Books: The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1559 60
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John Lothrop Motley >> The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1559 60
William of Orange, at the departure of the King for Spain, was in his
twenty-seventh year. He was a widower; his first wife, Anne of Egmont,
having died in 1558, after seven years of wedlock. This lady, to whom
he had been united when they were both eighteen years of age, was the
daughter of the celebrated general, Count de Buren, and the greatest
heiress in the Netherlands. William had thus been faithful to the family
traditions, and had increased his possessions by a wealthy alliance.
He had two children, Philip and Mary. The marriage had been more
amicable than princely marriages arranged for convenience often prove.
The letters of the Prince to his wife indicate tenderness and
contentment. At the same time he was accused, at a later period, of
"having murdered her with a dagger." The ridiculous tale was not even
credited by those who reported it, but it is worth mentioning, as a proof
that no calumny was too senseless to be invented concerning the man whose
character was from that hour forth to be the mark of slander, and whose
whole life was to be its signal, although often unavailing, refutation.
Yet we are not to regard William of Orange, thus on the threshold of his
great career, by the light diffused from a somewhat later period. In no
historical character more remarkably than in his is the law of constant
development and progress illustrated. At twenty-six he is not the "pater
patriae," the great man struggling upward and onward against a host of
enemies and obstacles almost beyond human strength, and along the dark
and dangerous path leading through conflict, privation, and ceaseless
labor to no repose but death. On the contrary, his foot was hardly on
the first step of that difficult ascent which was to rise before him all
his lifetime. He was still among the primrose paths. He was rich,
powerful, of sovereign rank. He had only the germs within him of what
was thereafter to expand into moral and intellectual greatness. He had
small sympathy for the religious reformation, of which he was to be one
of the most distinguished champions. He was a Catholic, nominally, and
in outward observance. With doctrines he troubled himself but little.
He had given orders to enforce conformity to the ancient Church, not with
bloodshed, yet with comparative strictness, in his principality of
Orange. Beyond the compliance with rites and forms, thought
indispensable in those days to a personage of such high degree, he did
not occupy himself with theology. He was a Catholic, as Egmont and Horn,
Berlaymont and Mansfeld, Montigny and even Brederode, were Catholic. It
was only tanners, dyers and apostate priests who were Protestants at that
day in the Netherlands. His determination to protect a multitude of his
harmless inferiors from horrible deaths did not proceed from sympathy
with their religious sentiments, but merely from a generous and manly
detestation of murder. He carefully averted his mind from sacred
matters. If indeed the seed implanted by his pious parents were really
the germ of his future conversion to Protestantism, it must be confessed
that it lay dormant a long time. But his mind was in other pursuits.
He was disposed for an easy, joyous, luxurious, princely life. Banquets,
masquerades, tournaments, the chase, interspersed with the routine of
official duties, civil and military, seemed likely to fill out his life.
His hospitality, like his fortune, was almost regal. While the King and
the foreign envoys were still in the Netherlands, his house, the splendid
Nassau palace of Brussels, was ever open. He entertained for the
monarch, who was, or who imagined himself to be, too poor to discharge
his own duties in this respect, but he entertained at his own expense.
This splendid household was still continued. Twenty-four noblemen and
eighteen pages of gentle birth officiated regularly in his family. His
establishment was on so extensive a scale that upon one day twenty-eight
master cooks were dismissed, for the purpose of diminishing the family
expenses, and there was hardly a princely house in Germany which did not
send cooks to learn their business in so magnificent a kitchen. The
reputation of his table remained undiminished for years. We find at
a later period, that Philip, in the course of one of the nominal
reconciliations which took place several times between the monarch and
William of Orange, wrote that, his head cook being dead, he begged the
Prince to "make him a present of his chief cook, Master Herman, who was
understood to be very skilful."
In this hospitable mansion, the feasting continued night and day. From
early morning till noon, the breakfast-tables were spread with wines and
luxurious viands in constant succession, to all comers and at every
moment.--The dinner and supper were daily banquets for a multitude of
guests. The highest nobles were not those alone who were entertained.
Men of lower degree were welcomed with a charming hospitality which made
them feel themselves at their ease. Contemporaries of all parties unite
in eulogizing the winning address and gentle manners of the Prince.
"Never," says a most bitter Catholic historian, "did an arrogant or
indiscreet word fall from his lips. He, upon no occasion, manifested
anger to his servants, however much they might be in fault, but contented
himself with admonishing them graciously, without menace or insult.
He had a gentle and agreeable tongue, with which he could turn all the
gentlemen at court any way he liked. He was beloved and honored by the
whole community." His manner was graceful, familiar, caressing, and yet
dignified. He had the good breeding which comes from the heart, refined
into an inexpressible charm from his constant intercourse, almost from
his cradle, with mankind of all ranks.
It may be supposed that this train of living was attended with expense.
Moreover, he had various other establishments in town and country;
besides his almost royal residence in Brussels. He was ardently fond of
the chase, particularly of the knightly sport of falconry. In the
country he "consoled himself by taking every day a heron in the clouds."
His falconers alone cost him annually fifteen hundred florins, after he
had reduced their expenses to the lowest possible point. He was much in
debt, even at this early period and with his princely fortune. "We come
of a race," he wrote carelessly to his brother Louis, "who are somewhat
bad managers in our young days, but when we grow older, we do better,
like our late father: 'sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper et in
secula seculorum'. My greatest difficulty," he adds, "as usual, is on
account of the falconers."
His debts already amounted, according to Granvelle's statement, to
800,000 or 900,000 florins. He had embarrassed himself, not only through
his splendid extravagance, by which all the world about him were made to
partake of his wealth, but by accepting the high offices to which he had
been appointed. When general-in-chief on the frontier, his salary was
three hundred florins monthly; "not enough," as he said, "to pay the
servants in his tent," his necessary expenses being twenty-five hundred
florins, as appears by a letter to his wife. His embassy to carry the
crown to Ferdinand, and his subsequent residence as a hostage for the
treaty in Paris, were also very onerous, and he received no salary;
according to the economical system in this respect pursued by Charles and
Philip. In these two embassies or missions alone, together with the
entertainments offered by him to the court and to foreigners, after the
peace at Brussels, the Prince spent, according to his own estimate,
1,500,000 florins. He was, however, although deeply, not desperately
involved, and had already taken active measures to regulate and reduce
his establishment. His revenues were vast, both in his own right and in
that of his deceased wife. He had large claims upon the royal treasury
for service and expenditure. He had besides ample sums to receive from
the ransoms of the prisoners of St. Quentin and Gravelines, having served
in both campaigns. The amount to be received by individuals from this
source may be estimated from the fact that Count Horn, by no means one
of the most favored in the victorious armies, had received from Leonor
d'Orleans, Due de Loggieville, a ransom of eighty thousand crowns. The
sum due, if payment were enforced, from the prisoners assigned to Egmont,
Orange, and others, must have been very large. Granvelle estimated the
whole amount at two millions; adding, characteristically, "that this kind
of speculation was a practice" which our good old fathers, lovers of
virtue, would not have found laudable. In this the churchman was right,
but he might have added that the "lovers of virtue" would have found it
as little "laudable" for ecclesiastics to dispose of the sacred offices
in their gift, for carpets, tapestry, and annual payments of certain
percentages upon the cure of souls. If the profits respectively gained
by military and clerical speculators in that day should be compared, the
disadvantage would hardly be found to lie with those of the long robe.
Such, then, at the beginning of 1560, was William of Orange; a generous,
stately, magnificent, powerful grandee. As a military commander, he had
acquitted himself very creditably of highly important functions at an
early age. Nevertheless it was the opinion of many persons, that he was
of a timid temperament. He was even accused of having manifested an
unseemly panic at Philippeville, and of having only been restrained by
the expostulations of his officers, from abandoning both that fortress
and Charlemont to Admiral Coligny, who had made his appearance in the
neighborhood, merely at the head of a reconnoitring party. If the story
were true, it would be chiefly important as indicating that the Prince of
Orange was one of the many historical characters, originally of an
excitable and even timorous physical organization, whom moral courage and
a strong will have afterwards converted into dauntless heroes. Certain
it is that he was destined to confront open danger in every form, that
his path was to lead through perpetual ambush, yet that his cheerful
confidence and tranquil courage were to become not only unquestionable
but proverbial. It may be safely asserted, however, that the story was
an invention to be classed with those fictions which made him the
murderer of his first wife, a common conspirator against Philip's crown
and person, and a crafty malefactor in general, without a single virtue.
It must be remembered that even the terrible Alva, who lived in harness
almost from the cradle to the grave, was, so late as at this period,
censured for timidity, and had been accused in youth of flat cowardice.
He despised the insinuation, which for him had no meaning. There is no
doubt too that caution was a predominant characteristic of the Prince.
It was one of the chief sources of his greatness. At that period,
perhaps at any period, he would have been incapable of such brilliant and
dashing exploits as had made the name of Egmont so famous. It had even
become a proverb, "the counsel of Orange, the execution of Egmont," yet
we shall have occasion to see how far this physical promptness which had
been so felicitous upon the battle-field was likely to avail the hero of
St. Quentin in the great political combat which was approaching.
As to the talents of the Prince, there was no difference of opinion. His
enemies never contested the subtlety and breadth of his intellect, his
adroitness and capacity in conducting state affairs, his knowledge of
human nature, and the profoundness of his views. In many respects it
must be confessed that his surname of The Silent, like many similar
appellations, was a misnomer. William of Orange was neither "silent" nor
"taciturn," yet these are the epithets which will be forever associated
with the name of a man who, in private, was the most affable, cheerful,
and delightful of companions, and who on a thousand great public
occasions was to prove himself, both by pen and by speech, the most
eloquent man of his age. His mental accomplishments were considerable:
He had studied history with attention, and he spoke and wrote with
facility Latin, French, German, Flemish, and Spanish.
The man, however, in whose hands the administration of the Netherlands
was in reality placed, was Anthony Perrenot, then Bishop of Arras, soon
to be known by the more celebrated title of Cardinal Granvelle. He was
the chief of the Consults, or secret council of three, by whose
deliberations the Duchess Regent was to be governed. His father,
Nicholas Perrenot, of an obscure family in Burgundy, had been long the
favorite minister and man of business to the Emperor Charles. Anthony,
the eldest of thirteen children, was born in 1517. He was early
distinguished for his talents. He studied at Dole, Padua, Paris, and
Louvain. At, the age of twenty he spoke seven languages with perfect
facility, while his acquaintance with civil and ecclesiastical laws was
considered prodigious. At the age of twenty-three he became a canon of
Liege Cathedral. The necessary eight quarters of gentility produced upon
that occasion have accordingly been displayed by his panegyrists in
triumphant refutation of that theory which gave him a blacksmith for his
grandfather. At the same period, although he had not reached the
requisite age, the rich bishopric of Arras had already been prepared
for him by his father's care. Three years afterwards, in 1543, he
distinguished himself by a most learned and brilliant harangue before
the Council of Trent, by which display he so much charmed the Emperor,
that he created him councillor of state. A few years afterwards he
rendered the unscrupulous Charles still more valuable proofs of devotion
and dexterity by the part he played in the memorable imprisonment of the
Landgrave of Hesse and the Saxon Dukes. He was thereafter constantly
employed in embassies and other offices of trust and profit.
There was no doubt as to his profound and varied learning, nor as to his
natural quickness and dexterity. He was ready witted, smooth and fluent
of tongue, fertile in expedients, courageous, resolute. He thoroughly
understood the art of managing men, particularly his superiors. He knew
how to govern under the appearance of obeying. He possessed exquisite
tact in appreciating the characters of those far above him in rank and
beneath him in intellect. He could accommodate himself with great
readiness to the idiosyncrasies of sovereigns. He was a chameleon to
the hand which fed him. In his intercourse with the King, he colored
himself, as it were, with the King's character. He was not himself, but
Philip; not the sullen, hesitating, confused Philip, however, but Philip
endowed with eloquence, readiness, facility. The King ever found himself
anticipated with the most delicate obsequiousness, beheld his struggling
ideas change into winged words without ceasing to be his own. No
flattery could be more adroit. The bishop accommodated himself to
the King's epistolary habits. The silver-tongued and ready debater
substituted protocols for conversation, in deference to a monarch who
could not speak. He corresponded with Philip, with Margaret of Parma,
with every one. He wrote folios to the Duchess when they were in the
same palace. He would write letters forty pages long to the King, and
send off another courier on the same day with two or three additional
despatches of identical date. Such prolixity enchanted the King, whose
greediness for business epistles was insatiable. The painstaking monarch
toiled, pen in hand, after his wonderful minister in vain. Philip was
only fit to be the bishop's clerk; yet he imagined himself to be the
directing and governing power. He scrawled apostilles in the margins to
prove that he had read with attention, and persuaded himself that he
suggested when he scarcely even comprehended. The bishop gave advice and
issued instructions when he seemed to be only receiving them. He was the
substance while he affected to be the shadow. These tactics were
comparatively easy and likely to be triumphant, so long as he had only to
deal with inferior intellects like those of Philip and Margaret. When he
should be matched against political genius and lofty character combined,
it was possible that his resources might not prove so all-sufficient.
His political principles were sharply defined in reality, but smoothed
over by a conventional and decorous benevolence of language, which
deceived vulgar minds. He was a strict absolutist. His deference to
arbitrary power was profound and slavish. God and "the master," as he
always called Philip, he professed to serve with equal humility. "It
seems to me," said he, in a letter of this epoch, "that I shall never be
able to fulfil the obligation of slave which I owe to your majesty, to
whom I am bound by so firm a chain;--at any rate, I shall never fail to
struggle for that end with sincerity."
As a matter of course, he was a firm opponent of the national rights of
the Netherlands, however artfully he disguised the sharp sword of violent
absolutism under a garland of flourishing phraseology. He had
strenuously warned Philip against assembling the States-general before
his departure for the sake of asking them for supplies. He earnestly
deprecated allowing the constitutional authorities any control over the
expenditures of the government, and averred that this practice under the
Regent Mary had been the cause of endless trouble. It may easily be
supposed that other rights were as little to his taste as the claim to
vote the subsidies, a privilege which was in reality indisputable. Men
who stood forth in defence of the provincial constitutions were, in his
opinion, mere demagogues and hypocrites; their only motive being to curry
favor with the populace. Yet these charters were, after all,
sufficiently limited. The natural rights of man were topics which had
never been broached. Man had only natural wrongs. None ventured to
doubt that sovereignty was heaven-born, anointed of God. The rights of
the Netherlands were special, not general; plural, not singular;
liberties, not liberty; "privileges," not maxims. They were practical,
not theoretical; historical, not philosophical. Still, such as they
were, they were facts, acquisitions. They had been purchased by the
blood and toil of brave ancestors; they amounted--however open to
criticism upon broad humanitarian grounds, of which few at that day had
ever dreamed--to a solid, substantial dyke against the arbitrary power
which was ever chafing and fretting to destroy its barriers. No men
were more subtle or more diligent in corroding the foundation of these
bulwarks than the disciples of Granvelle. Yet one would have thought
it possible to tolerate an amount of practical freedom so different
from the wild, social speculations which in later days, have made both
tyrants and reasonable lovers of our race tremble with apprehension.
The Netherlanders claimed, mainly, the right to vote the money which was
demanded in such enormous profusion from their painfully-acquired wealth;
they were also unwilling to be burned alive if they objected to
transubstantiation. Granvelle was most distinctly of an opposite opinion
upon both topics. He strenuously deprecated the interference of the
states with the subsidies, and it was by his advice that the remorseless
edict of 1550, the Emperor's ordinance of blood and fire, was re-enacted,
as the very first measure of Philip's reign. Such were his sentiments as
to national and popular rights by representation. For the people itself
--"that vile and mischievous animal called the people"--as he expressed
it, he entertained a cheerful contempt.
His aptitude for managing men was very great; his capacity for affairs
incontestable; but it must be always understood as the capacity for the
affairs of absolutism. He was a clever, scheming politician, an adroit
manager; it remained to be seen whether he had a claim to the character
of a statesman. His industry was enormous. He could write fifty letters
a day with his own hand. He could dictate to half a dozen amanuenses at
once, on as many different subjects, in as many different languages, and
send them all away exhausted.
He was already rich. His income from his see and other livings was
estimated, in 1557, at ten thousand dollars--[1885 approximation. The
decimal point more places to the right would in 2000 not be out of line.
D.W.]--; his property in ready money, "furniture, tapestry, and the
like," at two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. When it is considered
that, as compared with our times, these sums represent a revenue of a
hundred thousand, and a capital of two millions and a half in addition,
it may be safely asserted that the prelate had at least made a good
beginning. Besides his regular income, moreover, he had handsome
receipts from that simony which was reduced to a system, and which gave
him a liberal profit, generally in the shape of an annuity, upon every
benefice which he conferred. He was, however, by no means satisfied.
His appetite was as boundless as the sea; he was still a shameless
mendicant of pecuniary favors and lucrative offices. Already, in 1552,
the Emperor had roundly rebuked his greediness. "As to what you say of
getting no 'merced' nor 'ayuda de costa,'" said he, "'tis merced and
ayuda de costa quite sufficient, when one has fat benefices, pensions,
and salaries, with which a man might manage to support himself." The
bishop, however, was not easily abashed, and he was at the epoch which
now occupies us, earnestly and successfully soliciting from Philip the
lucrative abbey of Saint Armand. Not that he would have accepted this
preferment, "could the abbey have been annexed to any of the new
bishoprics;" on the contrary, he assured the king that "to carry out so
holy a work as the erection of those new sees, he would willingly have
contributed even out of his own miserable pittance."
It not being considered expedient to confiscate the abbey to any
particular bishop, Philip accordingly presented it to the prelate of
Arras, together with a handsome sum of money in the shape of an "ayuda de
costa" beside. The thrifty bishop, who foresaw the advent of troublous
times in the Netherlands, however, took care in the letters by which he
sent his thanks, to instruct the King to secure the money upon crown
property in Arragon, Naples, and Sicily, as matters in the provinces were
beginning to look very precarious.
Such, at the commencement of the Duchess Margaret's administration, were
the characters and the previous histories of the persons into whose hands
the Netherlands were entrusted. None of them have been prejudged. We
have contented ourselves with stating the facts with regard to all, up to
the period at which we have arrived. Their characters have been
sketched, not according to subsequent developments, but as they appeared
at the opening of this important epoch.
The aspect of the country and its inhabitants offered many sharp
contrasts, and revealed many sources of future trouble.
The aristocracy of the Netherlands was excessively extravagant,
dissipated, and already considerably embarrassed in circumstances. It
had been the policy of the Emperor and of Philip to confer high offices,
civil, military, and diplomatic, upon the leading nobles, by which
enormous expenses were entailed upon them, without any corresponding
salaries. The case of Orange has been already alluded to, and there were
many other nobles less able to afford the expense, who had been indulged
with these ruinous honors. During the war, there had been, however, many
chances of bettering broken fortunes. Victory brought immense prizes to
the leading officers. The ransoms of so many illustrious prisoners as
had graced the triumphs of Saint Quentin and Gravelines had been
extremely profitable. These sources of wealth had now been cut off; yet,
on the departure of the King from the Netherlands, the luxury increased
instead of diminishing, "Instead of one court," said a contemporary, "you
would have said that there were fifty." Nothing could be more sumptuous
than the modes of life in Brussels. The household of Orange has been
already painted. That of Egmont was almost as magnificent. A rivalry in
hospitality and in display began among the highest nobles, and extended
to those less able to maintain themselves in the contest. During the war
there had been the valiant emulation of the battlefield; gentlemen had
vied with each other how best to illustrate an ancient name with deeds of
desperate valor, to repair the fortunes of a ruined house with the spoils
of war. They now sought to surpass each other in splendid extravagance.
It was an eager competition who should build the stateliest palaces, have
the greatest number of noble pages and gentlemen in waiting, the most
gorgeous liveries, the most hospitable tables, the most scientific cooks.
There was, also, much depravity as well as extravagance. The morals of
high society were loose. Gaming was practised to a frightful extent.
Drunkenness was a prevailing characteristic of the higher classes. Even
the Prince of Orange himself, at this period, although never addicted to
habitual excess, was extremely convivial in his tastes, tolerating scenes
and companions, not likely at a later day to find much favor in his
sight. "We kept Saint Martin's joyously," he wrote, at about this
period, to his brother, "and in the most jovial company. Brederode was
one day in such a state that I thought he would certainly die, but he has
now got over it." Count Brederode, soon afterwards to become so
conspicuous in the early scenes of the revolt, was, in truth, most
notorious for his performances in these banqueting scenes. He appeared
to have vowed as uncompromising hostility to cold water as to the
inquisition, and always denounced both with the same fierce and ludicrous
vehemence. Their constant connection with Germany at that period did not
improve the sobriety of the Netherlands' nobles. The aristocracy of that
country, as is well known, were most "potent at potting." "When the
German finds himself sober," said the bitter Badovaro, "he believes
himself to be ill." Gladly, since the peace, they had welcomed the
opportunities afforded for many a deep carouse with their Netherlands
cousins. The approaching marriage of the Prince of Orange with the Saxon
princess--an episode which will soon engage our attention--gave rise to
tremendous orgies. Count Schwartzburg, the Prince's brother-in-law, and
one of the negotiators of the marriage, found many occasions to
strengthen the bonds of harmony between the countries by indulgence of
these common tastes. "I have had many princes and counts at my table,"
he wrote to Orange, "where a good deal more was drunk than eaten. The
Rhinegrave's brother fell down dead after drinking too much malvoisie;
but we have had him balsamed and sent home to his family."