Holland: The History of the Netherlands

by Thomas Colley Grattan

The duke of Alençon, now created duke of Anjou, by which title we shall hereafter distinguish him, had repaired to England, in hopes of completing his project of marriage with Elizabeth. After three months of almost confident expectation, the virgin queen, at this time fifty years of age, with a caprice not quite justifiable, broke all her former engagements; and, happily for herself and her country, declined the marriage. Anjou burst out into all the violence of his turbulent temper, and set sail for the Netherlands. Elizabeth made all the reparation in her power, by the honors paid him on his dismissal. She accompanied him as far as Canterbury, and sent him away under the convoy of the earl of Leicester, her chief favorite; and with a brilliant suite and a fleet of fifteen sail. Anjou was received at Antwerp with equal distinction; and was inaugurated there on the 19th of February as duke of Brabant, Lothier, Limburg, and Guelders, with many other titles, of which he soon proved himself unworthy. When the Prince of Orange, at the ceremony, placed the ducal mantle on his shoulders, Anjou said to him, "Fasten it so well, prince, that they cannot take it off again!"

During the rejoicings which followed this inauspicious ceremony, Philip's proscription against the Prince of Orange put forth its first fruits. The latter gave a grand dinner in the chateau of Antwerp, which he occupied, on the 18th of March, the birthday of the duke of Anjou; and, as he was quitting the dining-room, on his way to his private chamber, a young man stepped forward and offered a pretended petition, William being at all times of easy access for such an object. While he read the paper, the treacherous suppliant discharged a pistol at his head: the ball struck him under the left ear, and passed out at the right cheek. As he tottered and fell, the assassin drew a poniard to add suicide to the crime, but he was instantly put to death by the attendant guards. The young Count Maurice, William's second son, examined the murderer's body; and the papers found on him, and subsequent inquiries, told fully who and what he was. His name was John Jaureguay, his age twenty-three years; he was a native of Biscay, and clerk to a Spanish merchant of Antwerp, called Gaspar Anastro. This man had instigated him to the crime; having received a promise signed by King Philip, engaging to give him twenty-eight thousand ducats and other advantages, if he would undertake to assassinate the Prince of Orange. The inducements held out by Anastro to his simple dupe, were backed strongly by the persuasions of Antony Timmerman, a Dominican monk; and by Venero, Anastro's cashier, who had from fear declined becoming himself the murderer. Jaureguay had duly heard mass, and received the sacrament, before executing his attempt; and in his pockets were found a catechism of the Jesuits, with tablets filled with prayers in the Spanish language; one in particular being addressed to the Angel Gabriel, imploring his intercession with God and the Virgin, to aid him in the consummation of his object. Other accompanying absurdities seem to pronounce this miserable wretch to be as much an instrument in the hands of others as the weapon of his crime was in his own. Timmerman and Venero made a full avowal of their criminality, and suffered death in the usual barbarous manner of the times. The Jesuits, some years afterward, solemnly gathered the remains of these three pretended martyrs, and exposed them as holy relics for public veneration. Anastro effected his escape.

The alarm and indignation of the people of Antwerp knew no bounds. Their suspicions at first fell on the duke of Anjou and the French party; but the truth was soon discovered; and the rapid recovery of the Prince of Orange from his desperate wound set everything once more to rights. But a premature report of his death flew rapidly abroad; and he had anticipated proofs of his importance in the eyes of all Europe, in the frantic delight of the base, and the deep affliction of the good. Within three months, William was able to accompany the duke of Anjou in his visits to Ghent, Bruges, and the other chief towns of Flanders; in each of which the ceremony of inauguration was repeated. Several military exploits now took place, and various towns fell into the hands of the opposing parties; changing masters with a rapidity, as well as a previous endurance of suffering, that must have carried confusion and change on the contending principles of allegiance into the hearts and heads of the harassed inhabitants.

The duke of Anjou, intemperate, inconstant, and unprincipled, saw that his authority was but the shadow of power, compared to the deep-fixed practices of despotism which governed the other nations of Europe. The French officers, who formed his suite and possessed all his confidence, had no difficulty in raising his discontent into treason against the people with whom he had made a solemn compact. The result of their councils was a deep-laid plot against Flemish liberty; and its execution was ere-long attempted. He sent secret orders to the governors of Dunkirk, Bruges, Termonde, and other towns, to seize on and hold them in his name; reserving for himself the infamy of the enterprise against Antwerp. To prepare for its execution, he caused his numerous army of French and Swiss to approach the city; and they were encamped in the neighborhood, at a place called Borgerhout.

On the 17th of January, 1583, the duke dined somewhat earlier than usual, under the pretext of proceeding afterward to review his army in their camp. He set out at noon, accompanied by his guard of two hundred horse; and when he reached the second drawbridge, one of his officers gave the preconcerted signal for an attack on the Flemish guard, by pretending that he had fallen and broken his leg. The duke called out to his followers, "Courage, courage! the town is ours!" The guard at the gate was all soon despatched; and the French troops, which waited outside to the number of three thousand, rushed quickly in, furiously shouting the war-cry, "Town taken! town taken! kill! kill!" The astonished but intrepid citizens, recovering from their confusion, instantly flew to arms. All differences in religion or politics were forgotten in the common danger to their freedom. Catholics and Protestants, men and women, rushed alike to the conflict. The ancient spirit of Flanders seemed to animate all. Workmen, armed with the instruments of their various trades, started from their shops and flung themselves upon the enemy. A baker sprang from the cellar where he was kneading his dough, and with his oven shovel struck a French dragoon to the ground. Those who had firearms, after expending their bullets, took from their pouches and pockets pieces of money, which they bent between their teeth, and used for charging their arquebuses. The French were driven successively from the streets and ramparts, and the cannons planted on the latter were immediately turned against the reinforcements which attempted to enter the town. The French were everywhere beaten; the duke of Anjou saved himself by flight, and reached Termonde, after the perilous necessity of passing through a large tract of inundated country. His loss in this base enterprise amounted to one thousand five hundred; while that of the citizens did not exceed eighty men. The attempts simultaneously made on the other towns succeeded at Dunkirk and Termonde; but all the others failed.

The character of the Prince of Orange never appeared so thoroughly great as at this crisis. With wisdom and magnanimity rarely equalled and never surpassed, he threw himself and his authority between the indignation of the country and the guilt of Anjou; saving the former from excess, and the latter from execration. The disgraced and discomfited duke proffered to the states excuses as mean as they were hypocritical; and his brother, the king of France, sent a special envoy to intercede for him. But it was the influence of William that screened the culprit from public reprobation and ruin, and regained for him the place and power which he might easily have secured for himself, had he not prized the welfare of his country far above all objects of private advantage. A new treaty was negotiated, confirming Anjou in his former station, with renewed security against any future treachery on his part. He in the meantime retired to France, to let the public indignation subside; but before he could assume sufficient confidence again to face the country he had so basely injured his worthless existence was suddenly terminated, some thought by poison—the common solution of all such doubtful questions in those days—in the month of June in the following year. He expired in his twenty-ninth year.

A disgusting proof of public ingratitude and want of judgment was previously furnished by the conduct of the people of Antwerp against him who had been so often their deliverer from such various dangers. Unable to comprehend the greatness of his mind, they openly accused the Prince of Orange of having joined with the French for their subjugation, and of having concealed a body of that detested nation in the citadel. The populace rushed to the place, and having minutely examined it, were convinced of their own absurdity and the prince's innocence. He scorned to demand their punishment for such an outrageous calumny; but he was not the less afflicted at it. He took the resolution of quitting Flanders, as it turned out, forever; and he retired into Zealand, where he was better known and consequently better trusted.

In the midst of the consequent confusion in the former of these provinces, the prince of Parma, with indefatigable vigor, made himself master of town after town; and turned his particular attention to the creation of a naval force, which was greatly favored by the possession of Dunkirk, Nieuport, and Gravelines. Native treachery was not idle in this time of tumult and confusion. The count of Renneberg, governor of Friesland and Groningen, had set the basest example, and gone over to the Spaniards. The prince of Chimay, son of the duke of Arschot, and governor of Bruges, yielded to the persuasions of his father, and gave up the place to the prince of Parma. Hembyse also, amply confirming the bad opinion in which the Prince of Orange always held him, returned to Ghent, where he regained a great portion of his former influence, and immediately commenced a correspondence with the prince of Parma, offering to deliver up both Ghent and Termonde. An attempt was consequently made by the Spaniards to surprise the former town; but the citizens were prepared for this, having intercepted some of the letters of Hembyse; and the traitor was seized, tried, condemned, and executed on the 4th of August, 1584. He was upward of seventy years of age. Ryhove, his celebrated colleague, died in Holland some years later.

But the fate of so insignificant a person as Hembyse passed almost unnoticed, in the agitation caused by an event which shortly preceded his death.

From the moment of their abandonment by the duke of Anjou, the United Provinces considered themselves independent; and although they consented to renew his authority over the country at large, at the solicitation of the Prince of Orange, they were resolved to confirm the influence of the latter over their particular interests, which they were now sensible could acquire stability only by that means. The death of Anjou left them without a sovereign; and they did not hesitate in the choice which they were now called upon to make. On whom, indeed, could they fix but William of Nassau, without the utmost injustice to him, and the deepest injury to themselves? To whom could they turn, in preference to him who had given consistency to the early explosion of their despair; to him who first gave the country political existence, then nursed it into freedom, and now beheld it in the vigor and prime of independence? He had seen the necessity, but certainly overrated the value, of foreign support, to enable the new state to cope with the tremendous tyranny from which it had broken. He had tried successively Germany, England and France. From the first and the last of these powers he had received two governors, to whom he cheerfully resigned the title. The incapacity of both, and the treachery of the latter, proved to the states that their only chance for safety was in the consolidation of William's authority; and they contemplated the noblest reward which a grateful nation could bestow on a glorious liberator. And is it to be believed that he who for twenty years had sacrificed his repose, lavished his fortune, and risked his life, for the public cause, now aimed at absolute dominion, or coveted a despotism which all his actions prove him to have abhorred? Defeated bigotry has put forward such vapid accusations. He has been also held responsible for the early cruelties which, it is notorious, he used every means to avert, and frequently punished. But while these revolting acts can only be viewed in the light of reprisals against the bloodiest persecution that ever existed, by exasperated men driven to vengeance by a bad example, not one single act of cruelty or bad faith has ever been made good against William, who may be safely pronounced one of the wisest and best men that history has held up as examples to the species.