History of the United Netherlands, 1584-86 | Page 3

historical writer.
I would take this opportunity to repeat my thanks to M. Gachard,
Archivist of the kingdom of Belgium, for the uniform courtesy and
kindness which I have received at his-hands, and to bear my testimony
to the skill and critical accuracy with which he has illustrated so many
passages of Belgian and Spanish history.

31, HERTFORD-STREET, MAY-FAIR, November llth 1860.

THE UNITED NETHERLANDS.

CHAPTER I
.
Murder of Orange--Extension of Protestantism--Vast Power of Spain--
Religious Origin of the Revolt--Disposal of the Sovereignty--Courage
of the Estates of Holland--Children of William the Silent-- Provisional
Council of State--Firm attitude of Holland and Zeeland-- Weakness of
Flanders--Fall of Ghent--Adroitness of Alexander Farnese.
WILLIAM THE SILENT, Prince of Orange, had been murdered on the
10th of July, 1534. It is difficult to imagine a more universal disaster
than the one thus brought about by the hand of a single obscure fanatic.
For nearly twenty years the character of the Prince had been expanding
steadily as the difficulties of his situation increased. Habit, necessity,
and the natural gifts of the man, had combined to invest him at last with
an authority which seemed more than human. There was such general
confidence in his sagacity, courage, and purity, that the nation had
come to think with his brain and to act with his hand. It was natural that,
for an instant, there should be a feeling as of absolute and helpless
paralysis.
Whatever his technical attributes in the polity of the Netherlands--and it
would be difficult to define them with perfect accuracy--there is no
doubt that he stood there, the head of a commonwealth, in an attitude
such as had been maintained by but few of the kings, or chiefs, or high
priests of history. Assassination, a regular and almost indispensable
portion of the working machinery of Philip's government, had produced,
in this instance, after repeated disappointments, the result at last which
had been so anxiously desired. The ban of the Pope and the offered
gold of the King had accomplished a victory greater than any yet
achieved by the armies of Spain, brilliant as had been their triumphs on
the blood- stained soil of the Netherlands.
Had that "exceeding proud, neat, and spruce" Doctor of Laws, William
Parry, who had been busying himself at about the same time with his
memorable project against the Queen of England, proved as successful
as Balthazar Gerard, the fate of Christendom would have been still
darker. Fortunately, that member of Parliament had made the discovery

in time-- not for himself, but for Elizabeth--that the "Lord was better
pleased with adverbs than nouns;" the well-known result being that the
traitor was hanged and the Sovereign saved.
Yet such was the condition of Europe at that day. A small, dull, elderly,
imperfectly-educated, patient, plodding invalid, with white hair and
protruding under jaw, and dreary visage, was sitting day after day;
seldom speaking, never smiling, seven or eight hours out of every
twenty- four, at a writing table covered with heaps of interminable
despatches, in a cabinet far away beyond the seas and mountains, in the
very heart of Spain. A clerk or two, noiselessly opening and shutting
the door, from time to time, fetching fresh bundles of letters and taking
away others-- all written and composed by secretaries or high
functionaries--and all to be scrawled over in the margin by the diligent
old man in a big schoolboy's hand and style--if ever schoolboy, even in
the sixteenth century, could write so illegibly or express himself so
awkwardly; couriers in the court-yard arriving from or departing for the
uttermost parts of earth-Asia, Africa America, Europe-to fetch and
carry these interminable epistles which contained the irresponsible
commands of this one individual, and were freighted with the doom
and destiny of countless millions of the world's inhabitants--such was
the system of government against which the Netherlands had protested
and revolted. It was a system under which their fields had been made
desolate, their cities burned and pillaged, their men hanged, burned,
drowned, or hacked to pieces; their women subjected to every outrage;
and to put an end to which they had been devoting their treasure and
their blood for nearly the length of one generation. It was a system, too,
which, among other results, had just brought about the death of the
foremost statesman of Europe, and had nearly effected simultaneously
the murder of the most eminent sovereign in the world. The industrious
Philip, safe and tranquil in the depths of the Escorial, saying his prayers
three times a day with exemplary regularity, had just sent three bullets
through the body of William the Silent at his dining-room door in Delft.
"Had it only been done two years earlier," observed the patient old man,
"much trouble might have been spared me; but 'tis better