Holland: The History of the Netherlands

by Thomas Colley Grattan

TO THE DEATH OF PRINCE MAURICE

A.D. 1619—1625

The princess-dowager of Orange, and Du Maurier, the French ambassador, had vainly implored mercy for the innocent victim at the hands of the inexorable stadtholder. Maurice refused to see his mother-in-law: he left the ambassador's appeal unanswered. This is enough for the rigid justice of history that cannot be blinded by partiality, but hands over to shame, at the close of their career, even those whom she nursed in the very cradle of heroism. But an accusation has become current, more fatal to the fame of Prince Maurice, because it strikes at the root of his claims to feeling, which could not be impugned by a mere perseverance in severity that might have sprung from mistaken views. It is asserted, but only as general belief, that he witnessed the execution of Barneveldt. The little window of an octagonal tower, overlooking the square of the Binnenhof at The Hague, where the tragedy was acted, is still shown as the spot from which the prince gazed on the scene. Almost concealed from view among the clustering buildings of the place, it is well adapted to give weight to the tradition; but it may not, perhaps, even now be too late to raise a generous incredulity as to an assertion of which no eye-witness attestation is recorded, and which might have been the invention of malignity. There are many statements of history which it is immaterial to substantiate or disprove. Splendid fictions of public virtue have often produced their good if once received as fact; but, when private character is at stake, every conscientious writer or reader will cherish his "historic doubts," when he reflects on the facility with which calumny is sent abroad, the avidity with which it is received, and the careless ease with which men credit what it costs little to invent and propagate, but requires an age of trouble and an almost impossible conjunction of opportunities effectually to refute.

Grotius and Hoogerbeets were confined in the castle of Louvestein. Moersbergen, a leading patriot of Utrecht, De Haan, pensionary of Haarlem, and Uitenbogaard, the chosen confidant of Maurice, but the friend of Barneveldt, were next accused and sentenced to imprisonment or banishment. And thus Arminianism, deprived of its chiefs, was for the time completely stifled. The Remonstrants, thrown into utter despair, looked to emigration as their last resource. Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden, and Frederick, duke of Holstein, offered them shelter and protection in their respective states. Several availed themselves of these offers; but the states-general, alarmed at the progress of self-expatriation, moderated their rigor, and thus checked the desolating evil. Several of the imprisoned Arminians had the good fortune to elude the vigilance of their jailers; but the escape of Grotius is the most remarkable of all, both from his own celebrity as one of the first writers of his age in the most varied walks of literature, and from its peculiar circumstances, which only found a parallel in European history after a lapse of two centuries. We allude to the escape of Lavalette from the prison of the Conciergerie in Paris in 1815, which so painfully excited the interest of all Europe for the intended victim's wife, whose reason was the forfeit of her exertion.

Grotius was freely allowed during his close imprisonment all the relaxations of study. His friends supplied him with quantities of books, which were usually brought into the fortress in a trunk two feet two inches long, which the governor regularly and carefully examined during the first year. But custom brought relaxation in the strictness of the prison rules; and the wife of the illustrious prisoner, his faithful and constant visitor, proposed the plan of his escape, to which he gave a ready and, all hazards considered, a courageous assent. Shut up in this trunk for two hours, and with all the risk of suffocation, and of injury from the rude handling of the soldiers who carried it out of the fort, Grotius was brought clear off by the very agents of his persecutors, and safely delivered to the care of his devoted and discreet female servant, who knew the secret and kept it well. She attended the important consignment in the barge to the town of Gorcum; and after various risks of discovery, providentially escaped, Grotius at length found himself safe beyond the limits of his native land. His wife, whose torturing suspense may be imagined the while, concealed the stratagem as long as it was possible to impose on the jailer with the pardonable and praiseworthy fiction of her husband's illness and confinement to his bed. The government, outrageous at the result of the affair, at first proposed to hold this interesting prisoner in place of the prey they had lost, and to proceed criminally against her. But after a fortnight's confinement she was restored to liberty, and the country saved from the disgrace of so ungenerous and cowardly a proceeding. Grotius repaired to Paris, where he was received in the most flattering manner, and distinguished by a pension of one thousand crowns allowed by the king. He soon published his vindication—one of the most eloquent and unanswerable productions of its kind, in which those times of unjust accusations and illegal punishments were so fertile.

The expiration of the twelve years' truce was now at hand; and the United Provinces, after that long period of intestine trouble and disgrace, had once more to recommence a more congenial struggle against foreign enemies; for a renewal of the war with Spain might be fairly considered a return to the regimen best suited to the constitution of the people. The republic saw, however, with considerable anxiety, the approach of this new contest. It was fully sensible of its own weakness. Exile had reduced its population; patriotism had subsided; foreign friends were dead; the troops were unused to warfare; the hatred against Spanish cruelty had lost its excitement; the finances were in confusion; Prince Maurice had no longer the activity of youth; and the still more vigorous impulse of fighting for his country's liberty was changed to the dishonoring task of upholding his own tyranny.

The archdukes, encouraged by these considerations, had hopes of bringing back the United Provinces to their domination. They accordingly sent an embassy to Holland with proposals to that effect. It was received with indignation; and the ambassador, Peckius, was obliged to be escorted back to the frontiers by soldiers, to protect him from the insults of the people. Military operations were, however, for a while refrained from on either side, in consequence of the deaths of Philip III. of Spain and the archduke Albert. Philip IV. succeeded his father at the age of sixteen; and the archduchess Isabella found herself alone at the head of the government in the Belgian provinces. Olivarez became as sovereign a minister in Spain, as his predecessor the duke of Lerma had been; but the archduchess, though now with only the title of stadtholderess of the Netherlands, held the reins of power with a firm and steady hand.

In the celebrated thirty years' war which had commenced between the Protestants and Catholics of Germany, the former had met with considerable assistance from the United Provinces. Barneveldt, who foresaw the embarrassments which the country would have to contend with on the expiration of that truce, had strongly opposed its meddling in the quarrel; but his ruin and death left no restraint on the policy which prompted the republic to aid the Protestant cause. Fifty thousand florins a month to the revolted Protestants, and a like sum to the princes of the union, were for some time advanced. Frederick, the elector palatine, son-in-law of the king of England, and nephew of the prince, was chosen by the Bohemians for their king; but in spite of the enthusiastic wishes of the English nation, James persisted in refusing to interfere in Frederick's favor. France, governed by De Luynes, a favorite whose influence was deeply pledged, and, it is said, dearly sold to Spain, abandoned the system of Henry IV., and upheld the House of Austria. Thus the new monarch, only aided by the United Provinces, and that feebly, was soon driven from his temporary dignity; his hereditary dominions in the palatinate were overrun by the Spanish army under Spinola; and Frederick, utterly defeated at the battle of Prague, was obliged to take refuge in Holland. James's abandonment of his son-in-law has been universally blamed by almost every historian. He certainly allowed a few generous individuals to raise a regiment in England of two thousand four hundred chosen soldiers, who, under the command of the gallant Sir Horace Vere, could only vainly regret the impossibility of opposition to ten times their number of veteran troops.

This contest was carried on at first with almost all the advantages on the side of the House of Austria. Two men of extraordinary character, which presented a savage parody of military talent, and a courage chiefly remarkable for the ferocity into which it degenerated, struggled for a while against the imperial arms. These were the count of Mansfield and Christian of Brunswick. At the head of two desperate bands, which, by dint of hard fighting, acquired something of the consistency of regular armies, they maintained a long resistance; but the duke of Bavaria, commanding the troops of the emperor, and Count Tilly at the head of those of Spain, completed in the year 1622 the defeat of their daring and semi-barbarous opponents.

Spinola was resolved to commence the war against the republic by some important exploit. He therefore laid siege to Berg-op-Zoom, a place of great consequence, commanding the navigation of the Meuse and the coasts of all the islands of Zealand. But Maurice, roused from the lethargy of despotism which seemed to have wholly changed his character, repaired to the scene of threatened danger; and succeeded, after a series of desperate efforts on both sides, to raise the siege, forcing Spinola to abandon his attempt with a loss of upward of twelve thousand men. Frederick Henry in the meantime had made an incursion into Brabant with a body of light troops; and ravaging the country up to the very gates of Mechlin, Louvain, and Brussels, levied contributions to the amount of six hundred thousand florins. The states completed this series of good fortune by obtaining the possession of West Friesland, by means of Count Mansfield, whom they had despatched thither at the head of his formidable army, and who had, in spite of the opposition of Count Tilly, successfully performed his mission.