General History for Colleges and High Schools

by P. V. N. Myers

Europe at last grew weary of the seemingly interminable struggle, and the Spanish commanders becoming convinced that it was impossible to reduce the Dutch rebels to obedience by force of arms, negotiations were entered into, and by the celebrated treaty of 1609, comparative peace was secured to Christendom.

The treaty of 1609 was in reality an acknowledgment by Spain of the independence of the United Provinces of the Netherlands, although the Spanish king was so unwilling to admit the fact of his being unable to reduce the rebel states to submission, that the treaty was termed simply "a truce for twelve years." Spain did not formally acknowledge their independence until forty years afterwards, in the Peace of Westphalia, at the end of the Thirty Years' War (1648) (see p. 586).

DEVELOPMENT OF THE PROVINCES DURING THE WAR.—One of the most remarkable features of the war for Dutch independence was the vast expansion of the trade and commerce of the revolted provinces, and their astonishing growth in population, wealth, and resources, while carrying on the bitter and protracted struggle. When the contest ended, notwithstanding the waste of war, the number of inhabitants crowded on that little patch of sea-bottom and morass constituting the Dutch Republic, was equal to the entire population of England; that is to say, to three or four millions. But the home-land was only a small part of the dominions of the commonwealth. Through the enterprise and audacity of its bold sailors, it had made extensive acquisitions in the East Indies and other parts of the world, largely at the expense of the Spanish and the Portuguese colonial possessions. The commerce of the little republic had so expanded that more than one hundred thousand of its citizens found a home upon the sea. No idlers or beggars were allowed a place in the industrious commonwealth. And hand in hand with industry went intelligence. Throughout the United Provinces it was rare to meet with a person who could not both read and write.

CHAPTER LII.

THE HUGUENOT WARS IN FRANCE. (1562-1629.)

BEGINNING OF THE REFORMATION IN FRANCE.—Before Luther posted his ninety- five theses at Wittenberg, there appeared in the University of Paris and elsewhere in France men who, from their study of the Scriptures, had come to entertain opinions very like those of the German reformer. The land which had been the home of the Albigenses was again filled with heretics. The movement thus begun received a fresh impulse from the uprising in Germany under Luther.

The Reformation in France, as elsewhere, brought dissension, persecution, and war. We have already seen how Francis I., the second of the Valois- Orleans dynasty, [Footnote: The Valois-Orleans sovereigns, whose reigns cover the greater part of the period treated in the present chapter, were Louis XII. (1498-1515), Francis I. (1515-1547), Henry II. (1547-1559), Francis II. (1559-1560), Charles IX. (1560-1574), Henry III. (1574-1589). The successor of Henry III.—Henry IV.—was the first of the Bourbons.] waged an exterminating crusade against his heretical Waldensian subjects (see p. 533). His son and successor, Henry II., also conceived it to be his duty to uproot heresy; and it was his persecution of his Protestant subjects that sowed the seeds of those long and woful civil and religious wars which he left as a terrible legacy to his three feeble sons, Francis, Charles, and Henry, who followed him in succession upon the throne. At the time these wars began, which was about the middle of the sixteenth century, the confessors of the reformed creed, who later were known as Huguenots, [Footnote: This word is probably a corruption of the German Eidgenossen, meaning "oath-comrades" or "confederates.">[ numbered probably 400,000. The new doctrines found adherents especially among the nobility and the higher classes, and had taken particularly deep root in the South,—the region of the old Albigensian heresy.

THE CATHOLIC AND THE HUGUENOT LEADERS.—The leaders of the Catholic party were the notorious Catherine de Medici, and the powerful chiefs of the family of the Guises. Catherine, the queen-mother of the last three Valois-Orleans sovereigns, was an intriguing, treacherous Italian. Nominally she was a Catholic; but only nominally, for it seems certain that she was almost destitute of religious convictions of any kind. What she sought was power, and this she was ready to secure by any means. When it suited her purpose, she favored the Huguenots; and when it suited her purpose better, she incited the Catholics to make war upon them. Perhaps no other woman ever made so much trouble in the world. She made France wretched through the three successive reigns of her sons, and brought her house to a shameful and miserable end.

At the head of the family of the Guises stood Francis, Duke of Guise, a famous commander, who had gained great credit and popularity among his countrymen by many military exploits, especially by his capture of Calais from the English in the recent Spanish wars (see p. 553). By his side stood a younger brother Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine. Both of these men were ardent Catholics. Mary Stuart, the queen of the young king Francis II., was their niece, and through her they ruled the boy-king. The Pope and the king of Spain were friends and allies of the Guises.

The chiefs of the Huguenots were the Bourbon princes, Anthony, king of Navarre, and Louis, Prince of Condé, who, next after the brothers of Francis II., were heirs to the French throne; and Gaspard de Coligny, Admiral of France. Anthony was not a man of deep convictions. He at first sided with the Protestants, probably because it was only through forming an alliance with them that he could carry on his opposition to the Guises. He afterwards went over to the side of the Catholics. A man of very different character was Admiral Coligny. Early in life he had embraced the doctrines of the reformers, and he remained to the last the trusted and consistent, though ill-starred, champion of the Protestants.