The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1574-84 | Page 9

the most ardent of
the Catholic Princes of France, and the one who at the conferences of
Bayonne had been most indignant at the Queen Dowager's hesitation to
unite heartily with the, schemes of Alva and Philip for the
extermination of the Huguenots. His daughter, a woman of beauty,
intelligence, and virtue, forced before the canonical age to take the
religious vows, had been placed in the convent of Joliarrs, of which she
had become Abbess. Always secretly inclined to the Reformed religion,
she had fled secretly from her cloister, in the year of horrors 1572, and
had found refuge at the court of the Elector Palatine, after which step
her father refused to receive her letters, to contribute a farthing to her
support, or even to acknowledge her claims upon him by a single line

or message of affection.
Under these circumstances the outcast princess, who had arrived at the
years of maturity, might be considered her own mistress, and she was
neither morally nor legally bound, when her hand was sought in
marriage by the great champion of the Reformation, to ask the consent
of a parent who loathed her religion and denied her existence. The
legality of the divorce from Anne of Saxony had been settled by a full
expression of the ecclesiastical authority which she most respected;
[Acte de, cinq Ministres du St. Evangile par lequel ils declarent le
mariage du Prince d'Orange etre legitime.--Archives, etc., v. 216- 226.]
the facts upon which the divorce had been founded having been proved
beyond peradventure.
Nothing, in truth, could well be more unfortunate in its results than the
famous Saxon marriage, the arrangements for which had occasioned so
much pondering to Philip, and so much diplomatic correspondence on
the part of high personages in Germany, the Netherlands, and Spain.
Certainly, it was of but little consequence to what church the unhappy
Princess belonged, and they must be lightly versed in history or in
human nature who can imagine these nuptials to have exercised any
effect upon the religious or political sentiments of Orange. The
Princess was of a stormy, ill-regulated nature; almost a lunatic from the
beginning. The dislike which succeeded to her fantastic fondness for
the Prince, as well as her general eccentricity, had soon become the talk
of all the court at Brussels. She would pass week after week without
emerging from her chamber, keeping the shutters closed and candles
burning, day and night. She quarrelled violently, with Countess Egmont
for precedence, so that the ludicrous contentions of the two ladies in
antechambers and doorways were the theme and the amusement of
society. Her insolence, not only in private but in public, towards her
husband became intolerable: "I could not do otherwise than bear it with
sadness and patience," said the Prince, with great magnanimity,
"hoping that with age would come improvement." Nevertheless, upon
one occasion, at a supper party, she had used such language in the
presence of Count Horn and many other nobles, "that all wondered that
he could endure the abusive terms which she applied to him."
When the clouds gathered about him, when he had become an exile and
a wanderer, her reproaches and her violence increased. The sacrifice of

their wealth, the mortgages and sales which he effected of his estates,
plate, jewels, and furniture, to raise money for the struggling country,
excited her bitter resentment. She separated herself from him by
degrees, and at last abandoned him altogether. Her temper became
violent to ferocity. She beat her servants with her hands and with clubs;
she threatened the lives of herself, of her attendants, of Count John of
Nassau, with knives and daggers, and indulged in habitual profanity
and blasphemy, uttering frightful curses upon all around. Her original
tendency to intemperance had so much increased, that she was often
unable to stand on her feet. A bottle of wine, holding more than a quart,
in the morning, and another in the evening, together with a pound of
sugar, was her usual allowance. She addressed letters to Alva
complaining that her husband had impoverished himself "in his
good-for-nothing Beggar war," and begging the Duke to furnish her
with a little ready money and with the means of arriving at the
possession of her dower.
An illicit connexion with a certain John Rubens, an exiled magistrate of
Antwerp, and father of the celebrated painter, completed the list of her
delinquencies, and justified the marriage of the Prince with Charlotte
de Bourbon. It was therefore determined by the Elector of Saxony and
the Landgrave William to remove her from the custody of the Nassaus.
This took place with infinite difficulty, at the close of the year 1575.
Already, in 1572; Augustus had proposed to the Landgrave that she
should be kept in solitary confinement, and that