[Sidenote: February, 1561]
Granvelle, more than ever detested when he received the cardinal's hat, was dubbed "the red devil," "the archrascal," "the red dragon," "the Spanish swine," "the pope's dung." In July Egmont and Orange sent their resignations from the Council of State to Philip, saying that they could no longer share the responsibility for Granvelle's policy, especially as everything was done behind their backs. Philip, however, was slow to take alarm. For the moment his attention was taken up with the growth of the Huguenot party in France and his efforts centered on helping the French Catholics against them. But the Netherlands were {253} importunate. In voicing the wishes of the people the province of Brabant, with the capital, Brussels, the metropolitan see, Malines, and the university, Louvain, took as decided a lead as the Parlement of Paris did in France. The estates of Brabant demanded that Orange be made their governor. The nobles began to remember that they were legally a part of the Empire. The marriage of Orange, on August 26, 1561, with the Lutheran Anne of Saxony, was but one sign of the rapprochment. Though the prince continued to profess Catholicism, he entertained many Lutherans and emphasized as far as possible his position as vassal of the Empire. Philip, indeed, believed that the whole trouble came from the wounded vanity of a few nobles.
But Granvelle saw deeper. [Sidenote: 1561] When the Estates of Brabant stopped the payment of the principal tax or "Bede," [2] and when the people of Brussels took as a party uniform a costume derived from the carnival, a black cloak covered with red fool's heads, the cardinal, whose red hat was caricatured thereby, stated that nothing less than a republic was aimed at. This was true, though in the anticipation of the nobles, at least, the republic should have a decidedly aristocratic character. But Granvelle had no policy to propose but repression. In order to prevent condemned heretics from preaching and singing on the scaffold a gag was put into their mouths. How futile a measure! The Calvinists no longer disguised, but armed—a new and significant fact—thronged to their conventicles. Emigration continued on a large scale. By 1556 it was estimated that thirty thousand Protestants from the Low Countries were settled in or near London. Elizabeth encouraged them to come, assigning them {254} Norwich as a place of refuge. [Sidenote: 1563] She also began to tax imports from the Netherlands, a blow to which Philip replied by forbidding all English imports.
[Sidenote: Revolt]
Hitherto the resistance to the government had been mostly passive and constitutional. But from 1565 may be dated the beginning of the revolt that did not cease until it had freed the northern provinces forever from Spanish tyranny. The rise of the Dutch Republic is one of the most inspiring pages in history. Superficially it has many points of resemblance with the American War of Independence. In both there was the absentee king, the national hero, the local jealousies of the several provinces, the economic grievances, the rising national feeling and even the religious issue, though this had become very small in America. But the difference was in the ferocity of the tyranny and the intensity of the struggle. The two pictures are like the same landscape as it might be painted by Millet and by Turner: the one is decent and familiar, the other lurid and ghastly. With true Anglo-Saxon moderation the American war was fought like a game or an election, with humanity and attention to rules; but in Holland and Belgium was enacted the most terrible frightfulness in the world; over the whole land, mingled with the reek of candles carried in procession and of incense burnt to celebrate a massacre, brooded the sultry miasma of human blood and tears. On the one side flashed the savage sword of Alva and the pitiless flame of the inquisitor Tapper; on the other were arrayed, behind their dykes and walls, men resolved to win that freedom which alone can give scope and nobility to life.
[Sidenote: The Intellectuals]
And in the melée those suffered most who would fain have been bystanders, the humanists. Persecuted by both sides, the intellectuals, who had once deserted the Reform now turned again to it as the lesser of the two {255} evils. They would have been glad to make terms with any church that would have left them in liberty, but they found the whips of Calvin lighter than the scorpions of Philip. Even those who, like Van Helmont, wished to defend the church and to reconcile the Tridentine decrees with philosophy, found that their labors brought them under suspicion and that what the church demanded was not harmony of thought but abnegation of it.
The first act of the revolt may be said to be a secret compact, known as the Compromise, [Sidenote: The Compromise, 1565] originally entered into by twenty nobles at Brussels and soon joined by three hundred other nobles elsewhere. The document signed by them denounced the Edicts as surpassing the greatest recorded barbarity of tyrants and as threatening the complete ruin of the country. To resist them the signers promised each other mutual support. In this as in subsequent developments the Calvinist minority took the lead, but was supported by strong Catholic forces. Among the latter was the Prince of Orange, not yet a Protestant. His conversion really made little difference in his program; both before and after it he wanted tolerance or reconciliation on Cassander's plan of compromise. He would have greatly liked to have seen the Peace of Augsburg, now the public law of the Empire, extended to the Low Countries, but this was made difficult even to advocate because the Peace of Augsburg provided liberty only for the Lutheran confession, whereas the majority of Protestants in the Netherlands were now Calvinists. For the same reason little help could be expected from the German princes, for the mutual animosity that was the curse of the Protestant churches prevented their making common cause against the same enemy.
As the Huguenots—for so they began to be called in Brabant as well as in France—were as yet too few {256} to rebel, the only course open was to appeal to the government once more. A petition to make the Edicts milder was presented to Margaret in 1566. One of her advisers bade her not to be afraid of "those beggars." Originating in the scorn of enemies, like so many party names, the epithet "Beggars" (Gueux) presently became the designation and a proud one, of the nobles who had signed the Compromise and later of all the rebels.
Encouraged by the regent's apparent lack of power to coerce them, the Calvinist preachers became daily bolder. Once again their religion showed its remarkable powers of organization. Lacking nothing in funds, derived from a constituency of wealthy merchants, the preachers of the Reformation were soon able to forge a machinery of propaganda and party action that stood them in good stead against the greater numbers of their enemies. Especially in critical times, discipline, unity, and enthusiasm make headway against the deadly hatred of enemies and the deadlier apathy and timidity of the mass of mankind. It is true that the methods of the preachers often aroused opposition.