The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-59 | Page 9

arrange a pacification of
Europe as dramatically as he desired, in order that he might gather his
robes about him, and allow the curtain to fall upon his eventful history
in a grand hush of decorum and quiet. During the autumn and winter of
1555, hostilities had been virtually suspended, and languid negotiations
ensued. For several months armies confronted each other without
engaging, and diplomatists fenced among themselves without any
palpable result. At last the peace commissioners, who had been
assembled at Vaucelles since the beginning of the year 1556, signed a
treaty of truce rather than of peace, upon the 5th of February. It was to
be an armistice of five years, both by land and sea, for France, Spain,
Flanders, and Italy, throughout all the dominions of the French and
Spanish monarchs. The Pope was expressly included in the truce,
which was signed on the part of France by Admiral Coligny and
Sebastian l'Aubespine; on that of Spain, by Count de Lalain, Philibert
de Bruxelles, Simon Renard, and Jean Baptiste Sciceio, a jurisconsult
of Cremona. During the precious month of December, however, the
Pope had concluded with the French monarch a treaty, by which this
solemn armistice was rendered an egregious farce. While Henry's
plenipotentiaries had been plighting their faith to those of Philip, it had
been arranged that France should sustain, by subsidies and armies, the
scheme upon which Paul was bent, to drive the Spaniards entirely out
of the Italian peninsula. The king was to aid the pontiff, and, in return,
was to carve thrones for his own younger children out of the
confiscated realms of Philip. When was France ever slow to sweep
upon Italy with such a hope? How could the ever-glowing rivalry of

Valois and Habsburg fail to burst into a general conflagration, while the
venerable vicegerent of Christ stood thus beside them with his fan in
his hand?
For a brief breathing space, however, the news of the pacification
occasioned much joy in the provinces. They rejoiced even in a
temporary cessation of that long series of campaigns from which they
could certainly derive no advantage, and in which their part was to
furnish money, soldiers, and battlefields, without prospect of benefit
from any victory, however brilliant, or any treaty, however elaborate.
Manufacturing, agricultural and commercial provinces, filled to the full
with industrial life, could not but be injured by being converted into
perpetual camps. All was joy in the Netherlands, while at Antwerp, the
great commercial metropolis of the provinces and of Europe, the
rapture was unbounded. Oxen were roasted whole in the public squares;
the streets, soon to be empurpled with the best blood of her citizens, ran
red with wine; a hundred triumphal arches adorned the pathway of
Philip as he came thither; and a profusion of flowers, although it was
February, were strewn before his feet. Such was his greeting in the
light-hearted city, but the countenance was more than usually sullen
with which the sovereign received these demonstrations of pleasure. It
was thought by many that Philip had been really disappointed in the
conclusion of the armistice, that he was inspired with a spark of that
martial ambition for which his panegyrists gave him credit, and that
knowing full well the improbability of a long suspension of hostilities,
he was even eager for the chance of conquest which their resumption
would afford him. The secret treaty of the Pope was of course not so
secret but that the hollow intention of the contracting parties to the
truce of Vaucelles were thoroughly suspected; intentions which
certainly went far to justify the maxims and the practice of the new
governor-general of the Netherlands upon the subject of armistices.
Philip, understanding his position, was revolving renewed military
projects while his subjects were ringing merry bells and lighting
bonfires in the Netherlands. These schemes, which were to be carried
out in the immediate future, caused, however, a temporary delay in the
great purpose to which he was to devote his life.
The Emperor had always desired to regard the Netherlands as a whole,
and he hated the antiquated charters and obstinate privileges which

interfered with his ideas of symmetry. Two great machines, the court of
Mechlin and the inquisition, would effectually simplify and assimilate
all these irregular and heterogeneous rights. The civil tribunal was to
annihilate all diversities in their laws by a general cassation of their
constitutions, and the ecclesiastical court was to burn out all differences
in their religious faith. Between two such millstones it was thought that
the Netherlands might be crushed into uniformity. Philip succeeded to
these traditions. The father had never sufficient leisure to carry out all
his schemes, but it seemed probable that the son would be a worthy
successor, at least in all which concerned the