Holland: The History of the Netherlands

by Thomas Colley Grattan

This action may be taken as a fair sample of the difficulty with which any estimate can be formed of the relative losses on such occasions. The Dutch historians state the loss of the royalists, in killed, at upward of two thousand. Meteren, a good authority, says the peasants buried two thousand two hundred and fifty; while Bentivoglio, an Italian writer in the interest of Spain, makes the number exactly half that amount. Grotius says that the loss of the Dutch was four men killed. Bentivoglio states it at one hundred. But, at either computation, it is clear that the affair was a brilliant one on the part of Prince Maurice.

This was in its consequences a most disastrous affair to the archduke. His army was disorganized, and his finances exhausted; while the confidence of the states in their troops and their general was considerably raised. But the taking of Amiens by Portocarrero, one of the most enterprising of the Spanish captains, gave a new turn to the failing fortunes of Albert. This gallant officer, whose greatness of mind, according to some historians, was much disproportioned to the smallness of his person, gained possession of that important town by a well-conducted stratagem, and maintained his conquest valiantly till he was killed in its defence. Henry IV. made prodigious efforts to recover the place, the chief bulwark on that side of France; and having forced Montenegro, the worthy successor of Portocarrero, to capitulate, granted him and his garrison most honorable conditions. Henry, having secured Amiens against any new attack, returned to Paris and made a triumphal entry into the city.

During this year Prince Maurice took a number of towns in rapid succession; and the states, according to their custom, caused various medals, in gold, silver, and copper, to be struck, to commemorate the victories which had signalized their arms.

Philip II., feeling himself approaching the termination of his long and agitating career, now wholly occupied himself in negotiations for peace with France. Henry IV. desired it as anxiously. The pope, Clement VIII., encouraged by his exhortations this mutual inclination. The king of Poland sent ambassadors to The Hague and to London, to induce the states and Queen Elizabeth to become parties in a general pacification. These overtures led to no conclusion; but the conferences between France and Spain went on with apparent cordiality and great promptitude, and a peace was concluded between these powers at Vervins, on the 2d of May, 1598.

Shortly after the publication of this treaty, another important act was made known to the world, by which Philip ceded to Albert and Isabella, on their being formally affianced—a ceremony which now took place—the sovereignty of Burgundy and the Netherlands. This act bears date the 6th of May, and was proclaimed with all the solemnity due to so important a transaction. It contained thirteen articles; and was based on the misfortunes which the absence of the sovereign had hitherto caused to the Low Countries. The Catholic religion was declared that of the state, in its full integrity. The provinces were guaranteed against dismemberment. The archdukes, by which title the joint sovereigns were designated without any distinction of sex, were secured in the possession, with right of succession to their children; and a provision was added, that in default of posterity their possessions should revert to the Spanish crown. The infanta Isabella soon sent her procuration to the archduke, her affianced husband, giving him full power and authority to take possession of the ceded dominions in her name as in his own; and Albert was inaugurated with great pomp at Brussels, on the 22d of August. Having put everything in order for the regulation of the government during his absence, he set out for Spain for the purpose of accomplishing his spousals, and bringing back his bride to the chief seat of their joint power. But before his departure he wrote to the various states of the republic, and to Prince Maurice himself, strongly recommending submission and reconciliation. These letters received no answer; a new plot against the life of Prince Maurice, by a wretched individual named Peter Pann, having aroused the indignation of the country, and determined it to treat with suspicion and contempt every insidious proposition from the tyranny it defied.

Albert placed his uncle, the cardinal Andrew of Austria, at the head of the temporary government, and set out on his journey; taking the little town of Halle in his route, and placing at the altar of the Virgin, who is there held in particular honor, his cardinal's hat as a token of his veneration. He had not made much progress when he received accounts of the demise of Philip II., who died, after long suffering, and with great resignation, on the 13th of September, 1598, at the age of seventy-two. Albert was several months on his journey through Germany; and the ceremonials of his union with the infanta did not take place till the 18th of April, 1599, when it was finally solemnized in the city of Valencia in Spain.

This transaction, by which the Netherlands were positively erected into a separate sovereignty, seems naturally to make the limits of another epoch in their history. It completely decided the division between the northern and southern provinces, which, although it had virtually taken place long previous to this period, could scarcely be considered as formally consummated until now. Here then we shall pause anew, and take a rapid review of the social state of the Netherlands during the last half century, which was beyond all doubt the most important period of their history, from the earliest times till the present.

It has been seen that when Charles V. resigned his throne and the possession of his vast dominions to his son, arts, commerce, and manufactures had risen to a state of considerable perfection throughout the Netherlands. The revolution, of which we have traced the rise and progress, naturally produced to those provinces which relapsed into slavery a most lamentable change in every branch of industry, and struck a blow at the general prosperity, the effects of which are felt to this very day. Arts, science, and literature were sure to be checked and withered in the blaze of civil war; and we have now to mark the retrograde movements of most of those charms and advantages of civilized life, in which Flanders and the other southern states were so rich.

The rapid spread of enlightenment on religious subjects soon converted the manufactories and workshops of Flanders into so many conventicles of reform; and the clear-sighted artisans fled in thousands from the tyranny of Alva into England, Germany, and Holland—those happier countries, where the government adopted and went hand in hand with the progress of rational belief. Commerce followed the fate of manufactures. The foreign merchants one by one abandoned the theatre of bigotry and persecution; and even Antwerp, which had succeeded Bruges as the great mart of European traffic, was ruined by the horrible excesses of the Spanish soldiery, and never recovered from the shock. Its trade, its wealth, and its prosperity, were gradually transferred to Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and the towns of Holland and Zealand; and the growth of Dutch commerce attained its proud maturity in the establishment of the India Company in 1596, the effects of which we shall have hereafter more particularly to dwell on.

The exciting and romantic enterprises of the Portuguese and Spanish navigators in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries roused all the ardor of other nations for those distant adventures; and the people of the Netherlands were early influenced by the general spirit of Europe. If they were not the discoverers of new worlds, they were certainly the first to make the name of European respected and venerated by the natives.