Part 17

“The cities of Ypres, Lille, and other places of importance, were soon subject to similar visitations; and the whole of Flanders was in a few days ravaged by furious multitudes, whose frantic energy spread terror and destruction on their route. Antwerp was protected for a while by the presence of the prince of Orange; but an order from the government having obliged him to repair to Brussels, a few nights after his departure the celebrated cathedral shared the fate of many a minor temple, and was utterly pillaged. The blind fury of the spoilers was not confined to the mere effigies which they considered the types of idolatry, nor even to the pictures, the vases, the sixty-six altars, and their richly wrought accessories; but it was equally fatal to the splendid organ, which was considered the finest at that time in existence. The rapidity and the order with which this torchlight scene was acted, without a single accident among the numerous doers, has excited the wonder of almost all its early historians. One of them does not hesitate to ascribe the ‘miracle’ to the absolute agency of demons. For three days and nights these revolting scenes were acted, and every church in the city shared the fate of the cathedral, which, next to St. Peter’s at Rome, was the most magnificent in Christendom.

“Ghent, Tournay, Valenciennes, Mechlin, and other cities, were next the theatres of similar excesses; and in an incredibly short space of time above 400 churches were pillaged in Flanders and Brabant. Zealand, Utrecht, and others of the northern provinces, suffered more or less; Friesland, Guelders, and Holland alone escaped, and even the latter but in partial instances.

“These terrible scenes extinguished every hope of reconciliation with the king. An inveterate and interminable hatred was now established between him and the people; for the whole nation was identified with deeds which were in reality only shared by the most base, and were loathsome to all who were enlightened. It was in vain that the patriot nobles might hope or strive to exculpate themselves; they were sure to be held criminal either in fact or by implication. No show of loyalty, no efforts to restore order, no personal sacrifice, could save them from the hatred or screen them from the vengeance of Philip.

“The affright of the government during the short reign of anarchy and terror was without bounds.

“Necessity now extorted almost every concession which had been so long denied to justice and prudence. The confederates were declared absolved from all responsibility relative to their proceedings. The suppression of the inquisition, the abolition of the edicts against heresy, and a permission for the preachings, were simultaneously published.

“Philip was ill at Segovia when he received accounts of the excesses of the image-breakers, and of the convention concluded with the heretics. Dispatches from the government, with private advices from Viglius, Egmont, Mansfield, Megham, de Berlaimont, and others, gave him ample information as to the real state of things, and they thus strove to palliate their having acceded to the convention. The emperor even wrote to his royal nephew, imploring him to treat his wayward subjects with moderation, and offered his mediation between them.”

But all was in vain. Philip proceeded with his usual dissimulation. His artifices succeeded in disuniting the Protestants, but hostilities commenced, and there were victories and losses on both sides; new preliminaries of reconciliation, falsely intended, and resulting only in the self-banishment of the patriot lords and an immense emigration; until at last Philip fully developed his plans by sending Alva to supersede Marguerite.

“On the 5th May, 1567, this celebrated captain, whose reputation was so quickly destined to sink into the notoriety of an executioner, began his memorable march; and on the 22d of August, he, with his two natural sons, and his veteran army consisting of about 15,000 men, arrived at the walls of Brussels. The discipline observed on this march was a terrible fore-warning to the people of the Netherlands of the influence of the general and the obedience of the troops. They had little chance of resistance against such soldiers so commanded.

“Several of the Belgian nobility went forward to meet Alva, to render him the accustomed honours, and endeavour thus early to gain his good graces. Among them was the infatuated Egmont, who made a present to Alva of two superb horses, which the latter received with a disdainful air of condescension. Alva’s first care was the distribution of his troops—several thousands of whom were placed in Antwerp, Ghent, and other important towns, and the remainder reserved under his own immediate orders at Brussels. His approach was celebrated by universal terror; and his arrival was thoroughly humiliating to the duchess of Parma. He immediately produced his commission as commander-in-chief of the royal armies in the Netherlands; but he next showed her another, which confided to him powers infinitely more extended than any Marguerite herself had enjoyed, and which proved to her that the almost sovereign power over the country was virtually vested in him.

“Alva first turned his attention to the seizure of those patriot lords whose pertinacious infatuation left them within his reach. He summoned a meeting of all the members of the council of state and the knights of the order of the Golden Fleece, to deliberate on matters of great importance. Counts Egmont and Horn attended, among many others; and at the conclusion of the council they were both arrested (some historians assert by the hands of Alva and his eldest son), as was also Van Straeten, burgomaster of Antwerp, and Casambrot, Egmont’s secretary. The young count of Mansfield appeared for a moment at this meeting; but, warned by his father of the fate intended him, as an original member of the confederation, he had time to fly. The count of Hoogstraeten was happily detained by illness, and thus escaped the fate of his friends. Egmont and Horn were transferred to the citadel of Ghent, under an escort of 3000 Spanish soldiers. Several other persons of the first families were arrested; and those who had originally been taken in arms were executed without delay.

“The next measures of the new governor were the reëstablishment of the inquisition, the promulgation of the decrees of the council of Trent, the revocation of the duchess of Parma’s edicts, and the royal refusal to recognize the terms of her treaties with the Protestants. He immediately established a special tribunal, composed of twelve members, with full powers to inquire into and pronounce judgment on every circumstance connected with the late troubles. He named himself president of this council, and appointed a Spaniard, named Vargas, as vice-president—a wretch of the most diabolical cruelty. Several others of the judges were also Spaniards, in direct infraction of the fundamental laws of the country. This council, immortalized by its infamy, was named by the new governor (for so Alva was in fact, though not yet in name), the Council of Troubles. By the people it was soon designated the Council of Blood. In its atrocious proceedings no respect was paid to titles, contracts, or privileges, however sacred. Its judgments were without appeal. Every subject of the state was amenable to its summons; clergy and laity, the first individuals of the country, as well as the most wretched outcasts of society. Its decrees were passed with disgusting rapidity and contempt of form. Contumacy was punished with exile and confiscation. Those who, strong in innocence, dared to brave a trial, were lost without resource. The accused were forced to its bar without previous warning. Many a wealthy citizen was dragged to trial four leagues’ distance, tied to a horse’s tail. The number of victims was appalling. On one occasion, the town of Valenciennes alone saw fifty-five of its citizens fall by the hands of the executioner. Hanging, beheading, quartering, and burning, were the every-day spectacles. The enormous confiscations only added to the thirst for gold and blood by which Alva and his satellites were parched. History offers no example of parallel horrors: for while party vengeance on other occasions had led to scenes of fury and terror, they arose, in this instance, from the vilest cupidity and the most cold-blooded cruelty.

“After _three months_ of such atrocity, Alva, fatigued rather than satiated with butchery, resigned his hateful functions wholly into the hands of Vargas, who was chiefly aided by the members Delrio and Dela Torre. Even at this remote period we cannot repress the indignation excited by the mention of those monsters, and it is impossible not to feel satisfaction in fixing upon their names the brand of historic execration. One of these wretches, called Hesselts, used at length to sleep during the mock trials of the already doomed victims; and as often as he was roused up by his colleagues, he used to cry out mechanically, “To the gibbet! to the gibbet!” so familiar was his tongue with the sounds of condemnation.

“The despair of the people may be imagined from the fact, that until the end of the year 1567 their only consolation was the prospect of the king’s arrival! He never dreamt of coming. Even the delight of feasting in horrors like these could not conquer his indolence. The good duchess of Parma,—for so she was in comparison with her successor,—was not long left to oppose the feeble barrier of her prayers between Alva and his victims. She demanded her dismissal from the nominal dignity, which was now but a title of disgrace. Philip granted it readily, accompanied by a hypocritical letter, a present of 30,000 crowns, and the promise of an annual pension of 20,000 more. She left Brussels in the month of April, 1568, raised to a high place in the esteem and gratitude of the people, less by any actual claims from her own conduct, than by its fortuitous contrast with the infamy of her successor. She retired to Italy, and died at Naples in the month of February, 1586.

“In addition to the horrors acted by the Council of Blood, Alva committed many deeds of collateral but minor tyranny: among others, he issued a decree forbidding, under severe penalties, any inhabitant of the country to marry without his express permission. His furious edicts against emigration were attempted to be enforced in vain. Elizabeth of England opened all the ports of her kingdom to the Flemish refugees, who carried with them those abundant stores of manufacturing knowledge which she wisely knew to be the elements of national wealth.

“Alva soon summoned the prince of Orange, his brothers, and all the confederate lords, to appear before the council and answer to the charge of high treason. The prince gave a prompt and contemptuous answer, denying the authority of Alva and his council, and acknowledging for his judges only the emperor, whose vassal he was, or the king of Spain in person, as president of the order of the Golden Fleece. The other lords made replies nearly similar. The trials of each were, therefore, proceeded on, by contumacy; confiscation of property being an object almost as dear to the tyrant viceroy as the death of his victims. Judgments were promptly pronounced against those present or absent, alive or dead. Witness the case of the unfortunate marquess of Bergues, who had previously expired at Madrid, as was universally believed, by poison; and his equally ill-fated colleague in the embassy, the baron Montigny, was for a while imprisoned at Segovia, where he was soon after secretly beheaded, on the base pretext of former disaffection.

“The departure of the duchess of Parma having left Alva undisputed as well as unlimited authority, he proceeded rapidly in his terrible career. The count of Beuren was seized at Louvain, and sent prisoner to Madrid; and wherever it was possible to lay hands on a suspected patriot, the occasion was not neglected. It would be a revolting task to enter into a minute detail of all the horrors committed, and impossible to record the names of the victims who so quickly fell before Alva’s insatiate cruelty. The people were driven to frenzy. Bands of wretches fled to the woods and marshes; whence, half famished and perishing for want, they revenged themselves with pillage and murder. Pirates infested and ravaged the coast; and thus, from both sea and land, the whole extent of the Netherlands was devoted to carnage and ruin. The chronicles of Brabant and Holland, chiefly written in Flemish by contemporary authors, abound in thrilling details of the horrors of this general desolation, with long lists of those who perished. Suffice it to say, that on the recorded boast of Alva himself, he caused 18,000 inhabitants of the Low Countries to perish by the hands of the executioner, during his less than six years’ sovereignty in the Netherlands.

“The most important of these tragical scenes was now soon to be acted. The counts Egmont and Horn, having submitted to some previous interrogatories by Vargas and others, were removed from Ghent to Brussels, on the 3d of June, under a strong escort. The following day they passed through the mockery of a trial before the Council of Blood; and on the 5th, they were both beheaded in the great square of Brussels, in the presence of Alva, who gloated on the spectacle from a balcony that commanded the execution. The same day Vanstraelen and Casambrot shared the fate of their illustrious friends, in the castle of Vilvorde, with many others, whose names only find a place in the local chronicles of the times.”

All Europe at last burst out into execration and remonstrance, and an army was raised in Germany, which William of Orange headed, but which, after some victories, was dispersed by Alva. A frightful inundation aided him; for “no suffering could affect his inflexible sternness; and to such excess did he carry his persecution, that Philip himself began to be discontented, and reproached him sharply in some of his despatches. The governor replied in the same strain, and such was the effect of this correspondence, that Philip resolved to remove him.”

We will not follow the history through the short term of Requesens’s rule, or even through that of Don John of Austria, and of the Prince of Parma, though the latter would be well suited to our purpose. The happiest result of Philip’s obstinacy was the Declaration of National Independence by the States-General, assembled at Antwerp, who, after one or two trials of other princes, at length conferred the Sovereignty on the Prince of Orange.

In the end, the independence of Holland was maintained; but Philip conferred on Albert of Austria, and Isabella, the sovereignty of the reconciled southern provinces. Grattan gives a picture of the country at this time, which contrasts mournfully with the one given of it thirty years before.

“The reconciled provinces presented the most deplorable spectacle. The chief towns were almost depopulated. The inhabitants had in a great measure fallen victims to war, pestilence, and famine. Little inducement existed to replace by marriage the ravages caused by death, for few men wished to propagate a race which divine wrath seemed to have marked for persecution. The thousands of villages which had covered the face of the country were absolutely abandoned to the wolves, which had so rapidly increased, that they attacked not merely cattle and children, but grown-up persons. The dogs, driven abroad by hunger, had become as ferocious as other beasts of prey, and joined in large packs to hunt down brutes and men. Neither fields, nor woods, nor roads, were now to be distinguished by any visible limits. All was an entangled mass of trees, weeds, and grass. The prices of the necessaries of life were so high, that people of rank, after selling every thing to buy bread, were obliged to have recourse to open beggary in the streets of the great towns.

“From this frightful picture, and the numerous details which imagination may readily supply, we gladly turn to the contrast afforded by the northern states. Those we have just described have a feeble hold upon our sympathies; we cannot pronounce their sufferings to be unmerited. The want of firmness or enlightenment, which preferred such an existence to the risk of entire destruction, only heightens the glory of the people whose unyielding energy and courage gained them so proud a place among the independent nations of Europe.”

The assassination of the noble William of Orange, at the instigation of Philip, forms a fitting crime with which to close this section of the subject.

But before leaving the subject of the Netherlands, we must speak of one more passage of its history, viz: that which is connected with the name of Joseph II.

In the mean time, if it did, by its own internal energies, recover somewhat from the condition in which Philip II. left it, it had suffered through its connection with Austria, all the horrors of being the battle-ground of the rival houses of Bourbon and Hapsburgh, especially during the disastrous ten years of the War of Succession, in Spain.

With Joseph II., a new species of oppression commenced. This emperor’s character has been made the subject of a great deal of disquisition. He is the first, the only monarch of his race who ever seems to have entertained in his brain, the idea of a duty owing from a monarch to the nations under his sway; if indeed it were not after all rather a notion of the free grace of benevolence, that impelled him to make a plan of benefiting the people, under him by a new organization of the large part of Europe which the centralising selfishness and rapacity of his ancestors had connected into a heterogenoeous whole. But it is a very different thing to have an idea of reform, whether it calls itself duty or beneficence, and to have the character of a reformer. Out of the heart are the issues of life. Even Coxe (the apologist of the House of Austria, although he admits _the facts_ which make against that aim of his work and which have been so largely quoted in this volume) says, in the very chapter in which he speaks of the specific reforms of Joseph, and among many others of his abolition of useless tribunals and feudal offices, which were dilatory and oppressive, “_he yet introduced a still greater evil, by making the basis of the administration_, THE ABSOLUTE WILL _of the sovereign, from which there could be_ NO APPEAL.”

Here Coxe strikes upon the Hapsburghs, the character _in the blood_, (or is it in the spiritual tradition of families?) Without supposing Joseph consciously insincere in his idea of reform, beneficence, or duty; yet here we see that he was incapable of the principle, no less from personal character than from the falseness of his position. He said that his “greatest honour would be to reign over freemen,”[6] but the point he could not give up was precisely that of “reigning,” and to _reign_ over _freemen_ is _reductio ad absurdum_. Joseph never used the word _reign_ in a limited sense. It is only possible, in this work, to give one illustration of Joseph’s character as a reformer and promoter of the welfare of his subjects. We shall give it in the words of Coxe himself, that no one may say it is the one-sided view of a _republican_, who is acting the part of an advocate rather than of an historian. We give the whole of Coxe’s hundred and twenty-ninth chapter.

“That rich and fertile territory, usually known by the synonymous appellations of the Netherlands and the Low Countries, formed part of the vast dominions which had been attached to the Spanish monarchy. Conquered by the joint forces of the Maritime Powers, it was transferred, at the peace of Utrecht, under their guaranty, to the house of Austria, on condition that the ancient laws, customs, and constitutions should be inviolably preserved. The late emperor, Charles VI., was inaugurated on these terms. His daughter, Maria Theresa, entered into similar engagements on her accession; but during her reign some changes, with the consent, if not at the request, of the states, were introduced in the mode of representation in Brabant, and in the system of taxation. _Joseph gave the same solemn sanction to the existing constitution._

“Perhaps there was no country on the surface of the globe so small in extent, under the government of one prince, of which the component parts differed so widely in manners, government, and laws. Each of the provinces not only formed a separate sovereignty, enjoying a peculiar constitution, but the same variation extended to the cities and districts. In most of the provinces the rights and privileges were founded on tradition or prescription; but in Brabant and Limburgh they were detailed in a charter called La Joyeuse Entrée, which contained fifty-nine articles, a collection of ancient usages and immunities granted by the former dukes of Brabant. The sovereign was restrained from conferring charges on any except natives, no inhabitant was to be tried out of the country, and full liberty of speech was to be allowed in the assembly of the states, with many other privileges; the charter was also concluded with a declaration similar to the celebrated clause in the coronation oath of Andrew II., king of Hungary, that if the sovereign should cease to observe the articles, his subjects should also cease to obey him, until the breaches in the constitution were repaired, and the immunities restored.

“The power of the clergy was almost unbounded; the hierarchy consisted of one archbishop and seven bishops; there were also a hundred and eight abbeys, each endowed with annual revenues from 60,000 to 300,000 florins, numerous convents, and the number of religious persons, regular and secular, of both sexes, amounted to 30,000. The clergy possessed a considerable part of the landed property, and being the first order of the states, were enabled to relieve themselves from a considerable part of the public burdens, by fixing the land-tax at a low rate, and throwing the imposts on articles of consumption.

“Their predominant influence was extended by the system of public education, which was subjected to the immediate control of the hierarchy. The university of Louvain had long been celebrated for its numerous and richly-endowed colleges, and was formerly distinguished for learning and discipline. It possessed extraordinary privileges, with the patronage of numerous benefices, both in the Netherlands and in the bishopric of Liege; and above all, its academical honours were indispensable qualifications for the possession of every civil and ecclesiastical office. The members devoted to the papal see, maintained a blind adherence to the system of the ancient schoolmen, and proscribed all innovations adopted in other seminaries.

“In this country, and among a people so tenacious of their customs, liberties, and religion, Joseph did not merely attempt to reform abuses and lop superfluous branches, _but even laid the axe to the root of the constitution itself_. He purposed to force on the natives what he termed a simple and efficient form of government, and to establish yearly the same system of ecclesiastical polity, finance, and jurisprudence, as he had introduced into his hereditary countries. He commenced his innovations at an early period of his reign by abolishing several convents, prohibiting processions, jubilees, and confraternities, and removing statues, images, and offerings from the churches.