The Revolt of The Netherlands, book 2 | Page 3

governed by kings. Educated
between the throne and the confessional, he knew of no other relation
between man and man than that of rule and subjection; and the innate
consciousness of his own superiority gave him a contempt for others.
His policy wanted pliability, the only virtue which was here
indispensable to its success. He was naturally overbearing and insolent,
and the royal authority only gave arms to the natural impetuosity of his
disposition and the imperiousness of his order. He veiled his own
ambition beneath the interests of the crown, and made the breach
between the nation and the king incurable, because it would render him
indispensable to the latter. He revenged on the nobility the lowliness of
his own origin; and, after the fashion of all those who have risen by
their own merits, he valued the advantages of birth below those by
which he had raised himself to distinction. The Protestants saw in him
their most implacable foe; to his charge were laid all the burdens which
oppressed the country, and they pressed the more heavily because they
came from him. Nay, he was even accused of having brought back to
severity the milder sentiments to which the urgent remonstrances of the

provinces had at last disposed the monarch. The Netherlands execrated
him as the most terrible enemy of their liberties, and the originator of
all the misery which subsequently came upon them.
1559. Philip had evidently left the provinces too soon. The new
measures of the government were still strange to the people, and could
receive sanction and authority from his presence alone; the new
machines which he had brought into play required to be kept in motion
by a dreaded and powerful hand, and to have their first movements
watched and regulated. He now exposed his minister to all the angry
passions of the people, who no longer felt restrained by the fetters of
the royal presence; and he delegated to the weak arm of a subject the
execution of projects in which majesty itself, with all its powerful
supports, might have failed.
The land, indeed, flourished; and a general prosperity appeared to
testify to the blessings of the peace which had so lately been bestowed
upon it. An external repose deceived the eye, for within raged all the
elements of discord. If the foundations of religion totter in a country
they totter not alone; the audacity which begins with things sacred ends
with things profane. The successful attack upon the hierarchy had
awakened a spirit of boldness, and a desire to assail authority in general,
and to test laws as well as dogmas--duties as well as opinions. The
fanatical boldness with which men had learned to discuss and decide
upon the affairs of eternity might change its subject matter; the
contempt for life and property which religious enthusiasm had taught
could metamorphose timid citizens into foolhardy rebels. A female
government of nearly forty years had given the nation room to assert
their liberty; continual wars, of which the Netherlands had been the
theatre, had introduced a license with them, and the right of the
stronger had usurped the place of law and order. The provinces were
filled with foreign adventurers and fugitives; generally men bound by
no ties of country, family, or property, who had brought with them
from their unhappy homes the seeds of insubordination and rebellion.
The repeated spectacles of torture and of death had rudely burst the
tenderer threads of moral feeling, and had given an unnatural harshness
to the national character.
Still the rebellion would have crouched timorously and silently on the
ground if it had not found a support in the nobility. Charles V. had

spoiled the Flemish nobles of the Netherlands by making them the
participators of his glory, by fostering their national pride, by the
marked preference he showed for them over the Castilian nobles, and
by opening an arena to their ambition in every part of his empire. In the
late war with France they had really deserved this preference from
Philip; the advantages which the king reaped from the peace of
Chateau- Cambray were for the most part the fruits of their valor, and
they now sensibly missed the gratitude on which they had so
confidently reckoned. Moreover, the separation of the German empire
from the Spanish monarchy, and the less warlike spirit of the new
government, had greatly narrowed their sphere of action, and, except in
their own country, little remained for them to gain. And Philip now
appointed his Spaniards where Charles V. had employed the Flemings.
All the passions which the preceding government had raised and kept
employed still survived in peace; and in default of a legitimate object
these unruly feelings found, unfortunately, ample scope in the
grievances of their country. Accordingly, the