Books: The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555 59
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John Lothrop Motley >> The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555 59
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In the mean time an accident favored the designs of the papal court.
An open quarrel with Spain resulted from an insignificant circumstance.
The Spanish ambassador at Rome was in the habit of leaving the city very
often, at an early hour in the morning, upon shooting excursions, and had
long enjoyed the privilege of ordering the gates to be opened for him at
his pleasure. By accident or design, he was refused permission upon one
occasion to pass through the gate as usual. Unwilling to lose his day's
sport, and enraged at what he considered an indignity, his excellency, by
the aid of his attendants, attacked and beat the guard, mastered them,
made his way out of the city, and pursued his morning's amusement. The
Pope was furious, Caraffa artfully inflamed his anger. The envoy was
refused an audience, which he desired, for the sake of offering
explanations, and the train being thus laid, it was thought that the
right moment had arrived for applying the firebrand. The Cardinal went
to Paris post haste. In his audience of the King, he represented that
his Holiness had placed implicit reliance upon his secret treaty with his
majesty, that the recently concluded truce with Spain left the pontiff at
the mercy of the Spaniard, that the Duke of Alva had already drawn the
sword, that the Pope had long since done himself the pleasure and the
honor of appointing the French monarch protector of the papal chair in
general, and of the Caraffa family in particular, and that the moment had
arrived for claiming the benefit of that protection. He assured him,
moreover, as by full papal authority, that in respecting the recent truce
with Spain, his majesty would violate both human and divine law. Reason
and justice required him to defend the pontiff, now that the Spaniards
were about to profit by the interval of truce to take measures for his
detriment. Moreover, as the Pope was included in the truce of Vaucelles,
he could not be abandoned without a violation of that treaty itself.--
The arts and arguments of the Cardinal proved successful; the war was
resolved upon in favor of the Pope. The Cardinal, by virtue of powers
received and brought with him from his holiness, absolved the King from
all obligation to keep his faith with Spain. He also gave him a
dispensation from the duty of prefacing hostilities by a declaration of
war. Strozzi was sent at once into Italy, with some hastily collected
troops, while the Duke of Guise waited to organize a regular army.
The mischief being thus fairly afoot, and war let loose again upon
Europe, the Cardinal made a public entry into Paris, as legate of the
Pope. The populace crowded about his mule, as he rode at the head of a
stately procession through the streets. All were anxious to receive a
benediction from the holy man who had come so far to represent the
successor of St. Peter, and to enlist the efforts of all true believers
in his cause. He appeared to answer the entreaties of the superstitious
rabble with fervent blessings, while the friends who were nearest him
were aware that nothing but gibes and sarcasms were falling from his
lips. "Let us fool these poor creatures to their heart's content, since
they will be fools," he muttered; smiling the while upon them
benignantly, as became his holy office. Such were the materials of this
new combination; such was the fuel with which this new blaze was lighted
and maintained. Thus were the great powers of the earth--Spain, France,
England, and the Papacy embroiled, and the nations embattled against each
other for several years. The preceding pages show how much national
interests, or principles; were concerned in the struggle thus commenced,
in which thousands were to shed their life-blood, and millions to be
reduced from peace and comfort to suffer all the misery which famine and
rapine can inflict. It would no doubt have increased the hilarity of
Caraffa, as he made his triumphant entry into Paris, could the idea have
been suggested to his mind that the sentiments, or the welfare of the
people throughout the great states now involved in his meshes, could have
any possible bearing upon the question of peace or wax. The world was
governed by other influences. The wiles of a cardinal--the arts of a
concubine--the snipe-shooting of an ambassador--the speculations of a
soldier of fortune--the ill temper of a monk--the mutual venom of Italian
houses--above all, the perpetual rivalry of the two great historical
families who owned the greater part of Europe between them as their
private property--such were the wheels on which rolled the destiny of
Christendom. Compared to these, what were great moral and political
ideas, the plans of statesmen, the hopes of nations? Time was soon to
show. Meanwhile, government continued to be administered exclusively for
the benefit of the governors. Meanwhile, a petty war for paltry motives
was to precede the great spectacle which was to prove to Europe that
principles and peoples still existed, and that a phlegmatic nation of
merchants and manufacturers could defy the powers of the universe, and
risk all their blood and treasure, generation after generation, in a
sacred cause.
It does not belong to our purpose to narrate the details of the campaign
in Italy; neither is this war of politics and chicane of any great
interest at the present day. To the military minds of their age, the
scientific duel which now took place upon a large scale, between two such
celebrated captains as the Dukes of Guise and Alva, was no doubt esteemed
the most important of spectacles; but the progress of mankind in the art
of slaughter has stripped so antiquated an exhibition of most of its
interest, even in a technical point of view. Not much satisfaction could
be derived from watching an old-fashioned game of war, in which the
parties sat down before each other so tranquilly, and picked up piece
after piece, castle after castle, city after city, with such scientific
deliberation as to make it evident that, in the opinion of the
commanders, war was the only serious business to be done in the world;
that it was not to be done in a hurry, nor contrary to rule, and that
when a general had a good job upon his hands he ought to know his
profession much too thoroughly, to hasten through it before he saw his
way clear to another. From the point of time, at the close of the year
1556, when that well-trained but not very successful soldier, Strozzi,
crossed the Alps, down to the autumn of the following year, when the Duke
of Alva made his peace with the Pope, there was hardly a pitched battle,
and scarcely an event of striking interest. Alva, as usual, brought his
dilatory policy to bear upon his adversary with great effect. He had no
intention, he observed to a friend, to stake the whole kingdom of Naples
against a brocaded coat of the Duke of Guise. Moreover, he had been sent
to the war, as Ruy Gomez informed the Venetian ambassador, "with a bridle
in his mouth." Philip, sorely troubled in his mind at finding himself in
so strange a position as this hostile attitude to the Church, had
earnestly interrogated all the doctors and theologians with whom he
habitually took counsel, whether this war with the Pope would not work a
forfeiture of his title of the Most Catholic King. The Bishop of Arras
and the favorite both disapproved of the war, and encouraged, with all
their influence, the pacific inclinations of the monarch. The doctors
were, to be sure, of opinion that Philip, having acted in Italy only in
self-defence, and for the protection of his states, ought not to be
anxious as to his continued right to the title on which he valued himself
so highly. Nevertheless, such ponderings and misgivings could not but
have the effect of hampering the actions of Alva. That general chafed
inwardly at what he considered his own contemptible position. At the
same time, he enraged the Duke of Guise still more deeply by the forced
calmness of his proceedings. Fortresses were reduced, towns taken, one
after another, with the most provoking deliberation, while his distracted
adversary in vain strove to defy, or to delude him, into trying the
chances of a stricken field. The battle of Saint Quentin, the narrative
of which belongs to our subject, and will soon occupy our attention, at
last decided the Italian operations. Egmont's brilliant triumph in
Picardy rendered a victory in Italy superfluous, and placed in Alva's
hand the power of commanding the issue of his own campaign. The Duke of
Guise was recalled to defend the French frontier, which the bravery of
the Flemish hero had imperilled, and the Pope was left to make the best
peace which he could. All was now prosperous and smiling, and the
campaign closed with a highly original and entertaining exhibition.
The pontiff's puerile ambition, sustained by the intrigues of his nephew,
had involved the French monarch in a war which was contrary to his
interests and inclination. Paul now found his ally too sorely beset to
afford him that protection upon which he had relied, when he commenced,
in his dotage, his career as a warrior. He was, therefore, only desirous
of deserting his friend, and of relieving himself from his uncomfortable
predicament, by making a treaty with his catholic majesty upon the best
terms which he could obtain. The King of France, who had gone to war
only for the sake of his holiness, was to be left to fight his own
battles, while the Pope was to make his peace with all the world. The
result was a desirable one for Philip. Alva was accordingly instructed
to afford the holy father a decorous and appropriate opportunity for
carrying out his wishes. The victorious general was apprized that his
master desired no fruit from his commanding attitude in Italy and the
victory of Saint Quentin, save a full pardon from the Pope for
maintaining even a defensive war against him. An amicable siege of Rome
was accordingly commenced, in the course of which an assault or
"camiciata" on the holy city, was arranged for the night of the 26th
August, 1557. The pontiff agreed to be taken by surprise--while Alva,
through what was to appear only a superabundance of his habitual
discretion, was to draw off his troops at the very moment when the
victorious assault was to be made. The imminent danger to the holy city
and to his own sacred person thus furnishing the pontiff with an excuse
for abandoning his own cause, as well as that of his ally the Duke of
Alva was allowed, in the name of his master and himself; to make
submission to the Church and his peace with Rome. The Spanish general,
with secret indignation and disgust, was compelled to humor the vanity of
a peevish but imperious old man. Negotiations were commenced, and so
skilfully had the Duke played his game during the spring and summer,
that when he was admitted to kiss the Pope's toe, he was able to bring
a hundred Italian towns in his hand, as a peace-offering to his holiness.
These he now restored, with apparent humility and inward curses, upon the
condition that the fortifications should be razed, and the French
alliance absolutely renounced. Thus did the fanaticism of Philip reverse
the relative position of himself and his antagonist. Thus was the
vanquished pontiff allowed almost to dictate terms to the victorious
general. The king who could thus humble himself to a dotard, while he
made himself the scourge of his subjects, deserved that the bull of
excommunication which had been prepared should have been fulminated.
He, at least, was capable of feeling the scathing effects of such
anathemas.
The Duke of Guise, having been dismissed with the pontiff's assurance
that he had done little for the interests of his sovereign, less for the
protection of the Church, and least of all for his own reputation, set
forth with all speed for Civita Vecchia, to do what he could upon the
Flemish frontier to atone for his inglorious campaign in Italy. The
treaty between the Pope and the Duke of Alva was signed on the 14th
September (1557), and the Spanish general retired for the winter to
Milan. Cardinal Caraffa was removed from the French court to that of
Madrid, there to spin new schemes for the embroilment of nations and the
advancement of his own family. Very little glory was gained by any of
the combatants in this campaign. Spain, France, nor Paul IV., not one of
them came out of the Italian contest in better condition than that in
which they entered upon it. In fact all were losers. France had made an
inglorious retreat, the Pope a ludicrous capitulation, and the only
victorious party, the King of Spain, had, during the summer, conceded to
Cosmo de Medici the sovereignty of Sienna. Had Venice shown more
cordiality towards Philip, and more disposition to sustain his policy,
it is probable that the Republic would have secured the prize which thus
fell to the share of Cosmo. That astute and unprincipled potentate, who
could throw his net so well in troubled water, had successfully duped all
parties, Spain, France, and Rome. The man who had not only not
participated in the contest, but who had kept all parties and all warfare
away from his borders, was the only individual in Italy who gained
territorial advantage from the war.
To avoid interrupting the continuity of the narrative, the Spanish
campaign has been briefly sketched until the autumn of 1557, at which
period the treaty between the Pope and Philip was concluded. It is now
necessary to go back to the close of the preceding year.
Simultaneously with the descent of the French troops upon Italy,
hostilities had broken out upon the Flemish border. The pains of the
Emperor in covering the smouldering embers of national animosities so
precipitately, and with a view rather to scenic effect than to a
deliberate and well-considered result, were thus set at nought, and
within a year from the day of his abdication, hostilities were reopened
from the Tiber to the German Ocean. The blame of first violating the
truce of Vaucelles was laid by each party upon the other with equal
justice, for there can be but little doubt that the reproach justly
belonged to both. Both had been equally faithless in their professions
of amity. Both were equally responsible for the scenes of war, plunder,
and misery, which again were desolating the fairest regions of
Christendom.
At the time when the French court had resolved to concede to the wishes
of the Caraffa family, Admiral Coligny, who had been appointed governor
of Picardy, had received orders to make a foray upon the frontier of
Flanders. Before the formal annunciation of hostilities, it was thought
desirable to reap all the advantage possible from the perfidy which had
been resolved upon.
It happened that a certain banker of Lucca, an ancient gambler and
debauchee, whom evil courses had reduced from affluence to penury, had
taken up his abode upon a hill overlooking the city of Douay. Here he
had built himself a hermit's cell. Clad in sackcloth, with a rosary at
his waist, he was accustomed to beg his bread from door to door. His
garb was all, however, which he possessed of sanctity, and he had passed
his time in contemplating the weak points in the defences of the city
with much more minuteness than those in his own heart. Upon the breaking
out of hostilities in Italy, the instincts of his old profession had
suggested to him that a good speculation might be made in Flanders, by
turning to account as a spy the observations which he had made in his
character of a hermit. He sought an interview with Coligny, and laid his
propositions before him. The noble Admiral hesitated, for his sentiments
were more elevated than those of many of his contemporaries. He had,
moreover, himself negotiated and signed the truce with Spain, and he
shrank from violating it with his own hand, before a declaration of war.
Still he was aware that a French army was on its way to attack the
Spaniards in Italy; he was under instructions to take the earliest
advantage which his position upon the frontier might offer him; he knew
that both theory and practice authorized a general, in that age, to break
his fast, even in time of truce, if a tempting morsel should present
itself; and, above all, he thoroughly understood the character of his
nearest antagonist, the new governor of the Netherlands, Philibert of
Savoy, whom he knew to be the most unscrupulous chieftain in Europe.
These considerations decided him to take advantage of the hermit-banker's
communication.
A day was accordingly fixed, at which, under the guidance of this newly-
acquired ally, a surprise should be attempted by the French forces, and
the unsuspecting city of Douay given over to the pillage of a brutal
soldiery. The time appointed was the night of Epiphany, upon occasion of
which festival, it was thought that the inhabitants, overcome with sleep
and wassail, might be easily overpowered. (6th January, 1557.) The plot
was a good plot, but the Admiral of France was destined to be foiled by
an old woman. This person, apparently the only creature awake in the
town, perceived the danger, ran shrieking through the streets, alarmed
the citizens while it was yet time, and thus prevented the attack.
Coligny, disappointed in his plan, recompensed his soldiers by a sudden
onslaught upon Lens in Arthois, which he sacked and then levelled with
the ground. Such was the wretched condition of frontier cities,
standing, even in time of peace, with the ground undermined beneath them,
and existing every moment, as it were, upon the brink of explosion.
Hostilities having been thus fairly commenced, the French government was
in some embarrassment. The Duke of Guise, with the most available forces
of the kingdom, having crossed the Alps, it became necessary forthwith to
collect another army. The place of rendezvous appointed was Pierrepoint,
where an army of eighteen thousand infantry and five thousand horse were
assembled early in the spring. In the mean time, Philip finding the war
fairly afoot, had crossed to England for the purpose (exactly in
contravention of all his marriage stipulations) of cajoling his wife and
browbeating her ministers into a participation in his war with France.
This was easily accomplished. The English nation found themselves
accordingly engaged in a contest with which they had no concern, which,
as the event proved, was very much against their interests, and in which
the moving cause for their entanglement was the devotion of a weak, bad,
ferocious woman, for a husband who hated her. A herald sent from England
arrived in France, disguised, and was presented to King Henry at Rheims.
Here, dropping on one knee, he recited a list of complaints against his
majesty, on behalf of the English Queen, all of them fabricated or
exaggerated for the occasion, and none of them furnishing even a decorous
pretext for the war which was now formally declared in consequence. The
French monarch expressed his regret and surprise that the firm and
amicable relations secured by treaty between the two countries should
thus, without sufficient cause, be violated. In accepting the wager of
warfare thus forced upon him, he bade the herald, Norris, inform his
mistress that her messenger was treated with courtesy only because he
represented a lady, and that, had he come from a king, the language
with which he would have been greeted would have befitted the perfidy
manifested on the occasion. God would punish this shameless violation
of faith, and this wanton interruption to the friendship of two great
nations. With this the herald was dismissed from the royal presence, but
treated with great distinction, conducted to the hotel of the English
ambassador, and presented, on the part of the French sovereign with a
chain of gold.
Philip had despatched Ruy Gomez to Spain for the purpose of providing
ways and means, while he was himself occupied with the same task in
England. He stayed there three months. During this time, he "did more,"
says a Spanish contemporary, "than any one could have believed possible
with that proud and indomitable nation. He caused them to declare war
against France with fire and sword, by sea and land." Hostilities having
been thus chivalrously and formally established, the Queen sent an army
of eight thousand men, cavalry, infantry, and pioneers, who, "all clad in
blue uniform," commanded by Lords Pembroke and Clinton, with the three
sons of the Earl of Northumberland, and officered by many other scions of
England's aristocracy, disembarked at Calais, and shortly afterwards
joined the camp before Saint Quentin.
Philip meantime had left England, and with more bustle and activity than
was usual with him, had given directions for organizing at once a
considerable army. It was composed mainly of troops belonging to the
Netherlands, with the addition of some German auxiliaries. Thirty-five
thousand foot and twelve thousand horse had, by the middle of July,
advanced through the province of Namur, and were assembled at Givet under
the Duke of Savoy, who, as Governor-General of the Netherlands, held the
chief command. All the most eminent grandees of the provinces, Orange,
Aerschot, Berlaymont, Meghen, Brederode, were present with the troops,
but the life and soul of the army, upon this memorable occasion, was the
Count of Egmont.
Lamoral, Count of Egmont, Prince of Gavere, was now in the thirty-sixth
year of his age, in the very noon of that brilliant life which was
destined to be so soon and so fatally overshadowed. Not one of the dark
clouds, which were in the future to accumulate around him, had yet rolled
above his horizon. Young, noble, wealthy, handsome, valiant, he saw no
threatening phantom in the future, and caught eagerly at the golden
opportunity, which the present placed within his grasp, of winning fresh
laurels on a wider and more fruitful. field than any in which he had
hitherto been a reaper. The campaign about to take place was likely to
be an imposing, if not an important one, and could not fail to be
attractive to a noble of so ardent and showy a character as Egmont.
If there were no lofty principles or extensive interests to be contended
for, as there certainly were not, there was yet much that was stately and
exciting to the imagination in the warfare which had been so deliberately
and pompously arranged. The contending armies, although of moderate
size, were composed of picked troops, and were commanded by the flower of
Europe's chivalry. Kings, princes, and the most illustrious paladins of
Christendom, were arming for the great tournament, to which they had been
summoned by herald and trumpet; and the Batavian hero, without a crown or
even a country, but with as lofty a lineage as many anointed sovereigns
could boast, was ambitious to distinguish himself in the proud array.
Upon the north-western edge of the narrow peninsula of North Holland,
washed by the stormy waters of the German Ocean, were the ancient castle,
town, and lordship, whence Egmont derived his family name, and the title
by which he was most familiarly known. He was supposed to trace his
descent, through a line of chivalrous champions and crusaders, up to the
pagan kings of the most ancient of existing Teutonic races. The eighth
century names of the Frisian Radbold and Adgild among his ancestors were
thought to denote the antiquity of a house whose lustre had been
increased in later times by the splendor of its alliances. His father,
united to Francoise de Luxemburg, Princess of Gavere, had acquired by
this marriage, and transmitted to his posterity, many of the proudest
titles and richest estates of Flanders. Of the three children who
survived him, the only daughter was afterwards united to the Count of
Vaudemont, and became mother of Louise de Vaudemont, queen of the French
monarch, Henry the Third.
Of his two sons, Charles, the elder, had died young and unmarried,
leaving all the estates and titles of the family to his brother.
Lamoral, born in 1522, was in early youth a page of the Emperor. When
old enough to bear arms he demanded and obtained permission to follow the
career of his adventurous sovereign. He served his apprenticeship as a
soldier in the stormy expedition to Barbary, where, in his nineteenth
year, he commanded a troop of light horse, and distinguished himself
under the Emperor's eye for his courage and devotion, doing the duty not
only of a gallant commander but of a hardy soldier. Returning, unscathed
by the war, flood, or tempest of that memorable enterprise, he reached
his country by the way of Corsica, Genoa, and Lorraine, and was three
years afterwards united (in the year 1545) to Sabina of Bavaria, sister
of Frederick, Elector Palatine. The nuptials had taken place at Spiers,
and few royal weddings could have been more brilliant. The Emperor, his
brother Ferdinand King of the Romans, with the Archduke Maximilian, all
the imperial electors, and a concourse of the principal nobles of the
empire, were present on the occasion been at the Emperor's side during
the unlucky siege of Metz; in 1554 he had been sent at the head of a
splendid embassy to England, to solicit for Philip the hand of Mary
Tudor, and had witnessed the marriage in Winchester Cathedral, the same
year. Although one branch of his house had, in past times, arrived at
the sovereignty of Gueldres, and another had acquired the great estates
and titles of Buren, which had recently passed, by intermarriage with the
heiress, into the possession of the Prince of Orange, yet the Prince of
Gavere, Count of Egmont, was the chief of a race which yielded to none of
the great Batavian or Flemish families in antiquity, wealth, or power.
Personally, he was distinguished for his bravery, and although he was not
yet the idol of the camp, which he was destined to become, nor had yet
commanded in chief on any important occasion, he was accounted one of the
five principal generals in the Spanish service. Eager for general
admiration, he was at the same time haughty and presumptuous, attempting
to combine the characters of an arrogant magnate and a popular chieftain.
Terrible and sudden in his wrath, he was yet of inordinate vanity, and
was easily led by those who understood his weakness. With a limited
education, and a slender capacity for all affairs except those relating
to the camp, he was destined to be as vacillating and incompetent as a
statesman, as he was prompt and fortunately audacious in the field. A
splendid soldier, his evil stars had destined him to tread, as a
politician, a dark and dangerous path, in which not even genius, caution,
and integrity could ensure success, but in which rashness alternating
with hesitation, and credulity with violence, could not fail to bring
ruin. Such was Count Egmont, as he took his place at the-head of the
king's cavalry in the summer of 1557.
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