Chapter 35
The prince, during his residence in Germany, experienced all those alleviations of his misfortunes which the sympathy and support of powerful friends could afford. Among these the most deserving of notice was William the Wise, a worthy son of the famous old landgrave of Hesse who so stoutly maintained the Protestant cause against Charles the Fifth. He and the elector of Saxony, both kinsmen of William's wife, offered to provide an establishment for the prince, while he remained in Germany, which, if it was not on the magnificent scale to which he had been used in the Netherlands, was still not unsuited to the dignity of his rank.[1031]
[Sidenote: CIVIL WAR IN FRANCE.]
The little court of William received every day fresh accessions from those who fled from persecution in the Netherlands. They brought with them appeals to him from his countrymen to interpose in their behalf.
The hour had not yet come. But still he was not idle. He was earnestly endeavoring to interest the German princes in the cause, was strengthening his own resources, and steadily, though silently, making preparation for the great struggle with the oppressors of his country.
While these events were pa.s.sing in the Netherlands, the neighboring monarchy of France was torn by those religious dissensions, which, at this period, agitated, in a greater or less degree, most of the states of Christendom. One half of the French nation was in arms against the other half. At the time of our history, the Huguenots had gained a temporary advantage; their combined forces were beleaguering the capital, in which the king and Catherine de Medicis, his mother, were then held prisoners. In this extremity, Catherine appealed to Margaret to send a body of troops to her a.s.sistance. The regent hesitated as to what course to take, and referred the matter to Alva. He did not hesitate. He knew Philip's disposition in regard to France, and had himself, probably, come to an understanding on the subject with the queen-mother in the famous interview at Bayonne. He proposed to send a body of three thousand horse to her relief. At the same time he wrote to Catherine, offering to leave the Low Countries, and march himself to her support with his whole strength, five thousand horse and fifteen thousand foot, all his Spanish veterans included, provided she would bring matters to an issue, and finish at once with the enemies of their religion. The duke felt how powerfully such a result would react on the Catholic cause in the Netherlands.
He besought Catherine to come to no terms with the rebels; above all, to make them no concessions. "Such concessions must, of necessity, be either spiritual or temporal. If spiritual, they would be opposed to the rights of G.o.d; if temporal, to the rights of the king. Better to reign over a ruined land, which yet remains true to its G.o.d and its king, than over one left unharmed for the benefit of the Devil and his followers the heretics."[1032] In this declaration, breathing the full spirit of religious and political absolutism, may be found the true key to the policy of Alva and of his master.
Philip heartily approved of the views taken by his general.[1033] As the great champion of Catholicism, he looked with the deepest interest on the religious struggle going forward in the neighboring kingdom, which exercised so direct an influence on the revolutionary movements in the Netherlands. He strongly encouraged the queen-mother to yield nothing to the heretics. "With his own person," he declared, "and with all that he possessed, he was ready to serve the French crown in its contests with the rebels."[1034] Philip's zeal in the cause was so well understood in France, that some of the Catholic leaders did not scruple to look to him, rather than to their own government, as the true head of their party.[1035]
Catherine de Medicis did not discover the same uncompromising spirit, and had before this disgusted her royal son-in-law by the politic views which mingled with her religion. On the present occasion she did not profit by the brilliant offer made to her by Alva to come in person at the head of his army. She may have thought so formidable a presence might endanger the independence of the government. Roman Catholic as she was at heart, she preferred, with true Italian policy, balancing the rival factions against each other, to exterminating either of them altogether. The duke saw that Catherine was not disposed to strike at the root of the evil, and that the advantages to be secured by success would be only temporary. He contented himself, therefore, with despatching a smaller force, chiefly of Flemish troops, under Aremberg.
Before the count reached Paris, the battle of St. Denis had been fought.
Montmorenci fell; but the royal party was victorious. Catherine made a treaty with the discomfited Huguenots, as favorable to them as if they, not she, had won the fight. Alva, disgusted with the issue, ordered the speedy return of Aremberg, whose presence, moreover, was needed, on a more active theatre of operations.
During all this while Margaret's position afforded a pitiable contrast to the splendid elevation which she had occupied for so many years as head of the government. Not only had the actual power pa.s.sed from her hands, but she felt that all her influence had gone with it. She hardly enjoyed even the right of remonstrance. In this position, she had the advantage of being more favorably situated for criticizing the conduct of the administration, than when she was herself at the head of it. She became more sensible of the wrongs of the people,--now that they were inflicted by other hands than her own. She did not refuse to intercede in their behalf. She deprecated the introduction of a garrison into the good city of Brussels. If this were necessary, she still besought the duke not to allow the loyal inhabitants to be burdened with the maintenance of the soldiers.[1036] But he turned a deaf ear to her pet.i.tion. She urged that, after the chastis.e.m.e.nt already inflicted on the nation, the only way to restore quiet was by a general amnesty. The duke replied, that no amnesty could be so general but there must be some exceptions, and it would take time to determine who should be excepted.
She recommended that the states be called together to vote the supplies.
He evaded this also by saying it would be necessary first to decide on the amount of the subsidy to be raised.[1037] The regent felt that in all matters of real moment she had as little weight as any private individual in the country.
[Sidenote: DEPARTURE OF MARGARET]
From this state of humiliation she was at last relieved by the return of her secretary, Machiavelli, who brought with him despatches from Ruy Gomez, Philip's favorite minister. He informed the d.u.c.h.ess that the king, though, reluctantly, had at last acceded to her request, and allowed her to resign the government of the provinces. In token of his satisfaction with her conduct, his majesty had raised the pension which she had hitherto enjoyed, of eight thousand florins, to fourteen thousand, to be paid her yearly during the remainder of her life. This letter was dated on the sixth of October.[1038] Margaret soon after received one, dated four days later, from Philip himself, of much the same tenor with that of his minister. The king, in a few words, intimated the regret he felt at his sister's retirement from office, and the sense he entertained of the services she had rendered him by her long and faithful administration.[1039]
The increase of the pension showed no very extravagant estimate of these services; and the parsimonious tribute which, after his long silence, he now, in a few brief sentences, paid to her deserts, too plainly intimated, that all she had done had failed to excite even a feeling of grat.i.tude in the bosom of her brother.[1040] At the same time with the letter to Margaret came a commission to the duke of Alva, investing him with the t.i.tle of regent and governor-general, together with all the powers that had been possessed by his predecessor.[1041]
Margaret made only one request of Philip previous to her departure. This he denied her. Her father, Charles the Fifth, at the time of his abdication, had called the states-general together, and taken leave of them in a farewell address, which was still cherished as a legacy by his subjects. Margaret would have imitated his example. The grandeur of the spectacle pleased her imagination; and she was influenced, no doubt, by the honest desire of manifesting, in the hour of separation, some feelings of a kindly nature for the people over whom she had ruled for so many years.
But Philip, as we have seen, had no relish for these meetings of the states. He had no idea of consenting to them on an emergency no more pressing than the present. Margaret was obliged, therefore, to relinquish the pageant, and to content herself with taking leave of the people by letters addressed to the princ.i.p.al cities of the provinces. In these she briefly touched on the difficulties which had lain in her path, and on the satisfaction which she felt at having, at length, brought the country to a state of tranquillity and order. She besought them to remain always constant in the faith in which they had been nurtured, as well as in their loyalty to a prince so benign and merciful as the king, her brother. In so doing the blessing of Heaven would rest upon them; and for her own part, she would ever be found ready to use her good offices in their behalf.[1042]
She proved her sincerity by a letter written to Philip, before her departure, in which she invoked his mercy in behalf of his Flemish subjects. "Mercy," she said, "was a divine attribute. The greater the power possessed by a monarch, the nearer he approached the Deity, and the more should he strive to imitate the divine clemency and compa.s.sion.[1043] His royal predecessors had contented themselves with punis.h.i.+ng the leaders of sedition, while they spared the ma.s.ses who repented. Any other course would confound the good with the bad, and bring such calamities on the country as his majesty could
The tidings of the regent's abdication were received with dismay throughout the provinces. All the errors of her government, her acts of duplicity, the excessive rigor with which she had of late visited offences,--all were forgotten in the regret felt for her departure. Men thought only of the prosperity which the country had enjoyed under her rule, the confidence which in earlier years she had bestowed on the friends of the people, the generous manner in which she had interposed, on more than one occasion, to mitigate the hard policy of the court of Madrid. And as they turned from these more brilliant pa.s.sages of her history, their hearts were filled with dismay while they looked gloomily into the future.
Addresses poured in upon her from all quarters. The different cities vied with one another in expressions of regret for her departure, while they invoked the blessings of Heaven on her remaining days. More than one of the provinces gave substantial evidence of their good-will by liberal donatives. Brabant voted her the sum of twenty-five thousand florins, and Flanders, thirty thousand.[1045] The neighboring princes, and among them Elizabeth of England, joined with the people of the Netherlands in professions of respect for the regent, as well as of regret that she was to relinquish the government.[1046]
Cheered by these a.s.surances of the consideration in which she was held both at home and abroad, Margaret quitted Brussels at the close of December, 1567. She was attended to the borders of Brabant by Alva, and thence conducted to Germany, by Count Mansfeldt and an escort of Flemish n.o.bles.[1047] There bidding adieu to all that remained of her former state, she pursued her journey quietly to Italy. For some time she continued with her husband in his ducal residence at Parma. But, wherever lay the fault, it was Margaret's misfortune to taste but little of the sweets of domestic intercourse. Soon afterwards she removed to Naples, and there permanently established her abode on estates which had been granted her by the crown. Many years later, when her son, Alexander Farnese, was called to the government of the Netherlands, she quitted her retirement to take part with him in the direction of public affairs.
It was but for a moment; and her present departure from the Netherlands may be regarded as the close of her political existence.
[Sidenote: HER ADMINISTRATION REVIEWED.]
The government of Margaret continued from the autumn of 1559 to the end of 1567, a period of eight years. It was a stormy and most eventful period; for it was then that the minds of men were agitated to their utmost depths by the new doctrines which gave birth to the revolution.
Margaret's regency, indeed, may be said to have furnished the opening scenes of that great drama. The inhabitants of the Low Countries were accustomed to the sway of a woman. Margaret was the third of her line that had been intrusted with the regency. In qualifications for the office she was probably not inferior to her predecessors. Her long residence in Italy had made her acquainted with the principles of government in a country where political science was more carefully studied than in any other quarter of Europe. She was habitually industrious; and her robust frame was capable of any amount of labor. If she was too masculine in her nature to allow of the softer qualities of her s.e.x, she was, on the other hand, exempt from the fondness for pleasure and from most of the frivolities which belonged to the women of the voluptuous clime in which she had lived. She was stanch in her devotion to the Catholic faith; and her loyalty was such, that, from the moment of a.s.suming the government, she acknowledged no stronger motive than that of conformity to the will of her sovereign. She was fond of power; and she well knew that, with Philip, absolute conformity to his will was the only condition on which it was to be held.
With her natural good sense, and the general moderation of her views, she would, doubtless, have ruled over the land as prosperously as her predecessors, had the times been like theirs. But, unhappily for her, the times had greatly changed. Still Margaret, living on the theatre of action, and feeling the pressure of circ.u.mstances, would have gone far to conform to the change. But unfortunately she represented a prince, dwelling at a distance, who knew no change himself, allowed no concessions to others,--whose conservative policy rested wholly on the past.
It was unfortunate for Margaret, that she never fully possessed the confidence of Philip. Whether from distrust of her more accommodating temper, or of her capacity for government, he gave a larger share of it, at the outset, to Granvelle than to her. If the regent could have been blind to this, her eyes would soon have been opened to the fact by the rivals who hated the minister. It was not long before she hated him too.
But the removal of Granvelle did not establish her in her brother's confidence. It rather increased his distrust, by the necessity it imposed on her of throwing herself into the arms of the opposite party, the friends of the people. From this moment Philip's confidence was more heartily bestowed on the duke of Alva, even on the banished Granvelle, than on the regent. Her letters remained too often unanswered. The answers, when they did come, furnished only dark and mysterious hints of the course to be pursued. She was left to work out the problem of government by herself, sure for every blunder to be called to a strict account. Rumors of the speedy coming of the king suggested the idea that her own dominion was transitory, soon to be superseded by that of a higher power.
Under these disadvantages she might well have lost all reliance on herself. She was not even supplied with the means of carrying out her own schemes. She was left without money, without arms, without the power to pardon,--more important, with a brave and generous race, than the power to punish. Thus, dest.i.tute of resources, without the confidence of her employer, with the people stoutly demanding concessions on the one side, with the sovereign sternly refusing them on the other, it is little to say that Margaret was in a false position: her position was deplorable. She ought not to have remained in it a day after she found that she could not hold it with honor. But Margaret was too covetous of power readily to resign it. Her misunderstanding with her husband made her, moreover, somewhat dependent on her brother.
At last came the Compromise and the league. Margaret's eyes seemed now to be first opened to the direction of the course she was taking. This was followed by the explosion of the iconoclasts. The shock fully awoke her from her delusion. She was as zealous for the Catholic Church as Philip himself; and she saw with horror that it was trembling to its foundations. A complete change seemed to take place in her convictions,--in her very nature. She repudiated all those with whom she had hitherto acted. She embraced, as heartily as he could desire, the stern policy of Philip. She proscribed, she persecuted, she punished,--and that with an excess of rigor that does little honor to her memory. It was too late. The distrust of Philip was not to be removed by this tardy compliance with his wishes. A successor was already appointed; and at the very moment when she flattered herself that the tranquillity of the country and her own authority were established on a permanent basis, the duke of Alva was on his march across the mountains.
Yet it was fortunate for Margaret's reputation that she was succeeded in the government by a man like Alva. The darkest spots on her administration became light when brought into comparison with his reign of terror. From this point of view it has been criticized by the writers of her own time and those of later ages.[1048] And in this way, probably, as the student who ponders the events of her history may infer, a more favorable judgment has been pa.s.sed upon her actions than would be warranted by a calm and deliberate scrutiny.
CHAPTER III.
REIGN OF TERROR.
Numerous Arrests.--Trials and Executions.--Confiscations.--Orange a.s.sembles an Army.--Battle of Heyligerlee.--Alva's Proceedings.
1568.
In the beginning of 1568, Philip, if we may trust the historians, resorted to a very extraordinary measure for justifying to the world his rigorous proceedings against the Netherlands. He submitted the case to the Inquisition at Madrid; and that ghostly tribunal, after duly considering the evidence derived from the information of the king and of the inquisitors in the Netherlands, came to the following decision. All who had been guilty of heresy, apostasy, or sedition, and all, moreover, who, though professing themselves good Catholics, had offered no resistance to these, were, with the exception of a few specified individuals, thereby convicted of treason in the highest degree.[1049]
[Sidenote: NUMEROUS ARRESTS.]
This sweeping judgment was followed by a royal edict, dated on the same day, the sixteenth of February, in which, after reciting the language of the Inquisition, the whole nation, with the exception above stated, was sentenced, without distinction of s.e.x or age, to the penalties of treason,--death and confiscation of property; and this, the decree went on to say, "without any hope of grace whatever, that it might serve for an example and a warning to all future time!"[1050]
It is difficult to give credit to a story so monstrous, repeated though it has been by successive writers without the least distrust of its correctness. Not that anything can be too monstrous to be believed of the Inquisition. But it is not easy to believe that a sagacious prince like Philip the Second, however willing he might be to shelter himself under the mantle of the Holy Office, could have lent himself to an act as impolitic as it was absurd; one that, confounding the innocent with the guilty, would drive both to desperation,--would incite the former, from a sense of injury, to take up rebellion, by which there was nothing more to lose, and the latter to persist in it, since there was nothing more to hope.[1051]
The messenger who brought to Margaret the royal permission to resign the regency delivered to Alva his commission as captain-general of the Netherlands. This would place the duke, as Philip wrote to him, beyond the control of the council of finance, in the important matter of the confiscations.[1052] It raised him, indeed, not only above that council, but above every other council in the country. It gave him an authority not less than that of the sovereign himself. And Alva prepared to stretch this to an extent greater than any sovereign of the Netherlands had ever ventured on. The time had now come to put his terrible machinery into operation. The regent was gone, who, if she could not curb, might at least criticize his actions. The prisons were full; the processes were completed. Nothing remained but to pa.s.s sentence and to execute.
On the fourth of January, 1568, we find eighty-four persons sentenced to death at Valenciennes, on the charge of having taken part in the late movements,--religious or political.[1053] On the twentieth of February, ninety-five persons were arraigned before the Council of Blood, and thirty-seven capitally convicted.[1054] On the twentieth of March thirty-five more were condemned.[1055] The governor's emissaries were out in every direction. "I heard that preaching was going on at Antwerp," he writes to Philip; "and I sent my own provost there, for I cannot trust the authorities. He arrested a good number of heretics.
They will never attend another such meeting. The magistrates complain that the interference of the provost was a violation of their privileges. The magistrates may as well take it patiently."[1056] The pleasant manner in which the duke talks over the fate of his victims with his master may remind one of the similar dialogues between Pet.i.t Andre and Louis the Eleventh, in "Quentin Durward."
The proceedings in Ghent may show the course pursued in the other cities. Commissioners were sent to that capital, to ferret out the suspected. No than a hundred and forty-seven were summoned before the council at Brussels. Their names were cried about the streets, and posted up in placards on the public buildings. Among them were many n.o.ble and wealthy individuals. The officers were particularly instructed to ascertain the wealth of the parties. Most of the accused contrived to make their escape. They preferred flight to the chance of an acquittal by the b.l.o.o.d.y tribunal,--though flight involved certain banishment and confiscation of property. Eighteen only answered the summons by repairing to Brussels. They were all arrested on the same day, at their lodgings, and, without exception, were sentenced to death! Five or six of the princ.i.p.al were beheaded. The rest perished on the gallows.[1057]
[Sidenote: TRIALS AND EXECUTIONS.]
Impatient of what seemed to him a too tardy method of following up his game, the duke determined on a bolder movement, and laid his plans for driving a goodly number of victims into the toils at once. He fixed on Ash Wednesday for the time,--the beginning of Lent, when men, after the Carnival was past, would be gathered soberly in their own dwellings.[1058] The officers of justice entered their premises at dead of night; and no less than five hundred citizens were dragged from their beds and hurried off to prison.[1059] They all received sentence of death![1060] "I have reiterated the sentence again and again," he writes to Philip, "for they torment me with inquiries whether in this or that case it might not be commuted for banishment. They weary me of my life with their importunities."[1061] He was not too weary, however, to go on with the b.l.o.o.d.y work; for in the same letter we find him reckoning that three hundred heads more must fall before it will be time to talk of a general pardon.[1062]
It was common, says an old chronicler, to see thirty or forty persons arrested at once. The wealthier burghers might be seen, with their arms pinioned behind them, dragged at the horse's tail to the place of execution.[1063] The poorer sort were not even summoned to take their trial in Brussels. Their cases were despatched at once, and they were hung up, without further delay, in the city or in the suburbs.[1064]
Brandt, in his History of the Reformation, has collected many particulars respecting the persecution, especially in his own province of Holland, during that "reign of terror." Men of lower consideration, when dragged to prison, were often cruelly tortured on the rack, to extort confessions, implicating themselves or their friends. The modes of death adjudged by the b.l.o.o.d.y tribunal were various. Some were beheaded with the sword,--a distinction reserved, as it would seem, for persons of condition. Some were sentenced to the gibbet, and others to the stake.[1065] This last punishment, the most dreadful of all, was confined to the greater offenders against religion. But it seems to have been left much to the caprice of the judges, sometimes even of the brutal soldiery who superintended the executions. At least we find the Spanish soldiers, on one occasion, in their righteous indignation, throwing into the flames an unhappy Protestant preacher whom the court had sentenced to the gallows.[1066]
The soldiers of Alva were many of them veterans who had borne arms against the Protestants under Charles the Fifth,--comrades of the men who at that very time were hunting down the natives of the New World, and slaughtering them by thousands in the name of religion. With them the sum and substance of religion were comprised in a blind faith in the Romish Church, and in uncompromising hostility to the heretic. The life of the heretic was the most acceptable sacrifice that could be offered to Jehovah. With hearts thus seared by fanaticism, and made callous by long familiarity with human suffering, they were the very ministers to do the bidding of such a master as the duke of Alva.
The cruelty of the persecutors was met by an indomitable courage on the part of their victims. Most of the offences were, in some way or other, connected with religion. The accused were preachers, or had aided and comforted the preachers, or had attended their services, or joined the consistories, or afforded evidence, in some form, that they had espoused the d.a.m.nable doctrines of heresy. It is precisely in such a case, where men are called to suffer for conscience' sake, that they are prepared to endure all,--to die in defence of their opinions. The storm of persecution fell on persons of every condition; men and women, the young, the old, the infirm and helpless. But the weaker the party, the more did the spirit rise to endure his sufferings. Many affecting instances are recorded of persons who, with no support but their trust in heaven, displayed the most heroic fort.i.tude in the presence of their judges, and, by the boldness with which they a.s.serted their opinions, seemed even to court the crown of martyrdom. On the scaffold and at the stake this intrepid spirit did not desert them; and the testimony they bore to the truth of the cause for which they suffered had such an effect on the bystanders, that it was found necessary to silence them. A cruel device for more effectually accomplis.h.i.+ng this was employed by the officials. The tip of the tongue was seared with a red-hot iron, and the swollen member then compressed between two plates of metal screwed fast together. Thus gagged, the groans of the wretched sufferer found vent in strange sounds, that excited the brutal merriment of his tormentors.[1067]
But it is needless to dwell longer on the miseries endured by the people of the Netherlands in this season of trial. Yet, if the cruelties perpetrated in the name of religion are most degrading to humanity, they must be allowed to have called forth the most sublime spectacle which humanity can present,--that of the martyr offering up his life on the altar of principle.
It is difficult--in fact, from the data in my possession, not possible--to calculate the number of those who fell by the hand of the executioner in this dismal persecution.[1068] The number, doubtless, was not great as compared with the population of the country,--not so great as we may find left, almost every year of our lives, on a single battle-field. When the forms of legal proceedings are maintained, the movements of justice--if the name can be so profaned--are comparatively tardy. It is only, as in the French Revolution, when thousands are swept down by the cannon, or whole cargoes of wretched victims are plunged at once into the waters, that death moves on with the gigantic stride of pestilence and war.
[Sidenote: CONFISCATIONS.]