The cord that bound the seventeen provinces together was so weak that it was liable to snap at any time, and it was therefore rather to foreign assistance than to their own unaided exertions that the leading men looked to rescue the land from Spanish tyranny. They had appointed the emperor’s brother Matthias their governor-general in name, but that had not brought them the material aid which they needed. A considerable number of the nobles were now intriguing with the worthless duke of Anjou, brother of the king of France, leading him to believe that if he would bring a strong army into the field they would elect him their sovereign in place of Philippe. Even the prince of Orange favoured this scheme, and Anjou actually invaded the country and occupied Mons with a considerable force. The effect was that Queen Elizabeth of England, in her jealousy of France, gave greater assistance in men and money than before, and Anjou disbanded his troops and returned to Paris.
Don John was again helpless for want of money. Philippe had sent him nearly £400,000 from Spain with the troops under Alexander Farnese, and had promised him more, but the money was expended, and the promise was unfulfilled. Without the means of procuring the material of war he could do nothing. Then a pestilence broke out in his main army, and in a few weeks over a thousand men died. Worn out with care and anxiety, after a severe attack of illness, on the 1st of October 1578 Don John of Austria expired in his camp near Namur, after appointing on his deathbed Alexander Farnese, prince of Parma, his successor until the king’s pleasure should be known. The temporary appointment was confirmed, and the ablest of all of Philippe’s representatives was free to try what he could do towards settling the great controversy between despotism and liberty in the Netherlands.
Historical Sketches.
Alexander Farnese was the only son of the duke of Parma and Piacenza and of the regent Margaret, who preceded Alva in the administration. He was thirty-three years of age, and had been left a widower by the decease of his wife, a princess of Portugal. He found the country distracted with religious feuds, in which the Protestants were as violent as the Catholics. In Ghent the turbulence of a fanatical party was uncontrollable even by the prince of Orange, and the destruction of statues and ornaments in the churches was accompanied with such atrocious treatment of the leading adherents of the ancient faith that the Walloon provinces of the south, which were ardently Catholic, were exasperated to the last degree. On the 6th of January 1579 an alliance between Hainaut, Artois, and Lille with Douai and Orchies was entered into for the defence and exclusive maintenance of the Catholic church. The nobles in these provinces were timeservers, and Parma soon found that they could easily be bribed by offices and money to abandon the patriot interests. For this purpose Philippe could open his purse widely, though he neglected to pay his soldiers.
On the 17th of May 1579 the estates of the three provinces above named signed at Arras a formal treaty of reconciliation with the king of Spain, and were for ever lost to the Netherlands cause. Several towns in Brabant and Flanders shortly afterwards followed this example. The question of religion being settled to Philippe’s satisfaction, they were allowed to retain their charters subject to the prerogative of the sovereign.
The Union of Utrecht.
On the other hand, on the 23rd of January 1579 the foundation of the Netherlands Republic was laid by an agreement termed the Union of Utrecht, which was proclaimed on the 29th of the same month. The union was a loose one, for it left to each province and each city its own constitution unaltered, and only provided for a general assembly of deputies from the estates of the different provinces, in which each should have the same voting power, no matter how many deputies it should send. The object was defence against a common foe. It guaranteed to every man liberty of conscience, but it could not secure liberty of public worship where passion was running high, it could merely prevent inquisition whether Catholic or Protestant. It founded a new State, but the men who concluded it did not realise that this would be the result, they professed that they still adhered to the agreement with the other provinces, only making that agreement a little more binding in their own case. No supreme head was appointed, though Orange was practically in that position, and Matthias was not deprived of his title of governor-general, nor was Philippe formally deposed as sovereign of the provinces outside of Holland and Zeeland. The bishopric of Utrecht now ceased to exist.
The Union of Utrecht was signed by Count John of Nassau for himself and as stadholder of Gelderland, by the deputies of Holland, Zeeland, and Utrecht, by the deputies of the province of Groningen excluding the capital, by the deputies of Brill and the land of Voorne as a particular district though united with Holland, and further by a minority of the deputies of Friesland, the majority objecting to it. It was open to any other provinces or towns to join the Union, and on the 1st of March 1580 Overyssel gave in its adhesion, but the town of Groningen did not do so until 1595, and the complete province of Friesland not before 1598. Various nobles subsequently joined the Union, as did also the city of Ghent on the 4th of February 1579, the city of Antwerp on the 28th of July 1579, the city of Bruges on the 1st of February 1580, and several others later. Each city came to be practically an independent unit in the province in which it was situated, and could therefore make what alliances it chose. But owing to this circumstance the government of the Union was exceedingly weak, for no resolutions of the states-general were binding upon any town whose deputies did not agree to them.
Historical Sketches.
The provinces Holland, Zeeland, since enlarged by the addition of a small part of Flanders, the northern part of Gelderland including the county of Zutphen, Overyssel, Friesland, and Groningen, together with Drenthe, cover the whole territory of the present kingdom of the Netherlands except North Brabant and Limburg. Drenthe was a dependency of the bishopric of Utrecht from 1024 to 1537, when it became a direct fief to the emperor Charles V. It remained subject to the Spanish government until 1594, when it was overrun by the States forces, and thereafter it was a dependency of either Friesland or Groningen until 1813, when it became a separate province of the kingdom of the Netherlands.