The Story of Nations - Holland/Chapter 15

The Queen of England was perfectly alive to the necessity of curtailing or even of extinguishing Philip's power in the Netherlands. She knew what were the designs of the “prudent” king against her, open and secret. She was so well served in the matter of spies, that she knew almost as well as Orange did what passed in the king's cabinet, and at his writing-desk. Walsingham, her best and most far-sighted adviser, was as keen as a bloodhound in scenting out a plot. She knew that if Philip vanquished the Netherlands a descent upon England would certainly be attempted and be probably effected. It is probable that she did not fully understand how Philip's hands were occupied in France, but she knew well enough how little trust she could put in the French king. She did know that Philip was preparing a vast armament, and she had no doubt about its destination. The exploits of Drake had, indeed, delayed the issue of the Armada, but Philip was undeterred by any loss from projects on which he had set his heart. The Armada, however, did not sail till four years after the murder of Orange.

Charles the Ninth, fourth king of the house of Valois, died in 1574, exhausted by remorse, as we are told, for the horrible but fruitless massacre of St. Bartholomew, which had been perpetrated two years before. Two brothers survived him - Henry, then King of Poland, who became at once King of France, and speedily quitted his old for his new kingdom; and Francis Hercules, Duke of Anjou, whom we have seen before in the capacity of Duke of Brabant, and capital conspirator against the liberties of Flanders, and of Antwerp in particular. Henry was now the last of the house of Valois, his heir being Henry of Navarre, at that time a Huguenot.

Henry was as false as Philip. But he had vices more odious and scandalous in the eyes of the people than any other French king ever had. His reign was one perpetual civil war. At one time he was fighting with his kinsmen of Navarre, at another time with his insurgent nobles. Though he showed no love for his Calvinist subjects he was obliged to respect them and even to conciliate them, for they might help him against the faction of the Guises. Now the people of Paris and some other large towns in the North, who were more fanatically attached to the old religion than even the Pope himself, were determined to curtail the king's power and play into the hands of the Spanish king, or at least appear to do so. With the view of protecting their religion, the nobles founded and maintained an association which went by the name of the Most Holy League, and finally Madam League. The real object of this association was to make the nobles independent of the king, and in case he died childless, to exclude the heretical Henry from the throne. Philip, as we have seen, intended the throne for his daughter. Guise, who took Philip's money, purposed if possible to occupy it himself. But it was Philip's interest that France should be if possible exhausted and impoverished, and therefore the League was under his especial patronage.

Civil war was chronic during Henry's reign. There was hardly a year of peace during his fourteen years and more of reigning. We have seen that to the last, however, Orange strove to get a French king or a French prince to undertake the sovereignty of the Netherlands, of course under guarantees for the liberty and the institutions of the people. After the death of Orange, Olden Barneveldt, the great Advocate of Holland, carried out his policy, and negotiated with Henry, till the French king, after protracted and delusive playing with them, finally declined the offer made him.

The States intended, had the King of France accepted their offers, to give him a very limited sovereignty in their country. Whether if he had accepted it, or, indeed, could have accepted it, he would have treated his pledges with more good faith than his brother did, may well be doubted. But even as a limited ruler in the Netherlands, the position would have been highly advantageous to him as King of France. It was from the side of the Netherlands nearly all the historic invasions of France had been made. When the English tried to make good their footing in France, the goodwill of the Netherlands was indispensable to them. Edward the Third of England found Arteveldt the brewer of Ghent, a necessary ally in the fourteenth century; and the friendship of the Duke of Burgundy in the fifteenth aided the victories of the house of Lancaster, as his enmity arrested them, and finally expelled the English from France.

It was from the Netherlands that Philip was able to win the victory, of St. Quentin, and dictate the Peace of Cateau Cambresis. We shall find that Parma with his army in Flanders, raised the siege of Paris, and raised the siege of Rouen. A century afterwards, when France was consolidated, and had become the first military power in Europe, under Louis XIV., all the efforts of the great king were directed towards the acquisition of the Flemish towns. It was here that most of Marlborough's battles were fought and won, the Dutch of that day believing with reason, that the conquest of Flanders by the French would be the ruin of Holland. Had Henry and his mother been able to comprehend the supreme significance of Flanders to the French monarchy, and comprehending it, had they imagined that they would be able to hold them, it seems plain that they should have grasped at the opportunity. Henry the Fourth would have formed a different judgment on the situation, had he been on the throne, and had his hands been free to extend the bounds of his kingdom.

Henry III. declined their advances, and much precious time was lost in vainly negotiating with him; for, during this embassy, Antwerp was invested and after a protracted siege reduced. Ghent was gone, Brussels was gone, Mechlin was soon to follow, and freedom was confined to Holland and Zeland. The assassination of Orange was more valuable to Parma than an army of forty thousand veterans; for the master mind whom the cities trusted, and who could, though not without incessant labour, hold them together, was gone.

The Hollanders now turned to Elizabeth. It is necessary to know a little of the position of the great Queen, whose aid, grudgingly and capriciously given, was after all of inestimable value in the early days of the forlorn republic. Elizabeth had succeeded to the throne of a country which had been impoverished by the wanton extravagance and cruel frauds of her father, and by misgovernment in the reigns of her brother and sister. England had been wealthy and powerful a generation or two before; it was now poor and weak. If Elizabeth was penurious, she had need to be. The estates of the crown had been wasted, and the people had been impoverished. Her own birth was ambiguous. Her cousin, Mary Stewart, had quartered the arms of England when she was Queen of France, and never could be brought to disavow the act, even when she was Elizabeth's prisoner. She was excommunicated by the Pope, dethroned in words, and assassins were incited to attack her. She was the perpetual object of conspiracies, all of which were detected and baffled. She had her troubles at home, for Elizabeth was imperious and intolerant, and some of the exiles of Mary's reign had come to England with views about church government which did not suit her taste. She was extremely poor, her revenue was inelastic, and she was abundantly cautious.

Elizabeth had very sagacious counsellors. Burghley, the most wary of them; was as hesitating as his misstress was. Walsingham was far more clearsighted and bold, and had the temper of Elizabeth squared with his, the queen would have gone far more heartily into the matter. Now the Hollanders wanted two things, money and troops, especially land forces, for the Beggars of the Sea were fairly, competent to defend their own shores, and take account of Spanish forces on the water. Elizabeth could supply the Hollanders with some troops, and she sent them some excellent generals of division, though, one must say with shame, some of these, as Yorke and Stanley, were traitors. She would not take the sovereignty of their country on any terms, and always advocated a double protectorate. She was very hard about advancing them money, slow to grant it at all, and always insisting on security for it. It is fair to add that she never got back the whole of the money she lent them, and that her successor released the guarantees, the so-called cautionary towns, for a good deal less than the admitted debt.

She also gave them a commander, or lieutenant-general governor, in the person of the Earl of Leicester, her favourite. Leicester was a handsome man, and of commanding presence. Early in Elizabeth's reign and later on, it was believed that she intended to marry him, not in England only, but elsewhere. He was the son of Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, executed for high treason at the beginning of Mary's reign, and grandson of Dudley, one of Henry the Seventh's instruments of extortion, who was executed at the beginning of Henry the Eighth's reign. He was also, brother of Guildford Dudley, the husband of Jane Grey, who had been styled queen for twelve days.

Leicester was an unfortunate choice for Holland. He had no military experience, and was to be opposed to the greatest general of the age. His head, never very strong against temptations to pride and arrogance was fairly turned by the deference which was shown him in Holland, and the importance which was attached to his mission. He chafed without Judgment at the restraints which the jealousy of the Republic put on his authority. It was difficult for an English nobleman and courtier in those days to imagine that burghers and artizans and farmers had a right to any political opinions whatever, much less to take part in affairs of State. He was in Holland, with intervals, for three years, and was hated as heartily by the Dutch on his departure as he was welcomed at his first appearance. The Queen was angry with him, angry with the Dutch, and should have been angry with herself for having made so bad a choice.

It should not be thought, however, that Elizabeth was not of great service to Holland in the crisis of the republic, despite the errors of her favourite and the treachery of some of her subjects. Their misconduct, mischievous as it was, was atoned for by the valour and conduct of such men as the Veres and Roger Williams. But it was the destiny and the glory of Holland that she attained her independence and her power mainly, if not entirely, by her own spirit and determination, Holland had in the end to rely on herself, to form her own armies, her own navies, her own commanders by sea and land, and her own trade; and not only to give the world a spectacle of unflinching heroism, but to teach it a thousand lessons for peace or war. Perhaps it was well for Holland that Leicester did not possess the genius of Parma.