PG Edition of Netherlands series — Complete

by John Lothrop Motley

Thus, contrasted, then, were the two great parties in the Netherlands, at the conclusion of Leicester's first year of administration. It may easily be understood that it was not an auspicious moment to leave the country without a chief.

The strength of the States-party lay in Holland, Zeeland, Friesland. The main stay of the democratic or Leicester faction was in the city of Utrecht, but the Earl had many partizans in Gelderland, Friesland, and in Overyssel, the capital of which Province, the wealthy and thriving Deventer, second only in the republic to Amsterdam for commercial and political importance, had been but recently secured for the Provinces by the vigorous measures of Sir William Pelham.

The condition of the republic and of the Spanish Provinces was, at that moment, most signally contrasted. If the effects of despotism and of liberty could ever be exhibited at a single glance, it was certainly only necessary to look for a moment at the picture of the obedient and of the rebel Netherlands.

Since the fall of Antwerp, the desolation of Brabant, Flanders, and of the Walloon territories had become complete. The King had recovered the great commercial capital, but its commerce was gone. The Scheldt, which, till recently, had been the chief mercantile river in the world, had become as barren as if its fountains had suddenly dried up. It was as if it no longer flowed to the ocean, for its mouth was controlled by Flushing. Thus Antwerp was imprisoned and paralyzed. Its docks and basins, where 2500 ships had once been counted, were empty, grass was growing in its streets, its industrious population had vanished, and the Jesuits had returned in swarms. And the same spectacle was presented by Ghent, Bruges, Valenciennes, Tournay, and those other fair cities, which had once been types of vigorous industry and tumultuous life. The sea-coast was in the hands of two rising commercial powers, the great and free commonwealths of the future. Those powers were acting in concert, and commanding the traffic of the world, while the obedient Provinces were excluded from all foreign intercourse and all markets, as the result of their obedience. Commerce, manufactures, agriculture; were dying lingering deaths. The thrifty farms, orchards, and gardens, which had been a proverb and wonder of industry were becoming wildernesses. The demand for their produce by the opulent and thriving cities, which had been the workshops of the world, was gone. Foraging bands of Spanish and Italian mercenaries had succeeded to the famous tramp of the artizans and mechanics, which had often been likened to an army, but these new customers were less profitable to the gardeners and farmers. The clothiers, the fullers, the tapestry-workers, the weavers, the cutlers, had all wandered away, and the cities of Holland, Friesland, and of England, were growing skilful and rich by the lessons and the industry of the exiles to whom they afforded a home. There were villages and small towns in the Spanish Netherlands that had been literally depopulated. Large districts of country had gone to waste, and cane-brakes and squalid morasses usurped the place of yellow harvest-fields. The fog, the wild boar, and the wolf, infested the abandoned homes of the peasantry; children could not walk in safety in the neighbourhood even of the larger cities; wolves littered their young in the deserted farm-houses; two hundred persons, in the winter of 1586-7, were devoured by wild beasts in the outskirts of Ghent. Such of the remaining labourers and artizans as had not been converted into soldiers, found their most profitable employment as brigands, so that the portion of the population spared by war and emigration was assisting the enemy in preying upon their native country. Brandschatzung, burglary, highway-robbery, and murder, had become the chief branches of industry among the working classes. Nobles and wealthy burghers had been changed to paupers and mendicants. Many a family of ancient lineage, and once of large possessions, could be seen begging their bread, at the dusk of evening, in the streets of great cities, where they had once exercised luxurious hospitality; and they often begged in vain.

For while such was the forlorn aspect of the country—and the portrait, faithfully sketched from many contemporary pictures, has not been exaggerated in any of its dark details—a great famine smote the land with its additional scourge. The whole population, soldiers and brigands, Spaniards and Flemings, beggars and workmen, were in danger of perishing together. Where the want of employment had been so great as to cause a rapid depopulation, where the demand for labour had almost entirely ceased, it was a necessary result, that during the process, prices should be low, even in the presence of foreign soldiery, and despite the inflamed' profits, which such capitalists as remained required, by way not only of profit but insurance, in such troublous times. Accordingly, for the last year or two, the price of rye at Antwerp and Brussels had been one florin for the veertel (three bushels) of one hundred and twenty pounds; that of wheat, about one-third of a florin more. Five pounds of rye, therefore, were worth, one penny sterling, reckoning, as was then usual, two shillings to the florin. A pound weight of wheat was worth about one farthing. Yet this was forty-one years after the discovery of the mines of Potosi (A.D. 1545), and full sixteen years after the epoch; from which is dated that rapid fall in the value of silver, which in the course of seventy years, caused the average price of corn and of all other commodities, to be tripled or even quadrupled. At that very moment the average cost of wheat in England was sixty-four shillings the quarter, or about seven and sixpence sterling the bushel, and in the markets of Holland, which in truth regulated all others, the same prices prevailed. A bushel of wheat in England was equal therefore to eight bushels in Brussels.

Thus the silver mines, which were the Spanish King's property, had produced their effect everywhere more signally than within the obedient Provinces. The South American specie found its way to Philip's coffers, thence to the paymasters of his troops in Flanders, and thence to the commercial centres of Holland and England. Those countries, first to feel and obey the favourable expanding impulse of the age, were moving surely and steadily on before it to greatness. Prices were rising with unexampled rapidity, the precious metals were comparatively a drug, a world-wide commerce, such as had never been dreamed of, had become an every-day concern, the arts and sciences and a most generous culture in famous schools and universities, which had been founded in the midst of tumult and bloodshed, characterized the republic, and the golden age of English poetry, which was to make the Elizabethan era famous through all time, had already begun.

In the Spanish Netherlands the newly-found treasure served to pay the only labourers required in a subjugated and almost deserted country, the pikemen of Spain and Italy, and the reiters of Germany. Prices could not sustain themselves in the face of depopulation. Where there was no security for property, no home-market, no foreign intercourse, industrial pursuits had become almost impossible. The small demand for labour had caused it, as it were, to disappear, altogether. All men had become beggars, brigands, or soldiers. A temporary reaction followed. There were no producers. Suddenly it was discovered that no corn had been planted, and that there was no harvest. A famine was the inevitable result. Prices then rose with most frightful rapidity. The veertel of rye, which in the previous year had been worth one florin at Brussels and Antwerp, rose in the winter of 1586-7 to twenty, twenty-two, and even twenty-four florins; and wheat advanced from one and one-third florin to thirty-two florins the veertel. Other articles were proportionally increased in market-value; but it is worthy of remark that mutton was quoted in the midst of the famine at nine stuyvers (a little more than ninepence sterling) the pound, and beef at fivepence, while a single cod-fish sold for twenty-two florins. Thus wheat was worth sixpence sterling the pound weight (reckoning the veertel of one hundred and twenty pounds at thirty florins), which was a penny more than the price of a pound of beef; while an ordinary fish was equal in value to one hundred and six pounds of beef. No better evidence could be given that the obedient Provinces were relapsing into barbarism, than that the only agricultural industry then practised was to allow what flocks and herds were remaining to graze at will over the ruined farms and gardens, and that their fishermen were excluded from the sea.

The evil cured itself, however, and, before the expiration of another year, prices were again at their previous level. The land was sufficiently cultivated to furnish the necessaries of life for a diminishing population, and the supply of labour was more than enough, for the languishing demand. Wheat was again at tenpence the bushel, and other commodities valued in like proportion, and far below the market-prices in Holland and England.

On the other, hand, the prosperity of the republic was rapidly increasing. Notwithstanding the war, which had beer raging for a terrible quarter of a century without any interruption, population was increasing, property rapidly advancing in value, labour in active demand. Famine was impossible to a state which commanded the ocean. No corn grew in Holland and Zeeland, but their ports were the granary of the world. The fisheries were a mine of wealth almost equal to the famous Potosi, with which the commercial world was then ringing. Their commerce with the Baltic nations was enormous. In one month eight hundred vessels left their havens for the eastern ports alone. There was also no doubt whatever—and the circumstance was a source of constant complaint and of frequent ineffective legislation—that the rebellious Provinces were driving a most profitable trade with Spain and the Spanish possessions, in spite of their revolutionary war. The mines of Peru and Mexico were as fertile for the Hollanders and Zeelanders as for the Spaniards themselves. The war paid for the war, one hundred large frigates were constantly cruising along the coasts to protect the fast-growing traffic, and an army of twenty thousand foot soldiers and two thousand cavalry were maintained on land. There were more ships and sailors at that moment in Holland and Zeeland than in the whole kingdom of England.

While the sea-ports were thus rapidly increasing in importance, the towns in the interior were advancing as steadily. The woollen manufacture, the tapestry, the embroideries of Gelderland, and Friesland, and Overyssel, were becoming as famous as had been those of Tournay, Ypres, Brussels, and Valenciennes. The emigration from the obedient Provinces and from other countries was very great. It was difficult to obtain lodgings in the principal cities; new houses, new streets, new towns, were rising every day. The single Province of Holland furnished regularly, for war-expenses alone, two millions of florins (two hundred thousand pounds) a year, besides frequent extraordinary grants for the same purpose, yet the burthen imposed upon the vigorous young commonwealth seemed only to make it the more elastic. "The coming generations may see," says a contemporary historian, "the fortifications erected at that epoch in the cities, the costly and magnificent havens, the docks, the great extension of the cities; for truly the war had become a great benediction to the inhabitants." Such a prosperous commonwealth as this was not a prize to be lightly thrown away. There is no doubt whatever that a large majority of the inhabitants, and of the States by whom the people were represented, ardently and affectionately desired to be annexed to the English crown. Leicester had become unpopular, but Elizabeth was adored, and there was nothing unreasonable in the desire entertained by the Provinces of retaining their ancient constitutions, and of transferring their allegiance to the English Queen.