The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 | Page 4

although tottering to its fall; and has moreover, devoted
several chapters of his work upon Germany to a description of the most
remarkable Teutonic tribes of the Netherlands.
Geographically and ethnographically, the Low Countries belong both
to Gaul and to Germany. It is even doubtful to which of the two the
Batavian island, which is the core of the whole country, was reckoned
by the Romans. It is, however, most probable that all the land, with the
exception of Friesland, was considered a part of Gaul.
Three great rivers--the Rhine, the Meuse, and the Scheld--had
deposited their slime for ages among the dunes and sand banks heaved
up by the ocean around their mouths. A delta was thus formed,
habitable at last for man. It was by nature a wide morass, in which oozy
islands and savage forests were interspersed among lagoons and
shallows; a district lying partly below the level of the ocean at its
higher tides, subject to constant overflow from the rivers, and to
frequent and terrible inundations by the sea.
The Rhine, leaving at last the regions where its storied lapse, through
so many ages, has been consecrated alike by nature and art-by poetry
and eventful truth----flows reluctantly through the basalt portal of the
Seven Mountains into the open fields which extend to the German sea.
After entering this vast meadow, the stream divides itself into two
branches, becoming thus the two-horned Rhine of Virgil, and holds in
these two arms the island of Batavia.
The Meuse, taking its rise in the Vosges, pours itself through the
Ardennes wood, pierces the rocky ridges upon the southeastern frontier
of the Low Countries, receives the Sambre in the midst of that
picturesque anthracite basin where now stands the city of Namur, and
then moves toward the north, through nearly the whole length of the
country, till it mingles its waters with the Rhine.
The Scheld, almost exclusively a Belgian river, after leaving its
fountains in Picardy, flows through the present provinces of Flanders
and Hainault. In Caesar's time it was suffocated before reaching the sea
in quicksands and thickets, which long afforded protection to the
savage inhabitants against the Roman arms; and which the slow process
of nature and the untiring industry of man have since converted into the

archipelago of Zealand and South Holland. These islands were
unknown to the Romans.
Such were the rivers, which, with their numerous tributaries, coursed
through the spongy land. Their frequent overflow, when forced back
upon their currents by the stormy sea, rendered the country almost
uninhabitable. Here, within a half-submerged territory, a race of
wretched ichthyophagi dwelt upon terpen, or mounds, which they had
raised, like beavers, above the almost fluid soil. Here, at a later day, the
same race chained the tyrant Ocean and his mighty streams into
subserviency, forcing them to fertilize, to render commodious, to cover
with a beneficent network of veins and arteries, and to bind by watery
highways with the furthest ends of the world, a country disinherited by
nature of its rights. A region, outcast of ocean and earth, wrested at last
from both domains their richest treasures. A race, engaged for
generations in stubborn conflict with the angry elements, was
unconsciously educating itself for its great struggle with the still more
savage despotism of man.
The whole territory of the Netherlands was girt with forests. An
extensive belt of woodland skirted the sea-coast; reaching beyond the
mouths of the Rhine. Along the outer edge of this carrier, the dunes
cast up by the sea were prevented by the close tangle of thickets from
drifting further inward; and thus formed a breastwork which time and
art were to strengthen. The, groves of Haarlem and the Hague are relics
of this ancient forest. The Badahuenna wood, horrid with Druidic
sacrifices, extended along the eastern line of the vanished lake of Flevo.
The vast Hercynian forest, nine days' journey in breadth, closed in the
country on the German side, stretching from the banks of the Rhine to
the remote regions of the Dacians, in such vague immensity (says the
conqueror of the whole country) that no German, after traveling sixty
days, had ever reached, or even heard of; its commencement. On the
south, the famous groves of Ardennes, haunted by faun and satyr,
embowered the country, and separated it from Celtic Gaul.
Thus inundated by mighty rivers, quaking beneath the level of the
ocean, belted about by hirsute forests, this low land, nether land,
hollow land, or Holland, seemed hardly deserving the arms of the
all-accomplished Roman. Yet foreign tyranny, from the earliest ages,
has coveted this meagre territory as lustfully as it has sought to wrest

from their native possessors those lands with the fatal gift of beauty for
their dower; while the genius of liberty has