[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of thefile for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making anentire meal of them. D. W. ]

MOTLEY'S HISTORY OF THE NETHERLANDS, PG EDITION, VOLUME 2. 

THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC

JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY, D. C. L. , LL. D. 

1855

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. , Part 2. 

VII. 

Five centuries of isolation succeed. In the Netherlands, as throughoutEurope, a thousand obscure and slender rills are slowly preparing thegreat stream of universal culture. Five dismal centuries of feudalism:during which period there is little talk of human right, little obedienceto divine reason. Rights there are none, only forces; and, in brief, three great forces, gradually arising, developing themselves, acting uponeach other, and upon the general movement of society. 

The sword--the first, for a time the only force: the force of iron. The"land's master, " having acquired the property in the territory and in thepeople who feed thereon, distributes to his subalterns, often but a shadebeneath him in power, portions of his estate, getting the use of theirfaithful swords in return. Vavasours subdivide again to vassals, exchanging land and cattle, human or otherwise, against fealty, and sothe iron chain of a military hierarchy, forged of mutually interdependentlinks, is stretched over each little province. Impregnable castles, here more numerous than in any other part of Christendom, dot the levelsurface of the country. Mail-clad knights, with their followers, encamppermanently upon the soil. The fortunate fable of divine right isinvented to sanction the system; superstition and ignorance give currencyto the delusion. Thus the grace of God, having conferred the property ina vast portion of Europe upon a certain idiot in France, makes himcompetent to sell large fragments of his estate, and to give a divine, and, therefore, most satisfactory title along with them. A greatconvenience to a man, who had neither power, wit, nor will to keep theproperty in his own hands. So the Dirks of Holland get a deed fromCharles the Simple, and, although the grace of God does not prevent theroyal grantor himself from dying a miserable, discrowned captive, theconveyance to Dirk is none the less hallowed by almighty fiat. So theRoberts and Guys, the Johns and Baldwins, become sovereigns in Hainault, Brabant, Flanders and other little districts, affecting supernaturalsanction for the authority which their good swords have won and are everready to maintain. Thus organized, the force of iron asserts and exertsitself. Duke, count, seignor and vassal, knight and squire, master andman swarm and struggle amain. A wild, chaotic, sanguinary scene. Here, bishop and baron contend, centuries long, murdering human creatures byten thousands for an acre or two of swampy pasture; there, doughtyfamilies, hugging old musty quarrels to their heart, buffet each otherfrom generation to generation; thus they go on, raging and wrestlingamong themselves, with all the world, shrieking insane war-cries which nohuman soul ever understood--red caps and black, white hoods and grey, Hooks and Kabbeljaws, dealing destruction, building castles and burningthem, tilting at tourneys, stealing bullocks, roasting Jews, robbing thehighways, crusading--now upon Syrian sands against Paynim dogs, now inFrisian quagmires against Albigenses, Stedingers, and other heretics--plunging about in blood and fire, repenting, at idle times, and payingtheir passage through, purgatory with large slices of ill-gotten gainsplaced in the ever-extended dead-hand of the Church; acting, on thewhole, according to their kind, and so getting themselves civilized orexterminated, it matters little which. Thus they play their part, thoseenergetic men-at-arms; and thus one great force, the force of iron, spinsand expands itself, century after century, helping on, as it whirls, thegreat progress of society towards its goal, wherever that may be. 

Another force--the force clerical--the power of clerks, arises; the mightof educated mind measuring itself against brute violence; a forceembodied, as often before, as priestcraft--the strength of priests: craftmeaning, simply, strength, in our old mother-tongue. This great force, too, develops itself variously, being sometimes beneficent, sometimesmalignant. Priesthood works out its task, age after age: now smoothingpenitent death-beds, consecrating graves! feeding the hungry, clothingthe naked, incarnating the Christian precepts, in an, age of rapine andhomicide, doing a thousand deeds of love and charity among the obscureand forsaken--deeds of which there shall never be human chronicle, but aleaf or two, perhaps, in the recording angel's book; hiving precioushoney from the few flowers of gentle, art which bloom upon a howlingwilderness; holding up the light of science over a stormy sea; treasuringin convents and crypts the few fossils of antique learning which becomevisible, as the extinct Megatherium of an elder world reappears after thegothic deluge; and now, careering in helm and hauberk with the otherruffians, bandying blows in the thickest of the fight, blasting withbell, book, and candle its trembling enemies, while sovereigns, at thehead of armies, grovel in the dust and offer abject submission for thekiss of peace; exercising the same conjury over ignorant baron andcowardly hind, making the fiction of apostolic authority to bind andloose, as prolific in acres as the other divine right to have and hold;thus the force of cultivated intellect, wielded by a chosen few andsanctioned by supernatural authority, becomes as potent as the sword. 

A third force, developing itself more slowly, becomes even more potentthan the rest: the power of gold. Even iron yields to the more ductilemetal. The importance of municipalities, enriched by trade, begins to befelt. Commerce, the mother of Netherland freedom, and, eventually, itsdestroyer--even as in all human history the vivifying becomes afterwardsthe dissolving principle--commerce changes insensibly and miraculouslythe aspect of society. Clusters of hovels become towered cities; thegreen and gilded Hanse of commercial republicanism coils itself aroundthe decaying trunk of feudal despotism. Cities leagued with citiesthroughout and beyond Christendom-empire within empire-bind themselvescloser and closer in the electric chain of human sympathy and growstronger and stronger by mutual support. Fishermen and river raftsmenbecome ocean adventurers and merchant princes. Commerce plucks up half-drowned Holland by the locks and pours gold into her lap. Gold wrestspower from iron. Needy Flemish weavers become mighty manufacturers. Armies of workmen, fifty thousand strong, tramp through the swarmingstreets. Silk-makers, clothiers, brewers become the gossips of kings, lend their royal gossips vast sums and burn the royal notes of hand infires of cinnamon wood. Wealth brings strength, strength confidence. Learning to handle cross-bow and dagger, the burghers fear less thebaronial sword, finding that their own will cut as well, seeing thatgreat armies--flowers of chivalry--can ride away before them fast enoughat battles of spurs and other encounters. Sudden riches beget insolence, tumults, civic broils. Internecine quarrels, horrible tumults stain thestreets with blood, but education lifts the citizens more and more out ofthe original slough. They learn to tremble as little at priestcraft asat swordcraft, having acquired something of each. Gold in the end, unsanctioned by right divine, weighs up the other forces, supernaturalas they are. And so, struggling along their appointed path, makingcloth, making money, making treaties with great kingdoms, making war byland and sea, ringing great bells, waving great banners, they, too--theseinsolent, boisterous burghers--accomplish their work. Thus, the mightypower of the purse develops itself and municipal liberty becomes asubstantial fact. A fact, not a principle; for the old theorem ofsovereignty remains undisputed as ever. Neither the nation, in mass, nor the citizens, in class, lay claim to human rights. All upperattributes--legislative, judicial, administrative--remain in the land-master's breast alone. It is an absurdity, therefore, to argue withGrotius concerning the unknown antiquity of the Batavian republic. The republic never existed at all till the sixteenth century, and wasonly born after long years of agony. The democratic instincts of theancient German savages were to survive in the breasts of their cultivateddescendants, but an organized, civilized, republican polity had neverexisted. The cities, as they grew in strength, never claimed the rightto make the laws or to share in the government. As a matter of fact, they did make the laws, and shared, beside, in most important functionsof sovereignty, in the treaty-making power, especially. Sometimes bybargains; sometimes by blood, by gold, threats, promises, or good hardblows they extorted their charters. Their codes, statutes, joyfulentrances, and other constitutions were dictated by the burghers andsworn to by the monarch. They were concessions from above; privilegesprivate laws; fragments indeed of a larger liberty, but vastly, betterthan the slavery for which they had been substituted; solid facts insteadof empty abstractions, which, in those practical and violent days, wouldhave yielded little nutriment; but they still rather sought to reconcilethemselves, by a rough, clumsy fiction, with the hierarchy which they hadinvaded, than to overturn the system. Thus the cities, not regardingthemselves as representatives or aggregations of the people, becamefabulous personages, bodies without souls, corporations which hadacquired vitality and strength enough to assert their existence. As persons, therefore--gigantic individualities--they wheeled into thefeudal ranks and assumed feudal powers and responsibilities. The cityof Dort; of Middelburg, of Ghent, of Louvain, was a living being, doingfealty, claiming service, bowing to its lord, struggling with its equals, trampling upon its slaves. 

Thus, in these obscure provinces, as throughout Europe, in a thousandremote and isolated corners, civilization builds itself up, syntheticallyand slowly; yet at last, a whole is likely to get itself constructed. Thus, impelled by great and conflicting forces, now obliquely, nowbackward, now upward, yet, upon the whole, onward, the new Society movesalong its predestined orbit, gathering consistency and strength as itgoes. Society, civilization, perhaps, but hardly humanity. The peoplehas hardly begun to extricate itself from the clods in which it liesburied. There are only nobles, priests, and, latterly, cities. In thenorthern Netherlands, the degraded condition of the mass continuedlongest. Even in Friesland, liberty, the dearest blessing of the ancientFrisians, had been forfeited in a variety of ways. Slavery was bothvoluntary and compulsory. Paupers sold themselves that they might escapestarvation. The timid sold themselves that they might escape violence. These voluntary sales, which were frequent, wore usually made tocloisters and ecclesiastical establishments, for the condition ofChurch-slaves was preferable to that of other serfs. Persons worstedin judicial duels, shipwrecked sailors, vagrants, strangers, criminalsunable to pay the money-bote imposed upon them, were all deprived offreedom; but the prolific source of slavery was war. Prisoners werealmost universally reduced to servitude. A free woman who intermarriedwith a slave condemned herself and offspring to perpetual bondage. Amongthe Ripuarian Franks, a free woman thus disgracing herself, was girt witha sword and a distaff. Choosing the one, she was to strike her husbanddead; choosing the other, she adopted the symbol of slavery, and became achattel for life. 

The ferocious inroads of the Normans scared many weak and timid personsinto servitude. They fled, by throngs, to church and monastery, and werehappy, by enslaving themselves, to escape the more terrible bondage ofthe sea-kings. During the brief dominion of the Norman Godfrey, everyfree Frisian was forced to wear a halter around his neck. The lot of aChurch-slave was freedom in comparison. To kill him was punishable by aheavy fine. He could give testimony in court, could inherit, could makea will, could even plead before the law, if law could be found. Thenumber of slaves throughout the Netherlands was very large; the numberbelonging to the bishopric of Utrecht, enormous. 

The condition of those belonging to laymen was much more painful. TheLyf-eigene, or absolute slaves, were the most wretched. They were merebrutes. They had none of the natural attributes of humanity, their lifeand death were in the master's hands, they had no claim to a fraction oftheir own labor or its fruits, they had no marriage, except undercondition of the infamous 'jus primoe noctis'. The villagers, orvilleins, were the second class and less forlorn. They could commute thelabor due to their owner by a fixed sum of money, after annual payment ofwhich, the villein worked for himself. His master, therefore, was nothis absolute proprietor. The chattel had a beneficial interest in aportion of his own flesh and blood. 

The crusades made great improvement in the condition of the serfs. Hewho became a soldier of the cross was free upon his return, and many wereadventurous enough to purchase liberty at so honorable a price. Manyothers were sold or mortgaged by the crusading knights, desirous ofconverting their property into gold, before embarking upon theirenterprise. The purchasers or mortgagees were in general churches andconvents, so that the slaves, thus alienated, obtained at least apreferable servitude. The place of the absent serfs was supplied by freelabor, so that agricultural and mechanical occupations, now devolvingupon a more elevated class, became less degrading, and, in process oftime, opened an ever-widening sphere for the industry and progress offreemen. Thus a people began to exist. It was, however; a miserablepeople, with personal, but no civil rights whatever. Their condition, although better than servitude, was almost desperate. They were taxedbeyond their ability, while priest and noble were exempt. They had novoice in the apportionment of the money thus contributed. There was noredress against the lawless violence to which they were perpetuallyexposed. In the manorial courts, the criminal sat in judgment upon hisvictim. The functions of highwayman and magistrate were combined in oneindividual. 

By degrees, the class of freemen, artisans, traders, and the like, becoming the more numerous, built stronger and better houses outside thecastle gates of the "land's master" or the burghs of the more powerfulnobles. The superiors, anxious to increase their own importance, favoredthe progress of the little boroughs. The population, thus collected, began to divide themselves into guilds. These were soon afterwardserected by the community into bodies corporate; the establishment of thecommunity, of course, preceding, the incorporation of the guilds. Thosecommunities were created by charters or Keuren, granted by the sovereign. Unless the earliest concessions of this nature have perished, the towncharters of Holland or Zeland are nearly a century later than those ofFlanders, France, and England. 

The oldest Keur, or act of municipal incorporation, in the provincesafterwards constituting the republic, was that granted by Count Williamthe First of Holland and Countess Joanna of Flanders, as jointproprietors of Walcheren, to the town of Middelburg. It will be seenthat its main purport is to promise, as a special privilege to thiscommunity, law, in place of the arbitrary violence by which mankind, ingeneral, were governed by their betters. 

"The inhabitants, " ran the Charter, "are taken into protection by bothcounts. Upon fighting, maiming, wounding, striking, scolding; uponpeace-breaking, upon resistance to peace-makers and to the judgment ofSchepens; upon contemning the Ban, upon selling spoiled wine, and uponother misdeeds fines are imposed for behoof of the Count, the city, andsometimes of the Schepens. . . . . . . To all Middelburgers one kind of law isguaranteed. Every man must go to law before the Schepens. If any onebeing summoned and present in Walcheren does not appear, or refusessubmission to sentence, he shall be banished with confiscation ofproperty. Schout or Schepen denying justice to a complainant, shall, until reparation, hold no tribunal again. . . . . . . A burgher having a disputewith an outsider (buiten mann) must summon him before the Schepens. Anappeal lies from the Schepens to the Count. No one can testify but ahouseholder. All alienation of real estate must take place before theSchepens. If an outsider has a complaint against a burgher, the Schepensand Schout must arrange it. If either party refuses submission to them, they must ring the town bell and summon an assembly of all the burghersto compel him. Any one ringing the town bell, except by general consent, and any one not appearing when it tolls, are liable to a fine. NoMiddelburger can be arrested or held in durance within Flanders orHolland, except for crime. "

This document was signed, sealed, and sworn to by the two sovereigns inthe year 1217. It was the model upon which many other communities, cradles of great cities, in Holland and Zeland, were afterwards created. 

These charters are certainly not very extensive, even for the privilegedmunicipalities which obtained them, when viewed from an abstract stand-point. They constituted, however, a very great advance from the stand-point at which humanity actually found itself. They created, not for allinhabitants, but for great numbers of them, the right, not to govern themselves but to be governed by law: They furnished a local administrationof justice. They provided against arbitrary imprisonment. They set uptribunals, where men of burgher class were to sit in judgment. They heldup a shield against arbitrary violence from above and sedition fromwithin. They encouraged peace-makers, punished peace-breakers. Theyguarded the fundamental principle, 'ut sua tanerent', to the verge ofabsurdity; forbidding a freeman, without a freehold, from testifying--a capacity not denied even to a country slave. Certainly all this wasbetter than fist-law and courts manorial. For the commencement of thethirteenth century, it was progress. 

The Schout and Schepens, or chief magistrate and aldermen, wereoriginally appointed by the sovereign. In process of time, the electionof these municipal authorities was conceded to the communities. Thisinestimable privilege, however, after having been exercised during acertain period by the whole body of citizens, was eventually monopolizedby the municipal government itself, acting in common with the deans ofthe various guilds. 

Thus organized and inspired with the breath of civic life, thecommunities of Flanders and Holland began to move rapidly forward. More and more they assumed the appearance of prosperous little republics. For this prosperity they were indebted to commerce, particularly withEngland and the Baltic nations, and to manufactures, especially of wool. 

The trade between England and the Netherlands had existed for ages, and was still extending itself, to the great advantage of both countries. A dispute, however, between the merchants of Holland and England, towardsthe year 12l5, caused a privateering warfare, and a ten years' suspensionof intercourse. A reconciliation afterwards led to the establishment ofthe English wool staple, at Dort. A subsequent quarrel deprived Hollandof this great advantage. King Edward refused to assist Count Florence ina war with the Flemings, and transferred the staple from Dort to Brugesand Mechlin. 

The trade of the Netherlands with the Mediterranean and the East wasmainly through this favored city of Bruges, which, already in thethirteenth century, had risen to the first rank in the commercial world. It was the resting-place for the Lombards and other Italians, the greatentrepot for their merchandise. It now became, in addition, the greatmarketplace for English wool, and the woollen fabrics of all theNetherlands, as well as for the drugs and spices of the East. It had, however, by no means reached its apogee, but was to culminate withVenice, and to sink with her decline. When the overland Indian tradefell off with the discovery of the Cape passage, both cities withered. Grass grew in the fair and pleasant streets of Bruges, and sea-weedclustered about the marble halls of Venice. At this epoch, however, bothwere in a state of rapid and insolent prosperity. 

The cities, thus advancing in wealth and importance, were no longersatisfied with being governed according to law, and began to participate, not only in their own, but in the general government. Under Guy ofFlanders, the towns appeared regularly, as well as the nobles, in theassembly of the provincial estates. (1386-1389, A. D. ) In the course ofthe following century, the six chief cities, or capitals, of Holland(Dort, Harlem, Delft, Leyden, Goads, and Amsterdam) acquired the rightof sending their deputies regularly to the estates of the provinces. These towns, therefore, with the nobles, constituted the parliamentarypower of the nation. They also acquired letters patent from the count, allowing them to choose their burgomasters and a limited number ofcouncillors or senators (Vroedschappen). 

Thus the liberties of Holland and Flanders waxed, daily, stronger. A great physical convulsion in the course of the thirteenth century cameto add its influence to the slower process of political revolution. Hitherto there had been but one Friesland, including Holland, and nearlyall the territory of the future republic. A slender stream aloneseparated the two great districts. The low lands along the Vlie, oftenthreatened, at last sank in the waves. The German Ocean rolled in uponthe inland Lake of Flevo. The stormy Zuyder Zee began its existence byengulfing thousands of Frisian villages, with all their population, andby spreading a chasm between kindred peoples. The political, as well asthe geographical, continuity of the land was obliterated by thistremendous deluge. The Hollanders were cut off from their relatives inthe east by as dangerous a sea as that which divided them from theirAnglo-Saxon brethren in Britain. The deputies to the general assembliesat Aurich could no longer undertake a journey grown so perilous. WestFriesland became absorbed in Holland. East Friesland remained afederation of rude but self-governed maritime provinces, until the briefand bloody dominion of the Saxon dukes led to the establishment ofCharles the Fifth's authority. Whatever the nominal sovereignty overthem, this most republican tribe of Netherlanders, or of Europeans, hadnever accepted feudalism. There was an annual congress of the wholeconfederacy. Each of the seven little states, on the other hand, regulated its own internal affairs. Each state was subdivided intodistricts, each district governed by a Griet-mann (greatman, selectman)and assistants. Above all these district officers was a Podesta, amagistrate identical, in name and functions, with the chief officer ofthe Italian republics. There was sometimes but one Podesta; sometimesone for each province. He was chosen by the people, took oath offidelity to the separate estates, or, if Podesta-general, to the federaldiet, and was generally elected for a limited term, although sometimesfor life. He was assisted by a board of eighteen or twenty councillors. The deputies to the general congress were chosen by popular suffrage inEaster-week. The clergy were not recognized as a political estate. 

Thus, in those lands which a niggard nature had apparently condemned toperpetual poverty and obscurity, the principle of reasonable humanfreedom, without which there is no national prosperity or glory worthcontending for, was taking deepest and strongest root. Already in thethirteenth and fourteenth centuries Friesland was a republic, except inname; Holland, Flanders, Brabant, had acquired a large share of self-government. The powerful commonwealth, at a later period to be evolvedout of the great combat between centralized tyranny and the spirit ofcivil and religious liberty, was already foreshadowed. The elements, of which that important republic was to be compounded, were germinatingfor centuries. Love of freedom, readiness to strike and bleed at anymoment in her cause, manly resistance to despotism, howeverovershadowing, were the leading characteristics of the race in allregions or periods, whether among Frisian swamps, Dutch dykes, thegentle hills and dales of England, or the pathless forests of America. Doubtless, the history of human liberty in Holland and Flanders, as everywhere else upon earth where there has been such a history, unrolls manyscenes of turbulence and bloodshed; although these features have beenexaggerated by prejudiced historians. Still, if there were luxury andinsolence, sedition and uproar, at any rate there was life. Thoseviolent little commonwealths had blood in their veins. They were compactof proud, self-helping, muscular vigor. The most sanguinary tumultswhich they ever enacted in the face of day, were better than the orderand silence born of the midnight darkness of despotism. That veryunruliness was educating the people for their future work. Thosemerchants, manufacturers, country squires, and hard-fighting barons, allpent up in a narrow corner of the earth, quarrelling with each other andwith all the world for centuries, were keeping alive a national pugnacityof character, for which there was to be a heavy demand in the sixteenthcentury, and without which the fatherland had perhaps succumbed in themost unequal conflict ever waged by man against oppression. 

To sketch the special history of even the leading Netherland provinces, during the five centuries which we have thus rapidly sought tocharacterize, is foreign to our purpose. By holding the clue ofHolland's history, the general maze of dynastic transformationsthroughout the country may, however, be swiftly threaded. From the timeof the first Dirk to the close of the thirteenth century there werenearly four hundred years of unbroken male descent, a long line of Dirksand Florences. This iron-handed, hot-headed, adventurous race, placed assovereign upon its little sandy hook, making ferocious exertions to swellinto larger consequence, conquering a mile or two of morass or barrenfurze, after harder blows and bloodier encounters than might haveestablished an empire under more favorable circumstances, at last diesout. The courtship falls to the house of Avennes, Counts of Hainault. Holland, together with Zeland, which it had annexed, is thus joined tothe province of Hainault. At the end of another half century theHainault line expires. William the Fourth died childless in 1355. Hisdeath is the signal for the outbreak of an almost interminable series ofcivil commotions. Those two great, parties, known by the uncouth namesof Hook and Kabbeljaw, come into existence, dividing noble against noble, city against city, father against son, for some hundred and fifty years, without foundation upon any abstract or intelligible principle. It maybe observed, however, that, in the sequel, and as a general rule, theKabbeljaw, or cod-fish party, represented the city or municipal faction, while the Hooks (fish-hooks), that were to catch and control them, werethe nobles; iron and audacity against brute number and weight. 

Duke William of Bavaria, sister's son--of William the Fourth, getshimself established in 1354. He is succeeded by his brother Albert;Albert by his son William. William, who had married Margaret ofBurgundy, daughter of Philip the Bold, dies in 1417. The goodly heritageof these three Netherland provinces descends to his daughter Jacqueline, a damsel of seventeen. Little need to trace the career of the fair andill-starred Jacqueline. Few chapters of historical romance have drawnmore frequent tears. The favorite heroine of ballad and drama, toNetherlanders she is endued with the palpable form and perpetualexistence of the Iphigenias, Mary Stuarts, Joans of Arc, or otherconsecrated individualities. Exhausted and broken-hearted, afterthirteen years of conflict with her own kinsmen, consoled for thecowardice and brutality of three husbands by the gentle and knightlyspirit of the fourth, dispossessed of her father's broad domains, degraded from the rank of sovereign to be lady forester of her ownprovinces by her cousin, the bad Duke of Burgundy, Philip surnamed "theGood, " she dies at last, and the good cousin takes undisputed dominion ofthe land. (1437. )

The five centuries of isolation are at end. The many obscure streams ofNetherland history are merged in one broad current. Burgundy hasabsorbed all the provinces which, once more, are forced to recognize asingle master. A century and a few years more succeed, during which thishouse and its heirs are undisputed sovereigns of the soil. 

Philip the Good had already acquired the principal Netherlands, beforedispossessing Jacqueline. He had inherited, beside the two Burgundies, the counties of Flanders and Artois. He had purchased the county ofNamur, and had usurped the duchy of Brabant, to which the duchy ofLimburg, the marquisate of Antwerp, and the barony of Mechlin, hadalready been annexed. By his assumption of Jacqueline's dominions, hewas now lord of Holland, Zeland, and Hainault, and titular master ofFriesland. He acquired Luxemburg a few years later. 

Lord of so many opulent cities and fruitful provinces, he felt himselfequal to the kings of Europe. Upon his marriage with Isabella ofPortugal, he founded, at Bruges, the celebrated order of the GoldenFleece. What could be more practical or more devout than the conception?Did not the Lamb of God, suspended at each knightly breast, symbolize atonce the woollen fabrics to which so much of Flemish wealth andBurgundian power was owing, and the gentle humility of Christ, which wasever to characterize the order? Twenty-five was the limited number, including Philip himself, as grand master. The chevaliers were emperors, kings, princes, and the most illustrious nobles of Christendom; while aleading provision, at the outset, forbade the brethren, crowned headsexcepted, to accept or retain the companionship of any other order. 

The accession of so potent and ambitious a prince as the good Philipboded evil to the cause of freedom in the Netherlands. The spirit ofliberty seemed to have been typified in the fair form of the benignantand unhappy Jacqueline, and to be buried in her grave. The usurper, whohad crushed her out of existence, now strode forward to trample upon allthe laws and privileges of the provinces which had formed her heritage. 

At his advent, the municipal power had already reached an advanced stageof development. The burgher class controlled the government, not only ofthe cities, but often of the provinces, through its influence in theestates. Industry and wealth had produced their natural results. Thesupreme authority of the sovereign and the power of the nobles werebalanced by the municipal principle which had even begun to preponderateover both. All three exercised a constant and salutary check upon eachother. Commerce had converted slaves into freemen, freemen intoburghers, and the burghers were acquiring daily, a larger practical holdupon the government. The town councils were becoming almost omnipotent. Although with an oligarchical tendency, which at a later period was tobe more fully developed, they were now composed of large numbers ofindividuals, who had raised themselves, by industry and intelligence, out of the popular masses. There was an unquestionably republican toneto the institutions. Power, actually, if not nominally, was in the handsof many who had achieved the greatness to which they had not been born. 

The assemblies of the estates were rather diplomatic than representative. They consisted, generally, of the nobles and of the deputations from thecities. In Holland, the clergy had neither influence nor seats in theparliamentary body. Measures were proposed by the stadholder, whorepresented the sovereign. A request, for example, of pecuniary, accommodation, was made by that functionary or by the count himself inperson. The nobles then voted upon the demand, generally as one body, but sometimes by heads. The measure was then laid before the burghers. If they had been specially commissioned to act upon the matter; theyvoted, each city as a city, not each deputy, individually. If they hadreceived no instructions, they took back the proposition to lay beforethe councils of their respective cities, in order to return a decisionat an adjourned session, or at a subsequent diet. It will be seen, therefore, that the principle of national, popular representation wasbut imperfectly developed. The municipal deputies acted only underinstructions. Each city was a little independent state, suspicious notonly of the sovereign and nobles, but of its sister cities. This mutualjealousy hastened the general humiliation now impending. The centre ofthe system waging daily more powerful, it more easily unsphered thesefeebler and mutually repulsive bodies. 

Philip's first step, upon assuming the government, was to issue adeclaration, through the council of Holland, that the privileges andconstitutions, which he had sworn to as Ruward, or guardian, duringthe period in which Jacqueline had still retained a nominal sovereignty, were to be considered null and void, unless afterwards confirmed by himas count. At a single blow he thus severed the whole knot of pledges, oaths and other political complications, by which he had entangledhimself during his cautious advance to power. He was now untrammelledagain. As the conscience of the smooth usurper was, thenceforth, themeasure of provincial liberty, his subjects soon found it meted to themmore sparingly than they wished. From this point, then, through theBurgundian period, and until the rise of the republic, the liberty of theNetherlands, notwithstanding several brilliant but brief laminations, occurring at irregular intervals, seemed to remain in almost perpetualeclipse. 

The material prosperity of the country had, however, vastly increased. The fisheries of Holland had become of enormous importance. Theinvention of the humble Beukelzoon of Biervliet, had expanded into a mineof wealth. The fisheries, too, were most useful as a nursery of seamen, and were already indicating Holland's future naval supremacy. Thefishermen were the militia of the ocean, their prowess attested in thewar with the Hanseatic cities, which the provinces of Holland and Zeland, in Philip's name, but by their own unassisted exertions, carried ontriumphantly at this epoch. Then came into existence that race of cooland daring mariners, who, in after times, were to make the Dutch nameillustrious throughout the world, the men, whose fierce descendants, the"beggars of the sea, " were to make the Spanish empire tremble, the men, whose later successors swept the seas with brooms at the mast-head, andwhose ocean-battles with their equally fearless English brethren oftenlasted four uninterrupted days and nights. 

The main strength of Holland was derived from the ocean, from whosedestructive grasp she had wrested herself, but in whose friendly embraceshe remained. She was already placing securely the foundations ofcommercial wealth and civil liberty upon those shifting quicksands whichthe Roman doubted whether to call land or water. Her submergeddeformity, as she floated, mermaid-like, upon the waves was to beforgotten in her material splendor. Enriched with the spoils ofevery clime, crowned with the divine jewels of science and art, she was, one day, to sing a siren song of freedom, luxury, and power. 

As with Holland, so with Flanders, Brabant, and the other leadingprovinces. Industry and wealth, agriculture, commerce, and manufactures, were constantly augmenting. The natural sources of power were full tooverflowing, while the hand of despotism was deliberately sealing thefountain. 

For the house of Burgundy was rapidly culminating and as rapidlycurtailing the political privileges of the Netherlands. The contest was, at first, favorable to the cause of arbitrary power; but little seedswere silently germinating, which, in the progress of their giganticdevelopment, were, one day, to undermine the foundations of Tyranny andto overshadow the world. The early progress of the religious reformationin the Netherlands will be outlined in a separate chapter. Another greatprinciple was likewise at work at this period. At the very epoch whenthe greatness of Burgundy was most swiftly ripening, another weapon wassecretly forging, more potent in the great struggle for freedom than anywhich the wit or hand of man has ever devised or wielded. When Philipthe Good, in the full blaze of his power, and flushed with the triumphsof territorial aggrandizement, was instituting at Bruges the order of theGolden Fleece, "to the glory of God, of the blessed Virgin, and of theholy Andrew, patron saint of the Burgundian family, " and enrolling thenames of the kings and princes who were to be honored with its symbols, at that very moment, an obscure citizen of Harlem, one Lorenz Coster, orLawrence the Sexton, succeeded in printing a little grammar, by means ofmovable types. The invention of printing was accomplished, but it wasnot ushered in with such a blaze of glory as heralded the contemporaneouserection of the Golden Fleece. The humble setter of types did not deememperors and princes alone worthy his companionship. His invention sentno thrill of admiration throughout Christendom; and yet, what was thegood Philip of Burgundy, with his Knights of the Golden Fleece, and alltheir effulgent trumpery, in the eye of humanity and civilization, compared with the poor sexton and his wooden types?

 [The question of the time and place to which the invention of printing should be referred, has been often discussed. It is not probable that it will ever be settled to the entire satisfaction of Holland and Germany. The Dutch claim that movable types were first used at Harlem, fixing the time variously between the years 1423 and 1440. The first and very faulty editions of Lorenz are religiously preserved at Harlem. ]

Philip died in February, 1467. The details of his life and career do notbelong to our purpose. The practical tendency of his government was torepress the spirit of liberty, while especial privileges, extensive innature, but limited in time, were frequently granted to corporations. Philip, in one day, conferred thirty charters upon as many differentbodies of citizens. These were, however, grants of monopoly notconcessions of rights. He also fixed the number of city councils orVroedschappen in many Netherland cities, giving them permission topresent a double list of candidates for burgomasters and judges, fromwhich he himself made the appointments. He was certainly neither a goodnor great prince, but he possessed much administrative ability. Hismilitary talents were considerable, and he was successful in his wars. He was an adroit dissembler, a practical politician. He had the sense tocomprehend that the power of a prince, however absolute, must depend uponthe prosperity of his subjects. He taxed severely the wealth, but heprotected the commerce and the manufactures of Holland and Flanders. He encouraged art, science, and literature. The brothers, John andHubert Van Eyck, were attracted by his generosity to Bruges, where theypainted many pictures. John was even a member of the duke's council. The art of oil-painting was carried to great perfection by Hubert'sscholar, John of Bruges. An incredible number of painters, of greater orless merit, flourished at this epoch in the Netherlands, heralds of thatgreat school, which, at a subsequent period, was to astonish the worldwith brilliant colors; profound science, startling effects, and vigorousreproductions of Nature. Authors, too, like Olivier de la Marche andPhilippe de Comines, who, in the words of the latter, "wrote, not for theamusement of brutes, and people of low degree, but for princes and otherpersons of quality, " these and other writers, with aims as lofty, flourished at the court of Burgundy, and were rewarded by the Duke withprincely generosity. Philip remodelled and befriended the university ofLouvain. He founded at Brussels the Burgundian library, which becamecelebrated throughout Europe. He levied largely, spent profusely, butwas yet so thrifty a housekeeper, as to leave four hundred thousandcrowns of gold, a vast amount in those days, besides three million marks'worth of plate and furniture, to be wasted like water in the insanecareer of his son. 

The exploits of that son require but few words of illustration. Hardly achapter of European history or romance is more familiar to the world thanthe one which records the meteoric course of Charles the Bold. Thepropriety of his title was never doubtful. No prince was ever bolder, but it is certain that no quality could be less desirable, at thatparticular moment in the history of his house. It was not the qualityto confirm a usurping family in its ill-gotten possessions. Renewedaggressions upon the rights of others justified retaliation and invitedattack. Justice, prudence, firmness, wisdom of internal administrationwere desirable in the son of Philip and the rival of Louis. Theseattributes the gladiator lacked entirely. His career might have been abrilliant one in the old days of chivalry. His image might have appearedas imposing as the romantic forms of Baldwin Bras de Fer or Godfrey ofBouillon, had he not been misplaced in history. Nevertheless, heimagined himself governed by a profound policy. He had one dominantidea, to make Burgundy a kingdom. From the moment when, with almost thefirst standing army known to history, and with coffers well filled by hiscautious father's economy, he threw himself into the lists against thecrafty Louis, down to the day when he was found dead, naked, deserted, and with his face frozen into a pool of blood and water, he faithfullypursued this thought. His ducal cap was to be exchanged for a kinglycrown, while all the provinces which lay beneath the Mediterranean andthe North Sea, and between France and Germany, were to be united underhis sceptre. The Netherlands, with their wealth, had been alreadyappropriated, and their freedom crushed. Another land of libertyremained; physically, the reverse of Holland, but stamped with the samecourageous nationality, the same ardent love of human rights. Switzerland was to be conquered. Her eternal battlements of ice andgranite were to constitute the great bulwark of his realm. The worldknows well the result of the struggle between the lord of so many duchiesand earldoms, and the Alpine mountaineers. With all his boldness, Charles was but an indifferent soldier. His only merit was physicalcourage. He imagined himself a consummate commander, and, inconversation with his jester, was fond of comparing himself to Hannibal. "We are getting well Hannibalized to-day, my lord, " said the bitter fool, as they rode off together from the disastrous defeat of Gransen. Well"Hannibalized" he was, too, at Gransen, at Murten, and at Nancy. Hefollowed in the track of his prototype only to the base of the mountains. 

As a conqueror, he was signally unsuccessful; as a politician, he couldout-wit none but himself; it was only as a tyrant within his own ground, that he could sustain the character which he chose to enact. He lost thecrown, which he might have secured, because he thought the emperor's sonunworthy the heiress of Burgundy; and yet, after his father's death, hermarriage with that very Maximilian alone secured the possession of herpaternal inheritance. Unsuccessful in schemes of conquest, and inpolitical intrigue, as an oppressor of the Netherlands, he nearly carriedout his plans. Those provinces he regarded merely as a bank to drawupon. His immediate intercourse with the country was confined to theextortion of vast requests. These were granted with ever-increasingreluctance, by the estates. The new taxes and excises, which thesanguinary extravagance of the duke rendered necessary, could seldom becollected in the various cities without tumults, sedition, and bloodshed. Few princes were ever a greater curse to the people whom they wereallowed to hold as property. He nearly succeeded in establishing acentralized despotism upon the ruins of the provincial institutions. His sudden death alone deferred the catastrophe. His removal of thesupreme court of Holland from the Hague to Mechlin, and his maintenanceof a standing army, were the two great measures by which he prostratedthe Netherlands. The tribunal had been remodelled by his father; theexpanded authority which Philip had given to a bench of judges dependentupon himself, was an infraction of the rights of Holland. The court, however, still held its sessions in the country; and the sacredprivilege--de non evocando--the right of every Hollander to be tried inhis own land, was, at least, retained. Charles threw off the mask; heproclaimed that this council--composed of his creatures, holding officeat his pleasure--should have supreme jurisdiction over all the chartersof the provinces; that it was to follow his person, and derive allauthority from his will. The usual seat of the court he transferred toMechlin. It will be seen, in the sequel, that the attempt, under Philipthe Second, to enforce its supreme authority was a collateral cause ofthe great revolution of the Netherlands. 

Charles, like his father, administered the country by stadholders. Fromthe condition of flourishing self-ruled little republics, which they had, for a moment, almost attained, they became departments of an ill-assorted, ill-conditioned, ill-governed realm, which was neithercommonwealth nor empire, neither kingdom nor duchy; and which had nohomogeneousness of population, no affection between ruler and people, small sympathies of lineage or of language. 

His triumphs were but few, his fall ignominious. His father's treasurewas squandered, the curse of a standing army fixed upon his people, thetrade and manufactures of the country paralyzed by his extortions, and heaccomplished nothing. He lost his life in the forty-fourth year of hisage (1477), leaving all the provinces, duchies, and lordships, whichformed the miscellaneous realm of Burgundy, to his only child, the LadyMary. Thus already the countries which Philip had wrested from thefeeble hand of Jacqueline, had fallen to another female. Philip's owngranddaughter, as young, fair, and unprotected as Jacqueline, was nowsole mistress of those broad domains. 

VIII. 

A crisis, both for Burgundy and the Netherlands, succeeds. Within theprovinces there is an elastic rebound, as soon as the pressure is removedfrom them by the tyrant's death. A sudden spasm of liberty gives thewhole people gigantic strength. In an instant they recover all, and morethan all, the rights which they had lost. The cities of Holland, Flanders, and other provinces call a convention at Ghent. Laying asidetheir musty feuds, men of all parties-Hooks and Kabbeljaws, patriciansand people, move forward in phalanx to recover their nationalconstitutions. On the other hand, Louis the Eleventh seizes Burgundy, claiming the territory for his crown, the heiress for his son. Thesituation is critical for the Lady Mary. As usual in such cases, appealsare made to the faithful commons. A prodigality of oaths and pledges isshowered upon the people, that their loyalty may be refreshed and growgreen. The congress meets at Ghent. The Lady Mary professes much, but she will keep her vow. The deputies are called upon to rally thecountry around the duchess, and to resist the fraud and force of Louis. The congress is willing to maintain the cause of its young mistress. The members declare, at the same time, very roundly, "that the provinceshave been much impoverished and oppressed by the enormous taxationimposed upon them by the ruinous wars waged by Duke Charles from thebeginning to the end of his life. " They rather require "to be relievedthan additionally encumbered. " They add that, "for many years past, there has been a constant violation of the provincial and municipalcharters, and that they should be happy to see them restored. "

The result of the deliberations is the formal grant by Duchess Mary ofthe "Groot Privilegie, " or Great Privilege, the Magna Charta of Holland. Although this instrument was afterwards violated, and indeed abolished, it became the foundation of the republic. It was a recapitulation andrecognition of ancient rights, not an acquisition of new privileges. It was a restoration, not a revolution. Its principal points deserveattention from those interested in the political progress of mankind. 

"The duchess shall not marry without consent of the estates of herprovinces. All offices in her gift shall be conferred on natives only. No man shall fill two offices. No office shall be farmed. The 'GreatCouncil and Supreme Court of Holland' is re-established. Causes shall bebrought before it on appeal from the ordinary courts. It shall have nooriginal jurisdiction of matters within the cognizance of the provincialand municipal tribunals. The estates and cities are guaranteed in theirright not to be summoned to justice beyond the limits of their territory. The cities, in common with all the provinces of the Netherlands, may holddiets as often ten and at such places as they choose. No new taxes shallbe imposed but by consent of the provincial estates. Neither the duchessnor her descendants shall begin either an offensive or defensive warwithout consent of the estates. In case a war be illegally undertaken, the estates are not bound to contribute to its maintenance. In allpublic and legal documents, the Netherland language shall be employed. The commands of the duchess shall be invalid, if conflicting with theprivileges of a city. 

"The seat of the Supreme Council is transferred from Mechlin to theHague. No money shall be coined, nor its value raised or lowered, but byconsent of the estates. Cities are not to be compelled to contribute torequests which they have not voted. The sovereign shall come in personbefore the estates, to make his request for supplies. "

Here was good work. The land was rescued at a blow from the helplesscondition to which it had been reduced. This summary annihilation of allthe despotic arrangements of Charles was enough to raise him from histomb. The law, the sword, the purse, were all taken from the hand of thesovereign and placed within the control of parliament. Such sweepingreforms, if maintained, would restore health to the body politic. Theygave, moreover, an earnest of what was one day to arrive. Certainly, forthe fifteenth century, the "Great Privilege" was a reasonably liberalconstitution. Where else upon earth, at that day, was there half so muchliberty as was thus guaranteed? The congress of the Netherlands, according to their Magna Charta, had power to levy all taxes, to regulatecommerce and manufactures, to declare war, to coin money, to raise armiesand navies. The executive was required to ask for money in person, couldappoint only natives to office, recognized the right of disobedience inhis subjects, if his commands should conflict with law, and acknowledgedhimself bound by decisions of courts of justice. The cities appointedtheir own magistrates, held diets at their own pleasure, made their localby-laws and saw to their execution. Original cognizance of legal mattersbelonged to the municipal courts, appellate jurisdiction to the supremetribunal, in which the judges were appointed by the sovereign. Theliberty of the citizen against arbitrary imprisonment was amply providedfor. The 'jus de non evocando', the habeas corpus of Holland, was re-established. 

Truly, here was a fundamental law which largely, roundly, and reasonablyrecognized the existence of a people with hearts, heads, and hands oftheir own. It was a vast step in advance of natural servitude, the dogmaof the dark ages. It was a noble and temperate vindication of naturalliberty, the doctrine of more enlightened days. To no people in theworld more than to the stout burghers of Flanders and Holland belongs thehonor of having battled audaciously and perennially in behalf of humanrights. 

Similar privileges to the great charter of Holland are granted to manyother provinces; especially to Flanders, ever ready to stand forward infierce vindication of freedom. For a season all is peace and joy; butthe duchess is young, weak, and a woman. There is no lack of intriguingpoliticians, reactionary councillors. There is a cunning old king in thedistance, lying in wait; seeking what he can devour. A mission goes fromthe estates to France. The well-known tragedy of Imbrecourt and Hugonetoccurs. Envoys from the states, they dare to accept secret instructionsfrom the duchess to enter into private negotiations with the Frenchmonarch, against their colleagues--against the great charter--againsttheir country. Sly Louis betrays them, thinking that policy the moreexpedient. They are seized in Ghent, rapidly tried, and as rapidlybeheaded by the enraged burghers. All the entreaties of the Lady Mary, who, dressed in mourning garments, with dishevelled hair, unloosedgirdle, and streaming eyes; appears at the town-house and afterwards inthe market place, humbly to intercede for her servants, are fruitlessThere is no help for the juggling diplomatists. The punishment wassharp. Was it more severe and sudden than that which betrayed monarchsusually inflict? Would the Flemings, at that critical moment, havedeserved their freedom had they not taken swift and signal vengeance forthis first infraction of their newly recognized rights? Had it not beenweakness to spare the traitors who had thus stained the childhood of thenational joy at liberty regained?

IX. 

Another step, and a wide one, into the great stream of European history. The Lady Mary espouses the Archduke Maximilian. The Netherlands areabout to become Habsburg property. The Ghenters reject the pretensionsof the dauphin, and select for husband of their duchess the very man whomher father had so stupidly rejected. It had been a wiser choice forCharles the Bold than for the Netherlanders. The marriage takes place onthe 18th of August, 1477. Mary of Burgundy passes from the guardianshipof Ghent burghers into that of the emperor's son. The crafty husbandallies himself with the city party, feeling where the strength lies. He knows that the voracious Kabbeljaws have at last swallowed the Hooks, and run away with them. Promising himself future rights ofreconsideration, he is liberal in promises to the municipal party. In the mean time he is governor and guardian of his wife and herprovinces. His children are to inherit the Netherlands and all thattherein is. What can be more consistent than laws of descent, regulated by right divine? At the beginning of the century, good Philipdispossesses Jacqueline, because females can not inherit. At its close, his granddaughter succeeds to the property, and transmits it to herchildren. Pope and emperor maintain both positions with equal logic. The policy and promptness of Maximilian are as effective as the force andfraud of Philip. The Lady Mary falls from her horse and dies. Her son, Philip, four years of age, is recognized as successor. Thus the house ofBurgundy is followed by that of Austria, the fifth and last family whichgoverned Holland, previously to the erection of the republic. Maximilianis recognized by the provinces as governor and guardian, during theminority of his children. Flanders alone refuses. The burghers, everprompt in action, take personal possession of the child Philip, and carryon the government in his name. A commission of citizens and nobles thusmaintain their authority against Maximilian for several years. In 1488, the archduke, now King of the Romans, with a small force of cavalry, attempts to take the city of Bruges, but the result is a mortifying oneto the Roman king. The citizens of Bruges take him. Maximilian, withseveral councillors, is kept a prisoner in a house on the market-place. The magistrates are all changed, the affairs of government conducted inthe name of the young Philip alone. Meantime, the estates of the otherNetherlands assemble at Ghent; anxious, unfortunately, not for thenational liberty, but for that of the Roman king. Already Holland, tornagain by civil feuds, and blinded by the artifices of Maximilian, hasdeserted, for a season, the great cause to which Flanders has remained sotrue. At last, a treaty is made between the archduke and the Flemings. Maximilian is to be regent of the other provinces; Philip, underguardianship of a council, is to govern Flanders. Moreover, a congressof all the provinces is to be summoned annually, to provide for thegeneral welfare. Maximilian signs and swears to the treaty on the 16thMay, 1488. He swears, also, to dismiss all foreign troops within fourdays. Giving hostages for his fidelity, he is set at liberty. What areoaths and hostages when prerogative, and the people are contending?Emperor Frederic sends to his son an army under the Duke of Saxony. The oaths are broken, the hostages left to their fate. The strugglelasts a year, but, at the end of it, the Flemings are subdued. Whatcould a single province effect, when its sister states, even liberty-loving Holland, had basely abandoned the common cause? A new treaty ismade, (Oct. 1489). Maximilian obtains uncontrolled guardianship of hisson, absolute dominion over Flanders and the other provinces. Theinsolent burghers are severely punished for remembering that they hadbeen freemen. The magistrates of Ghent, Bruges, and Ypres, in blackgarments, ungirdled, bare-headed, and kneeling, are compelled to implorethe despot's forgiveness, and to pay three hundred thousand crowns ofgold as its price. After this, for a brief season, order reigns inFlanders. 

The course of Maximilian had been stealthy, but decided. Allying himselfwith the city party, he had crushed the nobles. The power thus obtained, he then turned against the burghers. Step by step he had trampled outthe liberties which his wife and himself had sworn to protect. He hadspurned the authority of the "Great Privilege, " and all other charters. Burgomasters and other citizens had been beheaded in great numbers forappealing to their statutes against the edicts of the regent, for votingin favor of a general congress according to the unquestionable law. Hehad proclaimed that all landed estates should, in lack of heirs male, escheat to his own exchequer. He had debased the coin of the country, and thereby authorized unlimited swindling on the part of all his agents, from stadholders down to the meanest official. If such oppression andknavery did not justify the resistance of the Flemings to theguardianship of Maximilian, it would be difficult to find any reasonablecourse in political affairs save abject submission to authority. 

In 1493, Maximilian succeeds to the imperial throne, at the death of hisfather. In the following year his son, Philip the Fair, now seventeenyears of age, receives the homage of the different states of theNetherlands. He swears to maintain only the privileges granted by Philipand Charles of Burgundy, or their ancestors, proclaiming null and voidall those which might have been acquired since the death of Charles. Holland, Zeland, and the other provinces accept him upon theseconditions, thus ignominiously, and without a struggle, relinquishingthe Great Privilege, and all similar charters. 

Friesland is, for a brief season, politically separated from the rest ofthe country. Harassed and exhausted by centuries of warfare, foreign, and domestic, the free Frisians, at the suggestion or command of EmperorMaximilian, elect the Duke of Saxony as their Podesta. The sovereignprince, naturally proving a chief magistrate far from democratic, getshimself acknowledged, or submitted to, soon afterwards, as legitimatesovereign of Friesland. Seventeen years afterward Saxony sells thesovereignty to the Austrian house for 350, 000 crowns. This littlecountry, whose statutes proclaimed her to be "free as the wind, as longas it blew, " whose institutions Charlemagne had honored and leftunmolested, who had freed herself with ready poniard from Norman tyranny, who never bowed her neck to feudal chieftain, nor to the papal yoke, nowdriven to madness and suicide by the dissensions of her wild children, forfeits at last her independent existence. All the provinces are thusunited in a common servitude, and regret, too late, their supineness ata moment when their liberties might yet have been vindicated. Theirancient and cherished charters, which their bold ancestors had earnedwith the sweat of their brows and the blood of their hearts, are at themercy of an autocrat, and liable to be superseded by his edicts. 

In 1496, the momentous marriage of Philip the Fair with Joanna, daughterof Ferdinand and Isabella of Castile and Aragon, is solemnized. Of thisunion, in the first year of the century, is born the second Charlemagne, who is to unite Spain and the Netherlands, together with so many vast anddistant realms, under a single sceptre. Six years afterwards (Sept. 25, 1506), Philip dies at Burgos. A handsome profligate, devoted to hispleasures, and leaving the cares of state to his ministers, Philip, "croit-conseil, " is the bridge over which the house of Habsburg passes toalmost universal monarchy, but, in himself, is nothing. 

X. 

Two prudent marriages, made by Austrian archdukes within twenty years, have altered the face of the earth. The stream, which we have beentracing from its source, empties itself at last into the ocean of aworld-empire. Count Dirk the First, lord of a half-submerged corner ofEurope, is succeeded by Count Charles the Second of Holland, better knownas Charles the Fifth, King of Spain, Sicily, and Jerusalem, Duke ofMilan, Emperor of Germany, Dominator in Asia and Africa, autocrat of halfthe world. The leading events of his brilliant reign are familiar toevery child. The Netherlands now share the fate of so large a group ofnations, a fate, to these provinces, most miserable. The weddings ofAustria Felix were not so prolific of happiness to her subjects as toherself. It can never seem just or reasonable that the destiny of manymillions of human beings should depend upon the marriage-settlements ofone man with one woman, and a permanent, prosperous empire can never bereared upon so frail a foundation. The leading thought of the firstCharlemagne was a noble and a useful one, nor did his imperial schemeseem chimerical, even although time, wiser than monarchs or lawgivers, was to prove it impracticable. To weld into one great whole the varioustribes of Franks, Frisians, Saxons, Lombards, Burgundians, and others, still in their turbulent youth, and still composing one great Teutonicfamily; to enforce the mutual adhesion of naturally coherent masses, allof one lineage, one language, one history, and which were only beginningto exhibit their tendencies to insulation, to acquiesce in a variety oflocal laws and customs, while an iron will was to concentrate a vast, buthomogeneous, people into a single nation; to raise up from the grave ofcorrupt and buried Rome a fresh, vigorous, German, Christian empire; thiswas a reasonable and manly thought. Far different the conception of thesecond Charlemagne. To force into discordant union, tribes which, forseven centuries, had developed themselves into hostile nations, separatedby geography and history, customs and laws, to combine many millionsunder one sceptre, not because of natural identity, but for the sake ofcomposing one splendid family property, to establish unity byannihilating local institutions, to supersede popular and liberalcharters by the edicts of a central despotism, to do battle with thewhole spirit of an age, to regard the souls as well as the bodies of vastmultitudes as the personal property of one individual, to strive for theperpetuation in a single house of many crowns, which accident hadblended, and to imagine the consecration of the whole system by placingthe pope's triple diadem forever upon the imperial head of theHabsburgs;--all this was not the effort of a great, constructive genius, but the selfish scheme of an autocrat. 

The union of no two countries could be less likely to prove advantageousor agreeable than that of the Netherlands and Spain. They were widelyseparated geographically, while in history, manners, and politics, theywere utterly opposed to each other. Spain, which had but just assumedthe form of a single state by the combination of all its kingdoms, withits haughty nobles descended from petty kings, and arrogating almostsovereign power within their domains, with its fierce enthusiasm for theCatholic religion, which, in the course of long warfare with theSaracens, had become the absorbing characteristic of a whole nation, with its sparse population scattered over a wide and stern country, with a military spirit which led nearly all classes to prefer povertyto the wealth attendant upon degrading pursuits of trade;--Spain, withher gloomy, martial, and exaggerated character, was the absolute contrastof the Netherlands. 

These provinces had been rarely combined into a whole, but there wasnatural affinity in their character, history, and position. There waslife, movement, bustling activity every where. An energetic populationswarmed in all the flourishing cities which dotted the surface of acontracted and highly cultivated country. Their ships were the carriersfor the world;--their merchants, if invaded in their rights, engaged invigorous warfare with their own funds and their own frigates; theirfabrics were prized over the whole earth; their burghers possessed thewealth of princes, lived with royal luxury, and exercised vast politicalinfluence; their love of liberty was their predominant passion. Theirreligious ardor had not been fully awakened; but the events of the nextgeneration were to prove that in no respect more than in the religioussentiment, were the two races opposed to each other. It was as certainthat the Netherlanders would be fierce reformers as that the Spaniardswould be uncompromising persecutors. Unhallowed was the union betweennations thus utterly contrasted. 

Philip the Fair and Ferdinand had detested and quarrelled with each otherfrom the beginning. The Spaniards and Flemings participated in themutual antipathy, and hated each other cordially at first sight. Theunscrupulous avarice of the Netherland nobles in Spain, their graspingand venal ambition, enraged and disgusted the haughty Spaniards. Thisinternational malignity furnishes one of the keys to a properunderstanding of the great revolt in the next reign. 

The provinces, now all united again under an emperor, were treated, opulent and powerful as they were, as obscure dependencies. The regencyover them was entrusted by Charles to his near relatives, who governed inthe interest of his house, not of the country. His course towards themupon the religious question will be hereafter indicated. The politicalcharacter of his administration was typified, and, as it were, dramatized, on the occasion of the memorable insurrection at Ghent. For this reason, a few interior details concerning that remarkable event, seem requisite. 

XI. 

Ghent was, in all respects, one of the most important cities in Europe. Erasmus, who, as a Hollander and a courtier, was not likely to be partialto the turbulent Flemings, asserted that there was no town in allChristendom to be compared to it for size, power, political constitution, or the culture of its inhabitants. It was, said one of its inhabitantsat the epoch of the insurrection, rather a country than a city. Theactivity and wealth of its burghers were proverbial. The bells were rungdaily, and the drawbridges over the many arms of the river intersectingthe streets were raised, in order that all business might be suspended, while the armies of workmen were going to or returning from their labors. As early as the fourteenth century, the age of the Arteveldes, Froissartestimated the number of fighting men whom Ghent could bring into thefield at eighty thousand. The city, by its jurisdiction over many largebut subordinate towns, disposed of more than its own immediatepopulation, which has been reckoned as high as two hundred thousand. 

Placed in the midst of well cultivated plains, Ghent was surrounded bystrong walls, the external circuit of which measured nine miles. Itsstreets and squares were spacious and elegant, its churches and otherpublic buildings numerous and splendid. The sumptuous church of SaintJohn or Saint Bavon, where Charles the Fifth had been baptized, theancient castle whither Baldwin Bras de Fer had brought the daughter ofCharles the Bald, the city hall with its graceful Moorish front, thewell-known belfry, where for three centuries had perched the dragon sentby the Emperor Baldwin of Flanders from Constantinople, and where swungthe famous Roland, whose iron tongue had called the citizens, generationafter generation, to arms, whether to win battles over foreign kings atthe head of their chivalry, or to plunge their swords in each others'breasts, were all conspicuous in the city and celebrated in the land. Especially the great bell was the object of the burghers' affection, and, generally, of the sovereign's hatred; while to all it seemed, as it were, a living historical personage, endowed with the human powers and passionswhich it had so long directed and inflamed. 

The constitution of the city was very free. It was a little republic inall but name. Its population was divided into fifty-two guilds ofmanufacturers and into thirty-two tribes of weavers; each fraternityelecting annually or biennally its own deans and subordinate officers. The senate, which exercised functions legislative, judicial, andadministrative, subject of course to the grand council of Mechlin and tothe sovereign authority, consisted of twenty-six members. These wereappointed partly from the upper class, or the men who lived upon theirmeans, partly from the manufacturers in general, and partly from theweavers. They were chosen by a college of eight electors, who wereappointed by the sovereign on nomination by the citizens. The wholecity, in its collective capacity, constituted one of the four estates(Membra) of the province of Flanders. It is obvious that so much libertyof form and of fact, added to the stormy character by which its citizenswere distinguished, would be most offensive in the eyes of Charles, andthat the delinquencies of the little commonwealth would be representedin the most glaring colors by all those quiet souls, who preferred thetranquillity of despotism to the turbulence of freedom. The cityclaimed, moreover, the general provisions of the "Great Privilege" of theLady Mary, the Magna Charta, which, according to the monarchical party, had been legally abrogated by Maximilian. The liberties of the town hadalso been nominally curtailed by the "calf-skin" (Kalf Vel). By thiscelebrated document, Charles the Fifth, then fifteen years of age, hadbeen made to threaten with condign punishment all persons who shouldmaintain that he had sworn at his inauguration to observe any privilegesor charters claimed by the Ghenters before the peace of Cadsand. 

The immediate cause of the discontent, the attempt to force from Flandersa subsidy of four hundred thousand caroli, as the third part of thetwelve hundred thousand granted by the states of the Netherlands, andthe resistance of Ghent in opposition to the other three members of theprovince, will, of course, be judged differently, according as thesympathies are stronger with popular rights or with prerogative. Thecitizens claimed that the subsidy could only be granted by the unanimousconsent of the four estates of the province. Among other proofs of thistheir unquestionable right, they appealed to a muniment, which had neverexisted, save in the imagination of the credulous populace. At a certainremote epoch, one of the Counts of Flanders, it was contended, hadgambled away his countship to the Earl of Holland, but had beenextricated from his dilemma by the generosity of Ghent. The burghers ofthe town had paid the debts and redeemed the sovereignty of their lord, and had thereby gained, in return, a charter, called the Bargain ofFlanders (Koop van Flandern). Among the privileges granted by thisdocument, was an express stipulation that no subsidy should ever begranted by the province without the consent of Ghent. This charter wouldhave been conclusive in the present emergency, had it not labored underthe disadvantage of never having existed. It was supposed by many thatthe magistrates, some of whom were favorable to government, had hiddenthe document. Lieven Pyl, an ex-senator, was supposed to be privy to itsconcealment. He was also, with more justice, charged with an act ofgreat baseness and effrontery. Reputed by the citizens to carry to theQueen Regent their positive refusal to grant the subsidy, he had, on thecontrary, given an answer, in their name, in the affirmative. For thesedelinquencies, the imaginary and the real, he was inhumanly tortured andafterwards beheaded. "I know, my children, " said he upon the scaffold, "that you will be grieved when you have seen my blood flow, and that youwill regret me when it is too late. " It does not appear, however, thatthere was any especial reason to regret him, however sanguinary thepunishment which had requited his broken faith. 

The mischief being thus afoot, the tongue of Roland, and the easily-excited spirits of the citizens, soon did the rest. Ghent broke forthinto open insurrection. They had been willing to enlist and pay troopsunder their own banners, but they had felt outraged at the enormouscontribution demanded of them for a foreign war, undertaken in the familyinterests of their distant master. They could not find the "Bargain ofFlanders, " but they got possession of the odious "calf skin, " which wassolemnly cut in two by the dean of the weavers. It was then torn inshreds by the angry citizens, many of whom paraded the streets withpieces of the hated document stuck in their caps, like plumes. Fromthese demonstrations they proceeded to intrigues with Francis the First. He rejected them, and gave notice of their overtures to Charles, who nowresolved to quell the insurrection, at once. Francis wrote, begging thatthe Emperor would honor him by coming through France; "wishing to assureyou, " said he, "my lord and good brother, by this letter, written andsigned by my hand, upon my honor, and on the faith of a prince, and ofthe best brother you have, that in passing through my kingdom everypossible honor and hospitality will be offered you, even as they could beto myself. " Certainly, the French king, after such profuse and voluntarypledges, to confirm which he, moreover, offered his two sons and othergreat individuals as hostages, could not, without utterly disgracinghimself, have taken any unhandsome advantage of the Emperor's presence inhis dominions. The reflections often made concerning the high-mindedchivalry of Francis, and the subtle knowledge of human nature displayedby Charles upon the occasion, seem, therefore, entirely superfluous. TheEmperor came to Paris. "Here, " says a citizen of Ghent, at the time, whohas left a minute account of the transaction upon record, but whosesympathies were ludicrously with the despot and against his owntownspeople, "here the Emperor was received as if the God of Paradise haddescended. " On the 9th of February, 1540, he left Brussels; on the 14thhe came to Ghent. His entrance into the city lasted more than six hours. Four thousand lancers, one thousand archers, five thousand halberdmen andmusqueteers composed his bodyguard, all armed to the teeth and ready forcombat. The Emperor rode in their midst, surrounded by "cardinals, archbishops, bishops, and other great ecclesiastical lords, " so that theterrors of the Church were combined with the panoply of war to affrightthe souls of the turbulent burghers. A brilliant train of "dukes, princes, earls, barons, grand masters, and seignors, together with mostof the Knights of the Fleece, " were, according to the testimony of thesame eyewitness, in attendance upon his Majesty. This unworthy son ofGhent was in ecstasies with the magnificence displayed upon the occasion. There was such a number of "grand lords, members of sovereign houses, bishops, and other ecclesiastical dignitaries going about the streets, that, " as the poor soul protested with delight, "there was nobody else tobe met with. " Especially the fine clothes of these distinguished guestsexcited his warmest admiration. It was wonderful to behold, he said, "the nobility and great richness of the princes and seignors, displayedas well in their beautiful furs, martins and sables, as in the greatchains of fine gold which they wore twisted round their necks, and thepearls and precious stones in their bonnets and otherwise, which theydisplayed in great abundance. It was a very triumphant thing to see themso richly dressed and accoutred. "

An idea may be formed of the size and wealth of the city at this period, from the fact that it received and accommodated sixty thousand strangers, with their fifteen thousand horses, upon the occasion of the Emperor'svisit. Charles allowed a month of awful suspense to intervene betweenhis arrival and his vengeance. Despair and hope alternated during theinterval. On the 17th of March, the spell was broken by the execution ofnineteen persons, who were beheaded as ringleaders. On the 29th ofApril, he pronounced sentence upon the city. The hall where it wasrendered was open to all comers, and graced by the presence of theEmperor, the Queen Regent, and the great functionaries of Court, Church, and State. The decree, now matured, was read at length. It annulled allthe charters, privileges, and laws of Ghent. It confiscated all itspublic property, rents, revenues, houses, artillery, munitions of war, and in general every thing which the corporation, or the traders, eachand all, possessed in common. In particular, the great bell--Roland wascondemned and sentenced to immediate removal. It was decreed that thefour hundred thousand florins, which had caused the revolt, shouldforthwith be paid, together with an additional fine by Ghent of onehundred and fifty thousand, besides six thousand a year, forever after. In place of their ancient and beloved constitution, thus annihilated at ablow, was promulgated a new form of municipal government of the simplestkind, according to which all officers were in future to be appointed byhimself and the guilds, to be reduced to half their number; shorn of allpolitical power, and deprived entirely of self-government. It was, moreover, decreed, that the senators, their pensionaries, clerks andsecretaries, thirty notable burghers, to be named by the Emperor, withthe great dean and second dean of the weavers, all dressed in blackrobes, without their chains, and bareheaded, should appear upon anappointed day, in company with fifty persons from the guilds, and fiftyothers, to be arbitrarily named, in their shirts, with halters upon theirnecks. This large number of deputies, as representatives of the city, were then to fall upon their knees before the Emperor, say in a loud andintelligible voice, by the mouth of one of their clerks, that they wereextremely sorry for the disloyalty, disobedience, infraction of laws, commotions, rebellion, and high treason, of which they had been guilty, promise that they would never do the like again, and humbly implore him, for the sake of the Passion of Jesus Christ, to grant them mercy andforgiveness. 

The third day of May was appointed for the execution of the sentence. Charles, who was fond of imposing exhibitions and prided himself uponarranging them with skill, was determined that this occasion should belong remembered by all burghers throughout his dominions who might bedisposed to insist strongly upon their municipal rights. The streetswere alive with troops: cavalry and infantry in great numbers keepingstrict guard at every point throughout the whole extent of the city; forit was known that the hatred produced by the sentence was most deadly, and that nothing but an array of invincible force could keep thosehostile sentiments in check. The senators in their black mourning robes, the other deputies in linen shirts, bareheaded, with halters on theirnecks, proceeded, at the appointed hour, from the senate house to theimperial residence. High on his throne, with the Queen Regent at hisside, surrounded by princes, prelates and nobles, guarded by his archersand halberdiers, his crown on his head and his sceptre in his hand, theEmperor, exalted, sat. The senators and burghers, in their robes cfhumiliation, knelt in the dust at his feet. The prescribed words ofcontrition and of supplication for mercy were then read by thepensionary, all the deputies remaining upon their knees, and many of themcrying bitterly with rage and shame. "What principally distressed them, "said the honest citizen, whose admiration for the brilliant accoutrementof the princes and prelates has been recorded, "was to have the halter ontheir necks, which they found hard to bear, and, if they had not beencompelled, they would rather have died than submit to it. "

As soon as the words had been all spoken by the pensionary, the Emperor, whose cue was now to appear struggling with mingled emotions ofreasonable wrath and of natural benignity, performed his part with muchdramatic effect. "He held himself coyly for a little time, " says theeye-witness, "without saying a word; deporting himself as though he wereconsidering whether or not he would grant the pardon for which theculprits had prayed. " Then the Queen Regent enacted her share in theshow. Turning to his Majesty "with all reverence, honor and humility, she begged that he would concede forgiveness, in honor of his nativity, which had occurred in that city. "

Upon this the Emperor "made a fine show of benignity, " and replied "verysweetly" that in consequence of his "fraternal love for her, by reason ofhis being a gentle and virtuous prince, who preferred mercy to the rigorof justice, and in view of their repentance, he would accord his pardonto the citizens. "

The Netherlands, after this issue to the struggle of Ghent, were reduced, practically, to a very degraded condition. The form of local self-government remained, but its spirit, when invoked, only arose to bederided. The supreme court of Mechlin, as in the days of Charles theBold, was again placed in despotic authority above the ancient charters. Was it probable that the lethargy of provinces, which had reached so higha point of freedom only to be deprived of it at last, could endureforever? Was it to be hoped that the stern spirit of religiousenthusiasm, allying itself with the--keen instinct of civil liberty, would endue the provinces with strength to throw off the Spanish yoke?

XII. 

It is impossible to comprehend the character of the great Netherlandrevolt in the sixteenth century without taking a rapid retrospectivesurvey of the religious phenomena exhibited in the provinces. Theintroduction of Christianity has been already indicated. From theearliest times, neither prince, people, nor even prelates were verydutiful to the pope. As the papal authority made progress, strongresistance was often made to its decrees. The bishops of Utrecht weredependent for their wealth and territory upon the good will of theEmperor. They were the determined opponents of Hildebrand, warmadherents of the Hohenstaufers-Ghibelline rather than Guelph. Heresy wasa plant of early growth in the Netherlands. As early as the beginning ofthe 12th century, the notorious Tanchelyn preached at Antwerp, attackingthe authority of the pope and of all other ecclesiastics; scoffing at theceremonies and sacraments of the Church. Unless his character and careerhave been grossly misrepresented, he was the most infamous of the manyimpostors who have so often disgraced the cause of religious reformation. By more than four centuries, he anticipated the licentiousness andgreediness manifested by a series of false prophets, and was the first toturn both the stupidity of a populace and the viciousness of a priesthoodto his own advancement; an ambition which afterwards reached its mostsignal expression in the celebrated John of Leyden. 

The impudence of Tanchelyn and the superstition of his followers seemalike incredible. All Antwerp was his harem. He levied, likewise, vastsums upon his converts, and whenever he appeared in public, his appareland pomp were befitting an emperor. Three thousand armed satellitesescorted his steps and put to death all who resisted his commands. Sogroveling became the superstition of his followers that they drank of thewater in which, he had washed, and treasured it as a divine elixir. Advancing still further in his experiments upon human credulity, heannounced his approaching marriage with the Virgin Mary, bade all hisdisciples to the wedding, and exhibited himself before an immense crowdin company with an image of his holy bride. He then ordered the peopleto provide for the expenses of the nuptials and the dowry of his wife, placing a coffer upon each side of the image, to receive thecontributions of either sex. Which is the most wonderful manifestationin the history of this personage--the audacity of the impostor, or thebestiality of his victims? His career was so successful in theNetherlands that he had the effrontery to proceed to Rome, promulgatingwhat he called his doctrines as he went. He seems to have beenassassinated by a priest in an obscure brawl, about the year 1115. 

By the middle of the 12th century, other and purer heresiarchs hadarisen. Many Netherlanders became converts to the doctrines of Waldo. From that period until the appearance of Luther, a succession of sects--Waldenses, Albigenses, Perfectists, Lollards, Poplicans, Arnaldists, Bohemian Brothers--waged perpetual but unequal warfare with the power anddepravity of the Church, fertilizing with their blood the future field ofthe Reformation. Nowhere was the persecution of heretics more relentlessthan in the Netherlands. Suspected persons were subjected to varioustorturing but ridiculous ordeals. After such trial, death by fire wasthe usual but, perhaps, not the most severe form of execution. InFlanders, monastic ingenuity had invented another most painful punishmentfor Waldenses and similar malefactors. A criminal whose guilt had beenestablished by the hot iron, hot ploughshare, boiling kettle, or otherlogical proof, was stripped and bound to the stake:--he was then flayed, from the neck to the navel, while swarms of bees were let loose to fastenupon his bleeding flesh and torture him to a death of exquisite agony. 

Nevertheless heresy increased in the face of oppression The Scriptures, translated by Waldo into French, were rendered into Netherland rhyme, andthe converts to the Vaudois doctrine increased in numbers and boldness. At the same time the power and luxury of the clergy was waxing daily. The bishops of Utrecht, no longer the defenders of the people againstarbitrary power, conducted themselves like little popes. Yielding indignity neither to king nor kaiser, they exacted homage from the mostpowerful princes of the Netherlands. The clerical order became the mostprivileged of all. The accused priest refused to acknowledge thetemporal tribunals. The protection of ecclesiastical edifices wasextended over all criminals and fugitives from justice--a beneficentresult in those sanguinary ages, even if its roots were sacerdotal pride. To establish an accusation against a bishop, seventy-two witnesses werenecessary; against a deacon, twenty-seven; against an inferior dignitary, seven; while two were sufficient to convict a layman. The power to readand write helped the clergy to much wealth. Privileges and charters frompetty princes, gifts and devises from private persons, were documentswhich few, save ecclesiastics, could draw or dispute. Not content, moreover, with their territories and their tithings, the churchmenperpetually devised new burthens upon the peasantry. Ploughs, sickles, horses, oxen, all implements of husbandry, were taxed for the benefit ofthose who toiled not, but who gathered into barns. In the course of thetwelfth century, many religious houses, richly endowed with lands andother property, were founded in the Netherlands. Was hand or voiceraised against clerical encroachment--the priests held ever in readinessa deadly weapon of defence: a blasting anathema was thundered againsttheir antagonist, and smote him into submission. The disciples of Himwho ordered his followers to bless their persecutors, and to love theirenemies, invented such Christian formulas as these:--"In the name of theFather, the Son, the Holy Ghost, the blessed Virgin Mary, John theBaptist, Peter and Paul, and all other Saints in Heaven, do we curse andcut off from our Communion him who has thus rebelled against us. May thecurse strike him in his house, barn, bed, field, path, city, castle. Mayhe be cursed in battle, accursed in praying, in speaking, in silence, ineating, in drinking, in sleeping. May he be accursed in his taste, hearing, smell, and all his senses. May the curse blast his eyes, head, and his body, from his crown to the soles of his feet. I conjure you, Devil, and all your imps, that you take no rest till you have brought himto eternal shame; till he is destroyed by drowning or hanging, till he istorn to pieces by wild beasts, or consumed by fire. Let his childrenbecome orphans, his wife a widow. I command you, Devil, and all yourimps, that even as I now blow out these torches, you do immediatelyextinguish the light from his eyes. So be it--so be it. Amen. Amen. "So speaking, the curser was wont to blow out two waxen torches which heheld in his hands, and, with this practical illustration, the anathemawas complete. 

Such insane ravings, even in the mouth of some impotent beldame, wereenough to excite a shudder, but in that dreary epoch, these curses fromthe lips of clergymen were deemed sufficient to draw down celestiallightning upon the head, not of the blasphemer, but of his victim. Men, who trembled neither at sword nor fire, cowered like slaves before suchhorrid imprecations, uttered by tongues gifted, as it seemed, withsuperhuman power. Their fellow-men shrank from the wretches thusblasted, and refused communication with them as unclean and abhorred. 

By the end of the thirteenth century, however, the clerical power wasalready beginning to decline. It was not the corruption of the Church, but its enormous wealth which engendered the hatred, with which it was bymany regarded. Temporal princes and haughty barons began to dispute theright of ecclesiastics to enjoy vast estates, while refusing the burthenof taxation, and unable to draw a sword for the common defence. At thisperiod, the Counts of Flanders, of Holland, and other Netherlandsovereigns, issued decrees, forbidding clerical institutions fromacquiring property, by devise, gift, purchase, or any other mode. The downfall of the rapacious and licentious knights-templar in theprovinces and throughout Europe, was another severe blow administeredat the same time. The attacks upon Church abuses redoubled in boldness, as its authority declined. Towards the end of the fourteenth century, the doctrines of Wicklif had made great progress in the land. Early inthe fifteenth, the executions of Huss and Jerome of Prague, produce theBohemian rebellion. The Pope proclaims a crusade against the Hussites. Knights and prelates, esquires and citizens, enlist in the sacred cause, throughout Holland and its sister provinces; but many Netherlanders, whohad felt the might of Ziska's arm, come back, feeling more sympathy withthe heresy which they had attacked, than with the Church for which theyhad battled. 

Meantime, the restrictions imposed by Netherland sovereigns upon clericalrights to hold or acquire property, become more stern and more general. On the other hand, with the invention of printing, the cause ofReformation takes a colossal stride in advance. A Bible, which, before, had cost five hundred crowns, now costs but five. The people acquire thepower of reading God's Word, or of hearing it read, for themselves. The light of truth dispels the clouds of superstition, as by a newrevelation. The Pope and his monks are found to bear, very often, butfaint resemblance to Jesus and his apostles. Moreover, the instinct ofself-interest sharpens the eye of the public. Many greedy priests, oflower rank, had turned shop-keepers in the Netherlands, and were growingrich by selling their wares, exempt from taxation, at a lower rate thanlay hucksters could afford. The benefit of clergy, thus taking the breadfrom the mouths of many, excites jealousy; the more so, as, besides theirmiscellaneous business, the reverend traders have a most lucrative branchof commerce from which other merchants are excluded. The sale ofabsolutions was the source of large fortunes to the priests. Theenormous impudence of this traffic almost exceeds belief. Throughoutthe Netherlands, the price current of the wares thus offered for sale, was published in every town and village. God's pardon for crimes alreadycommitted, or about to be committed, was advertised according to agraduated tariff. Thus, poisoning, for example, was absolved for elevenducats, six livres tournois. Absolution for incest was afforded atthirty-six livres, three ducats. Perjury came to seven livres and threecarlines. Pardon for murder, if not by poison, was cheaper. Even aparricide could buy forgiveness at God's tribunal at one ducat; fourlivres, eight carlines. Henry de Montfort, in the year 1448, purchasedabsolution for that crime at that price. Was it strange that a centuryor so of this kind of work should produce a Luther? Was it unnaturalthat plain people, who loved the ancient Church, should rather desire tosee her purged of such blasphemous abuses, than to hear of St. Peter'sdome rising a little nearer to the clouds on these proceeds of commutedcrime?

At the same time, while ecclesiastical abuses are thus augmenting, ecclesiastical power is diminishing in the Netherlands. The Church is nolonger able to protect itself against the secular aim. The halcyon daysof ban, book and candle, are gone. In 1459, Duke Philip of Burgundyprohibits the churches from affording protection to fugitives. Charlesthe Bold, in whose eyes nothing is sacred save war and the means ofmaking it, lays a heavy impost upon all clerical property. Upon beingresisted, he enforces collection with the armed hand. The sword and thepen, strength and intellect, no longer the exclusive servants orinstruments of priestcraft, are both in open revolt. Charles the Boldstorms one fortress, Doctor Grandfort, of Groningen, batters another. This learned Frisian, called "the light of the world, " friend andcompatriot of the great Rudolph Agricola, preaches throughout theprovinces, uttering bold denunciations of ecclesiastical error. He evendisputes the infallibility of the Pope, denies the utility of prayers forthe dead, and inveighs against the whole doctrine of purgatory andabsolution. 

With the beginning of the 16th century, the great Reformation wasactually alive. The name of Erasmus of Rotterdam was already celebrated;the man, who, according to Grotius, "so well showed the road to areasonable reformation. " But if Erasmus showed the road, he certainlydid not travel far upon it himself. Perpetual type of the quietist, themoderate man, he censured the errors of the Church with discriminationand gentleness, as if Borgianism had not been too long rampant at Rome, as if men's minds throughout Christendom were not too deeply stirred tobe satisfied with mild rebukes against sin, especially when the mildrebuker was in receipt of livings and salaries from the sinner. Insteadof rebukes, the age wanted reforms. The Sage of Rotterdam was a keenobserver, a shrewd satirist, but a moderate moralist. He loved ease, good company, the soft repose of princely palaces, better than a life ofmartyrdom and a death at the stake. He was not of the stuff of whichmartyrs are made, as he handsomely confessed on more than one occasion. "Let others affect martyrdom, " he said, "for myself I am unworthy of thehonor;" and, at another time, "I am not of a mind, " he observed"to venture my life for the truth's sake; all men have not strength toendure the martyr's death. For myself, if it came to the point, I shoulddo no better than Simon Peter. " Moderate in all things, he would haveliked, he said, to live without eating and drinking, although he neverfound it convenient to do so, and he rejoiced when advancing agediminished his tendency to other carnal pleasures in which he hadmoderately indulged. Although awake to the abuses of the Church, hethought Luther going too fast and too far. He began by applauding endedby censuring the monk of Wittemberg. The Reformation might have beendelayed for centuries had Erasmus and other moderate men been the onlyreformers. He will long be honored for his elegant, Latinity. In therepublic of letters, his efforts to infuse a pure taste, a soundcriticism, a love for the beautiful and the classic, in place of theowlish pedantry which had so long flapped and hooted through medivevalcloisters, will always be held in grateful reverence. In the history ofthe religious Reformation, his name seems hardly to deserve thecommendations of Grotius. 

As the schism yawns, more and more ominously, throughout Christendom, theEmperor naturally trembles. Anxious to save the state, but being noantique Roman, he wishes to close the gulf, but with more convenience tohimself: He conceives the highly original plan of combining Church andEmpire under one crown. This is Maximilian's scheme for Churchreformation. An hereditary papacy, a perpetual pope-emperor, theCharlemagne and Hildebrand systems united and simplified--thus the worldmay yet be saved. "Nothing more honorable, nobler, better, could happento us, " writes Maximilian to Paul Lichtenstein (16th Sept. 1511), "thanto re-annex the said popedom--which properly belongs to us--to ourEmpire. Cardinal Adrian approves our reasons and encourages us toproceed, being of opinion that we should not have much trouble with thecardinals. It is much to be feared that the Pope may die of his presentsickness. He has lost his appetite, and fills himself with so much drinkthat his health is destroyed. As such matters can not be arrangedwithout money, we have promised the cardinals, whom we expect to bringover, 300, 000 ducats, [Recall that the fine for redemption and pardon forthe sin of murder was at that time one ducat. D. W. ] which we shall raisefrom the Fuggers, and make payable in Rome upon the appointed day. "

These business-like arrangements he communicates, two days afterwards, in a secret letter to his daughter Margaret, and already exults at hisfuture eminence, both in this world and the next. "We are sendingMonsieur de Gurce, " he says; "to make an agreement with the Pope, that wemay be taken as coadjutor, in order that, upon his death, we may be sureof the papacy, and, afterwards, of becoming a saint. After my decease, therefore, you will be constrained to adore me, of which I shall be veryproud. I am beginning to work upon the cardinals, in which affair two orthree hundred thousand ducats will be of great service. " The letter wassigned, "From the hand of your good father, Maximilian, future Pope. "

These intrigues are not destined, however, to be successful. Pope Juliuslives two years longer; Leo the Tenth succeeds; and, as Medici are notmuch prone to Church reformation some other scheme, and perhaps someother reformer, may be wanted. Meantime, the traffic in bulls ofabsolution becomes more horrible than ever. Money must be raised tosupply the magnificent extravagance of Rome. Accordingly, Christians, throughout Europe, are offered by papal authority, guarantees offorgiveness for every imaginable sin, "even for the rape of God's mother, if that were possible, " together with a promise of life eternal inParadise, all upon payment of the price affixed to each crime. TheNetherlands, like other countries, are districted and farmed for thecollection of this papal revenue. Much of the money thus raised, remainsin the hands of the vile collectors. Sincere Catholics, who love andhonor the ancient religion, shrink with horror at the spectacle offeredon every side. Criminals buying Paradise for money, monks spending themoney thus paid in gaming houses, taverns, and brothels; this seems, tothose who have studied their Testaments, a different scheme of salvationfrom the one promulgated by Christ. There has evidently been a departurefrom the system of earlier apostles. Innocent conservative souls aremuch perplexed; but, at last, all these infamies arouse a giant to dobattle with the giant wrong. Martin Luther enters the lists, all alone, armed only with a quiver filled with ninety-five propositions, and a bowwhich can send them all over Christendom with incredible swiftness. Within a few weeks the ninety-five propositions have flown throughGermany, the Netherlands, Spain, and are found in Jerusalem. 

At the beginning, Erasmus encourages the bold friar. So long as the axeis not laid at the foot of the tree, which bears the poisonous but goldenfruit, the moderate man applauds the blows. "Luther's cause isconsidered odious, " writes Erasmus to the Elector of Saxony, "because hehas, at the same time, attacked the bellies of the monks and the bulls ofthe Pope. " He complains that the zealous man had been attacked withroiling, but not with arguments. He foresees that the work will have abloody and turbulent result, but imputes the principal blame to theclergy. "The priests talk, " said he, "of absolution in such terms, thatlaymen can not stomach it. Luther has been for nothing more censuredthan for making little of Thomas Aquinas; for wishing to diminish theabsolution traffic; for having a low opinion of mendicant orders, and forrespecting scholastic opinions less than the gospels. All this isconsidered intolerable heresy. "

Erasmus, however, was offending both parties. A swarm of monks werealready buzzing about him for the bold language of his Commentaries andDialogues. He was called Erasmus for his errors--Arasmus because hewould plough up sacred things--Erasinus because he had written himself anass--Behemoth, Antichrist, and many other names of similar import. Luther was said to have bought the deadly seed in his barn. The egg hadbeen laid by Erasmus, hatched by Luther. On the other hand, he wasreviled for not taking side manfully with the reformer. The moderate manreceived much denunciation from zealots on either side. He soon clearshimself, however, from all suspicions of Lutheranism. He is appalled atthe fierce conflict which rages far and wide. He becomes querulous asthe mighty besom sweeps away sacred dust and consecrated cobwebs. "Menshould not attempt every thing at once, " he writes, "but rather step bystep. That which men can not improve they must look at through thefingers. If the godlessness of mankind requires such fierce physiciansas Luther, if man can not be healed with soothing ointments and coolingdrinks, let us hope that God will comfort, as repentant, those whom hehas punished as rebellious. If the dove of Christ--not the owl ofMinerva--would only fly to us, some measure might be put to the madnessof mankind. "

Meantime the man, whose talk is not of doves and owls, the fiercephysician, who deals not with ointments and cooling draughts, stridespast the crowd of gentle quacks to smite the foul disease. Devils, thicker than tiles on house-tops, scare him not from his work. Bans andbulls, excommunications and decrees, are rained upon his head. Thepaternal Emperor sends down dire edicts, thicker than hail upon theearth. The Holy Father blasts and raves from Rome. Louvain doctorsdenounce, Louvain hangmen burn, the bitter, blasphemous books. Theimmoderate man stands firm in the storm, demanding argument instead ofillogical thunder; shows the hangmen and the people too, outside theElster gate at Wittenberg, that papal bulls will blaze as merrily asheretic scrolls. What need of allusion to events which changed theworld--which every child has learned--to the war of Titans, uprooting ofhoary trees and rock-ribbed hills, to the Worms diet, Peasant wars, thePatmos of Eisenach, and huge wrestlings with the Devil?

Imperial edicts are soon employed to suppress the Reformation in theNetherlands by force. The provinces, unfortunately; are the privateproperty of Charles, his paternal inheritance; and most paternally, according to his view of the matter, does he deal with them. Germany cannot be treated thus summarily, not being his heritage. "As it appears, "says the edict of 1521, "that the aforesaid Martin is not a man, but adevil under the form of a man, and clothed in the dress of a priest, thebetter to bring the human race to hell and damnation, therefore all hisdisciples and converts are to be punished with death and forfeiture ofall their goods. " This was succinct and intelligible. The bloody edict, issued at Worms, without even a pretence of sanction by the estates, wascarried into immediate effect. The papal inquisition was introduced intothe provinces to assist its operations. The bloody work, for which thereign of Charles is mainly distinguished in the Netherlands, now began. In 1523, July 1st, two Augustine monks were burned at Brussels, the firstvictims to Lutheranism in the provinces. Erasmus observed, with a sigh, that "two had been burned at Brussels, and that the city now beganstrenuously to favor Lutheranism. "

Pope Adrian the Sixth, the Netherland boat-maker's son and the Emperor'sancient tutor, was sufficiently alive to the sins of churchmen. Thehumble scholar of Utrecht was, at least, no Borgia. At the diet ofNuremberg, summoned to put down Luther, the honest Pope declared roundly, through the Bishop of Fabriane, that "these disorders had sprung from theSins of men, more especially from the sins of priests and prelates. Evenin the holy chair, " said he, "many horrible crimes have been committed. Many abuses have grown up in the ecclesiastical state. The contagiousdisease, spreading from the head to the members--from the Pope to lesserprelates--has spread far and wide, so that scarcely any one is to befound who does right, and who is free from infection. Nevertheless, theevils have become so ancient and manifold, that it will be necessary togo step by step. "

In those passionate days, the ardent reformers were as much outraged bythis pregnant confession as the ecclesiastics. It would indeed be a slowprocess, they thought, to move step by step in the Reformation, ifbetween each step, a whole century was to intervene. In vain did thegentle pontiff call upon Erasmus to assuage the stormy sea with hissmooth rhetoric. The Sage of Rotterdam was old and sickly; his day wasover. Adrian's head; too; languishes beneath the triple crown but twentymonths. He dies 13th Sept. , 1523, having arrived at the conviction, according to his epitaph, that the greatest misfortune of his life wasto have reigned. 

Another edict, published in the Netherlands, forbids all privateassemblies for devotion; all reading of the scriptures; all discussionswithin one's own doors concerning faith, the sacraments, the papalauthority, or other religious matter, under penalty of death. The edictswere no dead letter. The fires were kept constantly supplied with humanfuel by monks, who knew the art of burning reformers better than that ofarguing with them. The scaffold was the most conclusive of syllogisms, and used upon all occasions. Still the people remained unconvinced. Thousands of burned heretics had not made a single convert. 

A fresh edict renewed and sharpened the punishment for reading thescriptures in private or public. At the same time, the violent personalaltercation between Luther and Erasmus, upon predestination, togetherwith the bitter dispute between Luther and Zwingli concerning the realpresence, did more to impede the progress of the Reformation than ban oredict, sword or fire. The spirit of humanity hung her head, finding thatthe bold reformer had only a new dogma in place of the old ones, seeingthat dissenters, in their turn, were sometimes as ready as papists, withage, fagot, and excommunication. In 1526, Felix Mants, the anabaptist, is drowned at Zurich, in obedience to Zwingli's pithy formula--'Quiiterum mergit mergatur'. Thus the anabaptists, upon their firstappearance, were exposed to the fires of the Church and the water of theZwinglians. 

There is no doubt that the anabaptist delusion was so ridiculous and soloathsome, as to palliate or at least render intelligible the wrath withwhich they were regarded by all parties. The turbulence of the sect wasalarming to constituted authorities, its bestiality disgraceful to thecause of religious reformation. The leaders were among the most depravedof human creatures, as much distinguished for licentiousness, blasphemyand cruelty as their followers for grovelling superstition. The evilspirit, driven out of Luther, seemed, in orthodox eyes, to have takenpossession of a herd of swine. The Germans, Muncer and Hoffmann, hadbeen succeeded, as chief prophets, by a Dutch baker, named Matthiszoon, of Harlem; who announced himself as Enoch. Chief of this man's discipleswas the notorious John Boccold, of Leyden. Under the government of thisprophet, the anabaptists mastered the city of Munster. Here theyconfiscated property, plundered churches, violated females, murdered menwho refused to join the gang, and, in briefs practised all the enormitieswhich humanity alone can conceive or perpetrate. The prophet proclaimedhimself King of Sion, and sent out apostles to preach his doctrines inGermany and the Netherlands. Polygamy being a leading article of thesystem, he exemplified the principle by marrying fourteen wives. Ofthese, the beautiful widow of Matthiszoon was chief, was called the Queenof Sion, and wore a golden crown. The prophet made many fruitlessefforts to seize Amsterdam and Leyden. The armed invasion of theanabaptists was repelled, but their contagious madness spread. Theplague broke forth in Amsterdam. On a cold winter's night, (February, 1535), seven men and five women, inspired by the Holy Ghost, threw offtheir clothes and rushed naked and raving through the streets, shrieking"Wo, wo, wo! the wrath of God, the wrath of God!" When arrested, theyobstinately refused to put on clothing. "We are, " they observed, "thenaked truth. " In a day or two, these furious lunatics, who certainlydeserved a madhouse rather than the scaffold, were all executed. Thenumbers of the sect increased with the martyrdom to which they wereexposed, and the disorder spread to every part of the Netherlands. Manywere put to death in lingering torments, but no perceptible effect wasproduced by the chastisement. Meantime the great chief of the sect, theprophet John, was defeated by the forces of the Bishop of Munster, whorecovered his city and caused the "King of Zion" to be pinched to deathwith red-hot tongs. 

Unfortunately the severity of government was not wreaked alone upon theprophet and his mischievous crew. Thousands and ten-thousands ofvirtuous, well-disposed men and women, who had as little sympathy withanabaptistical as with Roman depravity; were butchered in cold blood, under the sanguinary rule of Charles, in the Netherlands. In 1533, QueenDowager Mary of Hungary, sister of the Emperor, Regent of the provinces, the "Christian widow" admired by Erasmus, wrote to her brother that "inher opinion all heretics, whether repentant or not, should be prosecutedwith such severity as that error might be, at once, extinguished, carebeing only taken that the provinces were not entirely depopulated. " Withthis humane limitation, the "Christian Widow" cheerfully set herself tosuperintend as foul and wholesale a system of murder as was everorganized. In 1535, an imperial edict was issued at Brussels, condemningall heretics to death; repentant males to be executed with the sword, repentant females to be buried alive, the obstinate, of both sexes, to beburned. This and similar edicts were the law of the land for twentyyears, and rigidly enforced. Imperial and papal persecution continuedits daily deadly work with such diligence as to make it doubtful whetherthe limits set by the Regent Mary might not be overstepped. In the midstof the carnage, the Emperor sent for his son Philip, that he mightreceive the fealty of the Netherlands as their future lord and master. Contemporaneously, a new edict was published at Brussels (29th April, 1549), confirming and reenacting all previous decrees in their mostsevere provisions. Thus stood religious matters in the Netherlands atthe epoch of the imperial abdication. 

XIII. 

The civil institutions of the country had assumed their last provincialform, in the Burgundo-Austrian epoch. As already stated, their tendency, at a later period a vicious one, was to substitute fictitious personagesfor men. A chain of corporations was wound about the liberty of theNetherlands; yet that liberty had been originally sustained by the systemin which it, one day, might be strangled. The spirit of local self-government, always the life-blood of liberty, was often excessive in itsmanifestations. The centrifugal force had been too much developed, and, combining with the mutual jealousy of corporations, had often made thenation weak against a common foe. Instead of popular rights there werestate rights, for the large cities, with extensive districts and villagesunder their government, were rather petty states than municipalities. Although the supreme legislative and executive functions belonged to thesovereign, yet each city made its by-laws, and possessed, beside, a bodyof statutes and regulations, made from time to time by its own authorityand confirmed by the prince. Thus a large portion, at least, of thenation shared practically in the legislative functions, which, technically, it did not claim; nor had the requirements of society madeconstant legislation so necessary, as that to exclude the people from thework was to enslave the country. There was popular power enough toeffect much good, but it was widely scattered, and, at the same time, confined in artificial forms. The guilds were vassals of the towns, thetowns, vassals of the feudal lord. The guild voted in the "broadcouncil" of the city as one person; the city voted in the estates as oneperson. The people of the United Netherlands was the personage yet to beinvented, It was a privilege, not a right, to exercise a handiwork, or toparticipate in the action of government. Yet the mass of privileges wasso large, the shareholders so numerous, that practically the towns wererepublics. The government was in the hands of a large number of thepeople. Industry and intelligence led to wealth and power. This wasgreat progress from the general servitude of the 11th and 12th centuries, an immense barrier against arbitrary rule. Loftier ideas of humanrights, larger conceptions of commerce, have taught mankind, in laterdays, the difference between liberties and liberty, between guilds andfree competition. At the same time it was the principle of mercantileassociation, in the middle ages, which protected the infant steps ofhuman freedom and human industry against violence and wrong. Moreover, at this period, the tree of municipal life was still green and vigorous. The healthful flow of sap from the humblest roots to the most verdurousbranches indicated the internal soundness of the core, and provided forthe constant development of exterior strength. The road to politicalinfluence was open to all, not by right of birth, but through honorableexertion of heads and hands. 

The chief city of the Netherlands, the commercial capital of the world, was Antwerp. In the North and East of Europe, the Hanseatic league hadwithered with the revolution in commerce. At the South, the splendidmarble channels, through which the overland India trade had beenconducted from the Mediterranean by a few stately cities, were now dry, the great aqueducts ruinous and deserted. Verona, Venice, Nuremberg, Augsburg, Bruges, were sinking, but Antwerp, with its deep and convenientriver, stretched its arm to the ocean and caught the golden prize, as itfell from its sister cities' grasp. The city was so ancient that itsgenealogists, with ridiculous gravity, ascended to a period two centuriesbefore the Trojan war, and discovered a giant, rejoicing in the classicname of Antigonus, established on the Scheld. This patriarch exacted onehalf the merchandise of all navigators who passed his castle, and wasaccustomed to amputate and cast into the river the right hands of thosewho infringed this simple tariff. Thus Hand-werpen, hand-throwing, became Antwerp, and hence, two hands, in the escutcheon of the city, wereever held up in heraldic attestation of the truth. The giant was, in histurn, thrown into the Scheld by a hero, named Brabo, from whose exploitsBrabant derived its name; "de quo Brabonica tellus. " But for theseantiquarian researches, a simpler derivation of the name would seeman t' werf, "on the wharf. " It had now become the principal entrepot andexchange of Europe. The Huggers, Velsens, Ostetts, of Germany, theGualterotti and Bonvisi of Italy, and many other great mercantile houseswere there established. No city, except Paris, surpassed it inpopulation, none approached it in commercial splendor. Its governmentwas very free. The sovereign, as Marquis of Antwerp, was solemnly swornto govern according to the ancient charters and laws. The stadholder, ashis representative, shared his authority with the four estates of thecity. The Senate of eighteen members was appointed by the stadholder outof a quadruple number nominated by the Senate itself and by the fourthbody, called the Borgery. Half the board was thus renewed annually. Itexercised executive and appellate judicial functions, appointed twoburgomasters, and two pensionaries or legal councillors, and alsoselected the lesser magistrates and officials of the city. The board ofancients or ex-senators, held their seats ex officio. The twenty-sixward-masters, appointed, two from each ward, by the Senate on nominationby tie wards, formed the third estate. Their especial business was toenrol the militia and to attend to its mustering and training. The deansof the guilds, fifty-four in number, two from each guild, selected by theSenate, from a triple list of candidates presented by the guilds, composed the fourth estate. This influential body was always assembledin the broad-council of the city. Their duty was likewise to conduct theexamination of candidates claiming admittance to any guild and offeringspecimens of art or handiwork, to superintend the general affairs of theguilds and to regulate disputes. 

There were also two important functionaries, representing the king incriminal and civil matters. The Vicarius capitalis, Scultetus, Schout, Sheriff, or Margrave, took precedence of all magistrates. His businesswas to superintend criminal arrests, trials, and executions. TheVicarius civilis was called the Amman, and his office corresponded withthat of the Podesta in the Frisian and Italian republics. His dutieswere nearly similar, in civil, to those of his colleague, in criminalmatters. 

These four branches, with their functionaries and dependents, composedthe commonwealth of Antwerp. Assembled together in council, theyconstituted the great and general court. No tax could be imposed by thesovereign, except with consent of the four branches, all votingseparately. 

The personal and domiciliary rights of the citizen were scrupulouslyguarded. The Schout could only make arrests with the Burgomaster'swarrant, and was obliged to bring the accused, within three days, beforethe judges, whose courts were open to the public. 

The condition of the population was prosperous. There were but few poor, and those did not seek but were sought by the almoners: The schools wereexcellent and cheap. It was difficult to find a child of sufficient agewho could not read, write, and speak, at least, two languages. The sonsof the wealthier citizens completed their education at Louvain, Douay, Paris, or Padua. 

The city itself was one of the most beautiful in Europe. Placed upon aplain along the banks of the Scheld, shaped like a bent bow with theriver for its string, it enclosed within it walls some of the mostsplendid edifices in Christendom. The world-renowned church of NotreDame, the stately Exchange where five thousand merchants dailycongregated, prototype of all similar establishments throughout theworld, the capacious mole and port where twenty-five hundred vessels wereoften seen at once, and where five hundred made their daily entrance ordeparture, were all establishments which it would have been difficult torival in any other part of the world. 

From what has already been said of the municipal institutions of thecountry, it may be inferred that the powers of the Estates-general werelimited. The members of that congress were not representatives chosen bythe people, but merely a few ambassadors from individual provinces. Thisindividuality was not always composed of the same ingredients. Thus, Holland consisted of two members, or branches--the nobles and the sixchief cities; Flanders of four branches--the cities, namely, of Ghent, Bruges, Ypres, and the "freedom of Bruges;" Brabant of Louvain, Brussels, Bois le Due, and Antwerp, four great cities, without representation ofnobility or clergy; Zeland, of one clerical person, the abbot ofMiddelburg, one noble, the Marquis of Veer and Vliessingen, and six chiefcities; Utrecht, of three branches--the nobility, the clergy, and fivecities. These, and other provinces, constituted in similar manner, weresupposed to be actually present at the diet when assembled. The chiefbusiness of the states-general was financial; the sovereign, or hisstadholder, only obtaining supplies by making a request in person, whileany single city, as branch of a province, had a right to refuse thegrant. 

XIII. 

Education had felt the onward movement of the country and the times. Thewhole system was, however, pervaded by the monastic spirit, which hadoriginally preserved all learning from annihilation, but which now keptit wrapped in the ancient cerecloths, and stiffening in the stonysarcophagus of a bygone age. The university of Louvain was the chiefliterary institution in the provinces. It had been established in 1423by Duke John IV. Of Brabant. Its government consisted of a President andSenate, forming a close corporation, which had received from the founderall his own authority, and the right to supply their own vacancies. Thefive faculties of law, canon law, medicine, theology, and the arts, werecultivated at the institution. There was, besides, a high school forunder graduates, divided into four classes. The place reeked withpedantry, and the character of the university naturally diffused itselfthrough other scholastic establishments. Nevertheless, it had done andwas doing much to preserve the love for profound learning, while therapidly advancing spirit of commerce was attended by an ever increasingtrain of humanizing arts. 

The standard of culture in those flourishing cities was elevated, compared with that observed in many parts of Europe. The children of thewealthier classes enjoyed great facilities for education in all the greatcapitals. The classics, music, and the modern languages, particularlythe French, were universally cultivated. Nor was intellectualcultivation confined to the higher orders. On the contrary, it wasdiffused to a remarkable degree among the hard-working artisans andhandicraftsmen of the great cities. 

For the principle of association had not confined itself exclusively topolitics and trade. Besides the numerous guilds by which citizenship wasacquired in the various cities, were many other societies for mutualimprovement, support, or recreation. The great secret, architectural ormasonic brotherhood of Germany, that league to which the artistic andpatient completion of the magnificent works of Gothic architecture in themiddle ages is mainly to be attributed, had its branches in netherGermany, and explains the presence of so many splendid and elaboratelyfinished churches in the provinces. There were also military sodalitiesof musketeers, cross-bowmen, archers, swordsmen in every town. Once ayear these clubs kept holiday, choosing a king, who was selected for hisprowess and skill in the use of various weapons. These festivals, alwaysheld with great solemnity and rejoicing, were accompanied bye manyexhibitions of archery and swordsmanship. The people were not likely, therefore, voluntarily to abandon that privilege and duty of freemen, theright to bear arms, and the power to handle them. 

Another and most important collection of brotherhoods were the so-calledguilds of Rhetoric, which existed, in greater or less number, in all theprincipal cities. These were associations of mechanics, for the purposeof amusing their leisure with poetical effusions, dramatic and musicalexhibitions, theatrical processions, and other harmless and not inelegantrecreations. Such chambers of rhetoric came originally in the fifteenthcentury from France. The fact that in their very title they confoundedrhetoric with poetry and the drama indicates the meagre attainments ofthese early "Rederykers. " In the outset of their career they gavetheatrical exhibitions. "King Herod and his Deeds" was enacted in thecathedral at Utrecht in 1418. The associations spread with greatcelerity throughout the Netherlands, and, as they were all connected witheach other, and in habits of periodical intercourse, these humble linksof literature were of great value in drawing the people of the provincesinto closer union. They became, likewise, important political engines. As early as the time of Philip the Good, their songs and lampoons becameso offensive to the arbitrary notions of the Burgundian government, as tocause the societies to be prohibited. It was, however, out of thesovereign's power permanently to suppress institutions, which alreadypartook of the character of the modern periodical press combined withfunctions resembling the show and licence of the Athenian drama. Viewedfrom the stand-point of literary criticism their productions were notvery commendable in taste, conception, or execution. To torture theMuses to madness, to wire-draw poetry through inextricable coils ofdifficult rhymes and impossible measures; to hammer one golden grain ofwit into a sheet of infinite platitude, with frightful ingenuity toconstruct ponderous anagrams and preternatural acrostics, to dazzle thevulgar eye with tawdry costumes, and to tickle the vulgar ear withvirulent personalities, were tendencies which perhaps smacked of thehammer, the yard-stick and the pincers, and gave sufficient proof, hadproof been necessary, that literature is not one of the mechanical arts, and that poetry can not be manufactured to a profit by joint stockcompanies. Yet, if the style of these lucubrations was often depraved, the artisans rarely received a better example from the literaryinstitutions above them. It was not for guilds of mechanics to give thetone to literature, nor were their efforts in more execrable taste thanthe emanations from the pedants of Louvain. The "Rhetoricians" are notresponsible for all the bad taste of their generation. The gravesthistorians of the Netherlands often relieved their elephantine labors bythe most asinine gambols, and it was not to be expected that thesebustling weavers and cutlers should excel their literary superiors intaste or elegance. 

Philip the Fair enrolled himself as a member in one of these societies. It may easily be inferred, therefore, that they had already become bodiesof recognized importance. The rhetorical chambers existed in the mostobscure villages. The number of yards of Flemish poetry annuallymanufactured and consumed throughout the provinces almost exceed belief. The societies had regular constitutions. Their presiding officers werecalled kings, princes, captains, archdeacons, or rejoiced in similarhigh-sounding names. Each chamber had its treasurer, its buffoon, andits standard-bearer for public processions. Each had its peculiar titleor blazon, as the Lily, the Marigold, or the Violet, with an appropriatemotto. By the year 1493, the associations had become so important, thatPhilip the Fair summoned them all to a general assembly at Mechlin. Herethey were organized, and formally incorporated under the generalsupervision of an upper or mother-society of Rhetoric, consisting offifteen members, and called by the title of "Jesus with the balsamflower. "

The sovereigns were always anxious to conciliate these influential guildsby becoming members of them in person. Like the players, theRhetoricians were the brief abstract and chronicle of the time, andneither prince nor private person desired their ill report. It had, indeed, been Philip's intention to convert them into engines for thearbitrary purposes of his house, but fortunately the publicly organizedsocieties were not the only chambers. On the contrary, the uncharteredguilds were the moat numerous and influential. They exercised a vastinfluence upon the progress of the religious reformation, and thesubsequent revolt of the Netherlands. They ridiculed, with their farcesand their satires, the vices of the clergy. They dramatized tyranny forpublic execration. It was also not surprising, that among the leaders ofthe wild anabaptists who disgraced the great revolution in church andstate by their hideous antics, should be found many who, like David ofDelft, John of Leyden, and others, had been members of rhetoricalchambers. The genius for mummery and theatrical exhibitions, transplanted from its sphere, and exerting itself for purposes of fraudand licentiousness, was as baleful in its effects as it was healthy inits original manifestations. Such exhibitions were but the excrescencesof a system which had borne good fruit. These literary guilds befittedand denoted a people which was alive, a people which had neither sunk tosleep in the lap of material prosperity, nor abased itself in the sty ofignorance and political servitude. The spirit of liberty pervaded theserude but not illiterate assemblies, and her fair proportions weredistinctly visible, even through the somewhat grotesque garb which shethus assumed. 

The great leading recreations which these chambers afforded to themselvesand the public, were the periodic jubilees which they celebrated invarious capital cities. All the guilds of rhetoric throughout theNetherlands were then invited to partake and to compete in magnificentprocessions, brilliant costumes, living pictures, charades, and otheranimated, glittering groups, and in trials of dramatic and poetic skill, all arranged under the superintendence of the particular associationwhich, in the preceding year, had borne away the prize. Such jubileeswere called "Land jewels. "

From the amusements of a people may be gathered much that is necessaryfor a proper estimation of its character. No unfavorable opinion can beformed as to the culture of a nation, whose weavers, smiths, gardeners, and traders, found the favorite amusement of their holidays in composingand enacting tragedies or farces, reciting their own verses, or inpersonifying moral and esthetic sentiments by ingeniously-arrangedgroups, or gorgeous habiliments. The cramoisy velvets and yellow satindoublets of the court, the gold-brocaded mantles of priests and princesare often but vulgar drapery of little historic worth. Such costumesthrown around the swart figures of hard-working artisans, for literaryand artistic purposes, have a real significance, and are worthy of acloser examination. Were not these amusements of the Netherlanders aselevated and humanizing as the contemporary bull-fights and autos-da-feof Spain? What place in history does the gloomy bigot merit who, for thelove of Christ, converted all these gay cities into shambles, and changedthe glittering processions of their Land jewels into fettered marches tothe scaffold?

Thus fifteen ages have passed away, and in the place of a horde ofsavages, living among swamps and thickets, swarm three millions ofpeople, the most industrious, the most prosperous, perhaps the mostintelligent under the sun. Their cattle, grazing on the bottom of thesea, are the finest in Europe, their agricultural products of moreexchangeable value than if nature had made their land to overflow withwine and oil. Their navigators are the boldest, their mercantile marinethe most powerful, their merchants the most enterprising in the world. Holland and Flanders, peopled by one race, vie with each other in thepursuits of civilization. The Flemish skill in the mechanical and in thefine arts is unrivalled. Belgian musicians delight and instruct othernations, Belgian pencils have, for a century, caused the canvas to glowwith colors and combinations never seen before. Flemish fabrics areexported to all parts of Europe, to the East and West Indies, to Africa. The splendid tapestries, silks, linens, as well as the more homely anduseful manufactures of the Netherlands, are prized throughout the world. Most ingenious, as they had already been described by the keen-eyedCaesar, in imitating the arts of other nations, the skillful artificersof the country at Louvain, Ghent, and other places, reproduce the shawlsand silks of India with admirable accuracy. 

Their national industry was untiring; their prosperity unexampled; theirlove of liberty indomitable; their pugnacity proverbial. Peaceful intheir pursuits, phlegmatic by temperament, the Netherlands were yet themost belligerent and excitable population of Europe. Two centuries ofcivil war had but thinned the ranks of each generation without quenchingthe hot spirit of the nation. 

The women were distinguished by beauty of form and vigor of constitution. Accustomed from childhood to converse freely with all classes and sexesin the daily walks of life, and to travel on foot or horseback from onetown to another, without escort and without fear, they had acquiredmanners more frank and independent than those of women in other lands, while their morals were pure and their decorum undoubted. The prominentpart to be sustained by the women of Holland in many dramas of therevolution would thus fitly devolve upon a class, enabled by nature andeducation to conduct themselves with courage. 

Within the little circle which encloses the seventeen provinces are 208walled cities, many of them among the most stately in Christendom, 150chartered towns, 6, 300 villages, with their watch-towers and steeples, besides numerous other more insignificant hamlets; the whole guarded by abelt of sixty fortresses of surpassing strength. 

XIV. 

Thus in this rapid sketch of the course and development of the Netherlandnation during sixteen centuries, we have seen it ever marked by oneprevailing characteristic, one master passion--the love of liberty, theinstinct of self-government. Largely compounded of the bravest Teutonicelements, Batavian and Frisian, the race ever battles to the death withtyranny, organizes extensive revolts in the age of Vespasian, maintains apartial independence even against the sagacious dominion of Charlemagne, refuses in Friesland to accept the papal yoke or feudal chain, and, throughout the dark ages, struggles resolutely towards the light, wresting from a series of petty sovereigns a gradual and practicalrecognition of the claims of humanity. With the advent of the Burgundianfamily, the power of the commons has reached so high a point, that it isable to measure itself, undaunted, with the spirit of arbitrary rule, ofwhich that engrossing and tyrannical house is the embodiment. For morethan a century the struggle for freedom, for civic life, goes on; Philipthe Good, Charles the Bold, Mary's husband Maximilian, Charles V. , inturn, assailing or undermining the bulwarks raised, age after age, against the despotic principle. The combat is ever renewed. Liberty, often crushed, rises again and again from her native earth with redoubledenergy. At last, in the 16th century, a new and more powerful spirit, the genius of religious freedom, comes to participate in the greatconflict. Arbitrary power, incarnated in the second Charlemagne, assailsthe new combination with unscrupulous, unforgiving fierceness. Venerablecivic magistrates; haltered, grovel in sackcloth and ashes; innocent, religious reformers burn in holocausts. By the middle of the century, the battle rages more fiercely than ever. In the little Netherlandterritory, Humanity, bleeding but not killed, still stands at bay anddefies the hunters. The two great powers have been gathering strengthfor centuries. They are soon to be matched in a longer and moredetermined combat than the world had ever seen. The emperor is about toleave the stage. The provinces, so passionate for nationality, formunicipal freedom, for religious reformation, are to become the propertyof an utter stranger; a prince foreign to their blood, their tongue, their religion, their whole habits of life and thought. 

Such was the political, religious, and social condition of a nation whowere now to witness a new and momentous spectacle. 

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Absolution for incest was afforded at thirty-six livresAchieved the greatness to which they had not been bornAdvancing age diminished his tendency to other carnal pleasuresAll his disciples and converts are to be punished with deathAll reading of the scriptures (forbidden)Altercation between Luther and Erasmus, upon predestinationAn hereditary papacy, a perpetual pope-emperorAnnounced his approaching marriage with the Virgin MaryAs ready as papists, with age, fagot, and excommunicationAttacking the authority of the popeBold reformer had only a new dogma in place of the old onesCharles the Fifth autocrat of half the worldCondemning all heretics to deathCraft meaning, simply, strengthCriminal whose guilt had been established by the hot ironCriminals buying Paradise for moneyCrusades made great improvement in the condition of the serfsDemocratic instincts of the ancient German savagesDenies the utility of prayers for the deadDifference between liberties and libertyDispute between Luther and Zwingli concerning the real presenceDivine rightDrank of the water in which, he had washedEnormous wealth (of the Church) which engendered the hatredErasmus encourages the bold friarErasmus of RotterdamEven for the rape of God's mother, if that were possibleExecutions of Huss and Jerome of PragueFable of divine right is invented to sanction the systemFelix Mants, the anabaptist, is drowned at ZurichFew, even prelates were very dutiful to the popeFiction of apostolic authority to bind and looseFishermen and river raftsmen become ocean adventurersFor myself I am unworthy of the honor (of martyrdom)Forbids all private assemblies for devotionForce clerical--the power of clerksGreat Privilege, the Magna Charta of HollandGuarantees of forgiveness for every imaginable sinHalcyon days of ban, book and candleHeresy was a plant of early growth in the NetherlandsIn Holland, the clergy had neither influence nor seatsInvented such Christian formulas as these (a curse)July 1st, two Augustine monks were burned at BrusselsKing of Zion to be pinched to death with red-hot tongsLabored under the disadvantage of never having existedLearn to tremble as little at priestcraft as at swordcraftMany greedy priests, of lower rank, had turned shop-keepersNo one can testify but a householderNot of the stuff of which martyrs are made (Erasmus)Nowhere was the persecution of heretics more relentlessObstinate, of both sexes, to be burnedOne golden grain of wit into a sheet of infinite platitudePardon for crimes already committed, or about to be committedPardon for murder, if not by poison, was cheaperPaying their passage through, purgatoryPoisoning, for example, was absolved for eleven ducatsPope and emperor maintain both positions with equal logicPower to read and write helped the clergy to much wealthReadiness to strike and bleed at any moment in her causeRepentant females to be buried aliveRepentant males to be executed with the swordSale of absolutions was the source of large fortunes to the priestsSame conjury over ignorant baron and cowardly hindScoffing at the ceremonies and sacraments of the ChurchSharpened the punishment for reading the scriptures in privateSlavery was both voluntary and compulsorySoldier of the cross was free upon his returnSt. Peter's dome rising a little nearer to the cloudsTanchelynThe bad Duke of Burgundy, Philip surnamed "the Good, "The egg had been laid by Erasmus, hatched by LutherThe vivifying becomes afterwards the dissolving principleThousands of burned heretics had not made a single convertThus Hand-werpen, hand-throwing, became AntwerpTo prefer poverty to the wealth attendant upon tradeTranquillity of despotism to the turbulence of freedomVillagers, or villeins