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Title: History of the United Netherlands, 1584-1609, Complete

Author: John Lothrop Motley

Release Date: October 15, 2006 [EBook #4885]

Language: English

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Produced by David Widger





HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS, 1584-1609, Complete

From the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce


Volume I.


By John Lothrop Motley




PREFACE.

The indulgence with which the History of the Rise of the Dutch Republic
was received has encouraged me to prosecute my task with renewed
industry.

A single word seems necessary to explain the somewhat increased
proportions which the present work has assumed over the original design.
The intimate connection which was formed between the Kingdom of England
and the Republic of Holland, immediately after the death of William the
Silent, rendered the history and the fate of the two commonwealths for a
season almost identical. The years of anxiety and suspense during which
the great Spanish project for subjugating England and reconquering the
Netherlands, by the same invasion, was slowly matured, were of deepest
import for the future destiny of those two countries, and for the cause
of national liberty. The deep-laid conspiracy of Spain and Rome against
human rights deserves to be patiently examined, for it is one of the
great lessons of history. The crisis was long and doubtful, and the
health--perhaps the existence--of England and Holland, and, with them,
of a great part of Christendom, was on the issue.

History has few so fruitful examples of the dangers which come from
superstition and despotism, and the blessings which flow from the
maintenance of religious and political freedom, as those afforded by the
struggle between England and Holland on the one side, and Spain and Rome
on the other, during the epoch which I have attempted to describe. It is
for this reason that I have thought it necessary to reveal, as minutely
as possible, the secret details of this conspiracy of king and priest
against the people, and to show how it was baffled at last by the strong
self-helping energy of two free nations combined.

The period occupied by these two volumes is therefore a short one, when
counted by years, for it begins in 1584 and ends with the commencement of
1590. When estimated by the significance of events and their results for
future ages, it will perhaps be deemed worthy of the close examination
which it has received. With the year 1588 the crisis was past; England
was safe, and the new Dutch commonwealth was thoroughly organized. It is
my design, in two additional volumes, which, with the two now published,
will complete the present work, to carry the history of the Republic down
to the Synod of Dort. After this epoch the Thirty Years' War broke out in
Germany; and it is my wish, at a future day, to retrace the history of
that eventful struggle, and to combine with it the civil and military
events in Holland, down to the epoch when the Thirty Years' War and the
Eighty Years' War of the Netherlands were both brought to a close by the
Peace of Westphalia.

The materials for the volumes now offered to the public were so abundant
that it was almost impossible to condense them into smaller compass
without doing injustice to the subject. It was desirable to throw full
light on these prominent points of the history, while the law of
historical perspective will allow long stretches of shadow in the
succeeding portions, in which less important objects may be more slightly
indicated. That I may not be thought capable of abusing the reader's
confidence by inventing conversations, speeches, or letters, I would take
this opportunity of stating--although I have repeated the remark in the
foot-notes--that no personage in these pages is made to write or speak
any words save those which, on the best historical evidence, he is known
to have written or spoken.

A brief allusion to my sources of information will not seem superfluous:
I have carefully studied all the leading contemporary chronicles and
pamphlets of Holland, Flanders, Spain, France, Germany, and England; but,
as the authorities are always indicated in the notes, it is unnecessary
to give a list of them here. But by far my most valuable materials are
entirely unpublished ones.

The archives of England are especially rich for the history of the
sixteenth century; and it will be seen, in the course of the narrative,
how largely I have drawn from those mines of historical wealth, the State
Paper Office and the MS. department of the British Museum. Although both
these great national depositories are in admirable order, it is to be
regretted that they are not all embraced in one collection, as much
trouble might then be spared to the historical student, who is now
obliged to pass frequently from the one place to the other, in order to,
find different portions of the same correspondence.

From the royal archives of Holland I have obtained many most important,
entirely unpublished documents, by the aid of which I have endeavoured to
verify, to illustrate, or sometimes to correct, the recitals of the elder
national chroniclers; and I have derived the greatest profit from the
invaluable series of Archives and Correspondence of the Orange-Nassau
Family, given to the world by M. Groen van Prinsterer. I desire to renew
to that distinguished gentleman, and to that eminent scholar M. Bakhuyzen
van den Brink, the expression of my gratitude for their constant kindness
and advice during my residence at the Hague. Nothing can exceed the
courtesy which has been extended to me in Holland, and I am deeply
grateful for the indulgence with which my efforts to illustrate the
history of the country have been received where that history is best
known.

I have also been much aided by the study of a portion of the Archives of
Simancas, the originals of which are in the Archives de l'Empire in
Paris, and which were most liberally laid before me through the kindness
of M. le Comte de La Borde.

I have, further; enjoyed an inestimable advantage in the perusal of the
whole correspondence between Philip II., his ministers, and governors,
relating to the affairs of the Netherlands, from the epoch at which this
work commences down to that monarch's death. Copies of this
correspondence have been carefully made from the originals at Simancas by
order of the Belgian Government, under the superintendence of the eminent
archivist M. Gachard, who has already published a synopsis or abridgment
of a portion of it in a French translation. The translation and
abridgment of so large a mass of papers, however, must necessarily occupy
many years, and it may be long, therefore, before the whole of the
correspondence--and particularly that portion of it relating to the epoch
occupied by these volumes sees the light. It was, therefore, of the
greatest importance for me to see the documents themselves unabridged and
untranslated. This privilege has been accorded me, and I desire to
express my thanks to his Excellency M. van de Weyer, the distinguished
representative of Belgium at the English Court, to whose friendly offices
I am mainly indebted for the satisfaction of my wishes in this respect. A
letter from him to his Excellency M. Rogier, Minister of the Interior in
Belgium--who likewise took the most courteous interest in promoting my
views--obtained for me the permission thoroughly to study this
correspondence; and I passed several months in Brussels, occupied with
reading the whole of it from the year 1584 to the end of the reign of
Philip II.

I was thus saved a long visit to the Archives of Simancas, for it would
be impossible conscientiously to write the history of the epoch without a
thorough examination of the correspondence of the King and his ministers.
I venture to hope, therefore--whatever judgment may be passed upon my own
labours--that this work may be thought to possess an intrinsic value; for
the various materials of which it is composed are original, and--so far
as I am aware--have not been made use of by any historical writer.

I would take this opportunity to repeat my thanks to M. Gachard,
Archivist of the kingdom of Belgium, for the uniform courtesy and
kindness which I have received at his-hands, and to bear my testimony to
the skill and critical accuracy with which he has illustrated so many
passages of Belgian and Spanish history.

31, HERTFORD-STREET, MAY-FAIR, November llth 1860.




THE UNITED NETHERLANDS.




CHAPTER I.

   Murder of Orange--Extension of Protestantism--Vast Power of Spain--
   Religious Origin of the Revolt--Disposal of the Sovereignty--Courage
   of the Estates of Holland--Children of William the Silent--
   Provisional Council of State--Firm attitude of Holland and Zeeland--
   Weakness of Flanders--Fall of Ghent--Adroitness of Alexander
   Farnese.

WILLIAM THE SILENT, Prince of Orange, had been murdered on the 10th of
July, 1584. It is difficult to imagine a more universal disaster than the
one thus brought about by the hand of a single obscure fanatic. For
nearly twenty years the character of the Prince had been expanding
steadily as the difficulties of his situation increased. Habit,
necessity, and the natural gifts of the man, had combined to invest him
at last with an authority which seemed more than human. There was such
general confidence in his sagacity, courage, and purity, that the nation
had come to think with his brain and to act with his hand. It was natural
that, for an instant, there should be a feeling as of absolute and
helpless paralysis.

Whatever his technical attributes in the polity of the Netherlands--and
it would be difficult to define them with perfect accuracy--there is no
doubt that he stood there, the head of a commonwealth, in an attitude
such as had been maintained by but few of the kings, or chiefs, or high
priests of history. Assassination, a regular and almost indispensable
portion of the working machinery of Philip's government, had produced, in
this instance, after repeated disappointments, the result at last which
had been so anxiously desired. The ban of the Pope and the offered gold
of the King had accomplished a victory greater than any yet achieved by
the armies of Spain, brilliant as had been their triumphs on the
blood-stained soil of the Netherlands.

Had that "exceeding proud, neat, and spruce" Doctor of Laws, William
Parry, who had been busying himself at about the same time with his
memorable project against the Queen of England, proved as successful as
Balthazar Gerard, the fate of Christendom would have been still darker.
Fortunately, that member of Parliament had made the discovery in
time--not for himself, but for Elizabeth--that the "Lord was better
pleased with adverbs than nouns;" the well-known result being that the
traitor was hanged and the Sovereign saved.

Yet such was the condition of Europe at that day. A small, dull, elderly,
imperfectly-educated, patient, plodding invalid, with white hair and
protruding under jaw, and dreary visage, was sitting day after day;
seldom speaking, never smiling, seven or eight hours out of every
twenty-four, at a writing table covered with heaps of interminable
despatches, in a cabinet far away beyond the seas and mountains, in the
very heart of Spain. A clerk or two, noiselessly opening and shutting the
door, from time to time, fetching fresh bundles of letters and taking
away others--all written and composed by secretaries or high
functionaries--and all to be scrawled over in the margin by the diligent
old man in a big schoolboy's hand and style--if ever schoolboy, even in
the sixteenth century, could write so illegibly or express himself so
awkwardly; couriers in the court-yard arriving from or departing for the
uttermost parts of earth-Asia, Africa America, Europe-to fetch and carry
these interminable epistles which contained the irresponsible commands of
this one individual, and were freighted with the doom and destiny of
countless millions of the world's inhabitants--such was the system of
government against which the Netherlands had protested and revolted. It
was a system under which their fields had been made desolate, their
cities burned and pillaged, their men hanged, burned, drowned, or hacked
to pieces; their women subjected to every outrage; and to put an end to
which they had been devoting their treasure and their blood for nearly
the length of one generation. It was a system, too, which, among other
results, had just brought about the death of the foremost statesman of
Europe, and had nearly effected simultaneously the murder of the most
eminent sovereign in the world. The industrious Philip, safe and tranquil
in the depths of the Escorial, saying his prayers three times a day with
exemplary regularity, had just sent three bullets through the body of
William the Silent at his dining-room door in Delft. "Had it only been
done two years earlier," observed the patient old man, "much trouble
might have been spared me; but 'tis better late than never." Sir Edward
Stafford, English envoy in Paris, wrote to his government--so soon as the
news of the murder reached him--that, according to his information out of
the Spanish minister's own house, "the same practice that had been
executed upon the Prince of Orange, there were practisers more than two
or three about to execute upon her Majesty, and that within two months."
Without vouching for the absolute accuracy of this intelligence, he
implored the Queen to be more upon her guard than ever. "For there is no
doubt," said the envoy, "that she is a chief mark to shoot at; and seeing
that there were men cunning enough to inchant a man and to encourage him
to kill the Prince of Orange, in the midst of Holland, and that there was
a knave found desperate enough to do it, we must think hereafter that
anything may be done. Therefore God preserve her Majesty."

Invisible as the Grand Lama of Thibet, clothed with power as extensive
and absolute as had ever been wielded by the most imperial Caesar, Philip
the Prudent, as he grew older and feebler in mind and body seemed to
become more gluttonous of work, more ambitious to extend his sceptre over
lands which he had never seen or dreamed of seeing, more fixed in his
determination to annihilate that monster Protestantism, which it had been
the business of his life to combat, more eager to put to death every
human creature, whether anointed monarch or humble artizan, that defended
heresy or opposed his progress to universal empire.

If this enormous power, this fabulous labour, had, been wielded or
performed with a beneficent intention; if the man who seriously regarded
himself as the owner of a third of the globe, with the inhabitants
thereof, had attempted to deal with these extensive estates inherited
from his ancestors with the honest intention of a thrifty landlord, an
intelligent slave-owner, it would have yet been possible for a little
longer to smile at the delusion, and endure the practice.

But there was another old man, who lived in another palace in another
remote land, who, in his capacity of representative of Saint Peter,
claimed to dispose of all the kingdoms of the earth--and had been willing
to bestow them upon the man who would go down and worship him. Philip
stood enfeoffed, by divine decree, of all America, the East Indies, the
whole Spanish Peninsula, the better portion of Italy, the seventeen
Netherlands, and many other possessions far and near; and he contemplated
annexing to this extensive property the kingdoms of France, of England,
and Ireland. The Holy League, maintained by the sword of Guise, the
pope's ban, Spanish ducats, Italian condottieri, and German mercenaries,
was to exterminate heresy and establish the Spanish dominion in France.
The same machinery, aided by the pistol or poniard of the assassin, was
to substitute for English protestantism and England's queen the Roman
Catholic religion and a foreign sovereign. "The holy league," said
Duplessis-Mornay, one of the noblest characters of the age, "has destined
us all to the name sacrifice. The ambition of the Spaniard, which has
overleaped so many lands and seas, thinks nothing inaccessible."

The Netherland revolt had therefore assumed world-wide proportions. Had
it been merely the rebellion of provinces against a sovereign, the
importance of the struggle would have been more local and temporary. But
the period was one in which the geographical land-marks of countries were
almost removed. The dividing-line ran through every state, city, and
almost every family. There was a country which believed in the absolute
power of the church to dictate the relations between man and his Maker,
and to utterly exterminate all who disputed that position. There was
another country which protested against that doctrine, and claimed,
theoretically or practically, a liberty of conscience. The territory of
these countries was mapped out by no visible lines, but the inhabitants
of each, whether resident in France, Germany, England, or Flanders,
recognised a relationship which took its root in deeper differences than
those of race or language. It was not entirely a question of doctrine or
dogma. A large portion of the world had become tired of the antiquated
delusion of a papal supremacy over every land, and had recorded its
determination, once for all, to have done with it. The transition to
freedom of conscience became a necessary step, sooner or later to be
taken. To establish the principle of toleration for all religions was an
inevitable consequence of the Dutch revolt; although thus far, perhaps
only one conspicuous man in advance of his age had boldly announced that
doctrine and had died in its defence. But a great true thought never
dies--though long buried in the earth--and the day was to come, after
long years, when the seed was to ripen into a harvest of civil and
religious emancipation, and when the very word toleration was to sound
like an insult and an absurdity.

A vast responsibility rested upon the head of a monarch, placed as Philip
II. found himself, at this great dividing point in modern history. To
judge him, or any man in such a position, simply from his own point of
view, is weak and illogical. History judges the man according to its
point of view. It condemns or applauds the point of view itself. The
point of view of a malefactor is not to excuse robbery and murder. Nor is
the spirit of the age to be pleaded in defence of the evil-doer at a time
when mortals were divided into almost equal troops. The age of Philip II.
was also the age of William of Orange and his four brethren, of Sainte
Aldegonde, of Olden-Barneveldt, of Duplessis-Mornay, La Noue, Coligny, of
Luther, Melancthon, and Calvin, Walsingham, Sidney, Raleigh, Queen
Elizabeth, of Michael Montaigne, and William Shakspeare. It was not an
age of blindness, but of glorious light. If the man whom the Maker of the
Universe had permitted to be born to such boundless functions, chose to
put out his own eyes that he might grope along his great pathway of duty
in perpetual darkness, by his deeds he must be judged. The King perhaps
firmly believed that the heretics of the Netherlands, of France, or of
England, could escape eternal perdition only by being extirpated from the
earth by fire and sword, and therefore; perhaps, felt it his duty to
devote his life to their extermination. But he believed, still more
firmly, that his own political authority, throughout his dominions, and
his road to almost universal empire, lay over the bodies of those
heretics. Three centuries have nearly past since this memorable epoch;
and the world knows the fate of the states which accepted the dogma which
it was Philip's life-work to enforce, and of those who protested against
the system. The Spanish and Italian Peninsulas have had a different
history from that which records the career of France, Prussia, the Dutch
Commonwealth, the British Empire, the Transatlantic Republic.

Yet the contest between those Seven meagre Provinces upon the sand-banks
of the North Sea, and--the great Spanish Empire, seemed at the moment
with which we are now occupied a sufficiently desperate one. Throw a
glance upon the map of Europe. Look at the broad magnificent Spanish
Peninsula, stretching across eight degrees of latitude and ten of
longitude, commanding the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, with a genial
climate, warmed in winter by the vast furnace of Africa, and protected
from the scorching heats of summer by shady mountain and forest, and
temperate breezes from either ocean. A generous southern territory,
flowing with wine and oil, and all the richest gifts of a bountiful
nature-splendid cities--the new and daily expanding Madrid, rich in the
trophies of the most artistic period of the modern world--Cadiz, as
populous at that day as London, seated by the straits where the ancient
and modern systems of traffic were blending like the mingling of the two
oceans--Granada, the ancient wealthy seat of the fallen Moors--Toledo,
Valladolid, and Lisbon, chief city of the recently-conquered kingdom of
Portugal, counting, with its suburbs, a larger population than any city,
excepting Paris, in Europe, the mother of distant colonies, and the
capital of the rapidly-developing traffic with both the Indies--these
were some of the treasures of Spain herself. But she possessed Sicily
also, the better portion of Italy, and important dependencies in Africa,
while the famous maritime discoveries of the age had all enured to her
aggrandizement. The world seemed suddenly to have expanded its wings from
East to West, only to bear the fortunate Spanish Empire to the most dizzy
heights of wealth and power. The most accomplished generals, the most
disciplined and daring infantry the world has ever known, the
best-equipped and most extensive navy, royal and mercantile, of the age,
were at the absolute command of the sovereign. Such was Spain.

Turn now to the north-western corner of Europe. A morsel of territory,
attached by a slight sand-hook to the continent, and half-submerged by
the stormy waters of the German Ocean--this was Holland. A rude climate,
with long, dark, rigorous, winters, and brief summers, a territory, the
mere wash of three great rivers, which had fertilized happier portions of
Europe only to desolate and overwhelm this less-favoured land, a soil so
ungrateful, that if the whole of its four hundred thousand acres of
arable land had been sowed with grain, it could not feed the labourers
alone, and a population largely estimated at one million of souls--these
were the characteristics of the Province which already had begun to give
its name to the new commonwealth. The isles of Zeeland--entangled in the
coils of deep slow-moving rivers, or combating the ocean without--and the
ancient episcopate of Utrecht, formed the only other Provinces that had
quite shaken off the foreign yoke. In Friesland, the important city of
Groningen was still held for the King, while Bois-le-Duc, Zutphen,
besides other places in Gelderland and North Brabant, also in possession
of the royalists, made the position of those provinces precarious.

The limit of the Spanish or "obedient" Provinces, on the one hand, and of
the United Provinces on the other, cannot, therefore, be briefly and
distinctly stated. The memorable treason--or, as it was called, the
"reconciliation" of the Walloon Provinces in the year 1583-4--had placed
the Provinces of Hainault, Arthois, Douay, with the flourishing cities
Arran, Valenciennes, Lille, Tournay, and others--all Celtic Flanders, in
short-in the grasp of Spain. Cambray was still held by the French
governor, Seigneur de Balagny, who had taken advantage of the Duke of
Anjou's treachery to the States, to establish himself in an unrecognized
but practical petty sovereignty, in defiance both of France and Spain;
while East Flanders and South Brabant still remained a disputed
territory, and the immediate field of contest. With these limitations, it
may be assumed, for general purposes, that the territory of the United
States was that of the modern Kingdom of the Netherlands, while the
obedient Provinces occupied what is now the territory of Belgium.

Such, then, were the combatants in the great eighty years' war for civil
and religious liberty; sixteen of which had now passed away. On the one
side, one of the most powerful and, populous world-empires of history,
then in the zenith of its prosperity; on the other hand, a slender group
of cities, governed by merchants and artisans, and planted precariously
upon a meagre, unstable soil. A million and a half of souls against the
autocrat of a third part of the known world. The contest seemed as
desperate as the cause was certainly sacred; but it had ceased to be a
local contest. For the history which is to occupy us in these volumes is
not exclusively the history of Holland. It is the story of the great
combat between despotism, sacerdotal and regal, and the spirit of
rational human liberty. The tragedy opened in the Netherlands, and its
main scenes were long enacted there; but as the ambition of Spain
expanded, and as the resistance to the principle which she represented
became more general, other nations were, of necessity, involved in the
struggle. There came to be one country, the citizens of which were the
Leaguers; and another country, whose inhabitants were Protestants. And in
this lay the distinction between freedom and absolutism. The religious
question swallowed all the others. There was never a period in the early
history of the Dutch revolt when the Provinces would not have returned to
their obedience, could they have been assured of enjoying liberty of
conscience or religious peace; nor was there ever a single moment in
Philip II.'s life in which he wavered in his fixed determination never to
listen to such a claim. The quarrel was in its nature irreconcilable and
eternal as the warfare between wrong and right; and the establishment of
a comparative civil liberty in Europe and America was the result of the
religious war of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The struggle
lasted eighty years, but the prize was worth the contest.

The object of the war between the Netherlands and Spain was not,
therefore, primarily, a rebellion against established authority for the
maintenance of civil rights. To preserve these rights was secondary. The
first cause was religion. The Provinces had been fighting for years
against the Inquisition. Had they not taken arms, the Inquisition would
have been established in the Netherlands, and very probably in England,
and England might have become in its turn a Province of the Spanish
Empire.

The death of William the Silent produced a sudden change in the political
arrangements of the liberated Netherlands. During the year 1583, the
United Provinces had elected Francis, Duke of Anjou, to be Duke of
Brabant and sovereign of the whole country, under certain constitutional
provisions enumerated in articles of solemn compact. That compact had
been grossly violated. The Duke had made a treacherous attempt to possess
himself of absolute power and to seize several important cities. He had
been signally defeated in Antwerp, and obliged to leave the country,
covered with ignominy. The States had then consulted William of Orange as
to the course to be taken in the emergency. The Prince had told them that
their choice was triple. They might reconcile themselves with Spain, and
abandon the contest for religious liberty which they had so long been
waging; they might reconcile themselves with Anjou, notwithstanding that
he had so utterly forfeited all claims to their consideration; or they
might fight the matter out with Spain single-handed. The last course was,
in his opinion, the most eligible one, and he was ready to sacrifice his
life to its furtherance. It was, however, indispensable, should that
policy be adopted, that much larger supplies should be voted than had
hitherto been raised, and, in general, that a much more extensive and
elevated spirit of patriotism should manifest itself than had hitherto
been displayed.

It was, on the whole, decided to make a second arrangement with the Duke
of Anjou, Queen Elizabeth warmly urging that course. At the same time,
however, that articles of agreement were drawn up for the installation of
Anjou as sovereign of the United Provinces, the Prince had himself
consented to accept the title of Count of Holland, under an ample
constitutional charter, dictated by his own lips. Neither Anjou nor
Orange lived to be inaugurated into the offices thus bestowed upon them.
The Duke died at Chateau-Thierry on the 10th June, and the Prince was
assassinated a month later at Delft.

What now was the political position of the United Provinces at this
juncture? The sovereignty which had been held by the Estates, ready to be
conferred respectively upon Anjou and Orange, remained in the hands of
the Estates. There was no opposition to this theory. No more enlarged
view of the social compact had yet been taken. The people, as such,
claimed no sovereignty. Had any champion claimed it for them they would
hardly have understood him. The nation dealt with facts. After abjuring
Philip in 1581--an act which had been accomplished by the Estates--the
same Estates in general assembly had exercised sovereign power, and had
twice disposed of that sovereign power by electing a hereditary ruler.
Their right and their power to do this had been disputed by none, save by
the deposed monarch in Spain. Having the sovereignty to dispose of, it
seemed logical that the Estates might keep it, if so inclined. They did
keep it, but only in trust. While Orange lived, he might often have been
elected sovereign of all the Provinces, could he have been induced to
consent. After his death, the Estates retained, ex necessitate, the
sovereignty; and it will soon be related what they intended to do with
it. One thing is very certain, that neither Orange, while he lived, nor
the Estates, after his death, were actuated in their policy by personal
ambition. It will be seen that the first object of the Estates was to
dispossess themselves of the sovereignty which had again fallen into
their hands.

What were the Estates? Without, at the present moment, any farther
inquiries into that constitutional system which had been long
consolidating itself, and was destined to exist upon a firmer basis for
centuries longer, it will be sufficient to observe, that the great
characteristic of the Netherland government was the municipality.

Each Province contained a large number of cities, which were governed by
a board of magistrates, varying in number from twenty to forty. This
college, called the Vroedschap (Assembly of Sages), consisted of the most
notable citizens, and was a self-electing body--a close corporation--the
members being appointed for life, from the citizens at large. Whenever
vacancies occurred from death or loss of citizenship, the college chose
new members--sometimes immediately, sometimes by means of a double or
triple selection of names, the choice of one from among which was offered
to the stadtholder of the province. This functionary was appointed by the
Count, as he was called, whether Duke of Bavaria or of Burgundy, Emperor,
or King. After the abjuration of Philip, the governors were appointed by
the Estates of each Province.

The Sage-Men chose annually a board of senators, or schepens, whose
functions were mainly judicial; and there were generally two, and
sometimes three, burgomasters, appointed in the same way. This was the
popular branch of the Estates. But, besides this body of representatives,
were the nobles, men of ancient lineage and large possessions, who had
exercised, according to the general feudal law of Europe, high, low, and
intermediate jurisdiction upon their estates, and had long been
recognized as an integral part of the body politic, having the right to
appear, through delegates of their order, in the provincial and in the
general assemblies.

Regarded as a machine for bringing the most decided political capacities
into the administration of public affairs, and for organising the most
practical opposition to the system of religious tyranny, the Netherland
constitution was a healthy, and, for the age, an enlightened one. The
officeholders, it is obvious, were not greedy for the spoils of office;
for it was, unfortunately, often the case that their necessary expenses
in the service of the state were not defrayed. The people raised enormous
contributions for carrying on the war; but they could not afford to be
extremely generous to their faithful servants.

Thus constituted was the commonwealth upon the death of William the
Silent. The gloom produced by that event was tragical. Never in human
history was a more poignant and universal sorrow for the death of any
individual. The despair was, for a brief season, absolute; but it was
soon succeeded by more lofty sentiments. It seemed, after they had laid
their hero in the tomb, as though his spirit still hovered above the
nation which he had loved so well, and was inspiring it with a portion of
his own energy and wisdom.

Even on the very day of the murder, the Estates of Holland, then sitting
at Delft, passed a resolution "to maintain the good cause, with God's
help, to the uttermost, without sparing gold or blood." This decree was
communicated to Admiral de Warmont, to Count Hohenlo, to William Lewis of
Nassau, and to other commanders by land and sea. At the same time, the
sixteen members--for no greater number happened to be present at the
session--addressed letters to their absent colleagues, informing them of
the calamity which had befallen them, summoning them at once to
conference, and urging an immediate convocation of the Estates of all the
Provinces in General Assembly. They also addressed strong letters of
encouragement, mingled with manly condolence, upon the common affliction,
to prominent military and naval commanders and civil functionaries,
begging them to "bear themselves manfully and valiantly, without
faltering in the least on account of the great misfortune which had
occurred, or allowing themselves to be seduced by any one from the union
of the States." Among these sixteen were Van Zuylen, Van Nyvelt, the
Seigneur de Warmont, the Advocate of Holland, Paul Buys, Joost de Menin,
and John van Olden-Barneveldt. A noble example was thus set at once to
their fellow citizens by these their representatives--a manful step taken
forward in the path where Orange had so long been leading.

The next movement, after the last solemn obsequies had been rendered to
the Prince was to provide for the immediate wants of his family. For the
man who had gone into the revolt with almost royal revenues, left his
estate so embarrassed that his carpets, tapestries, household linen--nay,
even his silver spoons, and the very clothes of his wardrobe were
disposed of at auction for the benefit of his creditors. He left eleven
children--a son and daughter by the first wife, a son and daughter by
Anna of Saxony, six daughters by Charlotte of Bourbon, and an infant,
Frederic Henry, born six months before his death. The eldest son, Philip
William, had been a captive in Spain for seventeen years, having been
kidnapped from school, in Leyden, in the year 1567. He had already become
so thoroughly Hispaniolized under the masterly treatment of the King and
the Jesuits, that even his face had lost all resemblance to the type of
his heroic family, and had acquired a sinister, gloomy, forbidding
expression, most painful to contemplate. All of good that he had retained
was a reverence for his father's name--a sentiment which he had
manifested to an extravagant extent on a memorable occasion in Madrid, by
throwing out of window, and killing on the spot a Spanish officer who had
dared to mention the great Prince with insult.

The next son was Maurice, then seventeen years of age, a handsome youth,
with dark blue eyes, well-chiselled features, and full red lips, who had
already manifested a courage and concentration of character beyond his
years. The son of William the Silent, the grandson of Maurice of Saxony,
whom he resembled in visage and character, he was summoned by every drop
of blood in his veins to do life-long battle with the spirit of Spanish
absolutism, and he was already girding himself for his life's work. He
assumed at once for his device a fallen oak, with a young sapling
springing from its root. His motto, "Tandem fit surculus arbor," "the
twig shall yet become a tree"--was to be nobly justified by his career.

The remaining son, then a six months' child, was also destined to high
fortunes, and to win an enduring name in his country's history. For the
present he remained with his mother, the noble Louisa de Coligny, who had
thus seen, at long intervals, her father and two husbands fall victims to
the Spanish policy; for it is as certain that Philip knew beforehand, and
testified his approbation of, the massacre of St. Bartholomew, as that he
was the murderer of Orange.

The Estates of Holland implored the widowed Princess to remain in their
territority, settling a liberal allowance upon herself and her child, and
she fixed her residence at Leyden.

But her position was most melancholy. Married in youth to the Seigneur de
Teligny, a young noble of distinguished qualities, she had soon become
both a widow and an orphan in the dread night of St. Bartholomew. She had
made her own escape to Switzerland; and ten years afterwards she had
united herself in marriage with the Prince of Orange. At the age of
thirty-two, she now found herself desolate and wretched in a foreign
land, where she had never felt thoroughly at home. The widow and children
of William the Silent were almost without the necessaries of life. "I
hardly know," wrote the Princess to her brother-in-law, Count John, "how
the children and I are to maintain ourselves according to the honour of
the house. May God provide for us in his bounty, and certainly we have
much need of it." Accustomed to the more luxurious civilisation of
France, she had been amused rather than annoyed, when, on her first
arrival in Holland for her nuptials, she found herself making the journey
from Rotterdam to Delft in an open cart without springs, instead of the
well-balanced coaches to which she had been used, arriving, as might have
been expected, "much bruised and shaken." Such had become the primitive
simplicity of William the Silent's household. But on his death, in
embarrassed circumstances, it was still more straightened. She had no
cause either to love Leyden, for, after the assassination of her husband,
a brutal preacher, Hakkius by name, had seized that opportunity for
denouncing the French marriage, and the sumptuous christening of the
infant in January, as the deeds which had provoked the wrath of God and
righteous chastisement. To remain there in her widowhood, with that six
months' child, "sole pledge of her dead lord, her consolation and only
pleasure," as she pathetically expressed herself, was sufficiently
painful, and she had been inclined to fix her residence in Flushing, in
the edifice which had belonged to her husband, as Marquis of Vere. She
had been persuaded, however, to remain in Holland, although "complaining,
at first, somewhat of the unkindness of the people."

A small well-formed woman, with delicate features, exquisite complexion,
and very beautiful dark eyes, that seemed in after-years, as they looked
from beneath her coif, to be dim with unshed tears; with remarkable
powers of mind, angelic sweetness of disposition, a winning manner, and a
gentle voice, Louisa de Coligny became soon dear to the rough Hollanders,
and was ever a disinterested and valuable monitress both to her own child
and to his elder brother Maurice.

Very soon afterwards the States General established a State Council, as a
provisional executive board, for the term of three months, for the
Provinces of Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Friesland, and such parts of
Flanders and Brabant as still remained in the Union. At the head of this
body was placed young Maurice, who accepted the responsible position,
after three days' deliberation. The young man had been completing his
education, with a liberal allowance from Holland and Zeeland, at the
University of Leyden; and such had been their tender care for the child
of so many hopes, that the Estates had given particular and solemn
warning, by resolution, to his governor during the previous summer, on no
account to allow him to approach the sea-shore, lest he should be
kidnapped by the Prince of Parma, who had then some war-vessels cruising
on the coast.

The salary of Maurice was now fixed at thirty thousand florins a year,
while each of the councillors was allowed fifteen hundred annually, out
of which stipend he was to support at least one servant; without making
any claim for travelling or other incidental expenses.

The Council consisted of three members from Brabant, two from Flanders,
four from Holland, three from Zeeland, two from Utrecht, one from
Mechlin, and three from Friesland--eighteen in all. They were empowered
and enjoined to levy troops by land and sea, and to appoint naval and
military officers; to establish courts of admiralty, to expend the moneys
voted by the States, to maintain the ancient privileges of the country,
and to see that all troops in service of the Provinces made oath of
fidelity to the Union. Diplomatic relations, questions of peace and war,
the treaty-making power, were not entrusted to the Council, without the
knowledge and consent of the States General, which body was to be
convoked twice a year by the State Council.

Thus the Provinces in the hour of danger and darkness were true to
themselves, and were far from giving way to a despondency which under the
circumstances would not have been unnatural.

For the waves of bitterness were rolling far and wide around them. A
medal, struck in Holland at this period, represented a dismasted hulk
reeling through the tempest. The motto, "incertum quo fate ferent" (who
knows whither fate is sweeping her?) expressed most vividly the ship
wrecked condition of the country. Alexander of Parma, the most
accomplished general and one of the most adroit statesmen of the age, was
swift to take advantage of the calamity which had now befallen the
rebellious Provinces. Had he been better provided with men and money, the
cause of the States might have seemed hopeless. He addressed many letters
to the States General, to the magistracies of various cities, and to
individuals, affecting to consider that with the death of Orange had died
all authority, as well as all motive for continuing the contest with
Spain. He offered easy terms of reconciliation with the discarded
monarch--always reserving, however, as a matter of course, the religious
question--for it was as well known to the States as to Parma that there
was no hope of Philip making concessions upon that important point.

In Holland and Zeeland the Prince's blandishments were of no avail. His
letters received in various towns of those Provinces, offered, said one
who saw them, "almost every thing they would have or demand, even till
they should repent." But the bait was not taken. Individuals and
municipalities were alike stanch, remembering well that faith was not to
be kept with heretics. The example was followed by the Estates of other
Provinces, and all sent in to the General Assembly, soon in session at
Delft, "their absolute and irrevocable authority to their deputies to
stand to that which they, the said States General, should dispose of as
to their persons, goods and country; a resolution and agreement which
never concurred before among them, to this day, in what age or government
soever."

It was decreed that no motion of agreement "with the tyrant of Spain"
should be entertained either publicly or privately, "under pain to be
reputed ill patriots." It was also enacted in the city of Dort that any
man that brought letter or message from the enemy to any private person
"should be forthwith hanged." This was expeditious and business-like. The
same city likewise took the lead in recording its determination by public
act, and proclaiming it by sound of trumpet, "to live and die in the
cause now undertaken."

In Flanders and Brabant the spirit was less noble. Those Provinces were
nearly lost already. Bruges seconded Parma's efforts to induce its
sister-city Ghent to imitate its own baseness in surrendering without a
struggle; and that powerful, turbulent, but most anarchical little
commonwealth was but too ready to listen to the voice of the tempter.
"The ducats of Spain, Madam, are trotting about in such fashion," wrote
envoy Des Pruneaux to Catherine de Medici, "that they have vanquished a
great quantity of courages. Your Majesties, too, must employ money if you
wish to advance one step." No man knew better than Parma how to employ
such golden rhetoric to win back a wavering rebel to his loyalty, but he
was not always provided with a sufficient store of those practical
arguments.

He was, moreover, not strong in the field, although he was far superior
to the States at this contingency. He had, besides his garrisons,
something above 18,000 men. The Provinces had hardly 3000 foot and 2500
horse, and these were mostly lying in the neighbourhood of Zutphen.
Alexander was threatening at the same time Ghent, Dendermonde, Mechlin,
Brussels, and Antwerp. These five powerful cities lie in a narrow circle,
at distances varying from six miles to thirty, and are, as it were,
strung together upon the Scheldt, by which river, or its tributary, the
Senne, they are all threaded. It would have been impossible for Parma,
with 100,000 men at his back, to undertake a regular and simultaneous
siege of these important places. His purpose was to isolate them from
each other and from the rest of the country, by obtaining the control of
the great river, and so to reduce them by famine. The scheme was a
masterly one, but even the consummate ability of Farnese would have
proved inadequate to the undertaking, had not the preliminary
assassination of Orange made the task comparatively easy. Treason,
faint-heartedness, jealousy, were the fatal allies that the
Governor-General had reckoned upon, and with reason, in the council-rooms
of these cities. The terms he offered were liberal. Pardon, permission
for soldiers to retreat with technical honour, liberty to choose between
apostacy to the reformed religion or exile, with a period of two years
granted to the conscientious for the winding up of their affairs; these
were the conditions, which seemed flattering, now that the well-known
voice which had so often silenced the Flemish palterers and intriguers
was for ever hushed.

Upon the 17th August (1584) Dendermonde surrendered, and no lives were
taken save those of two preachers, one of whom was hanged, while the
other was drowned. Upon the 7th September Vilvoorde capitulated, by which
event the water-communication between Brussels and Antwerp was cut off.
Ghent, now thoroughly disheartened, treated with Parma likewise; and upon
the 17th September made its reconciliation with the King. The surrender
of so strong and important a place was as disastrous to the cause of the
patriots as it was disgraceful to the citizens themselves. It was,
however, the result of an intrigue which had been long spinning, although
the thread had been abruptly, and, as it was hoped, conclusively, severed
several months before. During the early part of the year, after the
reconciliation of Bruges with the King--an event brought about by the
duplicity and adroitness of Prince Chimay--the same machinery had been
diligently and almost successfully employed to produce a like result in
Ghent. Champagny, brother of the famous Cardinal Granvelle, had been
under arrest for six years in that city. His imprisonment was not a
strict one however; and he avenged himself for what he considered very
unjust treatment at the hands of the patriots, by completely abandoning a
cause which he had once begun to favour. A man of singular ability,
courage, and energy, distinguished both for military and diplomatic
services, he was a formidable enemy to the party from which he was now
for ever estranged. As early as April of this year, secret emissaries of
Parma, dealing with Champagny in his nominal prison, and with the
disaffected burghers at large, had been on the point of effecting an
arrangement with the royal governor. The negotiation had been suddenly
brought to a close by the discovery of a flagrant attempt by Imbue, one
of the secret adherents of the King, to sell the city of Dendermonde, of
which he was governor, to Parma. For this crime he had been brought to
Ghent for trial, and then publicly beheaded. The incident came in aid of
the eloquence of Orange, who, up to the latest moment of his life, had
been most urgent in his appeals to the patriotic hearts of Ghent, not to
abandon the great cause of the union and of liberty. William the Silent
knew full well, that after the withdrawal of the great keystone-city of
Ghent, the chasm between the Celtic-Catholic and the Flemish-Calvinist
Netherlands could hardly be bridged again. Orange was now dead. The
negotiations with France, too, on which those of the Ghenters who still
held true to the national cause had fastened their hopes, had previously
been brought to a stand-still by the death of Anjou; and Champagny,
notwithstanding the disaster to Imbize, became more active than ever. A
private agent, whom the municipal government had despatched to the French
court for assistance, was not more successful than his character and
course of conduct would have seemed to warrant; for during his residence
in Paris, he had been always drunk, and generally abusive. This was not
good diplomacy, particularly on the part of an agent from a weak
municipality to a haughty and most undecided government.

"They found at this court," wrote Stafford to Walsingham, "great fault
with his manner of dealing that was sent from Gaunt. He was scarce sober
from one end of the week to the other, and stood so much on his tiptoes
to have present answer within three days, or else that they of Gaunt
could tell where to bestow themselves. They sent him away after keeping
him three weeks, and he went off in great dudgeon, swearing by yea and
nay that he will make report thereafter."

Accordingly, they of Ghent did bestow themselves very soon thereafter
upon the King of Spain. The terms were considered liberal, but there was,
of course, no thought of conceding the great object for which the
patriots were contending--religious liberty. The municipal
privileges--such as they might prove to be worth under the interpretation
of a royal governor and beneath the guns of a citadel filled with Spanish
troops--were to be guaranteed; those of the inhabitants who did not
choose to go to mass were allowed two years to wind up their affairs
before going into perpetual exile, provided they behaved themselves
"without scandal;" while on the other hand, the King's authority as Count
of Flanders was to be fully recognised, and all the dispossessed monks
and abbots to be restored to their property.

Accordingly, Champagny was rewarded for his exertions by being released
from prison and receiving the appointment of governor of the city: and,
after a very brief interval, about one-half of the population, the most
enterprising of its merchants and manufacturers, the most industrious of
its artizans, emigrated to Holland and Zeeland. The noble city of
Ghent--then as large as Paris, thoroughly surrounded with moats, and
fortified with bulwarks, ravelins, and counterscarps, constructed of
earth, during the previous two years, at great expense, and provided with
bread and meat, powder and shot, enough to last a year--was ignominiously
surrendered. The population, already a very reduced and slender one for
the great extent of the place and its former importance, had been
estimated at 70,000. The number of houses was 35,000, so that as the
inhabitants were soon farther reduced to one-half, there remained but one
individual to each house. On the other hand, the twenty-five monasteries
and convents in the town were repeopled--with how much advantage as a
set-off to the thousands of spinners and weavers who had wandered away,
and who in the flourishing days of Ghent had sent gangs of workmen
through the streets "whose tramp was like that of an army"--may be
sufficiently estimated by the result.

The fall of Brussels was deferred till March, and that of Mechlin (19th
July, 1585) and of Antwerp (19th August, 1585), till Midsummer of the
following year; but, the surrender of Ghent (10th March 1585)
foreshadowed the fate of Flanders and Brabant. Ostend and Sluys, however,
were still in the hands of the patriots, and with them the control of the
whole Flemish coast. The command of the sea was destined to remain for
centuries with the new republic.

The Prince of Parma, thus encouraged by the great success of his
intrigues, was determined to achieve still greater triumphs with his
arms, and steadily proceeded with his large design of closing the
Scheldt--and bringing about the fall of Antwerp. The details of that
siege-one of the most brilliant military operations of the age and one of
the most memorable in its results--will be given, as a connected whole,
in a subsequent series of chapters. For the present, it will be better
for the reader who wishes a clear view of European politics at this
epoch, and of the position of the Netherlands, to give his attention to
the web of diplomatic negotiation and court-intrigue which had been
slowly spreading over the leading states of Christendom, and in which the
fate of the world was involved. If diplomatic adroitness consists mainly
in the power to deceive, never were more adroit diplomatists than those
of the sixteenth century. It would, however, be absurd to deny them a
various range of abilities; and the history of no other age can show more
subtle, comprehensive, indefatigable--but, it must also be added, often
unscrupulous--intellects engaged in the great game of politics in which
the highest interests of millions were the stakes, than were those of
several leading minds in England, France, Germany, and Spain. With such
statesmen the burgher-diplomatists of the new-born commonwealth had to
measure themselves; and the result was to show whether or not they could
hold their own in the cabinet as on the field.

For the present, however, the new state was unconscious of its latent
importance, The new-risen republic remained for a season nebulous, and
ready to unsphere itself so soon as the relative attraction of other
great powers should determine its absorption. By the death of Anjou and
of Orange the United Netherlands had became a sovereign state, an
independent republic; but they stood with that sovereignty in their
hands, offering it alternately, not to the highest bidder, but to the
power that would be willing to accept their allegiance, on the sole
condition of assisting them in the maintenance of their religious
freedom.




CHAPTER II.

   Relations of the Republic to France--Queen's Severity towards
   Catholics and Calvinists--Relative Positions of England and France--
   Timidity of Germany--Apathy of Protestant Germany--Indignation of
   the Netherlanders--Henry III. of France--The King and his Minions--
   Henry of Guise--Henry of Navarre--Power of France--Embassy of the
   States to France--Ignominious position of the Envoys--Views of the
   French Huguenots--Efforts to procure Annexation--Success of Des
   Pruneaux.

The Prince of Orange had always favoured a French policy. He had ever
felt a stronger reliance upon the support of France than upon that of any
other power. This was not unreasonable, and so long as he lived, the
tendency of the Netherlands had been in that direction. It had never been
the wish of England to acquire the sovereignty of the Provinces. In
France on the contrary, the Queen Dowager, Catharine de' Medici had
always coveted that sovereignty for her darling Francis of Alencon; and
the design had been favoured, so far as any policy could be favoured, by
the impotent monarch who occupied the French throne.

The religion of the United Netherlands was Calvinistic. There were also
many Anabaptists in the country. The Queen of England hated Anabaptists,
Calvinists, and other sectarians, and banished them from her realms on
pain of imprisonment and confiscation of property. As firmly opposed as
was her father to the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome, she felt much of
the paternal reluctance to accept the spirit of the Reformation. Henry
Tudor hanged the men who believed in the Pope, and burnt alive those who
disbelieved in transubstantiation, auricular confession, and the other
'Six Articles.' His daughter, whatever her secret religious convictions,
was stanch in her resistance to Rome, and too enlightened a monarch not
to see wherein the greatness and glory of England were to be found; but
she had no thought of tolerating liberty of conscience. All opposed to
the Church of England, whether Papists or Puritans, were denounced as
heretics, and as such imprisoned or banished. "To allow churches with
contrary rites and ceremonies," said Elizabeth, "were nothing else but to
sow religion out of religion, to distract good men's minds, to cherish
factious men's humours, to disturb religion and commonwealth, and mingle
divine and human things; which were a thing in deed evil, in example
worst of all; to our own subjects hurtful, and to themselves--to whom it
is granted, neither greatly commodious, nor yet at all safe."--[Camden]
The words were addressed, it is true, to Papists, but there is very
little doubt that Anabaptists or any other heretics would have received a
similar reply, had they, too, ventured to demand the right of public
worship. It may even be said that the Romanists in the earlier days of
Elizabeth's reign fared better than the Calvinists. The Queen neither
banished nor imprisoned the Catholics. She did not enter their houses to
disturb their private religious ceremonies, or to inquire into their
consciences. This was milder treatment than the burning alive, burying
alive, hanging, and drowning, which had been dealt out to the English and
the Netherland heretics by Philip and by Mary, but it was not the spirit
which William the Silent had been wont to manifest in his measures
towards Anabaptists and Papists alike. Moreover, the Prince could hardly
forget that of the nine thousand four hundred Catholic ecclesiastics who
held benefices at the death of Queen Mary, all had renounced the Pope on
the accession of Queen Elizabeth, and acknowledged her as the head of the
church, saving only one hundred and eighty-nine individuals. In the
hearts of the nine thousand two hundred and eleven others, it might be
thought perhaps that some tenderness for the religion from which they had
so suddenly been converted, might linger, while it could hardly be hoped
that they would seek to inculcate in the minds of their flocks or of
their sovereign any connivance with the doctrines of Geneva.

When, at a later period, the plotting of Catholics, suborned by the Pope
and Philip, against the throne and person of the Queen, made more
rigorous measures necessary; when it was thought indispensable to execute
as traitors those Roman seedlings--seminary priests and their
disciples--who went about preaching to the Queen's subjects the duty of
carrying out the bull by which the Bishop of Rome had deposed and
excommunicated their sovereign, and that "it was a meritorious act to
kill such princes as were excommunicate," even then, the men who preached
and practised treason and murder experienced no severer treatment than
that which other "heretics" had met with at the Queen's hands. Jesuits
and Popish priests were, by Act of Parliament, ordered to depart the
realm within forty days. Those who should afterwards return to the
kingdom were to be held guilty of high treason. Students in the foreign
seminaries were commanded to return within six months and recant, or be
held guilty of high treason. Parents and guardians supplying money to
such students abroad were to incur the penalty of a preamunire--perpetual
exile, namely, with loss of all their goods.

Many seminary priests and others were annually executed in England under
these laws, throughout the Queen's reign, but nominally at least they
were hanged not as Papists, but as traitors; not because they taught
transubstantiation, ecclesiastical celibacy, auricular confession, or
even Papal supremacy, but because they taught treason and murder--because
they preached the necessity of killing the Queen. It was not so easy,
however, to defend or even comprehend the banishment and imprisonment of
those who without conspiring against the Queen's life or throne, desired
to see the Church of England reformed according to the Church of Geneva.
Yet there is no doubt that many sectaries experienced much inhuman
treatment for such delinquency, both in the early and the later years of
Elizabeth's reign.

There was another consideration, which had its due weight in this
balance, and that was the respective succession to the throne in the two
kingdoms of France and England. Mary Stuart, the Catholic, the niece of
the Guises, emblem and exponent of all that was most Roman in Europe, the
sworn friend of Philip, the mortal foe to all heresy, was the legitimate
successor to Elizabeth. Although that sovereign had ever refused to
recognize that claim; holding that to confirm Mary in the succession was
to "lay her own winding sheet before her eyes, yea, to make her, own
grave, while she liveth and looketh on;" and although the unfortunate
claimant of two thrones was a prisoner in her enemy's hands, yet, so long
as she lived, there was little security for Protestantism, even in
Elizabeth's lifetime, and less still in case of her sudden death. On the
other hand, not only were the various politico-religious forces of France
kept in equilibrium by their action upon each other--so that it was
reasonable to believe that the House of Valois, however Catholic itself,
would be always compelled by the fast-expanding strength of French
Calvinism, to observe faithfully a compact to tolerate the Netherland
churches--but, upon the death of Henry III. the crown would be
legitimately placed upon the head of the great champion and chief of the
Huguenots, Henry of Navarre.

It was not unnatural, therefore, that the Prince of Orange, a Calvinist
himself, should expect more sympathy with the Netherland reformers in
France than in England. A large proportion of the population of that
kingdom, including an influential part of the nobility, was of the
Huguenot persuasion, and the religious peace, established by royal edict,
had endured so long, that the reformers of France and the Netherlands had
begun to believe in the royal clemency, and to confide in the royal word.
Orange did not live to see the actual formation of the Holy League, and
could only guess at its secrets.

Moreover, it should be remembered that France at that day was a more
formidable state than England, a more dangerous enemy, and, as it was
believed, a more efficient protector. The England of the period, glorious
as it was for its own and all future ages, was, not the great British
Empire of to-day. On the contrary, it was what would now be considered,
statistically speaking, a rather petty power. The England of Elizabeth,
Walsingham, Burghley, Drake, and Raleigh, of Spenser and Shakspeare,
hardly numbered a larger population than now dwells in its capital and
immediate suburbs. It had neither standing army nor considerable royal
navy. It was full of conspirators, daring and unscrupulous, loyal to none
save to Mary of Scotland, Philip of Spain, and the Pope of Rome, and
untiring in their efforts to bring about a general rebellion. With
Ireland at its side, nominally a subject province, but in a state of
chronic insurrection--a perpetual hot-bed for Spanish conspiracy and
stratagem; with Scotland at its back, a foreign country, with half its
population exasperated enemies of England, and the rest but doubtful
friends, and with the legitimate sovereign of that country, "the daughter
of debate, who discord still did sow,"--[Sonnet by Queen Elizabeth.]--a
prisoner in Elizabeth's hands, the central point around which treason was
constantly crystallizing itself, it was not strange that with the known
views of the Queen on the subject of the reformed Dutch religion, England
should seem less desirable as a protector for the Netherlands than the
neighbouring kingdom of France.

Elizabeth was a great sovereign, whose genius Orange always appreciated,
in a comparatively feeble realm. Henry of Valois was the contemptible
monarch of a powerful state, and might be led by others to produce
incalculable mischief or considerable good. Notwithstanding the massacre
of St. Bartholomew, therefore, and the more recent "French fury" of
Antwerp, Orange had been willing to countenance fresh negociations with
France.

Elizabeth, too, it should never be forgotten, was, if not over generous,
at least consistent and loyal in her policy towards the Provinces. She
was not precisely jealous of France, as has been unjustly intimated on
distinguished authority, for she strongly advocated the renewed offer of
the sovereignty to Anjou, after his memorable expulsion from the
Provinces. At that period, moreover, not only her own love-coquetries
with Anjou were over, but he was endeavouring with all his might, though
in secret, to make a match with the younger Infanta of Spain. Elizabeth
furthered the negociation with France, both publicly and privately. It
will soon be narrated how those negociations prospered.

If then England were out of the question, where, except in France,
should the Netherlanders, not deeming themselves capable of standing
alone, seek for protection and support?

We have seen the extensive and almost ubiquitous power of Spain. Where
she did not command as sovereign, she was almost equally formidable as an
ally. The Emperor of Germany was the nephew and the brother-in-law of
Philip, and a strict Catholic besides. Little aid was to be expected from
him or the lands under his control for the cause of the Netherland
revolt. Rudolph hated his brother-in-law, but lived in mortal fear of
him. He was also in perpetual dread of the Grand Turk. That formidable
potentate, not then the "sick man" whose precarious condition and
territorial inheritance cause so much anxiety in modern days, was, it is
true, sufficiently occupied for the moment in Persia, and had been
sustaining there a series of sanguinary defeats. He was all the more
anxious to remain upon good terms with Philip, and had recently sent him
a complimentary embassy, together with some rather choice presents, among
which were "four lions, twelve unicorns, and two horses coloured white,
black, and blue." Notwithstanding these pacific manifestations towards
the West, however, and in spite of the truce with the German Empire which
the Turk had just renewed for nine years,--Rudolph and his servants still
trembled at every report from the East.

"He is much deceived," wrote Busbecq, Rudolph's ambassador in Paris, "who
doubts that the Turk has sought any thing by this long Persian war, but
to protect his back, and prepare the way, after subduing that enemy, to
the extermination of all Christendom, and that he will then, with all his
might, wage an unequal warfare with us, in which the existence of the
Empire will be at stake."

The envoy expressed, at the same period, however, still greater awe of
Spain. "It is to no one," he wrote, "endowed with good judgment, in the
least obscure, that the Spanish nation, greedy of empire, will never be
quiet, even with their great power, but will seek for the dominion of the
rest of Christendom. How much remains beyond what they have already
acquired? Afterwards, there will soon be no liberty, no dignity, for
other princes and republics. That single nation will be arbiter of all
things, than which nothing can be more miserable, nothing more degrading.
It cannot be doubted that all kings, princes, and states, whose safety or
dignity is dear to them, would willingly associate in arms to extinguish
the common conflagration. The death of the Catholic king would seem the
great opportunity 'miscendis rebus'."

Unfortunately neither Busbecq's master nor any other king or prince
manifested any of this commendable alacrity to "take up arms against the
conflagration." Germany was in a shiver at every breeze from East or
West-trembling alike before Philip and Amurath. The Papists were making
rapid progress, the land being undermined by the steady and stealthy
encroachments of the Jesuits. Lord Burghley sent many copies of his
pamphlet, in Latin, French, and Italian, against the Seminaries, to
Gebhard Truchsess; and the deposed archbishop made himself busy in
translating that wholesome production into German, and in dispersing it
"all Germany over." The work, setting duly forth "that the executions of
priests in England were not for religion but for treason," was
"marvellously liked" in the Netherlands. "In uttering the truth," said
Herle, "'tis likely to do great good;" and he added, that Duke Augustus
of Saxony "did now see so far into the sect of Jesuits, and to their
inward mischiefs, as to become their open enemy, and to make friends
against them in the Empire."

The love of Truchsess for Agnes Mansfeld had created disaster not only
for himself but for Germany. The whole electorate of Cologne had become
the constant seat of partisan warfare, and the resort of organised bands
of brigands. Villages were burned and rifled, highways infested, cities
threatened, and the whole country subjected to perpetual black mail
(brandschatzung)--fire-insurance levied by the incendiaries in person--by
the supporters of the rival bishops. Truchsess had fled to Delft, where
he had been countenanced and supported by Orange. Two cities still held
for him, Rheinberg and Neuss. On the other hand, his rival, Ernest of
Bavaria; supported by Philip II., and the occasional guest of Alexander
of Parma, had not yet succeeded in establishing a strong foothold in the
territory. Two pauper archbishops, without men or means of their own,
were thus pushed forward and back, like puppets, by the contending
highwaymen on either side; while robbery and murder, under the name of
Protestantism or Catholicism, were for a time the only motive or result
of the contest.

Thus along the Rhine, as well as the Maas and the Scheldt, the fires of
civil war were ever burning. Deeper within the heart of Germany, there
was more tranquillity; but it was the tranquillity rather of paralysis
than of health. A fearful account was slowly accumulating, which was
evidently to be settled only by one of the most horrible wars which
history has ever recorded. Meantime there was apathy where there should
have been enthusiasm; parsimony and cowardice where generous and combined
effort were more necessary than ever; sloth without security. The
Protestant princes, growing fat and contented on the spoils of the
church, lent but a deaf ear to the moans of Truchsess, forgetting that
their neighbour's blazing roof was likely soon to fire their own. "They
understand better, 'proximus sum egomet mild'," wrote Lord Willoughby
from Kronenburg, "than they have learned, 'humani nihid a me alienum
puto'. These German princes continue still in their lethargy, careless of
the state of others, and dreaming of their ubiquity, and some of them, it
is thought, inclining to be Spanish or Popish more of late than
heretofore."

The beggared archbishop, more forlorn than ever since the death of his
great patron, cried woe from his resting-place in Delft, upon Protestant
Germany. His tones seemed almost prophetic of the thirty years' wrath to
blaze forth in the next generation. "Courage is wanting to the people
throughout Germany," he wrote to William Lewis of Nassau. "We are
becoming the laughing-stock of the nations. Make sheep of yourselves, and
the wolf will eat you. We shall find our destruction in our immoderate
desire for peace. Spain is making a Papistical league in Germany.
Therefore is Assonleville despatched thither, and that's the reason why
our trash of priests are so insolent in the empire. 'Tis astonishing how
they are triumphing on all sides. God will smite them. Thou dear God!
What are our evangelists about in Germany? Asleep on both ears. 'Dormiunt
in utramque aurem'. I doubt they will be suddenly enough awakened one
day, and the cry will be, 'Who'd have thought it?' Then they will be for
getting oil for the lamp, for shutting the stable-door when the steed is
stolen," and so on, with a string of homely proverbs worthy of Sancho
Panza, or landgrave William of Hesse.

In truth, one of the most painful features is the general aspect of
affairs was the coldness of the German Protestants towards the
Netherlands. The enmity between Lutherans and Calvinists was almost as
fatal as that between Protestants and Papists. There was even a talk, at
a little later period, of excluding those of the "reformed" church from
the benefits of the peace of Passau. The princes had got the Augsburg
confession and the abbey-lands into the bargain; the peasants had got the
Augsburg confession without the abbey-lands, and were to believe exactly
what their masters believed. This was the German-Lutheran
sixteenth-century idea of religious freedom. Neither prince nor peasant
stirred in behalf of the struggling Christians in the United Provinces,
battling, year after year, knee-deep in blood, amid blazing cities and
inundated fields, breast to breast with the yellow jerkined pikemen of
Spain and Italy, with the axe and the faggot and the rack of the Holy
Inquisition distinctly visible behind them. Such were the realities which
occupied the Netherlanders in those days, not watery beams of theological
moonshine, fantastical catechism-making, intermingled with scenes of riot
and wantonness, which drove old John of Nassau half frantic; with
banquetting and guzzling, drinking and devouring, with unchristian
flaunting and wastefulness of apparel, with extravagant and wanton
dancing, and other lewd abominations; all which, the firm old reformer
prophesied, would lead to the destruction of Germany.

For the mass, slow moving but apparently irresistible, of Spanish and
papistical absolutism was gradually closing over Christendom. The
Netherlands were the wedge by which alone the solid bulk could be riven
asunder. It was the cause of German, of French, of English liberty, for
which the Provinces were contending. It was not surprising that they were
bitter, getting nothing in their hour of distress from the land of Luther
but dogmas and Augsburg catechisms instead of money and gunpowder, and
seeing German reiters galloping daily to reinforce the army of Parma in
exchange for Spanish ducats.

Brave old La Noue, with the iron arm, noblest of Frenchmen and
Huguenots--who had just spent five years in Spanish bondage, writing
military discourses in a reeking dungeon, filled with toads and vermin,
after fighting the battle of liberty for a life-time, and with his brave
son already in the Netherlands emulating his father's valour on the same
field--denounced at a little later day, the lukewarmness of Protestant
Germany with whimsical vehemence:--"I am astounded," he cried, "that
these princes are not ashamed of themselves; doing nothing while they see
the oppressed cut to pieces at their gates. When will God grant me grace
to place me among those who are doing their duty, and afar from those who
do nothing, and who ought to know that the cause is a common one. If I am
ever caught dancing the German cotillon, or playing the German flute, or
eating pike with German sauce, I hope it may be flung in my teeth."

The great league of the Pope and Philip was steadily consolidating
itself, and there were but gloomy prospects for the counter-league in
Germany. There was no hope but in England and France. For the reasons
already indicated, the Prince of Orange, taking counsel with the Estates,
had resolved to try the French policy once more. The balance of power in
Europe, which no man in Christendom so well understood as he, was to be
established by maintaining (he thought) the equilibrium between France
and Spain. In the antagonism of those two great realms lay the only hope
for Dutch or European liberty. Notwithstanding the treason of Anjou,
therefore, it had been decided to renew negociations with that Prince. On
the death of the Duke, the envoys of the States were accordingly
instructed to make the offer to King Henry III. which had been intended
for his brother. That proposition was the sovereignty of all the
Netherlands, save Holland and Zeeland, under a constitution maintaining
the reformed religion and the ancient laws and privileges of the
respective provinces.

But the death of Francis of Anjou had brought about a considerable change
in French policy. It was now more sharply defined than ever, a
right-angled triangle of almost mathematical precision. The three Henrys
and their partizans divided the realm into three hostile
camps--threatening each other in simulated peace since the treaty of
Fleig (1580), which had put an end to the "lover's war" of the preceding
year,--Henry of Valois, Henry of Guise, and Henry of Navarre.

Henry III., last of the Valois line, was now thirty-three years of age.
Less than king, less even than man, he was one of those unfortunate
personages who seem as if born to make the idea of royalty ridiculous,
and to test the capacity of mankind to eat and drink humiliation as if it
were wholesome food. It proved how deeply engraved in men's minds of that
century was the necessity of kingship, when the hardy Netherlanders, who
had abjured one tyrant, and had been fighting a generation long rather
than return to him, were now willing to accept the sovereignty of a thing
like Henry of Valois.

He had not been born without natural gifts, such as Heaven rarely denies
to prince or peasant; but the courage which he once possessed had been
exhausted on the field of Moncontour, his manhood had been left behind
him at Venice, and such wit as Heaven had endowed him withal was now
expended in darting viperous epigrams at court-ladies whom he was only
capable of dishonouring by calumny, and whose charms he burned to
outrival in the estimation of his minions. For the monarch of France was
not unfrequently pleased to attire himself like a woman and a harlot.
With silken flounces, jewelled stomacher, and painted face, with pearls
of great price adorning his bared neck and breast, and satin-slippered
feet, of whose delicate shape and size he was justly vain, it was his
delight to pass his days and nights in a ceaseless round of gorgeous
festivals, tourneys, processions; masquerades, banquets, and balls, the
cost of which glittering frivolities caused the popular burthen and the
popular execration to grow, from day to day, more intolerable and more
audible. Surrounded by a gang of "minions," the most debauched and the
most desperate of France, whose bedizened dresses exhaled perfumes
throughout Paris, and whose sanguinary encounters dyed every street in
blood, Henry lived a life of what he called pleasure, careless of what
might come after, for he was the last of his race. The fortunes of his
minions rose higher and higher, as their crimes rendered them more and
more estimable in the eyes of a King who took a woman's pride in the
valour of such champions to his weakness, and more odious to a people
whose miserable homes were made even more miserable, that the coffers of
a few court-favourites might be filled: Now sauntering, full-dressed, in
the public promenades, with ghastly little death's heads strung upon his
sumptuous garments, and fragments of human bones dangling among his
orders of knighthood--playing at cup and ball as he walked, and followed
by a few select courtiers who gravely pursued the same exciting
occupation--now presiding like a queen of beauty at a tournament to
assign the prize of valour, and now, by the advice of his mother, going
about the streets in robes of penitence, telling his beads as he went,
that the populace might be edified by his piety, and solemnly offering up
prayers in the churches that the blessing of an heir might be vouchsafed
to him,--Henry of Valois seemed straining every nerve in order to bring
himself and his great office into contempt.

As orthodox as he was profligate, he hated the Huguenots, who sought his
protection and who could have saved his throne, as cordially as he loved
the Jesuits, who passed their lives in secret plottings against his
authority and his person, or in fierce denunciations from the Paris
pulpits against his manifold crimes. Next to an exquisite and sanguinary
fop, he dearly loved a monk. The presence of a friar, he said, exerted as
agreeable an effect upon his mind as the most delicate and gentle
tickling could produce upon his body; and he was destined to have a
fuller dose of that charming presence than he coveted.

His party--for he was but the nominal chief of a faction, 'tanquam unus
ex nobis'--was the party in possession--the office-holders' party; the
spoilsmen, whose purpose was to rob the exchequer and to enrich
themselves. His minions--for the favourites were called by no other
name--were even more hated, because less despised than the King. Attired
in cloth of gold--for silk and satin were grown too coarse a material for
them--with their little velvet porringer-caps stuck on the sides of their
heads, with their long hair stiff with pomatum, and their heads set
inside a well-starched ruff a foot wide, "like St. John's head in a
charger," as a splenetic contemporary observed, with a nimbus of musk and
violet-powder enveloping them as they passed before vulgar mortals, these
rapacious and insolent courtiers were the impersonation of extortion and
oppression to the Parisian populace. They were supposed, not unjustly, to
pass their lives in dancing, blasphemy, dueling, dicing, and intrigue, in
following the King about like hounds, fawning at his feet, and showing
their teeth to all besides; and for virtues such as these they were
rewarded by the highest offices in church, camp, and state, while new
taxes and imposts were invented almost daily to feed their avarice and
supply their extravagance. France, doomed to feel the beak and talons of
these harpies in its entrails, impoverished by a government that robbed
her at home while it humiliated her abroad, struggled vainly in its
misery, and was now on the verge of another series of internecine
combats--civil war seeming the only alternative to a voluptuous and
licentious peace.

"We all stood here at gaze," wrote ambassador Stafford to Walsingham,
"looking for some great matter to come of this sudden journey to Lyons;
but, as far as men can find, 'parturient montes', for there hath been
nothing but dancing and banquetting from one house to another, bravery in
apparel, glittering like the sun." He, mentioned that the Duke of
Epernon's horse, taking fright at a red cloak, had backed over a
precipice, breaking his own neck, while his master's shoulder merely was
put out of joint. At the same time the Duke of Joyeuse, coming over Mount
Cenis, on his return from Savoy, had broken his wrist. The people, he
said, would rather they had both broken their necks "than any other
joint, the King having racked the nation for their sakes, as he
hath-done." Stafford expressed much compassion for the French in the
plight in which they found themselves. "Unhappy people!" he cried, "to
have such a King, who seeketh nothing but to impoverish them to enrich a
couple, and who careth not what cometh after his death, so that he may
rove on while he liveth, and careth neither for doing his own estate good
nor his neighbour's state harm." Sir Edward added, however, in a
philosophizing vein, worthy of Corporal Nym, that, "seeing we cannot be
so happy as to have a King to concur with us to do us any good, yet we
are happy to have one that his humour serveth him not to concur with
others to do us harm; and 'tis a wisdom for us to follow these humours,
that we may keep him still in that humour, and from hearkening to others
that may egg him on to worse."

It was a dark hour for France, and rarely has a great nation been reduced
to a lower level by a feeble and abandoned government than she was at
that moment under the distaff of Henry III. Society was corrupted to its
core. "There is no more truth, no more justice, no more mercy," moaned
President L'Etoile. "To slander, to lie, to rob, to wench, to steal; all
things are permitted save to do right and to speak the truth." Impiety
the most cynical, debauchery the most unveiled, public and unpunished
homicides, private murders by what was called magic, by poison, by hired
assassins, crimes natural, unnatural, and preternatural, were the common
characteristics of the time. All posts and charges were venal. Great
offices of justice were sold to the highest bidder, and that which was
thus purchased by wholesale was retailed in the same fashion. Unhappy the
pauper client who dreamed of justice at the hands of law. The great
ecclesiastical benefices were equally matter of merchandise, and married
men, women, unborn children, enjoyed revenues as dignitaries of the
church. Infants came into the world, it was said, like the mitre-fish,
stamped with the emblems of place.

"'Twas impossible," said L'Etoile, "to find a crab so tortuous and
backsliding as the government."

This was the aspect of the first of the three factions in France. Such
was the Henry at its head, the representative of royalty.

Henry with the Scar, Duke of Guise, the well-known chief of the house of
Lorraine, was the chief of the extreme papistical party. He was now
thirty-four years of age, tall, stately, with a dark, martial face and
dangerous eyes, which Antonio Moro loved to paint; a physiognomy made
still more expressive by the arquebus-shot which had damaged his left
cheek at the fight near Chateau-Thierry and gained him his name of
Balafre. Although one of the most turbulent and restless plotters of that
plotting age, he was yet thought more slow and heavy in character than
subtle, Teutonic rather than Italian. He was the idol of the Parisian
burghers. The grocers, the market-men, the members of the arquebus and
crossbow clubs, all doated on him. The fishwomen worshipped him as a god.
He was the defender of the good old religion under which Paris and the
other cities of France had thriven, the uncompromising opponent of the
new-fangled doctrines which western clothiers, and dyers, and
tapestry-workers, had adopted, and which the nobles of the
mountain-country, the penniless chevaliers of Bearn and Gascony and
Guienne, were ceaselessly taking the field and plunging France into
misery and bloodshed to support. But for the Balafre and Madam League--as
the great Spanish Catholic conspiracy against the liberties of France,
and of England, and of all Europe, was affectionately termed by the Paris
populace--honest Catholics would fare no better in France than they did
in England, where, as it was well known, they were every day subjected to
fearful tortures: The shopwindows were filled with coloured engravings,
representing, in exaggerated fashion, the sufferings of the English
Catholics under bloody Elizabeth, or Jezebel, as she was called; and as
the gaping burghers stopped to ponder over these works of art, there were
ever present, as if by accident, some persons of superior information who
would condescendingly explain the various pictures, pointing out with a
long stick the phenomena most worthy of notice. These caricatures proving
highly successful, and being suppressed by order of government, they were
repeated upon canvas on a larger scale, in still more conspicuous
situations, as if in contempt of the royal authority, which sullied
itself by compromise with Calvinism! The pulpits, meanwhile, thundered
denunciations on the one hand against the weak and wicked King, who
worshipped idols, and who sacrificed the dearly-earned pittance of his
subjects to feed the insolent pomp of his pampered favourites; and on the
other, upon the arch-heretic, the arch-apostate, the Bearnese Huguenot,
who, after the death of the reigning monarch, would have the effrontery
to claim his throne, and to introduce into France the persecutions and
the horrors under which unhappy England was already groaning.

The scarce-concealed instigator of these assaults upon the royal and upon
the Huguenot faction was, of course, the Duke of Guise,--the man whose
most signal achievement had been the Massacre of St. Bartholomew--all the
preliminary details of that transaction having been arranged by his
skill. So long as Charles IX. was living, the Balafre had created the
confusion which was his element, by entertaining and fomenting the
perpetual intrigues of Anjou and Alencon against their brother; while the
altercations between them and the Queen Mother and the furious madman who
then sat upon the throne, had been the cause of sufficient disorder and
calamity for France. On the death of Charles IX. Guise had sought the
intimacy of Henry of Navarre, that by his means he might frustrate the
hopes of Alencon for the succession. During the early period of the
Bearnese's residence at the French court the two had been inseparable,
living together, going to the same festivals, tournaments, and
masquerades, and even sleeping in the same bed. "My master," was ever
Guise's address to Henry; "my gossip," the young King of Navarre's reply.
But the crafty Bearnese had made use of the intimacy only to read the
secrets of the Balafre's heart; and on Navarre's flight from the court,
and his return to Huguenotism, Guise knew that he had been played upon by
a subtler spirit than his own. The simulated affection was now changed
into undisguised hatred. Moreover, by the death of Alencon, Navarre now
stood next the throne, and Guise's plots became still more extensive and
more open as his own ambition to usurp the crown on the death of the
childless Henry III. became more fervid.

Thus, by artfully inflaming the populace of Paris, and through his
organized bands of confederates--that of all the large towns of France,
against the Huguenots and their chief, by appeals to the religious
sentiment; and at the same time by stimulating the disgust and
indignation of the tax-payers everywhere at the imposts and heavy
burthens which the boundless extravagance of the court engendered, Guise
paved the way for the advancement of the great League which he
represented. The other two political divisions were ingeniously
represented as mere insolent factions, while his own was the true
national and patriotic party, by which alone the ancient religion and the
cherished institutions of France could be preserved.

And the great chief of this national patriotic party was not Henry of
Guise, but the industrious old man who sat writing despatches in the
depths of the Escorial. Spanish counsels, Spanish promises, Spanish
ducats--these were the real machinery by which the plots of Guise against
the peace of France and of Europe were supported. Madam League was simply
Philip II. Nothing was written, officially or unofficially, to the French
government by the Spanish court that was not at the same time
communicated to "Mucio"--as the Duke of Guise was denominated in the
secret correspondence of Philip, and Mucio was in Philip's pay, his
confidential agent, spy, and confederate, long before the actual
existence of the League was generally suspected.

The Queen-Mother, Catharine de' Medici, played into the Duke's hands.
Throughout the whole period of her widowhood, having been accustomed to
govern her sons, she had, in a certain sense, been used to govern the
kingdom. By sowing dissensions among her own children, by inflaming party
against party, by watching with care the oscillations of France--so than
none of the great divisions should obtain preponderance--by alternately
caressing and massacring the Huguenots, by cajoling or confronting
Philip, by keeping, as she boasted, a spy in every family that possessed
the annual income of two thousand livres, by making herself the head of
an organized system of harlotry, by which the soldiers and politicians of
France were inveigled, their secrets faithfully revealed to her by her
well-disciplined maids of honour, by surrounding her unfortunate sons
with temptation from earliest youth, and plunging them by cold
calculation into deepest debauchery, that their enervated faculties might
be ever forced to rely in political affairs on the maternal counsel, and
to abandon the administration to the maternal will; such were the arts by
which Catharine had maintained her influence, and a great country been
governed for a generation--Machiavellian state-craft blended with the
more simple wiles of a procuress.

Now that Alencon was dead, and Henry III. hopeless of issue, it was her
determination that the children of her daughter, the Duchess of Lorraine,
should succeed to the throne. The matter was discussed as if the throne
were already vacant, and Guise and the Queen-Mother, if they agreed in
nothing else, were both cordial in their detestation of Henry of Navarre.
The Duke affected to support the schemes in favour of his relatives, the
Princes of Lorraine, while he secretly informed the Spanish court that
this policy was only a pretence. He was not likely, he said, to advance
the interests of the younger branch of a house of which he was himself
the chief, nor were their backs equal to the burthen. It was necessary to
amuse the old queen, but he was profoundly of opinion that the only
sovereign for France, upon the death of Henry, was Philip II. himself.
This was the Duke's plan of arriving, by means of Spanish assistance, at
the throne of France; and such was Henry le Balafre, chief of the League.

And the other Henry, the Huguenot, the Bearnese, Henry of Bourbon, Henry
of Navarre, the chieftain of the Gascon chivalry, the king errant, the
hope and the darling of the oppressed Protestants in every land--of him
it is scarce needful to say a single word. At his very name a figure
seems to leap forth from the mist of three centuries, instinct with ruddy
vigorous life. Such was the intense vitality of the Bearnese prince, that
even now he seems more thoroughly alive and recognizable than half the
actual personages who are fretting their hour upon the stage.

We see, at once, a man of moderate stature, light, sinewy, and strong; a
face browned with continual exposure; small, mirthful, yet commanding
blue eyes, glittering from beneath an arching brow, and prominent
cheekbones; a long hawk's nose, almost resting upon a salient chin, a
pendent moustache, and a thick, brown, curly beard, prematurely grizzled;
we see the mien of frank authority and magnificent good humour, we hear
the ready sallies of the shrewd Gascon mother-wit, we feel the
electricity which flashes out of him, and sets all hearts around him on
fire, when the trumpet sounds to battle. The headlong desperate charge,
the snow-white plume waving where the fire is hottest, the large capacity
for enjoyment of the man, rioting without affectation in the 'certaminis
gaudia', the insane gallop, after the combat, to lay its trophies at the
feet of the Cynthia of the minute, and thus to forfeit its fruits; all
are as familiar to us as if the seven distinct wars, the hundred pitched
battles, the two hundred sieges; in which the Bearnese was personally
present, had been occurrences of our own day.

He at least was both king and man, if the monarch who occupied the throne
was neither. He was the man to prove, too, for the instruction of the
patient letter-writer of the Escorial, that the crown of France was to be
won with foot in stirrup and carbine in hand, rather than to be caught by
the weaving and casting of the most intricate nets of diplomatic
intrigue, though thoroughly weighted with Mexican gold.

The King of Navarre was now thirty-one years old; for the three Henrys
were nearly of the same age. The first indications of his existence had
been recognized amid the cannon and trumpets of a camp in Picardy, and
his mother had sung a gay Bearnese song as he was coming into the world
at Pau. Thus, said his grandfather, Henry of Navarre, thou shalt not bear
to us a morose and sulky child. The good king, without a kingdom, taking
the child, as soon as born, in the lappel of his dressing-gown, had
brushed his infant lips with a clove of garlic, and moistened them with a
drop of generous Gascon wine. Thus, said the grandfather again, shall the
boy be both merry and bold. There was something mythologically prophetic
in the incidents of his birth.

The best part of Navarre had been long since appropriated by Ferdinand of
Aragon. In France there reigned a young and warlike sovereign with four
healthy boys. But the new-born infant had inherited the lilies of France
from St. Louis, and a later ancestor had added to the escutcheon the
motto "Espoir." His grandfather believed that the boy was born to revenge
upon Spain the wrongs of the House of Albret, and Henry's nature seemed
ever pervaded with Robert of Clermont's device.

The same sensible grandfather, having different views on the subject of
education from those manifested by Catherine de Medici towards her
children, had the boy taught to run about bare-headed and bare-footed,
like a peasant, among the mountains and rocks of Bearn, till he became as
rugged as a young bear, and as nimble as a kid. Black bread, and beef,
and garlic, were his simple fare; and he was taught by his mother and his
grandfather to hate lies and liars, and to read the Bible.

When he was fifteen, the third religious war broke out. Both his father
and grandfather were dead. His mother, who had openly professed the
reformed faith, since the death of her husband, who hated it, brought her
boy to the camp at Rochelle, where he was received as the chief of the
Huguenots. His culture was not extensive. He had learned to speak the
truth, to ride, to shoot, to do with little sleep and less food. He could
also construe a little Latin, and had read a few military treatises; but
the mighty hours of an eventful life were now to take him by the hand,
and to teach him much good and much evil, as they bore him onward. He now
saw military treatises expounded practically by professors, like his
uncle Condo, and Admiral Coligny, and Lewis Nassau, in such lecture-rooms
as Laudun, and Jarnac, and Montcontour, and never was apter scholar.

The peace of Arnay-le-Duc succeeded, and then the fatal Bartholomew
marriage with the Messalina of Valois. The faith taught in the mountains
of Bearn was no buckler against the demand of "the mass or death,"
thundered at his breast by the lunatic Charles, as he pointed to
thousands of massacred Huguenots. Henry yielded to such conclusive
arguments, and became a Catholic. Four years of court imprisonment
succeeded, and the young King of Navarre, though proof to the artifices
of his gossip Guise, was not adamant to the temptations spread for him by
Catherine de' Medici. In the harem entertained for him in the Louvre many
pitfalls entrapped him; and he became a stock-performer in the state
comedies and tragedies of that plotting age.

A silken web of palace-politics, palace-diplomacy, palace revolutions,
enveloped him. Schemes and counter-schemes, stratagems and conspiracies,
assassinations and poisonings; all the state-machinery which worked so
exquisitely in fair ladies' chambers, to spread havoc and desolation over
a kingdom, were displayed before his eyes. Now campaigning with one royal
brother against Huguenots, now fighting with another on their side, now
solicited by the Queen-Mother to attempt the life of her son, now
implored by Henry III. to assassinate his brother, the Bearnese, as fresh
antagonisms, affinities; combinations, were developed, detected,
neutralized almost daily, became rapidly an adept in Medicean
state-chemistry. Charles IX. in his grave, Henry III. on the throne,
Alencon in the Huguenot camp--Henry at last made his escape. The brief
war and peace of Monsieur succeeded, and the King of Navarre formally
abjured the Catholic creed. The parties were now sharply defined. Guise
mounted upon the League, Henry astride upon the Reformation, were
prepared to do battle to the death. The temporary "war of the amorous"
was followed by the peace of Fleix.

Four years of peace again; four fat years of wantonness and riot
preceding fourteen hungry famine-stricken years of bloodiest civil war.
The voluptuousness and infamy of the Louvre were almost paralleled in
vice, if not in splendour, by the miniature court at Pau. Henry's Spartan
grandfather would scarce have approved the courses of the youth, whose
education he had commenced on so simple a scale. For Margaret of Valois,
hating her husband, and living in most undisguised and promiscuous
infidelity to him, had profited by her mother's lessons. A seraglio of
maids of honour ministered to Henry's pleasures, and were carefully
instructed that the peace and war of the kingdom were playthings in their
hands. While at Paris royalty was hopelessly sinking in a poisonous
marsh, there was danger that even the hardy nature of the Bearnese would
be mortally enervated by the atmosphere in which he lived.

The unhappy Henry III., baited by the Guises, worried by Alencon and his
mother, implored the King of Navarre to return to Paris and the Catholic
faith. M. de Segur, chief of Navarre's council, who had been won over
during a visit to the capital, where he had made the discovery that
"Henry III. was an angel, and his ministers devils," came back to Pau,
urging his master's acceptance of the royal invitation. Henry wavered.
Bold D'Aubigne, stanchest of Huguenots, and of his friends, next day
privately showed Segur a palace-window opening on a very steep precipice
over the Bayae, and cheerfully assured him that he should be flung from
it did he not instantly reverse his proceedings, and give his master
different advice. If I am not able to do the deed myself, said D'Aubigne,
here are a dozen more to help me. The chief of the council cast a glance
behind him, saw a number of grim Puritan soldiers, with their hats
plucked down upon their brows, looking very serious; so made his bow, and
quite changed his line of conduct.

At about the same time, Philip II. confidentially offered Henry of
Navarre four hundred thousand crowns in hand, and twelve hundred thousand
yearly, if he would consent to make war upon Henry III. Mucio, or the
Duke of Guise, being still in Philip's pay, the combination of Leaguers
and Huguenots against the unfortunate Valois would, it was thought, be a
good triangular contest.

But Henry--no longer the unsophisticated youth who had been used to run
barefoot among the cliffs of Coarasse--was grown too crafty a politician
to be entangled by Spanish or Medicean wiles. The Duke of Anjou was now
dead. Of all the princes who had stood between him and the throne, there
was none remaining save the helpless, childless, superannuated youth, who
was its present occupant. The King of Navarre was legitimate heir to the
crown of France. "Espoir" was now in letters of light upon his shield,
but he knew that his path to greatness led through manifold dangers, and
that it was only at the head of his Huguenot chivalry that he could cut
his way. He was the leader of the nobles of Gascony, and Dauphins, and
Guienne, in their mountain fastnesses, of the weavers, cutlers, and
artizans, in their thriving manufacturing and trading towns. It was not
Spanish gold, but carbines and cutlasses, bows and bills, which could
bring him to the throne of his ancestors.

And thus he stood the chieftain of that great austere party of Huguenots,
the men who went on, their knees before the battle, beating their breasts
with their iron gauntlets, and singing in full chorus a psalm of David,
before smiting the Philistines hip and thigh.

Their chieftain, scarcely their representative--fit to lead his Puritans
on the battle-field, was hardly a model for them elsewhere. Yet, though
profligate in one respect, he was temperate in every other. In food,
wine, and sleep, he was always moderate. Subtle and crafty in
self-defence, he retained something of his old love of truth, of his
hatred for liars. Hardly generous perhaps, he was a friend of justice,
while economy in a wandering King, like himself, was a necessary virtue,
of which France one day was to feel the beneficent action. Reckless and
headlong in appearance, he was in truth the most careful of men. On the
religious question, most cautious of all, he always left the door open
behind him, disclaimed all bigotry of opinion, and earnestly implored the
Papists to seek, not his destruction, but his instruction. Yet prudent as
he was by nature in every other regard, he was all his life the slave of
one woman or another, and it was by good luck rather than by sagacity
that he did not repeatedly forfeit the fruits of his courage and conduct,
in obedience to his master-passion.

Always open to conviction on the subject of his faith, he repudiated the
appellation of heretic. A creed, he said, was not to be changed like a
shirt, but only on due deliberation, and under special advice. In his
secret heart he probably regarded the two religions as his chargers, and
was ready to mount alternately the one or the other, as each seemed the
more likely to bear him safely in the battle. The Bearnese was no
Puritan, but he was most true to himself and to his own advancement. His
highest principle of action was to reach his goal, and to that principle
he was ever loyal. Feeling, too, that it was the interest of France that
he should succeed, he was even inspired--compared with others on the
stage--by an almost lofty patriotism.

Amiable by nature and by habit, he had preserved the most unimpaired
good-humour throughout the horrible years which succeeded St.
Bartholomew, during which he carried his life in his hand, and learned
not to wear his heart upon his sleeve. Without gratitude, without
resentment, without fear, without remorse, entirely arbitrary, yet with
the capacity to use all men's judgments; without convictions, save in
regard to his dynastic interests, he possessed all the qualities,
necessary to success. He knew how to use his enemies. He knew how to use
his friends, to abuse them, and to throw them away. He refused to
assassinate Francis Alencon at the bidding of Henry III., but he
attempted to procure the murder of the truest of his own friends, one of
the noblest characters of the age--whose breast showed twelve scars
received in his services--Agrippa D'Aubigne, because the honest soldier
had refused to become his pimp--a service the King had implored upon his
knees.

Beneath the mask of perpetual careless good-humour, lurked the keenest
eye, a subtle, restless, widely combining brain, and an iron will. Native
sagacity had been tempered into consummate elasticity by the fiery
atmosphere in which feebler natures had been dissolved. His wit was as
flashing and as quickly unsheathed as his sword. Desperate, apparently
reckless temerity on the battle-field was deliberately indulged in, that
the world might be brought to recognise a hero and chieftain in a King.
The do-nothings of the Merovingian line had been succeeded by the Pepins;
to the effete Carlovingians had come a Capet; to the impotent Valois
should come a worthier descendant of St. Louis. This was shrewd Gascon
calculation, aided by constitutional fearlessness. When despatch-writing,
invisible Philips, stargazing Rudolphs, and petticoated Henrys, sat upon
the thrones of Europe, it was wholesome to show the world that there was
a King left who could move about in the bustle and business of the age,
and could charge as well as most soldiers at the head of his cavalry;
that there was one more sovereign fit to reign over men, besides the
glorious Virgin who governed England.

Thus courageous, crafty, far-seeing, consistent, untiring, imperturbable,
he was born to command, and had a right to reign. He had need of the
throne, and the throne had still more need of him.

This then was the third Henry, representative of the third side of the
triangle, the reformers of the kingdom.

And before this bubbling cauldron of France, where intrigues, foreign and
domestic, conflicting ambitions, stratagems, and hopes, were whirling in
never-ceasing tumult, was it strange if the plain Netherland envoys
should stand somewhat aghast?

Yet it was necessary that they should ponder well the aspect of affairs;
for all their hopes, the very existence of themselves and of their
religion, depended upon the organization which should come of this chaos.

It must be remembered, however, that those statesmen--even the wisest or
the best-informed of them--could not take so correct a view of France and
its politics as it is possible for us, after the lapse of three
centuries, to do. The interior leagues, subterranean schemes, conflicting
factions, could only be guessed at; nor could the immediate future be
predicted, even by such far-seeing politicians as William of Orange; at a
distance, or Henry of Navarre, upon the spot.

It was obvious to the Netherlanders that France, although torn by
faction, was a great and powerful realm. There had now been, with the
brief exception of the lovers' war in 1580, a religious peace of eight
years' duration. The Huguenots had enjoyed tranquil exercise of their
worship during that period, and they expressed perfect confidence in the
good faith of the King. That the cities were inordinately taxed to supply
the luxury of the court could hardly be unknown to the Netherlanders.
Nevertheless they knew that the kingdom was the richest and most populous
of Christendom, after that of Spain. Its capital, already called by
contemporaries the "compendium of the world," was described by travellers
as "stupendous in extent and miraculous for its numbers." It was even
said to contain eight hundred thousand souls; and although, its actual
population did not probably exceed three hundred and twenty thousand, yet
this was more than double the number of London's inhabitants, and thrice
as many as Antwerp could then boast, now that a great proportion of its
foreign denizens had been scared away. Paris was at least by one hundred
thousand more populous than any city of Europe, except perhaps the remote
and barbarous Moscow, while the secondary cities of France, Rouen in the
north, Lyons in the centre, and Marseilles in the south, almost equalled
in size, business, wealth, and numbers, the capitals of other countries.
In the whole kingdom were probably ten or twelve millions of inhabitants,
nearly as many as in Spain, without her colonies, and perhaps three times
the number that dwelt in England.

In a military point of view, too, the alliance of France was most
valuable to the contiguous Netherlands. A few regiments of French troops,
under the command of one of their experienced Marshals, could block up
the Spaniards in the Walloon Provinces, effectually stop their operations
against Ghent, Antwerp, and the other great cities of Flanders and
Brabant, and, with the combined action of the United Provinces on the
north, so surround and cripple the forces of Parma, as to reduce the
power of Philip, after a few vigorous and well-concerted blows, to an
absolute nullity in, the Low Countries. As this result was of as vital
importance to the real interests of France and of Europe, whether
Protestant or Catholic, as it was to the Provinces, and as the French
government had privately manifested a strong desire to oppose the
progress of Spain towards universal empire, it was not surprising that
the States General, not feeling capable of standing alone, should make
their application to France. This they had done with the knowledge and
concurrence of the English government. What lay upon the surface the
Netherland statesmen saw and pondered well. What lurked beneath, they
surmised as shrewdly as they could, but it was impossible, with plummet
and fathom-line ever in hand, to sound the way with perfect accuracy,
where the quicksands were ever shifting, and the depth or shallowness of
the course perpetually varying. It was not easy to discover the
intentions of a government which did not know its own intentions, and
whose changing policy was controlled by so many hidden currents.

Moreover, as already indicated, the envoys and those whom they
represented had not the same means of arriving at a result as are granted
to us. Thanks to the liberality of many modern governments of Europe, the
archives where the state-secrets of the buried centuries have so long
mouldered, are now open to the student of history. To him who has
patience and industry many mysteries are thus revealed, which no
political sagacity or critical acumen could have divined. He leans over
the shoulder of Philip the Second at his writing-table, as the King
spells patiently out, with cipher-key in hand, the most concealed
hieroglyphics of Parma or Guise or Mendoza. He reads the secret thoughts
of "Fabius,"--[The name usually assigned to Philip himself in the
Paris-Simancas Correspondence.]--as that cunctative Roman scrawls his
marginal apostilles on each despatch; he pries into all the stratagems of
Camillus, Hortensius, Mucius, Julius, Tullius, and the rest of those
ancient heroes who lent their names to the diplomatic masqueraders of the
16th century; he enters the cabinet of the deeply-pondering Burghley, and
takes from the most private drawer the memoranda which record that
minister's unutterable doubtings; he pulls from the dressing-gown folds
of the stealthy, softly-gliding Walsingham the last secret which he has
picked from the Emperor's pigeon-holes, or the Pope's pocket, and which,
not Hatton, nor Buckhurst, nor Leicester, nor the Lord Treasurer, is to
see; nobody but Elizabeth herself; he sits invisible at the most secret
councils of the Nassaus and Barneveldt and Buys, or pores with Farnese
over coming victories, and vast schemes of universal conquest; he reads
the latest bit of scandal, the minutest characteristic of king or
minister, chronicled by the gossiping Venetians for the edification of
the Forty; and, after all this prying and eavesdropping, having seen the
cross-purposes, the bribings, the windings, the fencings in the dark, he
is not surprised, if those who were systematically deceived did not
always arrive at correct conclusions.

Noel de Caron, Seigneur de Schoneval, had been agent of the States at the
French court at the time of the death of the Duke of Anjou. Upon the
occurrence of that event, La Mouillerie and Asseliers were deputed by the
Provinces to King Henry III., in order to offer him the sovereignty,
which they had intended to confer upon his brother. Meantime that
brother, just before his death, and with the privity of Henry, had been
negotiating for a marriage with the younger daughter of Philip II.--an
arrangement somewhat incompatible with his contemporaneous scheme to
assume the sovereignty of Philip's revolted Provinces. An attempt had
been made at the same time to conciliate the Duke of Savoy, and invite
him to the French court; but the Duc de Joyeuse, then on his return from
Turin, was bringing the news, not only that the match with Anjou was not
favored--which, as Anjou was dead, was of no great consequence--but that
the Duke of Savoy was himself to espouse the Infanta, and was therefore
compelled to decline the invitation to Paris, for fear of offending his
father-in-law. Other matters were in progress, to be afterwards
indicated, very much interfering with the negotiations of the Netherland
envoys.

When La Mouillerie and Asseliers arrived at Rouen, on their road from
Dieppe to Paris, they received a peremptory order from the Queen-Mother
to proceed no farther. This prohibition was brought by an unofficial
personage, and was delivered, not to them, but to Des Pruneaux, French
envoy to the States General, who had accompanied the envoys to France.

After three weeks' time, during which they "kept themselves continually
concealed in Rouen," there arrived in that city a young nephew of
Secretary Brulart, who brought letters empowering him to hear what they
had in charge for the King. The envoys, not much flattered by such
cavalier treatment on the part of him to, whom they were offering a
crown, determined to digest the affront as they best might, and, to save
time, opened the whole business to this subordinate stripling. He
received from them accordingly an ample memoir to be laid before his
Majesty, and departed by the post the same night. Then they waited ten
days longer, concealed as if they had been thieves or spies, rather than
the representatives of a friendly power, on a more than friendly errand.

At last, on the 24th July 1854, after the deputies had been thus shut up
a whole month, Secretary Brulart himself arrived from Fontainebleau.

He stated that the King sent his royal thanks to the States for the offer
which they had made him, and to the deputies in particular for taking the
trouble of so long a journey; but that he did not find his realm in
condition to undertake a foreign war so inopportunely. In every other
regard, his Majesty offered the States "all possible favours and
pleasures."

Certainly, after having been thus kept in prison for a month, the
ambassadors had small cause to be contented with this very cold
communication. To be forbidden the royal presence, and to be turned out
of the country without even an official and accredited answer to a
communication in which they had offered the sovereignty of their
fatherland, was not flattering to their dignity. "We little thought,"
said they to Brulart, after a brief consultation among themselves, "to
receive such a reply as this. It displeases us infinitely that his
Majesty will not do us the honour to grant us an audience. We must take
the liberty of saying, that 'tis treating the States, our masters, with
too much contempt. Who ever heard before of refusing audience to public
personages? Kings often grant audience to mere letter-carriers. Even the
King of Spain never refused a hearing to the deputies from the
Netherlands when they came to Spain to complain of his own government.
The States General have sent envoys to many other kinds and princes, and
they have instantly granted audience in every case. His Majesty, too, has
been very ill-informed of the contracts which we formerly made with the
Duke of Anjou, and therefore a personal interview is the more necessary."
As the envoys were obstinate on the point of Paris, Brulart said "that
the King, although he should himself be at Lyons, would not prevent any
one from going to the capital on his own private affairs; but would
unquestionably take it very ill if, they should visit that city in a
public manner, and as deputies."

Des Pruneaux professed himself "very grievous at this result, and
desirous of a hundred deaths in consequence."

They stated that they should be ready within a month to bring an army of
3,000 horse and 13,000 foot into the field for the relief of Ghent,
besides their military operations against Zutphen; and that the enemy had
recently been ignominiously defeated in his attack upon Fort Lille, and
had lost 2,000 of his best soldiers.

Here were encouraging facts; and it certainly was worth the while of the
French sovereign to pause a moment before rejecting without a hearing,
the offer of such powerful and conveniently-situated provinces.

Des Pruneaux, a man of probity and earnestness, but perhaps of
insufficient ability to deal with such grave matters as now fell almost
entirely upon his shoulders, soon afterwards obtained audience of the
King. Being most sincerely in favour of the annexation of the Netherlands
to France, and feeling that now or never was the opportunity of bringing
it about, he persuaded the King to send him back to the Provinces, in
order to continue the negotiation directly with the States General. The
timidity and procrastination of the court could be overcome no further.

The two Dutch envoys, who had stolen secretly to Paris, were indulged in
a most barren and unmeaning interview with the Queen-Mother. Before their
departure from France, however, they had the advantage of much
conversation with leading members of the royal council, of the
parliaments of Paris and Rouen, and also with various persons professing
the reformed religion. They endeavoured thus to inform themselves, as
well as they could, why the King made so much difficulty in accepting
their propositions, and whether, and by what means, his Majesty could be
induced to make war in their behalf upon the King of Spain.

They were informed that, should Holland and Zeeland unite with the rest
of the Netherlands, the King "without any doubt would undertake the cause
most earnestly." His councillors, also--even those who had been most
active in dissuading his Majesty from such a policy--would then be
unanimous in supporting the annexation of the Provinces and the war with
Spain. In such a contingency, with the potent assistance of Holland and
Zeeland, the King would have little difficulty, within a very short time,
in chasing every single Spaniard out of the Netherlands. To further this
end, many leading personages in France avowed to the envoys their
determination "to venture their lives and their fortunes, and to use all
the influence which they possessed at court."

The same persons expressed their conviction that the King, once satisfied
by the Provinces as to conditions and reasons, would cheerfully go into
the war, without being deterred by any apprehension as to the power of
Spain. It was, however, fitting that each Province should chaffer as
little as possible about details, but should give his Majesty every
reasonable advantage. They should remember that they were dealing with "a
great, powerful monarch, who was putting his realm in jeopardy, and not
with a Duke of Anjou, who had every thing to gain and nothing to lose."

All the Huguenots, with whom the envoys conversed, were excessively
sanguine. Could the King be once brought they said, to promise the
Netherlands his protection, there was not the least fear but that he
would keep his word. He would use all the means within his power; "yea,
he would take the crown from his head," rather than turn back. Although
reluctant to commence a war with so powerful a sovereign, having once
promised his help, he would keep his pledge to the utmost, "for he was a
King of his word," and had never broken and would never break his faith
with those of the reformed religion.

Thus spoke the leading Huguenots of France, in confidential communication
with the Netherland envoys, not many months before the famous edict of
extermination, published at Nemours.

At that moment the reformers were full of confidence; not foreseeing the
long procession of battles and sieges which was soon to sweep through the
land. Notwithstanding the urgency of the Papists for their extirpation,
they extolled loudly the liberty of religious worship which Calvinists,
as well as Catholics, were enjoying in France, and pointed to the fact
that the adherents of both religions were well received at court, and
that they shared equally in offices of trust and dignity throughout the
kingdom.

The Netherland envoys themselves bore testimony to the undisturbed
tranquillity and harmony in which the professors of both religions were
living and worshipping side by side "without reproach or quarrel" in all
the great cities which they had visited. They expressed the conviction
that the same toleration would be extended to all the Provinces when
under French dominion; and, so far as their ancient constitutions and
privileges were concerned, they were assured that the King of France
would respect and maintain them with as much fidelity as the States could
possibly desire.

Des Pruneaux, accompanied by the two States' envoys, departed forthwith
for the Netherlands. On the 24th August, 1584 he delivered a discourse
before the States General, in which he disclosed, in very general terms,
the expectations of Henry III., and intimated very clearly that the
different Provinces were to lose no time in making an unconditional offer
to that monarch. With regard to Holland and Zeeland he observed that he
was provided with a special commission to those Estates. It was not long
before one Province after the other came to the conclusion to offer the
sovereignty to the King without written conditions, but with a general
understanding that their religious freedom and their ancient
constitutions were to be sacredly respected. Meantime, Des Pruneaux made
his appearance in Holland and Zeeland, and declared the King's intentions
of espousing the cause of the States, and of accepting the sovereignty of
all the Provinces. He distinctly observed, however, that it was as
sovereign, not as protector, that his Majesty must be recognised in
Holland and Zeeland, as well as in the rest of the country.

Upon this grave question there was much debate and much difference of
opinion. Holland and Zeeland had never contemplated the possibility of
accepting any foreign sovereignty, and the opponents of the present
scheme were loud and angry, but very reasonable in their remarks.

The French, they said, were no respecters of privileges nor of persons.
The Duke of Anjou had deceived William of Orange and betrayed the
Provinces. Could they hope to see farther than that wisest and most
experienced prince? Had not the stout hearts of the Antwerp burghers
proved a stronger defence to Brabant liberties than the "joyous entry" on
the dread day of the "French fury," it would have fared ill then and for
ever with the cause of freedom and religion in the Netherlands. The King
of France was a Papist, a Jesuit. He was incapable of keeping his
pledges. Should they make the arrangement now proposed and confer the
sovereignty upon him, he would forthwith make peace with Spain, and
transfer the Provinces back to that crown in exchange for the duchy of
Milan, which France had ever coveted. The Netherlands, after a quarter of
a century of fighting in defence of their hearths and altars, would find
themselves handed over again, bound and fettered, to the tender mercies
of the Spanish Inquisition.

The Kings of France and of Spain always acted in concert, for religion
was the most potent of bonds. Witness the sacrifice of thousands of
French soldiers to Alva by their own sovereign at Mons, witness the fate
of Genlis, witness the bloody night of St. Bartholomew, witness the
Antwerp fury. Men cited and relied upon the advice of William of Orange
as to this negotiation with France. But Orange never dreamed of going so
far as now proposed. He was ever careful to keep the Provinces of Holland
and Zeeland safe from every foreign master. That spot was to be holy
ground. Not out of personal ambition. God forbid that they, should accuse
his memory of any such impurity, but because he wished one safe refuge
for the spirit of freedom.

Many years long they had held out by land and sea against the Spaniards,
and should they now, because this Des Pruneaux shrugged his shoulders, be
so alarmed as to open the door to the same Spaniard wearing the disguise
of a Frenchman?

Prince Maurice also made a brief representation to the States' Assembly
of Holland, in which, without distinctly opposing the negotiation with
France, he warned them not to proceed too hastily with so grave a matter.
He reminded them how far they had gone in the presentation of the
sovereignty to his late father, and requested them, in their dealings
with France, not to forget his interests and those of his family. He
reminded them of the position of that family, overladen with debt
contracted in their service alone. He concluded by offering most
affectionately his service in any way in which he, young and
inexperienced as he knew himself to be, might be thought useful; as he
was long since resolved to devote his life to the welfare of his country.

These passionate appeals were answered with equal vehemence by those who
had made up their minds to try the chances of the French sovereignty. Des
Pruneaux, meanwhile, was travelling from province to province, and from
city to city, using the arguments which have already been sufficiently
indicated, and urging a speedy compliance with the French King's
propositions. At the same time, in accordance with his instructions, he
was very cautious to confine himself to generalities, and to avoid
hampering his royal master with the restrictions which had proved so
irksome to the Duke of Anjou.

"The States General demanded a copy of my speech," he wrote the day after
that harangue had been delivered, "but I only gave them a brief outline;
extending myself [25th August, 1584] as little as I possibly could,
according to the intention and command of your Majesty. When I got here,
I found them without hope of our assistance, and terribly agitated by the
partizans of Spain. There was some danger of their going over in a panic
to the enemy. They are now much changed again, and the Spanish partizans
are beginning to lose their tongues. I invite them, if they intend to
address your Majesty, to proceed as they ought towards a veritably grand
monarch, without hunting up any of their old quibbles, or reservations of
provinces, or any thing else which could inspire suspicion. I have sent
into Gelderland and Friesland, for I find I must stay here in Holland and
Zeeland myself. These two provinces are the gates and ramparts through
which we must enter. 'Tis, in my opinion, what could be called superb, to
command all the sea, thus subject to the crown of France. And France,
too, with assistance of this country, will command the land as well. They
are much astonished here, however, that I communicate nothing of the
intention of your Majesty. They say that if your Majesty does not accept
this offer of their country, your Majesty puts the rope around their
necks."

The French envoy was more and more struck with the brilliancy of the
prize offered to his master. "If the King gets these Provinces," said he
to Catharine, "'t will be the most splendid inheritance which Prince has
ever conquered."

In a very few weeks the assiduity of the envoy and of the French party
was successful. All the other provinces had very soon repeated the offer
which they had previously made through Asseliers and La Mouillerie. By
the beginning of October the opposition of Holland was vanquished. The
estates of that Province--three cities excepted, however--determined "to
request England and France to assume a joint protectorate over the
Netherlands. In case the King of France should refuse this proposition,
they were then ready to receive him as prince and master, with knowledge
and consent of the Queen of England, and on such conditions as the United
States should approve."

Immediately afterwards, the General Assembly of all the States determined
to offer the sovereignty to King Henry "on conditions to be afterwards
settled."

Des Pruneaux, thus triumphant, received a gold chain of the value of two
thousand florins, and departed before the end of October for France.

The departure of the solemn embassy to that country, for the purpose of
offering the sovereignty to the King, was delayed till the beginning of
January. Meantime it is necessary to cast a glance at the position of
England in relation to these important transactions.

     ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

     Diplomatic adroitness consists mainly in the power to deceive
     Enmity between Lutherans and Calvinists
     Find our destruction in our immoderate desire for peace
     German-Lutheran sixteenth-century idea of religious freedom
     Intentions of a government which did not know its own intentions
     Lord was better pleased with adverbs than nouns
     Make sheep of yourselves, and the wolf will eat you
     Necessity of kingship
     Neighbour's blazing roof was likely soon to fire their own
     Nor is the spirit of the age to be pleaded in defence
     Pauper client who dreamed of justice at the hands of law
     Seem as if born to make the idea of royalty ridiculous
     Shutting the stable-door when the steed is stolen
     String of homely proverbs worthy of Sancho Panza
     The very word toleration was to sound like an insult
     There was apathy where there should have been enthusiasm
     Tranquillity rather of paralysis than of health
     Write so illegibly or express himself so awkwardly




HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS

From the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce--1609

By John Lothrop Motley

History United Netherlands, 1584-1585




CHAPTER III.

   Policy of England--Schemes of the Pretender of Portugal--Hesitation
   of the French Court--Secret Wishes of France--Contradictory Views as
   to the Opinions of Netherlanders--Their Love for England and
   Elizabeth--Prominent Statesmen of the Provinces--Roger Williams the
   Welshman Views of Walsingham, Burghley, and the Queen--An Embassy to
   Holland decided upon--Davison at the Hague--Cautious and Secret
   Measures of Burghley--Consequent Dissatisfaction of Walsingham--
   English and Dutch Suspicion of France--Increasing Affection of
   Holland for England.

The policy of England towards the Provinces had been somewhat hesitating,
but it had not been disloyal. It was almost inevitable that there should
be timidity in the councils of Elizabeth, when so grave a question as
that of confronting the vast power of Spain was forcing itself day by day
more distinctly upon the consideration of herself and her statesmen. It
was very clear, now that Orange was dead, that some new and decided step
would be taken. Elizabeth was in favour of combined action by the French
and English governments, in behalf of the Netherlands--a joint
protectorate of the Provinces, until such time as adequate concessions on
the religious question could be obtained from Spain. She was unwilling to
plunge into the peril and expense of a war with the strongest power in
the world. She disliked the necessity under which she should be placed of
making repeated applications to her parliament, and of thus fostering the
political importance of the Commons; she was reluctant to encourage
rebellious subjects in another land, however just the cause of their
revolt. She felt herself vulnerable in Ireland and on the Scottish
border. Nevertheless, the Spanish power was becoming so preponderant,
that if the Netherlands were conquered, she could never feel a moment's
security within her own territory. If the Provinces were annexed to
France, on the other hand, she could not contemplate with complacency the
increased power thus placed in the hands of the treacherous and
jesuitical house of Valois.

The path of the Queen was thickly strewed with peril: her advisers were
shrewd, far-seeing, patriotic, but some of them were perhaps over
cautious. The time had, however, arrived when the danger was to be faced,
if the whole balance of power in Europe were not to come to an end, and
weak states, like England and the Netherlands, to submit to the tyranny
of an overwhelming absolutism. The instinct of the English sovereign, of
English statesmen, of the English nation, taught them that the cause of
the Netherlands was their own. Nevertheless, they were inclined to look
on yet a little longer, although the part of spectator had become an
impossible one. The policy of the English government was not treacherous,
although it was timid. That of the French court was both the one and the
other, and it would have been better both for England and the Provinces,
had they more justly appreciated the character of Catharine de' Medici
and her son.

The first covert negotiations between Henry and the States had caused
much anxiety among the foreign envoys in France. Don Bernardino de
Mendoza, who had recently returned from Spain after his compulsory
retreat from his post of English ambassador, was now established in
Paris, as representative of Philip. He succeeded Tasais--a Netherlander
by birth, and one of the ablest diplomatists in the Spanish service--and
his house soon became the focus of intrigue against the government to
which he was accredited--the very head-quarters of the League. His salary
was large, his way of living magnificent, his insolence intolerable.

"Tassis is gone to the Netherlands," wrote envoy Busbecq to the Emperor,
"and thence is to proceed to Spain. Don Bernardino has arrived in his
place. If it be the duty of a good ambassador to expend largely, it would
be difficult to find a better one than he; for they say 'tis his
intention to spend sixteen thousand dollars yearly in his embassy. I
would that all things were in correspondence; and that he were not in
other respects so inferior to Tassis."

It is, however, very certain that Mendoza was not only a brave soldier,
but a man of very considerable capacity in civil affairs, although his
inordinate arrogance interfered most seriously with his skill as a
negotiator. He was, of course, watching with much fierceness the progress
of these underhand proceedings between the French court and the
rebellious subjects of his master, and using threats and expostulations
in great profusion. "Mucio," too, the great stipendiary of Philip, was
becoming daily more dangerous, and the adherents of the League were
multiplying with great celerity.

The pretender of Portugal, Don Antonio, prior of Crato, was also in
Paris; and it was the policy of both the French and the English
governments to protect his person, and to make use of him as a rod over
the head of Philip. Having escaped, after the most severe sufferings, in
the mountains of Spain, where he had been tracked like a wild beast, with
a price of thirty thousand crowns placed upon his head, he was now most
anxious to stir the governments of Europe into espousing his cause, and
into attacking Spain through the recently acquired kingdom of Portugal.
Meantime, he was very desirous of some active employment, to keep himself
from starving, and conceived the notion, that it would be an excellent
thing for the Netherlands and himself, were he to make good to them the
loss of William the Silent.

"Don Antonio," wrote Stafford, "made a motion to me yesterday, to move
her Majesty, that now upon the Prince of Orange's death, as it is a
necessary thing for them to have a governor and head, and him to be at
her Majesty's devotion, if her Majesty would be at the means to work it
for him, she should be assured nobody should be more faithfully tied in
devotion to her than he. Truly you would pity the poor man's case, who is
almost next door to starving in effect."

A starving condition being, however, not the only requisite in a governor
and head to replace the Prince of Orange, nothing came of this motion.
Don Antonio remained in Paris, in a pitiable plight, and very much
environed by dangers; for the Duke of Guise and his brother had
undertaken to deliver him into the hands of Philip the Second, or those
of his ministers, before the feast of St. John of the coming year. Fifty
thousand dollars were to be the reward of this piece of work, combined
with other services; "and the sooner they set about it the better," said
Philip, writing a few months later, "for the longer they delay it, the
less easy will they find it."'

The money was never earned, however, and meantime Don Antonio made
himself as useful as he could, in picking up information for Sir Edward
Stafford and the other opponents of Spanish policy in Paris.

The English envoy was much embarrassed by the position of affairs. He
felt sure that the French monarch would never dare to enter the lists
against the king of Spain, yet he was accurately informed of the secret
negotiations with the Netherlands, while in the dark as to the ultimate
intentions of his own government.

"I was never set to school so much," he wrote to Walsingham (27th July,
1584), "as I have been to decipher the cause of the deputies of the Low
Countries coming hither, the offers that they made the King here, and the
King's manner of dealing with them!"

He expressed great jealousy at the mystery which enveloped the whole
transaction; and much annoyance with Noel de Caron, who "kept very
secret, and was angry at the motion," when he endeavoured to discover the
business in which they were engaged. Yet he had the magnanimity to
request Walsingham not to mention the fact to the Queen, lest she should
be thereby prejudiced against the States.

"For my part," said he, "I would be glad in any thing to further them,
rather than to hinder them--though they do not deserve it--yet for the
good the helping them at this time may bring ourselves."

Meantime, the deputies went away from France, and the King went to Lyons,
where he had hoped to meet both the Duke of Savoy and the King of
Navarre. But Joyeuse, who had been received at Chambery with "great
triumphs and tourneys," brought back only a broken wrist, without
bringing the Duke of Savoy; that potentate sending word that the "King of
Spain had done him the honour to give him his daughter, and that it was
not fit for him to do any thing that might bring jealousy."

Henry of Navarre also, as we have seen, declined the invitation sent him,
M. de Segur not feeling disposed for the sudden flight out of window
suggested by Agrippa D' Aubigne; so that, on the whole, the King and his
mother, with all the court, returned from Lyons in marvellous ill humour.

"The King storms greatly," said Stafford, "and is in a great dump." It
was less practicable than ever to discover the intentions of the
government; for although it was now very certain that active exertions
were making by Des Pruneaux in the Provinces, it was not believed by the
most sagacious that a serious resolution against Spain had been taken in
France. There was even a talk of a double matrimonial alliance, at that
very moment, between the two courts.

"It is for certain here said," wrote Stafford, "that the King of Spain
doth presently marry the dowager of France, and 'tis thought that if the
King of Spain marry, he will not live a year. Whensoever the marriage
be," added the envoy, "I would to God the effect were true, for if it be
not by some such handy work of God, I am afraid things will not go so
well as I could wish."

There was a lull on the surface of affairs, and it was not easy to sound
the depths of unseen combinations and intrigues.

There was also considerable delay in the appointment and the arrival of
the new deputies from the Netherlands; and Stafford was as doubtful as
ever as to the intentions of his own government.

"They look daily here for the States," he wrote to Walsingham (29th Dec.
1584), "and I pray that I may hear from you as soon as you may, what
course I shall take when they be here, either hot or cold or lukewarm in
the matter, and in what sort I shall behave myself. Some badly affected
have gone about to put into the King's head, that they never meant to
offer the sovereignty, which, though the King be not thoroughly persuaded
of, yet so much is won by this means that the King hearkeneth to see the
end, and then to believe as he seeth cause, and in the meantime to speak
no more of any such matter than if it had never been moved."

While his Majesty was thus hearkening in order to see more, according to
Sir Edward's somewhat Hibernian mode of expressing himself, and keeping
silent that he might see the better, it was more difficult than ever for
the envoy to know what course to pursue. Some persons went so far as to
suggest that the whole negotiation was a mere phantasmagoria devised by
Queen Elizabeth--her purpose being to breed a quarrel between Henry and
Philip for her own benefit; and "then, seeing them together by the ears,
as her accustomed manner was, to let them go alone, and sit still to look
on."

The King did not appear to be much affected by these insinuations against
Elizabeth; but the doubt and the delay were very harrassing. "I would to
God," wrote the English envoy, "that if the States mean to do anything
here with the King, and if her. Majesty and the council think it fit,
they would delay no time, but go roundly either to an agreement or to a
breach with the King. Otherwise, as the matter now sleepeth, so it will
die, for the King must be taken in his humour when he begins to nibble at
any bait, for else he will come away, and never bite a full bite while he
liveth."

There is no doubt that the bait, at which Henry nibbled with much
avidity, was the maritime part of the Netherlands. Holland and Zeeland in
the possession of either England or Spain, was a perpetual inconvenience
to France. The King, or rather the Queen-Mother and her advisers--for
Henry himself hardly indulged in any profound reflections on
state-affairs,--desired and had made a sine qua non of those Provinces.
It had been the French policy, from the beginning, to delay matters, in
order to make the States feel the peril of their position to the full.

"The King, differing and temporising," wrote Herle to the Queen, "would
have them fall into that necessity and danger, as that they should offer
unto him simply the possession of all their estates. Otherwise, they were
to see, as in a glass, their evident and hasty ruin."

Even before the death of Orange, Henry had been determined, if possible,
to obtain possession of the island of Walcheren, which controlled the
whole country. "To give him that," said Herle, "would be to turn the hot
end of the poker towards themselves, and put the cold part in the King's
hand. He had accordingly made a secret offer to William of Orange,
through the Princess, of two millions of livres in ready money, or, if he
preferred it, one hundred thousand livres yearly of perpetual
inheritance, if he would secure to him the island of Walcheren. In that
case he promised to declare war upon the King of Spain, to confirm to the
States their privileges, and to guarantee to the Prince the earldoms of
Holland and Zeeland, with all his other lands and titles."

It is superfluous to say that such offers were only regarded by the
Prince as an affront. It was, however, so necessary, in his opinion; to
maintain the cause of the reformed churches in France, and to keep up the
antagonism between that country and Spain, that the French policy was not
abandoned, although the court was always held in suspicion.

But on the death of William, there was a strong reaction against France
and in favour of England. Paul Buys, one of the ablest statesmen of the
Netherlands, Advocate of Holland, and a confidential friend of William
the Silent up to the time of his death, now became the leader of the
English party, and employed his most strenuous efforts against the French
treaty-having "seen the scope of that court."

With regard to the other leading personages, there was a strong
inclination in favour of Queen Elizabeth, whose commanding character
inspired great respect. At the same time warmer sentiments of adhesion
seem to have been expressed towards the French court, by the same
individuals, than the mere language of compliment justified.

Thus, the widowed Princess of Orange was described by Des Pruneaux to his
sovereign, as "very desolate, but nevertheless doing all in her power to
advance his interests; the Count Maurice, of gentle hopes, as also most
desirous of remaining his Majesty's humble servant, while Elector
Truchsess was said to be employing himself, in the same cause, with very
great affection."

A French statesman resident in the Provinces, whose name has not been
preserved, but who was evidently on intimate terms with many eminent
Netherlanders, declared that Maurice, "who had a mind entirely French,
deplored infinitely the misfortunes of France, and regretted that all the
Provinces could not be annexed to so fair a kingdom. I do assure you," he
added, "that he is in no wise English."

Of Count Hohenlo, general-in-chief of the States' army under Prince
Maurice, and afterwards his brother-in-law, the same gentleman spoke with
even greater confidence. "Count d'Oloc," said he (for by that ridiculous
transformation of his name the German general was known to French and
English), "with whom I have passed three weeks on board the fleet of the
States, is now wholly French, and does not love the English at all. The
very first time I saw him, he protested twice or thrice, in presence of
members of the States General and of the State Council, that if he had no
Frenchmen he could never carry on the war. He made more account," he
said, "of two thousand French than of six thousand others, English, or
Germans."

Yet all these distinguished persons--the widowed Princess of Orange,
Count Maurice, ex-elector Truchsess, Count Holenlo--were described to
Queen Elizabeth by her confidential agent, then employed in the
Provinces, as entirely at that sovereign's devotion.

"Count Maurice holds nothing of the French, nor esteems them," said
Herle, "but humbly desired me to signify unto your Majesty that he had in
his mind and determination faithfully vowed his service to your Majesty,
which should be continued in his actions with all duty, and sealed with
his blood; for he knew how much his father and the cause were beholden
ever to your Highness's goodness."

The Princess, together with her sister-in-law Countess Schwartzenburg,
and the young daughters of the late Prince were described on the same
occasion "as recommending their service unto her Majesty with a most
tender affection, as to a lady of all ladies." "Especially," said Herle,
"did the two Princesses in most humble and wise sort, express a certain
fervent devotion towards your Majesty."

Elector Truchsess was spoken of as "a prince well qualified and greatly
devoted to her Majesty; who, after many grave and sincere words had of
her Majesty's virtue, calling her 'la fille unique de Dieu, and le bien
heureuse Princesse', desired of God that he might do her service as she
merited."

And, finally, Count Hollock--who seemed to "be reformed in sundry things,
if it hold" (a delicate allusion to the Count's propensity for strong
potations), was said "to desire humbly to be known for one that would
obey the commandment of her Majesty more than of any earthly prince
living besides."

There can be no doubt that there was a strong party in favour of an
appeal to England rather than to France. The Netherlanders were too
shrewd a people not to recognize the difference between the king of a
great realm, who painted his face and wore satin petticoats, and the
woman who entertained ambassadors, each in his own language, on gravest
affairs of state, who matched in her wit and wisdom the deepest or the
most sparkling intellects of her council, who made extemporaneous Latin
orations to her universities, and who rode on horseback among her
generals along the lines of her troops in battle-array, and yet was only
the unmarried queen of a petty and turbulent state.

"The reverend respect that is borne to your Majesty throughout these
countries is great," said William Herle. They would have thrown
themselves into her arms, heart and soul, had they been cordially
extended at that moment of their distress; but she was coy, hesitating,
and, for reasons already sufficiently indicated, although not so
conclusive as they seemed, disposed to temporize and to await the issue
of the negotiations between the Provinces and France.

In Holland and Zeeland especially, there was an enthusiastic feeling in
favour of the English alliance. "They recommend themselves," said Herleo
"throughout the country in their consultations and assemblies, as also in
their common and private speeches, to the Queen of England's only favour
and goodness, whom they call their saviour, and the Princess of greatest
perfection in wisdom and sincerity that ever governed. Notwithstanding
their treaty now on foot by their deputies with France, they are not more
disposed to be governed by the French than to be tyrannized over by the
Spaniard; concluding it to be alike; and even 'commutare non sortem sed
servitutem'."

Paul Buys was indefatigable in his exertions against the treaty with
France, and in stimulating the enthusiasm for England and Elizabeth. He
expressed sincere and unaffected devotion to the Queen on all occasions,
and promised that no negotiations should take place, however secret and
confidential, that were not laid before her Majesty. "He has the chief
administration among the States," said Herle, "and to his credit and
dexterity they attribute the despatch of most things. He showed unto me
the state of the enemy throughout the provinces, and of the negotiation
in France, whereof he had no opinion at all of success, nor any will of
his own part but to please the Prince of Orange in his life-time."

It will be seen in the sequel whether or not the views of this
experienced and able statesman were lucid and comprehensive. It will also
be seen whether his strenuous exertions in favour of the English alliance
were rewarded as bountifully as they deserved, by those most indebted to
him.

Meantime he was busily employed in making the English government
acquainted with the capacity, disposition, and general plans of the
Netherlanders.

"They have certain other things in consultation amongst the States to
determine of," wrote Herle, "which they were sworn not to reveal to any,
but Buys protested that nothing should pass but to your liking and
surety, and the same to be altered and disposed as should seem good to
your Highness's own authority; affirming to me sincerely that Holland and
Zeeland, with the rest of the provinces, for the estimation they had of
your high virtue and temperancy, would yield themselves absolutely to
your Majesty and crown for ever, or to none other (their liberties only
reserved), whereof you should have immediate possession, without
reservation of place or privilege."

The important point of the capability of the Provinces to defend
themselves, about which Elizabeth was most anxious to be informed, was
also fully elucidated by the Advocate. "The means should be such,
proceeding from the Provinces," said he, "as your Majesty might defend
your interest therein with facility against the whole world." He then
indicated a plan, which had been proposed by the States of Brabant to the
States General, according to which they were to keep on foot an army of
15,000 foot and 5000 horse, with which they should be able, "to expulse
the enemy and to reconquer their towns and country lost, within three
months." Of this army they hoped to induce the Queen to furnish 5000
English footmen and 500 horse, to be paid monthly by a treasurer of her
own; and for the assistance thus to be furnished they proposed to give
Ostend and Sluys as pledge of payment. According to this scheme the
elector palatine, John Casimir, had promised to furnish, equip, and pay
2000 cavalry, taking the town of Maestricht and the country of Limburg,
when freed from the enemy, in pawn for his disbursements; while Antwerp
and Brabant had agreed to supply 300,000 crowns in ready money for
immediate use. Many powerful politicians opposed this policy, however,
and urged reliance upon France, "so that this course seemed to be lame in
many parts."--[Letter of Herle].

Agents had already been sent both to England and France, to procure, if
possible, a levy of troops for immediate necessity. The attempt was
unsuccessful in France, but the Dutch community of the reformed religion
in London subscribed nine thousand and five florins. This sum, with other
contributions, proved sufficient to set Morgan's regiment on foot, which
soon after began to arrive in the Netherlands by companies. "But if it
were all here at once," said Stephen Le Sieur, "'t would be but a
breakfast for the enemy."

The agent for the matter in England was De Griyse, formerly bailiff of
Bruges; and although tolerably successful in his mission, he was not
thought competent for so important a post, nor officially authorised for
the undertaking. While procuring this assistance in English troops he had
been very urgent with the Queen to further the negotiations between the
States and France; and Paul Buys was offended with him as a
mischief-maker and an intriguer. He complained of him as having "thrust
himself in, to deal and intermeddle in the affairs of the Low Countries
unavowed," and desired that he might be closely looked after.

After the Advocate, the next most important statesman in the provinces
was, perhaps, Meetkerk, President of the High Court of Flanders, a man of
much learning, sincerity, and earnestness of character; having had great
experience in the diplomatic service of the country on many important
occasions. "He stands second in reputation here," said Herle, "and both
Buys and he have one special care in all practises that are discovered,
to examine how near anything may concern your person or kingdom, whereof
they will advertise as matter shall fall out in importance."

John van Olden-Barneveldt, afterwards so conspicuous in the history of
the country, was rather inclined, at this period, to favour the French
party; a policy which was strenuously furthered by Villiers and by Sainte
Aldegonde.

Besides the information furnished to the English government, as to the
state of feeling and resources of the Netherlands, by Buys, Meetkerk, and
William Herle, Walsingham relied much upon the experienced eye and the
keen biting humour of Roger Williams.

A frank open-hearted Welshman, with no fortune but his sword, but as true
as its steel, he had done the States much important service in the
hard-fighting days of Grand Commander Requesens and of Don John of
Austria. With a shrewd Welsh head under his iron morion, and a stout
Welsh heart under his tawny doublet, he had gained little but hard knocks
and a dozen wounds in his campaigning, and had but recently been
ransomed, rather grudgingly by his government, from a Spanish prison in
Brabant. He was suffering in health from its effects, but was still more
distressed in mind, from his sagacious reading of the signs of the times.
Fearing that England was growing lukewarm, and the Provinces desperate,
he was beginning to find himself out of work, and was already casting
about him for other employment. Poor, honest, and proud, he had
repeatedly declined to enter the Spanish service. Bribes, such as at a
little later period were sufficient to sully conspicuous reputations and
noble names, among his countrymen in better circumstances than his own,
had been freely but unsuccessfully offered him. To serve under any but
the English or States' flag in the Provinces he scorned; and he thought
the opportunity fast slipping away there for taking the Papistical party
in Europe handsomely by the beard. He had done much manful work in the
Netherlands, and was destined to do much more; but he was now
discontented, and thought himself slighted. In more remote regions of the
world, the thrifty soldier thought that there might be as good
harvesting for his sword as in the thrice-trampled stubble of Flanders.

"I would refuse no hazard that is possible to be done in the Queen's
service," he said to Walsingham; "but I do persuade myself she makes no
account of me. Had it not been for the duty that nature bound me towards
her and my country, I needed not to have been in that case that I am in.
Perhaps I could have fingered more pistoles than Mr. Newell, the late
Latiner, and had better usage and pension of the Spaniards than he. Some
can tell that I refused large offers, in the misery of Alost, of the
Prince of Parma. Last of all, Verdugo offered me very fair, being in
Loccum, to quit the States' service, and accept theirs, without treachery
or betraying of place or man."

Not feeling inclined to teach Latin in Spain, like the late Mr. Newell,
or to violate oaths and surrender fortresses, like brave soldiers of
fortune whose deeds will be afterwards chronicled, he was disposed to
cultivate the "acquaintance of divers Pollacks," from which he had
received invitations. "Find I nothing there," said he, "Duke Matthias has
promised me courtesy if I would serve in Hungary. If not, I will offer
service to one of the Turk's bashaws against the Persians."

Fortunately, work was found for the trusty Welshman in the old fields.
His brave honest face often reappeared; his sharp sensible tongue uttered
much sage counsel; and his ready sword did various solid service, in
leaguer, battle-field, and martial debate, in Flanders, Holland, Spain,
and France.

For the present, he was casting his keen glances upon the negotiations in
progress, and cavilling at the general policy which seemed predominant.

He believed that the object of the French was to trifle with the States,
to protract interminably their negotiations, to prevent the English
government from getting any hold upon the Provinces, and then to leave
them to their fate.

He advised Walsingham to advance men and money, upon the security of
Sluys and Ostend.

"I dare venture my life," said he, with much energy, "that were Norris,
Bingham, Yorke, or Carlisle, in those ports, he would keep them during
the Spanish King's life."

But the true way to attack Spain--a method soon afterwards to be carried
into such brilliant effect by the naval heroes of England and the
Netherlands--the long-sighted Welshman now indicated; a combined attack,
namely, by sea upon the colonial possessions of Philip.

"I dare be bound," said he, "if you join with Treslong, the States
Admiral, and send off, both, three-score sail into his Indies, we will
force him to retire from conquering further, and to be contented to let
other princes live as well as he."

In particular, Williams urged rapid action, and there is little doubt,
that had the counsels of prompt, quick-witted, ready-handed soldiers like
himself, and those who thought with him, been taken; had the stealthy but
quick-darting policy of Walsingham prevailed over the solemn and stately
but somewhat ponderous proceedings of Burghley, both Ghent and Antwerp
might have been saved, the trifling and treacherous diplomacy of
Catharine de' Medici neutralized, and an altogether more fortunate aspect
given at once to the state of Protestant affairs.

"If you mean to do anything," said he, "it is more than time now. If you
will send some man of credit about it, will it please your honour, I will
go with him, because I know the humour of the people, and am acquainted
with a number of the best. I shall be able to show him a number of their
dealings, as well with the French as in other affairs, and perhaps will
find means to send messengers to Ghent, and to other places, better than
the States; for the message of one soldier is better than twenty boors."

It was ultimately decided--as will soon be related--to send a man of
credit to the Provinces. Meantime, the policy of England continued to be
expectant and dilatory, and Advocate Buys, after having in vain attempted
to conquer the French influence, and bring about the annexation of the
Provinces to England, threw down his office in disgust, and retired for a
time from the contest. He even contemplated for a moment taking service
in Denmark, but renounced the notion of abandoning his country, and he
will accordingly be found, at a later period, conspicuous in public
affairs.

The deliberations in the English councils were grave and anxious, for it
became daily more obvious that the Netherland question was the hinge upon
which the whole fate of Christendom was slowly turning. To allow the
provinces to fall back again into the grasp of Philip, was to offer
England herself as a last sacrifice to the Spanish Inquisition. This was
felt by all the statesmen in the land; but some of them, more than the
rest, had a vivid perception of the danger, and of the necessity of
dealing with it at once.

To the prophetic eye of Walsingham, the mists of the future at times were
lifted; and the countless sails of the invincible Armada, wafting
defiance and destruction to England, became dimly visible. He felt that
the great Netherland bulwark of Protestantism and liberty was to be
defended at all hazards, and that the death-grapple could not long be
deferred.

Burghley, deeply pondering, but less determined, was still disposed to
look on and to temporize.

The Queen, far-seeing and anxious, but somewhat hesitating, still clung
to the idea of a joint protectorate. She knew that the reestablishment of
Spanish authority in the Low Countries would be fatal to England, but she
was not yet prepared to throw down the gauntlet to Philip. She felt that
the proposed annexation of the Provinces to France would be almost as
formidable; yet she could not resolve, frankly and fearlessly, to assume,
the burthen of their protection. Under the inspiration of Burghley, she
was therefore willing to encourage the Netherlanders underhand;
preventing them at every hazard from slackening in their determined
hostility to Spain; discountenancing, without absolutely forbidding,
their proposed absorption by France; intimating, without promising, an
ultimate and effectual assistance from herself. Meantime, with something
of feline and feminine duplicity, by which the sex of the great sovereign
would so often manifest itself in the most momentous affairs, she would
watch and wait, teasing the Provinces, dallying with the danger, not
quite prepared as yet to abandon the prize to Henry or Philip, or to
seize it herself.

The situation was rapidly tending to become an impossible one.

Late in October a grave conference was held council, "upon the question
whether her Majesty should presently relieve the States of the Low
Countries."

It was shown, upon one side, that the "perils to the Queen and to the
realm were great, if the King of Spain should recover Holland and
Zeeland, as he had the other countries, for lack of succour in seasonable
time, either by the French King or the Queen's Majesty."

On the other side, the great difficulties in the way of effectual
assistance by England, were "fully remembered."

"But in the end, and upon comparison made," said Lord Burghley, summing
up, "betwixt the perils on the one part, and the difficulties on the
other," it was concluded that the Queen would be obliged to succumb to
the power of Spain, and the liberties of England be hopelessly lost, if
Philip were then allowed to carry out his designs, and if the Provinces
should be left without succour at his mercy.

A "wise person" was accordingly to be sent into Holland; first, to
ascertain whether the Provinces had come to an actual agreement with the
King of France, and, if such should prove to be the case, to enquire
whether that sovereign had pledged himself to declare war upon Philip. In
this event, the wise person was to express her Majesty's satisfaction
that the Provinces were thus to be "relieved from the tyranny of the King
of Spain."

On the other hand, if it should appear that no such conclusive
arrangements had been made, and that the Provinces were likely to fall
again victims to the "Spanish tyranny," her Majesty would then "strain
herself as far as, with preservation of her own estate, she might, to
succour them at this time."

The agent was then to ascertain "what conditions the Provinces would
require" upon the matter of succour, and, if the terms seemed reasonable,
he would assure them that "they should not be left to the cruelties of
the Spaniards."

And further, the wise person, "being pressed to answer, might by
conference of speeches and persuasions provoke them to offer to the Queen
the ports of Flushing and Middelburg and the Brill, wherein she meant not
to claim any property, but to hold them as gages for her expenses, and
for performances of their covenants."

He was also to make minute inquiries as to the pecuniary resources of the
Provinces, the monthly sums which they would be able to contribute, the
number of troops and of ships of war that they would pledge themselves to
maintain. These investigations were very important, because the Queen,
although very well disposed to succour them, "so nevertheless she was to
consider how her power might be extended, without ruin or manifest peril
to her own estate."

It was also resolved, in the same conference, that a preliminary step of
great urgency was to "procure a good peace with the King of Scots."
Whatever the expense of bringing about such a pacification might be, it
was certain that a "great deal more would be expended in defending the
realm against Scotland," while England was engaged in hostilities with
Spain. Otherwise, it was argued that her Majesty would be "so impeached
by Scotland in favour of the King of Spain, that her action against that
King would be greatly weakened."

Other measures necessary to be taken in view of the Spanish war were also
discussed. The ex-elector of Cologne, "a man of great account in
Germany," was to be assisted with money to make head against his rival
supported by the troops of Philip.

Duke Casimir of the Palatinate was to be solicited to make a diversion in
Gelderland.

The King of France was to be reminded of his treaty with England for
mutual assistance in case of the invasion by a foreign power of either
realm, and to be informed "not only of the intentions of the Spaniards to
invade England, upon their conquest of the Netherlands, but of their
actual invasion of Ireland."

It was "to be devised how the King of Navarre and Don Antonio of
Portugal, for their respective titles, might be induced to offend and
occupy the King of Spain, whereby to diminish his forces bent upon the
Low Countries."

It was also decided that Parliament should be immediately summoned, in
which, besides the request of a subsidy, many other necessary, provisions
should be made for her Majesty's safety.

"The conclusions of the whole," said Lord Burghley, with much
earnestness, "was this. Although her Majesty should hereby enter into a
war presently, yet were she better to do it now, while she may make the
same out of her realm, having the help of the people of Holland, and
before the King of Spain shall have consummated his conquests in those
countries, whereby he shall be so provoked with pride, solicited by the
Pope, and tempted by the Queen's own subjects, and shall be so strong by
sea, and so free from all other actions and quarrels,--yea, shall be so
formidable to all the rest of Christendom, as that her Majesty shall no
wise be able, with her own power, nor with aid of any other, neither by
sea nor land, to withstand his attempts, but shall be forced to give
place to his insatiable malice, which is most terrible to be thought of,
but miserable to suffer."

Thus did the Lord Treasurer wisely, eloquently, and well, describe the
danger by which England was environed. Through the shield of Holland the
spear was aimed full at the heart of England. But was it a moment to
linger? Was that buckler to be suffered to fall to the ground, or to be
raised only upon the arm of a doubtful and treacherous friend? Was it an
hour when the protection of Protestantism and of European liberty against
Spain was to be entrusted to the hand of a feeble and priest-ridden
Valois? Was it wise to indulge any longer in doubtings and dreamings, and
in yet a little more folding of the arms to sleep, while that insatiable
malice, so terrible to be thought of, so miserable to feel, was bowing
hourly more formidable, and approaching nearer and nearer?

Early in December, William Davison, gentleman-in-ordinary of her
Majesty's household, arrived at the Hague; a man painstaking, earnest,
and zealous, but who was fated, on more than one great occasion, to be
made a scape-goat for the delinquencies of greater personages than
himself.

He had audience of the States General on the 8th December. He then
informed that body that the Queen had heard, with, sorrowful heart, of
the great misfortunes which the United Provinces had sustained since the
death of the Prince of Orange; the many cities which they had lost, and
the disastrous aspect of the common cause. Moved by the affection which
she had always borne the country, and anxious for its preservation, she
had ordered her ambassador Stafford to request the King of France to
undertake, jointly with herself, the defence of the provinces against the
king of Spain. Not till very lately, however, had that envoy succeeded in
obtaining an audience, and he had then received "a very cold answer." It
being obvious to her Majesty, therefore, that the French government
intended to protract these matters indefinitely, Davison informed the
States that she had commissioned him to offer them "all possible
assistance, to enquire into the state of the country, and to investigate
the proper means of making that assistance most useful." He accordingly
requested the appointment of a committee to confer with him upon the
subject; and declared that the Queen did not desire to make herself
mistress of the Provinces, but only to be informed how she best could aid
their cause.

A committee was accordingly appointed, and a long series of somewhat
concealed negotiations was commenced. As the deputies were upon the eve
of their departure for France, to offer the sovereignty of the Provinces
to Henry, these proceedings were necessarily confused, dilatory, and at
tines contradictory.

After the arrival of the deputies in France, the cunctative policy
inspired by the Lord Treasurer was continued by England. The delusion of
a joint protectorate was still clung to by the Queen, although the
conduct of France was becoming very ambiguous, and suspicion growing
darker as to the ultimate and secret purport of the negotiations in
progress.

The anxiety and jealousy of Elizabeth were becoming keener than ever. If
the offers to the King were unlimited; he would accept them, and would
thus become as dangerous as Philip. If they were unsatisfactory, he would
turn his back upon the Provinces, and leave them a prey to Philip. Still
she would not yet renounce the hope of bringing the French King over to
an ingenuous course of action. It was thought, too, that something might
be done with the great malcontent nobles of Flanders, whose defection
from the national cause had been so disastrous, but who had been much
influenced in their course, it was thought, by their jealousy of William
the Silent.

Now that the Prince was dead, it was thought probable that the Arschots,
and Havres, Chimays, and Lalaings, might arouse themselves to more
patriotic views than they had manifested when they espoused the cause of
Spain.

It would be desirable to excite their jealousy of French influence, and,
at the same time, to inspire throughout the popular mind the fear of
another tyranny almost as absolute as that of Spain. "And if it be
objected," said Burghley, "that except they shall admit the French King
to the absolute dominion, he will not aid them, and they, for lack of
succour, be forced to yield to the Spaniard, it may be answered that
rather than they should be wholly subjected to the French, or overcome by
the Spaniard, her Majesty would yield unto them as much as, with
preservation of her estate, and defence of her own country, might be
demanded."

The real object kept in view by the Queen's government was, in short, to
obtain for the Provinces and for the general cause of liberty the
greatest possible amount of assistance from Henry, and to allow him to
acquire in return the least possible amount of power. The end proposed
was a reasonable one, but the means employed savoured too much of
intrigue.

"It may be easily made probable to the States," said the Lord Treasurer,
"that the government of the French is likely to prove as cumbersome and
perilous as that of the Spaniards; and likewise it may probably be
doubted how the French will keep touch and covenants with them, when any
opportunity shall be offered to break them; so that her Majesty thinketh
no good can be looked for to those countries by yielding this large
authority to the French. If they shall continue their title by this grant
to be absolute lords, there is no end, for a long time, to be expected of
this war; and, contrariwise, if they break off, there is an end of any
good composition with the King of Spain."

Shivering and shrinking, but still wading in deeper and deeper, inch by
inch, the cautious minister was fast finding himself too far advanced to
retreat. He was rarely decided, however, and never lucid; and least of
all in emergencies, when decision and lucidity would have been more
valuable than any other qualities.

Deeply doubting, painfully balancing, he at times drove the unfortunate
Davison almost distraught. Puzzled himself and still more puzzling to
others, he rarely permitted the Netherlanders, or even his own agents, to
perceive his drift. It was fair enough, perhaps, to circumvent the French
government by its own arts, but the Netherlanders meanwhile were in
danger of sinking into despair.

"Thus," wrote the Lord Treasurer to the envoy, "I have discoursed to you
of these uncertainties and difficulties, things not unknown to yourself,
but now being imparted to you by her Majesty's commandment, you are, by
your wisdom, to consider with whom to deal for the stay of this French
course, and yet, so to use it (as near as you may) that they of the
French faction there be not able to charge you therewith, by-advertising
into France. For it hath already appeared, by some speeches past between
our ambassador there and Des Pruneaux, that you are had in some jealousy
as a hinderer of this French course, and at work for her Majesty to have
some entrance and partage in that country. Nevertheless our ambassador;
by his answer, hath satisfied them to think the contrary."

They must have been easily satisfied, if they knew as much of the
dealings of her Majesty's government as the reader already knows. To
inspire doubt of the French, to insinuate the probability of their not
"keeping touch and covenant," to represent their rule as "cumbersome and
perilous," was wholesome conduct enough towards the Netherlanders--and
still more so, had it been accompanied with frank offers of
assistance--but it was certainly somewhat to "hinder the courses of the
French."

But in truth all parties were engaged for a season in a round game of
deception, in which nobody was deceived.

Walsingham was impatient, almost indignant at this puerility. "Your
doings, no doubt of it," he wrote to Davison, "are observed by the French
faction, and therefore you cannot proceed so closely but it will be
espied. Howsoever it be, seeing direction groweth from hence, we cannot
but blame ourselves, if the effects thereof do not fall out to our
liking."

That sagacious statesman was too well informed, and too much accustomed
to penetrate the designs of his antagonists, to expect anything from the
present intrigues.

To loiter thus, when mortal blows should be struck, was to give the
Spanish government exactly that of which it was always most
gluttonous--time; and the Netherlanders had none of it to spare. "With
time and myself, there are two of us," was Philip II.'s favourite
observation; and the Prince of Parma was at this moment sorely perplexed
by the parsimony and the hesitations of his own government, by which his
large, swift and most creative genius was so often hampered.

Thus the Spanish soldiers, deep in the trenches, went with bare legs and
empty stomachs in January; and the Dutchmen, among their broken dykes,
were up to their ears in mud and water; and German mercenaries, in the
obedient Provinces, were burning the peasants' houses in order to sell
the iron to buy food withal; while grave-visaged statesmen, in
comfortable cabinets, wagged their long white beards at each other from a
distance, and exchanged grimaces and protocols which nobody heeded.

Walsingham was weary of this solemn trifling. "I conclude," said he to
Davison, "that her Majesty--with reverence be it spoken--is ill advised,
to direct you in a course that is like to work so great peril. I know you
will do your best endeavour to keep all things upright, and yet it is
hard--the disease being now come to this state, or, as the physicians
term it, crisis--to carry yourself in such sort, but that it will, I
fear, breed a dangerous alteration in the cause."

He denounced with impatience, almost with indignation, the insincerity
and injustice of these intolerable hesitations. "Sorry am I," said he,
"to see the course that is taken in this weighty cause, for we will
neither help those poor countries ourselves, nor yet suffer others to do
it. I am not ignorant that in time to come the annexing of these
countries to the crown of France may prove prejudicial to England, but if
France refuse to deal with them, and the rather for that we shall
minister some cause of impediment by a kind of dealing underhand, then
shall they be forced to return into the hands of Spain, which is like to
breed such a present peril towards her Majesty's self, as never a wise
man that seeth it, and loveth her, but lamenteth it from the bottom of
his heart."

Walsingham had made up his mind that it was England, not France, that
should take up the cause of the Provinces, and defend them at every
hazard. He had been overruled, and the Queen's government had decided to
watch the course of the French negotiation, doing what it could,
underhand, to prevent that negotiation from being successful. The
Secretary did not approve of this disingenuous course. At the same time
he had no faith in the good intentions of the French court.

"I could wish," said he, "that the French King were carried with that
honourable mind into the defence of these countries that her Majesty is,
but France has not been used to do things for God's sake; neither do they
mean to use our advice or assistance in making of the bargain. For they
still hold a jealous conceit that when Spain and they are together by the
ears, we will seek underhand to work our own peace." Walsingham,
therefore, earnestly deprecated the attitude provisionally maintained by
England.

Meantime, early in January, (Jan. 3, 1585) the deputation from the
Provinces had arrived in France. The progress of their 1585 negotiation
will soon be related, but, before its result was known, a general
dissatisfaction had already manifested itself in the Netherlands. The
factitious enthusiasm which had been created in favour of France, as well
as the prejudice against England, began to die out. It became probable in
the opinion of those most accustomed to read the signs of the times, that
the French court was acting in connivance with Philip, and that the
negotiation was only intended to amuse the Netherlanders, to circumvent
the English, and to gain time both for France and Spain. It was not
believed that the character of Henry or the policy of his mother was
likely to the cause of any substantial aid to the cause of civil liberty
or Protestant principles.

"They look for no better fruit from the commission to France," wrote
Davison, who surveyed the general state of affairs with much keenness and
breadth of vision, "than a dallying entertainment of the time, neither
leaving them utterly hopeless, nor at full liberty to seek for relief
elsewhere, especially in England, or else some pleasing motion of peace,
wherein the French King will offer his mediation with Spain. Meantime the
people, wearied with the troubles, charges, and hazard of the war, shall
be rocked asleep, the provision for their defence neglected, some
Provinces nearest the danger seduced, the rest by their defection
astonished, and the enemy by their decay and confusions, strengthened.
This is the scope whereto the doings of the French King, not without
intelligence with the Spanish sovereign, doth aim, whatever is
pretended."

There was a wide conviction that the French King was dealing falsely with
the Provinces. It seemed certain that he must be inspired by intense
jealousy of England, and that he was unlikely, for the sake of those
whose "religion, popular liberty, and rebellion against their sovereign,"
he could not but disapprove, to allow Queen Elizabeth to steal a march
upon him, and "make her own market with Spain to his cost and
disadvantage."

In short, it was suspected--whether justly or not will be presently
shown--that Henry III. "was seeking to blear the eyes of the world, as
his brother Charles did before the Massacre of St. Bartholomew." As the
letters received from the Dutch envoys in France became less and less
encouraging, and as the Queen was informed by her ambassador in Paris of
the tergiversations in Paris, she became the more anxious lest the States
should be driven to despair. She therefore wrote to Davison, instructing
him "to nourish in them underhand some hope--as a thing proceeding from
himself--that though France should reject them, yet she would not abandon
them."

He was directed to find out, by circuitous means, what towns they would
offer to her as security for any advances she might be induced to make,
and to ascertain the amount of monthly contributions towards the support
of the war that they were still capable of furnishing. She was beginning
to look with dismay at the expatriation of wealthy merchants and
manufacturers going so rapidly forward, now that Ghent had fallen and
Brussels and Antwerp were in such imminent peril. She feared that, while
so much valuable time had been thrown away, the Provinces had become too
much impoverished to do their own part in their own defence; and she was
seriously alarmed at rumours which had become prevalent of a popular
disposition towards treating for a peace at any price with Spain. It soon
became evident that these rumours were utterly without foundation, but
the other reasons for Elizabeth's anxiety were sufficiently valid.

On the whole, the feeling in favour of England was rapidly gaining
ground. In Holland especially there was general indignation against the
French party. The letters of the deputies occasioned "murmur and mislike"
of most persons, who noted them to contain "more ample report of
ceremonies and compliments than solid argument of comfort."

Sir Edward Stafford, who looked with great penetration into the heart of
the mysterious proceedings at Paris, assured his government that no
better result was to be looked for, "after long dalliance and
entertainment, than either a flat refusal or such a masked embracing of
their cause, as would rather tend to the increasing of their miseries and
confusion than relief for their declining estate." While "reposing upon a
broken reed," they were, he thought, "neglecting other means more
expedient for their necessities."

This was already the universal opinion in Holland. Men now remembered,
with bitterness, the treachery of the Duke of Anjou, which they had been
striving so hard to forget, but which less than two years ago had nearly
proved fatal to the cause of liberty in the Provinces. A committee of the
States had an interview with the Queen's envoy at the Hague; implored her
Majesty through him not to abandon their cause; expressed unlimited
regret for the course which had been pursued, and avowed a determination
"to pluck their heads out of the collar," so soon as the opportunity
should offer.

They stated, moreover, that they had been directed by the assembly to lay
before him the instructions for the envoys to France, and the articles
proposed for the acceptance of the King. The envoy knew his business
better than not to have secretly provided himself with copies of these
documents, which he had already laid before his own government.

He affected, however, to feel hurt that he had been thus kept in
ignorance of papers which he really knew by heart. "After some pretended
quarrel," said he, "for their not acquainting me therewith sooner, I did
accept them, as if I had before neither seen nor heard of them."

This then was the aspect of affairs in the provinces during the absence
of the deputies in France. It is now necessary to shift the scene to that
country.




CHAPTER IV.

   Reception of the Dutch Envoys at the Louvre--Ignominious Result of
   the Embassy--Secret Influences at work--Bargaining between the
   French and Spanish Courts--Claims of Catharine de' Medici upon
   Portugal--Letters of Henry and Catharine--Secret Proposal by France
   to invade England--States' Mission to Henry of Navarre--Subsidies
   of Philip to Guise--Treaty of Joinville--Philip's Share in the
   League denied by Parma--Philip in reality its Chief--Manifesto of
   the League--Attitude of Henry III. and of Navarre--The League
   demands a Royal Decree--Designs of France and Spain against England
   --Secret Interview of Mendoza and Villeroy--Complaints of English
   Persecution--Edict of Nemours--Excommunication of Navarre and his
   Reply.

The King, notwithstanding his apparent reluctance, had, in Sir Edward
Stafford's language, "nibbled at the bait." He had, however, not been
secured at the first attempt, and now a second effort was to be made,
under what were supposed to be most favourable circumstances. In
accordance with his own instructions, his envoy, Des Pruneaux, had been
busily employed in the States, arranging the terms of a treaty which
should be entirely satisfactory. It had been laid down as an
indispensable condition that Holland and Zeeland should unite in the
offer of sovereignty, and, after the expenditure of much eloquence,
diplomacy, and money, Holland and Zeeland had given their consent. The
court had been for some time anxious and impatient for the arrival of the
deputies. Early in December, Des Pruneaux wrote from Paris to Count
Maurice, urging with some asperity, the necessity of immediate action.

"When I left you," he said, "I thought that performance would follow
promises. I have been a little ashamed, as the time passed by, to hear
nothing of the deputies, nor of any excuse on the subject. It would seem
as though God had bandaged the eyes of those who have so much cause to
know their own adversity."

To the States his language was still more insolent. "Excuse me,
Gentlemen," he said, "if I tell you that I blush at hearing nothing from
you. I shall have the shame and you the damage. I regret much the capture
of De Teligny, and other losses which are occasioned by your delays and
want of resolution."

Thus did the French court, which a few months before had imprisoned, and
then almost ignominiously dismissed the envoys who came to offer the
sovereignty of the Provinces, now rebuke the governments which had ever
since been strenuously engaged in removing all obstacles to the entire
fulfillment of the King's demands. The States were just despatching a
solemn embassy to renew that offer, with hardly any limitation as to
terms.

The envoys arrived on January 3rd, 1585, at Boulogne, after a stormy
voyage from Brielle. Yet it seems incredible to relate, that, after all
the ignominy heaped upon the last, there was nothing but solemn trifling
in reserve for the present legation; although the object of both
embassies was to offer a crown. The deputies were, however, not kept in
prison, upon this occasion, nor treated like thieves or spies. They were
admirably lodged, with plenty of cooks and lacqueys to minister to them;
they fared sumptuously every day, at Henry's expense, and, after they had
been six weeks in the kingdom, they at last succeeded in obtaining their
first audience.

On the 13th February the King sent five "very splendid, richly-gilded,
court-coach-waggons" to bring the envoys to the palace. At one o'clock
they arrived at the Louvre, and were ushered through four magnificent
antechambers into the royal cabinet. The apartments through which they
passed swarmed with the foremost nobles, court-functionaries, and ladies
of France, in blazing gala costume, who all greeted the envoys with
demonstrations of extreme respect: The halls and corridors were lined
with archers, halbardiers, Swiss guards, and grooms "besmeared with
gold," and it was thought that all this rustle of fine feathers would be
somewhat startling to the barbarous republicans, fresh from the fens of
Holland.

Henry received them in his cabinet, where he was accompanied only by the
Duke of Joyeuse--his foremost and bravest "minion"--by the Count of
Bouscaige, M. de Valette, and the Count of Chateau Vieux.

The most Christian King was neatly dressed, in white satin doublet and
hose, and well-starched ruff, with a short cloak on his shoulders, a
little velvet cap on the side of his head, his long locks duly perfumed
and curled, his sword at his side, and a little basket, full of puppies,
suspended from his neck by a broad ribbon. He held himself stiff and
motionless, although his face smiled a good-humoured welcome to the
ambassadors; and he moved neither foot, hand, nor head, as they advanced.

Chancellor Leoninus, the most experienced, eloquent, and tedious of men,
now made an interminable oration, fertile in rhetoric and barren in
facts; and the King made a short and benignant reply, according to the
hallowed formula in such cases provided. And then there was a
presentation to the Queen, and to the Queen-Mother, when Leoninus was
more prolix than before, and Catharine even more affectionate than her
son; and there were consultations with Chiverny and Villeroy, and Brulart
and Pruneaux, and great banquets at the royal expense, and bales of
protocols, and drafts of articles, and conditions and programmes and
apostilles by the hundred weight, and at last articles of annexation were
presented by the envoys, and Pruneaux looked at and pronounced them "too
raw and imperative," and the envoys took them home again, and dressed
them and cooked them till there was no substance left in them; for
whereas the envoys originally offered the crown of their country to
France, on condition that no religion but the reformed religion should be
tolerated there, no appointments made but by the States, and no security
offered for advances to be made by the Christian King, save the hearts
and oaths of his new subjects--so they now ended by proposing the
sovereignty unconditionally, almost abjectly; and, after the expiration
of nearly three months, even these terms were absolutely refused, and the
deputies were graciously permitted to go home as they came. The
annexation and sovereignty were definitely declined. Henry regretted and
sighed, Catharine de' Medici wept--for tears were ever at her
command--Chancellor Chiverny and Secretary Brulart wept likewise, and
Pruneaux was overcome with emotion at the parting interview of the
ambassadors with the court, in which they were allowed a last opportunity
for expressing what was called their gratitude.

And then, on the lath March, M. d'Oignon came to them, and presented, on
the part of the King, to each of the envoys a gold chain weighing
twenty-one ounces and two grains.

Des Pruneaux, too--Des Pruneaux who had spent the previous summer in the
Netherlands, who had travelled from province to province, from city to
city, at the King's command, offering boundless assistance, if they would
unanimously offer their sovereignty; who had vanquished by his
importunity the resistance of the stern Hollanders, the last of all the
Netherlanders to yield to the royal blandishments--Des Pruneaux, who had
"blushed"--Des Pruneaux who had wept--now thought proper to assume an
airy tone, half encouragement, half condolence.

"Man proposes, gentlemen," said he "but God disposes. We are frequently
called on to observe that things have a great variety of times and terms.
Many a man is refused by a woman twice, who succeeds the third time," and
so on, with which wholesome apothegms Des Pruneaux faded away then and
for ever from the page of Netherland history.

In a few days afterwards the envoys took shipping at Dieppe, and arrived
early in April at the Hague.

And thus terminated the negotiation of the States with France.

It had been a scene of elaborate trifling on the King's part from
beginning to end. Yet the few grains of wheat which have thus been
extracted from the mountains of diplomatic chaff so long mouldering in
national storehouses, contain, however dry and tasteless, still something
for human nourishment. It is something to comprehend the ineffable
meanness of the hands which then could hold the destiny of mighty
empires. Here had been offered a magnificent prize to France; a great
extent of frontier in the quarter where expansion was most desirable, a
protective network of towns and fortresses on the side most vulnerable,
flourishing, cities on the sea-coast where the marine traffic was most
lucrative, the sovereignty of a large population, the most bustling,
enterprising, and hardy in Europe--a nation destined in a few short years
to become the first naval and commercial power in the world--all this was
laid at the feet of Henry Valois and Catharine de' Medici, and rejected.

The envoys, with their predecessors, had wasted eight months of most
precious time; they had heard and made orations, they had read and
written protocols, they had witnessed banquets, masquerades, and revels
of stupendous frivolity, in honour of the English Garter, brought
solemnly to the Valois by Lord Derby, accompanied by one hundred
gentlemen "marvellously, sumptuously, and richly accoutred," during that
dreadful winter when the inhabitants of Brussels, Antwerp, Mechlin--to
save which splendid cities and to annex them to France, was a main object
of the solemn embassy from the Netherlands--were eating rats, and cats,
and dogs, and the weeds from the pavements, and the grass from the
churchyards; and were finding themselves more closely pressed than ever
by the relentless genius of Farnese; and in exchange for all these losses
and all this humiliation, the ambassadors now returned to their
constituents, bringing an account of Chiverny's magnificent banquets and
long orations, of the smiles of Henry III., the tears of Catharine de'
Medici, the regrets of M. des Pruneaux, besides sixteen gold chains, each
weighing twenty-one ounces and two grains.

It is worth while to go for a moment behind the scene; We have seen the
actors, with mask and cothurn and tinsel crown, playing their well-conned
parts upon the stage. Let us hear them threaten, and whimper, and chaffer
among themselves.

So soon as it was intimated that Henry III. was about to grant the
Netherland, envoys an audience, the wrath of ambassador Mendoza was
kindled. That magniloquent Spaniard instantly claimed an interview with
the King, before whom, according to the statement of his colleagues,
doing their best to pry into these secrets, he blustered and bounced, and
was more fantastical in his insolence than even Spanish envoy had ever
been before.

"He went presently to court," so Walsingham was informed by Stafford,
"and dealt very passionately with the King and Queen-Mother to deny them
audience, who being greatly offended with his presumptuous and malapert
manner of proceeding, the King did in choler and with some sharp
speeches, let him plainly understand that he was an absolute king, bound
to yield account of his doings to no man, and that it was lawful for him
to give access to any man within his own realm. The Queen-Mother answered
him likewise very roundly, whereupon he departed for the time, very much
discontented."

Brave words, on both sides, if they had ever been spoken, or if there had
been any action corresponding to their spirit.

But, in truth, from the beginning, Henry and his mother saw in the
Netherland embassy only the means of turning a dishonest penny. Since the
disastrous retreat of Anjou from the Provinces, the city of Cambray had
remained in the hands of the Seigneur de Balagny, placed there by the
duke. The citadel, garrisoned by French troops, it was not the intention
of Catharine de' Medici to restore to Philip, and a truce on the subject
had been arranged provisionally for a year. Philip, taking Parma's advice
to prevent the French court, if possible, from "fomenting the Netherland
rebellion," had authorized the Prince to conclude that truce, as if done
on his own responsibility, and not by royal order. Meantime, Balagny was
gradually swelling into a petty potentate, on his own account, making
himself very troublesome to the Prince of Parma, and requiring a great
deal of watching. Cambray was however apparently acquired for France.

But, besides this acquisition, there was another way of earning something
solid, by turning this Netherland matter handsomely to account. Philip
II. had recently conquered Portugal. Among the many pretensions to that
crown, those of Catherine de' Medici had been put forward, but had been
little heeded. The claim went back more than three hundred years, and to
establish its validity would have been to convert the peaceable
possession of a long line of sovereigns into usurpation. To ascend to
Alphonso III. was like fetching, as it was said, a claim from Evander's
grandmother. Nevertheless, ever since Philip had been upon the Portuguese
throne, Catherine had been watching the opportunity, not of unseating
that sovereign, but of converting her claim into money.

The Netherland embassy seemed to offer the coveted opportunity. There
was, therefore, quite as much warmth at the outset, on the part of
Mendoza, in that first interview after the arrival of the deputies, as
had been represented. There was however less dignity and more cunning on
the part of Henry and Catherine than was at all suspected. Even before
that conference the King had been impatiently expecting overtures from
the Spanish envoy, and had been disappointed. "He told me," said Henry,
"that he would make proposals so soon as Tassis should be gone, but he
has done nothing yet. He said to Gondi that all he meant was to get the
truce of Cambray accomplished. I hope, however, that my brother, the King
of Spain, will do what is right in regard to madam my mother's
pretensions. 'Tis likely that he will be now incited thereto, seeing that
the deputies of all the Netherland provinces are at present in my
kingdom, to offer me carte blanche. I shall hear what they have to say,
and do exactly what the good of my own affairs shall seem to require. The
Queen of England, too, has been very pressing and urgent with me for
several months on this subject. I shall hear, too, what she has to say,
and I presume, if the King of Spain will now disclose himself, and do
promptly what he ought, that we may set Christendom at rest."

Henry then instructed his ambassador in Spain to keep his eyes wide open,
in order to penetrate the schemes of Philip, and to this end ordered him
an increase of salary by a third, that he might follow that monarch on
his journey to Arragon.

Meanwhile Mendoza had audience of his Majesty. "He made a very pressing
remonstrance," said the King, "concerning the arrival of these deputies,
urging me to send them back at once; denouncing them as disobedient
rebels and heretics. I replied that my kingdom was free, and that I
should hear from them all that they had to say, because I could not
abandon madam my mother in her pretensions, not only for the filial
obedience which I owe her, but because I am her only heir. Mendoza
replied that he should go and make the same remonstrance to the
Queen-Mother, which he accordingly did, and she will herself write you
what passed between them. If they do not act up to their duty down there
I know how to take my revenge upon them."

This is the King's own statement--his veriest words--and he was surely
best aware of what occurred between himself and Mendoza, under their four
eyes only. The ambassador is not represented as extremely insolent, but
only pressing; and certainly there is little left of the fine periods on
Henry's part about listening to the cry of the oppressed, or preventing
the rays of his ancestors' diadem from growing pale, with which
contemporary chronicles are filled.

There was not one word of the advancement and glory of the French nation;
not a hint of the fame to be acquired by a magnificent expansion of
territory, still less of the duty to deal generously or even honestly
with an oppressed people, who in good faith were seeking an asylum in
exchange for offered sovereignty, not a syllable upon liberty of
conscience, of religious or civil rights; nothing but a petty and
exclusive care for the interests of his mother's pocket, and of his own
as his mother's heir. This farthing-candle was alone to guide the steps
of "the high and mighty King," whose reputation was perpetually
represented as so precious to him in all the conferences between his
ministers and the Netherland deputies. Was it possible for those envoys
to imagine the almost invisible meanness of such childish tricks?

The Queen-Mother was still more explicit and unblushing throughout the
whole affair.

"The ambassador of Spain," she said, "has made the most beautiful
remonstrances he could think of about these deputies from the
Netherlands. All his talk, however, cannot persuade me to anything else
save to increase my desire to have reparation for the wrong that has been
done me in regard to my claims upon Portugal, which I am determined to
pursue by every means within my power. Nevertheless I have told Don
Bernardino that I should always be ready to embrace any course likely to
bring about a peaceful conclusion. He then entered into a discussion of
my rights, which, he said, were not thought in Spain to be founded in
justice. But when I explained to him the principal points (of which I
possess all the pieces of evidence and justification), he hardly knew
what to say, save that he was astounded that I had remained so long
without speaking of my claims. In reply, I told him ingenuously the
truth."

The truth which the ingenuous Catharine thus revealed was, in brief, that
all her predecessors had been minors, women, and persons in situations
not to make their rights valid. Finding herself more highly placed, she
had advanced her claims, which had been so fully recognized in Portugal,
that she had been received as Infanta of the kingdom. All pretensions to
the throne being now through women only, hers were the best of any. At
all this Don Bernardino expressed profound astonishment, and promised to
send a full account to his master of "the infinite words" which had
passed between them at this interview!

"I desire," said Catharine, "that the Lord King of Spain should open his
mind frankly and promptly upon the recompense which he is willing to make
me for Portugal, in order that things may pass rather with gentleness
than otherwise."

It was expecting a great deal to look for frankness and promptness from
the Lord King of Spain, but the Queen-Mother considered that the
Netherland envoys had put a whip into her hand. She was also determined
to bring Philip up to the point, without showing her own game. "I will
never say," said Catharine--ingenuous no longer--"I will never say how
much I ask, but, on the contrary, I shall wait for him to make the offer.
I expect it to be reasonable, because he has seen fit to seize and occupy
that which I declare to be my property."

This is the explanation of all the languor and trifling of the French
court in the Netherland negotiation. A deep, constant, unseen current was
running counter to all the movement which appeared upon the surface. The
tergiversations of the Spanish cabinet in the Portugal matter were the
cause of the shufflings of the French ministers on the subject of the
Provinces.

"I know well," said Henry a few days later, "that the people down there,
and their ambassador here, are leading us on with words, as far as they
can, with regard to the recompense of madam my mother for her claims upon
Portugal. But they had better remember (and I think they will), that out
of the offers which these sixteen deputies of the Netherlands are
bringing me--and I believe it to be carte blanche--I shall be able to pay
myself. 'Twill be better to come promptly to a good bargain and a brief
conclusion, than to spin the matter out longer."

"Don Bernardino," said the Queen-Mother on the same day, "has been
keeping us up to this hour in hopes of a good offer, but 'tis to be
feared, for the good of Christendom, that 'twill be too late. The
deputies are come, bringing carte blanche. Nevertheless, if the King of
Spain is willing to be reasonable, and that instantly, it will be well,
and it would seem as if God had been pleased to place this means in our
hands."

After the conferences had been fairly got under way between the French
government and the envoys, the demands upon Philip for a good bargain and
a handsome offer became still more pressing.

"I have given audience to the deputies from the Provinces," wrote Henry,
"and the Queen-Mother has done the same. Chancellor Chiverny, Villequier,
Bellievre, and Brulart, will now confer with them from day today. I now
tell you that it will be well, before things go any farther, for the King
of Spain to come to reason about the pretensions of madam mother. This
will be a means of establishing the repose of Christendom. I shall be
very willing to concur in such an arrangement, if I saw any approximation
to it on the part of the King or his ministers. But I fear they will
delay too long, and so you had better tell them. Push them to the point
as much as possible, without letting them suspect that I have been
writing about it, for that would make them rather draw back than come
forward."

At the same time, during this alternate threatening and coaxing between
the French and the Spanish court, and in the midst of all the solemn and
tedious protocolling of the ministry and the Dutch envoys, there was a
most sincere and affectionate intercourse maintained between Henry III.
and the Prince of Parma. The Spanish Governor-General was assured that
nothing but the warmest regard was entertained for him and his master on
the part of the French court. Parma had replied, however, that so many
French troops had in times past crossed the frontier to assist the
rebels, that he hardly knew what to think. He expressed the hope, now
that the Duke of Anjou was dead, that his Christian Majesty would not
countenance the rebellion, but manifest his good-will.

"How can your Highness doubt it," said Malpierre, Henry's envoy, "for his
Majesty has given proof enough of his good will, having prevented all
enterprises in this regard, and preferred to have his own subjects cut
into pieces rather than that they should carry out their designs. Had his
Majesty been willing merely to connive at these undertakings, 'tis
probable that the affairs of your highness would not have succeeded so
well as they have done."

With regard to England, also, the conduct of Henry and his mother in
these negotiations was marked by the same unfathomable duplicity. There
was an appearance of cordiality on the surface; but there was deep
plotting, and bargaining, and even deadly hostility lurking below. We
have seen the efforts which Elizabeth's government had been making to
counteract the policy which offered the sovereignty of the provinces to
the French monarch. At the same time there was at least a loyal
disposition upon the Queen's part to assist the Netherlands, in
concurrence with Henry. The demeanour of Burghley and his colleagues was
frankness itself, compared with the secret schemings of the Valois; for
at least peace and good-will between the "triumvirate" of France, England
and the Netherlands, was intended, as the true means of resisting the
predominant influence of Spain.

Yet very soon after the solemn reception by Henry of the garter brought
by Lord Derby, and in the midst of the negotiations between the French
court and the United Provinces, the French king was not only attempting
to barter the sovereignty offered him by the Netherlanders against a
handsome recompense for the Portugal claim, but he was actually proposing
to the King of Spain to join with him in an invasion of England! Even
Philip himself must have admired and respected such a complication of
villany on the part of his most Christian brother. He was, however, not
disposed to put any confidence in his schemes.

"With regard to the attempt against England," wrote Philip to Mendoza,
"you must keep your eyes open--you must look at the danger of letting
them, before they have got rid of their rivals and reduced their
heretics, go out of their own house and kingdom, and thus of being made
fools of when they think of coming back again. Let them first exterminate
the heretics of France, and then we will look after those of England;
because 'tis more important to finish those who are near than those afar
off. Perhaps the Queen-Mother proposes this invasion in order to proceed
more feebly with matters in her own kingdom; and thus Mucio (Duke of
Guise) and his friends will not have so safe a game, and must take heed
lest they be deceived."

Thus it is obvious that Henry and Catharine intended, on the whole, to
deceive the English and the Netherlanders, and to get as good a bargain
and as safe a friendship from Philip as could be manufactured out of the
materials placed in the French King's hands by the United Provinces.
Elizabeth honestly wished well to the States, but allowed Burghley and
those who acted with him to flatter themselves with the chimera that
Henry could be induced to protect the Netherlands without assuming the
sovereignty of that commonwealth. The Provinces were fighting for their
existence, unconscious of their latent strength, and willing to trust to
France or to England, if they could only save themselves from being
swallowed by Spain. As for Spain itself, that country was more practised
in duplicity even than the government of the Medici-Valois, and was of
course more than a match at the game of deception for the franker
politicians of England and Holland.

The King of Navarre had meanwhile been looking on at a distance. Too keen
an observer, too subtle a reasoner to doubt the secret source of the
movements then agitating France to its centre, he was yet unable to
foresee the turn that all these intrigues were about to take. He could
hardly doubt that Spain was playing a dark and desperate game with the
unfortunate Henry III.; for, as we have seen, he had himself not long
before received a secret and liberal offer from Philip II., if he would
agree to make war upon the King. But the Bearnese was not the man to play
into the hands of Spain, nor could he imagine the possibility of the
Valois or even of his mother taking so suicidal a course.

After the Netherland deputies had received their final dismissal from the
King, they sent Calvart, who had been secretary to their embassy, on a
secret mission to Henry of Navarre, then resident at Chartres.

The envoy communicated to the Huguenot chief the meagre result of the
long negotiation with the French court. Henry bade him be of good cheer,
and assured him of his best wishes for their cause. He expressed the
opinion that the King of France would now either attempt to overcome the
Guise faction by gentle means, or at once make war upon them. The Bishop
of Acqs had strongly recommended the French monarch to send the King of
Navarre, with a strong force, to the assistance of the Netherlands,
urging the point with much fervid eloquence and solid argument. Henry for
a moment had seemed impressed, but such a vigorous proceeding was of
course entirely beyond his strength, and he had sunk back into his
effeminate languor so soon as the bold bishop's back was turned.

The Bearnese had naturally conceived but little hope that such a scheme
would be carried into effect; but he assured Calvart, that nothing could
give him greater delight than to mount and ride in such a cause.

"Notwithstanding," said the Bearnese, "that the villanous intentions of
the Guises are becoming plainer and plainer, and that they are obviously
supplied with Spanish dollars, I shall send a special envoy to the most
Christian King, and, although 'tis somewhat late, implore him to throw
his weight into the scale, in order to redeem your country from its
misery. Meantime be of good heart, and defend as you have done your
hearths, your liberty, and the honour of God."

He advised the States unhesitatingly to continue their confidence in the
French King, and to keep him informed of their plans and movements;
expressing the opinion that these very intrigues of the Guise party would
soon justify or even force Henry III. openly to assist the Netherlands.

So far, at that very moment, was so sharp a politician as the Bearnese
from suspecting the secret schemes of Henry of Valois. Calvart urged the
King of Navarre to assist the States at that moment with some slight
subsidy. Antwerp was in such imminent danger as to fill the hearts of all
true patriots with dismay; and a timely succour, even if a slender one,
might be of inestimable value.

Henry expressed profound regret that his own means were so limited, and
his own position so dangerous, as to make it difficult for him to
manifest in broad daylight the full affection which he bore the
Provinces.

"To my sorrow," said he, "your proposition is made in the midst of such
dark and stormy weather, that those who have clearest sight are unable to
see to what issue these troubles of France are tending."

Nevertheless, with much generosity and manliness, he promised Calvart to
send two thousand soldiers, at his own charges, to the Provinces without
delay; and authorised that envoy to consult with his agent at the court
of the French King, in order to obtain the royal permission for the
troops to cross the frontier.

The crownless and almost houseless King had thus, at a single interview,
and in exchange for nothing but good wishes, granted what the most
Christian monarch of France had refused, after months of negotiation, and
with sovereignty as the purchase-money. The envoy, well pleased, sped as
swiftly as possible to Paris; but, as may easily be imagined, Henry of
Valois forbade the movement contemplated by Henry of Navarre.

"His Majesty," said Villeroy, secretary of state, "sees no occasion, in
so weighty a business, thus suddenly to change his mind; the less so,
because he hopes to be able ere long to smooth over these troubles which
have begun in France. Should the King either openly or secretly assist
the Netherlands or allow them to be assisted, 'twould be a reason for all
the Catholics now sustaining his Majesty's party to go over to the Guise
faction. The Provinces must remain firm, and make no pacification with
the enemy. Meantime the Queen of England is the only one to whom God has
given means to afford you succour. One of these days, when the proper
time comes, his Majesty will assist her in affording you relief."

Calvart, after this conference with the King of Navarre, and subsequently
with the government, entertained a lingering hope that the French King
meant to assist the Provinces. "I know well who is the author of these
troubles," said the unhappy monarch, who never once mentioned the name of
Guise in all those conferences, "but, if God grant me life, I will give
him as good as he sends, and make him rue his conduct."

They were not aware after how many strange vacillations Henry was one day
to wreak this threatened vengeance. As for Navarre, he remained upon the
watch, good humoured as ever, more merry and hopeful as the tempest grew
blacker; manifesting the most frank and friendly sentiments towards the
Provinces, and writing to Queen Elizabeth in the chivalrous style so dear
to the heart of that sovereign, that he desired nothing better than to be
her "servant and captain-general against the common enemy."

But, indeed, the French King was not so well informed as he imagined
himself to be of the authorship of these troubles. Mucio, upon whose head
he thus threatened vengeance, was but the instrument. The concealed hand
that was directing all these odious intrigues, and lighting these flames
of civil war which were so long to make France a scene of desolation, was
that of the industrious letter-writer in the Escorial. That which Henry
of Navarre shrewdly suspected, when he talked of the Spanish dollars in
the Balafre's pocket, that which was dimly visible to the Bishop of Acqs
when he told Henry III. that the "Tagus had emptied itself into the Seine
and Loire, and that the gold of Mexico was flowing into the royal
cabinet," was much more certain than they supposed.

Philip, in truth, was neglecting his own most pressing interests that he
might direct all his energies towards entertaining civil war in France.
That France should remain internally at peace was contrary to all his
plans. He had therefore long kept Guise and his brother, the Cardinal de
Lorraine, in his pay, and he had been spending large sums of money to
bribe many of the most considerable functionaries in the kingdom.

The most important enterprises in the Netherlands were allowed to
languish, that these subterranean operations of the "prudent" monarch of
Spain should be pushed forward. The most brilliant and original genius
that Philip had the good fortune to have at his disposal, the genius of
Alexander Farnese, was cramped and irritated almost to madness, by the
fetters imposed upon it, by the sluggish yet obstinate nature of him it
was bound to obey. Farnese was at that moment engaged in a most arduous
military undertaking, that famous siege of Antwerp, the details of which
will be related in future chapters, yet he was never furnished with men
or money enough to ensure success to a much more ordinary operation. His
complaints, subdued but intense, fell almost unheeded on his master's
ear. He had not "ten dollars at his command," his cavalry horses were all
dead of hunger or had been eaten by their riders, who were starving to
death themselves, his army had dwindled to a "handful," yet he still held
on to his purpose, in spite of famine, the desperate efforts of
indefatigable enemies, and all the perils and privations of a deadly
winter. He, too, was kept for a long time in profound ignorance of
Philip's designs.

Meantime, while the Spanish soldiers were starving in Flanders, Philip's
dollars were employed by Mucio and his adherents in enlisting troops in
Switzerland and Germany, in order to carry on the civil war in France.
The French king was held systematically up to ridicule or detestation in
every village-pulpit in his own kingdom, while the sister of Mucio, the
Duchess of Montpensier, carried the scissors at her girdle, with which
she threatened to provide Henry with a third crown, in addition to those
of France and Poland, which he had disgraced--the coronal tonsure of a
monk. The convent should be, it was intimated, the eventual fate of the
modern Childeric, but meantime it was more important than ever to
supersede the ultimate pretensions of Henry of Navarre. To prevent that
heretic of heretics, who was not to be bought with Spanish gold, from
ever reigning, was the first object of Philip and Mucio.

Accordingly, on the last day of the year 1584, a secret treaty had been
signed at Joinville between Henry of Guise and his brother the Duc de
Mayenne, holding the proxies of their brother the Cardinal and those of
their uncles, Aumale and Elbeuf, on the one part, and John Baptist Tassis
and Commander Moreo, on the other, as representatives of Philip. This
transaction, sufficiently well known now to the most superficial student
of history, was a profound mystery then, so far as regarded the action of
the Spanish king. It was not a secret, however, that the papistical party
did not intend that the Bearnese prince should ever come to the throne,
and the matter of the succession was discussed, precisely as if the
throne had been vacant.

It was decided that Charles, paternal uncle to Henry of Navarre, commonly
called the Cardinal Bourbon, should be considered successor to the crown,
in place of Henry, whose claim was forfeited by heresy. Moreover, a great
deal of superfluous money and learning was expended in ordering some
elaborate legal arguments to be prepared by venal jurisconsults, proving
not only that the uncle ought to succeed before the nephew, but that
neither the one nor the other had any claim to succeed at all. The pea
having thus been employed to do the work which the sword alone could
accomplish, the poor old Cardinal was now formally established by the
Guise faction as presumptive heir to the crown.

A man of straw, a superannuated court-dangler, a credulous trifler, but
an earnest Papist as his brother Antony had been, sixty-six years old,
and feeble beyond his years, who, his life long, had never achieved one
manly action, and had now one foot in the grave; this was the puppet
placed in the saddle to run a tilt against the Bearnese, the man with
foot ever in the stirrup, with sword rarely in its sheath.

The contracting parties at Joinville agreed that the Cardinal should
succeed on the death of the reigning king, and that no heretic should
ever ascend the throne, or hold the meanest office in the kingdom. They
agreed further that all heretics should be "exterminated" without
distinction throughout France and the Netherlands. In order to procure
the necessary reforms among the clergy, the council of Trent was to be
fully carried into effect. Philip pledged himself to furnish at least
fifty thousand crowns monthly, for the advancement of this Holy League,
as it was denominated, and as much more as should prove necessary. The
sums advanced were to be repaid by the Cardinal on his succeeding to the
throne. All the great officers of the crown, lords and gentlemen, cities,
chapters, and universities, all Catholics, in short, in the kingdom, were
deemed to be included in the league. If any foreign Catholic prince
desired to enter the union, he should be admitted with the consent of
both parties. Neither his Catholic majesty nor the confederated princes
should treat with the most Christian King, either directly or indirectly.
The compact was to remain strictly secret--one copy of it being sent to
Philip, while the other was to be retained by Cardinal Bourbon and his
fellow leaguers.

And now--in accordance with this program--Philip proceeded stealthily and
industriously to further the schemes of Mucio, to the exclusion of more
urgent business. Noiseless and secret himself, and delighting in clothing
so much as to glide, as it were, throughout Europe, wrapped in the mantle
of invisibility, he was perpetually provoked by the noise, the bombast,
and the bustle, which his less prudent confederates permitted themselves.
While Philip for a long time hesitated to confide the secret of the
League to Parma, whom it most imported to understand these schemes of his
master, the confederates were openly boasting of the assistance which
they were to derive from Parma's cooperation. Even when the Prince had at
last been informed as to the state of affairs, he stoutly denied the
facts of which the leaguers made their vaunt; thus giving to Mucio and
his friends a lesson in dissimulation.

"Things have now arrived at a point," wrote Philip to Tassis, 15th March,
1585, "that this matter of the League cannot and ought not to be
concealed from those who have a right to know it. Therefore you must
speak clearly to the Prince of Parma, informing him of the whole scheme,
and enjoining the utmost secrecy. You must concert with him as to the
best means of rendering aid to this cause, after having apprised him of
the points which regarded him, and also that of the security of Cardinal
de Bourbon, in case of necessity."

The Prince was anything but pleased, in the midst of his anxiety and his
almost superhuman labour in the Antwerp siege, to be distracted,
impoverished, and weakened, in order to carry out these schemes against
France; but he kept the secret manfully.

To Malpierre, the French envoy in Brussels--for there was the closest
diplomatic communication between Henry III. and Philip, while each was
tampering with the rebellious subjects of the other--to Malpierre Parma
flatly contradicted all complicity on the part of the Spanish King or
himself with the Holy League, of which he knew Philip to be the
originator and the chief.

"If I complain to the Prince of Parma," said the envoy, "of the companies
going from Flanders to assist the League, he will make me no other reply
than that which the President has done--that there is nothing at all in
it--until they are fairly arrived in France. The President (Richardot)
said that if the Catholic King belonged to the League, as they insinuate,
his Majesty would declare the fact openly."

And a few days later, the Prince himself averred, as Malpierre had
anticipated, that "as to any intention on the part of himself or his
Catholic Majesty, to send succour to the League, according to the boast
of these gentlemen, he had never thought of such a thing, nor had
received any order on the subject from his master. If the King intended
to do anything of the kind, he would do it openly. He protested that he
had never seen anything, or known anything of the League."

Here was a man who knew how to keep a secret, and who had no scruples in
the matter of dissimulation, however enraged he might be at seeing men
and money diverted from his own masterly combinations in order to carry
out these schemes of his master.

Mucio, on the contrary, was imprudent and inclined to boast. His contempt
for Henry III, made him blind to the dangers to be apprehended from Henry
of Navarre. He did little, but talked a great deal.

Philip was very anxious that the work should be done both secretly and
thoroughly. "Let the business be finished before Saint John's day," said
he to Tassis, when sending fifty thousand dollars for the use of the
brothers Guise. "Tell Iniquez to warn them not to be sluggish. Let them
not begin in a lukewarm manner, but promise them plenty of assistance
from me, if they conduct themselves properly. Let them beware of
wavering, or of falling into plans of conciliation. If they do their
duty, I will do mine."

But the Guise faction moved slowly despite of Philip's secret promptings.
The truth is, that the means proposed by the Spanish monarch were
ludicrously inadequate to his plans, and it was idle to suppose that the
world was to be turned upside down for his benefit, at the very low price
which he was prepared to pay.

Nothing less than to exterminate all the heretics in Christendom, to
place himself on the thrones of France and of England, and to extinguish
the last spark of rebellion in the Netherlands, was his secret thought,
and yet it was very difficult to get fifty thousand dollars from him from
month to month. Procrastinating and indolent himself, he was for ever
rebuking the torpid movements of the Guises.

"Let Mucio set his game well at the outset," said he; "let him lay the
axe to the root of the tree, for to be wasting time fruitlessly is
sharpening the knife for himself."

This was almost prophetic. When after so much talking and tampering,
there began to be recrimination among the leaguers, Philip was very angry
with his subordinate.

"Here is Mucio," said he, "trying to throw the blame of all the
difficulties, which have arisen, upon us. Not hastening, not keeping his
secret, letting the execution of the enterprise grow cold, and lending an
ear to suggestions about peace, without being sure of its conclusion, he
has turned his followers into cowards, discredited his cause, and given
the King of France opportunity to strengthen his force and improve his
party. These are all very palpable things. I am willing to continue my
friendship for them, but not, if, while they accept it, they permit
themselves to complain, instead of manifesting gratitude."

On the whole, however, the affairs of the League seemed prosperous. There
was doubtless too much display among the confederates, but there was a
growing uneasiness among the royalists. Cardinal Bourbon, discarding his
ecclesiastical robes and scarlet stockings, paraded himself daily in
public, clothed in military costume, with all the airs of royalty. Many
persons thought him mad. On the other hand, Epergnon, the haughty
minion-in-chief, who governed Henry III., and insulted all the world, was
becoming almost polite.

"The progress of the League," said Busbecq, "is teaching the Duc d'
Epergnon manners. 'Tis a youth of such insolence, that without uncovering
he would talk with men of royal descent, while they were bareheaded. 'Tis
a common jest now that he has found out where his hat is."

Thus, for a long time, a network of secret political combinations had
been stretching itself over Christendom. There were great movements of
troops throughout Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, slowly
concentrating themselves upon France; yet, on the whole, the great mass
of the populations, the men and women who were to pay, to fight, to
starve, to be trampled upon, to be outraged, to be plundered, to be
burned out of houses and home, to bleed, and to die, were merely
ignorant, gaping spectators. That there was something very grave in
prospect was obvious, but exactly what was impending they knew no more
than the generation yet unborn. Very noiselessly had the patient manager
who sat in the Escorial been making preparations for that European
tragedy in which most of the actors had such fatal parts assigned them,
and of which few of the spectators of its opening scenes were doomed to
witness the conclusion. A shifting and glancing of lights, a vision of
vanishing feet, a trampling and bustling of unseen crowds, movements of
concealed machinery, a few incoherent words, much noise and confusion
vague and incomprehensible, till at last the tinkling of a small bell,
and a glimpse of the modest manager stealing away as the curtain was
rising--such was the spectacle presented at Midsummer 1585.

And in truth the opening picture was effective. Sixteen black-robed,
long-bearded Netherland envoys stalking away, discomfited and indignant
upon one side; Catharine de' Medici on the other, regarding them with a
sneer, painfully contorted into a pathetic smile; Henry the King, robed
in a sack of penitence, trembling and hesitating, leaning on the arm of
Epergnon, but quailing even under the protection of that mighty
swordsman; Mucio, careering, truncheon in hand, in full panoply, upon his
war-horse, waving forward a mingled mass of German lanzknechts, Swiss
musketeers, and Lorraine pikemen; the redoubtable Don Bernardino de
Mendoza, in front, frowning and ferocious, with his drawn sword in his
hand; Elizabeth of England, in the back ground, with the white-bearded
Burghley and the monastic Walsingham, all surveying the scene with eyes
of deepest meaning; and, somewhat aside, but in full view, silent, calm,
and imperturbably good-humoured, the bold Bearnese, standing with a
mischievous but prophetic smile glittering through his blue eyes and
curly beard--thus grouped were the personages of the drama in the
introductory scenes.

The course of public events which succeeded the departure of the
Netherland deputies is sufficiently well known. The secret negotiations
and intrigues, however, by which those external facts were preceded or
accompanied rest mainly in dusty archives, and it was therefore necessary
to dwell somewhat at length upon them in the preceding pages.

The treaty of Joinville was signed on the last day of the year 1584.

We have seen the real nature of the interview of Ambassador Mendoza with
Henry III. and his mother, which took place early in January, 1585.
Immediately after that conference, Don Bernardino betook himself to the
Duke of Guise, and lost no time in stimulating his confederate to prompt
but secret action.

The Netherland envoys had their last audience on the 18th March, and
their departure and disappointment was the signal for the general
exhibition and explosion. The great civil war began, and the man who
refused to annex the Netherlands to the French kingdom soon ceased to be
regarded as a king.

On the 31st March, the heir presumptive, just manufactured by the Guises,
sent forth his manifesto. Cardinal Bourbon, by this document, declared
that for twenty-four years past no proper measures had been taken to
extirpate the heresy by which France was infested. There was no natural
heir to the King. Those who claimed to succeed at his death had deprived
themselves, by heresy, of their rights. Should they gain their ends, the
ancient religion would be abolished throughout the kingdom, as it had
been in England, and Catholics be subjected to the same frightful
tortures which they were experiencing there. New men, admitted to the
confidence of the crown, clothed with the highest honours, and laden with
enormous emoluments, had excluded the ancient and honoured functionaries
of the state, who had been obliged to sell out their offices to these
upstart successors. These new favourites had seized the finances of the
kingdom, all of which were now collected into the private coffers of the
King, and shared by him with his courtiers. The people were groaning
under new taxes invented every day, yet they knew nothing of the
distribution of the public treasure, while the King himself was so
impoverished as to be unable to discharge his daily debts. Meantime these
new advisers of the crown had renewed to the Protestants of the kingdom
the religious privileges of which they had so justly been deprived, yet
the religious peace which had followed had not brought with it the
promised diminution of the popular burthens. Never had the nation been so
heavily taxed or reduced to such profound misery. For these reasons, he,
Cardinal Bourbon, with other princes of the blood, peers, gentlemen,
cities, and universities, had solemnly bound themselves by oath to
extirpate heresy down to the last root, and to save the people from the
dreadful load under which they were languishing. It was for this that
they had taken up arms, and till that purpose was accomplished they would
never lay them down.

The paper concluded with the hope that his Majesty would not take these
warlike demonstrations amiss; and a copy of the document was placed in
the royal hands.

It was very obvious to the most superficial observer, that the manifesto
was directed almost as much against the reigning sovereign as against
Henry of Navarre. The adherents of the Guise faction, and especially
certain theologians in their employ, had taken very bold grounds upon the
relations between king and subjects, and had made the public very
familiar with their doctrines. It was a duty, they said, "to depose a
prince who did not discharge his duty. Authority ill regulated was
robbery, and it was as absurd to call him a king who knew not how to
govern, as it was to take a blind man for a guide, or to believe that a
statue could influence the movements of living men."

Yet to the faction, inspired by such rebellious sentiments, and which was
thundering in his face such tremendous denunciations, the unhappy Henry
could not find a single royal or manly word of reply. He threw himself on
his knees, when, if ever, he should have assumed an attitude of command.
He answered the insolence of the men, who were parading their contempt
for his authority, by humble excuses, and supplications for pardon. He
threw his crown in the dust before their feet, as if such humility would
induce them to place it again upon his head. He abandoned the minions who
had been his pride, his joy, and his defence, and deprecated, with an
abject whimper, all responsibility for the unmeasured ambition and the
insatiable rapacity of a few private individuals. He conjured the
party-leaders, who had hurled defiance in his face, to lay down their
arms, and promised that they should find in his wisdom and bounty more
than all the advantages which they were seeking to obtain by war.

Henry of Navarre answered in a different strain. The gauntlet had at last
been thrown down to him, and he came forward to take it up; not
insolently nor carelessly, but with the cold courtesy of a Christian
knight and valiant gentleman. He denied the charge of heresy. He avowed
detestation of all doctrines contrary to the Word of God, to the decrees
of the Fathers of the Church, or condemned by the Councils.

The errors and abuses which had from time to time crept into the church,
had long demanded, in the opinion of all pious persons, some measures of
reform. After many bloody wars, no better remedy had been discovered to
arrest the cause of these dire religious troubles, whether in France or
Germany, than to permit all men to obey the dictates of their own
conscience. The Protestants had thus obtained in France many edicts by
which the peace of the kingdom had been secured. He could not himself be
denounced as a heretic, for he had always held himself ready to receive
instruction, and to be set right where he had erred. To call him
"relapsed" was an outrage. Were it true, he were indeed unworthy of the
crown, but the world knew that his change at the Massacre of St.
Bartholomew had been made under duresse, and that he had returned to the
reformed faith when he had recovered his liberty. Religious toleration
had been the object of his life. In what the tyranny of the popes and the
violence of the Spaniards had left him of his kingdom of Navarre,
Catholics and Protestants enjoyed a perfect religious liberty. No man had
the right, therefore, to denounce him as an enemy of the church, or a
disturber of the public repose, for he had ever been willing to accept
all propositions of peace which left the rights of conscience protected.

He was a Frenchman, a prince of France, a living member of the kingdom;
feeling with its pains, and bleeding with its wounds. They who denounced
him were alien to France, factitious portions of her body, feeling no
suffering, even should she be consuming with living fire. The Leaguers
were the friends and the servants of the Spaniards, while he had been
born the enemy, and with too good reason, of the whole Spanish race.

"Let the name of Papist and of Huguenot," he said, "be heard no more
among us. Those terms were buried in the edict of peace. Let us speak
only of Frenchmen and of Spaniards. It is the counter-league which we
must all unite to form, the natural union of the head with all its
members."

Finally, to save the shedding of so much innocent blood, to spare all the
countless miseries of civil war, he implored the royal permission to
terminate this quarrel in person, by single combat with the Duke of
Guise, one to one, two to two, or in as large a number as might be
desired, and upon any spot within or without the kingdom that should be
assigned. "The Duke of Guise," said Henry of Navarre, "cannot but accept
my challenge as an honour, coming as it does from a prince infinitely his
superior in rank; and thus, may God defend the right."

This paper, drawn up by the illustrious Duplessis-Mornay, who was to have
been the second of the King of Navarre in the proposed duel, was signed
10 June 1585.

The unfortunate Henry III., not so dull as to doubt that the true object
of the Guise party was to reduce him to insignificance, and to open their
own way to the throne, was too impotent of purpose to follow the dictates
which his wisest counsellors urged and his own reason approved. His
choice had lain between open hostility with his Spanish enemy and a more
terrible combat with that implacable foe wearing the mask of friendship.
He had refused to annex to his crown the rich and powerful Netherlands,
from dread of a foreign war; and he was now about to accept for himself
and kingdom all the horrors of a civil contest, in which his avowed
antagonist was the first captain of the age, and his nominal allies the
stipendiaries of Philip II.

Villeroy, his prime minister, and Catharine de' Medici, his mother, had
both devoted him to disgrace and ruin. The deputies from the Netherlands
had been dismissed, and now, notwithstanding the festivities and
exuberant demonstrations of friendship with which the Earl of Derby's
splendid embassy had been greeted, it became necessary to bind Henry hand
and foot to the conspirators, who had sworn the destruction of that
Queen, as well as his own, and the extirpation of heresy and heretics in
every realm of Christendom.

On the 9th June the league demanded a royal decree, forbidding the
practice of all religion but the Roman Catholic, on pain of death. In
vain had the clear-sighted Bishop of Acqs uttered his eloquent warnings.
Despite such timely counsels, which he was capable at once of
appreciating and of neglecting, Henry followed slavishly the advice of
those whom he knew in his heart to be his foes, and authorised the great
conspiracy against Elizabeth, against Protestantism, and against himself.

On the 5th June Villeroy had expressed a wish for a very secret interview
with Mendoza, on the subject of the invasion of England.

"It needed not this overture," said that magniloquent Spaniard, "to
engender in a person of my talents, and with the heart of a Mendoza,
venom enough for vengeance. I could not more desire than I did already to
assist in so holy a work; nor could I aspire to greater honour than would
be gained in uniting those crowns (of France and Spain) in strict
friendship, for the purpose of extirpating heresy throughout Europe, and
of chastising the Queen of England--whose abominations I am never likely
to forget, having had them so long before my eyes--and of satisfying my
just resentment for the injuries she has inflicted on myself. It was on
this subject," continued the ambassador, "that Monsieur de Villeroy
wished a secret interview with me, pledging himself--if your Majesty
would deign to unite yourself with this King, and to aid him with your
forces--to a successful result."

Mendoza accordingly expressed a willingness to meet the ingenuous
Secretary of State--who had so recently been assisting at the banquets
and rejoicings with Lord Derby and his companions, which had so much
enlivened the French capital--and assured him that his most Catholic
Majesty would be only too glad to draw closer the bonds of friendship
with the most Christian King, for the service of God and the glory of his
Church.

The next day the envoy and the Secretary of State met, very secretly, in
the house of the Signor Gondi. Villeroy commenced his harangue by an
allusion to the current opinion, that Mendoza had arrived in France with
a torch in his hand, to light the fires of civil war in that kingdom, as
he had recently done in England.

"I do not believe," replied Mendoza, "that discreet and prudent persons
in France attribute my actions to any such motives. As for the ignorant
people of the kingdom, they do not appal me, although they evidently
imagine that I have imbibed, during my residence in England, something of
the spirit of the enchanter Merlin, that, by signs and cabalistic words
alone, I am thought capable of producing such commotions."

After this preliminary flourish the envoy proceeded to complain bitterly
of the most Christian King and his mother, who, after the propositions
which they had made him, when on his way to Spain, had, since his return,
become so very cold and dry towards him. And on this theme he enlarged
for some time.

Villeroy replied, by complaining, in his turn, about the dealings of the
most Catholic King, with the leaguers and the rebels of France; and
Mendoza rejoined by an intimation that harping upon past grievances and
suspicions was hardly the way to bring about harmony in present matters.

Struck with the justice of this remark, the French Secretary of State
entered at once upon business. He made a very long speech upon the
tyranny which "that Englishwoman" was anew inflicting upon the Catholics
in her kingdom, upon the offences which she had committed against the
King of Spain, and against the King of France and his brothers, and upon
the aliment which she had been yielding to the civil war in the
Netherlands and in France for so many years. He then said that if Mendoza
would declare with sincerity, and "without any of the duplicity of a
minister"--that Philip would league himself with Henry for the purpose of
invading England, in order to reduce the three kingdoms to the Catholic
faith, and to place their crowns on the head of the Queen of Scotland, to
whom they of right belonged; then that the King, his master, was most
ready to join in so holy an enterprise. He begged Mendoza to say with
what number of troops the invasion could be made; whether Philip could
send any from Flanders or from Spain; how many it would be well to send
from France, and under what chieftain; in what manner it would be best to
communicate with his most Catholic Majesty; whether it were desirable to
despatch a secret envoy to him, and of what quality such agent ought to
be. He also observed that the most Christian King could not himself speak
to Mendoza on the subject before having communicated the matter to the
Queen-Mother, but expressed a wish that a special carrier might be
forthwith despatched to Spain; for he might be sure that, on an affair of
such weight, he would not have permitted himself to reveal the secret
wishes of his master, except by his commands.

Mendoza replied, by enlarging with much enthusiasm on the facility with
which England could be conquered by the combined power of France and
Spain. If it were not a very difficult matter before--even with the
jealousy between the two crowns--how much less so, now that they could
join their fleets and armies; now that the arming by the one prince would
not inspire the other with suspicion; now that they would be certain of
finding safe harbour in each other's kingdoms, in case of unfavourable
weather and head-winds, and that they could arrange from what ports to
sail, in what direction, and under what commanders. He disapproved,
however, of sending a special messenger to Spain, on the ground of
wishing to keep the matter entirely secret, but in reality--as he
informed Philip--because he chose to keep the management in his own
hands; because he could always let slip Mucio upon them, in case they
should play him false; because he feared that the leaking out of the
secret might discourage the Leaguers, and because he felt that the bolder
and more lively were the Cardinal of Bourbon and his confederates, the
stronger was the party of the King, his master, and the more intimidated
and dispirited would be the mind and the forces of the most Christian
King. "And this is precisely the point," said the diplomatist, "at which
a minister of your Majesty should aim at this season."

Thus the civil war in France--an indispensable part of Philip's
policy--was to be maintained at all hazards; and although the ambassador
was of opinion that the most Christian King was sincere in his
proposition to invade England, it would never do to allow any interval of
tranquillity to the wretched subjects of that Christian King.

"I cannot doubt," said Mendoza, "that the making of this proposal to me
with so much warmth was the especial persuasion of God, who, hearing the
groans of the Catholics of England, so cruelly afflicted, wished to force
the French King and his minister to feel, in the necessity which
surrounds them, that the offending Him, by impeding the grandeur of your
Majesty, would be their total ruin, and that their only salvation is to
unite in sincerity and truth with your Majesty for the destruction of the
heretics."

Therefore, although judging from the nature of the French--he might
imagine that they were attempting to put him to sleep, Mendoza, on the
whole, expressed a conviction that the King was in earnest, having
arrived at the conclusion that he could only get rid of the Guise faction
by sending them over to England. "Seeing that he cannot possibly
eradicate the war from his kingdom," said the envoy, "because of the
boldness with which the Leaguers maintain it, with the strong assistance
of your Majesty, he has determined to embrace with much fervour, and
without any deception at all, the enterprise against England, as the only
remedy to quiet his own dominions. The subjugation of those three
kingdoms, in order to restore them to their rightful owner, is a purpose
so holy, just, and worthy of your Majesty, and one which you have had so
constantly in view, that it is superfluous for me to enlarge upon the
subject. Your Majesty knows that its effects will be the tranquillity and
preservation of all your realms. The reasons for making the attempt, even
without the aid of France, become demonstrations now that she is
unanimously in favour of the scheme. The most Christian King is
resolutely bent--so far as I can comprehend the intrigues of Villeroy--to
carry out this project on the foundation of a treaty with the Guise
party. It will not take much time, therefore, to put down the heretics
here; nor will it consume much more to conquer England with the armies of
two such powerful Princes. The power of that island is of little moment,
there being no disciplined forces to oppose us, even if they were all
unanimous in its defence; how much less then, with so many Catholics to
assist the invaders, seeing them so powerful. If your Majesty, on account
of your Netherlands, is not afraid of putting arms into the hands of the
Guise family in France, there need be less objection to sending one of
that house into England, particularly as you will send forces of your own
into that kingdom, by the reduction of which the affairs of Flanders will
be secured. To effect the pacification of the Netherlands the sooner, it
would be desirable to conquer England as early as October."

Having thus sufficiently enlarged upon the sincerity of the French King
and his prime minister, in their dark projects against a friendly power,
and upon the ease with which that friendly power could be subjected, the
ambassador begged for a reply from his royal master without delay. He
would be careful, meantime, to keep the civil war alive in France--thus
verifying the poetical portrait of himself, the truth of which he had
just been so indignantly and rhetorically denying--but it was desirable
that the French should believe that this civil war was not Philip's sole
object. He concluded by drawing his master's attention to the sufferings
of the English Catholics. "I cannot refrain," he said, "from placing
before your eyes the terrible persecutions which the Catholics are
suffering in England; the blood of the martyrs flowing in so many kinds
of torments; the groans of the prisoners, of the widows and orphans; the
general oppression and servitude, which is the greatest ever endured by a
people of God, under any tyrant whatever. Your Majesty, into whose hands
God is now pleased to place the means, so long desired, of extirpating
and totally destroying the heresies of our time, can alone liberate them
from their bondage."

The picture of these kings, prime ministers, and ambassadors, thus
plotting treason, stratagem, and massacre, is a dark and dreary one. The
description of English sufferings for conscience' sake, under the
Protestant Elizabeth, is even more painful; for it had unfortunately too
much, of truth, although as wilfully darkened and exaggerated as could be
done by religious hatred and Spanish bombast. The Queen was surrounded by
legions of deadly enemies. Spain, the Pope, the League, were united in
one perpetual conspiracy against her; and they relied on the cooperation
of those subjects of hers whom her own cruelty was converting into
traitors.

We read with a shudder these gloomy secrets of conspiracy and wholesale
murder, which make up the diplomatic history of the sixteenth century,
and we cease to wonder that a woman, feeling herself so continually the
mark at which all the tyrants and assassins of Europe were
aiming--although not possessing perhaps the evidences of her peril so
completely as they have been revealed to us--should come to consider
every English Papist as a traitor and an assassin. It was unfortunate
that she was not able to rise beyond the vile instincts of the age, and
by a magnanimous and sublime toleration, to convert her secret enemies
into loyal subjects.

And now Henry of Valois was to choose between league and counter-league,
between Henry of Guise and Henry of Navarre, between France and Spain.
The whole chivalry of Gascony and Guienne, the vast swarm of industrious
and hardy Huguenot artisans, the Netherland rebels, the great English
Queen, stood ready to support the cause of French nationality, and of all
nationalities, against a threatening world-empire, of religious liberty
against sacerdotal absolutism, and the crown of a King, whose only merit
had hitherto been to acquiesce in a religious toleration dictated to him
by others, against those who derided his authority and insulted his
person. The bold knight-errant of Christendom, the champion to the
utterance against Spain, stood there with lance in rest, and the King
scarcely hesitated.

The League, gliding so long unheeded, now reared its crest in the very
palace of France, and full in the monarch's face. With a single shudder
the victim fell into its coils.

The choice was made. On the 18th of July (1585) the edict of Nemours was
published, revoking all previous edicts by which religious peace had been
secured. Death and confiscation of property were now proclaimed as the
penalty of practising any religious rites save those of the Roman
Catholic Church. Six months were allowed to the Nonconformists to put
their affairs in order, after which they were to make public profession
of the Catholic religion, with regular attendance upon its ceremonies, or
else go into perpetual exile. To remain in France without abjuring heresy
was thenceforth a mortal crime, to be expiated upon the gallows. As a
matter of course, all Huguenots were instantaneously incapacitated from
public office, the mixed chambers of justice were abolished, and the
cautionary towns were to be restored. On the other hand, the Guise
faction were to receive certain cities into their possession, as pledges
that this sanguinary edict should be fulfilled.

Thus did Henry III. abjectly kiss the hand which smote him. His mother,
having since the death of Anjou no further interest in affecting to
favour the Huguenots, had arranged the basis of this treaty with the
Spanish party. And now the unfortunate King had gone solemnly down to the
Parliament of Paris, to be present at the registration of the edict. The
counsellors and presidents were all assembled, and as they sat there in
their crimson robes, they seemed, to the excited imagination of those who
loved their country, like embodiments of the impending and most
sanguinary tragedy. As the monarch left the parliament-house a faint cry
of 'God save the King' was heard in the street. Henry hung his head, for
it was long since that cry had met his ears, and he knew that it was a
false and languid demonstration which had been paid for by the Leaguers.

And thus was the compact signed--an unequal compact. Madam League was on
horseback, armed in proof, said a contemporary; the King was on foot, and
dressed in a shirt of penitence. The alliance was not an auspicious one.
Not peace, but a firebrand--'facem, non pacem'--had the King held forth
to his subjects.

When the news came to Henry of Navarre that the King had really
promulgated this fatal edict, he remained for a time, with amazement and
sorrow, leaning heavily upon a table, with his face in his right hand.
When he raised his head again--so he afterwards asserted--one side of his
moustachio had turned white.

Meantime Gregory XIII., who had always refused to sanction the League,
was dead, and Cardinal Peretti, under the name of Sixtus V., now reigned
in his place. Born of an illustrious house, as he said--for it was a
house without a roof--this monk of humble origin was of inordinate
ambition. Feigning a humility which was but the cloak to his pride, he
was in reality as grasping, self-seeking, and revengeful, as he seemed
gentle and devout. It was inevitable that a pontiff of this character
should seize the opportunity offered him to mimic Hildebrand, and to
brandish on high the thunderbolts of the Church.

With a flaming prelude concerning the omnipotence delegated by Almighty
God to St. Peter and his successors--an authority infinitely superior to
all earthly powers--the decrees of which were irresistible alike by the
highest and the meanest, and which hurled misguided princes from their
thrones into the abyss, like children of Beelzebub, the Pope proceeded to
fulminate his sentence of excommunication against those children of
wrath, Henry of Navarre and Henry of Conde. They were denounced as
heretics, relapsed, and enemies of God (28th Aug.1585). The King was
declared dispossessed of his principality of Bearne, and of what remained
to him of Navarre. He was stripped of all dignities, privileges, and
property, and especially proclaimed incapable of ever ascending the
throne of France.

The Bearnese replied by a clever political squib. A terse and spirited
paper found its way to Rome, and was soon affixed, to the statutes of
Pasquin and Marforio, and in other public places of that city, and even
to the gates of the papal palace. Without going beyond his own doors, his
Holiness had the opportunity of reading, to his profound amazement, that
Mr. Sixtus, calling himself Pope, had foully and maliciously lied in
calling the King of Navarre a heretic. This Henry offered to prove before
any free council legitimately chosen. If the Pope refused to submit to
such decision, he was himself no better than excommunicate and
Antichrist, and the King of Navarre thereby declared mortal and perpetual
war upon him. The ancient kings of France had known how to chastise the
insolence of former popes, and he hoped, when he ascended the throne, to
take vengeance on Mr. Sixtus for the insult thus offered to all the kings
of Christendom--and so on, in a vein which showed the Bearnese to be a
man rather amused than blasted by these papal fireworks.

Sixtus V., though imperious, was far from being dull. He knew how to
appreciate a man when he found one, and he rather admired the cheerful
attitude maintained by Navarre, as he tossed back the thunderbolts. He
often spoke afterwards of Henry with genuine admiration, and declared
that in all the world he knew but two persons fit to wear a crown--Henry
of Navarre and Elizabeth of England. "'Twas pity," he said, "that both
should be heretics."

And thus the fires of civil war had been lighted throughout Christendom,
and the monarch of France had thrown himself head foremost into the
flames.

     ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

     Hibernian mode of expressing himself
     His inordinate arrogance
     His insolence intolerable
     Humility which was but the cloak to his pride
     Longer they delay it, the less easy will they find it
     Oration, fertile in rhetoric and barren in facts
     Round game of deception, in which nobody was deceived
     Wasting time fruitlessly is sharpening the knife for himself
     With something of feline and feminine duplicity
     'Twas pity, he said, that both should be heretics




HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS

From the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce--1609

By John Lothrop Motley

History of The United Netherlands, 1585

Alexander Farnese, The Duke of Parma




CHAPTER V., Part 1.

   Position and Character of Farnese--Preparations for Antwerp Siege--
   Its Characteristics--Foresight of William the Silent--Sainte
   Aldegonde, the Burgomaster--Anarchy in Antwerp--Character of Sainte
   Aldegonde--Admiral Treslong--Justinus de Nassau--Hohenlo--Opposition
   to the Plan of Orange--Liefkenshoek--Head--Quarters of Parma at
   Kalloo--Difficulty of supplying the City--Results of not piercing
   the Dykes--Preliminaries of the Siege--Successes of the Spaniards--
   Energy of Farnese with Sword and Pen--His Correspondence with the
   Antwerpers--Progress of the Bridge--Impoverished Condition of Parma
   --Patriots attempt Bois-le-Duc--Their Misconduct--Failure of the
   Enterprise--The Scheldt Bridge completed--Description of the
   Structure

The negotiations between France and the Netherlands have been massed, in
order to present a connected and distinct view of the relative attitude
of the different countries of Europe. The conferences and diplomatic
protocolling had resulted in nothing positive; but it is very necessary
for the reader to understand the negative effects of all this
dissimulation and palace-politics upon the destiny of the new
commonwealth, and upon Christendom at large. The League had now achieved
a great triumph; the King of France had virtually abdicated, and it was
now requisite for the King of Navarre, the Netherlands, and Queen
Elizabeth, to draw more closely together than before, if the last hope of
forming a counter-league were not to be abandoned. The next step in
political combination was therefore a solemn embassy of the
States-General to England. Before detailing those negotiations, however,
it is proper to direct attention to the external public events which had
been unrolling themselves in the Provinces, contemporaneously with the
secret history which has been detailed in the preceding chapters.

By presenting in their natural groupings various distinct occurrences,
rather than by detailing them in strict chronological order, a clearer
view of the whole picture will be furnished than could be done by
intermingling personages, transactions, and scenery, according to the
arbitrary command of Time alone.

The Netherlands, by the death of Orange, had been left without a head. On
the other hand, the Spanish party had never been so fortunate in their
chief at any period since the destiny of the two nations had been blended
with each other. Alexander Farnese, Prince of Parma, was a general and a
politician, whose character had been steadily ripening since he came into
the command of the country. He was now thirty-seven years of age--with
the experience of a sexagenarian. No longer the impetuous, arbitrary,
hot-headed youth, whose intelligence and courage hardly atoned for his
insolent manner and stormy career, he had become pensive, modest, almost
gentle. His genius was rapid in conception, patient in combination,
fertile in expedients, adamantine in the endurance or suffering; for
never did a heroic general and a noble army of veterans manifest more
military virtue in the support of an infamous cause than did Parma and
his handful of Italians and Spaniards. That which they considered to be
their duty they performed. The work before them they did with all their
might.

Alexander had vanquished the rebellion in the Celtic provinces, by the
masterly diplomacy and liberal bribery which have been related in a
former work. Artois, Hainault, Douay, Orchies, with the rich cities of
Lille, Tournay, Valenciennes, Arras, and other important places, were now
the property of Philip. These unhappy and misguided lands, however, were
already reaping the reward of their treason. Beggared, trampled upon,
plundered, despised, they were at once the prey of the Spaniards, and the
cause that their sister-states, which still held out, were placed in more
desperate condition than ever. They were also, even in their abject
plight, made still more forlorn by the forays of Balagny, who continued
in command of Cambray. Catharine de' Medici claimed that city as her
property, by will of the Duke of Anjou. A strange title--founded upon the
treason and cowardice of her favourite son--but one which, for a time,
was made good by the possession maintained by Balagny. That usurper
meantime, with a shrewd eye to his own interests, pronounced the truce of
Cambray, which was soon afterwards arranged, from year to year, by
permission of Philip, as a "most excellent milch-cow;" and he continued
to fill his pails at the expense of the "reconciled" provinces, till they
were thoroughly exhausted.

This large south-western section of the Netherlands being thus
permanently re-annexed to the Spanish crown, while Holland, Zeeland, and
the other provinces, already constituting the new Dutch republic, were
more obstinate in their hatred of Philip than ever, there remained the
rich and fertile territory of Flanders and Brabant as the great
debateable land. Here were the royal and political capital, Brussels, the
commercial capital, Antwerp, with Mechlin, Dendermonde, Vilvoorde, and
other places of inferior importance, all to be struggled for to the
death. With the subjection of this district the last bulwark between the
new commonwealth and the old empire would be overthrown, and Spain and
Holland would then meet face to face.

If there had ever been a time when every nerve in Protestant Christendom
should be strained to weld all those provinces together into one great
commonwealth, as a bulwark for European liberty, rather than to allow
them to be broken into stepping-stones, over which absolutism could
stride across France and Holland into England, that moment had arrived.
Every sacrifice should have been cheerfully made by all Netherlanders,
the uttermost possible subsidies and auxiliaries should have been
furnished by all the friends of civil and religious liberty in every land
to save Flanders and Brabant from their impending fate.

No man felt more keenly the importance of the business in which he was
engaged than Parma. He knew his work exactly, and he meant to execute it
thoroughly. Antwerp was the hinge on which the fate of the whole country,
perhaps of all Christendom, was to turn. "If we get Antwerp," said the
Spanish soldiers--so frequently that the expression passed into a
proverb--"you shall all go to mass with us; if you save Antwerp, we will
all go to conventicle with you."

Alexander rose with the difficulty and responsibility of his situation.
His vivid, almost poetic intellect formed its schemes with perfect
distinctness. Every episode in his great and, as he himself termed it,
his "heroic enterprise," was traced out beforehand with the tranquil
vision of creative genius; and he was prepared to convert his conceptions
into reality, with the aid of an iron nature that never knew fatigue or
fear.

But the obstacles were many. Alexander's master sat in his cabinet with
his head full of Mucio, Don Antonio, and Queen Elizabeth; while Alexander
himself was left neglected, almost forgotten. His army was shrinking to a
nullity. The demands upon him were enormous, his finances delusive,
almost exhausted. To drain an ocean dry he had nothing but a sieve. What
was his position? He could bring into the field perhaps eight or ten
thousand men over and above the necessary garrisons. He had before him
Brussels, Antwerp, Mechlin, Ghent, Dendermonde, and other powerful
places, which he was to subjugate. Here was a problem not easy of
solution. Given an army of eight thousand, more or less, to reduce
therewith in the least possible time, half-a-dozen cities; each
containing fifteen or twenty thousand men able to bear arms. To besiege
these places in form was obviously a mere chimera. Assault, battery, and
surprises--these were all out of the question.

Yet Alexander was never more truly heroic than in this position of vast
entanglement. Untiring, uncomplaining, thoughtful of others, prodigal of
himself, generous, modest, brave; with so much intellect and so much
devotion to what he considered his duty, he deserved to be a patriot and
a champion of the right, rather than an instrument of despotism.

And thus he paused for a moment--with much work already accomplished, but
his hardest life-task before him; still in the noon of manhood, a fine
martial figure, standing, spear in hand, full in the sunlight, though all
the scene around him was wrapped in gloom--a noble, commanding shape,
entitled to the admiration which the energetic display of great powers,
however unscrupulous, must always command. A dark, meridional
physiognomy, a quick; alert, imposing head; jet black, close-clipped
hair; a bold eagle's face, with full, bright, restless eye; a man rarely
reposing, always ready, never alarmed; living in the saddle, with harness
on his back--such was the Prince of Parma; matured and mellowed, but
still unharmed by time.

The cities of Flanders and Brabant he determined to reduce by gaining
command of the Scheldt. The five principal ones Ghent, Dendermonde,
Mechlin, Brussels Antwerp, lie narrow circle, at distances from each
other varying from five miles to thirty, and are all strung together by
the great Netherland river or its tributaries. His plan was immensely
furthered by the success of Balthasar Gerard, an ally whom Alexander had
despised and distrusted, even while he employed him. The assassination of
Orange was better to Parma than forty thousand men. A crowd of allies
instantly started up for him, in the shape of treason, faintheartedness,
envy, jealousy, insubordination, within the walls of every beleaguered
city. Alexander knew well how to deal with those auxiliaries. Letters,
artfully concocted, full of conciliation and of promise, were circulated
in every council-room, in almost every house.

The surrender of Ghent--brought about by the governor's eloquence, aided
by the golden arguments which he knew so well how to advance--had by the
middle of September (19th Sept. 1584), put him in possession of West
Flanders, with the important exception of the coast. Dendermonde
capitulated at a still earlier day; while the fall of Brussels, which
held out till many persons had been starved to death, was deferred till
the 10th March of the following year, and that of Mechlin till midsummer.

The details of the military or political operations, by which the
reduction of most of these places were effected, possess but little
interest. The siege of Antwerp, however, was one of the most striking
events of the age; and although the change in military tactics and the
progress of science may have rendered this leaguer of less technical
importance than it possessed in the sixteenth century, yet the
illustration that it affords of the splendid abilities of Parma, of the
most cultivated mode of warfare in use at that period, and of the
internal politics by which the country was then regulated, make it
necessary to dwell upon the details of an episode which must ever possess
enduring interest.

It is agreeable to reflect, too, that the fame of the general is not
polluted with the wholesale butchery, which has stained the reputation of
other Spanish commanders so indelibly. There was no killing for the mere
love of slaughter. With but few exceptions, there was no murder in cold
blood; and the many lives that were laid down upon those watery dykes
were sacrificed at least in bold, open combat; in a contest, the ruling
spirits of which were patriotism, or at least honour.

It is instructive, too, to observe the diligence and accuracy with which
the best lights of the age were brought to bear upon the great problem
which Parma had undertaken to solve. All the science then at command was
applied both by the Prince and by his burgher antagonists to the
advancement of their ends. Hydrostatics, hydraulics, engineering,
navigation, gunnery, pyrotechnics, mining, geometry, were summoned as
broadly, vigorously, and intelligently to the destruction or preservation
of a trembling city, as they have ever been, in more commercial days, to
advance a financial or manufacturing purpose. Land converted into water,
and water into land, castles built upon the breast of rapid streams,
rivers turned from their beds and taught new courses; the distant ocean
driven across ancient bulwarks, mines dug below the sea, and canals made
to percolate obscene morasses--which the red hand of war, by the very
act, converted into blooming gardens--a mighty stream bridged and
mastered in the very teeth of winter, floating ice-bergs, ocean-tides,
and an alert and desperate foe, ever ready with fleets and armies and
batteries--such were the materials of which the great spectacle was
composed; a spectacle which enchained the attention of Europe for seven
months, and on the result of which, it was thought, depended the fate of
all the Netherlands, and perhaps of all Christendom.

Antwerp, then the commercial centre of the Netherlands and of Europe,
stands upon the Scheldt. The river, flowing straight, broad, and full
along the verge of the city, subtends the arc into which the place
arranges itself as it falls back from the shore. Two thousand ships of
the largest capacity then known might easily find room in its ample
harbours. The stream, nearly half a mile in width, and sixty feet in
depth, with a tidal rise and fall of eleven feet, moves, for a few miles,
in a broad and steady current between the provinces of Brabant and
Flanders. Then, dividing itself into many ample estuaries, and gathering
up the level isles of Zeeland into its bosom, it seems to sweep out with
them into the northern ocean. Here, at the junction of the river and the
sea, lay the perpetual hope of Antwerp, for in all these creeks and
currents swarmed the fleets of the Zeelanders, that hardy and amphibious
race, with which few soldiers or mariners could successfully contend, on
land or water.

Even from the beginning of the year 1584 Parma had been from time to time
threatening Antwerp. The victim instinctively felt that its enemy was
poising and hovering over head, although he still delayed to strike.
Early in the summer Sainte Aldegonde, Recorder Martini, and other
official personages, were at Delft, upon the occasion of the christening
ceremonies of Frederic Henry, youngest child of Orange. The Prince, at
that moment, was aware of the plans of Parma, and held a long
conversation with his friends upon the measures which he desired to see
immediately undertaken. Unmindful of his usual hospitality, he insisted
that these gentlemen should immediately leave for Antwerp. Alexander
Farnese, he assured them, had taken the firm determination to possess
himself of that place, without further delay. He had privately signified
his purpose of laying the axe at once to the root of the tree, believing
that with the fall of the commercial capital the infant confederacy of
the United States would fall likewise. In order to accomplish this
object, he would forthwith attempt to make himself master of the banks of
the Scheldt, and would even throw a bridge across the stream, if his
plans were not instantly circumvented.

William of Orange then briefly indicated his plan; adding that he had no
fears for the result; and assuring his friends, who expressed much
anxiety on the subject, that if Parma really did attempt the siege of
Antwerp it should be his ruin. The plan was perfectly simple. The city
stood upon a river. It was practicable, although extremely hazardous, for
the enemy to bridge that river, and by so doing ultimately to reduce the
place. But the ocean could not be bridged; and it was quite possible to
convert Antwerp, for a season, into an ocean-port. Standing alone upon an
island, with the sea flowing around it, and with full and free marine
communication with Zeeland and Holland, it might safely bid defiance to
the land-forces, even of so great a commander as Parma. To the
furtherance of this great measure of defence, it was necessary to destroy
certain bulwarks, the chief of (10th June, 1584) which was called the
Blaw-garen Dyke; and Sainte Aldegonde was therefore requested to return
to the city, in order to cause this task to be executed without delay.

Nothing could be more judicious than this advice. The low lands along the
Scheldt were protected against marine encroachments, and the river itself
was confined to its bed, by a magnificent system of dykes, which extended
along its edge towards the ocean, in parallel lines. Other barriers of a
similar nature ran in oblique directions, through the wide open pasture
lands, which they maintained in green fertility, against the
ever-threatening sea. The Blaw-garen, to which the prince mainly alluded,
was connected with the great dyke upon the right bank of the Scheldt.
Between this and the city, another bulwark called the Kowenstyn Dyke,
crossed the country at right angles to the river, and joined the other
two at a point, not very far from Lillo, where the States had a strong
fortress.

The country in this neighbourhood was low, spongy, full of creeks, small
meres, and the old bed of the Scheldt. Orange, therefore, made it very
clear, that by piercing the great dyke just described, such a vast body
of water would be made to pour over the land as to submerge the Kowenstyn
also, the only other obstacle in the passage of fleets from Zeeland to
Antwerp. The city would then be connected with the sea and its islands,
by so vast an expanse of navigable water, that any attempt on Parma's
part to cut off supplies and succour would be hopeless. Antwerp would
laugh the idea of famine to scorn; and although this immunity would be
purchased by the sacrifice of a large amount of agricultural territory
the price so paid was but a slender one, when the existence of the
capital, and with it perhaps of the whole confederacy was at stake.

Sainte Aldegonde and Martini suggested, that, as there would be some
opposition to the measure proposed, it might be as well to make a similar
attempt on the Flemish side, in preference, by breaking through the dykes
in the neighbourhood of Saftingen. Orange replied, by demonstrating that
the land in the region which he had indicated was of a character to
ensure success, while in the other direction there were certain very
unfavourable circumstances which rendered the issue doubtful. The result
was destined to prove the sagacity of the Prince, for it will be shown in
the sequel, that the Saftingen plan, afterwards really carried out, was
rather advantageous than detrimental to the enemy's projects.

Sainte Aldegonde, accordingly, yielded to the arguments and entreaties of
his friend, and repaired without delay to Antwerp.

The advice of William the Silent--as will soon be related--was not acted
upon; and, within a few weeks after it had been given, he was in his
grave. Nowhere was his loss more severely felt than in Antwerp. It
seemed, said a contemporary, that with his death had died all authority.
The Prince was the only head which the many-membered body of that very
democratic city ever spontaneously obeyed. Antwerp was a small
republic--in time of peace intelligently and successfully
administered--which in the season of a great foreign war, amid plagues,
tumults, famine, and internal rebellion, required the firm hand and the
clear brain of a single chief. That brain and hand had been possessed by
Orange alone.

Before his death he had desired that Sainte Aldegonde should accept the
office of burgomaster of the city. Nominally, the position was not so
elevated as were many of the posts which that distinguished patriot had
filled. In reality, it was as responsible and arduous a place as could be
offered to any man's acceptance throughout the country. Sainte Aldegonde
consented, not without some reluctance. He felt that there was odium to
be incurred; he knew that much would be expected of him, and that his
means would be limited. His powers would be liable to a constant and
various restraint. His measures were sure to be the subject of perpetual
cavil. If the city were besieged, there were nearly one hundred thousand
mouths to feed, and nearly one hundred thousand tongues to dispute about
furnishing the food.

For the government of Antwerp had been degenerating from a well-organised
municipal republicanism into anarchy. The clashing of the various bodies
exercising power had become incessant and intolerable. The burgomaster
was charged with the chief executive authority, both for peace and war.
Nevertheless he had but a single vote in the board of magistrates, where
a majority decided. Moreover, he could not always attend the sessions,
because he was also member of the council of Brabant. Important measures
might therefore be decided by the magistracy, not only against his
judgment, but without his knowledge. Then there was a variety of boards
or colleges, all arrogating concurrent--which in truth was
conflicting-authority. There was the board of militia-colonels, which
claimed great powers. Here, too, the burgomaster was nominally the chief,
but he might be voted down by a majority, and of course was often absent.
Then there were sixteen captains who came into the colonels' sessions
whenever they liked, and had their word to say upon all subjects
broached. If they were refused a hearing, they were backed by eighty
other captains, who were ready at any moment to carry every disputed
point before the "broadcouncil."

There were a college of ward-masters, a college of select men, a college
of deacons, a college of ammunition, of fortification, of ship-building,
all claiming equal authority, and all wrangling among themselves; and
there was a college of "peace-makers," who wrangled more than all the
rest together.

Once a week there was a session of the board or general council. Dire was
the hissing and confusion, as the hydra heads of the multitudinous
government were laid together. Heads of colleges, presidents of chambers,
militia-chieftains; magistrates, ward-masters, deans of fishmongers, of
tailors, gardeners, butchers, all met together pell-mell; and there was
no predominant authority. This was not a convenient working machinery for
a city threatened with a siege by the first captain of the age. Moreover
there was a deficiency of regular troops: The burgher-militia were well
trained and courageous, but not distinguished for their docility. There
was also a regiment of English under Colonel Morgan, a soldier of great
experience, and much respected; but, as Stephen Le Sieur said, "this
force, unless seconded with more, was but a breakfast for the enemy."
Unfortunately, too, the insubordination, which was so ripe in the city,
seemed to affect these auxiliaries. A mutiny broke out among the English
troops. Many deserted to Parma, some escaped to England, and it was not
until Morgan had beheaded Captain Lee and Captain Powell, that discipline
could be restored.

And into this scene of wild and deafening confusion came Philip de
Marnix, Lord of Sainte Aldegonde.

There were few more brilliant characters than he in all Christendom. He
was a man, of a most rare and versatile genius. Educated in Geneva at the
very feet of Calvin, he had drunk, like mother's milk, the strong and
bitter waters of the stern reformer's, creed; but he had in after life
attempted, although hardly with success, to lift himself to the height of
a general religious toleration. He had also been trained in the severe
and thorough literary culture which characterised that rigid school. He
was a scholar, ripe and rare; no holiday trifler in the gardens of
learning. He spoke and wrote Latin like his native tongue. He could
compose poignant Greek epigrams. He was so familiar with Hebrew, that he
had rendered the Psalms of David out of the original into flowing Flemish
verse, for the use of the reformed churches. That he possessed the modern
tongues of civilized Europe, Spanish, Italian, French, and German, was a
matter of course. He was a profound jurisconsult, capable of holding
debate against all competitors upon any point of theory or practice of
law, civil, municipal, international. He was a learned theologian, and
had often proved himself a match for the doctors, bishops, or rabbin of
Europe, in highest argument of dogma, creed, or tradition. He was a
practised diplomatist, constantly employed in delicate and difficult
negotiations by William the Silent, who ever admired his genius,
cherished his friendship, and relied upon his character. He was an
eloquent orator, whose memorable harangue, beyond all his other efforts,
at the diet of Worms, had made the German princes hang their heads with
shame, when, taking a broad and philosophical view of the Netherland
matter, he had shown that it was the great question of Europe; that
Nether Germany was all Germany; that Protestantism could not be
unravelled into shreds; that there was but one cause in Christendom--that
of absolutism against national liberty, Papacy against the reform; and
that the seventeen Provinces were to be assisted in building themselves
into an eternal barrier against Spain, or that the "burning mark of shame
would be branded upon the forehead of Germany;" that the war, in short,
was to be met by her on the threshold; or else that it would come to seek
her at home--a prophecy which the horrible Thirty Years' War was in after
time most signally to verify.

He was a poet of vigour and originality, for he had accomplished what has
been achieved by few; he had composed a national hymn, whose strophes, as
soon as heard, struck a chord in every Netherland heart, and for three
centuries long have rung like a clarion wherever the Netherland tongue is
spoken. "Wilhelmus van Nassouwe," regarded simply as a literary
composition, has many of the qualities which an ode demands; an
electrical touch upon the sentiments, a throb of patriotism, sympathetic
tenderness, a dash of indignation, with rhythmical harmony and graceful
expression; and thus it has rung from millions of lips, from generation
to generation.

He was a soldier, courageous, untiring, prompt in action, useful in
council, and had distinguished himself in many a hard-fought field. Taken
prisoner in the sanguinary skirmish at Maaslandssluys, he had been
confined a year, and, for more than three months, had never laid his
head, as he declared, upon the pillow without commending his soul as for
the last time to his Maker, expecting daily the order for his immediate
execution, and escaping his doom only because William the Silent
proclaimed that the proudest head among the Spanish prisoners should fall
to avenge his death; so that he was ultimately exchanged against the
veteran Mondragon.

From the incipient stages of the revolt he had been foremost among the
patriots. He was supposed to be the author of the famous "Compromise of
the Nobles," that earliest and most conspicuous of the state-papers of
the republic, and of many other important political documents; and he had
contributed to general literature many works of European celebrity, of
which the 'Roman Bee-Hive' was the most universally known.

Scholar, theologian, diplomatist, swordsman, orator, poet, pamphleteer,
he had genius for all things, and was eminent in all. He was even famous
for his dancing, and had composed an intelligent and philosophical
treatise upon the value of that amusement, as an agent of civilisation,
and as a counteractor of the grosser pleasures of the table to which
Upper and Nether Germans were too much addicted.

Of ancient Savoyard extraction, and something of a southern nature, he
had been born in Brussels, and was national to the heart's core.

A man of interesting, sympathetic presence; of a physiognomy where many
of the attaching and attractive qualities of his nature revealed
themselves; with crisp curling hair, surmounting a tall, expansive
forehead--full of benevolence, idealism, and quick perceptions; broad,
brown, melancholy eyes, overflowing with tenderness; a lean and haggard
cheek, a rugged Flemish nose; a thin flexible mouth; a slender moustache,
and a peaked and meagre beard; so appeared Sainte Aldegonde in the
forty-seventh year of his age, when he came to command in Antwerp.

Yet after all--many-sided, accomplished, courageous, energetic, as he
was--it may be doubted whether he was the man for the hour or the post.
He was too impressionable; he had too much of the temperament of genius.
Without being fickle, he had, besides his versatility of intellect, a
character which had much facility in turning; not, indeed, in the breeze
of self-interest, but because he seemed placed in so high and clear an
atmosphere of thought that he was often acted upon and swayed by subtle
and invisible influences. At any rate his conduct was sometimes
inexplicable. He had been strangely fascinated by the ignoble Duke of
Anjou, and, in the sequel, it will be found that he was destined to
experience other magnetic or magical impulses, which were once thought
suspicious, and have remained mysterious even to the present day.

He was imaginative. He was capable of broad and boundless hopes. He was
sometimes prone to deep despair. His nature was exquisitely tempered; too
fine and polished a blade to be wielded among those hydra-heads by which
he was, now surrounded; and for which the stunning sledgehammer of
arbitrary force was sometimes necessary.

He was perhaps deficient in that gift, which no training and no culture
can bestow, and which comes from above alone by birth-right divine--that
which men willingly call master, authority; the effluence which came so
naturally from the tranquil eyes of William the Silent.

Nevertheless, Sainte Aldegonde was prepared to do his best, and all his
best was to be tasked to the utmost. His position was rendered still more
difficult by the unruly nature of some of his coordinates.

"From the first day to the last," said one who lived in Antwerp during
the siege, "the mistakes committed in the city were incredible." It had
long been obvious that a siege was contemplated by Parma. A liberal sum
of money had been voted by the States-General, of which Holland and
Zeeland contributed a very large proportion (two hundred thousand
florins); the city itself voted another large subsidy, and an order was
issued to purchase at once and import into the city at least a year's
supply of every kind of provisions of life and munitions of war.

William de Blois, Lord of Treslong, Admiral of Holland and Zeeland, was
requested to carry out this order, and superintend the victualling of
Antwerp. But Treslong at once became troublesome. He was one of the old
"beggars of the sea," a leader in the wild band who had taken possession
of the Brill, in the teeth of Alva, and so laid the foundation of the
republic. An impetuous noble, of wealthy family, high connections, and
refractory temper--a daring sailor, ever ready for any rash adventure,
but possessed of a very moderate share of prudence or administrative
ability, he fell into loose and lawless courses on the death of Orange,
whose firm hand was needed to control him. The French negotiation had
excited his profound disgust, and knowing Sainte Aldegonde to be heart
and soul in favour of that alliance, he was in no haste whatever to carry
out his orders with regard to Antwerp. He had also an insignificant
quarrel with President Meetkerk. The Prince of Parma--ever on the watch
for such opportunities--was soon informed of the Admiral's discontent,
and had long been acquainted with his turbulent character. Alexander at
once began to inflame his jealousy and soothe his vanity by letters and
messengers, urging upon him the propriety of reconciling himself with the
King, and promising him large rewards and magnificent employments in the
royal service. Even the splendid insignia of the Golden Fleece were
dangled before his eyes. It is certain that the bold Hollander was not
seduced by these visions, but there is no doubt that he listened to the
voice of the tempter. He unquestionably neglected his duty. Week after
week he remained, at Ostend, sneering at the French and quaffing huge
draughts in honour of Queen Elizabeth. At last, after much time had
elapsed, he agreed to victual Antwerp if he could be furnished with
thirty krom-stevens,--a peculiar kind of vessel, not to be found in
Zeeland. The krom-stevens were sent to him from Holland. Then, hearing
that his negligence had been censured by the States-General, he became
more obstinate than ever, and went up and down proclaiming that if people
made themselves disagreeable to him he would do that which should make
all the women and children in the Netherlands shriek and tremble. What
this nameless horror was to be he never divulged, but meantime he went
down to Middelburg, and swore that not a boat-load of corn should go up
to Antwerp until two members of the magistracy, whom he considered
unpleasant, had been dismissed from their office. Wearied with all this
bluster, and imbued with grave suspicion as to his motives, the States at
last rose upon their High Admiral and threw him into prison. He was
accused of many high crimes and misdemeanours, and, it was thought, would
be tried for his life. He was suspected and even openly accused of having
been tampered with by Spain, but there was at any rate a deficiency of
proof.

"Treslong is apprehended," wrote Davison to Burghley, "and, is charged to
have been the cause that the fleet passed not up to Antwerp. He is
suspected to have otherwise forgotten himself, but whether justly or not
will appear by his trial. Meantime he is kept in the common prison of
Middelburg, a treatment which it is thought they would not offer him if
they had not somewhat of importance against him."

He was subsequently released at the intercession of Queen Elizabeth, and
passed some time in England. He was afterwards put upon trial, but no
accuser appearing to sustain the charges against him, he was eventually
released. He never received a command in the navy again, but the very
rich sinecures of Grand Falconer and Chief Forester of Holland were
bestowed upon him, and he appears to have ended his days in peace and
plenty.

He was succeeded in the post of Admiral of Holland and Zeeland by
Justinus de Nassau, natural son of William the Silent, a young man of
much promise but of little experience.

General Count Hohenlo, too, lieutenant for young Maurice, and virtual
commander-in-chief of the States' forces, was apt to give much trouble. A
German noble, of ancient descent and princely rank; brave to temerity,
making a jest of danger; and riding into a foray as if to a merry-making;
often furiously intoxicated, and always turbulent and uncertain; a
handsome, dissipated cavalier, with long curls floating over his
shoulders, an imposing aristocratic face, and a graceful, athletic
figure, he needed some cool brain and steady hand to guide him--valuable
as he was to fulfil any daring project but was hardly willing to accept
the authority of a burgomaster. While the young Maurice yet needed
tutelage, while "the sapling was growing into the tree," Hohenlo was a
dangerous chieftain and a most disorderly lieutenant.

With such municipal machinery and such coadjutors had Sainte Aldegonde to
deal, while, meantime, the delusive French negociation was dragging its
slow length along, and while Parma was noiselessly and patiently
proceeding with his preparations.

The burgomaster--for Sainte Aldegonde, in whom vulgar ambition was not a
foible, had refused the dignity and title of Margrave of Antwerp, which
had been tendered him--had neglected no effort towards carrying into
effect the advice of Orange, given almost with his latest breath. The
manner in which that advice was received furnished a striking
illustration of the defective machinery which has been pourtrayed.

Upon his return from Delft, Sainte Aldegonde had summoned a meeting of
the magistracy of Antwerp. He laid before the board the information
communicated by Orange as to Parma's intentions. He also explained the
scheme proposed for their frustration, and urged the measures indicated
with so much earnestness that his fellow-magistrates were convinced. The
order was passed for piercing the Blauw-garen Dyke, and Sainte Aldegonde,
with some engineers, was requested to view the locality, and to take
order for the immediate fulfilment of the plan.

Unfortunately there were many other boards in session besides that of the
Schepens, many other motives at work besides those of patriotism. The
guild of butchers held a meeting, so soon as the plan suggested was
known, and resolved with all their strength to oppose its execution.

The butchers were indeed furious. Twelve thousand oxen grazed annually
upon the pastures which were about to be submerged, and it was
represented as unreasonable that all this good flesh and blood should be
sacrificed. At a meeting of the magistrates on the following day, sixteen
butchers, delegates from their guild, made their appearance, hoarse with
indignation. They represented the vast damage which would be inflicted
upon the estates of many private individuals by the proposed inundation,
by this sudden conversion of teeming meadows, fertile farms, thriving
homesteads, prolific orchards, into sandy desolation. Above all they
depicted, in glowing colours and with natural pathos, the vast
destruction of beef which was imminent, and they urged--with some show of
reason--that if Parma were really about to reduce Antwerp by famine, his
scheme certainly would not be obstructed by the premature annihilation of
these wholesome supplies.

That the Scheldt could be, closed in any manner was, however, they said,
a preposterous conception. That it could be bridged was the dream of a
lunatic. Even if it were possible to construct a bridge, and probable
that the Zeelanders and Antwerpers would look on with folded arms while
the work proceeded, the fabric, when completed, would be at the mercy of
the ice-floods of the winter and the enormous power of the ocean-tides.
The Prince of Orange himself, on a former occasion, when Antwerp was
Spanish, had attempted to close the river with rafts, sunken piles, and
other obstructions, but the whole had been swept away, like a dam of
bulrushes, by the first descent of the ice-blocks of winter. It was
witless to believe that Parma contemplated any such measure, and utterly
monstrous to believe in its success.

Thus far the butchers. Soon afterwards came sixteen colonels of militia,
as representatives of their branch of the multiform government. These
personages, attended by many officers of inferior degree, sustained the
position of the butchers with many voluble and vehement arguments. Not
the least convincing of their conclusions was the assurance that it would
be idle for the authorities to attempt the destruction of the dyke,
seeing that the municipal soldiery itself would prevent the measure by
main force, at all hazards, and without regard to their own or others'
lives.

The violence of this opposition, and the fear of a serious internecine
conflict at so critical a juncture, proved fatal to the project. Much
precious time was lost, and when at last the inhabitants of the city
awoke from their delusion, it was to find that repentance, as usual, had
come many hours too late.

For Parma had been acting while his antagonists had been wrangling. He
was hampered in his means, but he was assisted by what now seems the
incredible supineness of the Netherlanders. Even Sainte Aldegonde did not
believe in the possibility of erecting the bridge; not a man in Antwerp
seemed to believe it. "The preparations," said one who lived in the city,
"went on before our very noses, and every one was ridiculing the Spanish
commander's folly."

A very great error was, moreover, committed in abandoning Herenthals to
the enemy. The city of Antwerp governed Brabant, and it would have been
far better for the authorities of the commercial capital to succour this
small but important city, and, by so doing, to protract for a long time
their own defence. Mondragon saw and rejoiced over the mistake. "Now 'tis
easy to see that the Prince of Orange is dead," said the veteran, as he
took possession, in the Icing's name, of the forsaken Herenthals.

Early in the summer, Parma's operations had been, of necessity,
desultory. He had sprinkled forts up and down the Scheldt, and had
gradually been gaining control of the navigation upon that river. Thus
Ghent and Dendermonde, Vilvoorde, Brussels, and Antwerp, had each been
isolated, and all prevented from rendering mutual assistance. Below
Antwerp, however, was to be the scene of the great struggle. Here, within
nine miles of the city, were two forts belonging to the States, on
opposite sides of the stream, Lille, and Liefkenshoek. It was important
for the Spanish commander to gain possession of both; before commencing
his contemplated bridge.

Unfortunately for the States, the fortifications of Liefkenshoek, on the
Flemish side of the river, had not been entirely completed. Eight hundred
men lay within it, under Colonel John Pettin of Arras, an old patriotic
officer of much experience. Parma, after reconnoitring the place in
person, despatched the famous Viscount of Ghent--now called Marquis of
Roubaix and Richebourg--to carry it by assault. The Marquis sent one
hundred men from his Walloon legion, under two officers, in whom he had
confidence, to attempt a surprise, with orders, if not successful, to
return without delay. They were successful. The one hundred gained
entrance into the fort at a point where the defences had not been put
into sufficient repair.

They were immediately followed by Richebourg, at the head of his
regiment. The day was a fatal one. It was the 10th July, 1584 and William
of Orange was falling at Delft by the hand of Balthazar Gerard.
Liefkenshoek was carried at a blow. Of the eight hundred patriots in the
place, scarcely a man escaped. Four hundred were put to the sword, the
others were hunted into the river, when nearly all were drowned. Of the
royalists a single man was killed, and two or three more were wounded.
"Our Lord was pleased," wrote Parma piously to Philip, that we "should
cut the throats of four hundred of them in a single instant, and that a
great many more should be killed upon the dykes; so that I believe very
few to have escaped with life. We lost one man, besides two or three
wounded." A few were taken prisoners, and among them was the commander
John Pettin. He was at once brought before Richebourg, who was standing
in the presence of the Prince of Parma. The Marquis drew his sword,
walked calmly up to the captured Colonel, and ran him through the body.
Pettin fell dead upon the spot. The Prince was displeased. "Too much
choler, Marquis, too much choler,"--said he reprovingly. "Troppa colera,
Signor Marchese, a questa." But Richebourg knew better. He had, while
still Viscount of Ghent, carried on a year previously a parallel intrigue
with the royalists and the patriots. The Prince of Parma had bid highest
for his services, and had, accordingly, found him a most effectual
instrument in completing the reduction of the Walloon Provinces. The
Prince was not aware, however, that his brave but venal ally had, at the
very same moment, been secretly treating with William of Orange; and as
it so happened that Colonel Pettin had been the agent in the unsuccessful
negotiation, it was possible that his duplicity would now be exposed. The
Marquis had, therefore, been prompt to place his old confederate in the
condition wherein men tell no tales, and if contemporary chronicles did
not bely him, it was not the first time that he had been guilty of such
cold-blooded murder. The choler had not been superfluous.

The fortress of Lille was garrisoned by the Antwerp volunteers, called
the "Young Bachelors." Teligny, the brave son of the illustrious
"Iron-armed" La None, commanded in chief: and he had, besides the
militia, a company of French under Captain Gascoigne, and four hundred
Scotchmen under Colonel Morgan--perhaps two thousand men in all.

Mondragon, hero of the famous submarine expeditions of Philipsland and
Zierickzee, was ordered by Parma to take the place at every hazard. With
five thousand men--a large proportion of the Spanish effective force at
that moment--the veteran placed himself before the fort, taking
possession, of the beautiful country-house and farm of Lille, where he
planted his batteries, and commenced a regular cannonade. The place was
stronger than Liefkenshoek, however, and Teligny thoroughly comprehended
the importance of maintaining it for the States. Mondragon dug mines, and
Teligny countermined. The Spanish daily cannonade was cheerfully
responded to by the besieged, and by the time Mondragon had shot away
fifty thousand pounds of powder, he found that he had made no impression
upon the fortress, while the number of his troops had been diminishing
with great rapidity. Mondragon was not so impetuous as he had been on
many former occasions. He never ventured an assault. At last Teligny made
a sortie at the head of a considerable force. A warm action succeeded, at
the conclusion of which, without a decided advantage on either side, the
sluice-gate in the fortress was opened, and the torrent of the Scheldt,
swollen by a high tide, was suddenly poured upon the Spaniards. Assailed
at once by the fire from the Lillo batteries, and by the waters of the
river, they were forced to a rapid retreat. This they effected with great
loss, but with signal courage; struggling breast high in the waves, and
bearing off their field-pieces in their arms in the very face of the
enemy.

Three weeks long Mondragon had been before Fort Lille, and two thousand
of his soldiers had been slain in the trenches. The attempt was now
abandoned. Parma directed permanent batteries to be established at
Lillo-house, at Oordam, and at other places along the river, and
proceeded quietly with his carefully-matured plan for closing the river.

His own camp was in the neighbourhood of the villages of Beveren, Kalloo,
and Borght. Of the ten thousand foot and seventeen hundred horse, which
composed at the moment his whole army, about one-half lay with him, while
the remainder were with Count Peter Ernest Mansfield, in the
neighbourhood of Stabroek. Thus the Prince occupied a position on the
left bank of the Scheldt, nearly opposite Antwerp, while Mansfield was
stationed upon the right bank, and ten miles farther down the river. From
a point in the neighbourhood of Kalloo, Alexander intended to throw a
fortified bridge to the opposite shore. When completed, all traffic up
the river from Zeeland would be cut off; and as the country on the
land-side; abut Antwerp, had been now reduced, the city would be
effectually isolated. If the Prince could hold his bridge until famine
should break the resistance of the burghers, Antwerp would fall into his
hands.

His head-quarters were at Kalloo, and this obscure spot soon underwent a
strange transformation. A drowsy placid little village--with a modest
parish spire peeping above a clump of poplars, and with half a dozen
cottages, with storks nests on their roofs, sprinkled here and there
among pastures and orchards--suddenly saw itself changed as it were into
a thriving bustling town; for, saving the white tents which dotted the
green turf in every direction, the aspect of the scene was, for a time,
almost pacific. It was as if, some great manufacturing enterprise had
been set on foot, and the world had suddenly awoke to the hidden
capabilities of the situation.

A great dockyard and arsenal suddenly revealed themselves--rising like an
exhalation--where ship-builders, armourers, blacksmiths, joiners,
carpenters, caulkers, gravers, were hard at work all day long. The din
and hum of what seemed a peaceful industry were unceasing. From Kalloo,
Parma dug a canal twelve miles long to a place called Steeken, hundreds
of pioneers being kept constantly at work with pick and spade till it was
completed. Through this artificial channel--so soon as Ghent and
Dendermonde had fallen--came floats of timber, fleets of boats laden with
provisions of life and munitions of death, building-materials, and every
other requisite for the great undertaking, all to be disembarked at
Kalloo. The object was a temporary and destructive one, but it remains a
monument of the great general's energy and a useful public improvement.
The amelioration of the fenny and barren soil, called the Waesland, is
dated from that epoch; and the spot in Europe which is the most prolific,
and which nourishes the largest proportion of inhabitants to the square
mile, is precisely the long dreary swamp which the Prince thus drained
for military purposes, and converted into a garden. Drusus and Corbulo,
in the days of the Roman Empire, had done the same good service for their
barbarian foes.

At Kalloo itself, all the shipwrights, cutlers, masons, brass-founders,
rope-makers, anchor-forgers, sailors, boatmen, of Flanders and Brabant,
with a herd of bakers, brewers, and butchers, were congregated by express
order of Parma. In the little church itself the main workshop was
established, and all day long, week after week, month after month, the
sound of saw and hammer, adze and plane, the rattle of machinery, the cry
of sentinels, the cheers of mariners, resounded, where but lately had
been heard nothing save the drowsy homily and the devout hymn of rustic
worship.

Nevertheless the summer and autumn wore on, and still the bridge was
hardly commenced. The navigation of the river--although impeded and
rendered dangerous by the forts which Parma held along the banks--was
still open; and, so long as the price of corn in Antwerp remained three
or four times as high as the sum for which it could be purchased in
Holland and Zeeland, there were plenty of daredevil skippers ready to
bring cargoes. Fleets of fly-boats, convoyed by armed vessels, were
perpetually running the gauntlet. Sharp actions on shore between the
forts of the patriots and those of Parma, which were all intermingled
promiscuously along the banks, and amphibious and most bloody encounters
on ship-board, dyke, and in the stream itself, between the wild
Zeelanders and the fierce pikemen of Italy and Spain, were of repeated
occurrence. Many a lagging craft fell into the enemy's hands, when, as a
matter of course, the men, women, and children, on board, were horribly
mutilated by the Spaniards, and were then sent drifting in their boat
with the tide--their arms, legs, and ears lopped off up to the city, in
order that--the dangerous nature of this provision-trade might be fully
illustrated.

Yet that traffic still went on. It would have continued until Antwerp had
been victualled for more than a year, had not the city authorities, in
the plentitude of their wisdom, thought proper to issue orders for its
regulation. On the 25th October (1584) a census was taken, when the
number of persons inside the walls was found to be ninety thousand. For
this population it was estimated that 300,000 veertell, or about 900,000
bushels of corn, would be required annually. The grain was coming in very
fast, notwithstanding the perilous nature of the trade; for wheat could
be bought in Holland for fifty florins the last, or about fifteen pence
sterling the bushel, while it was worth five or six florins the veertel,
or about four shillings the bushel, in Antwerp.

The magistrates now committed a folly more stupendous than it seemed
possible for human creatures, under such circumstances, to compass. They
established a maximum upon corn. The skippers who had run their cargoes
through the gauntlet, all the way from Flushing to Antwerp, found on
their arrival, that, instead of being rewarded, according to the natural
laws of demand and supply, they were required to exchange their wheat,
rye, butter, and beef, against the exact sum which the Board of Schepens
thought proper to consider a reasonable remuneration. Moreover, in order
to prevent the accumulation of provisions in private magazines, it was
enacted, that all consumers of grain should be compelled to make their
purchases directly from the ships. These two measures were almost as
fatal as the preservation of the Blaw-garen Dyke, in the interest of the
butchers. Winter and famine were staring the city in the face, and the
maximum now stood sentinel against the gate, to prevent the admission of
food. The traffic ceased without a struggle. Parma himself could not have
better arranged the blockade.

Meantime a vast and almost general inundation had taken place. The aspect
of the country for many miles around was strange and desolate. The
sluices had been opened in the neighbourhood of Saftingen, on, the
Flemish side, so that all the way from Hulst the waters were out, and
flowed nearly to the gates of Antwerp. A wide and shallow sea rolled over
the fertile plains, while church-steeples, the tops of lofty trees, and
here and there the turrets of a castle, scarcely lifted themselves above
the black waters; the peasants' houses, the granges, whole rural
villages, having entirely disappeared. The high grounds of Doel, of
Kalloo, and Beveren, where Alexander was established, remained out of
reach of the flood. Far below, on the opposite side of the river, other
sluices had been opened, and the sea had burst over the wide, level
plain. The villages of Wilmerdonk, Orderen, Ekeren, were changed to
islands in the ocean, while all the other hamlets, for miles around, were
utterly submerged.

Still, however, the Blaw-garen Dyke and its companion the Kowenstyn
remained obstinately above the waters, forming a present and more fatal
obstruction to the communication between Antwerp and Zeeland than would
be furnished even by the threatened and secretly-advancing bridge across
the Scheldt. Had Orange's prudent advice been taken, the city had been
safe. Over the prostrate dykes, whose destruction he had so warmly urged,
the ocean would have rolled quite to the gates of Antwerp, and it would
have been as easy to bridge the North Sea as to control the free
navigation of the patriots over so wide a surface.

When it was too late, the butchers, and colonels, and captains, became
penitent enough. An order was passed, by acclamation, in November, to do
what Orange had recommended in June. It was decreed that the Blaw-garen
and the Kowenstyn should be pierced. Alas, the hour had long gone by.
Alexander of Parma was not the man to undertake the construction of a
bridge across the river, at a vast expense, and at the same time to
permit the destruction of the already existing barrier. There had been a
time for such a deed. The Seigneur de Kowenstyn, who had a castle and
manor on and near the dyke which bore his name, had repeatedly urged upon
the Antwerp magistracy the propriety of piercing this bulwark, even after
their refusal to destroy the outer barrier. Sainte Aldegonde, who
vehemently urged the measure, protested that his hair had stood on end,
when he found, after repeated entreaty, that the project was rejected.
The Seigneur de Kowenstyn, disgusted and indignant, forswore his
patriotism, and went over to Parma. The dyke fell into the hands of the
enemy. And now from Stabroek, where old Mansfeid lay with his army, all
the way across the flooded country, ran the great bulwark, strengthened
with new palisade-work and block-houses, bristling with Spanish cannon,
pike, and arquebus, even to the bank of the Scheldt, in the immediate
vicinity of Fort Lille. At the angle of its junction with the main dyke
of the river's bank, a strong fortress called Holy Cross (Santa Cruz) had
been constructed. That fortress and the whole line of the Kowenstyn were
held in the iron grip of Mondragon. To wrench it from him would be no
child's play. Five new strong redoubts upon the dyke, and five or six
thousand Spaniards established there, made the enterprise more formidable
than it would have been in June. It had been better to sacrifice the
twelve thousand oxen. Twelve thousand Hollanders might now be
slaughtered, and still the dyke remain above the waves.

Here was the key to the fate of Antwerp.

On the other hand, the opening of the Saftingen Sluice had done Parma's
work for him. Even there, too, Orange had been prophetic. Kalloo was high
and dry, but Alexander had experienced some difficulty in bringing a
fleet of thirty vessels, laden with cannon and other valuable materials,
from Ghent along the Scheldt, into his encampment, because it was
necessary for them, before reaching their destination, to pass in front
of Antwerp. The inundation, together with a rupture in the Dyke of
Borght, furnished him with a watery road; over which his fleet completely
avoided the city, and came in triumph to Kalloo.

Sainte Aldegonde, much provoked by this masterly movement on the part of
Parma, had followed the little squadron closely with some armed vessels
from the city. A sharp action had succeeded, in which the burgomaster,
not being properly sustained by the Zeeland ships on which he relied, had
been defeated. Admiral Jacob Jacobzoon behaved with so little spirit on
the occasion that he acquired with the Antwerp populace the name of
"Run-away Jacob," "Koppen gaet loppen;" and Sainte Aldegonde declared,
that, but for his cowardice, the fleet of Parma would have fallen into
their hands. The burgomaster himself narrowly escaped becoming a
prisoner, and owed his safety only to the swiftness of his barge, which
was called the "Flying Devil."

The patriots, in order to counteract similar enterprises in future, now
erected a sconce, which they called Fort Teligny; upon the ruptured dyke
of Borght, directly in front of the Borght blockhouse, belonging to the
Spaniards, and just opposite Fort Hoboken. Here, in this narrow passage,
close under the walls of Antwerp, where friends and foes were brought
closely, face to face, was the scene of many a sanguinary skirmish, from
the commencement of the siege until its close.

Still the bridge was believed to be a mere fable, a chimaera. Parma, men
said, had become a lunatic from pride. It was as easy to make the
Netherlands submit to the yoke of the Inquisition as to put a bridle on
the Scheldt. Its depth; breadth, the ice-floods of a northern winter, the
neighbourhood of the Zeeland fleets, the activity of the Antwerp
authorities, all were pledges that the attempt would be signally
frustrated.

And they should have been pledges--more than enough. Unfortunately,
however, there was dissension within, and no chieftain in the field, no
sage in the council, of sufficient authority to sustain the whole burthen
of the war, and to direct all the energies of the commonwealth. Orange
was dead. His son, one day to become the most illustrious military
commander in Europe, was a boy of seventeen, nominally captain-general,
but in reality but a youthful apprentice to his art. Hohenlo was wild,
wilful, and obstinate. Young William Lewis Nassau, already a soldier of
marked abilities, was fully occupied in Friesland, where he was
stadholder, and where he had quite enough to do in making head against
the Spanish governor and general, the veteran Verdugo: Military
operations against Zutphen distracted the attention of the States, which
should have been fixed upon Antwerp.

Admiral Treslong, as we have seen, was refractory, the cause of great
delinquency on the part of the fleets, and of infinite disaster to the
commonwealth. More than all, the French negotiation was betraying the
States into indolence and hesitation; and creating a schism between the
leading politicians of the country. Several thousand French troops, under
Monsieur d'Allaynes, were daily expected, but never arrived; and thus,
while English and French partisans were plotting and counter-plotting,
while a delusive diplomacy was usurping the place of lansquenettes and
gun-boats--the only possible agents at that moment to preserve
Antwerp--the bridge of Parma was slowly advancing. Before the winter had
closed in, the preparatory palisades had been finished.

Between Kalloo and Ordam, upon the opposite side, a sandbar had been
discovered in the river's bed, which diminished the depth of the stream,
and rendered the pile-driving comparatively easy. The breadth of the
Scheldt at this passage was twenty-four hundred feet; its depth, sixty
feet. Upon the Flemish side, near Kalloo, a strong fort was erected,
called Saint Mary, in honour of the blessed Virgin, to whom the whole
siege of Antwerp had been dedicated from the beginning. On the opposite
bank was a similar fort, flamed Philip, for the King. From each of these
two points, thus fortified, a framework of heavy timber, supported upon
huge piles, had been carried so far into the stream on either side that
the distance between the ends had at last been reduced to thirteen
hundred feet. The breadth of the roadway--formed of strong sleepers
firmly bound together--was twelve feet, along which block-houses of great
thickness were placed to defend the whole against assault.

Thus far the work had been comparatively easy. To bridge the remaining
open portion of the river, however, where its current was deepest and
strongest, and where the action of tide, tempest, and icebergs, would be
most formidable, seemed a desperate undertaking; for as the enterprise
advanced, this narrow open space became the scene of daily amphibious
encounters between the soldiers and sailors of Parma and the forces of
the States. Unfortunately for the patriots, it was only skirmishing. Had
a strong, concerted attack, in large force, from Holland and Zeeland
below and from the city above, been agreed upon, there was hardly a
period, until very late in the winter, when it might not have had the
best chances of success. With a vigorous commander against him, Parma,
weak in men, and at his wits' end for money, might, in a few hours, have
seen the labour of several months hopelessly annihilated. On the other
hand, the Prince was ably seconded by his lieutenant, Marquis Richebourg,
to whom had been delegated the immediate superintendence of the
bridge-building in its minutest details. He was never idle. Audacious,
indefatigable, ubiquitous, he at least atoned by energy and brilliant
courage for his famous treason of the preceding year, while his striking
and now rapidly approaching doom upon the very scene of his present
labours, made him appear to have been building a magnificent though
fleeting monument to his own memory.

Sainte Aldegonde, shut up in Antwerp, and hampered by dissension within
and obstinate jealousy without the walls, did all in his power to
frustrate the enemy's enterprise and animate the patriots. Through the
whole of the autumn and early winter, he had urged the States of Holland
and Zeeland to make use of the long winter nights, when moonless and
stormy, to attempt the destruction of Parma's undertaking, but the fatal
influences already indicated were more efficient against Antwerp than
even the genius of Farnese; and nothing came of the burgomaster's
entreaties save desultory skirmishing and unsuccessful enterprises. An
especial misfortune happened in one of these midnight undertakings.
Teligny ventured forth in a row-barge, with scarcely any companions, to
notify the Zeelanders of a contemplated movement, in which their
co-operation was desired. It was proposed that the Antwerp troops should
make a fictitious demonstration upon Fort Ordam, while at the same moment
the States' troops from Fort Lillo should make an assault upon the forts
on Kowenstyn Dyke; and in this important enterprise the Zeeland vessels
were requested to assist. But the brave Teligny nearly forfeited his life
by his rashness, and his services were, for a long time, lost to the
cause of liberty. It had been better to send a less valuable officer upon
such hazardous yet subordinate service. The drip of his oars was heard in
the darkness. He was pursued by a number of armed barges, attacked,
wounded severely in the shoulder, and captured. He threw his letters
overboard, but they were fished out of the water, carried to Parma, and
deciphered, so that the projected attack upon the Kowenstyn was
discovered, and, of necessity, deferred. As for Teligny, he was taken, as
a most valuable prize, into the enemy's camp, and was soon afterwards
thrust into prison at Tournay, where he remained six years--one year
longer than the period which his illustrious father had been obliged to
consume in the infamous dungeon at Mons. Few disasters could have been
more keenly felt by the States than the loss of this brilliant and
devoted French chieftain, who, young as he was, had already become very
dear to the republic; and Sainte Aldegonde was severely blamed for
sending so eminent a personage on that dangerous expedition, and for
sending him, too, with an insufficient convoy.

Still Alexander felt uncertain as to the result. He was determined to
secure Antwerp, but he yet thought it possible to secure it by
negotiation. The enigmatical policy maintained by France perplexed him;
for it did not seem possible that so much apparent solemnity and
earnestness were destined to lead to an impotent and infamous conclusion.
He was left, too, for a long time in ignorance of his own master's secret
schemes, he was at liberty to guess, and to guess only, as to the
projects of the league, he was without adequate means to carry out to a
certain triumph his magnificent enterprise, and he was in constant alarm
lest he should be suddenly assailed by an overwhelming French force. Had
a man sat upon the throne of Henry III., at that moment, Parma's
bridge-making and dyke-fortifying skilful as they were--would have been
all in vain. Meantime, in uncertainty as to the great issue, but resolved
to hold firmly to his purpose, he made repeated conciliatory offers to
the States with one hand, while he steadily prosecuted his aggressive
schemes with the other.

Parma had become really gentle, almost affectionate, towards the
Netherlanders. He had not the disposition of an Alva to smite and to
blast, to exterminate the rebels and heretics with fire and sword, with
the axe, the rack, and the gallows. Provided they would renounce the
great object of the contest, he seemed really desirous that they should
escape further chastisement; but to admit the worship of God according to
the reformed creed, was with him an inconceivable idea. To do so was both
unrighteous and impolitic. He had been brought up to believe that mankind
could be saved from eternal perdition only by believing in the
infallibility of the Bishop of Rome; that the only keys to eternal
paradise were in the hands of St. Peter's representative. Moreover, he
instinctively felt that within this religious liberty which the
Netherlanders claimed was hidden the germ of civil liberty; and though no
bigger than a grain of mustard-seed, it was necessary to destroy it at
once; for of course the idea of civil liberty could not enter the brain
of the brilliant general of Philip II.

On the 13th of November he addressed a letter to the magistracy and
broad-council of Antwerp. He asserted that the instigators of the
rebellion were not seeking to further the common weal, but their own
private ends. Especially had this been the ruling motive with the prince
of Orange and the Duke of Anjou, both of whom God had removed from the
world, in order to manifest to the States their own weakness, and the
omnipotence of Philip, whose prosperity the Lord was constantly
increasing. It was now more than time for the authorities of the country
to have regard for themselves, and for the miseries of the poor people.
The affection Which he had always felt for the Provinces from which he
had himself sprung and the favours which he had received from them in his
youth, had often moved him to propose measures, which, before God and his
conscience, he believed adequate to the restoration of peace. But his
letters had been concealed or falsely interpreted by the late Prince of
Orange, who had sought nothing but to spread desolation over the land,
and to shed the blood of the innocent. He now wrote once more, and for
the last time, in all fervour and earnestness, to implore them to take
compassion on their own wives and children and forlorn fatherland, to
turn their eyes backward on the peace and prosperity which they had
formerly enjoyed when obedient to his Majesty, and to cast a glance
around them upon the miseries which were so universal since the
rebellion. He exhorted them to close their ears to the insidious tongues
of those who were leading them into delusion as to the benevolence and
paternal sweetness of their natural lord and master, which were even now
so boundless that he did not hesitate once more to offer them his entire
forgiveness. If they chose to negotiate, they would find everything
granted that with right and reason could be proposed. The Prince
concluded by declaring that he made these advances not from any doubt as
to the successful issue of the military operations in which he was
engaged, but simply out of paternal anxiety for the happiness of the
Provinces. Did they remain obstinate, their ultimate conditions would be
rendered still more severe, and themselves, not he, would be responsible
for the misery and the bloodshed to ensue.

Ten days afterwards, the magistrates, thus addressed--after communication
with the broad-council--answered Parma's. 23rd Nov., letter manfully,
copiously, and with the customary but superfluous historical sketch. They
begged leave to entertain a doubt as to the paternal sweetness of a king
who had dealt so long in racks and gibbets. With Parma's own mother, as
they told the Prince, the Netherlanders had once made a treaty, by which
the right to worship God according to their consciences had been secured;
yet for maintaining that treaty they had been devoted to indiscriminate
destruction, and their land made desolate with fire and sword. Men had
been massacred by thousands, who had never been heard in their own
defence, and who had never been accused of any crime, "save that they had
assembled together in the name of God, to pray to Him through their only
mediator and advocate Jesus Christ, according to His command."

The axis of the revolt was the religious question; and it was impossible
to hope anything from a monarch who was himself a slave of the
Inquisition, and who had less independence of action than that enjoyed by
Jews and Turks, according to the express permission of the Pope.
Therefore they informed Parma that they had done with Philip for ever,
and that in consequence of the extraordinary wisdom, justice, and
moderation, of the French King, they had offered him the sovereignty of
their land, and had implored his protection.

They paid a tribute to the character of Farnese, who after gaining
infinite glory in arms, had manifested so much gentleness and disposition
to conciliate. They doubted not that he would, if he possessed the power,
have guided the royal councils to better and more generous results, and
protested that they would not have delayed to throw themselves into his
arms, had they been assured that he was authorized to admit that which
alone could form the basis of a successful negotiation--religious
freedom. They would in such case have been willing to close with him,
without talking about other conditions than such as his Highness in his
discretion and sweetness might think reasonable.

Moreover, as they observed in conclusion, they were precluded, by their
present relations with France, from entering into any other negotiation;
nor could they listen to any such proposals without deserving to be
stigmatized as the most lewd, blasphemous, and thankless mortals, that
ever cumbered the earth.

Being under equal obligations both to the Union and to France, they
announced that Parma's overtures would be laid before the French
government and the assembly of the States-General.

A day was to come, perhaps, when it would hardly seem lewdness and
blasphemy for the Netherlanders to doubt the extraordinary justice and
wisdom of the French King. Meantime, it cannot be denied that they were
at least loyal to their own engagements, and long-suffering where they
had trusted and given their hearts.

Parma replied by another letter, dated December 3rd. He assured the
citizens that Henry III. was far too discreet, and much too good a friend
to Philip II., to countenance this rebellion. If he were to take up their
quarrel, however, the King of Spain had a thousand means of foiling all
his attempts. As to the religious question--which they affirmed to be the
sole cause of the war--he was not inclined to waste words upon that
subject; nevertheless, so far as he in his simplicity could understand
the true nature of a Christian, he could not believe that it comported
with the doctrines of Jesus, whom they called their only mediator, nor
with the dictates of conscience, to take up arms against their lawful
king, nor to burn, rob, plunder, pierce dykes, overwhelm their
fatherland, and reduce all things to misery and chaos, in the name of
religion.

Thus moralizing and dogmatizing, the Prince concluded his letter, and so
the correspondence terminated. This last despatch was communicated at
once both to the States-General and to the French government, and
remained unanswered. Soon afterwards the Netherlands and England, France
and Spain, were engaged in that vast game of delusion which has been
described in the preceding chapters. Meantime both Antwerp and Parma
remained among the deluded, and were left to fight out their battle on
their own resources.

Having found it impossible to subdue Antwerp by his rhetoric, Alexander
proceeded with his bridge. It is impossible not to admire the steadiness
and ingenuity with which the Prince persisted in his plans, the courage
with which he bore up against the parsimony and neglect of his sovereign,
the compassionate tenderness which he manifested for his patient little
army. So much intellectual energy commands enthusiasm, while the
supineness on the other side sometimes excites indignation. There is even
a danger of being entrapped into sympathy with tyranny, when the cause of
tyranny is maintained by genius; and of being surprised into indifference
for human liberty, when the sacred interests of liberty are endangered by
self-interest, perverseness, and folly.

Even Sainte Aldegonde did not believe that the bridge could be completed.
His fears were that the city would be ruined rather by the cessation of
its commerce than by want of daily food. Already, after the capture of
Liefkenshoek and the death of Orange, the panic among commercial people
had been so intense that seventy or eighty merchants, representing the
most wealthy mercantile firms in Antwerp, made their escape from the
place, as if it had been smitten with pestilence, or were already in the
hands of Parma. All such refugees were ordered to return on peril of
forfeiting their property. Few came back, however, for they had found
means of converting and transferring their funds to other more secure
places, despite the threatened confiscation. It was insinuated that
Holland and Zeeland were indifferent to the fate of Antwerp, because in
the sequel the commercial cities of those Provinces succeeded to the vast
traffic and the boundless wealth which had been forfeited by the
Brabantine capital. The charge was an unjust one. At the very
commencement of the siege the States of Holland voted two hundred
thousand florins for its relief; and, moreover, these wealthy refugees
were positively denied admittance into the territory of the United
States, and were thus forced to settle in Germany or England. This
cessation of traffic was that which principally excited the anxiety of
Aldegonde. He could not bring himself to believe in the possibility of a
blockade, by an army of eight or ten thousand men, of a great and wealthy
city, where at least twenty thousand citizens were capable of bearing
arms. Had he thoroughly understood the deprivations under which Alexander
was labouring, perhaps he would have been even more confident as to the
result.

"With regard to the affair of the river Scheldt," wrote Parma to Philip,
"I should like to send your Majesty a drawing of the whole scheme; for
the work is too vast to be explained by letters. The more I examine it,
the more astonished I am that it should have been conducted to this
point; so many forts, dykes, canals, new inventions, machinery, and
engines, have been necessarily required."

He then proceeded to enlighten the King--as he never failed to do in all
his letters--as to his own impoverished, almost helpless condition.
Money, money, men! This was his constant cry. All would be in vain, he
said, if he were thus neglected. "'Tis necessary," said he, "for your
Majesty fully to comprehend, that henceforth the enterprise is your own.
I have done my work faithfully thus far; it is now for your Majesty to
take it thoroughly to heart; and embrace it with the warmth with which an
affair involving so much of your own interests deserves to be embraced."

He avowed that without full confidence in his sovereign's sympathy he
would never have conceived the project. "I confess that the enterprise is
great," he said, "and that by many it will be considered rash. Certainly
I should not have undertaken it, had I not felt certain of your Majesty's
full support."

But he was already in danger of being forced to abandon the whole
scheme--although so nearly carried into effect--for want of funds. "The
million promised," he wrote, "has arrived in bits and morsels, and with
so many ceremonies, that I haven't ten crowns at my disposal. How I am to
maintain even this handful of soldiers--for the army is diminished to
such a mere handful that it would astonish your Majesty--I am unable to
imagine. It would move you to witness their condition. They have suffered
as much as is humanly possible."

Many of the troops, indeed, were deserting, and making their escape,
beggared and desperate, into France, where, with natural injustice, they
denounced their General, whose whole heart was occupied with their
miseries, for the delinquency of his master, whose mind was full of other
schemes.

"There past this way many Spanish soldiers," wrote Stafford from Paris,
"so poor and naked as I ever saw any. There have been within this
fortnight two hundred at a time in this town, who report the extremity of
want of victuals in their camp, and that they have been twenty-four
months without pay. They exclaim greatly upon the Prince of Parma.
Mendoza seeks to convey them away, and to get money for them by all means
he can."

Stafford urged upon his government the propriety of being at least as
negligent as Philip had showed himself to be of the Spaniards. By
prohibiting supplies to the besieging army, England might contribute,
negatively, if not otherwise, to the relief of Antwerp. "There is no
place," he wrote to Walsingham, "whence the Spaniards are so thoroughly
victualled as from us. English boats go by sixteen and seventeen into
Dunkirk, well laden with provisions."

This was certainly not in accordance with the interests nor the
benevolent professions of the English ministers.

These supplies were not to be regularly depended upon however. They were
likewise not to be had without paying a heavy price for them, and the
Prince had no money in his coffer. He lived from hand to mouth, and was
obliged to borrow from every private individual who had anything to lend.
Merchants, nobles, official personages, were all obliged to assist in
eking out the scanty pittance allowed by the sovereign.

"The million is all gone," wrote Parma to his master; "some to Verdugo in
Friesland; some to repay the advances of Marquis Richebourg and other
gentlemen. There is not a farthing for the garrisons. I can't go on a
month longer, and, if not supplied, I shall be obliged to abandon the
work. I have not money enough to pay my sailors, joiners, carpenters, and
other mechanics, from week to week, and they will all leave me in the
lurch, if I leave them unpaid. I have no resource but to rely on your
Majesty. Otherwise the enterprise must wholly fail."

In case it did fail, the Prince wiped his hands of the responsibility. He
certainly had the right to do so.

One of the main sources of supply was the city of Hertogenbosch, or
Bois-le-Duc. It was one of the four chief cities of Brabant, and still
held for the King, although many towns in its immediate neighbourhood had
espoused the cause of the republic. The States had long been anxious to
effect a diversion for the relief of Antwerp, by making an attack on
Bois-le-Duc. Could they carry the place, Parma would be almost inevitably
compelled to abandon the siege in which he was at present engaged, and he
could moreover spare no troops for its defence. Bois-le-Duc was a
populous, wealthy, thriving town, situate on the Deeze, two leagues above
its confluence with the Meuse, and about twelve leagues from Antwerp. It
derived its name of `Duke's Wood' from a magnificent park and forest,
once the favourite resort and residence of the old Dukes of Brabant, of
which some beautiful vestiges still remained. It was a handsome
well-built city, with two thousand houses of the better class, besides
more humble tenements. Its citizens were celebrated for their courage and
belligerent skill, both on foot and on horseback. They were said to
retain more of the antique Belgic ferocity which Caesar had celebrated
than that which had descended to most of their kinsmen. The place was,
moreover, the seat of many prosperous manufactures. Its clothiers sent
the products of their looms over all Christendom, and its linen and
cutlery were equally renowned.

It would be a most fortunate blow in the cause of freedom to secure so,
thriving and conspicuous a town, situated thus in the heart of what
seemed the natural territory of the United States; and, by so doing, to
render nugatory the mighty preparations of Parma against Antwerp.
Moreover, it was known that there was no Spanish or other garrison within
its walls, so that there was no opposition to be feared, except from the
warlike nature of the citizens.

Count Hohenlo was entrusted, early in January, with this important
enterprise. He accordingly collected a force of four thousand infantry,
together with two hundred mounted lancers; having previously
reconnoitered the ground. He relied very much, for the success of the
undertaking, on Captain Kleerhagen, a Brussels nobleman, whose wife was a
native of Bois-le-Duc, and who was thoroughly familiar with the locality.
One dark winter's night, Kleerhagen, with fifty picked soldiers, advanced
to the Antwerp gate of Bois-le-Duc, while Hohenlo, with his whole force,
lay in ambuscade as near as possible to the city.

Between the drawbridge and the portcullis were two small guard-houses,
which, very carelessly, had been left empty. Kleerhagen, with his fifty
followers, successfully climbed into these lurking-places, where they
quietly ensconced themselves for the night. At eight o'clock of the
following morning (20th January) the guards of the gate drew up the
portcullis, and reconnoitered. At the same instant, the ambushed fifty
sprang from their concealment, put them to the sword, and made themselves
masters of the gate. None of the night-watch escaped with life, save one
poor old invalided citizen, whose business had been to draw up the
portcullis, and who was severely wounded, and left for dead. The fifty
immediately summoned all of Rohenlo's ambuscade that were within hearing,
and then, without waiting for them, entered the town pell-mell in the
best of spirits, and shouting victory! victory! till they were hoarse. A
single corporal, with two men, was left to guard the entrance. Meantime,
the old wounded gate-opener, bleeding and crippled, crept into a dark
corner, and laid himself down, unnoticed, to die.

Soon afterwards Hohenlo galloped into the town, clad in complete armour,
his long curls floating in the wind, with about two hundred troopers
clattering behind him, closely followed by five hundred pike-men on foot.

Very brutally, foolishly, and characteristically, he had promised his
followers the sacking of the city so soon as it should be taken. They
accordingly set about the sacking, before it was taken. Hardly had the
five or six hundred effected their entrance, than throwing off all
control, they dispersed through the principal streets, and began bursting
open the doors of the most opulent households. The cries of "victory!"
"gained city!" "down with the Spaniards!" resounded on all sides. Many of
the citizens, panic-struck, fled from their homes, which they thus
abandoned to pillage, while, meantime, the loud shouts of the assailants
reached the ears of the sergeant and his two companies who had been left
in charge of the gate. Fearing that they should be cheated of their
rightful share in the plunder, they at once abandoned their post, and set
forth after their comrades, as fast as their legs could carry them.

Now it so chanced--although there was no garrison in the town--that forty
Burgundian and Italian lancers, with about thirty foot-soldiers, had come
in the day before to escort a train of merchandise. The Seigneur de
Haultepenne, governor of Breda, a famous royalist commander--son of old
Count Berlaymont, who first gave the name of "beggars" to the
patriots-had accompanied them in the expedition. The little troop were
already about to mount their horses to depart, when they became aware of
the sudden tumult. Elmont, governor of the city, had also flown to the
rescue, and had endeavoured to rally the burghers. Not unmindful of their
ancient warlike fame, they had obeyed his entreaties. Elmont, with a
strong party of armed citizens, joined himself to Haultepenne's little
band of lancers. They fired a few shots at straggling parties of
plunderers, and pursued others up some narrow streets. They were but an
handful in comparison with the number of the patriots, who had gained
entrance to the city. They were, however, compact, united, and resolute.
The assailants were scattered, disorderly, and bent only upon plunder.
When attacked by an armed and regular band, they were amazed. They had
been told that there was no garrison; and behold a choice phalanx of
Spanish lancers, led on by one of the most famous of Philip's Netherland
chieftains. They thought themselves betrayed by Kleerhagen, entrapped
into a deliberately arranged ambush. There was a panic. The soldiers,
dispersed and doubtful, could not be rallied. Hohenlo, seeing that
nothing was to be done with his five hundred, galloped furiously out of
the gate, to bring in the rest of his troops who had remained outside the
walls. The prize of the wealthy city of Bois-le-Duc was too tempting to
be lightly abandoned; but he had much better have thought of making
himself master of it himself before he should present it as a prey to his
followers.

During his absence the panic spread. The States' troops, bewildered,
astonished, vigorously assaulted, turned their backs upon their enemies,
and fled helter-skelter towards the gates, through which they had first
gained admittance. But unfortunately for them, so soon as the corporal
had left his position, the wounded old gate-opener, in a dying condition,
had crawled forth on his hands and knees from a dark hole in the tower,
cut, with a pocket-knife, the ropes of the portcullis, and then given up
the ghost. Most effective was that blow struck by a dead man's hand. Down
came the portcullis. The flying plunderers were entrapped. Close behind
them came the excited burghers--their antique Belgic ferocity now fully
aroused--firing away with carbine and matchlock, dealing about them with
bludgeon and cutlass, and led merrily on by Haultepenne and Elmont armed
in proof, at the head of their squadron of lancers. The unfortunate
patriots had risen very early in the morning only to shear the wolf. Some
were cut to pieces in the streets; others climbed the walls, and threw
themselves head foremost into the moat. Many were drowned, and but a very
few effected their escape. Justinus de Nassau sprang over the parapet,
and succeeded in swimming the ditch. Kleerhagen, driven into the Holy
Cross tower, ascended to its roof, leaped, all accoutred as he was, into
the river, and with the assistance of a Scotch soldier, came safe to
land. Ferdinand Truchsess, brother of the ex-elector of Cologne, was
killed. Four or five hundred of the assailants--nearly all who had
entered the city--were slain, and about fifty of the burghers.

Hohenlo soon came back, with Colonel Ysselstein, and two thousand fresh
troops. But their noses, says a contemporary, grew a hundred feet long
with surprise when they saw the gate shut in their faces. It might have
occurred to the Count, when he rushed out of the town for reinforcements,
that it would be as well to replace the guard, which--as he must have
seen--had abandoned their post.

Cursing his folly, he returned, mavellously discomfited, and deservedly
censured, to Gertruydenberg. And thus had a most important enterprise;
which had nearly been splendidly successful, ended in disaster and
disgrace. To the recklessness of the general, to the cupidity which he
had himself awakened in his followers, was the failure alone to be
attributed. Had he taken possession of the city with a firm grasp at the
head of his four thousand men, nothing could have resisted him;
Haultepenne, and his insignificant force, would have been dead, or his
prisoners; the basis of Parma's magnificent operations would have been
withdrawn; Antwerp would have been saved.

"Infinite gratitude," wrote Parma to Philip, "should be rendered to the
Lord. Great thanks are also due to Haultepenne. Had the rebels succeeded
in their enterprise against Bolduc, I should have been compelled to
abandon the siege of Antwerp. The town; by its strength and situation, is
of infinite importance for the reduction both of that place and of
Brussels, and the rebels in possession of Bolduc would have cut off my
supplies."

The Prince recommended Haultepenne most warmly to the King as deserving
of a rich "merced." The true hero of the day, however--at least the chief
agent in the victory was the poor, crushed, nameless victim who had cut
the ropes of the portcullis at the Antwerp gate.

Hohenlo was deeply stung by the disgrace which he had incurred. For a
time he sought oblivion in hard drinking; but--brave and energetic,
though reckless--he soon became desirous of retrieving his reputation by
more successful enterprises. There was no lack of work, and assuredly his
hands were rarely idle.

"Hollach (Hohenlo) is gone from hence on Friday last," wrote Davison to
Walsingham, "he will do what he may to recover his reputation lost in the
attempt, of Bois-le-Duc; which, for the grief and trouble he hath
conceived thereof, hath for the time greatly altered him."

Meantime the turbulent Scheldt, lashed by the storms of winter, was
becoming a more formidable enemy to Parma's great enterprise than the
military demonstrations of his enemies, or the famine which was making
such havoc, with his little army. The ocean-tides were rolling huge
ice-blocks up and down, which beat against his palisade with the noise of
thunder, and seemed to threaten its immediate destruction. But the work
stood firm. The piles supporting the piers, which had been thrust out
from each bank into the stream, had been driven fifty feet into the
river's bed, and did their duty well. But in the space between, twelve
hundred and forty feet in width, the current was too deep for
pile-driving and a permanent bridge was to be established upon boats. And
that bridge was to be laid across the icy and tempestuous flood, in the
depth of winter, in the teeth of a watchful enemy, with the probability
of an immediate invasion from France, where the rebel envoys were known
to be negotiating on express invitation of the King--by half-naked,
half-starving soldiers and sailors, unpaid for years, and for the sake of
a master who seemed to have forgotten their existence.

"Thank God," wrote Alexander, "the palisade stands firm in spite of the
ice. Now with the favour of the Lord, we shall soon get the fruit we have
been hoping, if your Majesty is not wanting in that to which your
grandeur, your great Christianity, your own interests, oblige you. In
truth 'tis a great and heroic work, worthy the great power of your
Majesty." "For my own part," he continued, "I have done what depended
upon me. From your own royal hand must emanate the rest;--men, namely,
sufficient to maintain the posts, and money enough to support them
there."

He expressed himself in the strongest language concerning the danger to
the royal cause from the weak and gradually sinking condition of the
army. Even without the French intrigues with the rebels, concerning
which, in his ignorance of the exact state of affairs, he expressed much
anxiety, it would be impossible, he said, to save the royal cause without
men and money.

"I have spared myself," said the Prince, "neither day nor night. Let not
your Majesty impute the blame to me if we fail. Verdugo also is uttering
a perpetual cry out of Friesland for men--men and money."

Yet, notwithstanding all these obstacles, the bridge was finished at
last. On the 25th February, (1585) the day sacred to Saint Matthew, and
of fortunate augury to the Emperor Charles, father of Philip and
grandfather of Alexander, the Scheldt was closed.

As already stated, from Fort Saint Mary on the Kalloo side, and from Fort
Philip, not far from Ordain on the Brabant shore of the Scheldt, strong
structures, supported upon piers, had been projected, reaching,
respectively, five hundred feet into the stream. These two opposite ends
were now connected by a permanent bridge of boats. There were thirty-two
of these barges, each of them sixty-two feet in length and twelve in
breadth, the spaces between each couple being twenty-two feet wide, and
all being bound together, stem, stern, and midships, by quadruple hawsers
and chains. Each boat was anchored at stem and stern with loose cables.
Strong timbers, with cross rafters, were placed upon the boats, upon
which heavy frame-work the planked pathway was laid down. A thick parapet
of closely-fitting beams was erected along both the outer edges of the
whole fabric. Thus a continuous and well-fortified bridge, two thousand
four hundred feet in length, was stretched at last from shore to shore.
Each of the thirty-two boats on which the central portion of the
structure reposed, was a small fortress provided with two heavy pieces of
artillery, pointing, the one up, the other down the stream, and manned by
thirty-two soldiers and four sailors, defended by a breastwork formed of
gabions of great thickness.

The forts of Saint Philip and St. Mary, at either end of the bridge, had
each ten great guns, and both were filled with soldiers. In front of each
fort, moreover, was stationed a fleet of twenty armed vessels, carrying
heavy pieces of artillery; ten anchored at the angle towards Antwerp, and
as many looking down the river. One hundred and seventy great guns,
including the armaments of the boats under the bridge of the armada and
the forts, protected the whole structure, pointing up and down the
stream.

But, besides these batteries, an additional precaution had been taken. On
each side, above and below the bridge, at a moderate distance--a bow
shot--was anchored a heavy, raft floating upon empty barrels. Each raft
was composed of heavy timbers, bound together in bunches of three, the
spaces between being connected by ships' masts and lighter spar-work, and
with a tooth-like projection along the whole outer edge, formed of strong
rafters, pointed and armed with sharp prongs and hooks of iron. Thus a
serried phalanx, as it were, of spears stood ever on guard to protect the
precious inner structure. Vessels coming from Zeeland or Antwerp, and the
floating ice-masses, which were almost as formidable, were obliged to
make their first attack upon these dangerous outer defences. Each raft;
floating in the middle of the stream, extended twelve hundred, and
fifty-two feet across, thus protecting the whole of the bridge of boats
and a portion of that resting upon piles.

Such was the famous bridge of Parma. The magnificent undertaking has been
advantageously compared with the celebrated Rhine-bridge of Julius
Caesar. When it is remembered; however; that the Roman work was performed
in summer, across a river only half as broad as the Scheldt, free from
the disturbing, action of the tides; and flowing through an unresisting
country; while the whole character of the structure; intended only to,
serve for the single passage of an army, was far inferior to the massive
solidity of Parma's bridge; it seems not unreasonable to assign the
superiority to the general who had surmounted all the obstacles of a
northern winter, vehement ebb and flow from the sea, and enterprising and
desperate enemies at every point.

When the citizens, at last, looked upon the completed fabric, converted
from the "dream," which they had pronounced it to be, into a terrible
reality; when they saw the shining array of Spanish and Italian legions
marching and counter-marching upon their new road; and trampling, as it
were; the turbulent river beneath their feet; when they witnessed the
solemn military spectacle with which the Governor-General celebrated his
success, amid peals of cannon and shouts of triumph from his army, they
bitterly bewailed their own folly. Yet even then they could hardly
believe that the work had been accomplished by human agency, but they
loudly protested that invisible demons had been summoned to plan and
perfect this fatal and preter-human work. They were wrong. There had been
but one demon--one clear, lofty intelligence, inspiring a steady and
untiring hand. The demon was the intellect of Alexander Farnese; but it
had been assisted in its labour by the hundred devils of envy,
covetousness, jealousy, selfishness, distrust, and discord, that had
housed, not, in his camp, but in the ranks of those who were contending
for their hearths and altars.

And thus had the Prince arrived at success in spite of every obstacle. He
took a just pride in the achievement, yet he knew by how many dangers he
was still surrounded, and he felt hurt at his sovereign's neglect. "The
enterprise at Antwerp," he wrote to Philip on the day the bridge was
completed, "is so great and heroic that to celebrate it would require me
to speak more at large than I like, to do, for fear of being tedious to
your Majesty. What I will say, is that the labours and difficulties have
been every day so, great, that if your Majesty knew them, you would
estimate, what we have done more highly than-you do; and not forget us so
utterly, leaving us to die of hunger."

He considered the fabric in itself almost impregnable, provided he were
furnished with the means to maintain what he had so painfully
constructed.

"The whole is in such condition," said he, "that in opinion of all
competent military judges it would stand though all Holland and Zeeland
should come to destroy our palisades. Their attacks must be made at
immense danger, and disadvantage, so severely can we play upon them with
our artillery and musketry. Every boat is, garnished with the most dainty
captains and soldiers, so that if the enemy should attempt to assail us
now, they would come back with broken heads."

Yet in the midst of his apparent triumph he had, at times, almost despair
in his heart. He felt really at the last gasp. His troops had dwindled to
the mere shadow of an army, and they were forced to live almost upon air.
The cavalry had nearly vanished. The garrisons in the different cities
were starving. The burghers had no food for the soldiers nor for
themselves. "As for the rest of the troops," said Alexander, "they are
stationed where they have nothing to subsist upon, save salt water and
the dykes, and if the Lord does not grant a miracle, succour, even if
sent by your Majesty, will arrive too late." He assured his master, that
he could not go on more than five or six days longer, that he had been
feeding his soldiers for a long time from hand to mouth, and that it
would soon be impossible for him to keep his troops together. If he did
not disband them they would run away.

His pictures were most dismal, his supplications for money very moving
but he never alluded to himself. All his anxiety, all his tenderness,
were for his soldiers. "They must have food," he said: "'Tis impossible
to sustain them any longer by driblets, as I have done for a long time.
Yet how can I do it without money? And I have none at all, nor do I see
where to get a single florin."

But these revelations were made only to his master's most secret ear. His
letters, deciphered after three centuries, alone make manifest the almost
desperate condition in which the apparently triumphant general was
placed, and the facility with which his antagonists, had they been well
guided and faithful to themselves, might have driven him into the sea.

But to those adversaries he maintained an attitude of serene and smiling
triumph. A spy, sent from the city to obtain intelligence for the anxious
burghers, had gained admission into his lines, was captured and brought
before the Prince. He expected, of course, to be immediately hanged. On
the contrary, Alexander gave orders that he should be conducted over
every part of the encampment. The forts, the palisades, the bridge, were
all to be carefully exhibited and explained to him as if he had been a
friendly visitor entitled to every information. He was requested to count
the pieces of artillery in the forts, on the bridge, in the armada. After
thoroughly studying the scene he was then dismissed with a safe-conduct
to the city.

"Go back to those who sent you," said the Prince. "Convey to them the
information in quest of which you came. Apprize them of every thing which
you have inspected, counted, heard explained. Tell them further, that the
siege will never be abandoned, and that this bridge will be my sepulcher
or my pathway into Antwerp."

And now the aspect of the scene was indeed portentous. The chimera had
become a very visible bristling reality. There stood the bridge which the
citizens had ridiculed while it was growing before their faces. There
scowled the Kowenstyn--black with cannon, covered all over with
fortresses which the butchers had so sedulously preserved. From Parma's
camp at Beveren and Kalloo a great fortified road led across the river
and along the fatal dyke all the way to the entrenchments at Stabroek,
where Mansfeld's army lay. Grim Mondragon held the "holy cross" and the
whole Kowenstyn in his own iron grasp. A chain of forts, built and
occupied by the contending hosts of the patriots and the Spaniards, were
closely packed together along both banks of the Scheldt, nine miles long
from Antwerp to Lillo, and interchanged perpetual cannonades. The country
all around, once fertile as a garden, had been changed into a wild and
wintry sea where swarms of gun-boats and other armed vessels manoeuvred
and contended with each other over submerged villages and orchards, and
among half-drowned turrets and steeples. Yet there rose the great
bulwark--whose early destruction would have made all this desolation a
blessing--unbroken and obstinate; a perpetual obstacle to communication
between Antwerp and Zeeland. The very spirit of the murdered Prince of
Orange seemed to rise sadly and reproachfully out of the waste of waters,
as if to rebuke the men who had been so deaf to his solemn warnings.

Brussels, too, wearied and worn, its heart sick with hope deferred, now
fell into despair as the futile result of the French negotiation became
apparent. The stately and opulent city had long been in a most abject
condition. Many of its inhabitants attempted to escape from the horrors
of starving by flying from its walls. Of the fugitives, the men were
either scourged back by the Spaniards into the city, or hanged up along
the road-side. The women were treated, leniently, even playfully, for it
was thought an excellent jest to cut off the petticoats of the
unfortunate starving creatures up to their knees, and then command them
to go back and starve at home with their friends and fellow-citizens. A
great many persons literally died of hunger. Matrons with large families
poisoned their children and themselves to avoid the more terrible death
by starving. At last, when Vilvoorde was taken, when the baseness of the
French King was thoroughly understood, when Parma's bridge was completed
and the Scheldt bridled, Brussels capitulated on as favourable terms as
could well have been expected.

     ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

     College of "peace-makers," who wrangled more than all
     Military virtue in the support of an infamous cause
     Not distinguished for their docility
     Repentance, as usual, had come many hours too late




HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS

From the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce--1609

By John Lothrop Motley

History United Netherlands, 1585

Alexander Farnese, The Duke of Parma




CHAPTER V., Part 2.

   Position of Alexander and his Army--La Motte attempts in vain
   Ostend--Patriots gain Liefkenshoek--Projects of Gianibelli--Alarm on
   the Bridge--The Fire Ships--The Explosion--Its Results--Death of the
   Viscount of Ghent--Perpetual Anxiety of Farnese--Impoverished State
   of the Spaniards--Intended Attack of the Kowenstyn--Second Attack of
   the Kowenstyn--A Landing effected--A sharp Combat--The Dyke pierced
   --Rally of the Spaniards--Parma comes to the Rescue--Fierce Struggle
   on the Dyke--The Spaniards successful--Premature Triumph at Antwerp
   --Defeat of the Patriots--The Ship War's End--Despair of the Citizens

Notwithstanding these triumphs, Parma was much inconvenienced by not
possessing the sea-coast of Flanders. Ostend was a perpetual
stumbling-block to him. He therefore assented, with pleasure to a
proposition made by La Motte, one of the most experienced and courageous
of the Walloon royalist, commanders, to attempt the place by surprise.
And La Motte; at the first blow; was more than half successful.

On the night of the 29th March, (1585) with two thousand foot and twelve
hundred cavalry, he carried the whole of the old port of Ostend. Leaving
a Walloon officer, in whom he had confidence, to guard the position
already gained, he went back in person for reinforcements. During his
advance, the same ill luck attended his enterprise which had blasted
Hohenlo's achievement at Bois-le-Duc. The soldiers he left behind him
deserted their posts for the sake of rifling the town. The officer in
command, instead of keeping them to their duty, joined in the chase. The
citizens roused themselves, attacked their invaders, killed many of them,
and put the rest to flight. When La Motte returned; he found the panic
general. His whole force, including the fresh soldiers just brought to
the rescue, were beside themselves with fear. He killed several with his
own hand, but the troops were not to be rallied. His quick triumph was
changed into an absolute defeat.

Parma, furious at the ignominious result of a plan from which so much had
been expected, ordered the Walloon captain, from whose delinquency so
much disaster had resulted, to be forthwith hanged. "Such villainy," said
he, "must never go unpunished."

It was impossible for the Prince to send a second expedition to attempt
the reduction of Ostend, for the patriots were at last arousing
themselves to the necessity of exertion. It was very obvious--now that
the bridge had been built, and the Kowenstyn fortified--that one or the
other was to be destroyed, or Antwerp abandoned to its fate.

The patriots had been sleeping, as it were, all the winter, hugging the
delusive dream of French sovereignty and French assistance. No language
can exaggerate the deadly effects from the slow poison of that
negotiation. At any rate, the negotiation was now concluded. The dream
was dispelled. Antwerp must now fall, or a decisive blow must be struck
by the patriots themselves, and a telling blow had been secretly and
maturely meditated. Certain preparatory steps were however necessary.

The fort of Liefkenshoek, "darling's corner," was a most important post.
The patriots had never ceased to regret that precious possession, lost,
as we have seen, in so tragical a manner on the very day of Orange's
death. Fort Lillo, exactly opposite, on the Brabant shore of the Scheldt,
had always been securely held by them; and was their strongest position.
Were both places in their power, the navigation of the river, at least as
far as the bridge, would be comparatively secure.

A sudden dash was made upon Liefkenshoek. A number of armed vessels
sailed up from Zeeland, under command of Justinus de Nassau. They were
assisted from Fort Lillo by a detachment headed by Count Hohenlo. These
two officers were desirous of retrieving the reputation which they had
lost at Bois-le-Duc. They were successful, and the "darling" fort was
carried at a blow. After a brief cannonade, the patriots made a breach,
effected a landing, and sprang over the ramparts. The Walloons and
Spaniards fled in dismay; many of them were killed in the fort, and along
the dykes; others were hurled into the Scheldt. The victors followed up
their success by reducing, with equal impetuosity, the fort of Saint
Anthony, situate in the neighbourhood farther down the river. They thus
gained entire command of all the high ground, which remained in that
quarter above the inundation, and was called the Doel.

The dyke, on which Liefkenshoek stood, led up the river towards Kalloo,
distant less than a league. There were Parma's head-quarters and the
famous bridge. But at Fort Saint Mary; where the Flemish head of that
bridge rested, the dyke was broken. Upon that broken end the commanders
of the expedition against Liefkenshoek were ordered to throw up an
entrenchment, without loss of a moment, so soon as they should have
gained the fortresses which they were ordered first to assault. Sainte
Aldegonde had given urgent written directions to this effect. From a
redoubt situated thus, in the very face of Saint Mary's, that position,
the palisade-work, the whole bridge, might be battered with all the
artillery that could be brought from Zeeland.

But Parma was beforehand with them. Notwithstanding his rage and
mortification that Spanish soldiers should have ignominiously lost the
important fortress which Richebourg had conquered so brilliantly nine
months before, he was not the man to spend time in unavailing regrets.
His quick eye instantly, detected the flaw which might soon be fatal. In
the very same night of the loss of Liefkenshoek, he sent as strong a
party as could be spared, with plenty of sappers and miners, in
flat-bottomed boats across from Kalloo. As the morning dawned, an
improvised fortress, with the Spanish flag waving above its bulwarks,
stood on the broken end of the dyke. That done, he ordered one of the two
captains who had commanded in Liefkenshoek and Saint Anthony to be
beheaded on the same dyke. The other was dismissed with ignominy. Ostend
was, of course, given up; "but it was not a small matter," said Parma,
"to fortify ourselves that very night upon the ruptured place, and so
prevent the rebels from doing it, which would have been very
mal-a-propos."

Nevertheless, the rebels had achieved a considerable success; and now or
never the telling blow, long meditated, was to be struck.

There lived in Antwerp a subtle Mantuan, Gianibelli by name, who had
married and been long settled in the city. He had made himself busy with
various schemes for victualling the place. He had especially urged upon
the authorities, at an early period of the siege, the propriety of making
large purchases of corn and storing it in magazines at a time when
famine-price had by no means been reached. But the leading men had then
their heads full of a great ship, or floating castle, which they were
building, and which they had pompously named the 'War's End,' 'Fin de la
Guerre.' We shall hear something of this phenomenon at a later period.
Meanwhile, Gianibelli, who knew something of shipbuilding, as he did of
most other useful matters, ridiculed the design, which was likely to
cost, in itself before completion, as much money as would keep the city
in bread for a third of a year.

Gianibelli was no patriot. He was purely a man of science and of great
acquirements, who was looked upon by the ignorant populace alternately as
a dreamer and a wizard. He was as indifferent to the cause of freedom as
of despotism, but he had a great love for chemistry. He was also a
profound mechanician, second to no man of his age in theoretic and
practical engineering.

He had gone from Italy to Spain that he might offer his services to
Philip, and give him the benefit of many original and ingenious
inventions. Forced to dance attendance, day after day, among sneering
courtiers and insolent placemen, and to submit to the criticism of
practical sages and philosophers of routine, while, he was constantly
denied an opportunity of explaining his projects, the quick-tempered
Italian had gone away at last, indignant. He had then vowed revenge upon
the dulness by which his genius had been slighted, and had sworn that the
next time the Spaniards heard the name of the man whom they had dared to
deride, they should hear it with tears.

He now laid before the senate of Antwerp a plan for some vessels likely
to prove more effective than the gigantic 'War's End,' which he had
prophesied would prove a failure. With these he pledged himself to
destroy the bridge. He demanded three ships which he had selected from
the city fleet; the 'Orange,' the 'Post,' and the 'Golden Lion,'
measuring, respectively, one hundred and fifty, three hundred and fifty,
and five hundred tons. Besides these, he wished sixty flat-bottomed
scows, which he proposed to send down the river, partially submerged,
disposed in the shape of a half moon, with innumerable anchors and
grapnel's thrusting themselves out of the water at every point. This
machine was intended to operate against the raft.

Ignorance and incredulity did their work, as usual, and Gianbelli's
request was refused. As a quarter-measure, nevertheless, he was allowed
to take two smaller vessels of seventy and eighty tons. The Italian was
disgusted with parsimony upon so momentous an occasion, but he at the
same time determined, even with these slender materials, to give an
exhibition of his power.

Not all his the glory, however, of the ingenious project. Associated with
him were two skilful artizans of Antwerp; a clockmaker named Bory, and a
mechanician named Timmerman--but Gianibelli was the chief and
superintendent of the whole daring enterprise.

He gave to his two ships the cheerful names of the 'Fortune' and the
'Hope,' and set himself energetically to justify their titles by their
efficiency. They were to be marine volcanos, which, drifting down the
river with tide, were to deal destruction where the Spaniards themselves
most secure.

In the hold of each vessel, along the whole length, was laid down a solid
flooring of brick and mortar, one foot thick and five feet wide. Upon
this was built a chamber of marble mason-work, forty feet long, three and
a half feet broad, as many high, and with side-walks [walls? D.W.] five
feet in thickness.

This was the crater. It was filled with seven thousand of gunpowder, of a
kind superior to anything known, and prepared by Gianibelli himself. It
was covered with a roof, six feet in thickness, formed of blue
tombstones, placed edgewise. Over this crater, rose a hollow cone, or
pyramid, made of heavy marble slabs, and filled with mill-stones, cannon
balls, blocks of marble, chain-shot, iron hooks, plough-coulters, and
every dangerous missile that could be imagined. The spaces between the
mine and the sides of each ship were likewise filled with paving stones,
iron-bound stakes, harpoons, and other projectiles. The whole fabric was
then covered by a smooth light flooring of planks and brick-work, upon
which was a pile of wood: This was to be lighted at the proper time, in
order that the two vessels might present the appearance of simple
fire-ships, intended only to excite a conflagration of the bridge. On the
'Fortune' a slow match, very carefully prepared, communicated with the
submerged mine, which was to explode at a nicely-calculated moment. The
eruption of the other floating volcano was to be regulated by an
ingenious piece of clock-work, by which, at the appointed time, fire,
struck from a flint, was to inflame the hidden mass of gunpowder below.

In addition to these two infernal machines, or "hell-burners," as they
were called, a fleet of thirty-two smaller vessels was prepared. Covered
with tar, turpentine, rosin, and filled with inflammable and combustible
materials, these barks were to be sent from Antwerp down the river in
detachments of eight every half hour with the ebb tide. The object was to
clear the way, if possible, of the raft, and to occupy the attention of
the Spaniards, until the 'Fortune' and the `Hope' should come down upon
the bridge.

The 5th April, (1885) being the day following that on which the
successful assault upon Liefkenshoek and Saint Anthony had taken place,
was fixed for the descent of the fire-ships. So soon as it should be
dark, the thirty-two lesser burning-vessels, under the direction of
Admiral Jacob Jacobzoon, were to be sent forth from the neighborhood of
the 'Boor's Sconce'--a fort close to the city walls--in accordance with
the Italian's plan. "Run-a-way Jacob," however, or "Koppen Loppen," had
earned no new laurels which could throw into the shade that opprobrious
appellation. He was not one of Holland's naval heroes, but, on the whole,
a very incompetent officer; exactly the man to damage the best concerted
scheme which the genius of others could invent. Accordingly,
Koppen-Loppen began with a grave mistake. Instead of allowing the
precursory fire-ships to drift down the stream, at the regular intervals
agreed upon, he despatched them all rapidly, and helter skelter, one
after another, as fast as they could be set forth on their career. Not
long afterwards, he sent the two "hellburners," the 'Fortune' and the
'Hope,' directly in their wake. Thus the whole fiery fleet had set forth,
almost at once, upon its fatal voyage.

It was known to Parma that preparations for an attack were making at
Antwerp, but as to the nature of the danger he was necessarily in the
dark. He was anticipating an invasion by a fleet from the city in
combination with a squadron of Zeelanders coming up from below. So soon
as the first vessels, therefore, with their trains not yet lighted, were
discovered bearing down from the city, he was confirmed in his
conjecture. His drama and trumpets instantly called to arms, and the
whole body of his troops was mustered upon the bridge; the palisades, and
in the nearest forts. Thus the preparations to avoid or to contend with
the danger, were leading the Spaniards into the very jaws of destruction.
Alexander, after crossing and recrossing the river, giving minute
directions for repelling the expected assault, finally stationed himself
in the block-house at the point of junction, on the Flemish aide, between
the palisade and the bridge of boats. He was surrounded by a group of
superior officers, among whom Richebourg, Billy, Gaetano, Cessis, and the
Englishman Sir Rowland Yorke, were conspicuous.

It was a dark, mild evening of early spring. As the fleet of vessels
dropped slowly down the river, they suddenly became luminous, each ship
flaming out of the darkness, a phantom of living fire. The very waves of
the Scheldt seemed glowing with the conflagration, while its banks were
lighted up with a preternatural glare. It was a wild, pompous, theatrical
spectacle. The array of soldiers on both aides the river, along the dykes
and upon the bridge, with banners waving, and spear and cuirass glancing
in the lurid light; the demon fleet, guided by no human hand, wrapped in
flames, and flitting through the darkness, with irregular movement; but
portentous aspect, at the caprice of wind and tide; the death-like
silence of expectation, which had succeeded the sound of trumpet and the
shouts of the soldiers; and the weird glow which had supplanted the
darkness-all combined with the sense of imminent and mysterious danger to
excite and oppress the imagination.

Presently, the Spaniards, as they gazed from the bridge, began to take
heart again. One after another, many of the lesser vessels drifted
blindly against the raft, where they entangled themselves among the hooks
and gigantic spearheads, and burned slowly out without causing any
extensive conflagration. Others grounded on the banks of the river,
before reaching their destination. Some sank in the stream.

Last of all came the two infernal ships, swaying unsteadily with the
current; the pilots of course, as they neared the bridge, having
noiselessly effected their escape in the skiffs. The slight fire upon the
deck scarcely illuminated the dark phantom-like hulls. Both were carried
by the current clear of the raft, which, by a great error of judgment, as
it now appeared, on the part of the builders, had only been made to
protect the floating portion of the bridge. The 'Fortune' came first,
staggering inside the raft, and then lurching clumsily against the dyke,
and grounding near Kalloo, without touching the bridge. There was a
moment's pause of expectation. At last the slow match upon the deck
burned out, and there was a faint and partial explosion, by which little
or no damage was produced.

Parma instantly called for volunteers to board the mysterious vessel. The
desperate expedition was headed by the bold Roland York, a Londoner, of
whom one day there was more to be heard in Netherland history. The party
sprang into the deserted and now harmless volcano, extinguishing the
slight fires that were smouldering on the deck, and thrusting spears and
long poles into the hidden recesses of the hold. There was, however,
little time to pursue these perilous investigations, and the party soon
made their escape to the bridge.

The troops of Parma, crowding on the palisade, and looking over the
parapets, now began to greet the exhibition with peals of derisive
laughter. It was but child's play, they thought, to threaten a Spanish
army, and a general like Alexander Farnese, with such paltry fire-works
as these. Nevertheless all eyes were anxiously fixed upon the remaining
fire-ship, or "hell-burner," the 'Hope,' which had now drifted very near
the place of its destination. Tearing her way between the raft and the
shore, she struck heavily against the bridge on the Kalloo side, close to
the block-house at the commencement of the floating portion of the
bridge. A thin wreath of smoke was seen curling over a slight and
smouldering fire upon her deck.

Marquis Richebourg, standing on the bridge, laughed loudly at the
apparently impotent conclusion of the whole adventure. It was his last
laugh on earth. A number of soldiers, at Parma's summons, instantly
sprang on board this second mysterious vessel, and occupied themselves,
as the party on board the 'Fortune' had done, in extinguishing, the
flames, and in endeavoring to ascertain the nature of the machine.
Richebourg boldly directed from the bridge their hazardous experiments.

At the same moment a certain ensign De Vega, who stood near the Prince of
Parma, close to the block-house, approached him with vehement entreaties
that he should retire. Alexander refused to stir from the spot, being
anxious to learn the result of these investigations. Vega, moved by some
instinctive and irresistible apprehension, fell upon his knees, and
plucking the General earnestly by the cloak, implored him with such
passionate words and gestures to leave the place, that the Prince
reluctantly yielded.

It was not a moment too soon. The clockwork had been better adjusted than
the slow match in the 'Fortune.' Scarcely had Alexander reached the
entrance of Saint Mary's Fort, at the end of the bridge, when a horrible
explosion was heard. The 'Hope' disappeared, together with the men who
had boarded her, and the block-house, against which she had struck, with
all its garrison, while a large portion of the bridge, with all the
troops stationed upon it, had vanished into air. It was the work of a
single instant. The Scheldt yawned to its lowest depth, and then cast its
waters across the dykes, deep into the forts, and far over the land. The
earth shook as with the throb of a volcano. A wild glare lighted up the
scene for one moment, and was then succeeded by pitchy darkness. Houses
were toppled down miles away, and not a living thing, even in remote
places, could keep its feet. The air was filled with a rain of
plough-shares, grave-stones, and marble balls, intermixed with the heads,
limbs, and bodies, of what had been human beings. Slabs of granite,
vomited by the flaming ship, were found afterwards at a league's
distance, and buried deep in the earth. A thousand soldiers were
destroyed in a second of time; many of them being torn to shreds, beyond
even the semblance of humanity.

Richebourg disappeared, and was not found until several days later, when
his body was discovered; doubled around an iron chain, which hung from
one of the bridge-boats in the centre of the river. The veteran Robles,
Seigneur de Billy, a Portuguese officer of eminent service and high
military rank, was also destroyed. Months afterwards, his body was
discovered adhering to the timber-work of the bridge, upon the ultimate
removal of that structure, and was only recognized by a peculiar gold
chain which he habitually wore. Parma himself was thrown to the ground,
stunned by a blow on the shoulder from a flying stake. The page, who was
behind him, carrying his helmet, fell dead without a wound, killed by the
concussion of the air.

Several strange and less tragical incidents occurred. The Viscomte de
Bruxelles was blown out of a boat on the Flemish side, and descended safe
and, sound into another in the centre of the stream. Captain Tucci, clad
in complete armour, was whirled out of a fort, shot perpendicularly into
the air, and then fell back into the river. Being of a cool temperament,
a good swimmer, and very pious, he skilfully divested himself of cuirass
and helmet, recommended himself to the Blessed Virgin, and swam safely
ashore. Another young officer of Parma's body-guard, Francois de Liege by
name, standing on the Kalloo end of the bridge, rose like a feather into
the clouds, and, flying quite across the river, alighted on the opposite
bank with no further harm than a contused shoulder. He imagined himself
(he said afterwards) to have been changed into a cannon-ball, as he
rushed through the pitchy atmosphere, propelled by a blast of
irresistible fury.

   [The chief authorities used in the foregoing account of this famous
   enterprise are those already cited on a previous page, viz.: the MS.
   Letters of the Prince of Parma in the Archives of Simancas; Bor, ii.
   596, 597; Strada, H. 334 seq.; Meteren, xii. 223; Hoofd Vervolgh,
   91; Baudartii Polemographia, ii. 24-27; Bentivoglio, etc., I have
   not thought it necessary to cite them step by step; for all the
   accounts, with some inevitable and unimportant discrepancies, agree
   with each other. The most copious details are to be found in Strada
   and in Bor.]

It had been agreed that Admiral Jacobzoon should, immediately after the
explosion of the fire-ships, send an eight-oared barge to ascertain the
amount of damage. If a breach had been effected, and a passage up to the
city opened, he was to fire a rocket. At this signal, the fleet stationed
at Lillo, carrying a heavy armament, laden with provisions enough to
relieve Antwerp from all anxiety, and ready to sail on the instant, was
at once to force its way up the river.

The deed was done. A breach, two hundred feet in width was made. Had the
most skilful pilot in Zeeland held the helm of the 'Hope,' with a choice
crew obedient to his orders, he could not have guided her more carefully
than she had been directed by wind and tide. Avoiding the raft which lay
in her way, she had, as it were, with the intelligence of a living
creature, fulfilled the wishes of the daring genius that had created her;
and laid herself alongside the bridge, exactly at the most telling point.
She had then destroyed herself, precisely at the right moment. All the
effects, and more than all, that had been predicted by the Mantuan wizard
had come to pass. The famous bridge was cleft through and through, and a
thousand picked men--Parma's very "daintiest"--were blown out of
existence. The Governor-General himself was lying stark and stiff upon
the bridge which he said should be his triumphal monument or his tomb.
His most distinguished officers were dead, and all the survivors were
dumb and blind with astonishment at the unheard of, convulsion. The
passage was open for the fleet, and the fleet, lay below with sails
spread, and oars in the rowlocks, only waiting for the signal to bear up
at once to the scene of action, to smite out of existence all that
remained of the splendid structure, and to carry relief and triumph into
Antwerp.

Not a soul slept in the city. The explosion had shook its walls, and
thousands of people thronged the streets, their hearts beating high with
expectation. It was a moment of exquisite triumph. The 'Hope,' word of
happy augury, had not been relied upon in vain, and Parma's seven months
of patient labour had been annihilated in a moment. Sainte Aldegonde and
Gianibelli stood in the 'Boors' Sconce' on the edge of the river. They
had felt and heard the explosion, and they were now straining their eyes
through the darkness to mark the flight of the welcome rocket.

That rocket never rose. And it is enough, even after the lapse of three
centuries, to cause a pang in every heart that beats for human liberty to
think of the bitter disappointment which crushed these great and
legitimate hopes. The cause lay in the incompetency and cowardice of the
man who had been so unfortunately entrusted with a share in a noble
enterprise.

Admiral Jacobzoon, paralyzed by the explosion, which announced his own
triumph, sent off the barge, but did not wait for its return. The
boatmen, too, appalled by the sights and sounds which they had witnessed,
and by the murky darkness which encompassed them, did not venture near
the scene of action, but, after rowing for a short interval hither and
thither, came back with the lying report that nothing had been
accomplished, and that the bridge remained unbroken. Sainte Aldegonde and
Gianibelli were beside themselves with rage, as they surmised the
imbecility of the Admiral, and devoted him in their hearts to the
gallows, which he certainly deserved. The wrath of the keen Italian may
be conceived, now that his ingenious and entirely successful scheme was
thus rendered fruitless by the blunders of the incompetent Fleming.

On the other side, there was a man whom no danger could appall. Alexander
had been thought dead, and the dismay among his followers was universal.
He was known to have been standing an instant before the explosion on the
very block-house where the 'Hope' had struck. After the first terrible
moments had passed, his soldiers found their general lying, as if in a
trance, on the threshold of St. Mary's Fort, his drawn sword in his hand,
with Cessis embracing his knees, and Gaetano extended at his side,
stunned with a blow upon the head.

Recovering from his swoon, Parma was the first to spring to his feet.
Sword in hand, he rushed at once upon the bridge to mark the extent of
the disaster. The admirable structure, the result of so much patient and
intelligent energy, was fearfully shattered; the bridge, the river, and
the shore, strewed with the mangled bodies of his soldiers. He expected,
as a matter of certainty, that the fleet from below would instantly force
its passage, destroy, the remainder of his troops-stunned as they were
with the sudden catastrophe complete the demolition of the bridge, and
then make its way to Antwerp, with ample reinforcements and supplies. And
Alexander saw that the expedition would be successful. Momently expecting
the attack, he maintained his courage and semblance of cheerfulness, with
despair in his heart.

His winter's work seemed annihilated, and it was probable that he should
be obliged to raise the siege. Nevertheless, he passed in person from
rank to rank, from post to post, seeing that the wounded were provided
for, encouraging those that remained unhurt, and endeavouring to infuse a
portion of his own courage into the survivors of his panic-stricken army.

Nor was he entirely unsuccessful, as the night wore on and the expected
assault was still delayed. Without further loss of time, he employed his
men to collect the drifting boats, timber, and spar-work, and to make a
hasty and temporary restoration--in semblance at least--of the ruined
portion of his bridge. And thus he employed himself steadily all the
night, although expecting every instant to hear the first broadside of
the Zeeland cannon. When morning broke, and it became obvious that the
patriots were unable or unwilling to follow up their own success, the
Governor-General felt as secure as ever. He at once set about the
thorough repairs of his great work, and--before he could be again
molested--had made good the damage which it had sustained.

It was not till three days afterwards that the truth was known in
Antwerp. Hohenlo then sent down a messenger, who swam, under the bridge,
ascertained the exact state of affairs, and returned, when it was too
late, with the first intelligence of the triumph which had been won and
lost. The disappointment and mortification were almost intolerable. And
thus had. Run-a-way Jacob, 'Koppen Loppen,' blasted the hopes of so many
wiser and braver spirits than his own.

The loss to Parma and to the royalist cause in Marquis Richebourg, was
very great. The death of De Billy, who was a faithful, experienced, and
courageous general, was also much lamented. "The misfortune from their
death," said Parma, "is not to be exaggerated. Each was ever ready to do
his duty in your Majesty's service, and to save me much fatigue in all my
various affairs. Nevertheless," continued the Prince, with great piety,
"we give the Lord thanks for all, and take as a favour everything which
comes from His hand."

Alexander had indeed reason to deplore the loss of Robert de Melun,
Viscount of Ghent, Marquis of Roubaix and Richebourg. He was a most
valuable officer. His wealth was great. It had been recently largely
increased by the confiscation of his elder brother's estates for his
benefit, a measure which at Parma's intercession had been accorded by the
King. That brother was the patriotic Prince of Espinoy, whom we have
recently seen heading the legation of the States to France. And
Richebourg was grateful to Alexander, for besides these fraternal spoils,
he had received two marquisates through his great patron, in addition to
the highest military offices. Insolent, overbearing, truculent to all the
world, to Parma he was ever docile, affectionate, watchful, obsequious. A
man who knew not fatigue, nor fear, nor remorse, nor natural affection,
who could patiently superintend all the details of a great military work,
or manage a vast political intrigue by alternations of browbeating and
bribery, or lead a forlorn hope, or murder a prisoner in cold blood, or
leap into the blazing crater of what seemed a marine volcano, the Marquis
of Richebourg had ever made himself most actively and unscrupulously
useful to his master. Especially had he rendered invaluable services in
the reduction, of the Walloon Provinces, and in the bridging of the
Scheldt, the two crowning triumphs of Alexander's life. He had now passed
from the scene where he had played so energetic and dazzling a part, and
lay doubled round an iron cable beneath the current of the restless
river.

And in this eventful night, Parma, as always, had been true to himself
and to his sovereign. "We expected," said he, "that the rebels would
instantly attack us on all sides after the explosion. But all remained so
astonished by the unheard-of accident, that very few understood what was
going on. It seemed better that I--notwithstanding the risk of letting
myself be seen--should encourage the people not to run away. I did so,
and remedied matters a little but not so much as that--if the enemy had
then attacked us--we should not have been in the very greatest risk and
peril. I did not fail to do what I am obliged to do, and always hope to
do; but I say no more of what passed, or what was done by myself, because
it does not become me to speak of these things."

Notwithstanding this discomfiture, the patriots kept up heart, and were
incessantly making demonstrations against Parma's works. Their
proceedings against the bridge, although energetic enough to keep the
Spanish commander in a state of perpetual anxiety, were never so
efficient however as on the memorable occasion when the Mantuan engineer
and the Dutch watchmaker had exhausted all their ingenuity. Nevertheless,
the rebel barks swarmed all over the submerged territory, now threatening
this post, and now that, and effecting their retreat at pleasure; for
nearly the whole of Parma's little armada was stationed at the two
extremities of his bridge. Many fire-ships were sent down from time to
time, but Alexander had organized a systematic patrol of a few
sentry-boats, armed with scythes and hooks, which rowed up and down in
front of the rafts, and protected them against invasion.

Some little effect was occasionally produced, but there was on the whole
more anxiety excited than damage actually inflicted. The perturbation of
spirit among the Spaniards when any of these 'demon fine-ships,' as they
called them, appeared bearing down upon their bridge, was excessive. It
could not be forgotten, that the `Hope' had sent into space a thousand of
the best soldiers of the little army within one moment of time.

Such rapid proceedings had naturally left an uneasy impression on the
minds of the survivors. The fatigue of watching was enormous. Hardly an
officer or soldier among the besieging forces knew what it was to sleep.
There was a perpetual exchanging of signals and beacon-fires and rockets
among the patriots--not a day or night, when a concerted attack by the
Antwerpers from above, and the Hollanders from below, with gun-boats and
fire-ships, and floating mines, and other devil's enginry, was not
expected.

"We are always upon the alert," wrote Parma, "with arms in our hands.
Every one must mount guard, myself as well as the rest, almost every
night, and the better part of every day."

He was quite aware that something was ever in preparation; and the
nameless, almost sickening apprehension which existed among
his stout-hearted veterans, was a proof that the Mantuan's
genius--notwithstanding the disappointment as to the great result--had
not been exercised entirely in vain. The image of the Antwerp devil-ships
imprinted itself indelibly upon the Spanish mind, as of something
preternatural, with which human valour could only contend at a
disadvantage; and a day was not very far distant--one of the memorable
days of the world's history, big with the fate of England, Spain,
Holland, and all Christendom--when the sight of a half-dozen blazing
vessels, and the cry of "the Antwerp fireships," was to decide the issue
of a most momentous enterprise. The blow struck by the obscure Italian
against Antwerp bridge, although ineffective then, was to be most
sensibly felt after a few years had passed, upon a wider field.

Meantime the uneasiness and the watchfulness in the biesieging army were
very exhausting. "They are never idle in the city," wrote Parma. "They
are perpetually proving their obstinacy and pertinacity by their
industrious genius and the machines which they devise. Every day we are
expecting some new invention. On our side we endeavour to counteract
their efforts by every human means in our power. Nevertheless, I confess
that our merely human intellect is not competent to penetrate the designs
of their diabolical genius. Certainly, most wonderful and extraordinary
things have been exhibited, such as the oldest soldiers here have never
before witnessed."

Moreover, Alexander saw himself growing weaker and weaker. His force had
dwindled to a mere phantom of an army. His soldiers, ill-fed,
half-clothed, unpaid, were fearfully overworked. He was obliged to
concentrate all the troops at his disposal around Antwerp. Diversions
against Ostend, operations in Friesland and Gelderland, although most
desirable, had thus been rendered quite impossible.

"I have recalled my cavalry and infantry from Ostend," he wrote, "and Don
Juan de Manrique has fortunately arrived in Stabroek with a thousand good
German folk. The commissary-general of the cavalry has come in, too, with
a good lot of the troops that had been encamped in the open country.
Nevertheless, we remain wretchedly weak--quite insufficient to attempt
what ought to be done. If the enemy were more in force, or if the French
wished to make trouble, your Majesty would see how important it had been
to provide in time against such contingencies. And although our
neighbours, crestfallen, and rushing upon their own destruction, leave us
in quiet, we are not without plenty of work. It would be of inestimable
advantage to make diversions in Gelderland and Friesland, because, in
that case, the Hollanders, seeing the enemy so near their own borders,
would be obliged to withdraw their assistance from Antwerp. 'Tis pity to
see how few Spaniards your Majesty has left, and how diminished is our
army. Now, also, is the time to expect sickness, and this affair of
Antwerp is obviously stretching out into large proportions. Unless soon
reinforced, we must inevitably go to destruction. I implore your Majesty
to ponder the matter well, and not to defer the remedy."

His Majesty was sure to ponder the matter well, if that had been all.
Philip was good at pondering; but it was equally certain that the remedy
would be deferred. Meantime Alexander and his starving but heroic little
army were left to fight their battles as they could.

His complaints were incessant, most reasonable, but unavailing. With all
the forces he could muster, by withdrawing from the neighbourhood of
Ghent, Brussels, Vilvoorde, and from all the garrisons, every man that
could be spared, he had not strength enough to guard his own posts. To
attempt to win back the important forts recently captured by the rebels
on the Doel, was quite out of the question. The pictures he painted of
his army were indeed most dismal.

The Spaniards were so reduced by sickness that it was pitiful to see
them. The Italians were not in much better condition, nor the Germans.
"As for the Walloons," said he, "they are deserting, as they always do.
In truth, one of my principal dangers is that the French civil wars are
now tempting my soldiers across the frontier; the country there is so
much richer, and offers so much more for the plundering."

During the few weeks which immediately followed them famous descent of
the 'Hope' and the 'Fortune,' there had accordingly been made a variety
of less elaborate, but apparently mischievous, efforts against the
bridge. On the whole, however, the object was rather to deceive and amuse
the royalists, by keeping their attention fixed in that quarter, while a
great attack was, in reality, preparing against the Kowenstyn. That
strong barrier, as repeatedly stated, was even a more formidable obstacle
than the bridge to the communication between the beleagured city and
their allies upon the outside. Its capture and demolition, even at this
late period, would open the navigation to all the fleets of Zeeland.

In the undertaking of the 5th of April all had been accomplished that
human ingenuity could devise; yet the triumph had been snatched away even
at the very moment when it was complete. A determined and vigorous effort
was soon to be made upon the Kowenstyn, in the very face of Parma; for it
now seemed obvious that the true crisis was to come upon that fatal dyke.
The great bulwark was three miles long. It reached from Stabroek in
Brabant, near which village Mansfeld's troops were encamped, across the
inundated country, up to the line of the Scheldt. Thence, along the
river-dyke, and across the bridge to Kalloo and Beveren, where Parma's
forces lay, was a continuous fortified road some three leagues in length;
so that the two divisions of the besieging army, lying four leagues
apart, were all connected by this important line.

Could the Kowenstyn be pierced, the water, now divided by that great
bulwark into two vast lakes, would flow together in one continuous sea.
Moreover the Scheldt, it was thought, would, in that case, return to its
own cannel through Brabant, deserting its present bed, and thus leaving
the famous bridge high and dry. A wide sheet of navigable water would
then roll between Antwerp and the Zeeland coasts, and Parma's bridge, the
result of seven months' labour, would become as useless as a child's
broken toy.

Alexander had thoroughly comprehended the necessity of maintaining the
Kowenstyn. All that it was possible to do with the meagre forces at his
disposal, he had done. He had fringed both its margins, along its whole
length, with a breastwork of closely-driven stakes. He had strengthened
the whole body of the dyke with timber-work and piles. Upon its
river-end, just at the junction with the great Scheldt dyke, a strong
fortress, called the Holy Cross, had been constructed, which was under
the special command of Mondragon. Besides this, three other forts had
been built, at intervals of about a mile, upon the dyke. The one nearest
to Mondragon was placed at the Kowenstyn manor-house, and was called
Saint James. This was entrusted to Camillo Bourbon del Monte, an Italian
officer, who boasted the blood royal of France in his veins, and was
disposed on all occasions to vindicate that proud pedigree by his deeds.
The next fort was Saint George's, sometimes called the Black Sconce. It
had been built by La Motte, but it was now in command of the Spanish
officer, Benites. The third was entitled the Fort of the Palisades,
because it had been necessary to support it by a stockade-work in the
water, there being absolutely not earth enough to hold the structure. It
was placed in the charge of Captain Gamboa. These little castles had been
created, as it were, out of water and upon water, and under a hot fire
from the enemy's forts and fleets, which gave the pioneers no repose.

"'Twas very hard work," said Parma, "our soldiers are so exposed during
their labour, the rebels playing upon them perpetually from their
musket-proof vessels. They fill the submerged land with their boats,
skimming everywhere as they like, while we have none at all. We have been
obliged to build these three forts with neither material nor space;
making land enough for the foundation by bringing thither bundles of
hurdles and of earth. The fatigue and anxiety are incredible. Not a man
can sleep at night; not an officer nor soldier but is perpetually
mounting guard. But they are animated to their hard work by seeing that I
share in it, like one of themselves. We have now got the dyke into good
order, so far as to be able to give them a warm reception, whenever they
choose to come."

Quite at the farther or land end of the Kowenstyn, was another fort,
called the Stabroek, which commanded and raked the whole dyke, and was in
the neighbourhood of Mansfeld's head-quarters.

Placed as were these little citadels upon a slender, and--at brief
distance--invisible thread of land, with the dark waters rolling around
them far and near, they presented an insubstantial dream-like aspect,
seeming rather like castles floating between air and ocean than actual
fortifications--a deceptive mirage rather than reality. There was nothing
imaginary, however, in the work which they were to perform.

A series of attacks, some serious, others fictitious, had been made, from
time to time, upon both bridge and dyke; but Alexander was unable to
inspire his soldiers with his own watchfulness. Upon the 7th of May a
more determined attempt was made upon the Kowenstyn, by the fleet from
Lillo. Hohenlo and Colonel Ysselstein conducted the enterprise. The
sentinels at the point selected--having recently been so often threatened
by an enemy, who most frequently made a rapid retreat, as to have grown
weary and indifferent-were surprised, at dawn of day, and put to the
sword. "If the truth must be told," said Parma, "the sentries were sound
asleep." Five hundred Zeelanders, with a strong party of sappers and
miners, fairly established themselves upon the dyke, between St. George's
and Fort Palisade. The attack, although spirited at its commencement, was
doomed to be unsuccessful. A co-operation, agreed upon by the fleet from
Antwerp, failed through a misunderstanding. Sainte Aldegonde had
stationed certain members of the munition-chamber in the cathedral tower,
with orders to discharge three rockets, when they should perceive a
beacon-fire which he should light in Fort Tholouse. The watchmen mistook
an accidental camp-fire in the neighbourhood for the preconcerted signal,
and sent up the rockets. Hohenlo understanding, accordingly, that the
expedition was on the point of starting from Antwerp, hastened to perform
his portion of the work, and sailed up from Lillo. He did his duty
faithfully and well, and established himself upon the dyke, but found
himself alone and without sufficient force to maintain his position. The
Antwerp fleet never sailed. It was even whispered that the delinquency
was rather intended than accidental; the Antwerpers being supposed
desirous to ascertain the result of Hohenlo's attempt before coming forth
to share his fate. Such was the opinion expressed by Farnese in his
letters to Philip, but it seems probable that he was mistaken. Whatever
the cause, however, the fact of the Zeelanders' discomfiture was certain.
The St. George battery and that of the Palisade were opened at once upon
them, the balls came plunging among the sappers and miners before they
had time to throw up many spade-fulls of earth, and the whole party were
soon dead or driven from the dyke. The survivors effected their retreat
as they best could, leaving four of their ships behind them and three or
four hundred men.

"Forty rebels lay dead on the dyke," said Parma, "and one hundred and
fifty more, at least, were drowned. The enemy confess a much larger loss
than the number I state, but I am not a friend of giving details larger
than my ascertained facts; nor do I know how many were killed in the
boats."

This enterprise was but a prelude, however, to the great undertaking
which had now been thoroughly matured. Upon the 26th May, another and
most determined attack was to be made upon the Kowenstyn, by the
Antwerpers and Hollanders acting in concert. This time, it was to be
hoped, there would be no misconception of signals. "It was a
determination," said Parma, "so daring and desperate that there was no
substantial reason why we should believe they would carry it out; but
they were at last solemnly resolved to die or to effect their purpose."

Two hundred ships in all had been got ready, part of them under Hohenlo
and Justinus de Nassau, to sail up from Zeeland; the others to advance
from Antwerp under Sainte Aldegonde. Their destination was the Kowenstyn
Dyke. Some of the vessels were laden with provisions, others with
gabions, hurdles, branches, sacks of sand and of wool, and with other
materials for the rapid throwing up of fortifications.

It was two o'clock, half an hour before the chill dawn of a May morning,
Sunday, the 26th of the month. The pale sight of a waning moon was
faintly perceptible in the sky. Suddenly the sentinels upon the
Kowenstyn--this time not asleep--descried, as they looked towards Lillo,
four fiery apparitions gliding towards them across the waves. The alarm
was given, and soon afterwards the Spaniards began to muster, somewhat
reluctantly, upon the dyke, filled as they always were with the
mysterious dread which those demon-vessels never failed to inspire.

The fire-ships floated slowly nearer, and at last struck heavily against
the stockade-work. There, covered with tar, pitch, rosin, and gunpowder,
they flamed, flared, and exploded, during a brief period, with much
vigour, and then burned harmlessly out. One of the objects for which they
had been sent--to set fire to the palisade--was not accomplished. The
other was gained; for the enemy, expecting another volcanic shower of
tombstones and plough-coulters, and remembering the recent fate of their
comrades on the bridge, had retired shuddering into the forts. Meantime,
in the glare of these vast torches, a great swarm of gunboats and other
vessels, skimming across the leaden-coloured waters, was seen gradually
approaching the dyke. It was the fleet of Hohenlo and Justinus de Nassau,
who had been sailing and rowing since ten o'clock of the preceding night.
The burning ships lighted them on their way, while it had scared the
Spaniards from their posts.

The boats ran ashore in the mile-long space between forts St. George and
the Palisade, and a party of Zeelanders, Admiral Haultain, governor of
Walcheren, at their head, sprang upon the dyke. Meantime, however, the
royalists, finding that the fire-ships had come to so innocent an end,
had rallied and emerged from their forts. Haultain and his Zeelanders, by
the time they had fairly mounted the dyke, found themselves in the iron
embrace of several hundred Spaniards. After a brief fierce struggle, face
to face, and at push of pike, the patriots reeled backward down the bank,
and took refuge in their boats. Admiral Haultain slipped as he left the
shore, missed a rope's end which was thrown to him, fell into the water,
and, borne down by the weight of his armour, was drowned. The enemy,
pursuing them, sprang to the waist in the ooze on the edge of the dyke,
and continued the contest. The boats opened a hot fire, and there was a
severe skirmish for many minutes, with no certain result. It was,
however, beginning to go hard with the Zeelanders, when, just at the
critical moment, a cheer from the other side of the dyke was heard, and
the Antwerp fleet was seen coming swiftly to the rescue. The Spaniards,
taken between the two bands of assailants, were at a disadvantage, and it
was impossible to prevent the landing of these fresh antagonists. The
Antwerpers sprang ashore. Among the foremost was Sainte Aldegonde, poet,
orator, hymn-book maker, burgomaster, lawyer, polemical divine--now armed
to the teeth and cheering on his men, in the very thickest of the fight.
The diversion was successful, and Sainte Aldegonde gallantly drove the
Spaniards quite off the field. The whole combined force from Antwerp and
Zeeland now effected their landing. Three thousand men occupied all the
space between Fort George and the Palisade.

With Sainte Aldegonde came the unlucky Koppen Loppen, and all that could
be spared of the English and Scotch troops in Antwerp, under Balfour and
Morgan. With Hohenlo and Justinus de Nassau came Reinier Kant, who had
just succeeded Paul Buys as Advocate of Holland. Besides these came two
other men, side by side, perhaps in the same boat, of whom the world was
like to hear much, from that time forward, and whose names are to be most
solemnly linked together, so long as Netherland history shall endure;
one, a fair-faced flaxen-haired boy of eighteen, the other a
square-visaged, heavy-browed man of forty--Prince Maurice and John of
Olden-Barneveldt. The statesman had been foremost to urge the claim of
William the Silent's son upon the stadholderate of Holland and Zeeland,
and had been, as it were, the youth's political guardian. He had himself
borne arms more than once before, having shouldered his matchlock under
Batenburg, and marched on that officer's spirited but disastrous
expedition for the relief of Haarlem. But this was the life of those
Dutch rebels. Quill-driving, law-expounding, speech-making, diplomatic
missions, were intermingled with very practical business in besieged
towns or open fields, with Italian musketeers and Spanish pikemen. And
here, too, young Maurice was taking his first solid lesson in the art of
which he was one day to be so distinguished a professor. It was a sharp
beginning. Upon this ribband of earth, scarce six paces in breadth, with
miles of deep water on both sides--a position recently fortified by the
first general of the age, and held by the famous infantry of Spain and
Italy--there was likely to be no prentice-work.

To assault such a position was in truth, as Alexander had declared it to
be, a most daring and desperate resolution on the part of the States.
"Soldiers, citizens, and all," said Parma, "they are obstinate as dogs to
try their fortune."

With wool-sacks, sand-bags, hurdles, planks, and other materials brought
with them, the patriots now rapidly entrenched themselves in the position
so brilliantly gained; while, without deferring for an instant the great
purpose which they had come to effect, the sappers and miners fastened
upon the ironbound soil of the dyke, tearing it with pick, mattock, and
shovel, digging, delving, and throwing up the earth around them, busy as
human beavers, instinctively engaged in a most congenial task.

But the beavers did not toil unmolested. The large and determined force
of Antwerpers and English, Hollanders and Zeelanders, guarded the
fortifications as they were rapidly rising, and the pioneers as they were
so manfully delving; but the enemy was not idle. From Fort Saint James,
next beyond Saint George, Camillo del Monte led a strong party to the
rescue. There was a tremendous action, foot to foot, breast to breast,
with pike and pistol, sword and dagger. Never since the beginning of the
war had there been harder fighting than now upon that narrow isthmus.
"'Twas an affair of most brave obstinacy on both sides," said Parma, who
rarely used strong language. "Soldiers, citizens, and all--they were like
mad bulldogs." Hollanders, Italians, Scotchmen, Spaniards, Englishmen,
fell thick and fast. The contest was about the entrenchments before they
were completed, and especially around the sappers and miners, in whose
picks and shovels lay the whole fate of Antwerp. Many of the
dyke-breakers were digging their own graves, and rolled, one after
another, into the breach which they were so obstinately creating. Upon
that slender thread of land the hopes of many thousands were hanging. To
tear it asunder, to roll the ocean-waves up to Antwerp, and thus to
snatch the great city triumphantly from the grasp of Philip--to
accomplish this, the three thousand had come forth that May morning. To
prevent it, to hold firmly that great treasure entrusted to them, was the
determination of the Spaniards. And so, closely pent and packed,
discharging their carbines into each other's faces, rolling, coiled
together, down the slimy sides of the dyke into the black waters,
struggling to and fro, while the cannon from the rebel fleet and from the
royal forts mingled their roar with the sharp crack of the musketry,
Catholics and patriots contended for an hour, while still, through all
the confusion and uproar, the miners dug and delved.

At last the patriots were victorious. They made good their entrenchments,
drove the Spaniards, after much slaughter, back to the fort of Saint
George on the one side, and of the Palisade on the other, and cleared the
whole space between the two points. The centre of the dyke was theirs;
the great Kowenstyn, the only key by which the gates of Antwerp could be
unlocked, was in the deliverers' hands. They pursued their victory, and
attacked the Palisade Fort. Gamboa, its commandant, was severely wounded;
many other officers dead or dying; the outworks were in the hands of the
Hollanders; the slender piles on which the fortress rested in the water
were rudely shaken; the victory was almost complete.

And now there was a tremendous cheer of triumph. The beavers had done
their work, the barrier was bitten through and through, the salt water
rushed like a river through the ruptured dyke. A few moments later, and a
Zeeland barge, freighted with provisions, floated triumphantly into the
waters beyond, now no longer an inland sea. The deed was done--the
victory achieved. Nothing more was necessary than to secure it, to tear
the fatal barrier to fragments, to bury it, for its whole length, beneath
the waves. Then, after the isthmus had been utterly submerged, when the
Scheldt was rolled back into its ancient bed, when Parma's famous bridge
had become useless, when the maritime communication between Antwerp and
Holland had been thoroughly established, the Spaniards would have nothing
left for it but to drown like rats in their entrenchments or to abandon
the siege in despair. All this was in the hands of the patriots. The
Kowenstyn was theirs. The Spaniards were driven from the field, the
batteries of their forts silenced. For a long period the rebels were
unmolested, and felt themselves secure.

"We remained thus some three hours," says Captain James, an English
officer who fought in the action, and described it in rough, soldierly
fashion to Walsingham the same day, "thinking all things to be secure."
Yet in the very supreme moment of victory, the leaders, both of the
Hollanders and of the Antwerpers, proved themselves incompetent to their
position. With deep regret it must be admitted, that not only the
reckless Hohenlo, but the all-accomplished Sainte Aldegonde, committed
the gravest error. In the hour of danger, both had comported themselves
with perfect courage and conduct. In the instant of triumph, they gave
way to puerile exultation. With a celerity as censurable as it seems
incredible, both these commanders sprang into the first barge which had
thus floated across the dyke, in order that they might, in person, carry
the news of the victory to Antwerp, and set all the bells ringing and the
bonfires blazing. They took with them Ferrante Spinola, a
mortally-wounded Italian officer of rank, as a trophy of their battle,
and a boatload of beef and flour, as an earnest of the approaching
relief.

While the conquerors were thus gone to enjoy their triumph, the
conquered, though perplexed and silenced, were not yet disposed to accept
their defeat. They were even ignorant that they were conquered. They had
been forced to abandon the field, and the patriots had entrenched
themselves upon the dyke, but neither Fort Saint George nor the Palisade
had been carried, although the latter was in imminent danger.

Old Count Peter Ernest Mansfeld--a grizzled veteran, who had passed his
childhood, youth, manhood, and old age, under fire--commanded at the
land-end of the dyke, in the fortress of Stabroek, in which neighbourhood
his whole division was stationed. Seeing how the day was going, he called
a council of war. The patriots had gained a large section of the dyke. So
much was certain. Could they succeed in utterly demolishing that bulwark
in the course of the day? If so, how were they to be dislodged before
their work was perfected? It was difficult to assault their position.
Three thousand Hollanders, Antwerpers, Englishmen--"mad bulldogs all," as
Parma called them--showing their teeth very mischievously, with one
hundred and sixty Zeeland vessels throwing in their broadsides from both
margins of the dyke, were a formidable company to face.

"Oh for one half hour of Alexander in the field!" sighed one of the
Spanish officers in council. But Alexander was more than four leagues
away, and it was doubtful whether he even knew of the fatal occurrence.
Yet how to send him a messenger. Who could reach him through that valley
of death? Would it not be better to wait till nightfall? Under the cover
of darkness something might be attempted, which in the daylight would be
hopeless. There was much anxiety, and much difference of opinion had been
expressed, when Camillo Capizucca, colonel of the Italian Legion,
obtained a hearing. A man bold in words as in deeds, he vehemently
denounced the pusillanimity which would wait either for Parma or for
nightfall. "What difference will it make," he asked, "whether we defer
our action until either darkness or the General arrives? In each case we
give the enemy time enough to destroy the dyke, and thoroughly to relieve
the city. That done, what good can be accomplished by our arms? Then our
disheartened soldiers will either shrink from a fruitless combat or march
to certain death." Having thus, very warmly but very sagaciously, defined
the position in which all were placed, he proceeded to declare that he
claimed, neither for himself nor for his legion, any superiority over the
rest of the army. He knew not that the Italians were more to be relied
upon than others in the time of danger, but this he did know, that no man
in the world was so devoted as he was to the Prince of Parma. To show
that devotion by waiting with folded arms behind a wall until the Prince
should arrive to extricate his followers, was not in his constitution. He
claimed the right to lead his Italians against the enemy at once--in the
front rank, if others chose to follow; alone, if the rest preferred to
wait till a better leader should arrive.

The words of the Italian colonel sent a thrill through all who heard him.
Next in command under Capizucca was his camp-marshal, an officer who bore
the illustrious name of Piccolomini--father of the Duke Ottavio, of whom
so much was to be heard at a later day throughout the fell scenes of that
portion of the eighty years' tragedy now enacting, which was to be called
the Thirty Years' War of Germany. The camp-marshal warmly seconded the
proposition of his colonel. Mansfeld, pleased with such enthusiasm among
his officers, yielded to their wishes, which were, in truth, his own. Six
companies of the Italian Legion were in his encampment while the
remainder were stationed, far away, upon the bridge, under command of his
son, Count Charles. Early in the morning, before the passage across the
dyke had been closed the veteran condottiere, pricking his ears as he
snuffed the battle from afar, had contrived to send a message to his son.

"Charles, my boy," were his words, "to-day we must either beat them or
burst."

Old Peter Ernest felt that the long-expected, long-deferred assault was
to be made that morning in full force, and that it was necessary for the
royalists, on both bridge and dyke, to hold their own. Piccolomini now
drew up three hundred of his Italians, picked veterans all, and led them
in marching order to Mansfeld. That general at the same moment, received
another small but unexpected reinforcement. A portion of the Spanish
Legion, which had long been that of Pedro Pacchi, lay at the extreme
verge of the Stabroek encampment, several miles away. Aroused by the
distant cannonading, and suspecting what had occurred, Don Juan d'Aquila,
the colonel in command, marched without a moment's delay to Mansfeld's
head-quarters, at the head of all the force he could muster--about two
hundred strong. With him came Cardona, Gonzales de Castro, Toralva, and
other distinguished officers. As they arrived, Capizucca was just setting
forth for the field. There arose a dispute for precedence between the
Italians and the Spaniards. Capizucca had first demanded the privilege of
leading what seemed a forlorn hope, and was unwilling to yield his claim
to the new comer. On the other hand, the Spaniards were not disposed to
follow where they felt entitled to lead. The quarrel was growing warm,
when Aquila, seizing his Italian rival by the hand, protested that it was
not a moment for friends to wrangle for precedence.

"Shoulder to shoulder," said he, "let us go into this business, and let
our blows rather fall on our enemies' heads than upon each other's." This
terminated the altercation. The Italians and Spaniards--in battle array
as they were--all dropped on their knees, offered a brief prayer to the
Holy Virgin, and then, in the best possible spirits, set forth along the
dyke. Next to fort Stabroek--whence they issued--was the Palisade Fort,
nearly a mile removed, which the patriots had nearly carried, and between
which and St. George, another mile farther on, their whole force was
established.

The troops under Capizucca and Aquila soon reached the Palisade, and
attacked the besiegers, while the garrison, cheered by the unexpected
relief, made a vigorous sortie. There was a brief sharp contest, in which
many were killed on both sides; but at last the patriots fell back upon
their own entrenchments, and the fort was saved. Its name was instantly
changed to Fort Victory, and the royalists then prepared to charge the
fortified camp of the rebels, in the centre of which the dyke-cutting
operations were still in progress. At the same moment, from the opposite
end of the bulwark, a cry was heard along the whole line of the dyke.
From Fort Holy Cross, at the Scheldt end, the welcome intelligence was
suddenly communicated--as if by a magnetic impulse--that Alexander was in
the field!

It was true. Having been up half the night, as usual, keeping watch along
his bridge, where he was ever expecting a fatal attack, he had retired
for a few hours' rest in his camp at Beveren. Aroused at day-break by the
roar of the cannon, he had hastily thrown on his armour, mounted his
horse, and, at the head of two hundred pikemen, set forth for the scene
of action. Detained on the bridge by a detachment of the Antwerp fleet,
which had been ordered to make a diversion in that quarter, he had, after
beating off their vessels with his boat-artillery, and charging Count
Charles Mansfeld to heed well the brief injunction of old Peter Ernest,
made all the haste he could to the Kowenstyn. Arriving at Fort Holy
Cross, he learned from Mondragon how the day was going. Three thousand
rebels, he learned, were established on the dyke, Fort Palisade was
tottering, a fleet from both sides was cannonading the Spanish
entrenchments, the salt water was flowing across the breach already made.
His seven months' work, it seemed, had come to nought. The navigation was
already open from the sea to Antwerp, the Lowenstyn was in the rebels'
hands. But Alexander was not prone to premature despair. "I arrived,"
said he to Philip in a letter written on the same evening, "at the very
nick of time." A less hopeful person might have thought that he had
arrived several hours too late. Having brought with him every man that
could be spared from Beveren and from the bridge, he now ordered Camillo
del Monte to transport some additional pieces of artillery from Holy
Cross and from Saint James to Fort Saint Georg. At the same time a sharp
cannonade was to be maintained upon the rebel fleet from all the forts.

Mondragon, with a hundred musketeers and pikemen, was sent forward
likewise as expeditiously as possible to Saint George. No one could be
more alert. The battered veteran, hero of some of the most remarkable
military adventures that history has ever recorded,' fought his way on
foot, in the midst of the fray, like a young ensign who had his first
laurels to win. And, in truth, the day was not one for cunning
manoeuvres, directed, at a distance, by a skillful tactician. It was a
brisk close contest, hand to hand and eye to eye--a Homeric encounter, in
which the chieftains were to prove a right to command by their personal
prowess. Alexander, descending suddenly--dramatically, as it were--when
the battle seemed lost--like a deity from the clouds-was to justify, by
the strength of his arm, the enthusiasm which his name always awakened.
Having, at a glance, taken in the whole situation, he made his brief
arrangements, going from rank to rank, and disposing his troops in the
most effective manner. He said but few words, but his voice had always a
telling effect.

"The man who refuses, this day, to follow me," he said, "has never had
regard to his own honour, nor has God's cause or the King's ever been
dear to his heart."

His disheartened Spaniards and Italians--roused as by a magic
trumpet--eagerly demanded to be led against the rebels. And now from each
end of the dyke, the royalists were advancing toward the central position
occupied by the patriots. While Capizucca and Aquila were occupied at
Fort Victory, Parma was steadily cutting his way from Holy Cross to Saint
George. On foot, armed with sword and shield, and in coat of mail, and
marching at the head of his men along the dyke, surrounded by Bevilacqua,
Bentivoglio, Manriquez, Sforza, and other officers of historic name and
distinguished courage, now upon the summit of the causeway, now on its
shelving banks, now breast-high in the waters, through which lay the
perilous path, contending at every inch with the scattered bands of the
patriots, who slowly retired to their entrenched camp, and with the
Antwerp and Zeeland vessels, whose balls tore through the royalist ranks,
the General at last reached Saint George. On the preservation of that
post depended the whole fortune of the day, for Parma had already
received the welcome intelligence that the Palisade--now Fort
Victory--had been regained. He instantly ordered an outer breast-work of
wool-sacks and sand-bags to be thrown up in front of Saint George, and
planted a battery to play point-blank at the enemy's entrenchments. Here
the final issue was to be made.

The patriots and Spaniards were thus all enclosed in the mile-long space
between St. George and the Palisade. Upon that narrow strip of earth,
scarce six paces in width, more than five thousand men met in mortal
combat--a narrow arena for so many gladiators, hemmed in on both sides by
the sea. The patriots had, with solemn ceremony, before starting upon
their enterprise, vowed to destroy the dyke and relieve Antwerp, or to
perish in the attempt. They were true to their vow. Not the ancient
Batavians or Nervii had ever manifested more tenacity against the Roman
legions than did their descendants against the far-famed Spanish infantry
upon this fatal day. The fight on the Kowenstyn was to be long remembered
in the military annals of Spain and Holland. Never, since the curtain
first rose upon the great Netherland tragedy, had there been a fiercer
encounter. Flinching was impossible. There was scant room for the play of
pike and dagger, and, close packed as were the combatants, the dead could
hardly fall to the ground. It was a mile-long series of separate mortal
duels, and the oozy dyke was soon slippery with blood.

From both sides, under Capizucca and Aquila on the one band, and under
Alexander on the other, the entrenchments of the patriots were at last
assaulted, and as the royalists fell thick and fast beneath the
breast-work which they were storming, their comrades clambered upon their
bodies, and attempted, from such vantage-ground, to effect an entrance.
Three times the invaders were beaten back with heavy loss, and after each
repulse the attack was renewed with fresh vigour, while within the
entrenchments the pioneers still plied the pick and shovel, undismayed by
the uproar around them.

A fourth assault, vigorously made, was cheerfully repelled by the
Antwerpers and Hollanders, clustering behind their breast-works, and
looking steadily into their enemies' eyes. Captain Heraugiere--of whom
more was to be heard one day--had led two hundred men into action, and
now found himself at the head of only thirteen. The loss had been as
severe among many other patriot companies, as well as in the Spanish
ranks, and again the pikemen of Spain and Italy faltered before the iron
visages and cordial blows of the Hollanders.

This work had lasted a good hour and a half, when at last, on the fifth
assault, a wild and mysterious apparition renewed the enthusiasm of the
Spaniards. The figure of the dead commander of the old Spanish Legion,
Don Pedro Pacchi, who had fallen a few months before at the siege of
Dendermonde was seen charging in front of his regiment, clad in his
well-known armour, and using the gestures which had been habitual with
him in life. No satisfactory explanation was ever made of this singular
delusion, but it was general throughout the ranks, and in that
superstitious age was as effective as truth. The wavering Spaniards
rallied once more under the guidance of their phantom leader, and again
charged the breast-work of the patriots. Toralva, mounting upon the back
of one of his soldiers, was first to vault into the entrenchments. At the
next instant he lay desperately wounded on the ground, but was close
followed by Capizucca, sustained by a determined band. The entrenchment
was carried, but the furious conflict still continued. At nearly the same
moment, however, several of the patriot vessels were observed to cast off
their moorings, and to be drifting away from the dyke. A large number of
the rest had been disabled by the hot fire, which by Alexander's
judicious orders had been directed upon the fleet. The ebbing tide left
no choice to the commander of the others but to retreat or to remain and
fall into the enemy's hands, should he gain the day. Had they risked the
dangerous alternative, it might have ensured the triumph of the whole
enterprise, while their actual decision proved most disastrous in the
end.

"We have conquered," cried Alexander, stretching his arm towards the
receding waters. "The sea deserts the impious heretics. Strike from them
now their last hope, and cut off their retreat to the departing ships."
The Spaniards were not slow to perceive their advantage, while the
courage of the patriots at last began to ebb with the tide. The day was
lost. In the hour of transitory triumph the leaders of the expedition had
turned their backs on their followers, and now, after so much heroism had
been exhibited, fortune too had averted her face. The grim resistance
changed to desperate panic, and a mad chase began along the blood-stained
dyke. Some were slain with spear and bullet, others were hunted into the
sea, many were smothered in the ooze along the edge of the embankment.
The fugitives, making their way to the retreating vessels, were pursued
by the Spaniards, who swam after them, with their swords in their teeth,
and engaged them in mortal combat in the midst of the waves.

"And so we cut all their throats," said Parma, "the rebels on every side
remaining at our mercy, and I having no doubt that my soldiers would
avenge the loss of their friends."

The English and the Scotch, under Balfour and Morgan, were the very last
to abandon the position which they had held so manfully seven hours long.
Honest Captain James, who fought to the last, and described the action
the same night in the fewest possible words, was of opinion that the
fleet had moved away only to obtain a better position. "They put off to
have more room to play on the enemy," said he; "but the Hollanders and
Zeelanders, seeing the enemy come on so hotly, and thinking our galleys
would leave them, abandoned their string. The Scots, seeing them to
retire, left their string. The enemy pursued very hotly; the Englishmen
stood to repulse, and are put most to the sword. In this shameful retreat
there were slain or drowned to the number of two thousand." The blunt
Englishman was justly indignant that an enterprise, so nearly successful,
had been ruined by the desertion of its chiefs. "We had cut the dyke in
three places," said he; "but left it most shamefully for want of
commandment."

Poor Koppen Loppen--whose blunders on former occasions had caused so much
disaster--was now fortunate enough to expiate them by a soldier's death.
Admiral Haultain had, as we have seen, been drowned at the commencement
of the action. Justinus de Nassau, at its close, was more successful in
his retreat to the ships. He, too, sprang into the water when the
overthrow was absolute; but, alighting in some shallows, was able to
conceal himself among weeds and waterlilies till he had divested himself
of his armour, when he made his escape by swimming to a boat, which
conveyed him to Lillo. Roelke van Deest, an officer of some note, was so
horribly wounded in the face, that he was obliged to wear a mask for the
remainder of his life.

Parma, overjoyed at his victory, embraced Capizucca before the whole
army, with warm expressions of admiration for his conduct. Both the
Italian colonel and his Spanish rival Aquila were earnestly recommended
to Philip for reward and promotion. The wounded Toralva was carried to
Alexander's own quarters, and placed in Alexander's own bed, where he
remained till his recovery, and was then presented--a distinction which
he much valued--with the armour which the Prince had worn on the day of
the battle. Parma himself, so soon as the action was concluded, went with
his chief officers straight from the field to the little village-church
of Stabroek, where he fell upon his knees and offered up fervent thanks
for his victory. He next set about repairing the ruptured dyke, damaged
in many places but not hopelessly ruined, and for this purpose the bodies
of the rebels, among other materials, were cast by hundreds into the
ditches which their own hands had dug.

Thus ended the eight hours' fight on the Kowenstyn. "The feast lasted
from seven to eight hours," said Parma, "with the most brave obstinacy on
both sides that has been seen for many a long day." A thousand royalists
were killed and twice as many patriots, and the issue of the conflict was
most uncertain up to the very last.

"Our loss is greater than I wish it was," wrote Alexander to Philip: "It
was a very close thing, and I have never been more anxious in my life as
to the result for your Majesty's service. The whole fate of the battle
was hanging all the time by a thread." More than ever were reinforcements
necessary, and it was only by a miracle that the victory had at last been
gained with such slender resources. "'Tis a large, long, laborious,
expensive, and most perilous war," said Parma, when urging the claims of
Capizucca and Aquila, "for we have to fight every minute; and there are
no castles and other rewards, so that if soldiers are not to have
promotion, they will lose their spirit." Thirty-two of the rebel vessels
grounded, and fell into the hands of the Spaniards, who took from them
many excellent pieces of artillery. The result was most conclusive and
most disheartening for the patriots.

Meantime--as we have seen--Hohenlo and Sainte Aldegonde had reached
Antwerp in breathless haste to announce their triumph. They had been met
on the quay by groups of excited citizens, who eagerly questioned the two
generals arriving thus covered with laurels from the field of battle, and
drank with delight all the details of the victory. The poor dying Spinola
was exhibited in triumph, the boat-load of breadstuffs received with
satisfaction, and vast preparations were made to receive, on wharves and
in storehouses, the plentiful supplies about to arrive. Beacons and
bonfires were lighted, the bells from all the steeples rang their
merriest peals, cannon thundered in triumph not only in Antwerp itself,
but subsequently at Amsterdam and other more distant cities. In due time
a magnificent banquet was spread in the town-house to greet the
conquering Hohenlo. Immense gratification was expressed by those of the
reformed religion; dire threats were uttered against the Catholics. Some
were for hanging them all out of hand, others for throwing them into the
Scheldt; the most moderate proposed packing them all out of town so soon
as the siege should be raised--an event which could not now be delayed
many days longer.

Hohenlo, placed on high at the head of the banquet-table, assumed the
very god of war. Beside and near him sat the loveliest dames of Antwerp,
rewarding his bravery with their brightest smiles. The Count drained huge
goblets to their health, to the success of the patriots, and to the
confusion of the royalists, while, as he still drank and feasted, the
trumpet, kettle-drum, and cymbal, and merry peal of bell without, did
honour to his triumph. So gay and gallant was the victor, that he
announced another banquet on the following day, still further to
celebrate the happy release of Antwerp, and invited the fair ladies
around him again to grace the board. It is recorded that the gentlewoman
next him responded with a sigh, that, if her presentiments were just, the
morrow would scarcely be so joyful as the present day had been, and that
she doubted whether the triumph were not premature.

Hardly had she spoken when sinister sounds were heard in the streets. The
first few stragglers, survivors of the deadly fight, had arrived with the
fatal news that all was lost, the dyke regained, the Spaniards
victorious, the whole band of patriots cut to pieces. A few
frightfully-wounded and dying sufferers were brought into the
banqueting-hall. Hohenlo sprang from the feast--interrupted in so ghastly
a manner--pursued by shouts and hisses. Howls of execration, saluted him
in the streets, and he was obliged to conceal himself for a time, to
escape the fury of the populace.

On the other hand, Parma was, not unnaturally, overjoyed at the
successful issue to the combat, and expressed himself on the subject in
language of (for him) unusual exultation. "To-day, Sunday, 26th of June,"
said he, in a letter to Philip, despatched by special courier on the very
same night, "the Lord has been pleased to grant to your Majesty a great
and most signal victory. In this conjuncture of so great importance it
may be easily conceived that the best results that can be desired will be
obtained if your Majesty is now ready to do what is needful. I
congratulate your Majesty very many times on this occasion, and I desire
to render infinite thanks to Divine Providence."

He afterwards proceeded, in a rapid and hurried manner, to give his
Majesty the outlines of the battle, mentioning, with great encomium,
Capizucca and Aquila, Mondragon and Vasto, with many other officers, and
recommending them for reward and promotion; praising, in short, heartily
and earnestly, all who had contributed to the victory, except himself, to
whose personal exertions it was chiefly due. "As for good odd Mansfeld,"
said he, "he bore himself like the man he is, and he deserves that your
Majesty should send him a particular mark of your royal approbation,
writing to him yourself pleasantly in Spanish, which is that which will
be most highly esteemed by him." Alexander hinted also that Philip would
do well to bestow upon Mansfeld the countship of Biart, as a reward for
his long years of faithful service!

This action on the Kowenstyn terminated the effective resistance of
Antwerp. A few days before, the monster-vessel, in the construction of
which so much time and money had been consumed, had at last been set
afloat. She had been called the War's End, and, so far as Antwerp was
concerned, the fates that presided over her birth seemed to have been
paltering in a double sense when the ominous name was conferred. She was
larger than anything previously known in naval architecture; she had four
masts and three helms. Her bulwarks were ten feet thick; her tops were
musket-proof. She had twenty guns of largest size, besides many other
pieces of artillery of lesser calibre, the lower tier of which was almost
at the water's level. She was to carry one thousand men, and she was so
supported on corks and barrels as to be sure to float under any
circumstances. Thus she was a great swimming fortress which could not be
sunk, and was impervious to shot. Unluckily, however, in spite of her
four masts and three helms, she would neither sail nor steer, and she
proved but a great, unmanageable and very ridiculous tub, fully
justifying all the sarcasms that had been launched upon her during the
period of her construction, which had been almost as long as the siege
itself.

The Spaniards called her the Bugaboo--a monster to scare children withal.
The patriots christened her the Elephant, the Antwerp Folly, the Lost
Penny, with many similar appellations. A small army might have been
maintained for a month, they said, on the money she had cost, or the
whole city kept in bread for three months. At last, late in May, a few
days before the battle of the Kowenstyn, she set forth from Antwerp,
across the submerged land, upon her expedition to sweep all the Spanish
forts out of existence, and to bring the war to its end. She came to her
own end very briefly, for, after drifting helplessly about for an hour,
she stuck fast in the sand in the neighbourhood of Ordam, while the crew
and soldiers made their escape, and came back to the city to share in the
ridicule which, from first to last, had attached itself to the
monster-ship.

Two days after the Kowenstyn affair, Alexander sent an expedition under
Count Charles Mansfeld to take possession of the great Bugaboo. The boat,
in which were Count Charles, Count Aremberg, his brother de Barbancon,
and other noble volunteers, met with an accident: a keg of gun powder
accidentally exploding, blowing Aremberg into the water, whence he
escaped unharmed by swimming, and frightfully damaging Mansfeld in the
face. This indirect mischief--the only injury ever inflicted by the War's
End upon the enemy--did not prevent the rest of the party in the boats
from taking possession of the ship, and bringing her in triumph to the
Prince of Parma. After being thoroughly examined and heartily laughed at
by the Spaniards, she was broken up--her cannon, munitions, and other
valuable materials, being taken from her--and then there was an end of
the War's End.

This useless expenditure-against the judgment and entreaties of many
leading personages--was but a type of the difficulties with which Sainte
Aldegonde had been obliged to contend from the first day of the siege to
the last. Every one in the city had felt himself called on to express an
opinion as to the proper measures for defence. Diversity of humours,
popular license, anarchy, did not constitute the best government for a
city beleagured by Alexander Farnese. We have seen the deadly injury
inflicted upon the cause at the outset by the brutality of the butchers,
and the manful struggle which Sainte Aldegonde had maintained against
their cupidity and that of their friends. He had dealt with the thousand
difficulties which rose up around him from day to day, but his best
intentions were perpetually misconstrued, his most strenuous exertions
steadily foiled. It was a city where there was much love of money, and
where commerce--always timid by nature, particularly when controlled by
alien residents--was often the cause of almost abject cowardice.

From time to time there had been threatening demonstrations made against
the burgomaster, who, by protracting the resistance of Antwerp, was
bringing about the absolute destruction of a worldwide trade, and the
downfall of the most opulent capital in Christendom. There were also many
popular riots--very easily inflamed by the Catholic portion of the
inhabitants--for bread. "Bread, bread, or peace!" was hoarsely shouted by
ill-looking mischievous crowds, that dogged the steps and besieged the
doors of Sainte Aldegonde; but the burgomaster had done his best by
eloquence of tongue and personal courage, both against mobs and against
the enemy, to inspire the mass of his fellow-citizens with his own
generous spirit. He had relied for a long time on the negotiation with
France, and it would be difficult to exaggerate the disastrous effects
produced by the treachery of the Valois court. The historian Le Petit, a
resident of Antwerp at the time of the siege, had been despatched on
secret mission to Paris, and had communicated to the States' deputies
Sainte Aldegonde's earnest adjurations that they should obtain, if
possible, before it should be too late, an auxiliary force and a
pecuniary subsidy. An immediate assistance, even if slight, might be
sufficient to prevent Antwerp and its sister cities from falling into the
hands of the enemy. On that messenger's return, the burgomaster, much
encouraged by his report, had made many eloquent speeches in the senate,
and for a long time sustained the sinking spirits of the citizens.

The irritating termination to the triumph actually achieved against the
bridge, and the tragical result to the great enterprise against the
Kowenstyn, had now thoroughly broken the heart of Antwerp. For the last
catastrophe Sainte Aldegonde himself was highly censurable, although the
chief portion of the blame rested on the head of Hohenlo. Nevertheless
the States of Holland were yet true to the cause of the Union and of
liberty. Notwithstanding their heavy expenditures, and their own loss of
men, they urged warmly and earnestly the continuance of the resistance,
and promised, within at latest three months' time, to raise an army of
twelve thousand foot and seven thousand horse, with which they pledged
themselves to relieve the city, or to perish in the endeavour. At the
same time, the legation, which had been sent to England to offer the
sovereignty to Queen Elizabeth, sent encouraging despatches to Antwerp,
assuring the authorities that arrangements for an auxiliary force had
been effected; while Elizabeth herself wrote earnestly upon the subject
with her own hand.

"I am informed," said that Princess, "that through the closing of the
Scheldt you are likely to enter into a treaty with the Prince of Parma,
the issue of which is very much to be doubted, so far as the maintenance
of your privileges is concerned. Remembering the warm friendship which
has ever existed between this crown and the house of Burgundy, in the
realms of which you are an important member, and considering that my
subjects engaged in commerce have always met with more privilege and
comity in the Netherlands than in any other country, I have resolved to
send you at once, assistance, comfort, and aid. The details of the plan
will be stated by your envoys; but be assured that by me you will never
be forsaken or neglected."

The negotiations with Queen Elizabeth--most important for the
Netherlands, for England, and for the destinies of Europe--which
succeeded the futile diplomatic transactions with France, will be laid
before the reader in a subsequent chapter. It is proper that they should
be massed by themselves, so that the eye can comprehend at a single
glance their whole progress and aspect, as revealed both by public and
official, and by secret and hitherto unpublished records. Meantime, so
far as regards Antwerp, those negotiations had been too deliberately
conducted for the hasty and impatient temper of the citizens.

The spirit of the commercial metropolis, long flagging, seemed at last
broken. Despair was taking possession of all hearts. The common people
did nothing but complain, the magistrates did nothing but wrangle. In the
broad council the debates and dissensions were discouraging and endless.
Six of the eight militia-colonels were for holding out at all hazards,
while a majority of the eighty captains were for capitulation. The
populace was tumultuous and threatening, demanding peace and bread at any
price. Holland sent promises in abundance, and Holland was sincere; but
there had been much disappointment, and there was now infinite
bitterness. It seemed obvious that a crisis was fast approaching,
and--unless immediate aid should come from Holland or from England--that
a surrender was inevitable. La None, after five years' imprisonment, had
at last been exchanged against Count Philip Egmont. That noble, chief of
an ancient house, cousin of the Queen of France, was mortified at being
ransomed against a simple Huguenot gentleman--even though that gentleman
was the illustrious "iron-armed" La Noue--but he preferred to sacrifice
his dignity for the sake of his liberty. He was still more annoyed that
one hundred thousand crowns as security were exacted from La Noue--for
which the King of Navarre became bondsman--that he would never again bear
arms in the Netherlands except in obedience to the French monarch, while
no such pledges were required of himself. La None visited the Prince of
Parma at Antwerp, to take leave, and was received with the courtesy due
to his high character and great distinction. Alexander took pleasure in
showing him all his fortifications, and explaining to him the whole
system of the siege, and La Noue was filled with honest amazement. He
declared afterwards that the works were superb and impregnable; and that
if he had been on the outside at the head of twelve thousand troops, he
should have felt obliged to renounce the idea of relieving the city.
"Antwerp cannot escape you," confessed the veteran Huguenot, "but must
soon fall into your hands. And when you enter, I would counsel you to
hang up your sword at its gate, and let its capture be the crowning
trophy in your list of victories."

"You are right," answered Parma, "and many of my friends have given me
the same advice; but how am I to retire, engaged as I am for life in the
service of my King?"

Such was the opinion of La None, a man whose love for the reformed
religion and for civil liberty can be as little doubted as his competency
to form an opinion upon great military subjects. As little could he be
suspected just coming as he did from an infamous prison, whence he had
been at one time invited by Philip II. to emerge, on condition of
allowing his eyes to be put out--of any partiality for that monarch or
his representative.

Moreover, although the States of Holland and the English government were
earnestly desirous of relieving the city, and were encouraging the
patriots with well-founded promises, the Zeeland authorities were
lukewarm. The officers of the Zeeland navy, from which so much was
expected, were at last discouraged. They drew up, signed, and delivered
to Admiral Justinus de Nassau, a formal opinion to the effect that the
Scheldt had now so many dry and dangerous places, and that the tranquil
summer-nights--so different from those long, stormy ones of winter--were
so short as to allow of no attempt by water likely to be successful to
relieve the city.

Here certainly was much to discourage, and Sainte Aldegonde was at length
discouraged. He felt that the last hope of saving Antwerp was gone, and
with it all possibility of maintaining the existence of a United
Netherland commonwealth. The Walloon Provinces were lost already; Ghent,
Brussels, Mechlin, had also capitulated, and, with the fall of Antwerp,
Flanders and Brabant must fall. There would be no barrier left even to
save Holland itself. Despair entered the heart of the burgomaster, and he
listened too soon to its treacherous voice. Yet while he thought a free
national state no longer a possibility, he imagined it practicable to
secure religious liberty by negotiation with Philip II. He abandoned with
a sigh one of the two great objects for which he had struggled side by
side with Orange for twenty years, but he thought it possible to secure
the other. His purpose was now to obtain a favourable capitulation for
Antwerp, and at the same time to bring about the submission of Holland,
Zeeland, and the other United Provinces, to the King of Spain. Here
certainly was a great change of face on the part of one so conspicuous,
and hitherto so consistent, in the ranks of Netherland patriots, and it
is therefore necessary, in order thoroughly to estimate both the man and
the crisis, to follow carefully his steps through the secret path of
negotiation into which he now entered, and in which the Antwerp drama was
to find its conclusion. In these transactions, the chief actors are, on
the one side, the Prince of Parma, as representative of absolutism and
the Papacy; on the other, Sainte Aldegonde, who had passed his life as
the champion of the Reformation.

No doubt the pressure upon the burgomaster was very great. Tumults were
of daily occurrence. Crowds of rioters beset his door with cries of
denunciations and demands for bread. A large and turbulent mob upon one
occasion took possession of the horse-market, and treated him with
personal indignity and violence, when he undertook to disperse them. On
the other hand, Parma had been holding out hopes of pardon with more
reasonable conditions than could well be expected, and had, with a good
deal of art, taken advantage of several trivial circumstances to inspire
the burghers with confidence in his good-will. Thus, an infirm old lady
in the city happened to imagine herself so dependent upon asses milk as
to have sent her purveyor out of the city, at the peril of his life, to
procure a supply from the neighbourhood. The young man was captured,
brought to Alexander, from whose hands he very naturally expected the
punishment of a spy. The prince, however, presented him, not only with
his liberty, but with a she-ass; and loaded the animal with partridges
and capons, as a present for the invalid. The magistrates, hearing of the
incident, and not choosing to be outdone in courtesy, sent back a
waggon-load of old wine and remarkable confectionary as an offering to
Alexander, and with this interchange of dainties led the way to the
amenities of diplomacy.

     ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

     Courage and semblance of cheerfulness, with despair in his heart
     Demanding peace and bread at any price
     Not a friend of giving details larger than my ascertained facts




HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS

From the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce--1609

By John Lothrop Motley

History United Netherlands, v41, 1584

Alexander Farnese, The Duke of Parma




CHAPTER V., Part 3.

   Sainte Aldegonde discouraged--His Critical Position--His
   Negotiations with the Enemy--Correspondence with Richardot--
   Commotion in the City--Interview of Marnix with Parma--Suspicious
   Conduct of Marnix--Deputation to the Prince--Oration of Marnix--
   Private Views of Parma--Capitulation of Antwerp--Mistakes of Marnix
   --Philip on the Religious Question--Triumphal Entrance of Alexander--
   Rebuilding of the Citadel--Gratification of Philip--Note on Sainte
   Aldegonde

Sainte Aldegonde's position had become a painful one. The net had been
drawn closely about the city. The bridge seemed impregnable, the great
Kowenstyn was irrecoverably in the hands of the enemy, and now all the
lesser forts in the immediate vicinity of Antwerp-Borght, Hoboken,
Cantecroix, Stralen, Berghen, and the rest--had likewise fallen into his
grasp. An account of grain, taken on the 1st of June, gave an average of
a pound a-head for a month long, or half a pound for two months. This was
not the famine-point, according to the standard which had once been
established in Leyden; but the courage of the burghers had been rapidly
oozing away, under the pressure of their recent disappointments. It
seemed obvious to the burgomaster, that the time for yielding had
arrived.

"I had maintained the city," he said, "for a long period, without any
excessive tumult or great effusion of blood--a city where there was such
a multitude of inhabitants, mostly merchants or artisans deprived of all
their traffic, stripped of their manufactures, destitute of all
commodities and means of living. I had done this in the midst of a great
diversity of humours and opinions, a vast popular license, a confused
anarchy, among a great number of commanders, most of them inexperienced
in war; with very little authority of my own, with slender forces of
ships, soldiers, and sailors; with alight appearance of support from king
or prince without, or of military garrison within; and under all these
circumstances I exerted myself to do my uttermost duty in preserving the
city, both in regard to its internal government, and by force of arms by
land and sea, without sparing myself in any labour or peril.

"I know very well that there are many persons, who, finding themselves
quite at their ease, and far away from the hard blows that are passing,
are pleased to exhibit their wisdom by sitting in judgment upon others,
founding their decision only upon the results. But I demand to be judged
by equity and reason, when passion has been set aside. I claim that my
honour shall be protected against my calumniators; for all should
remember that I am not the first man, nor shall I be the last, that has
been blamed unjustly. All persons employed in public affairs are subject
to such hazards, but I submit myself to Him who knows all hearts, and who
governs all. I take Him to witness that in the affair of Antwerp, as in
all my other actions since my earliest youth, I have most sincerely
sought His glory and the welfare of His poor people, without regard to
my own private interests."

For it is not alone the fate of Antwerp that is here to be recorded. The
fame of Sainte Aldegonde was now seriously compromised. The character of
a great man must always be closely scanned and scrutinised; protected, if
needful, against calumny, but always unflinchingly held up to the light.
Names illustrious by genius and virtue are History's most precious
treasures, faithfully to be guarded by her, jealously to be watched; but
it is always a misfortune when her eyes are deceived by a glitter which
is not genuine.

Sainte Aldegonde was a man of unquestionable genius. His character had
ever been beyond the reproach of self-seeking or ignoble ambition. He had
multiplied himself into a thousand forms to serve the cause of the United
Netherland States, and the services so rendered had been brilliant and
frequent. A great change in his conduct and policy was now approaching,
and it is therefore the more necessary to examine closely at this epoch
his attitude and his character.

Early in June, Richardot, president of the council of Artois, addressed a
letter to Sainte Aldegonde, by command of Alexander of Parma, suggesting
a secret interview between the burgomaster and the Prince.

On the 8th of June, Sainte Aldegonde replied, in favourable terms, as to
the interview; but observed, that, as he was an official personage, it
was necessary for him to communicate the project to the magistracy of the
city. He expressed likewise the hope that Parma would embrace the present
opportunity for making a general treaty with all the Provinces. A special
accord with Antwerp, leaving out Holland and Zeeland, would, he said,
lead to the utter desolation of that city, and to the destruction of its
commerce and manufactures, while the occasion now presented itself to the
Prince of "winning praise and immortal glory by bringing back all the
country to a voluntary and prompt obedience to his Majesty." He proposed,
that, instead of his coming alone, there should be a number of deputies
sent from Antwerp to confer with Alexander.

On the 11th June, Richardot replied by expressing, his own regrets and
those of the Prince, that the interview could not have been with the
burgomaster alone, but acknowledging the weight of his reasons, and
acquiescing in the proposition to send a larger deputation. Three days
afterwards, Sainte Aldegonde, on private consultation with some
confidential personages, changed his ground; announced his preference for
a private interview, under four eyes, with Parma; and requested that a
passport might be sent. The passport was accordingly forwarded the same
day, with an expression of Alexander's gratification, and with the offer,
on the part of Richardot, to come himself to Antwerp as hostage during
the absence of the burgomaster in Parma's camp at Beveren.

Sainte Aldegonde was accordingly about to start on the following day
(16th of June), but meantime the affair had got wind. A secret interview,
thus projected, was regarded by the citizens as extremely suspicious.
There was much bitter insinuation against the burgomaster--many violent
demonstrations. "Aldegonde, they say, is going to see Parma," said one of
the burghers, "which gives much dissatisfaction, because, 'tis feared
that he will make a treaty according to the appetite and pleasure of his
Highness, having been gained over to the royal cause by money. He says
that it would be a misfortune to send a large number of burghers. Last
Sunday (16th June) there was a meeting of the broad council. The
preachers came into the assembly and so animated the citizens by
demonstrations of their religion, that all rushed from the council-house,
crying with loud voices that they did not desire peace but war."

This desire was a healthy and a reasonable one; but, unfortunately, the
Antwerpers had not always been so vigorous or so united in their
resistance to Parma. At present, however, they were very furious, so soon
as the secret purpose of Sainte Aldegonde became generally known. The
proposed capitulation, which great mobs had been for weeks long savagely
demanding at the hands of the burgomaster, was now ascribed to the
burgomaster's unblushing corruption. He had obviously, they thought, been
purchased by Spanish ducats to do what he had hitherto been so steadily
refusing. A certain Van Werne had gone from Antwerp into Holland a few
days before upon his own private affairs, with a safe-conduct from Parma.
Sainte Aldegonde had not communicated to him the project then on foot,
but he had permitted him to seek a secret interview with Count Mansfeld.
If that were granted, Van Werne was to hint that in case the Provinces
could promise themselves a religious peace it would be possible, in the
opinion of Sainte Aldegonde, to induce Holland and Zealand and all the
rest of the United Provinces, to return to their obedience. Van Werne, on
his return to Antwerp, divulged these secret negotiations, and so put a
stop to Sainte Aldegonde's scheme of going alone to Parma. "This has
given a bad suspicion to the people," wrote the burgomaster to Richardot,
"so much so that I fear to have trouble. The broad council has been in
session, but I don't know what has taken place there, and I do not dare
to ask."

Sainte Aldegonde's motive, as avowed by himself, for seeking a private
interview, was because he had received no answer to the main point in his
first letter, as to the proposition for a general accord. In order
therefore to make the deliberations more rapid, he had been disposed to
discuss that preliminary question in secret. "But now," said he to
Richardot, "as the affair had been too much divulged, as well by diverse
reports and writings sown about, very inopportunely, as by the arrival of
M. Van Werne, I have not found it practicable to set out upon my road,
without communication with the members of the government. This has been
done, however, not in the way of consultation, but as the announcement of
a thing already resolved upon."

He proceeded to state, that great difficulties had arisen, exactly as he
had foreseen. The magistrates would not hear of a general accord, and it
was therefore necessary that a delay should be interposed before it would
be possible for him to come. He begged Richardot to persuade Alexander,
that he was not trifling with him. "It is not," said he, "from lightness,
or any other passion, that I am retarding this affair. I will do all in
my power to obtain leave to make a journey to the camp of his Highness,
at whatever price it may cost and I hope before long to arrive at my
object. If I fail, it must be ascribed to the humours of the people; for
my anxiety to restore all the Provinces to obedience to his Majesty is
extreme."

Richardot, in reply, the next day, expressed regret, without
astonishment, on the part of Alexander and himself, at the intelligence
thus received. People had such difference of humour, he said, and all men
were not equally capable of reason. Nevertheless the citizens were warned
not to misconstrue Parma's gentleness, because he was determined to die,
with his whole army, rather than not take Antwerp. "As for the King,"
said Richardot, "he will lay down all his crowns sooner than abandon this
enterprise." Van Werne was represented as free from blame, and sincerely
desirous of peace. Richardot had only stated to him, in general terms,
that letters had been received from Sainte Aldegonde, expressing an
opinion in favour of peace. As for the royalists, they were quite
innocent of the reports and writings that had so inopportunely been
circulated in the city. It was desirable, however, that the negotiation
should not too long be deferred, for otherwise Antwerp might perish,
before a general accord with Holland and Zeeland could be made. He begged
Sainte Aldegonde to banish all anxiety as to Parma's sentiments towards
himself or the community. "Put yourself, Sir, quite at your ease," said
he. "His Highness is in no respects dissatisfied with you, nor prone to
conceive any indignation against this poor people." He assured the
burgomaster that he was not suspected of lightness, nor of a wish to
delay matters, but he expressed solicitude with regard to the threatening
demonstrations which had been made against him in Antwerp. "For," said
he, "popular governments are full of a thousand hazards, and it would be
infinitely painful to me, if you should come to harm."

Thus it would appear that it was Sainte Aldegonde who was chiefly anxious
to effect the reconciliation of Holland and Zeeland with the King. The
initiative of this project to include all the United Provinces in one
scheme with the reduction of Antwerp came originally from him, and was
opposed, at the outset, by the magistrates of that city, by the Prince of
Parma and his councillors, and, by the States of Holland and Zeeland. The
demonstrations on the part of the preachers, the municipal authorities,
and the burghers, against Sainte Aldegonde and his plan for a secret
interview, so soon as it was divulged, made it impossible to carry that
project into effect.

"Aldegonde, who governs Antwerp," wrote Parma to Philip, "was
endeavouring, eight days ago, to bring about some kind of negotiation for
an accord. He manifested a desire to come hither for the sake of a
personal interview with me, which I permitted. It was to have taken place
last Sunday, 16th of this month, but by reason of a certain popular
tumult, which arose out of these circumstances, it has been necessary to
defer the meeting."

There was much disappointment felt by the royalist at this unsatisfactory
result. "These bravadoes and impertinent demonstrations on the part of
some of your people," wrote Richardot, ten days later, "will be the
destruction of the whole country, and will convert the Prince's
gentleness into anger. 'Tis these good and zealous patriots, trusting to
a little favourable breeze that blew for a few days past, who have been
the cause of all this disturbance, and who are ruining their miserable
country--miserable, I say, for having produced such abortions as
themselves."

Notwithstanding what had passed, however, Richardot intimated that
Alexander was still ready to negotiate. "And if you, Sir," he concluded,
in his letter to Aldegonde, "concerning whom many of our friends have at
present a sinister opinion, as if your object was to circumvent us, are
willing to proceed roundly and frankly, as I myself firmly believe that
you will do, we may yet hope for a favourable issue."

Thus the burgomaster was already the object of suspicion to both parties.
The Antwerpers denounced him as having been purchased by Spanish gold;
the royalists accused him of intending to overreach the King. It was not
probable therefore that all were correct in their conjectures.

At last it was arranged that deputies should be appointed by the broad
council to commence a negotiation with Parma. Sainte Aldegonde informed
Richardot, that he would (5th July, 1585) accompany them, if his affairs
should permit. He protested his sincerity and frankness throughout the
whole affair. "They try to calumniate me," he said, "as much on one side
as on the other, but I will overcome by my innocence all the malice of my
slanderers. If his Highness should be pleased to grant us some liberty
for our religion, I dare to promise such faithful service as will give
very great satisfaction."

Four days later, Sainte Aldegonde himself, together with M. de Duffel, M.
de Schoonhoven, and Adrian Hesselt, came to Parma's camp at Beveren, as
deputies on the part of the Antwerp authorities. They were courteously
received by the Prince, and remained three days as his guests. During the
period of this visit, the terms of a capitulation were thoroughly
discussed, between Alexander and his councillors upon one part, and the
four deputies on the other. The envoys endeavoured, with all the
arguments at their command, to obtain the consent of the Prince to three
preliminary points which they laid down as indispensable. Religious
liberty must be granted, the citadel must not be reconstructed, a foreign
garrison must not be admitted; they said. As it was the firm intention of
the King, however, not to make the slightest concession on any one of
these points, the discussion was not a very profitable one. Besides the
public interviews at which all the negotiators were present, there was a
private conference between Parma and Sainte Aldegonde which lasted more
than four hours, in which each did his best to enforce his opinions upon
the other. The burgomaster endeavoured to persuade the Prince with all
the eloquence for which he was so renowned, that the hearts not of the
Antwerpers only, but of the Hollanders and Zeelanders, were easily to be
won at that moment. Give them religious liberty, and attempt to govern
them by gentleness rather than by Spanish garrisons, and the road was
plain to a complete reconciliation of all the Provinces with his Majesty.

Alexander, who knew his master to be inexorable upon these three points,
was courteous but peremptory in his statements. He recommended that the
rebels should take into consideration their own declining strength, the
inexhaustible resources of the King, the impossibility of obtaining
succour from France, and the perplexing dilatoriness of England, rather
than waste their time in idle expectations of a change in the Spanish
policy. He also intimated, obliquely but very plainly, to Sainte
Aldegonde, that his own fortune would be made, and that he had everything
to hope from his Majesty's bounty, if he were now willing to make himself
useful in carrying into effect the royal plans.

The Prince urged these views with so much eloquence, that he seemed, in
his own words, to have been directly inspired by the Lord for this
special occasion! Sainte Aldegonde, too, was signally impressed by
Alexander's language, and thoroughly fascinated-magnetized, as it
were--by his character. He subsequently declared, that he had often
conversed familiarly with many eloquent personages, but that he had never
known a man more powerful or persuasive than the Prince of Parma. He
could honestly say of him--as Hasdrubal had said of Scipio--that Farnese
was even more admirable when seen face to face, than he had seemed when
one only heard of his glorious achievements.

"The burgomaster and three deputies," wrote Parma to Philip, "were here
until the 12th July. We discussed (30th July, 1585) the points and form
of a capitulation, and they have gone back thoroughly satisfied. Sainte
Aldegonde especially was much pleased with the long interview which he
had with me, alone, and which lasted more than three hours. I told him,
as well as my weakness and suffering from the tertian fever permitted,
all that God inspired me to say on our behalf."

Nevertheless, if Sainte Aldegonde and his colleagues went away thoroughly
satisfied, they had reason, soon after their return, to become thoroughly
dejected. The magistrates and burghers would not listen to a proposition
to abandon the three points, however strongly urged to do so by arguments
drawn from the necessity of the situation, and by representations of
Parma's benignity. As for the burgomaster, he became the target for
calumny, so soon as his three hours' private interview became known; and
the citizens loudly declared that his head ought to be cut off, and sent
in a bag, as a present, to Philip, in order that the traitor might meet
the sovereign with whom he sought a reconciliation, face to face, as soon
as possible.

The deputies, immediately after their return, made their report to the
magistrates, as likewise to the colonels and captains, and to the deans
of guilds. Next day, although it was Sunday, there was a session of the
broad council, and Sainte Aldegonde made a long address, in which--as he
stated in a letter to Richardot--he related everything that had passed in
his private conversation with Alexander. An answer was promised to Parma
on the following Tuesday, but the burgomaster spoke very discouragingly
as to the probability of an accord.

"The joy with which our return was greeted," he said, "was followed by a
general disappointment and sadness, so soon as the result was known. The
want of a religious toleration, as well as the refusal to concede on the
other two points, has not a little altered the hearts of all, even of the
Catholics. A citadel and a garrison are considered ruin and desolation to
a great commercial city. I have done what I can to urge the acceptance of
such conditions as the Prince is willing to give, and have spoken in
general terms of his benign intentions. The citizens still desire peace.
Had his Highness been willing to take both religions under his
protection, he might have won all hearts, and very soon all the other
Provinces would have returned to their obedience, while the clemency and
magnanimity of his Majesty would thus have been rendered admirable
throughout the world."

The power to form an accurate conception as to the nature of Philip and
of other personages with whom he was dealing, and as to the general signs
of his times, seems to have been wanting in the character of the gifted
Aldegonde. He had been dazzled by the personal presence of Parma, and he
now spoke of Philip II., as if his tyranny over the Netherlands--which
for twenty years had been one horrible and uniform whole--were the
accidental result of circumstances, not the necessary expression of his
individual character, and might be easily changed at will--as if Nero, at
a moment's warning, might transform himself into Trajan. It is true that
the innermost soul of the Spanish king could by no possibility be
displayed to any contemporary, as it reveals itself, after three
centuries, to those who study the record of his most secret thoughts;
but, at any rate, it would seem that his career had been sufficiently
consistent, to manifest the amount of "clemency and magnanimity" which he
might be expected to exercise.

"Had his Majesty," wrote Sainte Aldegonde, "been willing, since the year
sixty-six, to pursue a course of toleration, the memory of his reign
would have been sacred to all posterity, with an immortal praise of
sapience, benignity, and sovereign felicity."

This might be true, but nevertheless a tolerating Philip, in the year
1585, ought to have seemed to Sainte Aldegonde an impossible idea.

"The emperors," continued the burgomaster, "who immediately succeeded
Tiberius were the cause of the wisdom which displayed itself in the good
Trajan--also a Spaniard--and in Antoninus, Verus, and the rest: If you
think that this city, by the banishment of a certain number of persons,
will be content to abandon the profession of the reformed faith, you are
much mistaken. You will see, with time, that the exile of this religion
will be accompanied by a depopulation and a sorrowful ruin and desolation
of this flourishing city. But this will be as it pleases God. Meantime I
shall not fail to make all possible exertions to induce the citizens to
consent to a reconciliation with his Majesty. The broad council will soon
give their answer, and then we shall send a deputation. We shall invite
Holland and Zeeland to join with us, but there is little hope of their
consent."

Certainly there was little hope of their consent. Sainte Aldegonde was
now occupied in bringing about the capitulation of Antwerp, without any
provision for religious liberty--a concession which Parma had most
distinctly refused--and it was not probable that Holland and Zeeland,
after twenty years of hard fighting, and with an immediate prospect of
assistance from England--could now be induced to resign the great object
of the contest without further struggle.

It was not until a month had elapsed that the authorities of Antwerp sent
their propositions to the Prince of Parma. On the 12th August, however,
Sainte Aldegonde, accompanied by the same three gentlemen who had been
employed on the first mission, and by seventeen others besides, proceeded
with safe-conduct to the camp at Beveren. Here they were received with
great urbanity, and hospitably entertained by Alexander, who received
their formal draft of articles for a capitulation, and referred it to be
reported upon to Richardot, Pamel, and Vanden Burgh. Meantime there were
many long speeches and several conferences, sometimes between all the
twenty-one envoys and the Prince together; on other occasions, more
secret ones, at which only Aldegonde and one or two of his colleagues
were present. It had been obvious, from the date of the first interview,
in the preceding month, that the negotiation would be of no avail until
the government of Antwerp was prepared to abandon all the conditions
which they had originally announced as indispensable. Alexander had not
much disposition and no authority whatever to make concessions.

"So far as I can understand," Parma had written on the 30th July, "they
are very far from a conclusion. They have most exorbitant ideas, talking
of some kind of liberty of conscience, besides refusing on any account to
accept of garrisons, and having many reasons to allege on such subjects."

The discussions, therefore, after the deputies had at last arrived,
though courteously conducted, could scarcely be satisfactory to both
parties. "The articles were thoroughly deliberated upon," wrote
Alexander, "by all the deputies, nor did I fail to have private
conferences with Aldegonde, that most skilful and practised lawyer and
politician, as well as with two or three of the others. I did all in my
power to bring them to a thorough recognition of their errors, and to
produce a confidence in his Majesty's clemency, in order that they might
concede what was needful for the interests of the Catholic religion and
the security of the city. They heard all I had to say without
exasperating themselves, and without interposing any strong objections,
except in the matter of religion, and, still more, in the matter of the
citadel and the garrison. Aldegonde took much pains to persuade me that
it would be ruinous for a great, opulent, commercial city to submit to a
foreign military force. Even if compelled by necessity to submit now, the
inhabitants would soon be compelled by the same necessity to abandon the
place entirely, and to leave in ruins one of the most splendid and
powerful cities in the world, and in this opinion Catholics and heretics
unanimously concurred. The deputies protested, with one accord, that so
pernicious and abominable a thing as a citadel and garrison could not
even be proposed to their constituents. I answered, that, so long as the
rebellion of Holland and Zeeland lasted, it would be necessary for your
Majesty to make sure of Antwerp, by one or the other of those means, but
promised that the city should be relieved of the incumbrance so soon as
those islands should be reduced.

"Sainte Aldegonde was not discouraged by this statement, but in the hope
of convincing others, or with the wish of showing that he had tried his
best, desired that I would hear him before the council of state. I
granted the request, and Sainte Aldegonde then made another long and very
elegant oration, intended to divert me from my resolution."

It must be confessed--if the reports, which have come down to us of that
long and elegant oration be correct--that the enthusiasm of the
burgomaster for Alexander was rapidly degenerating into idolatry.

"We are not here, O invincible Prince," he said, "that we may excuse, by
an anxious legation, the long defence which we have made of our homes.
Who could have feared any danger to the most powerful city in the
Netherlands from so moderate a besieging force? You would yourself have
rather wished for, than approved of, a greater facility on our part, for
the brave cannot love the timid. We knew the number of your troops, we
had discovered the famine in your camp, we were aware of the paucity of
your ships, we had heard of the quarrels in your army, we were expecting
daily to hear of a general mutiny among your soldiers. Were we to believe
that with ten or eleven thousand men you would be able to block up the
city by land and water, to reduce the open country of Brabant, to cut off
all aid as well from the neighbouring towns as from the powerful
provinces of Holland and Zeeland, to oppose, without a navy, the whole
strength of our fleets, directed against the dyke? Truly, if you had been
at the head of fifty thousand soldiers, and every soldier had possessed
one hundred hands, it would have seemed impossible for you to meet so
many emergencies in so many places, and under so many distractions. What
you have done we now believe possible to do, only because we see that it
has been done. You have subjugated the Scheldt, and forced it to bear its
bridge, notwithstanding the strength of its current, the fury of the
ocean-tides, the tremendous power of the icebergs, the perpetual
conflicts with our fleets. We destroyed your bridge, with great slaughter
of your troops. Rendered more courageous by that slaughter, you restored
that mighty work. We assaulted the great dyke, pierced it through and
through, and opened a path for our ships. You drove us off when victors,
repaired the ruined bulwark, and again closed to us the avenue of relief.
What machine was there that we did not employ? what miracles of fire did
we not invent? what fleets and floating cidadels did we not put in
motion? All that genius, audacity, and art, could teach us we have
executed, calling to our assistance water, earth, heaven, and hell
itself. Yet with all these efforts, with all this enginry, we have not
only failed to drive you from our walls, but we have seen you gaining
victories over other cities at the same time. You have done a thing, O
Prince, than which there is nothing greater either in ancient or modern
story. It has often occurred, while a general was besieging one city that
he lost another situate farther off. But you, while besieging Antwerp,
have reduced simultaneously Dendermonde, Ghent, Nymegen, Brussels, and
Mechlin."

All this, and much more, with florid rhetoric, the burgomaster pronounced
in honour of Farnese, and the eulogy was entirely deserved. It was hardly
becoming, however, for such lips, at such a moment, to sound the praise
of him whose victory had just decided the downfall of religious liberty,
and of the national independence of the Netherlands. His colleagues
certainly must have winced, as they listened to commendations so lavishly
bestowed upon the representative of Philip, and it is not surprising that
Sainte Aldegonde's growing unpopularity should, from that hour, have
rapidly increased. To abandon the whole object of the siege, when
resistance seemed hopeless, was perhaps pardonable, but to offer such
lip-homage to the conqueror was surely transgressing the bounds of
decorum.

His conclusion, too, might to Alexander seem as insolent as the whole
tenor of his address had been humble; for, after pronouncing this solemn
eulogy upon the conqueror, he calmly proposed that the prize of the
contest should be transferred to the conquered.

"So long as liberty of religion, and immunity from citadel and garrison
can be relied upon," he said, "so long will Antwerp remain the most
splendid and flourishing city in Christendom; but desolation will ensue
if the contrary policy is to prevail."

But it was very certain that liberty of religion, as well as immunity
from citadel and garrison, were quite out of the question. Philip and
Parma had long been inexorably resolved upon all the three points.

"After the burgomaster had finished his oration," wrote Alexander to his
sovereign, "I discussed the matter with him in private, very distinctly
and minutely."

The religious point was soon given up, Sainte Aldegonde finding it waste
of breath to say anything more about freedom of conscience. A suggestion
was however made on the subject of the garrison, which the prince
accepted, because it contained a condition which it would be easy to
evade.

"Aldegonde proposed," said Parma, "that a garrison might be admissible if
I made my entrance into the city merely with infantry and cavalry of
nations which were acceptable--Walloons, namely, and Germans--and in no
greater numbers than sufficient for a body-guard. I accepted, because, in
substance, this would amount to a garrison, and because, also, after the
magistrates shall have been changed, I shall have no difficulty in making
myself master of the people, continuing the garrison, and rebuilding the
citadel."

The Prince proceeded to give his reasons why he was willing to accept the
capitulation on what he considered so favourable terms to the besieged.
Autumn was approaching. Already the fury of the storms had driven vessels
clean over the dykes; the rebels in Holland and Zeeland were preparing
their fleets--augmented by many new ships of war and fire-machines--for
another desperate attack upon the Palisades, in which there was great
possibility of their succeeding; an auxiliary force from England was soon
expected; so that, in view of all these circumstances, he had resolved to
throw himself at his Majesty's feet and implore his clemency. "If this
people of Antwerp, as the head, is gained," said he, "there will be
tranquillity in all the members."

These reasons were certainly conclusive; nor is it easy to believe, that,
under the circumstances thus succinctly stated by Alexander, it would
have been impossible for the patriots to hold out until the promised
succour from Holland and from England should arrive. In point of fact,
the bridge could not have stood the winter which actually ensued; for it
was the repeatedly expressed opinion of the Spanish officers in Antwerp,
that the icebergs which then filled the Scheldt must inevitably have
shattered twenty bridges to fragments, had there been so many. It
certainly was superfluous for the Prince to make excuses to Philip for
accepting the proposed capitulation. All the prizes of victory had been
thoroughly secured, unless pillage, massacre, and rape, which had been
the regular accompaniments of Alva's victories, were to be reckoned among
the indispensable trophies of a Spanish triumph.

Nevertheless, the dearth in the city had been well concealed from the
enemy; for, three days after the surrender, not a loaf of bread was to be
had for any money in all Antwerp, and Alexander declared that he would
never have granted such easy conditions had he been aware of the real
condition of affairs.

The articles of capitulation agreed upon between Parma and the deputies
were brought before the broad council on the 9th August. There was much
opposition to them, as many magistrates and other influential personages
entertained sanguine expectations from the English negotiation, and were
beginning to rely with confidence upon the promises of Queen Elizabeth.
The debate was waxing warm, when some of the councillors, looking out of
window of the great hall, perceived that a violent mob had collected in
the streets. Furious cries for bread were uttered, and some
meagre-looking individuals were thrust forward to indicate the famine
which was prevailing, and the necessity of concluding the treaty without
further delay. Thus the municipal government was perpetually exposed to
democratic violence, excited by diametrically opposite influences.
Sometimes the burgomaster was denounced for having sold himself and his
country to the Spaniards, and was assailed with execrations for being
willing to conclude a sudden and disgraceful peace. At other moments he
was accused of forging letters containing promises of succour from the
Queen of England and from the authorities of Holland, in order to
protract the lingering tortures of the war. Upon this occasion the
peace-mob carried its point. The councillors, looking out of window,
rushed into the hall with direful accounts of the popular ferocity; the
magistrates and colonels who had been warmest in opposition suddenly
changed their tone, and the whole body of the broad council accepted the
articles of capitulation by a unanimous vote.

The window was instantly thrown open, and the decision publicly
announced. The populace, wild with delight, rushed through the streets,
tearing down the arms of the Duke of Anjou, which had remained above the
public edifices since the period of that personage's temporary residence
in the Netherlands, and substituting, with wonderful celerity, the
escutcheon of Philip the Second. Thus suddenly could an Antwerp mob pass
from democratic insolence to intense loyalty.

The articles, on the whole, were as liberal as could have been expected.
The only hope for Antwerp and for a great commonwealth of all the
Netherlands was in holding out, even to the last gasp, until England and
Holland, now united, had time to relieve the city. This was,
unquestionably, possible. Had Antwerp possessed the spirit of Leyden, had
William of Orange been alive, that Spanish escutcheon, now raised with
such indecent haste, might have never been seen again on the outside wall
of any Netherland edifice. Belgium would have become at once a
constituent portion of a great independent national realm, instead of
languishing until our own century, the dependency of a distant and a
foreign metropolis. Nevertheless, as the Antwerpers were not disposed to
make themselves martyrs, it was something that they escaped the nameless
horrors which had often alighted upon cities subjected to an enraged
soldiery. It redounds to the eternal honour of Alexander Farnese--when
the fate of Naarden and Haarlem and Maestricht, in the days of Alva, and
of Antwerp itself in the horrible "Spanish fury," is remembered--that
there were no scenes of violence and outrage in the populous and wealthy
city, which was at length at his mercy after having defied him so long.

Civil and religious liberty were trampled in the dust, commerce and
manufactures were destroyed, the most valuable portion of the citizens
sent into hopeless exile, but the remaining inhabitants were not
butchered in cold blood.

The treaty was signed on the 17th August. Antwerp was to return to its
obedience. There was to be an entire amnesty and oblivion for the past,
without a single exception. Royalist absentees were to be reinstated in
their possessions. Monasteries, churches, and the King's domains were to
be restored to their former proprietors. The inhabitants of the city were
to practise nothing but the Catholic religion. Those who refused to
conform were allowed to remain two years for the purpose of winding up
their affairs and selling out their property, provided that during that
period they lived "without scandal towards the ancient religion"--a very
vague and unsatisfactory condition. All prisoners were to be released
excepting Teligny. Four hundred thousand florins were to be paid by the
authorities as a fine. The patriot garrison was to leave the city with
arms and baggage and all the honours of war.

This capitulation gave more satisfaction to the hungry portion of the
Antwerpers than to the patriot party of the Netherlands. Sainte Aldegonde
was vehemently and unsparingly denounced as a venal traitor. It is
certain, whatever his motives, that his attitude had completely changed.
For it was not Antwerp alone that he had reconciled or was endeavouring
to reconcile with the King of Spain, but Holland and Zeeland as well, and
all the other independent Provinces. The ancient champion of the patriot
army, the earliest signer of the 'Compromise,' the bosom friend of
William the Silent, the author of the 'Wilhelmus' national song, now
avowed his conviction, in a published defence of his conduct against the
calumnious attacks upon it, "that it was impossible, with a clear
conscience, for subjects, under any circumstances, to take up arms
against Philip, their king." Certainly if he had always entertained that
opinion he must have suffered many pangs of remorse during his twenty
years of active and illustrious rebellion. He now made himself secretly
active in promoting the schemes of Parma and in counteracting the
negotiation with England. He flattered himself, with an infatuation which
it is difficult to comprehend, that it would be possible to obtain
religious liberty for the revolting Provinces, although he had consented
to its sacrifice in Antwerp. It is true that he had not the privilege of
reading Philip's secret letters to Parma, but what was there in the
character of the King--what intimation had ever been given by the
Governor-General--to induce a belief in even the possibility of such a
concession?

Whatever Sainte Aldegonde's opinions, it is certain that Philip had no
intention of changing his own policy. He at first suspected the
burgomaster of a wish to protract the negotiations for a perfidious
purpose.

"Necessity has forced Antwerp," he wrote on the 17th of August--the very
day on which the capitulation was actually signed--"to enter into
negotiation. I understand the artifice of Aldegonde in seeking to prolong
and make difficult the whole affair, under pretext of treating for the
reduction of Holland and Zeeland at the same time. It was therefore very
adroit in you to defeat this joint scheme at once, and urge the Antwerp
matter by itself, at the same time not shutting the door on the others.
With the prudence and dexterity with which this business has thus far
been managed I am thoroughly satisfied."

The King also expressed his gratification at hearing from Parma that the
demand for religious liberty in the Netherlands would soon be abandoned.

"In spite of the vehemence," he said, "which they manifest in the
religious matter, desiring some kind of liberty, they will in the end, as
you say they will, content themselves with what the other cities, which
have returned to obedience, have obtained. This must be done in all cases
without flinching, and without permitting any modification."

What "had been obtained" by Brussels, Mechlin, Ghent, was well known. The
heretics had obtained the choice of renouncing their religion or of going
into perpetual exile, and this was to be the case "without flinching" in
Holland and Zeeland, if those provinces chose to return to obedience. Yet
Sainte Aldegonde deluded himself with the thought of a religious peace.

In another and very important letter of the same date Philip laid down
his policy very distinctly. The Prince of Parma, by no means such a bigot
as his master, had hinted at the possibility of tolerating the reformed
religion in the places recovered from the rebels, sub silentio, for a
period not defined, and long enough for the heretics to awake from their
errors.

"You have got an expression of opinion, I see," wrote the King to
Alexander, "of some grave men of wisdom and conscience, that the
limitation of time, during which the heretics may live without scandal,
may be left undefined; but I feel very keenly the danger of such a
proposition. With regard to Holland and Zeeland, or any other provinces
or towns, the first step must be for them to receive and maintain alone
the exercise of the Catholic religion, and to subject themselves to the
Roman church, without tolerating the exercise of any other religion, in
city, village, farm-house, or building thereto destined in the fields, or
in any place whatsoever; and in this regulation there is to be no flaw,
no change, no concession by convention or otherwise of a religious peace,
or anything of the sort. They are all to embrace the Roman Catholic
religion, and the exercise of that is alone to be permitted."

This certainly was distinct enough, and nothing had been ever said in
public to induce a belief in any modification of the principles on which
Philip had uniformly acted. That monarch considered himself born to
suppress heresy, and he had certainly been carrying out this work during
his whole lifetime.

The King was willing, however, as Alexander had intimated in his
negotiations with Antwerp, and previously in the capitulation of
Brussels, Ghent, and other places, that there should be an absence of
investigation into the private chambers of the heretics, during the
period allotted them for choosing between the Papacy and exile.

"It may be permitted," said Philip, "to abstain from inquiring as to what
the heretics are doing within their own doors, in a private way, without
scandal, or any public exhibition of their rites during a fixed time. But
this connivance, and the abstaining from executing the heretics, or from
chastising them, even although they may be living very circumspectly, is
to be expressed in very vague terms."

Being most anxious to provide against a second crop of heretics to
succeed the first, which he was determined to uproot, he took pains to
enjoin with his own hand upon Parma the necessity of putting in Catholic
schoolmasters and mistresses to the exclusion of reformed teachers into
all the seminaries of the recovered Provinces, in order that all the boys
and girls might grow up in thorough orthodoxy.

Yet this was the man from whom Sainte Aldegonde imagined the possibility
of obtaining a religious peace.

Ten days after the capitulation, Parma made his triumphal entrance into
Antwerp; but, according to his agreement, he spared the citizens the
presence of the Spanish and Italian soldiers, the military procession
being composed of the Germans and Walloons. Escorted by his body-guard,
and surrounded by a knot of magnates and veterans, among whom the Duke of
Arschot, the Prince of Chimay, the Counts Mansfeld, Egmont, and Aremberg,
were conspicuous, Alexander proceeded towards the captured city. He was
met at the Keyser Gate by a triumphal chariot of gorgeous workmanship, in
which sat the fair nymph Antwerpia, magnificently bedizened, and
accompanied by a group of beautiful maidens. Antwerpia welcomed the
conqueror with a kiss, recited a poem in his honour, and bestowed upon
him the keys of the city, one of which was in gold. This the Prince
immediately fastened to the chain around his neck, from which was
suspended the lamb of the golden fleece, with which order he had just
been, amid great pomp and ceremony, invested.

On the public square called the Mere, the Genoese merchants had erected
two rostral columns, each surmounted by a colossal image, representing
respectively Alexander of Macedon and Alexander of Parma. Before the
house of Portugal was an enormous phoenix, expanding her wings quite
across the street; while, in other parts of the town, the procession was
met by ships of war, elephants, dromedaries, whales, dragons, and other
triumphal phenomena. In the market-place were seven statues in copper,
personifying the seven planets, together with an eighth representing
Bacchus; and perhaps there were good mythological reasons why the god of
wine, together with so large a portion of our solar system, should be
done in copper by Jacob Jongeling, to honour the triumph of Alexander,
although the key to the enigma has been lost.

The cathedral had been thoroughly fumigated with frankincense, and
besprinkled with holy water, to purify the sacred precincts from their
recent pollution by the reformed rites; and the Protestant pulpits which
had been placed there, had been soundly beaten with rods, and then burned
to ashes. The procession entered within its walls, where a magnificent Te
Deum was performed, and then, after much cannon-firing, bell-ringing,
torch-light exhibition, and other pyrotechnics, the Prince made his way
at last to the palace provided for him. The glittering display, by which
the royalists celebrated their triumph, lasted three days' long, the city
being thronged from all the country round with eager and frivolous
spectators, who were never wearied with examining the wonders of the
bridge and the forts, and with gazing at the tragic memorials which still
remained of the fight on the Kowenstyn.

During this interval, the Spanish and Italian soldiery, not willing to be
outdone in demonstrations of respect to their chief, nor defrauded of
their rightful claim to a holiday amused themselves with preparing a
demonstration of a novel character. The bridge, which, as it was well
known, was to be destroyed within a very few days, was adorned with
triumphal arches, and decked with trees and flowering plants; its roadway
was strewed with branches; and the palisades, parapets, and forts, were
garnished with wreaths, emblems, and poetical inscriptions in honour of
the Prince. The soldiers themselves, attired in verdurous garments of
foliage and flower-work, their swart faces adorned with roses and lilies,
paraded the bridge and the dyke in fantastic procession with clash of
cymbal and flourish of trumpet, dancing, singing, and discharging their
carbines, in all the delirium of triumph. Nor was a suitable termination
to the festival wanting, for Alexander, pleased with the genial character
of these demonstrations, repaired himself to the bridge, where he was
receiv