Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/91

79 THIRTY YEARS WAR.] HOLLAND 79 airy Hand land. le- redi- V SUC- 4onin use of lance ,h mce. King James, was eager to gain his objects without fighting, and to be on friendly terms with Spain ; he and Land were opposed to the Calvinism of the Dutch, and disliked their form of church government; and commercial jealousy was already beginning to arise. Successes and losses were evenly balanced in the war : the Dutch recaptured Juliers and took Cleves, while Spinola, after great losses caused by the gallant defence of the English, in 1625 took Breda. A few days before the town fell Maurice died, leaving the Spaniards in the heart of his territories, arid the Dutch vexed with religious and domestic factions. His brother, Frederick Henry of Orange-Nassau, suc ceeded him as stadtholder of Holland, Zealand, Guelder- land, Utreclit, and Overyssel. The war by land became utterly spiritless, though by sea the Dutch still asserted their maritime supremacy. By land the chief operations were the siege and capture by Frederick Henry of Herzogenbusch, Maestricht, ajid Wesel in 1628; by sea the Dutch interfered, much against the popular feeling, to assist the French court against the Huguenots at La Rochelle. They blockaded Dunkirk, whence Spanish privateers had been wont to harass their commerce ; under Piet Heyn of Delftshaven, boldest of their sea-captains, they vexed the Spanish coasts, captured Spanish war ships, carried off their &quot;silver fleet,&quot; and finally in 1631 won near Tholen a brilliant victory over a great Spanish fleet commanded by Count John of Nassau, who was endeavour ing to make a descent on the Zealand coast. In this year the States, feeling that the moderation of the stadtholder was honest and salutary, that his influence alone seemed able to quiet the raga of religious faction, and that his military operations had secured the confidence of the provinces, took the important, and, as it turned out, the unwise step of securing to his infant son the reversion of all his great offices of stadtholder, captain, and admiral- general. The Calvinists were willing to grant so much to the head of their party, and made no objection to the introduction of the principle of hereditary succession; while the Remonstrants, discerning that Frederick Henry, like his brother before him, was personally more favourable to their tenets than to those of their adversaries, accepted the measure in the hope that when permanently established as their prince he would carry out those tolerant views which he was known to hold. In 1632 he justified their confidence by his masterly siege and capture of Maestricht, in defiance of all the efforts of the Spanish and imperial generals; Namur, Luxembourg, and eastern Brabant were laid under contribution in con sequence, and the States defended from danger of attack towards the east. As the war dragged on after the death of Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, France and Holland drew more together, and in 1635 an alliance and partition treaty was made between them, in which it was proposed that the Spaniards should be driven out of the Netherlands, which should be made an independent state, guaranteed by the allies ; that France should receive, as her share, the sea- coast up to Blankenberg, together with Thionville and Namur; and that a corresponding portion should be given to Holland ; if this scheme of an independent state proved a failure, then France and Holland should divide the whole district between them, The joint operations consequent on this agreement proved a failure : Frederick Henry had always been opposed to the alliance, and probably did not wish its success; the divergence between him and the States General at this time gave Cardinal Richelieu the oppor tunity of restoring the Remonstrant party in Holland, and making it French in sympathy, in opposition to the House of Orange a combination of which Louis XIV. afterwards made great use. In 1637 the stadtholder recovered Breda, though the gain was balanced by the loss of Roermond and other places; and in 1638 the war was favourable to the Spaniards. In 1639, however, a series of great naval triumphs under Tromp and De Witt turned the scale in favour of the Dutch. In 1 640, on the death of Count Henry of Nassau, stadt holder of Friesland and Groningen, the latter province chose Frederick Henry as its stadtholder, and he thus became chief of six out of the seven United Provinces ; in the next year he was able to arrange the marriage of his son William with Mary, eldest daughter of Charles I. of Con- England, a match devised by the queen-mother of France, nexion while a refugee in Holland, in order to increase the ill-will Wlth between Richelieu and the stadtholder. Tims began the dynastic relation between the Stewarts and the house of Grange, which led to such great results before the end of the century. The States General were not too well pleased with this alliance, and looked shyly at Henrietta Maria when she came over to Hollnid to get help for Charles I. in 1642. They were becoming alarmed at the great power and growing ambition of France under Richelieu, while they sympathized to a great extent with the English Puritans. All parties, except the French, being now utterly weary of the war, negotiations for peace, long talked of, long prepared for, began in earnest at Mtinster and Osnabriick. Before their close Frederick Henry died in 1647, and was {succeeded in his dignities and offices by his young son William II., and almost immediately afterwards (January William 1648), in spite of the opposition of France and the young IT. prince of Orange, the deputies of the Provinces (with ex ception of Zealand and Utrecht) signed a separate treaty Peace of peacj with Spain, which was confirmed and sworn to in ^^ May at Miinstcr. It was a complete surrender of every- thing for which Spain so long had fought. The United Provinces were recognized as free and independent, and Spain dropped all her claims ; the uti possidetis basis was adopted in the matter of all conquests ; the two contract ing parties agreed to respect and keep clear of each other s trading-grounds ; each should pay, in the ports of the other, only such tolls as natives of the other paid ; the Scheldt was entirely closed by the States, so that Amsterdam might strangle Antwerp the chief harbour of the free Provinces thus ruining the chief harbour of those still subject to Spain. And so ended the so-called Eighty Years War. No sooner was the peace concluded than bitter disputes Holland arose between Holland, on the one hand, and the prince of nn ^ Orange, supported by the army and navy and the smaller Jj provinces, on the other. He was tempted into foolish acts : var i ance. he arrested six of the deputies of Holland ; he even tried to surprise and occupy Amsterdam ; he favoured the English royalists, now plentiful in the Provinces, while Amsterdam and Holland inclined towards the Commonwealth. Things went so far that William II. had almost destroyed the liberties of the Provinces, and was intent on two schemes, the resumption of war against Spain, with a partition with France of the Spanish Netherlands, and interference on behalf of Charles II. in England, when his opportune death by small-pox occurred. A few days afterwards his widow, Mary of England, gave birth to a son, who was destined to be the most distinguished man of his race, William III. of Holland and England. For a time the death of William II. restored the burgher- Amstrr party to power, and made Amsterdam the head of the United (lani &quot; I|V Provinces. Holland triumphed over Zealand; the house ru of Orange, friend of the Stewarts, seemed to suffer eclipse with them ; and though the royalist mob even at the Hague, set on by a princely rough of the palatine house, made it impossible for the envoys of the English Commonwealth to come to terms with the republic, still the popular monarchi cal party was in fact powerless in the Provinces for more