History of the United Netherlands, 1584-86 | Page 5

the seed was to
ripen into a harvest of civil and religious emancipation, and when the
very word toleration was to sound like an insult and an absurdity.
A vast responsibility rested upon the head of a monarch, placed as
Philip II. found himself, at this great dividing point in modern history.
To judge him, or any man in such a position, simply from his own point

of view, is weak and illogical. History judges the man according to its
point of view. It condemns or applauds the point of view itself. The
point of view of a malefactor is not to excuse robbery and murder. Nor
is the spirit of the age to be pleaded in defence of the evil-doer at a time
when mortals were divided into almost equal troops. The age of Philip
II. was also the age of William of Orange and his four brethren, of
Sainte Aldegonde, of Olden-Barneveldt, of Duplessis-Mornay, La
Noue, Coligny, of Luther, Melancthon, and Calvin, Walsingham,
Sidney, Raleigh, Queen Elizabeth, of Michael Montaigne, and William
Shakspeare. It was not an age of blindness, but of glorious light. If the
man whom the Maker of the Universe had permitted to be born to such
boundless functions, chose to put out his own eyes that he might grope
along his great pathway of duty in perpetual darkness, by his deeds he
must be judged. The King perhaps firmly believed that the heretics of
the Netherlands, of France, or of England, could escape eternal
perdition only by being extirpated from the earth by fire and sword, and
therefore; perhaps, felt it his duty to devote his life to their
extermination. But he believed, still more firmly, that his own political
authority, throughout his dominions, and his road to almost universal
empire, lay over the bodies of those heretics. Three centuries have
nearly past since this memorable epoch; and the world knows the fate
of the states which accepted the dogma which it was Philip's life-work
to enforce, and of those who protested against the system. The Spanish
and Italian Peninsulas have had a different history from that which
records the career of France, Prussia, the Dutch Commonwealth, the
British Empire, the Transatlantic Republic.
Yet the contest between those Seven meagre Provinces upon the
sand-banks of the North Sea, and--the great Spanish Empire, seemed at
the moment with which we are now occupied a sufficiently desperate
one. Throw a glance upon the map of Europe. Look at the broad
magnificent Spanish Peninsula, stretching across eight degrees of
latitude and ten of longitude, commanding the Atlantic and the
Mediterranean, with a genial climate, warmed in winter by the vast
furnace of Africa, and protected from the scorching heats of summer by
shady mountain and forest, and temperate breezes from either ocean. A
generous southern territory, flowing with wine and oil, and all the
richest gifts of a bountiful nature-splendid cities--the new and daily

expanding Madrid, rich in the trophies of the most artistic period of the
modern world--Cadiz, as populous at that day as London, seated by the
straits where the ancient and modern systems of traffic were blending
like the mingling of the two oceans--Granada, the ancient wealthy seat
of the fallen Moors--Toledo, Valladolid, and Lisbon, chief city of the
recently-conquered kingdom of Portugal, counting, with its suburbs, a
larger population than any city, excepting Paris, in Europe, the mother
of distant colonies, and the capital of the rapidly-developing traffic
with both the Indies--these were some of the treasures of Spain herself.
But she possessed Sicily also, the better portion of Italy, and important
dependencies in Africa, while the famous maritime discoveries of the
age had all enured to her aggrandizement. The world seemed suddenly
to have expanded its wings from East to West, only to bear the
fortunate Spanish Empire to the most dizzy heights of wealth and
power. The most accomplished generals, the most disciplined and
daring infantry the world has ever known, the best- equipped and most
extensive navy, royal and mercantile, of the age, were at the absolute
command of the sovereign. Such was Spain.
Turn now to the north-western corner of Europe. A morsel of territory,
attached by a slight sand-hook to the continent, and half-submerged by
the stormy waters of the German Ocean--this was Holland. A rude
climate, with long, dark, rigorous, winters, and brief summers, a
territory, the mere wash of three great rivers, which had fertilized
happier portions of Europe only to desolate and overwhelm this
less-favoured land, a soil so ungrateful, that if the whole of its four
hundred thousand acres of arable land had been sowed with grain, it
could not feed the labourers alone, and a population largely estimated
at one million of souls--these were the characteristics of the Province
which already had begun to give