The History of the Revolt of the Netherlands | Page 8

meeting the exigencies of the war, disappeared in the plundering hands

of his deputies.
What the latter were compelled to extort by the unnatural expedient of
terror, the nation would have been disposed to grant to the sovereign
majesty. That which made his ministers detested would have rendered
the monarch feared; for the abuse of hereditary power is less painfully
oppressive than the abuse of delegated authority. His presence would
have saved his exchequer thousands had he been nothing more than an
economical despot; and even had he been less, the awe of his person
would have preserved a territory which was lost through hatred and
contempt for his instruments.
In the same manner, as the oppression of the people of the Netherlands
excited the sympathy of all who valued their own rights, it might have
been expected that their disobedience and defection would have been a
call to all princes to maintain their own prerogatives in the case of their
neighbors. But jealousy of Spain got the better of political sympathies,
and the first powers of Europe arranged themselves more or less openly
on the side of freedom.
Although bound to the house of Spain by the ties of relationship, the
Emperor Maximilian II. gave it just cause for its charge against him of
secretly favoring the rebels. By the offer of his mediation he implicitly
acknowledged the partial justice of their complaints, and thereby
encouraged them to a resolute perseverance in their demands. Under an
emperor sincerely devoted to the interests of the Spanish house,
William of Orange could scarcely have drawn so many troops and so
much money from Germany. France, without openly and formally
breaking the peace, placed a prince of the blood at the head of the
Netherlandish rebels; and it was with French gold and French troops
that the operations of the latter were chiefly conducted. [2] Elizabeth of
England, too, did but exercise a just retaliation and revenge in
protecting the rebels against their legitimate sovereign; and although
her meagre and sparing aid availed no farther than to ward off utter ruin
from the republic, still even this was infinitely valuable at a moment
when nothing but hope could have supported their exhausted courage.
With both these powers Philip at the time was at peace, but both

betrayed him. Between the weak and the strong honesty often ceases to
appear a virtue; the delicate ties which bind equals are seldom observed
towards him whom all men fear. Philip had banished truth from
political intercourse; he himself had dissolved all morality between
kings, and had made artifice the divinity of cabinets. Without once
enjoying the advantages of his preponderating greatness, he had,
throughout life, to contend with the jealousy which it awakened in
others. Europe made him atone for the possible abuses of a power of
which in fact he never had the full possession.
If against the disparity between the two combatants, which, at first
sight, is so astounding, we weigh all the incidental circumstances which
were adverse to Spain, but favorable to the Netherlands, that which is
supernatural in this event will disappear, while that which is
extraordinary will still remain--and a just standard will be furnished by
which to estimate the real merit of these republicans in working out
their freedom. It must not, however, be thought that so accurate a
calculation of the opposing forces could have preceded the undertaking
itself, or that, on entering this unknown sea, they already knew the
shore on which they would ultimately be landed. The work did not
present itself to the mind of its originator in the exact form which it
assumed when completed, any more than the mind of Luther foresaw
the eternal separation of creeds when he began to oppose the sale of
indulgences. What a difference between the modest procession of those
suitors in Brussels, who prayed for a more humane treatment as a favor,
and the dreaded majesty of a free state, which treated with kings as
equals, and in less than a century disposed of the throne of its former
tyrant. The unseen hand of fate gave to the discharged arrow a higher
flight, and quite a different direction from that which it first received
from the bowstring. In the womb of happy Brabant that liberty had its
birth which, torn from its mother in its earliest infancy, was to gladden
the so despised Holland. But the enterprise must not be less thought of
because its issue differed from the first design. Man works up, smooths,
and fashions the rough stone which the times bring to him; the moment
and the instant may belong to him, but accident develops the history of
the world. If the passions which co-operated actively in bringing about
this event were only not unworthy of