The Story of Nations - Holland/Chapter 25

The Dutch had waged war for forty years In defence of their political and religious liberties. They refused to allow themselves to be taxed without their own consent, or to submit to being persecuted into a religion which they did not choose to accept. But it is unfortunately the case, that men who suffer much for their own liberty of conscience, constantly refuse to concede to others what they themselves have contended for. This was particularly the case in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The followers of Calvin hated and persecuted the followers of Luther, and often more heartily and more cruelly than they did their old enemies of the Roman Church. The Puritans of Massachusetts, in the early days of their history, treated the sectaries among themselves as harshly as they had been treated before they fled from their persecutors. The fact is, these people not only thought that they were entirely in the right, but they were convinced that every one who differed from them in doctrine or discipline must infallibly be in the wrong. Then by a process which they borrowed from the laws which regulate civil life, they considered that those who dissented from or even doubted their opinions were traitors, who must needs, in the interests of public duty and public safety, be severely punished. So, in England, the Episcopal party persecuted the Presbyterian party. In time the latter got the upper hand, and persecuted their old foes. In due course, the Episcopalians again got hold of the government and avenged themselves on the Dissenters. Now Holland had to go through fifteen years of this kind of shameful struggle, during which theological bitterness dishonoured the Republic.

The enemies of Holland, when they granted the truce, counted upon the likelihood that political and religious faction would so tear to pieces the country which had fought so gallantly for victory that in a short time they would, from sheer weariness at anarchy, welcome back their old lords, and they who were greedy after the inheritance, or at least wanted to appropriate the commerce and wealth of Holland, were not disinclined to foment these differences. For the Kings of France never lost sight of what they hoped to make prize of, and the Kings of England were always ready to encourage the mercantile classes in England in their envy and grudge at the rich Republic. So they stirred up strife between the house of Orange and the chiefs of the Dutch Commonwealth, and were not above meddling in the religious dissensions which now cropped up. James of England had a great opinion of his theological learning, and entered with alacrity into a controversy in which he was quite convinced that he was superior to all of his age.

The Constitution of the United Netherlands was not a satisfactory one. To use an American expression, which exactly represents the situation, it was one in which the doctrine of State rights was carried to a length which threatened to dissolve the union into fragments. The several States had each their ancient charters and privileges. They had united in order to assure these several rights by joint action. Even in the face of the enemy difficulties arose, but when peace came the difficulties were multiplied. In order that the central government, such as it was, should have authority, every State must give its assent, and in an important crisis, one of the little States would be very reluctant to give its assent; and so common action was paralyzed. Had the Dutch States done as the American States did in the early days of the American Union, they would never have suffered from the conspiracy which at last succeeded in changing the republic into a monarchy.

Now Maurice was a considerable soldier and no contemptible diplomatist. But he was ambitious and avaricious. He would never have refused the sovereignty which had been offered his father, and which, as he thought, was his hereditary right, because it had been proffered to his father and had been declined by him. He was constantly urged from without to assume a hereditary position. But he hesitated to do this against the will of the States, and preferred to see whether he could not so weaken the opposition to him, as to insure him practically the authority which he coveted. Now undoubtedly the chief opponents of Maurice in his theory of administration were Barneveldt, Grotius, and, speaking generally, the leading men in the States-General. The strength of the Orange party was in the populace. The leader of what we may call the aristocratic party was Barneveldt. He had been of infinite service to his country, of infinite service to Maurice, for he had protected, educated, and counselled him. But Maurice was embittered against him, and was planning how he might supersede and destroy him. The death of Barneveldt on the scaffold of the Binnenhof was a judical murder of the very worst kind, contrived and carried out by Maurice, against his own benefactor and the benefactor of his country.

The pretext in the first instance was a religious feud. The Dutch had adopted the Calvinist model of the Reformed faith, and had accepted in its crudest form the doctrine of predestination. But there arose a revolt against this doctrine in the University of Leyden; for universities in the Old World have always been the nurseries of theological novelties, or, as the adherents of the old tenets call them, heresies. Now in 1602, a certain Jacob Arminius had been recommended to one of the theology chairs in the University of Leyden, and though at first his admission was opposed by the other theology professor, Gomarus, the latter yielded, and even advocated his admission. But in a very short time the teaching of Arminius again roused the suspicion of Gomarus, and the controversy began, and soon passed from the university into the parish pulpits, where it rapidly became embittered, and was soon identified with political rancour.

Arminius died in 1609, but the tenets which he held, or was reputed to hold, and the school which he founded, survived him. These sectaries got the name of Remonstrants, their opponents that of contra-Remonstrants; and the latter having got the upper hand, partly by the assistance which James of England gave them, and partly by the activity of the clergy, who stirred up the people against the Remonstrants, proceeded to persecute their opponents, driving them out of the churches and banishing them from the country. But the doctrine spread; the English king, who urged that the new heresy should be extirpated at the stake, himself inclined to it in the latter years of his reign, and the struggle between the episcopal clergy and the Puritans in England, which was one of the two causes of the great civil war, and the Commonwealth of 1649, was embittered by the fact that the school of Laud had embraced the hated doctrine of Arminius. But after the Restoration in England, this school revived, and finally developed into those tenets which were called Latitudinarian and sometimes Unitarian.

It is always distasteful to an historian to linger on the floor of theological controversy, but in the history of the human race, or of any part of it, it is impossible to interpret or comprehend the course of events, unless one takes into account all those, forces which influence society. Now, from the beginning of the sixteenth century, when Luther threw down the gauntlet to Rome, to the middle of the seventeenth, when both parties, entirely exhausted, agreed to a peace in the treaty of Westphalia, there was not a single public question which had not a theological side to it. If men fought for political freedom, they encouraged themselves in the struggle with religious motives, and strove to sanctify their claims to secular rights, by insisting that these rights were derived from the rightful interpretation of the Bible. From the beginning the Reformation divided itself into two streams. Luther guided the one from Saxony, Calvin the other from Geneva. But the former invested the King with the powers which he took away from the Pope, and the tenet of the Divine right of kings, and with it the other right which a king claimed of dictating what the subject's religion should be, became almost a religious dogma. Public liberty therefore made but little progress in those countries which adopted the Lutheran confession, and the tenets of Augsburg have been embraced by only a small, and that the northern section of the Teutonic race. But the other, a different, and rapidly a hostile creed, early enlisted itself on the side of political liberty and resistance to arbitrary power. Calvinism was the creed of the French Huguenots, of the Swiss Protestants, of the Dutch patriots, of the Scottish people, of the English Puritans, and of the settlers in New England. These races are the pioneers of political liberty. They studied the Old Testament carefully, and found it very invigorating. And in Holland, believing that they owed much, aye, everything, to predestination, they looked upon any who disputed this cardinal doctrine as leagued with the foes of their liberty, or ready to league with them. Nor, as time went on, did this conviction diminish, for it was soon seen that the disciples of Arminius ranged themselves on the side of absolutism.

The municipal party at Amsterdam and other large Dutch towns, without committing themselves to the new doctrines, were sincerely desirous of peace. It was certain to increase the difficulties of government if, after they had rest on their borders, they should have strife in every town, almost in every family. Hence the States of Holland issued an ordinance, under the title a “Resolution for the Peace of the Church,” which was drawn up by Grotius and intended to strike a balance between the disputants, and sought to silence some of the most furious partisans, and invited Maurice to support the decision of the civil government by his authority. Now Maurice, it is known, had long determined to make his power larger and more permanent; he saw that the party which Barneveldt led or influenced was the great obstacle to his achieving his designs, and there seems no doubt that in 1616 he had indeed to effect his success, by getting rid of his rival. In this year, by a great stroke of diplomacy, Barneveldt induced the English king, to whom the Dutch were admitted to be still in debt to the amount of £600,000, to accept a present payment of £250,000, and to surrender the three cautionary towns, Brill, Flushing, and Rammekens, which had been held as security for the English debt since the days of Elizabeth, to the Dutch Government. James was ridiculed all over Europe for his improvident bargain, and returned the contempt which he encountered by hatred towards the Dutch statesman.

The next step taken was the creation of a small body of troops under the control or in the pay of the municipal authorities, who should repress the outrages which these furious partisans were constantly committing. This gave Maurice the opportunity which he desired. He argued that this measure of precaution was a revolt against the authority which had been entrusted to him as commander-in-chief of the Dutch forces, and therefore responsible for the peace. Acting on his own authority, and making an entirely new departure in what had been the customary and constitutional procedure of the States, he remodelled the municipalities, disbanded the guards which the municipalities had elected, openly joined the party of violence, and arrested Barneveldt, Grotius, and others. As Maurice had remodelled the representatives of the States-General, he was able to make it appear that the arrest and the trial of the aged statesman was the act of legal and constituted authorities. Maurice, after establishing his partisans in all the Dutch towns, summoned a synod at Dort, or Dordrecht, in order to secure the countenance of religion for the purposes which he meditated. The synod had 180 sittings, cost the State a million guilders, and set forth a confession of faith, which was long held by the Calvinistic party as of supreme authority.

Meanwhile, Barneveldt was in prison, and subjected to many affronts and injuries. The Court which tried him was an illegal one, and the illustrious prisoner was treated with the greatest unfairness by his judges. One of those who was impeached with him was so terrified by the threat of torture, that he committed suicide in prison.

Barneveldt was found guilty and sentenced to death. The charges against him were frivolous, had they been true, and were mostly false. But Maurice and his associates were resolved on the judicial murder of the great statesman, though they pretended that had Barneveldt acknowledged his guilt they would have commuted his sentence. He was beheaded in the square of the Binnenhof at the Hague on May 13, 1619. In all the history of political faction, sullied as it has been by a thousand crimes, none is more infamous than the murder of this great man. If justice were done to his memory, his statue should be erected on the spot where he was so shamefully executed. Sixty-three years afterwards, two other great Dutch statesmen were murdered by an infuriated rabble, instigated by the interests, perhaps with the connivance, of the same family which, after having, in the person of William the Silent, done so much for Holland, did, in the person of his descendants, ultimately effect its ruin.

Barneveldt was the only victim of this counter revolution. The frightened suicide was hanged on a gallows, and the others who had been condemned on the charge for which Barneveldt suffered were finally sentenced to, imprisonment for life. It is probable that Maurice did not like to encounter the universal reprobation which all Europe would have uttered had he shed the blood of Grotius, who was not only renowned for his bravery, but had employed his pen effectively on behalf or his country's commercial liberties. Grotius continued his literary labours in prison, and after two years, by means of an ingenious stratagem devised and carried out by his wife, he succeeded in escaping, packed up in a chest which purported to contain books on the Arminian side of the controversy. Grotius got safely to Antwerp and thence to Paris. He attempted to return to and reside in Rotterdam in 1631, but the States were implacable and he left for Hamburg, and afterwards went to Sweden. He died in 1645.