The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1577-78 | Page 3

promise that, according to the said Ghent
Pacification, they would suffer no attempt to be made against the public
repose or against the Catholic worship. He added that, as he had no
intention of usurping any superiority over the states-general assembled
at Brussels, he was content to leave the settlement of this point to their
free-will and wisdom, engaging himself neither to offer nor permit any
hindrance to their operations.
With this answer the deputies are said to have been well pleased. If
they were so, it must be confessed that they were thankful for small
favors. They had asked to have the Catholic religion introduced into
Holland and Zealand. The Prince had simply referred them to the
estates of these provinces. They had asked him to guarantee that the
exercise of the Reformed religion should not be "procured" in the rest
of the country. He had merely promised that the Catholic worship
should not be prevented. The difference between the terms of the
request and the reply was sufficiently wide.
The consent to his journey was with difficulty accorded by the estates
of Holland and Zealand, and his wife, with many tears and anxious
forebodings, beheld him depart for a capital where the heads of his
brave and powerful friends had fallen, and where still lurked so many
of his deadly foes. During his absence, prayers were offered daily for
his safety in all the churches of Holland and Zealand, by command of
the estates.
He arrived at Antwerp on the 17th of September, and was received with
extraordinary enthusiasm. The Prince, who had gone forth alone,
without even a bodyguard, had the whole population of the great city
for his buckler. Here he spent five days, observing, with many a sigh,
the melancholy changes which had taken place in the long interval of
his absence. The recent traces of the horrible "Fury," the blackened
walls of the Hotel de Ville, the prostrate ruins of the marble streets,
which he had known as the most imposing in Europe, could be hardly
atoned for in his eyes even by the more grateful spectacle of the
dismantled fortress.

On the 23rd of September he was attended by a vast concourse of
citizens to the new canal which led to Brussels, where three barges
were in waiting for himself and suite. In one a banquet was spread; in
the second, adorned with emblematic devices and draped with the
banners of the seventeen provinces, he was to perform the brief journey;
while the third had been filled by the inevitable rhetoric societies, with
all the wonders of their dramatic and plastic ingenuity. Rarely had such
a complication of vices and virtues, of crushed dragons, victorious
archangels, broken fetters, and resurgent nationalities, been seen before,
within the limits of a single canal boat. The affection was, however,
sincere, and the spirit noble, even though the taste which presided at
these remonstrations may have been somewhat pedantic.
The Prince was met several miles before the gates of Brussels by a
procession of nearly half the inhabitants of the city, and thus escorted,
he entered the capital in the afternoon of the 23rd of September. It was
the proudest day of his life. The representatives of all the provinces,
supported by the most undeniable fervor of the united Netherland
people, greeted "Father William." Perplexed, discordant, hating, fearing,
doubting, they could believe nothing, respect nothing, love nothing,
save the "tranquil" Prince. His presence at that moment in Brussels was
the triumph of the people and of religious toleration. He meant to make
use of the crisis to extend and to secure popular rights, and to establish
the supremacy of the states-general under the nominal sovereignty of
some Prince, who was yet to be selected, while the executive body was
to be a state-council, appointed by the states-general. So far as appears,
he had not decided as to the future protector, but he had resolved that it
should be neither himself nor Philip of Spain. The outlaw came to
Brussels prepared at last to trample out a sovereignty which had
worked its own forfeiture. So far as he had made any election within
his breast, his choice inclined to the miserable Duke of Anjou; a prince
whom he never came to know as posterity has known him, but whom
he at least learned to despise. Thus far the worthless and paltry intriguer
still wore the heroic mask, deceiving even such far seeing politicians as
Saint Aldegonde and the Prince.
William's first act was to put a stop to the negotiations already on foot
with Don John. He intended that they should lead to war, because peace
was impossible, except a peace for which civil and religious liberty

would be bartered, for it was idle, in his opinion, to expect the