History of the United Netherlands, 1597-98 | Page 9

France even if he felt obliged to restore not only
Amiens but every other city or stronghold that he had ever conquered
in that kingdom. Time would soon show whether this prediction were
correct or delusive; but while the secret negotiations between Henry
and the Pope were vigorously proceeding for that peace with Spain
which the world in general and the commonwealth of the Netherlands
in particular thought to be farthest from the warlike king's wishes, it
was necessary to set about the siege of Amiens.
Henry assembled a force of some twelve or fifteen thousand men for
that purpose, while the cardinal-archduke, upon his part, did his best to
put an army in the field in order to relieve the threatened city so
recently acquired by a coarse but successful artifice.
But Albert was in even a worse plight than that in which his great
antagonist found himself. When he had first arrived in the provinces,
his exchequer was overflowing, and he was even supposed to devote a

considerable portion of the military funds to defray the expenses of his
magnificent housekeeping at Brussels. But those halcyon days were
over. A gigantic fraud, just perpetrated by Philip; had descended like a
thunderbolt upon the provinces and upon all commercial Europe, and
had utterly blasted the unfortunate viceroy. In the latter days of the
preceding year the king had issued a general repudiation of his debts.
He did it solemnly, too, and with great religious unction, for it was a
peculiarity of this remarkable sovereign that he was ever wont to
accomplish his darkest crimes, whether murders or stratagems, as if
they were acts of virtue. Perhaps he really believed them to be such, for
a man, before whom so many millions of his fellow worms had been
writhing for half a century in the dust, might well imagine himself a
deity.
So the king, on the 20th November, 1596, had publicly revoked all the
assignments, mortgages, and other deeds by which the royal domains;
revenues, taxes, and other public property had been transferred or
pledged for moneys already advanced to merchants, banker, and other
companies or individuals, and formally took them again into his own
possession, on the ground that his exertions in carrying on this long war
to save Christianity from destruction had reduced him to beggary,
while the money-lenders, by charging him exorbitant interest, had all
grown rich at his expense.
This was perfectly simple. There was no attempt to disguise the villany
of the transaction. The massacre of so many millions of Protestants, the
gigantic but puerile attempts to subjugate the Dutch republic, and to
annex France, England, and the German empire to his hereditary
dominions, had been attended with more expense than Philip had
calculated upon. The enormous wealth which a long series of marriages,
inheritances, conquests, and maritime discoveries had heaped upon
Spain had been exhausted by the insane ambition of the king to
exterminate heresy throughout the world, and to make himself the
sovereign of one undivided, universal, catholic monarchy. All the gold
and silver of America had not sufficed for this purpose, and he had seen,
with an ever rising indignation, those very precious metals which, in
his ignorance of the laws of trade, he considered his exclusive property
flowing speedily into the coffers of the merchants of Europe, especially
those of the hated commonwealth of the rebellious Netherlands.

Therefore he solemnly renounced all his contracts, and took God to
witness that it was to serve His Divine will. How else could he hope to
continue his massacre of the Protestants?
The effect of the promulgation of this measure was instantaneous. Two
millions and a half of bills of exchange sold by the Cardinal Albert
came back in one day protested. The chief merchants and bankers of
Europe suspended payment. Their creditors became bankrupt. At the
Frankfort fair there were more failures in one day than there had ever
been in all the years since Frankfort existed. In Genoa alone a million
dollars of interest were confiscated. It was no better in Antwerp; but
Antwerp was already ruined. There was a general howl of indignation
and despair upon every exchange, in every counting-room, in every
palace, in every cottage of Christendom. Such a tremendous
repudiation of national debts was never heard of before. There had been
debasements of the currency, petty frauds by kings upon their
unfortunate peoples, but such a crime as this had never been conceived
by human heart before.
The archduke was fain to pawn his jewelry, his plate, his furniture, to
support the daily expenses of his household. Meantime he was to set an
army in the field to relieve a city, beleaguered by the most warlike
monarch in Christendom. Fortunately for him, that prince was in very
similar straits,