The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 | Page 5

inspired as noble a
resistance to oppression here as it ever aroused in Grecian or Italian
breasts.

II.
It can never be satisfactorily ascertained who were the aboriginal
inhabitants. The record does not reach beyond Caesar's epoch, and he
found the territory on the left of the Rhine mainly tenanted by tribes of
the Celtic family. That large division of the Indo-European group
which had already overspread many portions of Asia Minor, Greece,
Germany, the British Islands, France, and Spain, had been long settled
in Belgic Gaul, and constituted the bulk of its population. Checked in
its westward movement by the Atlantic, its current began to flow
backwards towards its fountains, so that the Gallic portion of the
Netherland population was derived from the original race in its earlier
wanderings and from the later and refluent tide coming out of Celtic
Gaul. The modern appellation of the Walloons points to the affinity of
their ancestors with the Gallic, Welsh, and Gaelic family. The Belgae
were in many respects a superior race to most of their blood-allies.
They were, according to Caesar's testimony, the bravest of all the Celts.
This may be in part attributed to the presence of several German tribes,
who, at this period had already forced their way across the Rhine,
mingled their qualities with the Belgic material, and lent an additional
mettle to the Celtic blood. The heart of the country was thus inhabited
by a Gallic race, but the frontiers had been taken possession of by
Teutonic tribes.
When the Cimbri and their associates, about a century before our era,
made their memorable onslaught upon Rome, the early inhabitants of
the Rhine island of Batavia, who were probably Celts, joined in the
expedition. A recent and tremendous inundation had swept away their
miserable homes, and even the trees of the forests, and had thus
rendered them still more dissatisfied with their gloomy abodes. The
island was deserted of its population. At about the same period a civil
dissension among the Chatti--a powerful German race within the
Hercynian forest-- resulted in the expatriation of a portion of the people.
The exiles sought a new home in the empty Rhine island, called it

"Bet-auw," or "good-meadow," and were themselves called,
thenceforward, Batavi, or Batavians.
These Batavians, according to Tacitus, were the bravest of all the
Germans. The Chatti, of whom they formed a portion, were a
pre-eminently warlike race. "Others go to battle," says the historian,
"these go to war." Their bodies were more hardy, their minds more
vigorous, than those of other tribes. Their young men cut neither hair
nor beard till they had slain an enemy. On the field of battle, in the
midst of carnage and plunder, they, for the first time, bared their faces.
The cowardly and sluggish, only, remained unshorn. They wore an iron
ring, too, or shackle upon their necks until they had performed the same
achievement, a symbol which they then threw away, as the emblem of
sloth. The Batavians were ever spoken of by the Romans with entire
respect. They conquered the Belgians, they forced the free Frisians to
pay tribute, but they called the Batavians their friends. The tax-gatherer
never invaded their island. Honorable alliance united them with the
Romans. It was, however, the alliance of the giant and the dwarf. The
Roman gained glory and empire, the Batavian gained nothing but the
hardest blows. The Batavian cavalry became famous throughout the
Republic and the Empire. They were the favorite troops of Caesar, and
with reason, for it was their valor which turned the tide of battle at
Pharsalia. From the death of Julius down to the times of Vespasian, the
Batavian legion was the imperial body guard, the Batavian island the
basis of operations in the Roman wars with Gaul, Germany, and
Britain.
Beyond the Batavians, upon the north, dwelt the great Frisian family,
occupying the regions between the Rhine and Ems, The Zuyder Zee
and the Dollart, both caused by the terrific inundations of the thirteenth
century and not existing at this period, did not then interpose
boundaries between kindred tribes. All formed a homogeneous nation
of pure German origin.
Thus, the population of the country was partly Celtic, partly German.
Of these two elements, dissimilar in their tendencies and always
difficult to blend, the Netherland people has ever been compounded. A
certain fatality of history has perpetually helped to separate still more
widely these constituents, instead of detecting and stimulating the
elective affinities which existed. Religion, too, upon all great historical

occasions, has acted as the most powerful of dissolvents. Otherwise,
had so many valuable and contrasted characteristics been early fused
into a whole, it would be difficult to show a race more richly endowed
by Nature for dominion and progress than the Belgo-Germanic people.
Physically the