Holland: The History of the Netherlands

by Thomas Colley Grattan

These orders were chiefly concerning the reiterated subject of the persecution to be inflexibly pursued against the religious reformers. Not satisfied with the hitherto established forms of punishment, Philip now expressly commanded that the more revolting means decreed by his father in the rigor of his early zeal, such as burning, living burial, and the like, should be adopted; and he somewhat more obscurely directed that the victims should be no longer publicly immolated, but secretly destroyed. He endeavored, by this vague phraseology, to avoid the actual utterance of the word "inquisition"; but he thus virtually established that atrocious tribunal, with attributes still more terrific than even in Spain; for there the condemned had at least the consolation of dying in open day, and of displaying the fortitude which is rarely proof against the horror of a private execution. Philip had thus consummated his treason against the principles of justice and the practices of jurisprudence, which had heretofore characterized the country; and against the most vital of those privileges which he had solemnly sworn to maintain.

His design of establishing this horrible tribunal, so impiously named "holy" by its founders, had been long suspected by the people of the Netherlands. The expression of those fears had reached him more than once. He as often replied by assurances that he had formed no such project, and particularly to Count d'Egmont during his recent visit to Madrid. But at that very time he assembled a conclave of his creatures, doctors of theology, of whom he formally demanded an opinion as to whether he could conscientiously tolerate two sorts of religion in the Netherlands. The doctors, hoping to please him, replied, that "he might, for the avoidance of a greater evil." Philip trembled with rage, and exclaimed, with a threatening tone, "I ask not if I can, but if I ought." The theologians read in this question the nature of the expected reply; and it was amply conformable to his wish. He immediately threw himself on his knees before a crucifix, and raising his hands toward heaven, put up a prayer for strength in his resolution to pursue as deadly enemies all who viewed that effigy with feelings different from his own. If this were not really a sacrilegious farce, it must be that the blaspheming bigot believed the Deity to be a monster of cruelty like himself.

Even Viglius was terrified by the nature of Philip's commands; and the patriot lords once more withdrew from all share in the government, leaving to the duchess of Parma and her ministers the whole responsibility of the new measures. They were at length put into actual and vigorous execution in the beginning of the year 1566. The inquisitors of the faith, with their familiars, stalked abroad boldly in the devoted provinces, carrying persecution and death in their train. Numerous but partial insurrections opposed these odious intruders. Every district and town became the scene of frightful executions or tumultuous resistance. The converts to the new doctrines multiplied, as usual, under the effects of persecution. "There was nowhere to be seen," says a contemporary author, "the meanest mechanic who did not find a weapon to strike down the murderers of his compatriots." Holland, Zealand and Utrecht alone escaped from those fast accumulating horrors. William of Nassau was there.

CHAPTER VIII

COMMENCEMENT OF THE REVOLUTION

A.D. 1566

The stadtholderess and her ministers now began to tremble. Philip's favorite counsellors advised him to yield to the popular despair; but nothing could change his determination to pursue his bloody game to the last chance. He had foreseen the impossibility of reducing the country to slavery as long as it maintained its tranquillity, and that union which forms in itself the elements and the cement of strength. It was from deep calculation that he had excited the troubles, and now kept them alive. He knew that the structure of illegal power could only be raised on the ruins of public rights and national happiness; and the materials of desolation found sympathy in his congenial mind.

And now in reality began the awful revolution of the Netherlands against their tyrant. In a few years this so lately flourishing and happy nation presented a frightful picture; and in the midst of European peace, prosperity, and civilization, the wickedness of one prince drew down on the country he misgoverned more evils than it had suffered for centuries from the worst effects of its foreign foes.

William of Nassau has been accused of having at length urged on the stadtholderess to promulgate the final edicts and the resolutions of the Council of Trent, and then retiring from the council of state. This line of conduct may be safely admitted and fairly defended by his admirers. He had seen the uselessness of remonstrance against the intentions of the king. Every possible means had been tried, without effect, to soften his pitiless heart to the sufferings of the country. At length the moment came when the people had reached that pitch of despair which is the great force of the oppressed, and William felt that their strength was now equal to the contest he had long foreseen. It is therefore absurd to accuse him of artifice in the exercise of that wisdom which rarely failed him on any important crisis. A change of circumstances gives a new name to actions and motives; and it would be hard to blame William of Nassau for the only point in which he bore the least resemblance to Philip of Spain—that depth of penetration, which the latter turned to every base and the former to every noble purpose.

Up to the present moment the Prince of Orange and the Counts Egmont and Horn, with their partisans and friends, had sincerely desired the public peace, and acted in the common interest of the king and the people. But all the nobles had not acted with the same constitutional moderation. Many of those, disappointed on personal accounts, others professing the new doctrines, and the rest variously affected by manifold motives, formed a body of violent and sometimes of imprudent malcontents. The marriage of Alexander, prince of Parma, son of the stadtholderess, which was at this time celebrated at Brussels, brought together an immense number of these dissatisfied nobles, who became thus drawn into closer connection, and whose national candor was more than usually brought out in the confidential intercourse of society. Politics and patriotism were the common subjects of conversation in the various convivial meetings that took place. Two German nobles, Counts Holle and Schwarzemberg, at that period in the Netherlands, loudly proclaimed the favorable disposition of the princes of the empire toward the Belgians. It was supposed even thus early that negotiations had been opened with several of those sovereigns. In short, nothing seemed wanting but a leader, to give consistency and weight to the confederacy which was as yet but in embryo. This was doubly furnished in the persons of Louis of Nassau and Henry de Brederode. The former, brother of the Prince of Orange, was possessed of many of those brilliant qualities which mark men as worthy of distinction in times of peril. Educated at Geneva, he was passionately attached to the reformed religion, and identified in his hatred the Catholic Church and the tyranny of Spain. Brave and impetuous, he was, to his elder brother, but as an adventurous partisan compared with a sagacious general. He loved William as well as he did their common cause, and his life was devoted to both.