Books: The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1564 65
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John Lothrop Motley >> The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1564 65
Certainly here was a sufficient amount of plain speaking upon one great
subject, and very little encouragement with regard to the other. Yet
Egmont, who immediately after receiving these instructions set forth upon
his return to the Netherlands, manifested nothing but satisfaction.
Philip presented to him, as his travelling companion, the young Prince
Alexander of Parma, then about to make a visit to his mother in Brussels,
and recommended the youth, afterwards destined to play so prominent a
part in Flemish history, to his peculiar caret Egmont addressed a letter
to the King from Valladolid, in which he indulged in ecstasies concerning
the Escorial and the wood of Segovia, and declared that he was returning
to the Netherlands "the most contented man in the world."
He reached Brussels at the end of April. Upon the fifth of May he
appeared before the council, and proceeded to give an account of his
interview with the King, together with a statement of the royal
intentions and opinions. These were already sufficiently well known.
Letters, written after the envoy's departure, had arrived before him,
in which, while in the main presenting the same views as those contained
in the instructions to Egmont, Philip had expressed his decided
prohibition of the project to enlarge the state council and to suppress
the authority of the other two. Nevertheless, the Count made his report
according to the brief received at Madrid, and assured his hearers that
the King was all benignity, having nothing so much at heart as the
temporal and eternal welfare of the provinces. The siege of Malta, he
stated, would prevent the royal visit to the Netherlands for the moment,
but it was deferred only for a brief period. To remedy the deficiency in
the provincial exchequer, large remittances would be made immediately
from Spain. To provide for the increasing difficulties of the religious
question, a convocation of nine learned and saintly personages was
recommended, who should devise some new scheme by which the objections to
the present system of chastising heretics might be obviated.
It is hardly necessary to state that so meagre a result to the mission of
Egmont was not likely to inspire the hearts of Orange and his adherents
with much confidence. No immediate explosion of resentment, however,
occurred. The general aspect for a few days was peaceful. Egmont
manifested much contentment with the reception which he met with in
Spain, and described the King's friendly dispositions towards the leading
nobles in lively colors. He went to his government immediately after his
return, assembled the states of Artois, in the city of Arras, and
delivered the letters sent to that body by the King. He made a speech on
this occasion, informing the estates that his Majesty had given orders
that the edicts of the Emperor were to be enforced to the letter; adding
that he had told the King, freely, his own opinion upon the subject;
in order to dissuade him from that which others were warmly urging.
He described Philip as the most liberal and debonair of princes; his
council in Spain as cruel and sanguinary. Time was to show whether the
epithets thus applied to the advisers were not more applicable to the
monarch than the eulogies thus lavished by the blind and predestined
victim. It will also be perceived that this language, used before the
estates of Artois, varied materially from his observation to the Dowager
Duchess of Aerschot, denouncing as enemies the men who accused him of
having requested a moderation of the edicts. In truth, this most
vacillating, confused, and unfortunate of men perhaps scarcely
comprehended the purport of his recent negotiations in Spain, nor
perceived the drift of his daily remarks at home. He was, however,
somewhat vainglorious immediately after his return, and excessively
attentive to business. "He talks like a King," said Morillon,
spitefully, "negotiates night and day, and makes all bow before him."
His house was more thronged with petitioners, courtiers, and men of
affairs, than even the palace of the Duchess. He avowed frequently that
he would devote his life and his fortune to the accomplishment of the
King's commands, and declared his uncompromising hostility to all who
should venture to oppose that loyal determination.
It was but a very short time, however, before a total change was
distinctly perceptible in his demeanor. These halcyon days were soon
fled. The arrival of fresh letters from Spain gave a most unequivocal
evidence of the royal determination, if, indeed, any doubt could be
rationally entertained before. The most stringent instructions to keep
the whole machinery of persecution constantly at work were transmitted
to the Duchess, and aroused the indignation of Orange and his followers.
They avowed that they could no longer trust the royal word, since, so
soon after Egmont's departure, the King had written despatches so much at
variance with his language, as reported by the envoy. There was nothing,
they said, clement and debonair in these injunctions upon gentlemen of
their position and sentiments to devote their time to the encouragement
of hangmen and inquisitors. The Duchess was unable to pacify the nobles.
Egmont was beside himself with rage. With his usual recklessness and
wrath, he expressed himself at more than one session of the state
council in most unmeasured terms. His anger had been more inflamed by
information which he had received from the second son of Berlaymont, a
young and indiscreet lad, who had most unfortunately communicated many
secrets which he had learned from his father, but which were never
intended for Egmont's ear.
Philip's habitual dissimulation had thus produced much unnecessary
perplexity. It was his custom to carry on correspondence through the aid
of various secretaries, and it was his invariable practice to deceive
them all. Those who were upon the most confidential terms with the
monarch, were most sure to be duped upon all important occasions. It has
been seen that even the astute Granvelle could not escape this common lot
of all who believed their breasts the depositories of the royal secrets.
Upon this occasion, Gonzalo Perez and Ruy Gomez complained bitterly that
they had known nothing of the letters which had recently been despatched
from Valladolid, while Tisnacq and Courterville had been ignorant of the
communications forwarded by the hands of Egmont. They avowed that the
King created infinite trouble by thus treating his affairs in one way
with one set of councillors and in an opposite sense with the others,
thus dissembling with all, and added that Philip was now much astonished
at the dissatisfaction created in the provinces by the discrepancy
between the French letters brought by Egmont, and the Spanish letters
since despatched to the Duchess. As this was his regular manner of
transacting business, not only for the Netherlands, but for all his
dominions, they were of opinion that such confusion and dissatisfaction
might well be expected.
After all, however, notwithstanding the indignation of Egmont, it must be
confessed that he had been an easy dupe. He had been dazzled by royal
smiles, intoxicated by court incense, contaminated by yet baser bribes.
He had been turned from the path of honor and the companionship of the
wise and noble to do the work of those who were to compass his
destruction. The Prince of Orange reproached him to his face with
having forgotten, when in Spain, to represent the views of his associates
and the best interests of the country, while he had well remembered his
own private objects, and accepted the lavish bounty of the King. Egmont,
stung to the heart by the reproof, from one whom he honored and who
wished him well, became sad and sombre for a long time, abstained from
the court and from society, and expressed frequently the intention of
retiring to his estates. He was, however, much governed by his
secretary, the Seigneur de Bakerzeel, a man of restless, intriguing, and
deceitful character, who at this period exercised as great influence over
the Count as Armenteros continued to maintain over the Duchess, whose
unpopularity from that and other circumstances was daily increasing.
In obedience to the commands of the King, the canons of Trent had been
published. They were nominally enforced at Cambray, but a fierce
opposition was made by the clergy themselves to the innovation in
Mechlin, Utrecht, and many other places.
This matter, together with other more vitally important questions, came
before the assembly of bishops and doctors, which, according to Philip's
instructions, had been convoked by the Duchess. The opinion of the
learned theologians was, on the whole, that the views of the Trent
Council, with regard to reformation of ecclesiastical morals and popular
education, was sound. There was some discordancy between the clerical
and lay doctors upon other points. The seigniors, lawyers, and deputies
from the estates were all in favor of repealing the penalty of death for
heretical offences of any kind. President Viglius, with all the bishops
and doctors of divinity, including the prelates of St. Omer, Namur and
Ypres, and four theological professors from Louvain, stoutly maintained
the contrary opinion. The President especially, declared himself
vehemently in favor of the death punishment, and expressed much anger
against those who were in favor of its abolition. The Duchess, upon the
second day of the assembly, propounded formally the question, whether any
change was to be made in the chastisement of heretics. The Prince of
Orange, with Counts Horn and Egmont, had, however, declined to take part
in the discussions, on the ground that it was not his Majesty's intention
that state councillors should deliver their opinions before strangers,
but that persons from outside had been summoned to communicate their
advice to the Council. The seigniors having thus washed their hands of
the matter, the doctors came to a conclusion with great alacrity. It was
their unanimous opinion that it comported neither with the service of God
nor the common weal, to make any change in the punishment, except,
perhaps, in the case of extreme youth; but that, on the contrary,
heretics were only to be dealt with by retaining the edicts in their
rigor, and by courageously chastising the criminals. After sitting for
the greater part of six days, the bishops and doctors of divinity reduced
their sentiments to writing, and affixed their signatures to the
document. Upon the great point of the change suggested in the penalties
of heresy, it was declared that no alteration was advisable in the
edicts, which had been working so well for thirty-five years. At the
same time it was suggested that "some persons, in respect to their age
and quality, might be executed or punished more or less rigorously than
others; some by death, some by galley slavery, some by perpetual
banishment and entire confiscation of property." The possibility was
also admitted, of mitigating the punishment of those who, without being
heretics or sectaries, might bring themselves within the provisions of
the edicts, "through curiosity, nonchalance, or otherwise." Such
offenders, it was hinted, might be "whipped with rods, fined, banished,
or subjected to similar penalties of a lighter nature." It will be
perceived by this slight sketch of the advice thus offered to the Duchess
that these theologians were disposed very carefully to strain the mercy,
which they imagined possible in some cases, but which was to drop only
upon the heads of the just. Heretics were still to be dealt with, so far
as the bishops and presidents could affect their doom, with unmitigated
rigor.
When the assembly was over, the Duchess, thus put in possession of the
recorded wisdom of these special councillors, asked her constitutional
advisers what she was to do with it. Orange, Egmont, Horn, Mansfeld
replied, however, that it was not their affair, and that their opinion
had not been demanded by his Majesty in the premises. The Duchess
accordingly transmitted to Philip the conclusions of the assembly,
together with the reasons of the seigniors for refusing to take part in
its deliberations. The sentiments of Orange could hardly be doubtful,
however, nor his silence fail to give offense to the higher powers.
He contented himself for the time with keeping his eyes and ears open to
the course of events, but he watched well. He had "little leisure for
amusing himself," as Brederode suggested. That free-spoken individual
looked upon the proceedings of the theological assembly with profound
disgust. "Your letter," he wrote to Count Louis, "is full of those
blackguards of bishops and presidents. I would the race were extinct,
like that of green dogs. They will always combat with the arms which
they have ever used, remaining to the end avaricious, brutal, obstinate,
ambitious, et cetera. I leave you to supply the rest."
Thus, then, it was settled beyond peradventure that there was to be no
compromise with heresy. The King had willed it. The theologians had
advised it. The Duchess had proclaimed it. It was supposed that
without the axe, the fire, and the rack, the Catholic religion would
be extinguished, and that the whole population of the Netherlands would
embrace the Reformed Faith. This was the distinct declaration of
Viglius, in a private letter to Granvelle. "Many seek to abolish the
chastisement of heresy," said he; "if they gain this point, actum est
de religione Catholica; for as most of the people are ignorant fools,
the heretics will soon be the great majority, if by fear of punishment
they are not kept in the true path."
The uneasiness, the terror, the wrath of the people seemed rapidly
culminating to a crisis. Nothing was talked of but the edicts and the
inquisition. Nothing else entered into the minds of men. In the
streets, in the shops, in the taverns, in the fields; at market, at
church, at funerals, at weddings; in the noble's castle, at the farmer's
fireside, in the mechanic's garret, upon the merchants' exchange, there
was but one perpetual subject of shuddering conversation. It was better,
men began to whisper to each other, to die at once than to live in
perpetual slavery. It was better to fall with arms in hand than to be
tortured and butchered by the inquisition. Who could expect to contend
with such a foe in the dark?
They reproached the municipal authorities with lending themselves as
instruments to the institution. They asked magistrates and sheriffs
how far they would go in their defence before God's tribunal for the
slaughter of his creatures, if they could only answer the divine
arraignment by appealing to the edict of 1550. On the other hand, the
inquisitors were clamorous in abuse of the languor and the cowardice of
the secular authorities. They wearied the ear of the Duchess with
complaints of the difficulties which they encountered in the execution
of their functions--of the slight alacrity on the part of the various
officials to assist them in the discharge of their duties.
Notwithstanding the express command of his Majesty to that effect,
they experienced, they said, a constant deficiency of that cheerful
co-operation which they had the right to claim, and there was perpetual
discord in consequence. They had been empowered by papal and by royal
decree to make use of the gaols, the constables, the whole penal
machinery of each province; yet the officers often refused to act, and
had even dared to close the prisons. Nevertheless, it had been intended,
as fully appeared by the imperial and royal instructions to the
inquisitors, that their action through the medium of the provincial
authorities should be unrestrained. Not satisfied with these
representations to the Regent, the inquisitors had also made a direct
appeal to the King. Judocus Tiletanus and Michael de Bay addressed to
Philip a letter from Louvain. They represented to him that they were the
only two left of the five inquisitors-general appointed by the Pope for
all the Netherlands, the other three having been recently converted into
bishops. Daily complaints, they said, were reaching them of the
prodigious advance of heresy, but their own office was becoming so
odious, so calumniated, and exposed to so much resistance, that they
could not perform its duties without personal danger. They urgently
demanded from his Majesty, therefore, additional support and assistance.
Thus the Duchess, exposed at once to the rising wrath of a whole people
and to the shrill blasts of inquisitorial anger, was tossed to and fro,
as upon a stormy sea. The commands of the King, too explicit to be
tampered with, were obeyed. The theological assembly had met and given
advice. The Council of Trent was here and there enforced. The edicts
were republished and the inquisitors encouraged. Moreover, in accordance
with Philip's suggestion, orders were now given that the heretics should
be executed at midnight in their dungeons, by binding their heads between
their knees, and then slowly suffocating them in tubs of water. Secret
drowning was substituted for public burning, in order that the heretic's
crown of vainglory, which was thought to console him in his agony, might
never be placed upon his head.
In the course of the summer, Magaret wrote to her brother that the
popular frenzy was becoming more and more intense. The people were
crying aloud, she said, that the Spanish inquisition, or a worse than
Spanish inquisition, had been established among them by means of bishops
and ecclesiastics. She urged Philip to cause the instructions for the
inquisitors to be revised. Egmont, she said, was vehement in expressing
his dissatisfaction at the discrepancy between Philip's language to him
by word of mouth and that of the royal despatches on the religious
question. The other seigniors were even more indignant.
While the popular commotion in the Netherlands was thus fearfully
increasing, another circumstance came to add to the prevailing
discontent. The celebrated interview between Catharine de Medici and
her daughter, the Queen of Spain, occurred in the middle of the month of
June, at Bayonne. The darkest suspicions as to the results to humanity
of the plots to be engendered in this famous conference between the
representatives of France and Spain were universally entertained. These
suspicions were most reasonable, but they were nevertheless mistaken.
The plan for a concerted action to exterminate the heretics in both
kingdoms had, as it was perfectly well known, been formed long before
this epoch. It was also no secret that the Queen Regent of France had
been desirous of meeting her son-in-law in order to confer with him upon
important matters, face to face. Philip, however, had latterly been
disinclined for the personal interview with Catharine. As his wife was
most anxious to meet her mother, it was nevertheless finally arranged
that Queen Isabella should make the journey; but he excused himself, on
account of the multiplicity of his affairs, from accompanying her in the
expedition. The Duke of Alva was, accordingly, appointed to attend the
Queen to Bayonne. Both were secretly instructed by Philip to leave
nothing undone in the approaching interview toward obtaining the hearty
co-operation of Catharine de Medici in a general and formally-arranged
scheme for the simultaneous extermination of all heretics in the French
and Spanish dominions. Alva's conduct in this diplomatic commission was
stealthy in the extreme. His letters reveal a subtlety of contrivance
and delicacy of handling such as the world has not generally reckoned
among his characteristics. All his adroitness, as well as the tact of
Queen Isabella, by whose ability Alva declared himself to have been
astounded, proved quite powerless before the steady fencing of the wily
Catharine. The Queen Regent, whose skill the Duke, even while defeated,
acknowledged to his master, continued firm in her design to maintain her
own power by holding the balance between Guise and Montmorency, between
Leaguer and Huguenot. So long as her enemies could be employed in
exterminating each other, she was willing to defer the extermination of
the Huguenots. The great massacre of St. Bartholomew was to sleep for
seven years longer. Alva was, to be sure, much encouraged at first by
the language of the French princes and nobles who were present at
Bayonne. Monluc protested that "they might saw the Queen Dowager in two
before she would become Huguenot." Montpensier exclaimed that "he would
be cut in pieces for Philip's service--that the Spanish monarch was the
only hope for France," and, embracing Alva with fervor, he affirmed that
"if his body were to be opened at that moment, the name of Philip would
be found imprinted upon his heart." The Duke, having no power to proceed
to an autopsy, physical or moral, of Montpensier's interior, was left
somewhat in the dark, notwithstanding these ejaculations. His first
conversation with the youthful King, however, soon dispelled his hopes.
He found immediately, in his own words, that Charles the Ninth "had been
doctored." To take up arms, for religious reasons, against his own
subjects, the monarch declared to be ruinous and improper. It was
obvious to Alva that the royal pupil had learned his lesson for that
occasion. It was a pity for humanity that the wisdom thus hypocritically
taught him could not have sunk into his heart. The Duke did his best to
bring forward the plans and wishes of his royal master, but without
success. The Queen Regent proposed a league of the two Kings and the
Emperor against the Turk, and wished to arrange various matrimonial
alliances between the sons and daughters of the three houses. Alva
expressed the opinion that the alliances were already close enough,
while, on the contrary, a secret league against the Protestants would
make all three families the safer. Catherine, however, was not to be
turned from her position. She refused even to admit that the Chancellor
de l'Hospital was a Huguenot, to which the Duke replied that she was the
only person in her kingdom who held that opinion. She expressed an
intention of convoking an assembly of doctors, and Alva ridiculed in his
letters to Philip the affectation of such a proceeding. In short, she
made it sufficiently evident that the hour for the united action of the
French and Spanish sovereigns against their subjects had not struck,
so that the famous Bayonne conference was terminated without a result.
It seemed not the less certain, however, in the general opinion of
mankind, that all the particulars of a regular plot had been definitely
arranged upon this occasion, for the extermination of the Protestants,
and the error has been propagated by historians of great celebrity of
all parties, down to our own days. The secret letters of Alva, however,
leave no doubt as to the facts.
In the course of November, fresh letters from Philip arrived in the
Netherlands, confirming every thing which he had previously written.
He wrote personally to the inquisitors-general, Tiletanus and De Bay,
encouraging them, commending them, promising them his support, and urging
them not to be deterred by any consideration from thoroughly fulfilling
their duties. He wrote Peter Titelmann a letter, in which he applauded
the pains taken by that functionary to remedy the ills which religion was
suffering, assured him of his gratitude, exhorted him to continue in his
virtuous course, and avowed his determination to spare neither pains,
expense, nor even his own life, to sustain the Catholic Faith. To the
Duchess he wrote at great length, and in most unequivocal language. He
denied that what he had written from Valladolid was of different meaning
from the sense of the despatches by Egmont. With regard to certain
Anabaptist prisoners, concerning whose fate Margaret had requested his
opinion, he commanded their execution, adding that such was his will in
the case of all, whatever their quality, who could be caught.
That which the people said in the Netherlands touching the inquisition,
he pronounced extremely distasteful to him. That institution, which had
existed under his predecessors, he declared more necessary than ever;
nor would he suffer it to be discredited. He desired his sister to put
no faith in idle talk, as to the inconveniences likely to flow from the
rigor of the inquisition. Much greater inconveniences would be the
result if the inquisitors did not proceed with their labors, and the
Duchess was commanded to write to the secular judges, enjoining upon them
to place no obstacles in the path, but to afford all the assistance which
might be required.
To Egmont, the King wrote with his own hand, applauding much that was
contained in the recent decisions of the assembly of bishops and doctors
of divinity, and commanding the Count to assist in the execution of the
royal determination. In affairs of religion, Philip expressed the
opinion that dissimulation and weakness were entirely out of place.