The Evolution of States

by J. M. Robertson

It seems necessary to insist on the elementary fact that it was Netherlanders who put Protestants to death in the Netherlands; and that it was Spaniards who were burnt in Spain. In the Middle Ages "nowhere was the persecution of heretics more relentless than in the Netherlands" (Motley, p. 36; cp. p. 132). Grenvelle, most zealous of heresy-hunters, was a Burgundian; Viglius, an even bitterer persecutor, was a Frisian. The statement of Prescott (Philip II, Kirk's ed. 1894, p. 149) that the Netherlanders "claimed freedom of thought as their birthright" is a gratuitous absurdity. As regards, further, the old hallucination of "race types," it has to be noted that Charles, a devout Catholic and persecutor, was emphatically Teutonic, according to the established canons. His stock was Burgundo-Austrian on the father's side; his Spanish mother was of Teutonic descent; he had the fair hair, blue eyes, and hanging jaw and lip of the Teutonic Hapsburgs (see Menzel, Geschichte der Deutschen, cap. 341), and so had his descendants after him. On the other hand, William the Silent was markedly "Spanish" in his physiognomy (Motley, p. 56), and his reticence would in all ages pass for a Spanish rather than a "Teutonic" characteristic. Motley is reduced to such shifts of rhetoric concerning Philip II as the proposition (p. 75) that "the Burgundian and Austrian elements of his blood seemed to have evaporated." But his descendant, Philip IV, as seen in the great portraits of Velasquez, is, like him, a "typical" Teuton; and the stock preserved the Teutonic physiological tendency to gluttony, a most "un-Spanish" characteristic.

It is true that, as Buckle argues, the many earthquakes in Spain tended to promote superstitious fear; but then on his principles the Dutch seafaring habits, and the constant risks and frequent disasters of inundation, had the same primary tendency. For the rest, the one serious oversight in Buckle's theory of Spanish civilisation is his assumption (cp. 3-vol. ed. ii, 455-61; 1-vol. ed. p. 550) that Spanish "loyalty" was abnormal and continuous from the period of the first struggles with the Moors. As to this see the present writer's notes in the 1-vol. ed. of Buckle, as cited. Even Ferdinand, as an Aragonese, was disrespectfully treated by the Castilians (cp. Armstrong as cited, pp. 5, 31, etc.; De Castro, History of Religious Intolerance in Spain, Eng. tr. 1853, pp. 40, 41); and Philip I and Charles V set up a new resistance. An alien dynasty could set up disaffection in Spain as elsewhere.

It should be noted, finally, that the stiff ceremonialism which is held to be the special characteristic of Spanish royalty was a Burgundo-Teutonic innovation, dating from Philip I, and that even in the early days of Philip the Cortes petitioned "that the household of the Prince Don Carlos should be arranged on the old Spanish lines, and not in the pompous new-fangled way of the House of Burgundy" (Major Hume's Spain, p. 127). Prescott (Philip II, ed. cited, pp. 655, 659) makes the petition refer to the king's own household, and shows it to have condemned the king's excessive expenditure in very strong terms, saying the expense of his household was "as great as would be required for the conquest of a kingdom." At the same time the Cortes petitioned against bull-fights, which appear to have originated with the Moors, were strongly opposed by Isabella the Catholic, and were much encouraged by the Teutonic Charles V (U.R. Burke, History of Spain, 1895, ii, 2-4; Hume's ed. i, 328 sq.). In fine, the conventional Spain is a manufactured system, developed under a Teutonic dynasty. "To a German race of sovereigns Spain finally owed the subversion of her national system and ancient freedom" (Stubbs, Const. Hist. 4th ed. i, 5).

No doubt the Dutch disaffection to Philip, which began to reveal itself immediately after his accession, may be conceived as having economic grounds. Indeed, his creation of fresh bishoprics, and his manipulation of the abbey revenues, created instant and general resentment among churchmen and nobles,[766] as compared with his mere continuation of religious persecution; and despite his pledges to the contrary, certain posts in the Low Countries were conferred on Spaniards.[767] But had he shown his father's adaptability, all this could have been adjusted. Had he either lived at Brussels or made the Flemings feel that he held them an integral part of his empire, he would have had the zealous support of the upper classes in suppressing the popular heresy, which repelled them. Heresy in the Netherlands, indeed, seems thus far to have been on the whole rather licentious and anarchic than austere or "spiritual." The pre-Protestant movements of the Béguines, Beghards, and Lollards, beginning well, had turned out worse than the orders of friars in the south; and the decorous "Brethren of the Common Lot" were in the main "good churchmen," only a minority accepting Protestantism.[768] In face of the established formulas concerning the innate spirituality of the Teuton, and of the play of his "conscience" in his course at the Reformation, there stand the historic facts that in the Teutonic world alone was the Reformation accompanied by widespread antinomianism, debauchery, and destructive violence. In France, Spain, and Italy there were no such movements as the Anabaptist, which so far as it could go was almost a dissolution of sane society.[769] From Holland that movement drew much of its strength and leadership, even as, in a previous age, the antinomian movement of Tanquelin had there had its main success.[770] Such was the standing of Dutch Protestantism in 1555; and no edict against heresy could be more searching and merciless than that drawn up by Charles in 1550[771] without losing any upper-class loyalty. Philip did but strive to carry it out.[772]

Had Philip, further, maintained a prospect of chronic war for the nobility of the Netherlands, the accruing chances of wealth[773] would in all likelihood have sufficed to keep them loyal. In the early wars of his reign with France immense gains had been made by them in the way of ransoms and booty. When these ceased, luxury continuing, embarrassment became general.[774] But when Philip's energies were seen to be mainly bent on killing out heresy, the discontented nobles began to lean to the side of the persecuted commonalty. At the first formation of the Confederacy of the "Beggars" in 1566, almost the only zealous Protestant among the leaders was William's impetuous brother Louis of Nassau, a Calvinist by training, who had for comrade the bibulous Brederode. The name of "Gueux," given to the malcontents in contempt by the councillor Berlaimont, had direct application to the known poverty or embarrassment of the great majority.[775] There was thus undisguisedly at work in the Netherlands the great economic force which had brought about "the Reformation" in all the Teutonic countries; and the needy nobles insensibly grew Protestant as it became more and more clear that only the lands of the Church could restore their fortunes.[776] This holds despite the fact that the more intelligent Protestantism which latterly spread among the people was the comparatively democratic form set up by Calvin, which reached the Low Countries through France, finding the readier reception among the serious because of the prestige accruing to its austerity as against the moral disrepute which now covered the German forms.

[As to the proportional success of Lutheranism and Calvinism, see Motley, pp. 132, 133; and Grattan, pp. 110, 111. (On p. 110 of Grattan there is a transposition of "second" and "third" groups, which the context corrects.) Motley, an inveterate Celtophobe, is at pains to make out that the Walloons rebelled first and were first reconciled to Rome, "exactly like their Celtic ancestors, fifteen centuries earlier." He omits to comment on the fact that it was only the French form of Protestantism, that of Calvin, that became viable in the Netherlands at all, or on the fact that indecent Anabaptism flourished mainly in Friesland; though he admits that the Lutheran movement left all religious rights in the hands of the princes, the people having to follow the creed of their rulers. The "racial" explanation is mere obscurantism, here as always. The Walloons of South Flanders were first affected simply because they were first in touch with Huguenotism. That they were never converted in large numbers to Protestantism is later admitted by Motley himself (p. 797), who thereupon speaks of the "intense attachment to the Roman ceremonial which distinguished the Walloon population." Thus his earlier statement that they had rebelled against "papal Rome" is admittedly false. They had rebelled simply against the Spanish tyranny. Yet the false statement is left standing—one more illustration of the havoc that may be worked in a historian's intelligence by a prejudice. (For other instances see, in the author's volume The Saxon and the Celt, the chapters dealing with Mommsen and Burton.)

It was the Teutonic-speaking city populations of North Flanders and Brabant who became Protestants in mass after the troubles had begun (Motley, p. 798). When the Walloon provinces withdrew from the combination against Spain, the cities of Ghent, Antwerp, Bruges, and Ypres joined the Dutch Union of Utrecht. They were one and all reduced by the skill and power of Alexander of Parma, who thereupon abolished the freedom of Protestant worship. The Protestants fled in thousands to England and the Dutch provinces, the remaining population, albeit mostly Teutonic, becoming Catholic. At this moment one-and-a-half of the four-and-a-half millions of Dutch are Catholics; while in Belgium, where there are hardly any Protestants, the Flemish-speaking and French-speaking populations are nearly equal in numbers.

Van Kampen, who anticipated Motley in disparaging the Walloons as being Frenchly fickle (Geschichte, i, 366), proceeds to contend that even the Flemings are more excitable than the Dutch and other Teutons; but he notes later that as the Dutch poet Cats was much read and imitated in Belgium, he was thus proved to have expressed the spirit of the whole Netherlands (ii, 109). Once more, then, the racial theory collapses.]

Thus the systematic savagery of the Inquisition under Philip, for which the people at first blamed not at all the king but his Flemish minister, Cardinal Granvelle, served rather to make a basis and pretext for organised revolt than directly to kindle it. In so far as the people spontaneously resorted to violence, in the image-breaking riots, they compromised and imperilled the nationalist movement in the act of precipitating it. The king's personal equation, finally, served to make an enemy of the masterly William of Orange, who, financially embarrassed like the lesser nobility,[777] could have been retained as an administrator by a wise monarch. A matter so overlaid with historical declamation is hard to set in a clear light; but it may serve to say of William that he was made a "patriot," as was Robert the Bruce, by stress of circumstances;[778] and that in the one case as in the other it was exceptional character and capacity that made patriotism a success;[779] William in particular having to maintain himself against continual domestic enmity, patrician as well as popular. Nothing short of the ferocity and rapacity of the Spanish attack, indeed, could have long united the Netherlands. The first confederacy dissolved at the approach of Alva, who, strong in soldiership but incapable of a statesmanlike settlement, drove the Dutch provinces to extremities by his cruelty, caused a hundred thousand artisans and traders to fly with their industry and capital, exasperated even the Catholic ministers in Flanders by his proposed taxes, and finally by imposing them enraged into fresh revolt the people he had crushed and terrorised, till they were eager to offer the sovereignty to the queen of England. When Requesens came with pacificatory intentions, it was too late; and the Pacification of Ghent (1576) was but a breathing-space between grapples.

What finally determined the separation and independence of the Dutch Provinces was their maritime strength. Antwerp, trading largely on foreign bottoms, represented wealth without the then indispensable weapons. Dutch success begins significantly with the taking of Brill (1572) by the gang of William van der Marck, mostly pirates and ruffians, whose methods William of Orange could not endure.[780] But they had shown the military basis for the maritime States. It was the Dutch fleet that prevented Parma's from joining "the" Armada under Medina-Sidonia,[781] thereby perhaps saving England. Such military genius and energy as Parma's might have made things go hard with the Dutch States had he lived, or had he not been called off against his judgment to fight in France; but his death well balanced the assassination of William of Orange, who had thus far been the great sustainer and welder of the movement of independence. Plotted against and vilified by the demagogues of Ghent, betrayed by worthless fellow nobles, Teutonic and French alike; chronically insulted in his own person and humiliated in that of his brother John, whom the States treated with unexampled meanness; stupidly resisted in his own leadership by the same States, whose egoism left Maestricht to its fate when he bade them help, and who cast on him the blame when it fell; thwarted and crippled by the fanaticism and intolerant violence of the Protestant mobs of the towns; bereaved again and again in the vicissitude of the struggle, William turned to irrelevance all imputations of self-seeking; and in his unfailing sagacity and fortitude he finally matches any aristocrat statesman in history. Doubtless he would have served Philip well had Philip chosen him and trusted him. But as it lay in one thoroughly able man, well placed for prestige in a crisis, to knit and establish a new nation, so it lay in one fanatical dullard[782] to wreck half of his own empire, with the greatest captains of his age serving him; and to bring his fabled treasury to ruin while his despised rebels grew rich.