William was as much pleased as John was enraged at the failure of the policy of reconciliation. While the majority of the states still hoped for peace William was determined on independence at all costs. In August he sent a demand to the representatives to do their duty by the people, for he did not doubt that they had the right to depose the tyrant. Never did his prospects look brighter. Help was offered by Elizabeth and the tide of republican feeling began to rise higher. In proportion as the laborers were drawn to the party of revolt did the doctrine of the monarchomachs become liberal. No longer satisfied with the democracy of corporations and castes of the Middle Ages, the people began to dream of the individualistic democracy of modern times.
The executive power, virtually abandoned by Don John, now became centered in a Committee of {268} Eighteen, nominally on fortifications, but in reality, like the French Committee of Public Safety, supreme in all matters. This body was first appointed by the citizens of Brussels, but the States General were helpless against it. It was supported by the armed force of the patriots and by the personal prestige of Orange. His power was growing, for, with the capitulation of the Spanish garrison at Utrecht he had been appointed Statholder of that province. When he entered Brussels on September 23, he was received with the wild acclamations of the populace. Opposition to him seemed impossible. And yet, even at this high-water mark of his power, his difficulties were considerable. Each province was jealous of its rights and, as in the American Revolution, each province wished to contribute as little as possible to the common fund. Moreover the religious question was still extremely delicate. Orange's permission to the Catholics to celebrate their rites on his estates alienated as many Protestant fanatics as it conciliated those of the old religion.
[Sidenote: Archduke Matthew]
The Netherlands were not yet strong enough to do without powerful foreign support, nor was public opinion yet ripe for the declaration of an independent republic. Feeling that a statholder of some sort was necessary, the States General petitioned Philip to remove Don John and to appoint a legitimate prince of the blood. This petition was perhaps intentionally impossible of fulfilment in a way agreeable to Philip, for he had no legitimate brother or son. But a prince of the House of Hapsburg offered himself in the person of the Archduke Matthew, a son of the Emperor Maximilian, recently deceased. [Sidenote: October 12, 1576] Though he had neither ability of his own nor support from his brother, the Emperor Rudolph II, and though but nineteen years old, he offered his services to the Netherlands and immediately went thither. With high statecraft William {269} drew Matthew into his policy, for he saw that the dangers to be feared were anarchy and disunion. In some cities, notably Ghent, where another Committee of Eighteen was appointed on the Brussels model, the lowest classes assumed a dictatorship analagous to that of the Bolsheviki in Russia. At the same time the Patriots' demand that Orange should be made Governor of Brabant was distasteful to the large loyalist element in the population. William at once saw the use that might be made of Matthew as a figure-head to rally those who still reverenced the house of Hapsburg and who saw in monarchy the only guarantee of order at home and consideration abroad. Promptly arresting the Duke of Aerschot, a powerful noble who tried to use Matthew's name to create a separate faction, Orange induced the States General first to decree Don John an enemy of the country [Sidenote: December 7, 1577] and then to offer the governorship of the Netherlands to the archduke, at the same time begging him, on account of his youth, to leave the administration in the hands of William. After Matthew's entry into Brussels [Sidenote: January 18, 1578] the States General swore allegiance to this puppet in the hands of their greatest statesman.
Almost immediately the war broke out again. Both sides had been busy raising troops. At Gembloux Don John with 20,000 men defeated about the same number of Patriot troops. [Sidenote: January 31] But this failed to clarify a situation that tended to become ever more complicated. Help from England and France came in tiny dribblets just sufficient to keep Philip's energies occupied in the cruel civil war. But the vacancy, so to speak, on the ducal throne of the Burgundian state, seemed to invite the candidacy of neighboring princes and a chance of seriously interesting France came when the ambition of Francis, Duke of Anjou, was stirred to become ruler of the Low Countries. William attempted also to make {270} use of him. In return for the promise to raise 12,000 troops, Anjou received from the States General the title of "Defender of the Freedom of the Netherlands against the tyranny of the Spaniards and their allies." The result was that the Catholic population was divided in its support between Matthew and Anjou, and that Orange retained the balance of influence.
[Sidenote: Protestant schism]
The insuperable difficulty in the way of success for the policy of this great man was still the religious one. Calvinism had been largely drawn off to Holland and Zeeland, and Catholicism remained the religion of the great majority of the population in the other provinces. At first sight the latter appeared far from being an intractable force. In contrast with the fiery zeal of the Calvinists on the one hand and of the Spaniards on the other, the faith of the Catholic Flemings and Walloons seemed lukewarm, an old custom rather than a living conviction. Most were shocked by the fanaticism of the Spaniards, who thus proved the worst enemies of their faith, and yet, within the Netherlands, they were very unwilling to see the old religion perish. When the lower classes at Ghent assumed the leadership they rather forced than converted that city to the Calvinist confession. Their acts were taken as a breach of the Pacification of Ghent and threatened the whole policy of Orange by creating fresh discord. To obviate this, William proposed to the States General a religious peace on the basis of the status quo with refusal to allow further proselyting. [Sidenote: July, 1578] But this measure, acceptable to the Catholics, was deeply resented by the Calvinists. It was said that one who changed his religion as often as his coat must prefer human to divine things and that he who would tolerate Romanists must himself be an atheist.
[Sidenote: Division of the Netherlands]
It was therefore, a primarily religious issue, and no difference of race, language or material interest, {271} that divided the Netherlands into two halves. For a time the common hatred of all the people for the foreigner welded them into a united whole; but no sooner was the pressure of the Spanish yoke even slightly relaxed than the mutual antipathy of Calvinist and Catholic showed itself. If we look closely into the causes why the North should become predominantly Protestant while the South gradually reverted to an entirely Catholic faith, we must see that the reasons were in part racial, in part geographical and in part social. Geographically and linguistically the Northern provinces looked for their culture to Germany, and the Southern provinces to France. Moreover the easy defensibility of Holland and Zeeland, behind their moats, made them the natural refuge of a hunted sect and, this tendency once having asserted itself, the polarization of the Netherlands naturally followed, Protestants being drawn and driven to their friends in the North and Catholics similarly finding it necessary or advisable to settle in the South. Moreover in the Southern provinces the two privileged classes, clergy and nobility, were relatively stronger than in the almost entirely bourgeois and commercial North. And the influence of both was thrown into the scale of the Roman church, the first promptly and as a matter of course, the second eventually as a reaction from the strongly democratic tendency of Calvinism. In some of the Southern cities there ensued at this time a desperate struggle between the Protestant democracy and the Catholic aristocracy. The few Protestants of gentle birth in the Walloon provinces felt ill at ease in company with their Dutch co-religionists and were called by them "Malcontents" because they looked askance at the political principles of the North.
[Sidenote: January 1579]