One morning, while writing at his desk, a young Spaniard who had forged the seals obtained access to the Prince's writing room. Because he had been searched by the guard the visitor was without weapon. But having delivered his forged letter, he asked the Prince for a Bible and the loan of a few crowns. He received a gift of twelve pieces of silver, and went into the courtyard, where, with the Prince's own money, he purchased a pistol from the guard. Thence he returned to find a hiding place in the dark passageway, and to empty three shots into the Prince's breast.
With the death of William the Silent the Netherlands lost their noblest hero, their most sublime patriot, and one of the greatest leaders of all time. Few are the names worthy to be ranked with that of this Prince of the blood who gave his wealth, his strength and finally his life for the cause of liberty. Ruling with a strong hand, he was not a despot; brave, he was not reckless; giant, he was also gentle; warring against the Inquisition, with its thumbscrews and fagots, he held himself back from bloodthirstiness and revenge. The victim of every kind of attack that hate could devise or malignity invent, he never degraded himself by meeting hate with hate or crime with crime. When the long struggle for liberty which he began was brought to an issue, Spain had buried 350,000 of her sons and allies in Holland, spent untold millions for the destroying of freedom, and sunk from the ranks of the first power in Europe to the level of a fourth-rate country—stagnant in ideas, cruel in government, superstitious in religion. But brave little Holland had emerged to serve forever as a rock against tyranny and a refuge from oppression.
IV
OLIVER CROMWELL
(1599–1658)
And the Rise of Democracy in England
Society's ingratitude to its heroes and leaders is proverbial. Earth's bravest souls have been misunderstood in youth, maligned in manhood and neglected in old age. The fathers slay the prophets, the children build the sepulchres, and the grandchildren wear deeply the path the heroes trod. History teems with illustrations of this principle. Socrates is the wisest prophet, the noblest teacher, the truest citizen and patriot that Athens ever had, and Athens rewards him with a cup of poison. In a critical hour Savonarola saves the liberty of his city, and Florence burns him in the market-place. Cervantes writes the only world-wide thing in Spanish literature, and for an abiding place Spain rewards him, not with a mansion, but with a blanket in a dungeon, feeds him, not upon the apples of Paradise, but on the apples of Sodom, and gives him to drink, not the nectar of the gods, but vinegar mingled with gall.
Next to the Bible in influence upon English literature comes the Pilgrim's Progress. England kept John Bunyan in jail at Bedford for twelve years, as his reward. For some reason, nations reserve their wreaths of recognition until the heart is broken, until hope is dead, and the ambitions are in heaven. The history of the other great leaders, therefore, leads us to expect that the greatest, because the most typical, Englishman of all time, shall be unique in his obloquy and shame, as he was signal in his supreme gifts. During his life the very skies rained lies and cruel taunts; in his death the mildewed lips of slander took up new falsehoods. In the grave the very dust of this hero furnished a sure foundation for the temple of liberty, but his grave was despoiled. With pomp and pageantry Charles the Second ordered his bones to be exhumed, and the skeleton hung between thieves at Tyburn to satisfy his hatred. For twelve years Cromwell's skull was elevated upon a pole above Westminster Hall, where it stood exposed to the rains of twelve summers and the snows of twelve winters.
And now that two hundred and fifty years have passed away, these centuries have not availed for extinguishing the fires of hatred and controversy, or for doing justice to the memory of this man, Oliver Cromwell, God's appointed king.
We would naturally expect that time would have availed to clear the name and fame of Cromwell and to secure for him the recognition that his achievements deserve. But it was hard for some royalists to forgive this man who turned his hand against the sacred person of the King. For nearly three centuries the conflict has raged. The royal historians count Cromwell the greatest hypocrite in history, the trickster, the regicide, the political Judas of all time. For a hundred years after his death, no man was found brave enough to mention the name of Oliver Cromwell in Windsor Castle or the House of Lords. England's Abbey has made a place for the statues of that one-talent general, Burgoyne, whose chief business was to surrender his troops to our colonial soldiers, but the Abbey has no niche for a bust of the only English general who ranks with the great soldiers of history—Alexander, Cæsar, Napoleon, Grant, and now Foch—these six and no more.