The Life and Death of John of Barneveld, Advocate of Holland, 1609-15 | Page 6

The Republic was so integral a part of that system which divided
Europe into two great hostile camps according to creeds rather than
frontiers that the history of its foremost citizen touches at every point
the general history of Christendom.
The great peculiarity of the Dutch constitution at this epoch was that no
principle was absolutely settled. In throwing off a foreign tyranny and
successfully vindicating national independence the burghers and nobles
had not had leisure to lay down any organic law. Nor had the day for
profound investigation of the political or social contract arrived. Men
dealt almost exclusively with facts, and when the facts arranged
themselves illogically and incoherently the mischief was grave and
difficult to remedy. It is not a trifling inconvenience for an organized
commonwealth to be in doubt as to where, in whom, and of what nature
is its sovereignty. Yet this was precisely the condition of the United
Netherlands. To the eternal world so dazzling were the reputation and
the achievements of their great captain that he was looked upon by
many as the legitimate chief of the state and doubtless friendly
monarchs would have cordially welcomed him into their brotherhood.
During the war he had been surrounded by almost royal state. Two
hundred officers lived daily at his table. Great nobles and scions of
sovereign houses were his pupils or satellites. The splendour of military
despotism and the awe inspired by his unquestioned supremacy in what
was deemed the greatest of all sciences invested the person of Maurice
of Nassau with a grandeur which many a crowned potentate might envy.
His ample appointments united with the spoils of war provided him
with almost royal revenues, even before the death of his elder brother
Philip William had placed in his hands the principality and wealthy
possessions of Orange. Hating contradiction, arbitrary by instinct and
by military habit, impatient of criticism, and having long acknowledged
no master in the chief business of state, he found himself at the
conclusion of the truce with his great occupation gone, and, although

generously provided for by the treasury of the Republic, yet with an
income proportionately limited.
Politics and theology were fields in which he had hardly served an
apprenticeship, and it was possible that when he should step forward as
a master in those complicated and difficult pursuits, soon to absorb the
attention of the Commonwealth and the world, it might appear that war
was not the only science that required serious preliminary studies.
Meantime he found himself not a king, not the master of a nominal
republic, but the servant of the States-General, and the limited
stadholder of five out of seven separate provinces.
And the States-General were virtually John of Barneveld. Could
antagonism be more sharply defined? Jealousy, that potent principle
which controls the regular movements and accounts for the aberrations
of humanity in widest spheres as well as narrowest circles far more
generally and conclusively than philosophers or historians have been
willing to admit, began forthwith to manifest its subtle and irresistible
influence.
And there were not to be wanting acute and dangerous schemers who
saw their profit in augmenting its intensity.
The Seven Provinces, when the truce of twelve years had been signed,
were neither exhausted nor impoverished. Yet they had just emerged
from a forty years' conflict such as no people in human history had ever
waged against a foreign tyranny. They had need to repose and recruit,
but they stood among the foremost great powers of the day. It is not
easy in imagination to thrust back the present leading empires of the
earth into the contracted spheres of their not remote past. But to feel
how a little confederacy of seven provinces loosely tied together by an
ill- defined treaty could hold so prominent and often so controlling a
place in the European system of the seventeenth century, we must
remember that there was then no Germany, no Russia, no Italy, no
United States of America, scarcely even a Great Britain in the sense
which belongs to that mighty empire now.
France, Spain, England, the Pope, and the Emperor were the leading
powers with which the Netherlands were daily called on to solve great
problems and try conclusions; the study of political international
equilibrium, now rapidly and perhaps fortunately becoming one of the
lost arts, being then the most indispensable duty of kings and

statesmen.
Spain and France, which had long since achieved for themselves the
political union of many independent kingdoms and states into which
they had been divided were the most considerable powers and of
necessity rivals. Spain, or rather the House of Austria divided into its
two great branches, still pursued its persistent and by no means
fantastic dream of universal monarchy. Both Spain and France could
dispose of