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Title: The Rise of the Dutch Republic, Introduction I.
Author: John Lothrop Motley
Release Date: January, 2004 [EBook #4801]
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[This file was first posted on March 12, 2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
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MOTLEY'S HISTORY OF THE NETHERLANDS, PG EDITION, VOLUME 1.
THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC
A History
JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY, D.C.L., LL.D.
Corresponding Member of the Institute of France, Etc.
1855
[Etext Editor's Note: JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY, born in Dorchester, Mass.
1814, died 1877. Other works: Morton's Hopes and Merry Mount, novels.
Motley was the United States Minister to Austria, 1861-67, and the United
States Minister to England, 1869-70. Mark Twain mentions his respect
for John Motley. Oliver Wendell Holmes said in 'An Oration delivered
before the City Authorities of Boston' on the 4th of July, 1863:
"'It cannot be denied,'--says another observer, placed on one of our
national watch-towers in a foreign capital,--'it cannot be denied
that the tendency of European public opinion, as delivered from high
places, is more and more unfriendly to our cause; but the people,'
he adds, 'everywhere sympathize with us, for they know that our cause
is that of free institutions,--that our struggle is that of the
people against an oligarchy.' These are the words of the Minister to
Austria, whose generous sympathies with popular liberty no homage
paid to his genius by the class whose admiring welcome is most
seductive to scholars has ever spoiled; our fellow-citizen, the
historian of a great Republic which infused a portion of its life
into our own,--John Lothrop Motley." D.W.]
PREFACE
The rise of the Dutch Republic must ever be regarded as one of the
leading events of modern times. Without the birth of this great
commonwealth, the various historical phenomena of: the sixteenth and
following centuries must have either not existed; or have presented
themselves under essential modifications.--Itself an organized protest
against ecclesiastical tyranny and universal empire, the Republic guarded
with sagacity, at many critical periods in the world's history; that
balance of power which, among civilized states; ought always to be
identical with the scales of divine justice. The splendid empire of
Charles the Fifth was erected upon the grave of liberty. It is a
consolation to those who have hope in humanity to watch, under the reign
of his successor, the gradual but triumphant resurrection of the spirit
over which the sepulchre had so long been sealed. From the handbreadth
of territory called the province of Holland rises a power which wages
eighty years' warfare with the most potent empire upon earth, and which,
during the progress of the struggle, becoming itself a mighty state, and
binding about its own slender form a zone of the richest possessions of
earth, from pole to tropic, finally dictates its decrees to the empire of
Charles.
So much is each individual state but a member of one great international
commonwealth, and so close is the relationship between the whole human
family, that it is impossible for a nation, even while struggling for
itself, not to acquire something for all mankind. The maintenance of the
right by the little provinces of Holland and Zealand in the sixteenth, by
Holland and England united in the seventeenth, and by the United States
of America in the eighteenth centuries, forms but a single chapter in the
great volume of human fate; for the so-called revolutions of Holland,
England, and America, are all links of one chain.
To the Dutch Republic, even more than to Florence at an earlier day, is
the world indebted for practical instruction in that great science of
political equilibrium which must always become more and more important as
the various states of the civilized world are pressed more closely
together, and as the struggle for pre-eminence becomes more feverish and
fatal. Courage and skill in political and military combinations enabled
William the Silent to overcome the most powerful and unscrupulous monarch
of his age. The same hereditary audacity and fertility of genius placed
the destiny of Europe in the hands of William's great-grandson, and
enabled him to mould into an impregnable barrier the various elements of
opposition to the overshadowing monarchy of Louis XIV. As the schemes of
the Inquisition and the unparalleled tyranny of Philip, in one century,
led to the establishment of the Republic of the United Provinces, so, in
the next, the revocation of the Nantes Edict and the invasion of Holland
are avenged by the elevation of the Dutch stadholder upon the throne of
the stipendiary Stuarts.
To all who speak the English language; the history of the great agony
through which the Republic of Holland was ushered into life must have
peculiar interest, for it is a portion of the records of the Anglo-Saxon
race--essentially the same, whether in Friesland, England, or
Massachusetts.
A great naval and commercial commonwealth, occupying a small portion of
Europe but conquering a wide empire by the private enterprise of trading
companies, girdling the world with its innumerable dependencies in Asia,
America, Africa, Australia--exercising sovereignty in Brazil, Guiana, the
West Indies, New York, at the Cape of Good Hope, in Hindostan, Ceylon,
Java, Sumatra, New Holland--having first laid together, as it were, many
of the Cyclopean blocks, out of which the British realm, at a late:
period, has been constructed--must always be looked upon with interest by
Englishmen, as in a great measure the precursor in their own scheme of
empire.
For America the spectacle is one of still deeper import. The Dutch
Republic originated in the opposition of the rational elements of human
nature to sacerdotal dogmatism and persecution--in the courageous
resistance of historical and chartered liberty to foreign despotism.
Neither that liberty nor ours was born of the cloud-embraces of a false
Divinity with, a Humanity of impossible beauty, nor was the infant career
of either arrested in blood and tears by the madness of its worshippers.
"To maintain," not to overthrow, was the device of the Washington of the
sixteenth century, as it was the aim of our own hero and his great
contemporaries.
The great Western Republic, therefore--in whose Anglo-Saxon veins flows
much of that ancient and kindred blood received from the nation once
ruling a noble portion of its territory, and tracking its own political
existence to the same parent spring of temperate human liberty--must look
with affectionate interest upon the trials of the elder commonwealth.
These volumes recite the achievement of Dutch independence, for its
recognition was delayed till the acknowledgment was superfluous and
ridiculous. The existence of the Republic is properly to be dated from
the Union of Utrecht in 1581, while the final separation of territory
into independent and obedient provinces, into the Commonwealth of the
United States and the Belgian provinces of Spain, was in reality effected
by William the Silent, with whose death three years subsequently, the
heroic period of the history may be said to terminate. At this point
these volumes close. Another series, with less attention to minute
details, and carrying the story through a longer range of years, will
paint the progress of the Republic in its palmy days, and narrate the
establishment of, its external system of dependencies and its interior
combinations for self-government and European counterpoise. The lessons
of history and the fate of free states can never be sufficiently pondered
by those upon whom so large and heavy a responsibility for the
maintenance of rational human freedom rests.
I have only to add that this work is the result of conscientious
research, and of an earnest desire to arrive at the truth. I have
faithfully studied al1 the important contemporary chroniclers and later
historians--Dutch, Flemish, French, Italian, Spanish, or German.
Catholic and Protestant, Monarchist and Republican, have been consulted
with the same sincerity. The works of Bor (whose enormous but
indispensable folios form a complete magazine of contemporary state-
papers, letters, and pamphlets, blended together in mass, and connected
by a chain of artless but earnest narrative), of Meteren, De Thou,
Burgundius, Heuterus; Tassis, Viglius, Hoofd, Haraeus, Van der Haer,
Grotius-of Van der Vynckt, Wagenaer, Van Wyn, De Jonghe, Kluit, Van
Kampen, Dewez, Kappelle, Bakhuyzen, Groen van Prinsterer--of Ranke and
Raumer, have been as familiar to me as those of Mendoza, Carnero,
Cabrera, Herrera, Ulloa, Bentivoglio, Peres, Strada. The manuscript
relations of those Argus-eyed Venetian envoys who surprised so many
courts and cabinets in their most unguarded moments, and daguerreotyped
their character and policy for the instruction of the crafty Republic,
and whose reports remain such an inestimable source for the secret
history of the sixteenth century, have been carefully examined--
especially the narratives of the caustic and accomplished Badovaro, of
Suriano, and Michele. It is unnecessary to add that all the publications
of M. Gachard--particularly the invaluable correspondence of Philip II.
and of William the Silent, as well as the "Archives et Correspondence" of
the Orange Nassau family, edited by the learned and distinguished Groen
van Prinsterer, have been my constant guides through the tortuous
labyrinth of Spanish and Netherland politics. The large and most
interesting series of pamphlets known as "The Duncan Collection," in the
Royal Library at the Hague, has also afforded a great variety of details
by which I have endeavoured to give color and interest to the narrative.
Besides these, and many other printed works, I have also had the
advantage of perusing many manuscript histories, among which may be
particularly mentioned the works of Pontua Payen, of Renom de France, and
of Pasquier de la Barre; while the vast collection of unpublished
documents in the Royal Archives of the Hague, of Brussels, and of
Dresden, has furnished me with much new matter of great importance.
I venture to hope that many years of labour, a portion of them in the
archives of those countries whose history forms the object of my study,
will not have been entirely in vain; and that the lovers of human
progress, the believers in the capacity of nations for self-government
and self-improvement, and the admirers of disinterested human genius and
virtue, may find encouragement for their views in the detailed history of
an heroic people in its most eventful period, and in the life and death
of the great man whose name and fame are identical with those of his
country.
No apology is offered for this somewhat personal statement. When an
unknown writer asks the attention of the public upon an important theme,
he is not only authorized, but required, to show, that by industry and
earnestness he has entitled himself to a hearing. The author too keenly
feels that he has no further claims than these, and he therefore most
diffidently asks for his work the indulgence of his readers.
I would take this opportunity of expressing my gratitude to Dr. Klemm,
Hofrath and Chief Librarian at Dresden, and to Mr. Von Weber,
Ministerial-rath and Head of the Royal Archives of Saxony, for the
courtesy and kindness extended to me so uniformly during the course of my
researches in that city. I would also speak a word of sincere thanks to
Mr. Campbell, Assistant Librarian at the Hague, for his numerous acts of
friendship during the absence of, his chief, M. Holtrop. To that most
distinguished critic and historian, M. Bakhuyzen van den Brinck, Chief
Archivist of the Netherlands, I am under deep obligations for advice,
instruction, and constant kindness, during my residence at the Hague; and
I would also signify my sense of the courtesy of Mr. Charter-Master de
Schwane, and of the accuracy with which copies of MSS. in the archives
were prepared for me by his care. Finally, I would allude in the
strongest language of gratitude and respect to M. Gachard, Archivist-
General of Belgium, for his unwearied courtesy and manifold acts of
kindness to me during my studies in the Royal Archives of Brussels.
THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC
HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION.
Part 1.
I.
The north-western corner of the vast plain which extends from the German
ocean to the Ural mountains, is occupied by the countries called the
Netherlands. This small triangle, enclosed between France, Germany, and
the sea, is divided by the modern kingdoms of Belgium and Holland into
two nearly equal portions. Our earliest information concerning this
territory is derived from the Romans. The wars waged by that nation with
the northern barbarians have rescued the damp island of Batavia, with its
neighboring morasses, from the obscurity in which they might have
remained for ages, before any thing concerning land or people would have
been made known by the native inhabitants. Julius Caesar has saved from,
oblivion the heroic savages who fought against his legions in defence of
their dismal homes with ferocious but unfortunate patriotism; and the
great poet of England, learning from the conqueror's Commentaries the
name of the boldest tribe, has kept the Nervii, after almost twenty
centuries, still fresh and familiar in our ears.
Tacitus, too, has described with singular minuteness the struggle between
the people of these regions and the power of Rome, overwhelming, 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 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 two races resembled each other. Both were of vast
stature. The gigantic Gaul derided the Roman soldiers as a band of
pigmies. The German excited astonishment by his huge body and muscular
limbs. Both were fair, with fierce blue eyes, but the Celt had yellow
hair floating over his shoulders, and the German long locks of fiery red,
which he even dyed with woad to heighten the favorite color, and wore
twisted into a war-knot upon the top of his head. Here the German's love
of finery ceased. A simple tunic fastened at his throat with a thorn,
while his other garments defined and gave full play to his limbs,
completed his costume. The Gaul, on the contrary, was so fond of dress
that the Romans divided his race respectively into long-haired, breeched,
and gowned Gaul; (Gallia comata, braccata, togata). He was fond of
brilliant and parti-colored clothes, a taste which survives in the
Highlander's costume. He covered his neck and arms with golden chains.
The simple and ferocious German wore no decoration save his iron ring,
from which his first homicide relieved him. The Gaul was irascible,
furious in his wrath, but less formidable in a sustained conflict with a
powerful foe. "All the Gauls are of very high stature," says a soldier
who fought under Julian. (Amm. Marcel. xv. 12. 1). "They are white,
golden-haired, terrible in the fierceness of their eyes, greedy of
quarrels, bragging and insolent. A band of strangers could not resist
one of them in a brawl, assisted by his strong blue-eyed wife, especially
when she begins, gnashing her teeth, her neck swollen, brandishing her
vast and snowy arms, and kicking with her heels at the same time, to
deliver her fisticuffs, like bolts from the twisted strings of a
catapult. The voices of many are threatening and formidable. They are
quick to anger, but quickly appeased. All are clean in their persons;
nor among them is ever seen any man or woman, as elsewhere, squalid in
ragged garments. At all ages they are apt for military service. The old
man goes forth to the fight with equal strength of breast, with limbs as
hardened by cold and assiduous labor, and as contemptuous of all dangers,
as the young. Not one of them, as in Italy is often the case, was ever
known to cut off his thumbs to avoid the service of Mars."
The polity of each race differed widely from that of the other. The
government of both may be said to have been republican, but the Gallic
tribes were aristocracies, in which the influence of clanship was a
predominant feature; while the German system, although nominally regal,
was in reality democratic. In Gaul were two orders, the nobility and the
priesthood, while the people, says Caesar, were all slaves. The knights
or nobles were all trained to arms. Each went forth to battle, followed
by his dependents, while a chief of all the clans was appointed to take
command during the war. The prince or chief governor was elected
annually, but only by the nobles. The people had no rights at all, and
were glad to assign themselves as slaves to any noble who was strong
enough to protect them. In peace the Druids exercised the main functions
of government. They decided all controversies, civil and criminal. To
rebel against their decrees was punished by exclusion from the
sacrifices--a most terrible excommunication, through which the criminal
was cut off from all intercourse with his fellow-creatures.
With the Germans, the sovereignty resided in the great assembly of the
people. There were slaves, indeed, but in small number, consisting
either of prisoners of war or of those unfortunates who had gambled away
their liberty in games of chance. Their chieftains, although called by
the Romans princes and kings, were, in reality, generals, chosen by
universal suffrage. Elected in the great assembly to preside in war,
they were raised on the shoulders of martial freemen, amid wild battle
cries and the clash of spear and shield. The army consisted entirely of
volunteers, and the soldier was for life infamous who deserted the field
while his chief remained alive. The same great assembly elected the
village magistrates and decided upon all important matters both of peace
and war. At the full of the moon it was usually convoked. The nobles
and the popular delegates arrived at irregular intervals, for it was an
inconvenience arising from their liberty, that two or three days were
often lost in waiting for the delinquents. All state affairs were in the
hands of this fierce democracy. The elected chieftains had rather
authority to persuade than power to command.
The Gauls were an agricultural people. They were not without many arts
of life. They had extensive flocks and herds; and they even exported
salted provisions as far as Rome. The truculent German, Ger-mane,
Heer-mann, War-man, considered carnage the only useful occupation,
and despised agriculture as enervating and ignoble. It was base, in his
opinion, to gain by sweat what was more easily acquired by blood. The
land was divided annually by the magistrates, certain farms being
assigned to certain families, who were forced to leave them at the
expiration of the year. They cultivated as a common property the lands
allotted by the magistrates, but it was easier to summon them to the
battle-field than to the plough. Thus they were more fitted for the
roaming and conquering life which Providence was to assign to them for
ages, than if they had become more prone to root themselves in the soil.
The Gauls built towns and villages. The German built his solitary hut
where inclination prompted. Close neighborhood was not to his taste.
In their system of religion the two races were most widely contrasted.
The Gauls were a priest-ridden race. Their Druids were a dominant caste,
presiding even over civil affairs, while in religious matters their
authority was despotic. What were the principles of their wild Theology
will never be thoroughly ascertained, but we know too much of its
sanguinary rites. The imagination shudders to penetrate those shaggy
forests, ringing with the death-shrieks of ten thousand human victims,
and with the hideous hymns chanted by smoke-and-blood-stained priests to
the savage gods whom they served.
The German, in his simplicity, had raised himself to a purer belief than
that of the sensuous Roman or the superstitious Gaul. He believed in a
single, supreme, almighty God, All-Vater or All-father. This Divinity
was too sublime to be incarnated or imaged, too infinite to be enclosed
in temples built with hands. Such is the Roman's testimony to the lofty
conception of the German. Certain forests were consecrated to the unseen
God whom the eye of reverent faith could alone behold. Thither, at
stated times, the people repaired to worship. They entered the sacred
grove with feet bound together, in token of submission. Those who fell
were forbidden to rise, but dragged themselves backwards on the ground.
Their rules were few and simple. They had no caste of priests, nor were
they, when first known to the Romans, accustomed to offer sacrifice. It
must be confessed that in a later age, a single victim, a criminal or a
prisoner, was occasionally immolated. The purity of their religion was
soon stained by their Celtic neighborhood. In the course of the Roman
dominion it became contaminated, and at last profoundly depraved. The
fantastic intermixture of Roman mythology with the gloomy but modified
superstition of Romanized Celts was not favorable to the simple character
of German theology. The entire extirpation, thus brought about, of any
conceivable system of religion, prepared the way for a true revelation.
Within that little river territory, amid those obscure morasses of the
Rhine and Scheld, three great forms of religion--the sanguinary
superstition of the Druid, the sensuous polytheism of the Roman, the
elevated but dimly groping creed of the German, stood for centuries, face
to face, until, having mutually debased and destroyed each other, they
all faded away in the pure light of Christianity.
Thus contrasted were Gaul and German in religious and political systems.
The difference was no less remarkable in their social characteristics.
The Gaul was singularly unchaste. The marriage state was almost unknown.
Many tribes lived in most revolting and incestuous concubinage; brethren,
parents, and children, having wives in common. The German was loyal as
the Celt was dissolute. Alone among barbarians, he contented himself
with a single wife, save that a few dignitaries, from motives of policy,
were permitted a larger number. On the marriage day the German offered
presents to his bride--not the bracelets and golden necklaces with which
the Gaul adorned his fair-haired concubine, but oxen and a bridled horse,
a sword, a shield, and a spear-symbols that thenceforward she was to
share his labors and to become a portion of himself.
They differed, too, in the honors paid to the dead. The funerals of the
Gauls were pompous. Both burned the corpse, but the Celt cast into the
flames the favorite animals, and even the most cherished slaves and
dependents of the master. Vast monuments of stone or piles of earth were
raised above the ashes of the dead. Scattered relics of the Celtic age
are yet visible throughout Europe, in these huge but unsightly memorials,
The German was not ambitious at the grave. He threw neither garments nor
odors upon the funeral pyre, but the arms and the war-horse of the
departed were burned and buried with him.
The turf was his only sepulchre, the memory of his valor his only
monument. Even tears were forbidden to the men. "It was esteemed
honorable," says the historian, "for women to lament, for men to
remember."
The parallel need be pursued no further. Thus much it was necessary to
recall to the historical student concerning the prominent characteristics
by which the two great races of the land were distinguished:
characteristics which Time has rather hardened than effaced. In the
contrast and the separation lies the key to much of their history. Had
Providence permitted a fusion of the two races, it is, possible, from
their position, and from the geographical and historical link which they
would have afforded to the dominant tribes of Europe, that a world-empire
might have been the result, different in many respects from any which has
ever arisen. Speculations upon what might have been are idle. It is
well, however; to ponder the many misfortunes resulting from a mutual
repulsion, which, under other circumstances and in other spheres, has
been exchanged for mutual attraction and support.
It is now necessary to sketch rapidly the political transformations
undergone by the country, from the early period down to the middle of the
sixteenth century; the epoch when the long agony commenced, out of which
the Batavian republic was born.
III.
The earliest chapter in the history of the Netherlands was written by
their conqueror. Celtic Gaul is already in the power of Rome; the Belgic
tribes, alarmed at the approaching danger, arm against the universal,
tyrant. Inflammable, quick to strike, but too fickle to prevail against
so powerful a foe, they hastily form a league of almost every clan. At
the first blow of Caesar's sword, the frail confederacy falls asunder
like a rope of sand. The tribes scatter in all directions.
Nearly all are soon defeated, and sue for mercy. The Nervii, true to the
German blood in their, veins, swear to die rather than surrender. They,
at least, are worthy of their cause. Caesar advances against them at the
head of eight legions. Drawn up on the banks of the Sambre, they await
the Roman's approach. In three days' march Caesar comes up with them,
pitches his camp upon a steep hill sloping down to the river, and sends
some cavalry across. Hardly have the Roman horsemen crossed the stream,
than the Nervii rush from the wooded hill-top, overthrow horse and rider,
plunge in one great mass into the current, and, directly afterwards, are
seen charging up the hill into the midst of the enemy's force. "At the
same moment," says the conqueror, "they seemed in the wood, in the river,
and within our lines." There is a panic among the Romans, but it is
brief. Eight veteran Roman legions, with the world's victor at their
head, are too much for the brave but undisciplined Nervii. Snatching a
shield from a soldier, and otherwise unarmed, Caesar throws himself into
the hottest of the fight. The battle rages foot to foot and hand to hand
but the hero's skill, with the cool valor of his troops, proves
invincible as ever. The Nervii, true to their vow, die, but not a man
surrenders. They fought upon that day till the ground was heaped with
their dead, while, as the foremost fell thick and fast, their comrades,
says the Roman, sprang upon their piled-up bodies, and hurled their
javelins at the enemy as from a hill. They fought like men to whom life
without liberty was a curse. They were not defeated, but exterminated.
Of many thousand fighting men went home but five hundred. Upon reaching
the place of refuge where they had bestowed their women and children,
Caesar found, after the battle, that there were but three of their
senators left alive. So perished the Nervii. Caesar commanded his
legions to treat with respect the little remnant of the tribe which had
just fallen to swell the empty echo of his glory, and then, with hardly a
breathing pause, he proceeded to annihilate the Aduatici, the Menapii,
and the Morini.
Gaul being thus pacified, as, with sublime irony, he expresses himself
concerning a country some of whose tribes had been annihilated, some sold
as slaves, and others hunted to their lairs like beasts of prey, the
conqueror departed for Italy. Legations for peace from many German races
to Rome were the consequence of these great achievements. Among others
the Batavians formed an alliance with the masters of the world. Their
position was always an honorable one. They were justly proud of paying
no tribute, but it was, perhaps, because they had nothing to pay. They
had few cattle, they could give no hides and horns like the Frisians, and
they were therefore allowed to furnish only their blood. From this time
forth their cavalry, which was the best of Germany, became renowned in
the Roman army upon every battle-field of Europe.
It is melancholy, at a later moment, to find the brave Batavians
distinguished in the memorable expedition of Germanicus to crush the
liberties of their German kindred. They are forever associated with the
sublime but misty image of the great Hermann, the hero, educated in Rome,
and aware of the colossal power of the empire, who yet, by his genius,
valor, and political adroitness, preserved for Germany her nationality,
her purer religion, and perhaps even that noble language which her late-
flowering literature has rendered so illustrious--but they are associated
as enemies, not as friends.
Galba, succeeding to the purple upon the suicide of Nero, dismissed the
Batavian life-guards to whom he owed his elevation. He is murdered, Otho
and Vitellius contend for the succession, while all eyes are turned upon
the eight Batavian regiments. In their hands the scales of empire seem
to rest. They declare for Vitellius, and the civil war begins. Otho is
defeated; Vitellius acknowledged by Senate and people. Fearing, like his
predecessors, the imperious turbulence of the Batavian legions, he, too,
sends them into Germany. It was the signal for a long and extensive
revolt, which had well nigh overturned the Roman power in Gaul and Lower
Germany.
IV.
Claudius Civilis was a Batavian of noble race, who had served twenty-five
years in the Roman armies. His Teutonic name has perished, for, like
most savages who become denizens of a civilized state, he had assumed an
appellation in the tongue of his superiors. He was a soldier of fortune,
and had fought wherever the Roman eagles flew. After a quarter of a
century's service he was sent in chains to Rome, and his brother
executed, both falsely charged with conspiracy. Such were the triumphs
adjudged to Batavian auxiliaries. He escaped with life, and was disposed
to consecrate what remained of it to a nobler cause. Civilis was no
barbarian. Like the German hero Arminius, he had received a Roman
education, and had learned the degraded condition of Rome. He knew the
infamous vices of her rulers; he retained an unconquerable love for
liberty and for his own race. Desire to avenge his own wrongs was
mingled with loftier motives in his breast. He knew that the sceptre was
in the gift of the Batavian soldiery. Galba had been murdered, Otho had
destroyed himself, and Vitellius, whose weekly gluttony cost the empire
more gold than would have fed the whole Batavian population and converted
their whole island-morass into fertile pastures, was contending for the
purple with Vespasian, once an obscure adventurer like Civilis himself,
and even his friend and companion in arms. It seemed a time to strike a
blow for freedom.
By his courage, eloquence, and talent for political combinations,
Civilis effected a general confederation of all the Netherland tribes,
both Celtic and German. For a brief moment there was a united people, a
Batavian commonwealth. He found another source of strength in German
superstition. On the banks of the Lippe, near its confluence with the
Rhine, dwelt the Virgin Velleda, a Bructerian weird woman, who exercised
vast influence over the warriors of her nation. Dwelling alone in a
lofty tower, shrouded in a wild forest, she was revered as an oracle.
Her answers to the demands of her worshippers concerning future events
were delivered only to a chosen few. To Civilis, who had formed a close
friendship with her, she promised success, and the downfall of the Roman
world. Inspired by her prophecies, many tribes of Germany sent large
subsidies to the Batavian chief.
The details of the revolt have been carefully preserved by Tacitus, and
form one of his grandest and most elaborate pictures. The spectacle of a
brave nation, inspired by the soul of one great man and rising against an
overwhelming despotism, will always speak to the heart, from generation
to generation. The battles, the sieges, the defeats, the indomitable
spirit of Civilis, still flaming most brightly when the clouds were
darkest around him, have been described by the great historian in his
most powerful manner. The high-born Roman has thought the noble
barbarian's portrait a subject worthy his genius.
The struggle was an unsuccessful one. After many victories and many
overthrows, Civilis was left alone. The Gallic tribes fell off, and sued
for peace. Vespasian, victorious over Vitellius, proved too powerful for
his old comrade. Even the Batavians became weary of the hopeless
contest, while fortune, after much capricious hovering, settled at last
upon the Roman side. The imperial commander Cerialis seized the moment
when the cause of the Batavian hero was most desperate to send emissaries
among his tribe, and even to tamper with the mysterious woman whose
prophecies had so inflamed his imagination. These intrigues had their
effect. The fidelity of the people was sapped; the prophetess fell away
from her worshipper, and foretold ruin to his cause. The Batavians
murmured that their destruction was inevitable, that one nation could not
arrest the slavery which was destined for the whole world. How large a
part of the human race were the Batavians? What were they in a contest
with the whole Roman empire? Moreover, they were not oppressed with
tribute. They were only expected to furnish men and valor to their proud
allies. It was the next thing to liberty. If they were to have rulers,
it was better to serve a Roman emperor than a German witch.
Thus murmured the people. Had Civilis been successful, he would have
been deified; but his misfortunes, at last, made him odious in spite of
his heroism. But the Batavian was not a man to be crushed, nor had he
lived so long in the Roman service to be outmatched in politics by the
barbarous Germans. He was not to be sacrificed as a peace-offering to
revengeful Rome. Watching from beyond the Rhine the progress of
defection and the decay of national enthusiasm, he determined to be
beforehand with those who were now his enemies. He accepted the offer of
negotiation from Cerialis. The Roman general was eager to grant a full
pardon, and to re-enlist so brave a soldier in the service of the empire.
A colloquy was agreed upon. The bridge across the Nabalia was broken
asunder in the middle, and Cerialis and Civilis met upon the severed
sides. The placid stream by which Roman enterprise had connected the
waters of the Rhine with the lake of Flevo, flowed between the imperial
commander and the rebel chieftain.
***********************************************
Here the story abruptly terminates. The remainder of the Roman's
narrative is lost, and upon that broken bridge the form of the Batavian
hero disappears forever. His name fades from history: not a syllable is
known of his subsequent career; every thing is buried in the profound
oblivion which now steals over the scene where he was the most imposing
actor.
The soul of Civilis had proved insufficient to animate a whole people;
yet it was rather owing to position than to any personal inferiority,
that his name did not become as illustrious as that of Hermann. The
German patriot was neither braver nor wiser than the Batavian, but he
had the infinite forests of his fatherland to protect him. Every legion
which plunged into those unfathomable depths was forced to retreat
disastrously, or to perish miserably. Civilis was hemmed in by the
ocean; his country, long the basis of Roman military operations, was
accessible by river and canal, The patriotic spirit which he had for a
moment raised, had abandoned him; his allies had deserted him; he stood
alone and at bay, encompassed by the hunters, with death or surrender as
his only alternative. Under such circumstances, Hermann could not have
shown more courage or conduct, nor have terminated the impossible
struggle with greater dignity or adroitness.
The contest of Civilis with Rome contains a remarkable foreshadowing of
the future conflict with Spain, through which the Batavian republic,
fifteen centuries later, was to be founded. The characters, the events,
the amphibious battles, desperate sieges, slippery alliances, the traits
of generosity, audacity and cruelty, the generous confidence, the broken
faith seem so closely to repeat themselves, that History appears to
present the self-same drama played over and over again, with but a change
of actors and of costume. There is more than a fanciful resemblance
between Civilis and William the Silent, two heroes of ancient German
stock, who had learned the arts of war and peace in the service of a
foreign and haughty world-empire. Determination, concentration of
purpose, constancy in calamity, elasticity almost preternatural, self-
denial, consummate craft in political combinations, personal fortitude,
and passionate patriotism, were the heroic elements in both. The
ambition of each was subordinate to the cause which he served. Both
refused the crown, although each, perhaps, contemplated, in the sequel,
a Batavian realm of which he would have been the inevitable chief.
Both offered the throne to a Gallic prince, for Classicus was but the
prototype of Anjou, as Brinno of Brederode, and neither was destined,
in this world, to see his sacrifices crowned with success.
The characteristics of the two great races of the land portrayed
themselves in the Roman and the Spanish struggle with much the same
colors. The Southrons, inflammable, petulant, audacious, were the first
to assault and to defy the imperial power in both revolts, while the
inhabitants of the northern provinces, slower to be aroused, but of more
enduring wrath, were less ardent at the commencement, but; alone,
steadfast at the close of the contest. In both wars the southern Celts
fell away from the league, their courageous but corrupt chieftains having
been purchased with imperial gold to bring about the abject submission of
their followers; while the German Netherlands, although eventually
subjugated by Rome, after a desperate struggle, were successful in the
great conflict with Spain, and trampled out of existence every vestige
of her authority. The Batavian republic took its rank among the leading
powers of the earth; the Belgic provinces remained Roman, Spanish,
Austrian property.
V.
Obscure but important movements in the regions of eternal twilight,
revolutions, of which history has been silent, in the mysterious depths
of Asia, outpourings of human rivets along the sides of the Altai
mountains, convulsions up-heaving r mote realms and unknown dynasties,
shock after shock throb bing throughout the barbarian world and dying
upon the edge of civilization, vast throes which shake the earth as
precursory pangs to the birth of a new empire--as dying symptoms of the
proud but effete realm which called itself the world; scattered hordes of
sanguinary, grotesque savages pushed from their own homes, and hovering
with vague purposes upon the Roman frontier, constantly repelled and
perpetually reappearing in ever-increasing swarms, guided thither by a
fierce instinct, or by mysterious laws--such are the well known phenomena
which preceded the fall of western Rome. Stately, externally powerful,
although undermined and putrescent at the core, the death-stricken empire
still dashed back the assaults of its barbarous enemies.
During the long struggle intervening between the age of Vespasian and
that of Odoacer, during all the preliminary ethnographical revolutions
which preceded the great people's wandering, the Netherlands remained
subject provinces. Their country was upon the high road which led the
Goths to Rome. Those low and barren tracts were the outlying marches of
the empire. Upon that desolate beach broke the first surf from the
rising ocean of German freedom which was soon to overwhelm Rome. Yet,
although the ancient landmarks were soon well nigh obliterated, the
Netherlands still remained faithful to the Empire, Batavian blood was
still poured out for its defence.
By the middle of the fourth century, the Franks and Allemanians, alle-
mannez, all-men, a mass of united Germans are defeated by the Emperor
Julian at Strasburg, the Batavian cavalry, as upon many other great
occasions, saving the day for despotism. This achievement, one of the
last in which the name appears upon historic record, was therefore as
triumphant for the valor as it was humiliating to the true fame of the
nation. Their individuality soon afterwards disappears, the race having
been partly exhausted in the Roman service, partly merged in the Frank
and Frisian tribes who occupy the domains of their forefathers.
For a century longer, Rome still retains its outward form, but the
swarming nations are now in full career. The Netherlands are
successively or simultaneously trampled by Franks, Vandals, Alani, Suevi,
Saxons, Frisians, and even Sclavonians, as the great march of Germany to
universal empire, which her prophets and bards had foretold, went
majestically forward. The fountains of the frozen North were opened,
the waters prevailed, but the ark of Christianity floated upon the flood.
As the deluge assuaged, the earth had returned to chaos, the last pagan
empire had been washed out of existence, but the dimly, groping,
faltering, ignorant infancy of Christian Europe had begun.
After the wanderings had subsided, the Netherlands are found with much
the same ethnological character as before. The Frank dominion has
succeeded the Roman, the German stock preponderates over the Celtic, but
the national ingredients, although in somewhat altered proportions,
remain essentially the same. The old Belgae, having become Romanized in
tongue and customs, accept the new Empire of the Franks. That people,
however, pushed from their hold of the Rhine by thickly thronging hordes
of Gepidi, Quadi, Sarmati, Heruli, Saxons, Burgundians, move towards the
South and West. As the Empire falls before Odoacer, they occupy Celtic
Gaul with the Belgian portion of the Netherlands; while the Frisians,
into which ancient German tribe the old Batavian element has melted, not
to be extinguished, but to live a renovated existence, the "free
Frisians;" whose name is synonymous with liberty, nearest blood relations
of the Anglo-Saxon race, now occupy the northern portion, including the
whole future European territory of the Dutch republic.
The history of the Franks becomes, therefore, the history of the
Netherlands. The Frisians struggle, for several centuries, against their
dominion, until eventually subjugated by Charlemagne. They even encroach
upon the Franks in Belgic Gaul, who are determined not to yield their
possessions. Moreover, the pious Merovingian faineans desire to plant
Christianity among the still pagan Frisians. Dagobert, son of the second
Clotaire, advances against them as far as the Weser, takes possession of
Utrecht, founds there the first Christian church in Friesland, and
establishes a nominal dominion over the whole country.
Yet the feeble Merovingians would have been powerless against rugged
Friesland, had not their dynasty already merged in that puissant family
of Brabant, which long wielded their power before it assumed their crown.
It was Pepin of Heristal, grandson of the Netherlander, Pepin of Landen,
who conquered the Frisian Radbod (A.D. 692), and forced him to exchange
his royal for the ducal title.
It was Pepin's bastard, Charles the Hammer, whose tremendous blows
completed his father's work. The new mayor of the palace soon drove the
Frisian chief into submission, and even into Christianity. A bishop's
indiscretion, however, neutralized the apostolic blows of the mayor. The
pagan Radbod had already immersed one of his royal legs in the baptismal
font, when a thought struck him. "Where are my dead forefathers at
present?" he said, turning suddenly upon Bishop Wolfran. "In Hell, with
all other unbelievers," was the imprudent answer. "Mighty well," replied
Radbod, removing his leg, "then will I rather feast with my ancestors in
the halls of Woden, than dwell with your little starveling hand of
Christians in Heaven." Entreaties and threats were unavailing. The
Frisian declined positively a rite which was to cause an eternal
separation from his buried kindred, and he died as he had lived, a
heathen. His son, Poppa, succeeding to the nominal sovereignty, did not
actively oppose the introduction of Christianity among his people, but
himself refused to be converted. Rebelling against the Frank dominion,
he was totally routed by Charles Martell in a great battle (A.D.750) and
perished with a vast number of Frisians. The Christian dispensation,
thus enforced, was now accepted by these northern pagans. The
commencement of their conversion had been mainly the work of their
brethren from Britain. The monk Wilfred was followed in a few years by
the Anglo-Saxon Willibrod. It was he who destroyed the images of Woden
in Walcheren, abolished his worship, and founded churches in North
Holland. Charles Martell rewarded him. with extensive domains about
Utrecht, together with many slaves and other chattels. Soon afterwards
he was consecrated Bishop of all the Frisians. Thus rose the famous
episcopate of Utrecht. Another Anglo-Saxon, Winfred, or Bonifacius, had
been equally active among his Frisian cousins. His crozier had gone hand
in hand with the battle-axe. Bonifacius followed close upon the track of
his orthodox coadjutor Charles. By the middle of the eighth century,
some hundred thousand Frisians had been slaughtered, and as many more
converted. The hammer which smote the Saracens at Tours was at last
successful in beating the Netherlanders into Christianity. The labors of
Bonifacius through Upper and Lower Germany were immense; but he, too,
received great material rewards. He was created Archbishop of Mayence,
and, upon the death of Willibrod, Bishop of Utrecht. Faithful to his
mission, however, he met, heroically, a martyr's death at the hands of
the refractory pagans at Dokkum. Thus was Christianity established in
the Netherlands.
Under Charlemagne, the Frisians often rebelled, making common cause with
the Saxons. In 785, A.D., they were, however, completely subjugated, and
never rose again until the epoch of their entire separation from the
Frank empire. Charlemagne left them their name of free Frisians, and the
property in their own land. The feudal system never took root in their
soil. "The Frisians," says their statute book; "shall be free, as long
as the wind blows out of the clouds and the world stands." They agreed,
however, to obey the chiefs whom the Frank monarch should appoint to
govern them, according to their own laws. Those laws were collected, and
are still extant. The vernacular version of their Asega book contains
their ancient customs, together with the Frank additions. The general
statutes of Charlemagne were, of course, in vigor also; but that great
legislator knew too well the importance attached by all mankind to local
customs, to allow his imperial capitulara to interfere, unnecessarily,
with the Frisian laws.
Thus again the Netherlands, for the first time since the fall of Rome,
were united under one crown imperial. They had already been once united,
in their slavery to Rome. Eight centuries pass away, and they are again
united, in subjection to Charlemagne. Their union was but in forming a
single link in the chain of a new realm. The reign of Charlemagne had at
last accomplished the promise of the sorceress Velleda and other
soothsayers. A German race had re-established the empire of the world.
The Netherlands, like-the other provinces of the great monarch's
dominion, were governed by crown-appointed functionaries, military and
judicial. In the northeastern, or Frisian portion, however; the grants
of land were never in the form of revocable benefices or feuds. With
this important exception, the whole country shared the fate, and enjoyed
the general organization of the Empire.
But Charlemagne came an age too soon. The chaos which had brooded over
Europe since the dissolution of the Roman world, was still too absolute.
It was not to be fashioned into permanent forms, even by his bold and
constructive genius. A soil, exhausted by the long culture of Pagan
empires, was to lie fallow for a still longer period. The discordant
elements out of which the Emperor had compounded his realm, did not
coalesce during his life-time. They were only held together by the
vigorous grasp of the hand which had combined them. When the great
statesman died, his Empire necessarily fell to pieces. Society had need
of farther disintegration before it could begin to reconstruct itself
locally. A new civilization was not to be improvised by a single mind.
When did one man ever civilize a people? In the eighth and ninth
centuries there was not even a people to be civilized. The construction
of Charles was, of necessity, temporary. His Empire was supported by
artificial columns, resting upon the earth, which fell prostrate almost
as soon as the hand of their architect was cold. His institutions had
not struck down into the soil. There were no extensive and vigorous
roots to nourish, from below, a flourishing Empire through time and
tempest.
Moreover, the Carlovingian race had been exhausted by producing a race
of heroes like the Pepins and the Charleses. The family became, soon,
as contemptible as the ox-drawn, long-haired "do-nothings" whom it had
expelled; but it is not our task to describe the fortunes of the
Emperor's ignoble descendants. The realm was divided, sub-divided, at
times partially reunited, like a family farm, among monarchs incompetent
alike to hold, to delegate, or--to resign the inheritance of the great
warrior and lawgiver. The meek, bald, fat, stammering, simple Charles,
or Louis, who successively sat upon his throne--princes, whose only
historic individuality consists in these insipid appellations--had not
the sense to comprehend, far less to develop, the plans of their
ancestor.
Charles the Simple was the last Carlovingian who governed Lotharingia,
in which were comprised most of the Netherlands and Friesland. The
German monarch, Henry the Fowler, at that period called King of the East
Franks, as Charles of the West Franks, acquired Lotharingia by the treaty
of Bonn, Charles reserving the sovereignty over the kingdom during his
lifetime. In 925, A.D., however, the Simpleton having been imprisoned
and deposed by his own subjects, the Fowler was recognized King, of
Lotharingia. Thus the Netherlands passed out of France into Germany,
remaining, still, provinces of a loose, disjointed Empire.
This is the epoch in which the various dukedoms, earldoms, and other
petty sovereignties of the Netherlands became hereditary. It was in the
year 922 that Charles the Simple presented to Count Dirk the territory of
Holland, by letters patent. This narrow hook of land, destined, in
future ages, to be the cradle of a considerable empire, stretching
through both hemispheres, was, thenceforth, the inheritance of Dirk's
descendants. Historically, therefore, he is Dirk I., Count of Holland.
Of this small sovereign and his successors, the most powerful foe for
centuries was ever the Bishop of Utrecht, the origin of whose greatness
has been already indicated. Of the other Netherland provinces, now or
before become hereditary, the first in rank was Lotharingia, once the
kingdom of Lothaire, now the dukedom of Lorraine. In 965 it was divided
into Upper and Lower Lorraine, of which the lower duchy alone belonged to
the Netherlands. Two centuries later, the Counts of Louvain, then
occupying most of Brabant, obtained a permanent hold of Lower Lorraine,
and began to call themselves Dukes of Brabant. The same principle of
local independence and isolation which created these dukes, established
the hereditary power of the counts and barons who formerly exercised
jurisdiction under them and others. Thus arose sovereign Counts of
Namur, Hainault, Limburg, Zutphen, Dukes of Luxemburg and Gueldres,
Barons of Mechlin, Marquesses of Antwerp, and others; all petty
autocrats. The most important of all, after the house of Lorraine,
were the Earls of Flanders; for the bold foresters of Charles the Great
had soon wrested the sovereignty of their little territory from his
feeble descendants as easily as Baldwin, with the iron arm, had deprived
the bald Charles of his daughter. Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Overyssel,
Groningen, Drenthe and Friesland (all seven being portions of Friesland
in a general sense), were crowded together upon a little desolate corner
of Europe; an obscure fragment of Charlemagne's broken empire. They were
afterwards to constitute the United States of the Netherlands, one of the
most powerful republics of history. Meantime, for century after century,
the Counts of Holland and the Bishops of Utrecht were to exercise divided
sway over the territory.
Thus the whole country was broken into many shreds and patches of
sovereignty. The separate history of such half-organized morsels is
tedious and petty. Trifling dynasties, where a family or two were every
thing, the people nothing, leave little worth recording. Even the most
devout of genealogists might shudder to chronicle the long succession of
so many illustrious obscure.
A glance, however, at the general features of the governmental system now
established in the Netherlands, at this important epoch in the world's
history, will show the transformations which the country, in common with
other portions of the western world, had undergone.
In the tenth century the old Batavian and later Roman forms have faded
away. An entirely new polity has succeeded. No great popular assembly
asserts its sovereignty, as in the ancient German epoch; no generals and
temporary kings are chosen by the nation. The elective power had been
lost under the Romans, who, after conquest, had conferred the
administrative authority over their subject provinces upon officials
appointed by the metropolis. The Franks pursued the same course.
In Charlemagne's time, the revolution is complete. Popular assemblies
and popular election entirely vanish. Military, civil, and judicial
officers-dukes, earls, margraves, and others--are all king's creatures,
'knegton des konings, pueri regis', and so remain, till they abjure the
creative power, and set up their own. The principle of Charlemagne,
that his officers should govern according to local custom, helps them
to achieve their own independence, while it preserves all that is left
of national liberty and law.
The counts, assisted by inferior judges, hold diets from time to time--
thrice, perhaps, annually. They also summon assemblies in case of war.
Thither are called the great vassals, who, in turn, call their lesser
vassals; each armed with "a shield, a spear, a bow, twelve arrows, and a
cuirass." Such assemblies, convoked in the name of a distant sovereign,
whose face his subjects had never seen, whose language they could hardly
understand, were very different from those tumultuous mass-meetings,
where boisterous freemen, armed with the weapons they loved the best,
and arriving sooner or later, according to their pleasure, had been
accustomed to elect their generals and magistrates and to raise them upon
their shields. The people are now governed, their rulers appointed by an
invisible hand. Edicts, issued by a power, as it were, supernatural,
demand implicit obedience. The people, acquiescing in their own
annihilation, abdicate not only their political but their personal
rights. On the other hand, the great source of power diffuses less and
less of light and warmth. Losing its attractive and controlling
influence, it becomes gradually eclipsed, while its satellites fly from
their prescribed bounds and chaos and darkness return. The sceptre,
stretched over realms so wide, requires stronger hands than those of
degenerate Carlovingians. It breaks asunder. Functionaries become
sovereigns, with hereditary, not delegated, right to own the people, to
tax their roads and rivers, to take tithings of their blood and sweat, to
harass them in all the relations of life. There is no longer a
metropolis to protect them from official oppression. Power, the more
sub-divided, becomes the more tyrannical. The sword is the only symbol
of law, the cross is a weapon of offence, the bishop is a consecrated
pirate, every petty baron a burglar, while the people, alternately the
prey of duke, prelate, and seignor, shorn and butchered like sheep,
esteem it happiness to sell themselves into slavery, or to huddle beneath
the castle walls of some little potentate, for the sake of his wolfish
protection. Here they build hovels, which they surround from time to
time with palisades and muddy entrenchments; and here, in these squalid
abodes of ignorance and misery, the genius of Liberty, conducted by the
spirit of Commerce, descends at last to awaken mankind from its sloth and
cowardly stupor. A longer night was to intervene; however, before the
dawn of day.
The crown-appointed functionaries had been, of course, financial
officers. They collected the revenue of the sovereign, one third of
which slipped through their fingers into their own coffers. Becoming
sovereigns themselves, they retain these funds for their private
emolument. Four principal sources yielded this revenue: royal domains,
tolls and imposts, direct levies and a pleasantry called voluntary
contributions or benevolences. In addition to these supplies were also
the proceeds of fines. Taxation upon sin was, in those rude ages, a
considerable branch of the revenue. The old Frisian laws consisted
almost entirely of a discriminating tariff upon crimes. Nearly all the
misdeeds which man is prone to commit, were punished by a money-bote
only. Murder, larceny, arson, rape--all offences against the person
were commuted for a definite price. There were a few exceptions,
such as parricide, which was followed by loss of inheritance; sacrilege
and the murder of a master by a slave, which were punished with death.
It is a natural inference that, as the royal treasury was enriched by
these imposts, the sovereign would hardly attempt to check the annual
harvest of iniquity by which his revenue was increased. Still, although
the moral sense is shocked by a system which makes the ruler's interest
identical with the wickedness of his people, and holds out a comparative
immunity in evil-doing for the rich, it was better that crime should be
punished by money rather than not be punished at all. A severe tax,
which the noble reluctantly paid and which the penniless culprit commuted
by personal slavery, was sufficiently unjust as well as absurd, yet it
served to mitigate the horrors with which tumult, rapine, and murder
enveloped those early days. Gradually, as the light of reason broke upon
the dark ages, the most noxious features of the system were removed,
while the general sentiment of reverence for law remained.
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
A country disinherited by nature of its rights
A pleasantry called voluntary contributions or benevolences
Annual harvest of iniquity by which his revenue was increased
Batavian legion was the imperial body guard
Beating the Netherlanders into Christianity
Bishop is a consecrated pirate
Brethren, parents, and children, having wives in common
For women to lament, for men to remember
Gaul derided the Roman soldiers as a band of pigmies
Great science of political equilibrium
Holland, England, and America, are all links of one chain
Long succession of so many illustrious obscure
Others go to battle, says the historian, these go to war
Revocable benefices or feuds
Taxation upon sin
The Gaul was singularly unchaste
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DUTCH REPUBLIC, INTRO. I. ***
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