In the first place the country consisted of several thousand semi-independent towns and villages and these for the greater part were inhabited by fishermen, sailors and traders, three classes of people who are accustomed to a certain amount of independence of action and who are forced by the nature of their trade to make quick decisions and to judge the casual occurrences of the day’s work upon their own merits.
I would not for a moment claim that, man for man, they were a whit more intelligent or broadminded than their neighbors in other parts of the world. But hard work and tenacity of purpose had made them the grain and fish carriers of all northern and western Europe. They knew that the money of a Catholic was just as good as that of a Protestant and they preferred a Turk who paid cash to a Presbyterian who asked for six months’ credit. An ideal country therefore to start a little experiment in tolerance and furthermore the right man was in the right place and what is infinitely more important the right man was in the right place at the right moment.
William the Silent was a shining example of the old maxim that “those who wish to rule the world must know the world.” He began life as a very fashionable and rich young man, enjoying a most enviable social position as the confidential secretary of the greatest monarch of his time. He wasted scandalous sums of money upon dinners and dances, married several of the better known heiresses of his day and lived gayly without a care for the day of tomorrow. He was not a particularly studious person and racing charts interested him infinitely more than religious tracts.
The social unrest which followed in the wake of the Reformation did not at first impress him as anything more serious than still another quarrel between capital and labor, the sort of thing that could be settled by the use of a little tact and the display of a few brawny police constables.
But once he had grasped the true nature of the issue that had arisen between the sovereign and his subjects, this amiable grand seigneur was suddenly transformed into the exceedingly able leader of what, to all intents and purposes, was the prime lost cause of the age. The palaces and horses, the gold plate and the country estates were sold at short notice (or confiscated at no notice at all) and the sporting young man from Brussels became the most tenacious and successful enemy of the house of Habsburg.
This change of fortune, however, did not affect his private character. William had been a philosopher in the days of plenty. He remained a philosopher when he lived in a couple of furnished rooms and did not know how to pay for Saturday’s clean wash. And just as in the olden days he had worked hard to frustrate the plans of a cardinal who had expressed the intention of building a sufficient number of gallows to accommodate all Protestants, he now made it a point to bridle the energy of those ardent Calvinists who wished to hang all Catholics.
His task was wellnigh hopeless.
Between twenty and thirty thousand people had already been killed, the prisons of the Inquisition were full of new candidates for martyrdom and in far off Spain new armies were being recruited to smash the rebellion before it should spread to other parts of the Empire.
To tell people who were fighting for their lives that they must love those who had just hanged their sons and brothers and uncles and grandfathers was out of the question. But by his personal example, by his conciliatory attitude towards those who opposed him, William was able to show his followers how a man of character can invariably rise superior to the old Mosaic law of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
In this campaign for public decency he enjoyed the support of a very remarkable man. In the church of Gouda you may this very day read a curious monosyllabic epitaph which enumerates the virtues of one Dirck Coornhert, who lies buried there. This Coornhert was an interesting fellow. He was the son of well-to-do people and had spent many years of his youth traveling in foreign lands and getting some first hand information about Germany, Spain and France. As soon as he had returned home from this trip he fell in love with a girl who did not have a cent. His careful Dutch father had forbidden the marriage. When his son married the girl just the same, he did what those ancestral patriarchs were supposed to do under the circumstances; he talked about filial ingratitude and disinherited the boy.