Holland - The History of the Netherlands | Page 6

by the refluent waters, and
which they catch in nets formed of rushes or seaweed. Neither tree nor
shrub is visible on these shores. The drink of the people is rain-water,
which they preserve with great care; their fuel, a sort of turf, which they
gather and form with the hand. And yet these unfortunate beings dare to
complain against their fate, when they fall under the power and are
incorporated with the empire of Rome!"
The picture of poverty and suffering which this passage presents is
heightened when joined to a description of the country. The coasts
consisted only of sand-banks or slime, alternately overflowed or left
imperfectly dry. A little further inland, trees were to be found, but on a
soil so marshy that an inundation or a tempest threw down whole
forests, such as are still at times discovered at either eight or ten feet
depth below the surface. The sea had no limits; the rivers no beds nor
banks; the earth no solidity; for according to an author of the third
century of our era, there was not, in the whole of too immense plain, a
spot of ground that did not yield under the footsteps of
man.--Eumenius.
It was not the same in the southern parts, which form at present the
Walloon country. These high grounds suffered much less from the
ravages of the waters. The ancient forest of the Ardennes, extending
from the Rhine to the Scheldt, sheltered a numerous though savage
population, which in all things resembled the Germans, from whom
they derived their descent. The chase and the occupations of rude
agriculture sufficed for the wants of a race less poor and less patient,
but more unsteady and ambitious, than the fishermen of the low lands.
Thus it is that history presents us with a tribe of warriors and
conquerors on the southern frontier of the country; while the scattered
inhabitants of the remaining parts seemed to have fixed there without a
contest, and to have traced out for themselves, by necessity and habit,
an existence which any other people must have considered
insupportable.

This difference in the nature of the soil and in the fate of the inhabitants
appears more striking when we consider the present situation of the
country. The high grounds, formerly so preferable, are now the least
valuable part of the kingdom, even as regards their agriculture; while
the ancient marshes have been changed by human industry into rich and
fertile tracts, the best parts of which are precisely those conquered from
the grasp of the ocean. In order to form an idea of the solitude and
desolation which once reigned where we now see the most richly
cultivated fields, the most thriving villages, and the wealthiest towns of
the continent, the imagination must go back to times which have not
left one monument of antiquity and scarcely a vestige of fact.
The history of the Netherlands is, then, essentially that of a patient and
industrious population struggling against every obstacle which nature
could oppose to its well-being; and, in this contest, man triumphed
most completely over the elements in those places where they offered
the greatest resistance. This extraordinary result was due to the hardy
stamp of character imprinted by suffering and danger on those who had
the ocean for their foe; to the nature of their country, which presented
no lure for conquest; and, finally, to the toleration, the justice, and the
liberty nourished among men left to themselves, and who found
resources in their social state which rendered change neither an object
of their wants nor wishes.
About half a century before the Christian era, the obscurity which
enveloped the north of Europe began to disperse; and the expedition of
Julius Cæsar gave to the civilized world the first notions of the
Netherlands, Germany, and England. Cæsar, after having subjugated
the chief part of Gaul, turned his arms against the warlike tribes of the
Ardennes, who refused to accept his alliance or implore his protection.
They were called Belgæ by the Romans; and at once pronounced the
least civilized and the bravest of the Gauls. Cæsar there found several
ignorant and poor but intrepid clans of warriors, who marched fiercely
to encounter him; and, notwithstanding their inferiority in numbers, in
weapons, and in tactics, they nearly destroyed the disciplined armies of
Rome. They were, however, defeated, and their country ravaged by the
invaders, who found less success when they attacked the natives of the

low grounds. The Menapians, a people who occupied the present
provinces of Flanders and Antwerp, though less numerous than those
whom the Romans had last vanquished, arrested their progress both by
open fight and by that petty and harassing contest--that warfare of the
people rather than of the soldiery--so well adapted to the