, since the eastern provinces were afraid (and not unjustly) that its much greater wealth would give Holland predominance in the proposed confederation. Nevertheless it was accomplished, and an Act of Union was drawn up and signed at Utrecht, January 29, 1579, by the representatives of Holland, Zeeland, the town and district (sticht) of Utrecht, Gelderland and Zutphen, by which they agreed to defend their rights and liberties and to resist all foreign intervention in their affairs by common action as if they were one province, and to establish and maintain freedom of conscience and of worship within their boundaries. William does not seem at first to have been altogether pleased with his brother's handiwork. He still hoped that a confederation on a much wider scale might have been formed, comprising the greater part of those who had appended their signatures to the Pacification of Ghent. It was not until some months had passed and he saw that his dreams of a larger union were not to be realised, that he signed, on May 3, the Act of Union drawn up at Utrecht. By this time he was well aware that Parma had succeeded in winning over the malcontent nobles to accept his terms. On May 19 the Walloon provinces, whose representatives had signed the Union of Arras, [pg.73] agreed to acknowledge, with certain nominal reservations, the sovereignty of Philip and to allow only Catholic worship. In fact the reconciliation was complete.
Thus, despite the efforts of Orange, the idea of the federation of all the seventeen provinces on national lines became a thing of the past, henceforth unattainable. The Netherlands were divided into two camps. Gradually in the course of 1580 Overyssel, Drente and the greater part of Friesland gave in their adherence to the Union of Utrecht, and Groningen and the Ommelanden allied themselves with their neighbours. In the rest of the Low Countries all fell away and submitted themselves to the king's authority, except Antwerp and Breda in Brabant, and Ghent, Bruges and Ypres in Flanders. William felt that Parma was constantly gaining ground. Defection after defection took place, the most serious being that of George Lalaing, Count of Renneberg, the Stadholder of Groningen. Negotiations were indeed secretly opened with William himself, and the most advantageous and flattering terms offered to him, if he would desert the patriot cause. But with him opposition to Spain and to Spanish methods of government was a matter of principle and strong conviction. He was proof alike against bribery and cajolery, even when he perceived, as the year 1580 succeeded 1579, that he had no staunch friends on whom he could absolutely rely, save in the devoted provinces of Holland and Zeeland.
For things had been going from bad to worse. The excesses and cruelties committed by the Calvinists, wherever they found themselves in a position to persecute a Catholic minority, and especially the outrages perpetrated at Ghent under the leadership of two Calvinist fanatics, De Ryhove and De Hembyze, although they were done in direct opposition to the wishes and efforts of Orange, always and at all times the champion of toleration, did much to discredit him in Flanders and Brabant and to excite bitter indignation among the Catholics, who still formed the great majority of the population of the Netherlands. William felt himself to be month by month losing power. The action he was at last compelled to take, in rescuing Ghent from the hands of the ultra-democratic Calvinist party and in expelling De Ryhove and De Hembyze, caused him to be denounced as "a papist at heart." Indeed the bigots of both creeds in that age of intolerance and persecution were utterly unable to understand his attitude, and could only attribute[pg.74] it to a lack of any sincere religious belief at all. Farnese, meanwhile, whose genius for Machiavellian statesmanship was as remarkable as those gifts for leadership in war which entitled him to rank as the first general of his time, was a man who never failed to take full advantage of the mistakes and weaknesses of his opponents. At the head of a veteran force he laid siege in the spring of 1579 to the important frontier town of Maestricht. He encountered a desperate resistance, worthy of the defence of Haarlem or of Leyden, and for four months the garrison held out grimly in the hope of relief. But, despite all the efforts of Orange to despatch an adequate force to raise the siege, at last (June 29) the town was carried by assault and delivered up for three days to the fury of a savage soldiery. By the possession of this key to the Meuse, Parma was now able to cut off communications between Brabant and Protestant Germany. Had he indeed been adequately supported by Philip it is probable that at this time all the provinces up to the borders of Holland might have been brought into subjection by the Spanish forces.
The position of William was beset with perils on every side. One by one his adherents were deserting him; even in the provinces of Holland and Zeeland he was losing ground. He saw clearly that without foreign help the national cause for which he had sacrificed everything was doomed. In this emergency he reopened negotiations with Anjou, not because he had any trust in the French prince's capacity or sincerity, but for the simple reason that there was no one else to whom he could turn. As heir to the throne of France and at this time the favoured suitor of Queen Elizabeth, his acceptance of the sovereignty of the Netherlands would secure, so Orange calculated, the support both of France and England. It was his hope also that the limiting conditions attached to the offer of sovereignty would enable him to exercise a strong personal control over a man of weak character like Anjou. The Duke's vanity and ambition were flattered by the proposal; and on September 19, 1580, a provisional treaty was signed at Plessis-les-Tours by which Anjou accepted the offer that was made to him, and showed himself quite ready to agree to any limitations imposed upon his authority, since he had not any intention, when once he held the reins of power, of observing them.