Chapter IV: Part 4

On the 26th of August the estates addressed a demand to Don John, in which they called upon him to disband all the troops in his service and to send the German mercenaries instantly out of the country, to dismiss every foreigner from office, whether civil or military, and to renounce his secret alliance with the duke of Guise, the head of the Catholic League in France. They required him to govern thenceforth only with the advice and consent of the Council of State, to carry out whatever should be determined on by a majority of that body, and to regard neither measures as binding nor despatches as authentic unless decided upon or drawn up in that Council. This was a demand for parliamentary or what is now termed responsible government in its widest sense, and the representative of King Philippe could not agree to it.

The inhabitants of Antwerp now rose in a body and razed to the ground the side of the citadel which commanded the city, so that it was no longer a menace to them. The people of Ghent also broke down their castle, and remodelled the government of that city in a democratic manner. The estates invited the prince of Orange to visit Brussels and give them advice, and on the 23rd of September he made his appearance there.

[Sidenote: Action of Queen Elizabeth.]

Don John now retired from Namur to Luxemburg, and waited in that city until the king should provide him with an army strong enough to conquer the country. The estates on their part commenced to levy troops, for negotiations had quite ceased. On the 7th of December they declared Don John no longer governor-general, but an enemy of the Netherlands.

The prince of Orange was elected ruward of Brabant, a post which gave him great power in that province, and his influence was enormous throughout the whole country. By his advice a new act of union was signed at Brussels on the 10th of December, by which the adherents of the Roman Catholic church and the Protestants bound themselves to respect each other and to protect one another from all enemies whatever. But this was a step too far in advance of the times to be permanent, for it was an age of bitter intolerance.

Queen Elizabeth of England, fearing that French influence would prevail in the Netherlands if she did not aid the struggling country at this critical time, resolved to give the estates some assistance. On the 7th of January 1578 she entered into an engagement in London to endorse their obligations to the extent of one hundred thousand pounds sterling, and to supply five thousand infantry and one thousand cavalry, who should, however, be paid by them. This was not regarded as making war against Spain, because at the same time the Catholic League in France was sending a much greater number of well trained men to assist Don John of Austria.

While the armies on both sides were gathering, another factor, that might have caused much confusion, was introduced. A party of nobles, in order to thwart the prince of Orange, invited the archduke Matthias of Hapsburg, brother of the emperor, to fill the post of governor-general. The young man accepted the invitation, and came to the Netherlands, but the prince of Orange and his adherents managed things so adroitly that Matthias, though inaugurated as governor-general on the 18th of January 1578, had really no power conferred upon him, and Orange himself as lieutenant-general retained all authority.

[Sidenote: Historical Sketches.]

Both parties had by this time collected considerable forces, Don John at Luxemburg, the estates at Namur, but the armies were very differently composed. Philippe had sent several veteran regiments of Spaniards and Italians, the most highly disciplined troops in the world, commanded by Alexander Farnese, prince of Parma, and to these had been added some well-trained French battalions, making altogether a compact army of about twenty thousand men. The army of the estates was equal in number, but was a motley assemblage of Germans, French, Netherlanders, English, and Scotch.

On the 31st of January 1578 these forces met at Gemblours, fourteen kilometres from Namur, and the result was the total annihilation of the States army, with hardly any loss at all on Don John’s side. Seven or eight thousand men were killed on the field, six hundred were made prisoners and were immediately hanged or drowned, and the remainder were dispersed. All their baggage, ammunition, weapons, and stores of every kind fell into the hands of the victors, and the patriot cause seemed doomed to ruin.

A great many small towns in the southern provinces were immediately occupied by the king’s troops, terrible atrocities being perpetrated wherever resistance was offered. Brussels, however, the seat of government, was put in a thorough condition for defence, and the States set about organising another army as rapidly as possible.

On the other hand, in the north, a great augmentation of the power of the prince of Orange was taking place. Haarlem had been recovered for the patriot cause, the province of Utrecht had accepted the prince as stadholder, and on the 8th of February 1578 the important city of Amsterdam was gained, so that the provinces of Holland, Zeeland, and Utrecht were wholly animated by the same spirit. Then, on the 11th of March the estates of Gelderland elected as governor of that province Count John of Nassau, the only surviving brother of William of Orange, which was almost equivalent to electing the prince himself. The Reformed religion was making very rapid progress in Utrecht and Gelderland, but was not yet as exclusively the faith of the people as in Holland and Zeeland. In June of this year 1578 the second provincial synod of the Reformed churches was held at Dordrecht, the first having met at Hoorn in 1572, a proof how entirely the inquisition had failed to extirpate freedom of conscience in that part of the country.

[Sidenote: Rivalry between England and France.]

The cord that bound the seventeen provinces together was so weak that it was liable to snap at any time, and it was therefore rather to foreign assistance than to their own unaided exertions that the leading men looked to rescue the land from Spanish tyranny. They had appointed the emperor’s brother Matthias their governor-general in name, but that had not brought them the material aid which they needed. A considerable number of the nobles were now intriguing with the worthless duke of Anjou, brother of the king of France, leading him to believe that if he would bring a strong army into the field they would elect him their sovereign in place of Philippe. Even the prince of Orange favoured this scheme, and Anjou actually invaded the country and occupied Mons with a considerable force. The effect was that Queen Elizabeth of England, in her jealousy of France, gave greater assistance in men and money than before, and Anjou disbanded his troops and returned to Paris.

Don John was again helpless for want of money. Philippe had sent him nearly £400,000 from Spain with the troops under Alexander Farnese, and had promised him more, but the money was expended, and the promise was unfulfilled. Without the means of procuring the material of war he could do nothing. Then a pestilence broke out in his main army, and in a few weeks over a thousand men died. Worn out with care and anxiety, after a severe attack of illness, on the 1st of October 1578 Don John of Austria expired in his camp near Namur, after appointing on his deathbed Alexander Farnese, prince of Parma, his successor until the king’s pleasure should be known. The temporary appointment was confirmed, and the ablest of all of Philippe’s representatives was free to try what he could do towards settling the great controversy between despotism and liberty in the Netherlands.

[Sidenote: Historical Sketches.]

Alexander Farnese was the only son of the duke of Parma and Piacenza and of the regent Margaret, who preceded Alva in the administration. He was thirty-three years of age, and had been left a widower by the decease of his wife, a princess of Portugal. He found the country distracted with religious feuds, in which the Protestants were as violent as the Catholics. In Ghent the turbulence of a fanatical party was uncontrollable even by the prince of Orange, and the destruction of statues and ornaments in the churches was accompanied with such atrocious treatment of the leading adherents of the ancient faith that the Walloon provinces of the south, which were ardently Catholic, were exasperated to the last degree. On the 6th of January 1579 an alliance between Hainaut, Artois, and Lille with Douai and Orchies was entered into for the defence and exclusive maintenance of the Catholic church. The nobles in these provinces were timeservers, and Parma soon found that they could easily be bribed by offices and money to abandon the patriot interests. For this purpose Philippe could open his purse widely, though he neglected to pay his soldiers.

On the 17th of May 1579 the estates of the three provinces above named signed at Arras a formal treaty of reconciliation with the king of Spain, and were for ever lost to the Netherlands cause. Several towns in Brabant and Flanders shortly afterwards followed this example. The question of religion being settled to Philippe’s satisfaction, they were allowed to retain their charters subject to the prerogative of the sovereign.

[Sidenote: The Union of Utrecht.]

On the other hand, on the 23rd of January 1579 the foundation of the Netherlands Republic was laid by an agreement termed the Union of Utrecht, which was proclaimed on the 29th of the same month. The union was a loose one, for it left to each province and each city its own constitution unaltered, and only provided for a general assembly of deputies from the estates of the different provinces, in which each should have the same voting power, no matter how many deputies it should send. The object was defence against a common foe. It guaranteed to every man liberty of conscience, but it could not secure liberty of public worship where passion was running high, it could merely prevent inquisition whether Catholic or Protestant. It founded a new State, but the men who concluded it did not realise that this would be the result, they professed that they still adhered to the agreement with the other provinces, only making that agreement a little more binding in their own case. No supreme head was appointed, though Orange was practically in that position, and Matthias was not deprived of his title of governor-general, nor was Philippe formally deposed as sovereign of the provinces outside of Holland and Zeeland. The bishopric of Utrecht now ceased to exist.

The Union of Utrecht was signed by Count John of Nassau for himself and as stadholder of Gelderland, by the deputies of Holland, Zeeland, and Utrecht, by the deputies of the province of Groningen excluding the capital, by the deputies of Brill and the land of Voorne as a particular district though united with Holland, and further by a minority of the deputies of Friesland, the majority objecting to it. It was open to any other provinces or towns to join the Union, and on the 1st of March 1580 Overyssel gave in its adhesion, but the town of Groningen did not do so until 1595, and the complete province of Friesland not before 1598. Various nobles subsequently joined the Union, as did also the city of Ghent on the 4th of February 1579, the city of Antwerp on the 28th of July 1579, the city of Bruges on the 1st of February 1580, and several others later. Each city came to be practically an independent unit in the province in which it was situated, and could therefore make what alliances it chose. But owing to this circumstance the government of the Union was exceedingly weak, for no resolutions of the states-general were binding upon any town whose deputies did not agree to them.

[Sidenote: Historical Sketches.]

The provinces Holland, Zeeland, since enlarged by the addition of a small part of Flanders, the northern part of Gelderland including the county of Zutphen, Overyssel, Friesland, and Groningen, together with Drenthe, cover the whole territory of the present kingdom of the Netherlands except North Brabant and Limburg. Drenthe was a dependency of the bishopric of Utrecht from 1024 to 1537, when it became a direct fief to the emperor Charles V. It remained subject to the Spanish government until 1594, when it was overrun by the States forces, and thereafter it was a dependency of either Friesland or Groningen until 1813, when it became a separate province of the kingdom of the Netherlands.

III.

CONTINUATION OF THE WAR IN THE NETHERLANDS UNTIL 1606.

[Sidenote: Continuation of the War.]

The most exciting part of the scene now changes to the town of Maastricht, an important strategical position in the present province of Limburg. Maastricht contained thirty-four thousand inhabitants, and there was a garrison of a thousand soldiers within its walls. On the 12th of March 1579 Parma laid siege to the town with an army of twenty to twenty-five thousand men, and completely enclosed it. Two or three thousand peasants of both sexes, whose homes had been ravaged, managed to get in before it was surrounded, and they were of great service in the defence. The resistance was desperate, men and women fighting side by side whenever breaches were made in the walls and the soldiers tried to enter, as also in excavating passages by which the Spanish mines were destroyed. The carnage on both sides was frightful. On one occasion five hundred soldiers were hurled into the air and killed by a single explosion of a mine. An attempt to relieve the town was made by the prince of Orange, but it failed, for it was impossible to raise an army strong enough for the purpose. At last, on the 29th of June, Maastricht was taken, and then an indiscriminate massacre followed. On the first day four thousand men and women were butchered, and their dead bodies were flung into the streets. Three days the massacre continued, and then the few survivors fled from their old homes and tried to find a refuge in the country. Maastricht was depopulated, and after everything of value had been removed, it was repeopled by strangers.

Possession of Mechlin was obtained by Parma through the treachery of its governor De Bours, who introduced Spanish troops secretly, but six months later it was recovered by surprise by Van der Tympel, governor of Brussels.

[Sidenote: Historical Sketches.]

Another serious disaster befel the patriot cause in the far north. In November 1579 Joris Lalain, count of Renneberg, stadholder of Groningen and its dependency Drenthe, sold himself to Parma for office and a sum of money. During the night of the 3rd of March 1580 he caused all the leading men of the patriot party in the town of Groningen to be arrested in their beds and committed to prison, and before dawn on the 4th his adherents were in possession of the town. The States tried to recover the place, and a small army laid siege to it, but Parma sent a stronger force to the north, by which the patriots were almost annihilated. Then for some time there was a series of petty operations in the Frisian districts, in which nothing decisive was effected on either side, but much property was destroyed, and much misery was caused.

In 1580 Philippe II added Portugal to his dominions. At the time there was no thought that by this union the Portuguese possessions in the eastern seas would be laid open to conquest by the Netherlands, but that was the result. Before the close of the century the provinces within the Union of Utrecht were destined to become the foremost sea power of the world, and then the addition of Portugal to their foes was simply the addition of a vast amount of valuable spoil for them to gather. Meantime much that is interesting and instructive was to transpire in the provinces.

On the 15th of March 1580 Philippe, by advice of Cardinal Granvelle, issued a ban declaring the prince of Orange an outlaw, and offering twenty-five thousand crowns of gold, pardon for any crime however great, and a title of nobility to anyone who should assassinate him. He was regarded as the very soul of the struggle for liberty of conscience and political freedom, as indeed he was, and if he could be got out of the way, the king believed that the fourteen still defiant provinces would return like Artois, Hainaut, and Lille to the Catholic church and to perfect obedience.

[Sidenote: Election of the Duke of Anjou as Sovereign.]

This was the final grievance which led to the absolute renunciation of the sovereignty of Philippe by the disaffected provinces. Hitherto, though they were fighting against him, all acts of government were carried out in his name except in Holland and Zeeland, but on the 26th of July 1581 their estates, assembled at the Hague, formally and solemnly abjured him. His seals were broken, and every one was absolved from oaths of allegiance taken to him.

But there was no intention on the part of the people to change the form of their government, what they desired was to preserve their ancient charters, not to destroy them. The bond of union between the provinces was that one individual had been sovereign of them all, and now that Philippe had been abjured they must choose another in his stead, or break into fragments. The general choice fell upon the prince of Orange, but he emphatically refused to accept the position, because he would not have it said that personal ambition had influenced his conduct. Holland and Zeeland, however, would have no other, and after much hesitation he consented to become their head temporarily. The archduke Matthias, who was of no account, laid down his office as governor-general, and shortly afterwards retired to Germany.

By the influence of Orange the worthless duke of Anjou was chosen sovereign of the other twelve provinces. He was a brother of the king of France, who promised to assist him with money and men to defend the country against Spain. It was believed that he was about to wed Queen Elizabeth of England, and she certainly did all that she could to favour his election by the estates. He agreed to all the conditions required of him, though they bound him to constitutional government as closely as the king of England is bound to-day. He would have agreed to anything at all, in fact, but his promise, or his signature, or his oath was of no value whatever. Fortunately for England his insignificant person and his repulsive features prevented the great queen from espousing him.

[Sidenote: Historical Sketches.]

He was in England when the final arrangements were made, but on the 10th of February 1582 he arrived at Flushing with a brilliant train of English and French noblemen. The queen had requested that he might be treated with the same respect as herself, and so he was received with all possible honour. On the 17th of the same month he reached Antwerp, and was inaugurated with much ceremony as sovereign duke of Brabant. In July he was installed at Bruges as sovereign count of Flanders, and at the same time the estates of Gelderland formally accepted him as duke of that province, and those of Friesland pledged him obedience as their lord. He did not visit the other provinces in order to be installed with ceremony, but took up his residence at Antwerp, and was generally accepted as sovereign. To support him he had a strong French army, which was supposed to be a movable force, while troops raised by the States were stationed as garrisons in the towns.

The prince of Parma meantime was far from idle. Reinforcements of Spanish and Italian troops were constantly arriving, until at the end of August 1582 he was at the head of an army fully sixty thousand strong and largely composed of veteran soldiers. Using the obedient provinces of Artois and Hainaut as a base of operations, he sent out detachments to surprise cities that were not thoroughly on their guard, and as he had bribed many of the nobles, he was always well-informed on this point. So he got possession among various places of Oudenarde in Flanders on the 5th of July 1582, and a little later of Steenwyk in Friesland, of Eindhoven in Brabant, and of Nieuwpoort in Flanders.

The duke of Anjou had sworn to maintain the constitutions of the provinces and freedom of conscience, but the brother of the king of France and the son of Catherine of Medici could not long bear restraint. He wished to make himself an absolute sovereign and to suppress Protestantism, and without reflecting what the consequence must be of attempting to oppose Parma and the people of the Netherlands at the same time, on the 15th of January 1583 by his order detachments of French troops took possession of Dunkirk, Ostend, Dixmuyde, Denremonde, Alost, and Vilvoorde, and ejected the Netherlands garrisons. A similar attempt upon Bruges failed, as the city authorities closed the gates in time against the French soldiers.

[Sidenote: Treachery of Anjou.]

The duke resided in Antwerp, and at Borgerhout close by there was a camp of French troops. On the 17th of January at mid-day he rode through the gate leading to Borgerhout, when his bodyguard attacked the burgher watch, killed every man of them, and took possession of the archway and the drawbridge. Six hundred cavalry and three thousand infantry from Borgerhout then poured into the city, where they divided, and some began to plunder. But the burghers sprang quickly to arms, the leading sections of the French were overwhelmed, and those behind commenced to retreat in a panic. The burghers pressed on, killed over two thousand of the French, and made prisoners of all the others. Fewer than a hundred burghers lost their lives on this occasion.

Anjou fled with the remainder of his troops from Borgerhout, but a dyke was cut in his passage, and another thousand soldiers were drowned. He succeeded, however, in escaping to a place of safety, where he collected various scattered detachments about him, and formed a new camp. There he entered into correspondence with Parma on one side and with the States on the other, trying to make terms with each.

The position was one of extreme peril. Owing to the jealousy between the provinces and the cities and to the rivalry between Catholics and Protestants, they could not stand alone. To pursue the miscreant Anjou any further would be to incur the hostility of France, and that would most certainly bring ruin upon the country. Queen Elizabeth wrote strongly urging a reconciliation with him, and that was also in the opinion of the prince of Orange the wisest course to adopt. So an arrangement was made with him, by which on the 28th of March 1583 he surrendered the cities that he had seized, and the States released their French prisoners and restored to him the plate and furniture he had left behind in Antwerp. He was to wait at Dunkirk until some plan could be devised by which he might be restored to the dignity he had forfeited, but on the 28th of June he left to visit Paris, and never returned. He died in France on the 10th of June 1584.

[Sidenote: Historical Sketches.]

The treachery of Anjou was imitated by more than one of the Netherlands nobles. On the 22nd of September 1583 the town of Zutphen in Gelderland was betrayed to the Spaniards by Count Van den Berg, and on the 20th of May 1584 Bruges in Flanders was given up to Parma by the prince of Chimay, who was governor of that important city. Then Ypres in Flanders was besieged and forced to surrender, and as in Bruges all Protestants were expelled. Most of these took refuge in the northern provinces, so that the line of separation between the two opposing religions was constantly becoming more clearly defined.

At this critical time in the history of the provinces the great man whose name will ever be associated with all that is best and noblest in their struggle for liberty was taken from them by the pistol of an assassin. The ban of Philippe II had at last produced the effect for which it was designed. There had been many attempts to murder the prince of Orange and secure the king’s reward, but hitherto all had failed. The most serious of these took place on the 18th of March 1582, when he had been wounded, at first it was believed mortally, but he had recovered, though his wife died from the shock. And now, on the 10th of July 1584, in his own house at Delft he was shot by a fanatic Burgundian Catholic named Balthazar Gérard, who under pretence of being a Calvinist in distress had obtained admittance to his service. The Father of his Country, as he was deservedly called, expired almost immediately. The murderer was seized, and died under the most excruciating tortures that the ingenuity of man could devise, but he remained callous to the last. The sorrowing people laid the corpse of him they had such good reason to mourn for in the new church at Delft, and raised a stately tomb over it, where few Dutch speaking South Africans who visit Europe fail to pay their respects to the memory of the illustrious dead. Thus William of Orange passed away.

[Sidenote: Murder of the Prince of Orange.]

The real murderer, Philippe the Second of Spain, rewarded the parents of his tool with patents of nobility and with three seignories or rich estates in Franche Comté, taken from the confiscated property of his victim.

For a short time the country was paralysed by the death of its great leader, but soon in the northern provinces a general resolution was taken to prosecute the war more vigorously than ever. It now became almost purely a strife of religion. The prince of Orange had favoured toleration, but when he was removed the enmity between the Catholics and the Protestants showed itself so strong that a united country was no longer possible. It was not recognised at the time, but it can now be seen, that the position of the dividing line was the object striven for, and consequently the central provinces, Flanders, Brabant, Mechlin, Gelderland, and Limburg, where the Teutons and Celts were intermixed, were to be the principal scene of operations.

The states-general, exercising supreme power, appointed an executive council to raise forces and carry on the war until a sovereign should be chosen. This council consisted of eighteen members, four representing Holland, three Zeeland, three Friesland, three Brabant, two Utrecht, two Flanders, and one Mechlin. As its president the states-general appointed Maurits of Nassau, second son of the murdered prince of Orange, his eldest son Philip having long been a prisoner in Spain. It was a clumsy instrument for carrying on a war, with a president only seventeen years of age, and depending for funds upon the states-general, that it was required to convoke at least twice a year; but it was the only possible machinery that could be created at the time. The States’ movable army consisted of three thousand infantry and two thousand five hundred cavalry, the burghers being relied upon for the defence of the towns.

[Sidenote: Historical Sketches.]

On the other side was the astute and active Parma, with a field force of over eighteen thousand veterans, besides garrisons in all the towns he had taken. He was provided with gold to bribe the corrupt nobles, and he was skilful in using it. The disparity between the two parties was so great that it was not surprising that towns of mixed population should waver when plausible overtures were made to them, rather than risk being attacked and treated as Maastricht had been. Dendermonde was the first to give way. On the 17th of August 1584 it was reconciled to the Spanish king, and lost for ever to the patriot cause. The fatal example was followed by Vilvoorde on the 7th of September, and on the 17th of the same month by the all-important city of Ghent. The terms of reconciliation were that the municipal institutions were to be respected, and that the Protestants were to be allowed two years within which either to conform to the Catholic worship or to dispose of their property and go into exile. This was at least much better than to be burnt or buried alive. Emigration to Holland and Zeeland followed on a very large scale, and before the expiration of the two years Ghent in particular lost nearly half of its former inhabitants. Thus Protestantism gained in the north and Catholicism in the south of the country.

The eyes of the great powers of Europe were now more intently fixed upon the Netherlands than ever before, but it was difficult to assist them. Neither Germany, France, nor England was willing to enter openly into war with the powerful Spanish empire in order to preserve constitutional government and Calvinistic doctrine. The states actually offered the sovereignty of the provinces to the contemptible Henry III, who sat upon the throne of France, if he would pledge his word to maintain their charters and their religion, and he declined to accept the offer, though he had every reason to be hostile to Spain. Elizabeth of England favoured a joint protectorate of the Netherlands by France and herself, but was naturally unwilling to see them absorbed by her neighbour, and was not inclined to assist them alone. And so in their time of greatest need they had only themselves to depend upon.

[Sidenote: Designs of the Prince of Parma.]

It was fortunate for the northern provinces that Parma was not receiving reinforcements, or the whole country would soon have been overrun. Philippe was closely engaged in fomenting civil war in France and in planning the conquest of England, subjects which occupied his mind and drew upon his purse to such an extent that he neglected the Netherlands and failed to furnish money to maintain and pay even the limited number of soldiers he had there. He was the real head of the so-called holy league, that under the nominal leadership of the duke of Guise was in arms to establish absolutism and extirpate Protestantism in Europe. Parma was left mainly to his own resources, but he possessed military and diplomatic ability of the highest order, and could do with his slender army what ordinary generals could not have done with forces twice as strong.

If he could obtain possession of Brussels and Antwerp the backbone of the rebellion would be broken, he believed, and in the autumn of 1584 he commenced operations to that end. His plan was to construct a fortified bridge over the Schelde below Antwerp, which would prevent succour being sent up the river from Zeeland, and thus the cities would be starved out, for the open country was in his hands. There was one way by which this plan could be frustrated, and that was by cutting the great dykes and letting the sea roll over the land, but the patriots hesitated to destroy so much property. When at last they tried to do it they were too late, for Parma had fortified the dykes and held them with an iron hand. During the winter of 1584-5 famine was so severe in Brussels that people died of hunger, and on the 13th of March 1585 the city capitulated. Mechlin held out until the 19th of July, when it too fell.

[Sidenote: Historical Sketches.]

The siege of Antwerp was one of the most celebrated events in the history of the Netherlands. The city was then much less populous than it had formerly been, but it still contained ninety thousand inhabitants, the most turbulent though the most energetic and industrious in Europe. It was the most important commercial city in the country. If there had been union of counsel and obedience to a single authority, Antwerp need not have feared anything that Parma with his eleven or twelve thousand soldiers could do, but all was discord and confusion within the walls. And without was one strong clear-headed man, with a genius for war, in command of soldiers devoted to him, a man who could construct a strong fortified bridge seven hundred and thirty-two metres in length over a deep tidal river in the winter season and in the face of a far superior number of combatants, a feat deemed by most people utterly impossible until it was accomplished. The sufferings of Antwerp were less than those of Leyden, but on the 17th of August 1585 the city capitulated. Life and property were to be respected, a ransom of only £33,000 was to be paid, no other than the Roman Catholic worship was to be publicly observed, but Protestants were allowed two years in which to dispose of their property and leave.

Immediately a stream of emigration set out towards the north. Amsterdam especially benefited by refugee merchants and artisans from Antwerp settling there, and very shortly became the first commercial city of Europe. Middelburg too and many other towns of Holland and Zeeland received a large access of population from the fugitive Protestants of Brabant and Flanders. The old cities immediately lost their former importance, Antwerp sank into a small place, the citadel was rebuilt and a foreign garrison was stationed in it, but beyond the soldiers and the members of the Company of Jesus who were stationed there as instructors of the young, no new residents were attracted to take the place of the Protestants who moved away.

[Sidenote: Treaty with Queen Elizabeth.]

During the siege of Antwerp the states-general were making every effort in their power to obtain assistance from England. Queen Elizabeth realised the necessity of supporting the Netherlands against Philippe II, who was her enemy as well as theirs, but she was unwilling to give more than was absolutely necessary. She had to be on her guard against other enemies than Spain, and she could not afford to spend money freely. The states offered her the sovereignty of the provinces, which she declined, and the negotiations for an alliance were so protracted that when an agreement was finally arrived at, it was too late to save Antwerp.

On the 10th of August 1585 a treaty between the queen and the states was signed, by the terms of which Elizabeth was to furnish and pay during the war five thousand infantry and one thousand cavalry to assist in the defence of the provinces,[25] and was to receive the town of Flushing and the fortress of Rammekens in Zeeland and the town of Brill and two fortresses in Holland as pledges for the payment of all expenses when the war was over. She was to provide these places with suitable garrisons, but was not to interfere in any way with the civil government or the customs and privileges of the inhabitants.

[Sidenote: Historical Sketches.]

The earl of Leicester was appointed lieutenant-general of the English forces, and with a brilliant staff of nobles landed at Flushing on the 19th of December 1585. The chivalrous and virtuous Sir Philip Sidney was placed in command of the English garrison of Flushing.

The states-general, realising that under the existing form of government it was impossible to act with vigour against the enemy, appointed Leicester governor and captain-general of the united provinces, and on the 4th of February 1586 he was inaugurated at the Hague in that capacity. On the 6th a proclamation was issued by the states,[26] giving him “supreme command and absolute authority over all the affairs of war by sea and land, ... the administration and direction of government and justice over all the said united provinces, cities, and associated members, ... and special power to levy, receive, and administer all the contributions granted and appointed for carrying on the war.” The queen, however, was incensed by his acceptance of such extensive power, and he did not afterwards receive her support as freely as before. In particular the English soldiers in the Netherlands were left without pay or proper maintenance, and it might have gone hard with them if Parma’s forces had not been in the same condition. Philippe, who was hastening on the preparation of the great armada which he intended for the invasion and conquest of England, was trying to gain time and conceal his operations by pretending to enter into negotiations for peace, and so nothing decisive was done on either side.

What was effected during the year 1586 was more advantageous to the Spaniards than to the Dutch and English. In January of this year Parma laid siege to the town of Grave, on the Brabant bank of the Maas, and though in April the garrison was strengthened and a great quantity of provisions thrown in by the patriots, on the 7th of June the place was surrendered by its weak-minded commandant. On the same day Megen and Batenburg were given up to Parma, and on the 28th of June Venlo capitulated, when only the towns of Geertruidenberg, Heusden, Bergen op Zoom, and Willemstad were left in Brabant to the patriot cause. All the territory south of the lower Schelde had now been recovered by the Spaniards except a little slip in the north of Flanders and along the seacoast. This little slip was slightly enlarged, however, by the seizure on the 17th of July of the fortified town of Axel by a combined English and Dutch expedition.

[Sidenote: Death of Sir Philip Sidney.]

In Gelderland Nymegen on the Waal and Zutphen on the Yssel with some villages in the neighbourhood of each were held by the Spaniards, and Leicester resolved to attempt to get possession of them. On the 12th of September after a short siege he occupied Doesburg, eight kilometres from Zutphen, and then proceeded to beleaguer the city. Parma, with six thousand five hundred soldiers, immediately marched to its relief, and on the 2nd of October succeeded in forcing a way in with a great convoy of provisions. In the action when endeavouring to prevent him from doing so, the chivalrous Sir Philip Sidney received a wound from which he died. Parma, after strengthening the garrison, marched to disperse some German troops in the service of the States, and Leicester, having placed large garrisons in Deventer, Doesburg, and a very strong fort close to Zutphen, retired to the Hague. On the 24th of November he left the Netherlands to return to England, but did not resign his office, thus causing great confusion.

He had been at variance with the states-general, and had been disposed to carry out his views with a high hand, though he was exceedingly generous with his wealth and spent large sums of money of his own in the service of the country. Two parties had arisen: one, that may be termed oligarchal, favouring the existing form of town and provincial governments and wide toleration in matters of religion; the other, that called itself democratic, appealing to the sovereignty of the people at large, but without explaining how that sovereignty was to be manifested, and desiring to exclude rigidly all religious practices except those of the Reformed church. The earl of Leicester was the head of the last named of these parties. He left Sir John Norris in command of the English troops in the Netherlands, and professedly delegated his own authority to the state council, though secretly he issued commissions that greatly impaired the power of that body and of the English general.

[Sidenote: Historical Sketches.]

Soon after his departure a series of deplorable events occurred. Sir William Stanley, who was in command of the garrison of Deventer, betrayed that important city to Colonel Tassis, who held Zutphen for Parma, and with an Irish regiment under his orders went over to the service of Spain. On the same day, 29th of January 1587, Colonel Rowland York betrayed to Tassis the great fortress close to Zutphen, of which he was in command. The northern provinces were thus cut in two, and the Spaniards were able to ravage large portions of Gelderland and Overyssel. Then Wauw, a castle about four kilometres from Bergen op Zoom, was sold to Parma by its commandant, and a little later the town of Gelder was similarly sold by Commandant Aristotle Patton.

These acts of treachery created a strong feeling of distrust of the whole of the English forces in the country, especially as it was known that Queen Elizabeth was extremely desirous of concluding peace with Spain, and was at this very time corresponding with the duke of Parma on the subject. The states-general took advantage of this feeling and attempted to recover the authority which they had ceded to the earl of Leicester, but did not fully succeed in doing so.

[Sidenote: Action of Sir Francis Drake.]

The preparations of Philippe for the invasion of England were rapidly advancing, and it had been arranged between him and Parma that a powerful army was to be massed in Flanders and Brabant, which should be embarked in small vessels and convoyed across the straits by a great fleet to be sent from Spain. Until all was ready, the queen was to be kept unsuspicious of danger by pretended negotiations for peace, which were never to be more than a blind.

To carry out this scheme Parma needed a capacious and convenient harbour. Those he possessed were useless for his purpose, because the English held Flushing at the mouth of the Schelde and Dutch armed ships were constantly cruising almost up to Antwerp, so at the beginning of June 1587 he laid siege to Sluis in north-western Flanders with all the forces he could muster. The town had a garrison of eight hundred English and eight hundred Dutch soldiers, and not only the burghers but the women aided heroically in its defence. The importance of preventing such a harbour from falling into the hands of the Spaniards was realised at once in England, and Leicester was directed to return to the Netherlands without delay. On the 7th of July he reached Flushing with three thousand raw recruits, but the bickering between him and the states was so great that united action was impossible, and his attempt to relieve Sluis was an utter failure. The garrison was so reduced in number that it could resist no longer, and the burghers and women were quite worn out, when at the beginning of August Sluis capitulated on honourable terms, and Parma came into possession of an excellent base for the invasion of England.

That invasion, however, was deferred for a time, and the pretence of negotiating for peace was to be continued many months longer, owing to the action of the daring sea captain Sir Francis Drake. Drake sailed from Plymouth on the 2nd of April 1587 with four men-of-war and twenty-four ships fitted out by private adventurers, and seventeen days later entered the harbour of Cadiz and pillaged, burned, and destroyed some hundred and fifty vessels that he found there. He then sailed to Lisbon, and destroyed a hundred transports and provision ships that were lying in the Tagus. At first sight this looks something like piracy, for there had been no declaration of war between England and Spain. But what were all those vessels lying off Cadiz and Lisbon destined for? For the invasion of England, and this it was that justified Drake in destroying them as he so bravely did.

[Sidenote: Historical Sketches.]

Leicester remained nearly six months in the Netherlands on his second visit, and then, finding it impossible to recover his former authority, he returned to England. On the 27th of December 1587 he attached his name to a document resigning his office, but it did not reach the states-general until April 1588. In the interim a condition of affairs that can almost be termed civil war prevailed. The officials and commanders of garrisons who had taken an oath of fidelity to Leicester refused to obey any other authority, and young Maurits of Nassau, who had been appointed by the states captain-general, was obliged to coerce them by force of arms. At last Leicester’s resignation was received, and on the 12th of April 1588 the states-general issued a placaat[27] absolving all persons from their oaths of fidelity to him, when something like harmony was restored. The baron Willoughby now became the commander of the English troops in the Netherlands.

Warlike operations in that country were, however, almost stayed for a while, owing to Parma’s whole attention being occupied with preparations for the invasion of England and deceiving the English commissioners who were treating for peace. He was building great numbers of small transports, collecting vast stores of provisions and munitions of war, and providing for sixty thousand soldiers, some of whom were intended to hold his conquests during his absence and others to go with him to England when the invincible armada should arrive from Spain with additional forces and convoy his vessels across the channel.

[Sidenote: The Invincible Armada.]

At last in July 1588 the armada, consisting of a hundred and thirty-four ships of war, with twenty thousand soldiers on board, sailed from Coruña, and on the 29th of that month came in sight of the English coast. Never in the world’s history were more important issues in the balance than those dependent on that mighty fleet. Absolutism or political liberty, iron bound religious conformity or freedom of conscience, these were the issues at stake, not only for England and Holland, but for mighty nations still unborn. It is not necessary to relate the history of the armada here, every schoolboy knows how it came to anchor in Calais roads, how the Sea Beggars of Holland and Zeeland prevented Parma from joining it, how the English fleet under Howard and Drake and Hawkins and other ocean heroes followed and worried it, how they sent fireships that frightened it in confusion from Calais roads, how it fled into the North sea with the English grappling every galleon that lagged behind, how God sent a great storm that dispersed it, and how finally only fifty-three out of the hundred and thirty-four huge fighting ships reached the Spanish coast again, and these little better than disabled wrecks. The invincible armada was no more, and England and Holland were saved.

Parma had a great army under his command, but sickness was wasting it away, and he had not the means of maintaining it properly. So much had been expended upon the armada that it was impossible for Philippe to send him the money he needed. He was in chronic ill-health and seemed to have lost heart too by the failure of the mighty effort that had been made, and so for a time took no action commensurate with what might have been expected of him. He indeed laid siege to Bergen op Zoom, which was garrisoned by five thousand Dutch and English soldiers under Colonel Morgan, but he did not press it with his old vigour, and during the night of the 12th of November 1588 he abandoned it. Then for months he did nothing, until on the 10th of April 1589 he obtained possession of Geertruidenberg, a town on the Brabant side of the Maas.

[Sidenote: Historical Sketches.]

Philippe’s views were now directed more to France than to the Netherlands. After the assassination of Henry III the two parties in that kingdom appealed to arms, and Parma was directed to assist the duke of Mayenne, who was at the head of the Catholic league, against Henry of Navarre, then a Huguenot, the legitimate heir to the throne. Accordingly, in March 1590 he began to send troops to Mayenne, and in August he followed in person with twelve thousand infantry and three thousand cavalry, but after breaking the blockade of Paris, then besieged by Navarre, he returned to the Netherlands, leaving a strong division of his forces in France. His soldiers were dying rapidly from disease, they were unpaid and half mutinous, and neither money nor sufficient provisions could be obtained in the exhausted Spanish provinces. Under these circumstances Parma, notwithstanding the large number of men nominally at his disposal, was really almost helpless.

Maurits was not slow to take advantage of this condition of things. He had a regular army of only ten thousand infantry and two thousand cavalry, but his troops were properly paid and well disciplined, and he was rapidly advancing in military knowledge and skill. He had also the assistance of a small English contingent. On the 4th of March 1590 he got possession of the important town of Breda in Brabant. During the night of the 3rd seventy Hollanders concealed in a turf boat gained entrance to the castle, and attacked the garrison of Italian soldiers six times their number, who were seized with a panic and fled into the town. Before dawn of the 4th a body of patriot troops, with Maurits at their head, arrived, and Breda was gained. Within a few months eight other towns in Brabant, though all of less importance than Breda, were wrested from the Spaniards.

[Sidenote: Death of the Duke of Parma.]

During 1591 some great successes were gained by Maurits. On the 23rd of May the great fort at Zutphen was taken, and on the 30th the town capitulated. On the 10th of June Deventer was surrendered, and thus the important cities lost by the treachery of Stanley and York were recovered. On the 2nd of July Delfzyl, far north in Groningen, capitulated, and on the 24th of September Hulst, in the north of Flanders, was obliged to do the same. On the 21st of October Nymegen was taken, so that the year was a most fortunate one for the patriot cause. The Spanish garrisons of all these towns had made a stout resistance, and some had held out for a long time, but none of those scenes of massacre that characterised Spanish victories obscured the successes of Maurits. The soldiers were permitted to march away unharmed, and the result was that afterwards they did not fight so desperately as they would have done if they had believed that to submit would be followed by their butchery. As to religion, the same system was introduced in the recovered towns as was observed in South Africa during the greater part of the rule of the East India Company: only the Reformed worship could be practised publicly, but there was no inquisition in matters of conscience, and in their own houses men could worship as they pleased.

During 1592 less was accomplished. From January to June Parma was in France, and when he left that country his ill health prevented him from making much exertion. Philippe, without the slightest cause, had become suspicious of his fidelity, and had resolved to disgrace him. From this indignity he was spared by his death at Arras on the 3rd of December 1592. The old count Pieter Ernest Mansfeld then acted as governor-general of the submissive Netherlands until January 1594, when the archduke Ernest, brother of the emperor of Germany and nephew of King Philippe, arrived at Brussels and assumed the duty. He was a man of no account, and played a very unimportant part until his death on the 20th of February 1595. The count of Fuentes then acted as head of affairs until the 29th of January 1596, when the cardinal archduke Albert, youngest brother of the late Ernest, took over the charge.

[Sidenote: Historical Sketches.]

At this time the war against Spain was chiefly confined to France, where both the English and the Dutch were aiding the king of Navarre against Philippe and the Catholic league. In July 1593 the king of Navarre was reconciled to the Catholic church, and on the 26th of February 1594 was crowned at Chartres as Henry IV, king of France. Still the English and Dutch continued to help him against Spain, and the Spanish forces, except the garrisons of the towns, were withdrawn from the Netherlands to oppose him, so that Maurits was able with his little army and a few English auxiliaries to do something. He laid siege to Steenwyk, in the north of Overyssel, which surrendered on the 4th of July 1592, and to Koevorden, in Drenthe, which capitulated on the 12th of September of the same year. Next he laid siege to Geertruidenberg, which capitulated on the 22nd of June 1593, and to Groningen, which fell into his hands on the 22nd of July 1594. The remainder of the district, then termed the Ommelanden, was already a party to the union of Utrecht, and the city now at once gave in its adhesion, so that the province of Groningen thereafter took rank as a sister state of Holland and the others.