Books: The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1566
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John Lothrop Motley >> The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1566
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At this very moment, in the early summer of 1566, many thousands of
burghers, merchants, peasants, and gentlemen, were seen mustering and
marching through the fields of every province, armed with arquebus,
javelin, pike and broadsword. For what purpose were these gatherings?
Only to hear sermons and to sing hymns in the open air, as it was
unlawful to profane the churches with such rites. This was the first
great popular phase of the Netherland rebellion. Notwithstanding the
edicts and the inquisition with their daily hecatombs, notwithstanding
the special publication at this time throughout the country by the
Duchess Regent that all the sanguinary statutes concerning religion were
in as great vigor as ever, notwithstanding that Margaret offered a reward
of seven hundred crowns to the man who would bring her a preacher--dead
or alive,--the popular thirst for the exercises of the reformed religion
could no longer be slaked at the obscure and hidden fountains where their
priests had so long privately ministered.
Partly emboldened by a temporary lull in the persecution, partly
encouraged by the presentation of the Request and by the events to which
it had given rise, the Reformers now came boldly forth from their lurking
places and held their religious meetings in the light of day. The
consciousness of numbers and of right had brought the conviction of
strength. The audacity of the Reformers was wonderful to the mind of
President Viglius, who could find no language strong enough with which
to characterize and to deplore such blasphemous conduct. The field-
preaching seemed in the eyes of government to spread with the rapidity
of a malignant pestilence. The miasma flew upon the wings of the wind.
As early as 1562, there had been public preaching in the neighborhood of
Ypres. The executions which followed, however, had for the time
suppressed the practice both in that place as well as throughout Flanders
and the rest of the provinces. It now broke forth as by one impulse from
one end of the country to the other. In the latter part of June, Hermann
Stryoker or Modet, a monk who had renounced his vows to become one of the
most popular preachers in the Reformed Church, addressed a congregation
of seven or eight thousand persons in the neighborhood of Ghent. Peter
Dathenus, another unfrocked monk, preached at various places in West
Flanders, with great effect. A man endowed with a violent, stormy
eloquence, intemperate as most zealots, he was then rendering better
services to the cause of the Reformation than he was destined to do at
later periods.
But apostate priests were not the only preachers. To the ineffable
disgust of the conservatives in Church and State, there were men with
little education, utterly devoid of Hebrew, of lowly station--hatters,
curriers, tanners, dyers, and the like, who began to preach also;
remembering, unseasonably perhaps, that the early disciples, selected by
the founder of Christianity, had not all been doctors of theology, with
diplomas from a "renowned university." But if the nature of such men
were subdued to what it worked in, that charge could not be brought
against ministers with the learning and accomplishments of Ambrose Wille,
Marnier, Guy de Bray, or Francis Junius, the man whom Scaliger called the
"greatest of all theologians since the days of the apostles."
An aristocratic sarcasm could not be levelled against Peregrine de la
Grange, of a noble family in Provence, with the fiery blood of southern
France in his veins, brave as his nation, learned, eloquent,
enthusiastic, who galloped to his field-preaching on horseback, and fired
a pistol-shot as a signal for his congregation to give attention.
On the 28th of June, 1566, at eleven o'clock at night, there was an
assemblage of six thousand people near Tournay, at the bridge of
Ernonville, to hear a sermon from Ambrose Wille, a man who had studied
theology in Geneva, at the feet of Calvin, and who now, with a special
price upon his head,--was preaching the doctrines he had learned. Two
days afterwards, ten thousand people assembled at the same spot, to hear
Peregrine de la Grange. Governor Moulbais thundered forth a proclamation
from the citadel, warning all men that the edicts were as rigorous as
ever, and that every man, woman, or child who went to these preachings,
was incurring the penalty of death. The people became only the more
ardent and excited. Upon Sunday, the seventh of July; twenty thousand
persons assembled at the same bridge to hear Ambrose Wille. One man in
three was armed. Some had arquebuses, others pistols, pikes, swords,
pitchforks, poniards, clubs. The preacher, for whose apprehension a
fresh reward had been offered, was escorted to his pulpit by a hundred
mounted troopers. He begged his audience not to be scared from the word
of God by menace; assured them that although but a poor preacher himself,
he held a divine commission; that he had no fear of death; that, should
he fall, there were many better than he to supply his place, and fifty
thousand men to avenge his murder.
The Duchess sent forth proclamations by hundreds. She ordered the
instant suppression of these armed assemblies and the arrest of the
preachers. But of what avail were proclamations against such numbers
with weapons in their hands. Why irritate to madness these hordes of
enthusiasts, who were now entirely pacific, and who marched back to the
city, after conclusion of divine service, with perfect decorum? All
classes of the population went eagerly to the sermons. The gentry of the
place, the rich merchants, the notables, as well as the humbler artisans
and laborers, all had received the infection. The professors of the
Reformed religion outnumbered the Catholics by five or six to one. On
Sundays and other holidays, during the hours of service, Tournay was
literally emptied of its inhabitants. The streets were as silent as if
war or pestilence had swept the place. The Duchess sent orders, but she
sent no troops. The trained-bands of the city, the cross-bow-men of St.
Maurice, the archers of St. Sebastian, the sword-players of St.
Christopher, could not be ordered from Tournay to suppress the preaching,
for they had all gone to the preaching themselves. How idle, therefore;
to send peremptory orders without a matchlock to enforce the command.
Throughout Flanders similar scenes were enacted. The meetings were
encampments, for the Reformers now came to their religious services armed
to the teeth, determined, if banished from the churches, to defend their
right to the fields. Barricades of upturned wagons, branches, and
planks, were thrown up around the camps. Strong guards of mounted men
were stationed at every avenue. Outlying scouts gave notice of
approaching danger, and guided the faithful into the enclosure.
Pedlers and hawkers plied the trade upon which the penalty of death was
fixed, and sold the forbidden hymn-books to all who chose to purchase.
A strange and contradictory spectacle! An army of criminals doing deeds
which could only be expiated at the stake; an entrenched rebellion,
bearding the government with pike, matchlock, javelin and barricade, and
all for no more deadly purpose than to listen to the precepts of the
pacific Jesus.
Thus the preaching spread through the Walloon provinces to the northern
Netherlands. Towards the end of July, an apostate monk, of singular
eloquence, Peter Gabriel by name, was announced to preach at Overeen near
Harlem. This was the first field-meeting which had taken place in
Holland. The people were wild with enthusiasm; the authorities beside
themselves with apprehension. People from the country flocked into the
town by thousands. The other cities were deserted, Harlem was filled to
overflowing. Multitudes encamped upon the ground the night before. The
magistrates ordered the gates to be kept closed in the morning till long
after the usual hour. It was of no avail. Bolts and bars were but small
impediments to enthusiasts who had travelled so many miles on foot or
horseback to listen to a sermon. They climbed the walls, swam the moat
and thronged to the place of meeting long before the doors had been
opened. When these could no longer be kept closed without a conflict,
for which the magistrates were not prepared, the whole population poured
out of the city with a single impulse. Tens of thousands were assembled
upon the field. The bulwarks were erected as usual, the guards were
posted, the necessary precautions taken. But upon this occasion, and in
that region there was but little danger to be apprehended. The multitude
of Reformers made the edicts impossible, so long as no foreign troops
were there to enforce them. The congregation was encamped and arranged
in an orderly manner. The women, of whom there were many, were placed
next the pulpit, which, upon this occasion, was formed of a couple of
spears thrust into the earth, sustaining a cross-piece, against which the
preacher might lean his back. The services commenced with the singing of
a psalm by the whole vast assemblage. Clement Marot's verses, recently
translated by Dathenus, were then new and popular. The strains of the
monarch minstrel, chanted thus in their homely but nervous mother tongue
by a multitude who had but recently learned that all the poetry and
rapture of devotion were not irrevocably coffined with a buried language,
or immured in the precincts of a church, had never produced a more
elevating effect. No anthem from the world-renowned organ in that
ancient city ever awakened more lofty emotions than did those ten
thousand human voices ringing from the grassy meadows in that fervid
midsummer noon. When all was silent again, the preacher rose; a little,
meagre man, who looked as if he might rather melt away beneath the
blazing sunshine of July, than hold the multitude enchained four
uninterrupted hours long, by the magic of his tongue. His text was the
8th, 9th, and 10th verses of the second chapter of Ephesians; and as the
slender monk spoke to his simple audience of God's grace, and of faith
in Jesus, who had descended from above to save the lowliest and the most
abandoned, if they would put their trust in Him, his hearers were
alternately exalted with fervor or melted into tears. He prayed for all
conditions of men--for themselves, their friends, their enemies, for the
government which had persecuted them, for the King whose face was turned
upon them in anger. At times, according to one who was present, not a
dry eye was to be seen in the crowd. When the minister had finished, he
left his congregation abruptly, for he had to travel all night in order
to reach Alkmaar, where he was to preach upon the following day.
By the middle of July the custom was established outside all the
principal cities. Camp-meetings were held in some places; as, for
instance, in the neighborhood of Antwerp, where the congregations
numbered often fifteen thousand and on some occasions were estimated at
between twenty and thirty thousand persons at a time; "very many of
them," said an eye-witness, "the best and wealthiest in the town."
The sect to which most of these worshippers belonged was that of Calvin.
In Antwerp there were Lutherans, Calvinists, and Anabaptists. The
Lutherans were the richest sect, but the Calvinists the most numerous
and enthusiastic. The Prince of Orange at this moment was strenuously
opposed both to Calvinism and Anabaptism, but inclining to Lutheranism.
Political reasons at this epoch doubtless influenced his mind in
religious matters. The aid of the Lutheran princes of Germany, who
detested the doctrines of Geneva, could hardly be relied upon for the
Netherlanders, unless they would adapt the Confession of Augsburg. The
Prince knew that the Emperor, although inclined to the Reformation, was
bitterly averse to Calvinism, and he was, therefore, desirous of healing
the schism which existed in the general Reformed Church. To accomplish
this, however, would be to gain a greater victory over the bigotry which
was the prevailing characteristic of the age than perhaps could be
expected. The Prince, from the first moment of his abandoning the
ancient doctrines, was disposed to make the attempt.
The Duchess ordered the magistrates of Antwerp to put down these mass-
meetings by means of the guild-militia. They replied that at an earlier
day such a course might have been practicable, but that the sects had
become quite too numerous for coercion. If the authorities were able to
prevent the exercises of the Reformed religion within the city, it would
be as successful a result as could be expected. To prevent the preaching
outside the walls, by means of the bourgher force, was an utter
impossibility. The dilatoriness of the Sovereign placed the Regent in
a frightful dilemma, but it was sufficiently obvious that the struggle
could not long be deferred. "There will soon be a hard nut to crack,"
wrote Count Louis. "The King will never grant the preaching; the people
will never give it up, if it cost them their necks. There's a hard puff
coming upon the country before long." The Duchess was not yet authorized
to levy troops, and she feared that if she commenced such operations, she
should perhaps offend the King, while she at the same time might provoke
the people into more effective military preparations than her own. She
felt that for one company levied by her, the sectaries could raise ten.
Moreover, she was entirely without money, even if she should otherwise
think it expedient to enrol an army. Meantime she did what she could
with "public prayers, processions, fasts, sermons, exhortations," and
other ecclesiastical machinery which she ordered the bishops to put in
motion. Her situation was indeed sufficiently alarming.
Egmont, whom many of the sectaries hoped to secure as their leader in
case of a civil war, showed no disposition to encourage such hopes, but
as little to take up arms against the people. He went to Flanders, where
the armed assemblages for field-preaching had become so numerous that a
force of thirty or forty thousand men might be set on foot almost at a
moment's warning, and where the conservatives, in a state of alarm,
desired the presence of their renowned governor. The people of Antwerp,
on their part, demanded William of Orange. The Prince, who was
hereditary burgrave of the city, had at first declined the invitation of
the magistracy. The Duchess united her request with the universal prayer
of the inhabitants. Events meantime had been thickening, and suspicion
increasing. Meghen had been in the city for several days, much to the
disgust of the Reformers, by whom he was hated. Aremberg was expected to
join him, and it was rumored that measures were secretly in progress
under the auspices of these two leading cardinalists, for introducing a
garrison, together with great store of ammunition, into the city. On the
other hand, the "great beggar," Brederode, had taken up his quarters also
in Antwerp; had been daily entertaining a crowd of roystering nobles at
his hotel, previously to a second political demonstration, which will
soon be described, and was constantly parading the street, followed by a
swarm of adherents in the beggar livery. The sincere Reformers were made
nearly as uncomfortable by the presence of their avowed friends, as by
that of Meghen and Aremberg, and earnestly desired to be rid of them all.
Long and anxious were the ponderings of the magistrates upon all these
subjects. It was determined, at last, to send a fresh deputation to
Brussels, requesting the Regent to order the departure of Meghen,
Aremberg, and Brederode from Antwerp; remonstrating with her against any
plan she might be supposed to entertain of sending mercenary troops into
the city; pledging the word of the senate to keep the peace, meanwhile,
by their regular force; and above all, imploring her once more, in the
most urgent terms, to send thither the burgrave, as the only man who was
capable of saving the city from the calamities into which it was so
likely to fall.
The Prince of Orange being thus urgently besought, both by the government
of Antwerp, the inhabitants of that city, and by the Regent herself, at
last consented to make the visit so earnestly demanded. On the 13th
July, he arrived in Antwerp. The whole city was alive with enthusiasm.
Half its population seemed to have come forth from the gates to bid him
welcome, lining the road for miles. The gate through which he was to
pass, the ramparts, the roofs of the houses were packed close, with
expectant and eager faces. At least thirty thousand persons had
assembled to welcome their guest. A long cavalcade of eminent citizens
had come as far as Berghen to meet him and to escort him into the city.
Brederode, attended by some of the noble confederates, rode at the head
of the procession. As they encountered the Prince, a discharge of
pistol-shots was fired by way of salute, which was the signal for a
deafening shout from the assembled multitude. The crowd thronged about
the Prince as he advanced, calling him their preserver, their father,
their only hope. Wild shouts of welcome rose upon every side, as he rode
through the town, mingled with occasional vociferations of "long life to
the beggars." These party cries were instantly and sharply rebuked by
Orange, who expressed, in Brederode's presence, the determination that
he would make men unlearn that mischievous watchword. He had, moreover,
little relish at that time for the tumultuous demonstrations of
attachment to his person, which were too fervid to be censured, but too
unseasonable to be approved. When the crowd had at last been made to
understand that their huzzas were distasteful to the Prince, most of
the multitude consented to disperse, feeling, however, a relief from
impending danger in the presence of the man to whom they instinctively
looked as their natural protector.
The senators had come forth in a body to receive the burgrave and escort
him to the hotel prepared for him. Arrived there, he lost no time in
opening the business which had brought him to Antwerp. He held at once a
long consultation with the upper branch of the government. Afterwards,
day after day, he honestly, arduously, sagaciously labored to restore the
public tranquillity. He held repeated deliberations with every separate
portion of the little commonwealth, the senate, the council of ancients,
the corporation of ward-masters, the deans of trades. Nor did he confine
his communication to these organized political bodies alone. He had
frequent interviews with the officers of the military associations,
with the foreign merchant companies, with the guilds of "Rhetoric."
The chambers of the "Violet" and the "Marigold" were not too frivolous
or fantastic to be consulted by one who knew human nature and the
constitution of Netherland society so well as did the Prince. Night
and day he labored with all classes of citizens to bring about a better
understanding, and to establish mutual confidence. At last by his
efforts tranquillity was restored. The broad-council having been
assembled, it was decided that the exercise of the Reformed religion
should be excluded from the city, but silently tolerated in the suburbs,
while an armed force was to be kept constantly in readiness to suppress
all attempts at insurrection. The Prince had desired, that twelve
hundred men should be enlisted and paid by the city, so that at least a
small number of disciplined troops might be ready at a moment's warning;
but he found it impossible to carry the point with the council. The
magistrates were willing to hold themselves responsible for the peace of
the city, but they would have no mercenaries.
Thus, during the remainder of July and the early part of August, was
William of Orange strenuously occupied in doing what should have been
the Regent's work. He was still regarded both by the Duchess and by the
Calvinist party--although having the sympathies of neither,--as the only
man in the Netherlands who could control the rising tide of a national
revolt. He took care, said his enemies, that his conduct at Antwerp
should have every appearance of loyalty; but they insinuated that he was
a traitor from the beginning, who was insidiously fomenting the troubles
which he appeared to rebuke. No one doubted his genius, and all felt
or affected admiration at its display upon this critical occasion.
"The Prince of Orange is doing very great and notable services at Antwerp
to the King and to the country," said Assonleville. "That seignior is
very skilful in managing great affairs." Margaret of Parma wrote letters
to him fixed with the warmest gratitude, expressions of approbation, and
of wishes that he could both remain in Antwerp and return to assist her
in Brussels. Philip, too, with his own pen, addressed him a letter,
in which implicit confidence in the Prince's character was avowed, all
suspicion on the part of the Sovereign indignantly repudiated, earnest
thanks for his acceptance of the Antwerp mission uttered, and a distinct
refusal given to the earnest request made by Orange to resign his
offices. The Prince read or listened to all this commendation, and
valued it exactly at its proper worth. He knew it to be pure grimace.
He was no more deceived by it than if he had read the letter sent by
Margaret to Philip, a few weeks later, in which she expressed herself as
"thoroughly aware that it was the intention of Orange to take advantage
of the impending tumults, for the purpose of conquering the provinces
and of dividing the whole territory among himself and friends." Nothing
could be more utterly false than so vile and ridiculous a statement.
The course of the Prince had hitherto been, and was still, both
consistent and loyal. He was proceeding step by step to place the
monarch in the wrong, but the only art which he was using, was to plant
himself more firmly upon the right. It was in the monarch's power to
convoke the assembly of the states-general, so loudly demanded by the
whole nation, to abolish the inquisition, to renounce persecution, to
accept the great fact of the Reformation. To do so he must have ceased
to be Philip. To have faltered in attempting to bring him into that
path, the Prince must have ceased to be William of Orange. Had he
succeeded, there would have been no treason and no Republic of Holland.
His conduct at the outbreak of the Antwerp troubles was firm and
sagacious. Even had his duty required him to put down the public
preaching with peremptory violence, he had been furnished with no means
to accomplish the purpose. The rebellion, if it were one, was already
full-grown. It could not be taken by the throat and strangled with one
hand, however firm.
A report that the High Sheriff of Brabant was collecting troops by
command of government, in order to attack the Reformers at their field-
preachings, went far to undo the work already accomplished by the Prince.
The assemblages swelled again from ten or twelve thousand to twenty-five
thousand, the men all providing themselves more thoroughly with weapons
than before. Soon afterwards, the intemperate zeal of another
individual, armed to the teeth--not, however, like the martial sheriff
and his forces, with arquebus and javelin, but with the still more deadly
weapons of polemical theology,--was very near causing a general outbreak.
A peaceful and not very numerous congregation were listening to one of
their preachers in a field outside the town. Suddenly an unknown
individual in plain clothes and with a pragmatical demeanor, interrupted
the discourse by giving a flat contradiction to some of the doctrines
advanced. The minister replied by a rebuke, and a reiteration of the
disputed sentiment.--The stranger, evidently versed in ecclesiastical
matters, volubly and warmly responded. The preacher, a man of humble
condition and moderate abilities, made as good show of argument as he
could, but was evidently no match for his antagonist. He was soon
vanquished in the wordy warfare. Well he might be, for it appeared that
the stranger was no less a personage than Peter Rythovius, a doctor of
divinity, a distinguished pedant of Louvain, a relation of a bishop and
himself a Church dignitary. This learned professor, quite at home in his
subject, was easily triumphant, while the poor dissenter, more accustomed
to elevate the hearts of his hearers than to perplex their heads, sank
prostrate and breathless under the storm of texts, glosses, and hard
Hebrew roots with which he was soon overwhelmed. The professor's triumph
was, however, but short-lived, for the simple-minded congregation, who
loved their teacher, were enraged that he should be thus confounded.
Without more ado, therefore, they laid violent hands upon the Quixotic
knight-errant of the Church, and so cudgelled and belabored him bodily
that he might perhaps have lost his life in the encounter had he not been
protected by the more respectable portion of the assembly. These
persons, highly disapproving the whole proceeding, forcibly rescued him
from the assailants, and carried him off to town, where the news of the
incident at once created an uproar. Here he was thrown into prison as a
disturber of the peace, but in reality that he might be personally
secure. The next day the Prince of Orange, after administering to him a
severe rebuke for his ill-timed exhibition of pedantry, released him from
confinement, and had him conveyed out of the city. "This theologian;"
wrote the Prince to Duchess Margaret, "would have done better, methinks,
to stay at home; for I suppose he had no especial orders to perform this
piece of work."
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