The Story of Nations - Holland/Chapter 12

The new governor of the Netherlands, son of Ottavio Farnese, Prince of Parma, and of Margaret of Parma, sister of Philip of Spain, was a very different person from any of the regents who had hitherto controlled the Netherlands. He was, or soon proved himself to be, the greatest general of the age, and he was equally, according to the statesmanship of the age, the most accomplished and versatile statesman. He had no designs beyond those of Philip, and during his long career in the Netherlands, from October, 1578, to December, 1592, he served the King of Spain as faithfully and with as few scruples as Philip could have desired. The king survived the prince for nearly six years. But he survived nearly all those who took part in the prolonged struggle in the Netherlands. Bad as his constitution was, his methodical life and his entire freedom from any passion whatever but selfishness allowed him to grow old.

Parma was religious, but he had no morality whatever. He was not bigoted like Alva, for he was politic, and knew that unwise severity might baffle a commander and ruin a campaign. But he had no scruple in deceiving, lying, assassinating, and even less scruple in saying or swearing that he had done none of these things. Men whose creed is that they have an indefeasible right to the lives and fortunes, and even the consciences of their subjects, as they call them, are seldom scrupulous. Now such men, if they possess military genius in time of war, and diplomatic skill in times of peace, are and always will be (for the type exists, though the manner is changed) the worst enemies of the human race. To complete the picture of Parma's character, it should be added that he was entirely disinterested. He impoverished himself, wore himself out, was lavish in bribing others, but was temperate, plain in his habits, unsparing of his own life, and entirely disinterested. He had an excellent judgment of men, and indeed he had experience of the two extremes, of the exceeding baseness of the Flemish nobles, and of the lofty and pure patriotism of the Dutch patriots. Nothing indeed was more unfortunate for the Dutch, than the belief which they entertained, that the Flemings who had been dragooned into uniformity, could be possibly stirred to patriotism. Alva had done his work thoroughly. It is possible to extirpate a reformation. But the success of the process is the moral ruin of those who are the subjects of the experiment.

Fortunately, for Parma, there was a suitor for the Netherland sovereignty, in the person of the very worst prince of the very worst royal family that ever existed in Europe, i.e., the Duke of Anjou, of the house of Valois. This person was favoured by Orange, probably because he had detected Philip's designs on France, and thought that national jealousy would induce the French Government, which was Catherine of Medici, to favour the Low Countries. Besides, Parma had a faction in every Flemish town, who were known as the Malcontents, who were the party of the greedy and unscrupulous nobles. And, besides Anjou, there was the party of another pretender, John Casimir, of Poland. He, however, soon left them. Parma quickly found in such dissensions plenty of men whom he could usefully bribe. He made his first purchases in the Walloon district, and secured them. The provinces here were Artois, Hainault, Lille, Douay, and Orchies. They were soon permanently reunited to Spain.

On January 29, 1579, the Union of Utrecht, which was virtually the Constitution of the Dutch Republic, was agreed to. It was greater in extent on the Flemish side than the Dutch Republic finally remained, less on that of Friesland. Orange still had hopes of including most of the Netherland seaboard, and he still kept up the form of allegiance to Philip. The principal event of the year was the siege and capture of Maestricht. The Hollanders could not make up their mind to the sacrifice which was necessary in order to save it. Mechlin also was betrayed by its commander, De Bours, who reconciled himself to Romanism, and received the pay for his treason from Parma at the same time. In March, 1580, a similar act of treason was committed by Count Renneberg, the governor of Friesland, who betrayed its chief city, Groningen. He had assured the burgomaster of the city the night before, that such guilt was far from his thoughts, and murdered the burgomaster next day. The honest men of this age were the burghers. With few exceptions, the nobles were corrupt, and when they were not corrupt, often disgraced the cause they served by violence and cruelty, by drunkenness and recklessness.

In this year, Philip became also King of Portugal. He not only now had the whole of the Spanish peninsula under his sway, but he succeeded to that estate in the East Indies which Alexander the Sixth, of pious memory, had conferred on the Portuguese king nearly a century before. The event was important, because the quarrel of the Low Countries with Spain led to the creation of the Dutch East India trade, and to the foundation of the Dutch Empire in the Moluccas. We shall see in the course of this narrative how the Dutch had their opportunities, and insisted on the rights which they had acquired.

In the same year, June, 1580, was published the ban of Philip. This instrument, drawn up by Cardinal Granvelle, declared Orange to be traitor and miscreant, made him an outlaw, put a heavy price on his head (25,000 gold crowns), offered the assassin the pardon of any crime, however heinous, and nobility, whatever be his rank. Philip had tried to cajole him. He had tried, by enormous offers, to bribe him. He was now determined, if possible, to murder him; and at last, after four years' anxious strivings, he succeeded. William answered the ban by a vigorous appeal to the civilized world. He had, indeed, but a limited, perhaps a powerless audience, for the doctrine of political assassination had been taught for some time by the Jesuits. They had conspired against Elizabeth, but the Queen was well informed. Walsingham had a quick scent for these vermin, baffled them while he lived, and had his successors or disciples in the craft. But William, while he sent his “Apology” to all the potentates in Europe, was certain of the sympathy and affection of the Dutch States then assembled at Delft.

Renneberg, the traitor, laid siege to Steenwyk, the principal fortress of Drenthe, at the beginning of 1581. There were Malcontents in the place, and foremost among them was a butcher, who wanted to know what the population was to eat when the meat was gone. “We will eat you, villain,” the commander answered, “first of all, so you may be sure you will not die of starvation.” In February, John Norris, the English general, one of Elizabeth's chickens of Mars, relieved the town. Renneberg raised the siege, was defeated in July by the same Norris, and died, full of remorse, a few days afterwards.

But the most important event in 1581 was the declaration of Dutch Independence, formally issued at the Hague on the 26th of July. By this instrument, Orange, though most unwillingly, felt himself obliged to accept the sovereignty over Holland and Zeland, and whatever else of the seven provinces was in the hands of the patriots. The Netherlands were now divided into three portions. The Walloon Provinces in the south were reconciled to Philip and Parma. The middle provinces were under the almost nominal sovereignty of Anjou, the northern were under William. The Prince of Orange really desired that the sovereignty of Holland should also be conferred on Anjou, but the Estates would not have him, and would have none but William, Father William as they affectionately called him.

Philip's name was now discarded from public documents, his authority was formally, as it long had been effectively, disowned; his seal was broken, and William was thereafter to conduct the government in his own name. The instrument was styled an “Act of Abjuration.” At this time, it seems surprising that so much delay was made in performing an act, which had virtually been in operation for almost a generation. But just as the value of history consists in extracting wisdom for the future from the experience of the past, because the record of social life to have value must be continuous, and because even the remote past has its bearing on the present, so it is quite necessary, if we are to have any reality in our interpretation of the past, to project ourselves into it, and strive with all our powers, original or borrowed, to realize what the past was. An English historian, when he was asked when modern history began, instantly answered with, “The call of Abraham,” and, indeed, the historical student cannot neglect without serious injury to his study of what is after all the scanty fragments of human action which survive, anything whose influence is still enduring.

The fact is, the action of the Dutch Republic was the first appeal which the world has read on the duties of rulers to their people. Men have revolted a thousand times against tyranny and misgovernment, sometimes successfully, more frequently to be crushed into more hopeless servitude. The Dutch were the first to justify their action by an appeal to the first principles of justice. They were the first to assert at human institutions, and human allegiance to governments are to be interpreted and maintained by their manifest utility. They were the first to assert and prove that men and women are not the private estate of princes, to be disposed of in their industry, their property, their consciences, by the discretion of those who were fortunate enough to be able to live by the labours of others. They were the first to affirm that there is, and must be, a contract between the ruler and the people, even though that contract has not been reduced to writing, or debated on, or fought for; and strangely enough, the idea which lay under this doctrine was derived from that which had now become the principal instrument of oppression and wrong doing. The feudal system from which the Dutch broke away, was the origin of the tenet that the duties of the ruler and the subject are reciprocal.

But this doctrine had been buried and forgotten. In modern times constitutional antiquaries have exhumed it and wrangled over it. The other doctrine, sedulously taught by venal lawyers and ambitious priests, that every right which man has is held at the discretion of the prince, and that every opinion he entertains is to be guided, controlled, or abandoned at the bidding of the priest, had smothered the more ancient theory of reciprocal obligation. The two rulers, king and priest, had entered into a compact. The latter was to teach the doctrine of passive obedience, the former was to support the creed which the latter thought proper to promulgate, with the secular arm. During the whole of the seventeenth century, the English clergy were teaching the doctrine of passive obedience from the ten thousand pulpits. A century after the declaration of Dutch Independence, Hobbes, who believed nothing, laid down the doctrine that a subject ought to take that creed which the discretion of the king supplied him with.

It is impossible to over-estimate the timeliness, the significance, the value of the Act of Abjuration. The sturdy Hollanders, at a time when public liberty seemed entirely lost, and despotism had become a religious creed, began the political reformation. The teachers of Europe in everything, they are the first to argue that governments exist for nations, not nations for governments. And as precedents, especially successful ones, govern the world, the Dutch gave the cue for the English Parliamentary war, and the English Revolution, to the American Declaration of Independence, to the better side of the French Revolution, and to the public spirit which has slowly and imperfectly recovered liberty from despotism.