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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Information of this tumult was brought to the senate, then assembled
in the Hotel de Ville. That body was thrown into a state of great
perturbation. In losing the Prince of Orange, they seemed to have lost
their own brains, and the first measure which they took was to despatch a
messenger to implore his return. In the mean time, it was necessary that
they should do something for themselves. It was evident that a storm was
brewing. The pest which was sweeping so rapidly through the provinces
would soon be among them. Symptoms of the dreaded visitation were
already but too manifest. What precaution should: they take? Should
they issue a proclamation? Such documents had been too common of late,
and had lost their virtue. It was the time not to assert but to exercise
authority. Should they summon the ward-masters, and order the instant
arming and mustering of their respective companies? Should they assemble
the captains of the Military associations? Nothing better could have
been desired than such measures in cases of invasion or of ordinary
tumult, but who should say how deeply the poison had sunk into the body
politic; who should say with how much or how little alacrity the burgher
militia would obey the mandates of the magistracy? It would be better to
issue no proclamation unless they could enforce its provisions; it would
be better not to call out the citizen soldiery unless they were likely to
prove obedient. Should mercenary troops at this late hour be sent for?
Would not their appearance at this crisis rather inflame the rage than
intimidate the insolence of the sectaries? Never were magistrates in
greater perplexity. They knew not what course was likely to prove the
safest, and in their anxiety to do nothing wrong, the senators did
nothing at all. After a long and anxious consultation, the honest
burgomaster and his associates all went home to their beds, hoping that
the threatening flame of civil tumult would die out of itself, or perhaps
that their dreams would supply them with that wisdom which seemed denied
to their waking hours.
In the morning, as it was known that no precaution had been taken, the
audacity of the Reformers was naturally increased. Within the cathedral
a great crowd was at an early hour collected, whose savage looks and
ragged appearance denoted that the day and night were not likely to pass
away so peacefully as the last. The same taunts and imprecations were
hurled at the image of the Virgin; the same howling of the beggars' cry
resounded through the lofty arches. For a few hours, no act of violence
was committed, but the crowd increased. A few trifles, drifting, as
usual, before the event, seemed to indicate the approaching convulsion.
A very paltry old woman excited the image-breaking of Antwerp. She had
for years been accustomed to sit before the door of the cathedral with
wax-tapers and wafers, earning scanty subsistence from the profits of her
meagre trade, and by the small coins which she sometimes received in
charity. Some of the rabble began to chaffer with this ancient
hucksteress. They scoffed at her consecrated wares; they bandied with
her ribald jests, of which her public position had furnished her with a
supply; they assured her that the hour had come when her idolatrous
traffic was to be forever terminated, when she and her patroness, Mary,
were to be given over to destruction together. The old woman, enraged,
answered threat with threat, and gibe with gibe. Passing from words to
deeds, she began to catch from the ground every offensive missile or
weapon which she could find, and to lay about her in all directions.
Her tormentors defended themselves as they could. Having destroyed her
whole stock-in-trade, they provoked others to appear in her defence. The
passers-by thronged to the scene; the cathedral was soon filled to
overflowing; a furious tumult was already in progress.
Many persons fled in alarm to the town-house, carrying information of
this outbreak to the magistrates. John Van Immerzeel, Margrava of
Antwerp, was then holding communication with the senate, and awaiting the
arrival of the ward-masters, whom it had at last been thought expedient
to summon. Upon intelligence of this riot, which the militia, if
previously mustered, might have prevented, the senate determined to
proceed to the cathedral in a body, with the hope of quelling the mob by
the dignity of their presence. The margrave, who was the high executive
officer of the little commonwealth, marched down to the cathedral
accordingly, attended by the two burgomasters and all the senators. At
first their authority, solicitations, and personal influence, produced a
good effect. Some of those outside consented to retire, and the tumult
partially subsided within. As night, however, was fast approaching, many
of the mob insisted upon remaining for evening mass. They were informed
that there would be none that night, and that for once the people could
certainly dispense with their vespers.
Several persons now manifesting an intention of leaving the cathedral,
it was suggested to the senators that if, they should lead the way, the
populace would follow in their train, and so disperse to their homes.
The excellent magistrates took the advice, not caring, perhaps, to fulfil
any longer the dangerous but not dignified functions of police officers.
Before departing, they adopted the precaution of closing all the doors of
the church, leaving a single one open, that the rabble still remaining
might have an opportunity to depart. It seemed not to occur to the
senators that the same gate would as conveniently afford an entrance for
those without as an egress for those within. That unlooked-for event
happened, however. No sooner had the magistrates retired than the rabble
burst through the single door which had been left open, overpowered the
margrave, who, with a few attendants, had remained behind, vainly
endeavoring by threats and exhortations to appease the tumult, drove him
ignominiously from the church, and threw all the other portals wide open.
Then the populace flowed in like an angry sea. The whole of the
cathedral was at the mercy of the rioters, who were evidently bent on
mischief. The wardens and treasurers of the church, after a vain attempt
to secure a few of its most precious possessions, retired. They carried
the news to the senators, who, accompanied by a few halberdmen, again
ventured to approach the spot. It was but for a moment, however, for,
appalled by the furious sounds which came from within the church, as if
subterranean and invisible forces were preparing a catastrophe which no
human power could withstand, the magistrates fled precipitately from the
scene. Fearing that the next attack would be upon the town-house, they
hastened to concentrate at that point their available forces, and left
the stately cathedral to its fate.
And now, as the shadows of night were deepening the perpetual twilight of
the church, the work of destruction commenced. Instead of evening mass
rose the fierce music of a psalm, yelled by a thousand angry voices. It
seemed the preconcerted signal for a general attack. A band of marauders
flew upon the image of the Virgin, dragged it forth from its receptacle,
plunged daggers into its inanimate body, tore off its jewelled and
embroidered garments, broke the whole figure into a thousand pieces, and
scattered the fragments along the floor. A wild shout succeeded, and
then the work which seemed delegated to a comparatively small number of
the assembled crowd, went on with incredible celerity. Some were armed
with axes, some with bludgeons, some with sledge-hammers; others brought
ladders, pulleys, ropes, and levers. Every statue was hurled from its
niche, every picture torn from the wall, every wonderfully-painted window
shivered to atoms, every ancient monument shattered, every sculptured
decoration, however inaccessible in appearance, hurled to the ground.
Indefatigably, audaciously,--endowed, as it seemed, with preternatural
strength and nimbleness, these furious iconoclasts clambered up the dizzy
heights, shrieking and chattering like malignant apes, as they tore off
in triumph the slowly-matured fruit of centuries. In a space of time
wonderfully brief, they had accomplished their task.
A colossal and magnificent group of the Saviour crucified between two
thieves adorned the principal altar. The statue of Christ was wrenched
from its place with ropes and pulleys, while the malefactors, with bitter
and blasphemous irony, were left on high, the only representatives of the
marble crowd which had been destroyed. A very beautiful piece of
architecture decorated the choir,--the "repository," as it was called,
in which the body of Christ was figuratively enshrined. This much-
admired work rested upon a single column, but rose, arch upon arch,
pillar upon pillar, to the height of three hundred feet, till quite lost
in the vault above. "It was now shattered into a million pieces." The
statues, images, pictures, ornaments, as they lay upon the ground, were
broken with sledge-hammers, hewn with axes, trampled, torn; and beaten
into shreds. A troop of harlots, snatching waxen tapers from the altars,
stood around the destroyers and lighted them at their work. Nothing
escaped their omnivorous rage. They desecrated seventy chapels, forced
open all the chests of treasure, covered their own squalid attire with
the gorgeous robes of the ecclesiastics, broke the sacred bread, poured
out the sacramental wine into golden chalices, quaffing huge draughts to
the beggars' health; burned all the splendid missals and manuscripts, and
smeared their shoes with the sacred oil, with which kings and prelates
had been anointed. It seemed that each of these malicious creatures must
have been endowed with the strength of a hundred giants. How else, in
the few brief hours of a midsummer night, could such a monstrous
desecration have been accomplished by a troop which, according to all
accounts, was not more than one hundred in number. There was a multitude
of spectators, as upon all such occasions, but the actual spoilers were
very few.
The noblest and richest temple of the Netherlands was a wreck, but the
fury of the spoilers was excited, not appeased. Each seizing a burning
torch, the whole herd rushed from the cathedral, and swept howling
through the streets. "Long live the beggars!" resounded through the
sultry midnight air, as the ravenous pack flew to and fro, smiting every
image of the Virgin, every crucifix, every sculptured saint, every
Catholic symbol which they met with upon their path. All night long,
they roamed from one sacred edifice to another, thoroughly destroying as
they went. Before morning they had sacked thirty churches within the
city walls. They entered the monasteries, burned their invaluable
libraries, destroyed their altars, statues, pictures, and descending into
the cellars, broached every cask which they found there, pouring out in
one great flood all the ancient wine and ale with which those holy men
had been wont to solace their retirement from generation to generation.
They invaded the nunneries, whence the occupants, panic-stricken, fled
for refuge to the houses of their friends and kindred. The streets were
filled with monks and nuns, running this way and that, shrieking and
fluttering, to escape the claws of these fiendish Calvinists. The terror
was imaginary, for not the least remarkable feature in these transactions
was, that neither insult nor injury was offered to man or woman, and that
not a farthing's value of the immense amount of property destroyed, was
appropriated. It was a war not against the living, but against graven
images, nor was the sentiment which prompted the onslaught in the least
commingled with a desire of plunder. The principal citizens of Antwerp,
expecting every instant that the storm would be diverted from the
ecclesiastical edifices to private dwellings, and that robbery, rape, and
murder would follow sacrilege, remained all night expecting the attack,
and prepared to defend their hearths, even if the altars were profaned.
The precaution was needless. It was asserted by the Catholics that the
confederates and other opulent Protestants had organized this company of
profligates for the meagre pittance of ten stivers day. On the other
hand, it was believed by many that the Catholics had themselves plotted
the whole outrage in order to bring odium upon the Reformers. Both
statements were equally unfounded. The task was most thoroughly
performed, but it was prompted: by a furious fanaticism, not by baser
motives.
Two days and nights longer the havoc raged unchecked through all the
churches of Antwerp and the neighboring villages. Hardly a statue or
picture escaped destruction. Fortunately, the illustrious artist, whose
labors were destined in the next generation to enrich and ennoble the
city, Rubens, most profound of colorists, most dramatic--of artists;
whose profuse tropical genius seemed to flower the more luxuriantly, as
if the destruction wrought by brutal hands were to be compensated by the
creative energy of one, divine spirit, had not yet been born. Of the
treasures which existed the destruction was complete. Yet the rage was
directed exclusively against stocks and stones. Not a man was wounded
nor a woman outraged. Prisoners, indeed, who had been languishing
hopelessly in dungeons were liberated. A monk, who had been in the
prison of the Barefoot Monastery, for twelve years, recovered his
freedom. Art was trampled in the dust, but humanity deplored no victims.
These leading features characterized the movement every where. The
process was simultaneous and almost universal. It was difficult to say
where it began and where it ended. A few days in the midst of August
sufficed for the whole work. The number of churches desecrated has never
been counted. In the single province of Flanders, four hundred were
sacked. In Limburg, Luxemburg, and Namur, there was no image-breaking.
In Mechlin, seventy or eighty persons accomplished the work thoroughly,
in the very teeth of the grand council, and of an astonished magistracy.
In Tournay, a city distinguished for its ecclesiastical splendor, the
reform had been making great progress during the summer. At the same
time the hatred between the two religions had been growing more and more
intense. Trifles and serious matters alike fed the mutual animosity.
A tremendous outbreak had been nearly occasioned by an insignificant
incident. A Jesuit of some notoriety had been preaching a glowing
discourse in the pulpit of Notre Dane. He earnestly avowed his wish
that he were good enough to die for all his hearers. He proved to
demonstration that no man should shrink from torture or martyrdom in
order to sustain the ancient faith. As he was thus expatiating, his
fervid discourse was suddenly interrupted by three sharp, sudden blows,
of a very peculiar character, struck upon the great portal of the Church.
The priest, forgetting his love for martyrdom, turned pale and dropped
under the pulpit. Hurrying down the steps, he took refuge in the vestry,
locking and barring the door. The congregation shared in his panic:
"The beggars are coming," was the general cry. There was a horrible
tumult, which extended through the city as the congregation poured
precipitately out of the Cathedral, to escape a band of destroying and
furious Calvinists. Yet when the shock had a little subsided, it was
discovered that a small urchin was the cause of the whole tumult. Having
been bathing in the Scheldt, he had returned by way of the church with a
couple of bladders under his arm. He had struck these against the door
of the Cathedral, partly to dry them, partly from a love of mischief.
Thus a great uproar, in the course of which it had been feared that
Toumay was to be sacked and drenched in blood, had been caused by a
little wanton boy who had been swimming on bladders.
This comedy preceded by a few days only the actual disaster. On the 22d
of August the news reached Tournay that the churches in Antwerp, Ghent,
and many other places, had been sacked. There was an instantaneous
movement towards imitating the example on the same evening. Pasquier de
la Barre, procureur-general of the city, succeeded by much entreaty in
tranquillizing the people for the night. The "guard of terror" was set,
and hopes were entertained that the storm might blow over. The
expectation, was vain. At daybreak next day, the mob swept upon the
churches and stripped them to the very walls. Pictures, statues; organs,
ornaments, chalices of silver and gold, reliquaries, albs, chasubles,
copes, ciboriea, crosses, chandeliers, lamps; censers, all of richest
material, glittering with pearls, rubies, and other precious stones, were
scattered in heaps of ruin upon the ground.
As the Spoilers burrowed among the ancient tombs, they performed, in one
or two instances, acts of startling posthumous justice. The embalmed
body of Duke Adolphus of Gueldres, last of the Egmonts, who had reigned
in that province, was dragged from its sepulchre and recognized.
Although it had been there for ninety years, it was as uncorrupted,
"Owing to the excellent spices which had preserved it from decay," as
upon the day of burial. Thrown upon the marble floor of the church, it
lay several days exposed to the execrations of the multitude. The Duke
had committed a crime against his father, in consequence of which the
province which had been ruled by native races, had passed under the
dominion of Charles the Bold. Weary of waiting for the old Duke's
inheritance, he had risen against him in open rebellion. Dragging him
from his bed at midnight in the depth of winter, he had compelled the old
man, with no covering but his night gear, to walk with naked feet twenty-
five miles over ice and snow from Grave to Buren, while he himself
performed the same journey in his company on horseback. He had then
thrown him into a dungeon beneath the tower of Buren castle, and kept him
a close prisoner for six months.
[Memoires de Philippe de Comines (Loud. et Paris, 1747), liv. iv.
194-196. In the Royal Gallery at Berlin is a startling picture by
Rembrandt, in which the old Duke is represented looking out of the
bars of his dungeon at his son, who is threatening him with uplifted
hand and savage face. No subject could be imagined better adapted
to the gloomy and sarcastic genius of that painter.]
At last, the Duke of Burgundy summoned the two before his council, and
proposed that Adolphus should allow his father 6000 florins annually,
with the title of Duke till his death. "He told us," said Comines, "that
he would sooner throw the old man head-foremost down a well and jump in
himself afterwards. His father had been Duke forty-four years, and it
was time for him to retire." Adolphus being thus intractable, had been
kept in prison till after the death of Charles the Bold. To the
memorable insurrection of Ghent, in the time of the Lady Mary, he owed
his liberty. The insurgent citizens took him from prison, and caused him
to lead them in their foray against Tournay. Beneath the walls of that
city he was slain, and buried under its cathedral. And now as if his
offence had not been sufficiently atoned for by the loss of his ancestral
honors, his captivity, and his death, the earth, after the lapse of
nearly a century, had cast him forth from her bosom. There, once more
beneath the sunlight, amid a ribald crew of a later generation which had
still preserved the memory of his sin, lay the body of the more than
parricide, whom "excellent spices" had thus preserved from corruption,
only to be the mark of scorn and demoniac laughter.
A large assemblage of rioters, growing in numbers as they advanced, swept
over the province of Tournay, after accomplishing the sack of the city
churches. Armed with halberds, hammers, and pitchforks, they carried on
the war, day after day, against the images. At the convent of
Marchiennes, considered by contemporaries the most beautiful abbey in all
the Netherlands, they halted to sing the ten commandments in Marot's
verse. Hardly had the vast chorus finished the precept against graven
images;
Taiiler ne to feras imaige
De quelque chose que ce soit,
Sy bonneur luy fail on hommaige,
Bon Dieu jalousie en recoit,
when the whole mob seemed seized with sudden madness. Without waiting to
complete the Psalm, they fastened upon the company of marble martyrs, as
if they had possessed sensibility to feel the blows inflicted. In an
hour they had laid the whole in ruins.
Having accomplished this deed, they swept on towards Anchin. Here,
however, they were confronted by the Seigneur de la Tour, who, at the
head of a small company of peasants, attacked the marauders and gained
a complete victory. Five or six hundred of them were slain, others were
drowned in the river and adjacent swamps, the rest were dispersed.
It was thus proved that a little more spirit upon the part of the orderly
portion of the inhabitants, might have brought about a different result
than the universal image-breaking.
In Valenciennes, "the tragedy," as an eye-witness calls it, was performed
upon Saint Bartholomew's day. It was, however, only a tragedy of
statues. Hardly as many senseless stones were victims as there were to
be living Huguenots sacrificed in a single city upon a Bartholomew which
was fast approaching. In the Valenciennes massacre, not a human being
was injured.
Such in general outline and in certain individual details, was the
celebrated iconomachy of the Netherlands. The movement was a sudden
explosion of popular revenge against the symbols of that Church from
which the Reformers had been enduring such terrible persecution. It was
also an expression of the general sympathy for the doctrines which had
taken possession of the national heart. It was the depravation of that
instinct which had in the beginning of the summer drawn Calvinists and
Lutherans forth in armed bodies, twenty thousand strong, to worship God
in the open fields. The difference between the two phenomena was, that
the field-preaching was a crime committed by the whole mass of the
Reformers; men, women, and children confronting the penalties of death,
by a general determination, while the imagebreaking was the act of a
small portion of the populace. A hundred persons belonging to the lowest
order of society sufficed for the desecration of the Antwerp churches.
It was, said Orange, "a mere handful of rabble" who did the deed. Sir
Richard Clough saw ten or twelve persons entirely sack church after
church, while ten thousand spectators looked on, indifferent or horror-
struck. The bands of iconoclasts were of the lowest character, and few
in number. Perhaps the largest assemblage was that which ravaged the
province of Tournay, but this was so weak as to be entirely routed by a
small and determined force. The duty of repression devolved upon both
Catholics and Protestants. Neither party stirred. All seemed overcome
with special wonder as the tempest swept over the land.
The ministers of the Reformed religion, and the chiefs of the liberal
party, all denounced the image-breaking. Francis Junius bitterly
regretted such excesses. Ambrose Wille, pure of all participation in the
crime, stood up before ten thousand Reformers at Tournay--even while the
storm was raging in the neighboring cities, and, when many voices around
him were hoarsely commanding similar depravities to rebuke the outrages
by which a sacred cause was disgraced. The Prince of Orange, in his
private letters, deplored the riots, and stigmatized the perpetrators.
Even Brederode, while, as Suzerain of his city of Viane, he ordered the
images there to be quietly taken from the churches, characterized this
popular insurrection as insensate and flagitious. Many of the leading
confederates not only were offended with the proceedings, but, in their
eagerness to chastise the iconoclasts and to escape from a league of
which they were weary, began to take severe measures against the
Ministers and Reformers, of whom they had constituted themselves
in April the especial protectors.
The next remarkable characteristic of these tumults was the almost entire
abstinence of the rioters from personal outrage and from pillage. The
testimony of a very bitter, but honest Catholic at Valenciennes, is
remarkable upon this point. "Certain chroniclers," said he, "have
greatly mistaken the character of this image-breaking. It has been said
that the Calvinists killed a hundred priests in this city, cutting some
of them into pieces, and burning others over a slow fire. I remember
very well every thing which happened upon that abominable day, and I can
affirm that not a single priest was injured. The Huguenots took good
care not to injure in any way the living images." This was the case
every where. Catholic and Protestant writers agree that no deeds of
violence were committed against man or woman.
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