History of the United Netherlands, 1584-86 | Page 6

its name to the new commonwealth.
The isles of Zeeland--entangled in the coils of deep slow-moving rivers,
or combating the ocean without--and the ancient episcopate of Utrecht,
formed the only other Provinces that had quite shaken off the foreign
yoke. In Friesland, the important city of Groningen was still held for
the King, while Bois-le-Duc, Zutphen, besides other places in
Gelderland and North Brabant, also in possession of the royalists, made
the position of those provinces precarious.
The limit of the Spanish or "obedient" Provinces, on the one hand, and

of the United Provinces on the other, cannot, therefore, be briefly and
distinctly stated. The memorable treason--or, as it was called, the
"reconciliation" of the Walloon Provinces in the year 1583-4--had
placed the Provinces of Hainault, Arthois, Douay, with the flourishing
cities Arran, Valenciennes, Lille, Tournay, and others--all Celtic
Flanders, in short-in the grasp of Spain. Cambray was still held by the
French governor, Seigneur de Balagny, who had taken advantage of the
Duke of Anjou's treachery to the States, to establish himself in an
unrecognized but practical petty sovereignty, in defiance both of France
and Spain; while East Flanders and South Brabant still remained a
disputed territory, and the immediate field of contest. With these
limitations, it may be assumed, for general purposes, that the territory
of the United States was that of the modern Kingdom of the
Netherlands, while the obedient Provinces occupied what is now the
territory of Belgium.
Such, then, were the combatants in the great eighty years' war for civil
and religious liberty; sixteen of which had now passed away. On the
one side, one of the most powerful and, populous world-empires of
history, then in the zenith of its prosperity; on the other hand, a slender
group of cities, governed by merchants and artisans, and planted
precariously upon a meagre, unstable soil. A million and a half of souls
against the autocrat of a third part of the known world. The contest
seemed as desperate as the cause was certainly sacred; but it had ceased
to be a local contest. For the history which is to occupy us in these
volumes is not exclusively the history of Holland. It is the story of the
great combat between despotism, sacerdotal and regal, and the spirit of
rational human liberty. The tragedy opened in the Netherlands, and its
main scenes were long enacted there; but as the ambition of Spain
expanded, and as the resistance to the principle which she represented
became more general, other nations were, of necessity, involved in the
struggle. There came to be one country, the citizens of which were the
Leaguers; and another country, whose inhabitants were Protestants.
And in this lay the distinction between freedom and absolutism. The
religious question swallowed all the others. There was never a period in
the early history of the Dutch revolt when the Provinces would not
have returned to their obedience, could they have been assured of
enjoying liberty of conscience or religious peace; nor was there ever a

single moment in Philip II.'s life in which he wavered in his fixed
determination never to listen to such a claim. The quarrel was in its
nature irreconcilable and eternal as the warfare between wrong and
right; and the establishment of a comparative civil liberty in Europe
and America was the result of the religious war of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. The struggle lasted eighty years, but the prize
was worth the contest.
The object of the war between the Netherlands and Spain was not,
therefore, primarily, a rebellion against established authority for the
maintenance of civil rights. To preserve these rights was secondary.
The first cause was religion. The Provinces had been fighting for years
against the Inquisition. Had they not taken arms, the Inquisition would
have been established in the Netherlands, and very probably in England,
and England might have become in its turn a Province of the Spanish
Empire.
The death of William the Silent produced a sudden change in the
political arrangements of the liberated Netherlands. During the year
1583, the United Provinces had elected Francis, Duke of Anjou, to be
Duke of Brabant and sovereign of the whole country, under certain
constitutional provisions enumerated in articles of solemn compact.
That compact had been grossly violated. The Duke had made a
treacherous attempt to possess himself of absolute power and to seize
several important cities. He had been signally defeated in Antwerp, and
obliged to leave the country, covered with ignominy. The States had
then consulted William of Orange as to the course to be taken in the
emergency. The Prince had told them that their choice was triple. They
might reconcile themselves with Spain, and abandon the contest for
religious liberty which they had so long been waging; they might
reconcile