History of the United Netherlands, 1602-03 | Page 5

hardly make your royal heads greasy
with the fat of such property as we possess, 'Twill also be a remarkable
spectacle after you have stripped our wives and children stark naked for
the benefit of your treasury, to see them sent in that condition, within

three days afterwards, out of the country, as the ban ordains.
"You order the ban to be executed against our children and our
children's children, but your Highness never learned this in the Bible,
when you were an archbishop, and when you expounded, or ought to
have expounded, the Holy Scriptures to your flock. What theology
teaches your Highness to vent your wrath upon the innocent?
"Whenever the cause of discontent is taken away, the soldiers will
become obedient and cheerful. All kings and princes may mirror
themselves in the bad government of your Highness, and may see how
they fare who try to carry on a war, while with their own hands they cut
the sinews of war. The great leaders of old--Cyrus, Alexander, Scipio,
Caesar--were accustomed, not to starve, but to enrich their soldiers.
What did Alexander, when in an arid desert they brought, him a helmet
full of water? He threw it on the sand, saying that there was only
enough for him, but not enough for his army.
"Your Highnesses have set ten crowns, and one hundred, and five
hundred crowns upon our heads, but never could find five hundred
mites nor ten mites to keep our souls and bodies together.
"Yet you have found means to live yourselves with pomp and luxury,
far exceeding that of the great Emperor Charles and much surpassing
the magnificence of your Highnesses' brothers, the emperor and the
king."
Thus, and much more, the magistrates of the "Italian
republic"--answering their master's denunciations of vengeance, both in
this world and the next, with a humorous scorn very refreshing in that
age of the world to contemplate. The expanding influence of the Dutch
commonwealth was already making itself felt even in the ranks of its
most determined foes.
The mutineers had also made an agreement with the States-General, by
which they had secured permission, in case of need, to retire within the
territory of the republic.
Maurice had written to them from his camp before Grave, and at first
they were disposed to treat him with as little courtesy as they had
shown the Nuncius; for they put the prince's letter on a staff, and fired
at it as a mark, assuring the trumpeter who brought it that they would
serve him in the same manner should he venture thither again. Very
soon afterwards, however, the Eletto and council, reproving the folly of

their subordinates, opened negotiations with the stadholder, who, with
the consent of the States, gave them preliminary permission to take
refuge under the guns of Bergenop-Zoom, should they by chance be
hard pressed.
Thus throughout Europe a singular equilibrium of contending forces
seemed established. Before Ostend, where the chief struggle between
imperialism and republicanism had been proceeding for more than a
year with equal vigour, there seemed no possibility of a result. The
sands drank up the blood of the combatants on both sides, month after
month, in summer; the pestilence in town and camp mowed down
Catholic and Protestant with perfect impartiality during the winter,
while the remorseless ocean swept over all in its wrath, obliterating in
an hour the patient toil of months.
In Spain, in England, and Ireland; in Hungary, Germany, Sweden, and
Poland, men wrought industriously day by day and year by year, to
destroy each other, and to efface the products of human industry, and
yet no progress could fairly be registered. The Turk was in Buda, on the
right bank of the Danube, and the Christian in Pest, on the left, while
the crescent; but lately supplanted by the cross, again waved in triumph
over Stuhlweissenberg, capital city of the Magyars. The great Marshal
Biron, foiled in his stupendous treachery, had laid down his head upon
the block; the catastrophe following hard upon the madcap riot of Lord
Essex in the Strand and his tragic end. The troublesome and restless
favourites of Henry and of Elizabeth had closed their stormy career, but
the designs of the great king and the great queen were growing wider
and wilder, more false and more fantastic than ever, as the evening
shadows of both were lengthening.
But it was not in Europe nor in Christendom: alone during that twilight
epoch of declining absolutism, regal and sacerdotal, and the coming
glimmer of freedom, religious and commercial, that the contrast
between the old and new civilizations was exhibiting itself.
The same fishermen and fighting men, whom we have but lately seen
sailing forth from Zeeland and Friesland to confront the dangers of
either pole, were now