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HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS
From the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce--1609
By John Lothrop Motley
MOTLEY'S HISTORY OF THE NETHERLANDS
History of the United Netherlands, 1590-1599, Complete
CHAPTER XXI.
Effect of the Assassination of Henry III.--Concentration of forces
for the invasion of France--The Netherlands determine on striking a
blow for freedom--Organization of a Dutch army--Stratagem to
surprise the castle of Breda--Intrepidity and success of the
enterprise.
The dagger of Jacques Clement had done much, and was likely to do
more, to change the face of Europe. Another proof was afforded that
assassination had become a regular and recognised factor in the political
problems of the sixteenth century. Another illustration was exhibited of
the importance of the individual--even although that individual was in
himself utterly despicable--to the working out of great historical
results. It seemed that the murder of Henry III.--that forlorn
caricature of kingship and of manhood--was likely to prove eminently
beneficial to the cause of the Netherland commonwealth. Five years
earlier, the murder of William the Silent had seemed to threaten its
very existence.
For Philip the Prudent, now that France was deprived of a head, conceived
that the time had arrived when he might himself assume the sovereignty of
that kingdom. While a thing of straw, under the name of Charles X. and
shape of a Cardinal Bourbon, was set up to do battle with that living
sovereign and soldier, the heretic Bearnese, the Duke of Parma was
privately ordered to bend all his energies towards the conquest of the
realm in dispute, under pretence of assisting the Holy League.
Accordingly, early in the year 1590, Alexander concentrated a
considerable force on the French frontier in Artois and Hainault,
apparently threatening Bergen-op-Zoom and other cities in South Holland,
but in reality preparing to invade France. The Duke of Mayenne, who had
assumed the title of lieutenant-general of that kingdom, had already
visited him at Brussels in order to arrange the plan of the campaign.
While these measures were in preparation, an opportunity was likely to be
afforded to the Netherlanders of striking a blow or two for liberty and
independence; now that all the force that possibly could be spared was to
be withdrawn by their oppressors and to be used for the subjugation of
their neighbours. The question was whether there would be a statesman
and a soldier ready to make use of this golden opportunity.
There was a statesman ripe and able who, since the death of the Taciturn,
had been growing steadily in the estimation of his countrymen and who
already was paramount in the councils of the States-General. There was a
soldier, still very young, who was possessed of the strongest hereditary
claims to the confidence and affection of the United Provinces and who
had been passing a studious youth in making himself worthy of his father
and his country. Fortunately, too, the statesman and the soldier were
working most harmoniously together. John of Olden-Barneveld, with his
great experience and vast and steady intellect, stood side by side with
young Maurice of Nassau at this important crisis in the history of the
new commonwealth.
At length the twig was becoming the tree--'tandem fit surculus arbor'--
according to the device assumed by the son of William the Silent after
his father's death.
The Netherlands had sore need of a practical soldier to contend with the
scientific and professional tyrants against whom they had so long been
struggling, and Maurice, although so young, was pre-eminently a practical
man. He was no enthusiast; he was no poet. He was at that period
certainly no politician. Not often at the age of twenty has a man
devoted himself for years to pure mathematics for the purpose of saving
his country. Yet this was Maurice's scheme. Four years long and more,
when most other youths in his position and at that epoch would have been
alternating between frivolous pleasures and brilliant exploits in the
field, the young prince had spent laborious days and nights with the
learned Simon Stevinus of Bruges. The scientific work which they
composed in common, the credit of which the master assigned to the pupil,
might have been more justly attributed perhaps to the professor than to
the prince, but it is certain that Maurice was an apt scholar.
In that country, ever held in existence by main human force against the
elements, the arts of engineering, hydrostatics and kindred branches were
of necessity much cultivated. It was reserved for the young
mathematician to make them as potent against a human foe.
Moreover, there were symptoms that the military discipline, learning and
practical skill, which had almost made Spain the mistress of the world,
were sinking into decay. Farnese, although still in the prime of life,
was broken in health, and there seemed no one fit to take the place of
himself and his lieutenants when they should be removed from the scene
where they had played. their parts so consummately. The army of the
Netherlands was still to be created. Thus far the contest had been
mainly carried on by domestic militia and foreign volunteers or
hirelings. The train-bands of the cities were aided in their struggles
against Spanish pikemen and artillerists, Italian and Albanian cavalry by
the German riders, whom every little potentate was anxious to sell to
either combatant according to the highest bid, and by English
mercenaries, whom the love of adventure or the hope of plunder sent forth
under such well-seasoned captains as Williams and Morgan, Vere and the
Norrises, Baskerville and Willoughby.
But a Dutch army there was none and Maurice had determined that at last
a national force should be created. In this enterprise he was aided and
guided by his cousin Lewis William, Stadtholder of Friesland--the quaint,
rugged little hero, young in years but almost a veteran in the wars of
freedom, who was as genial and intellectual in council as he was reckless
and impulsive in the field.
Lewis William had felt that the old military art was dying out and that--
there was nothing to take its place. He was a diligent student of
antiquity. He had revived in the swamps of Friesland the old manoeuvres,
the quickness of wheeling, the strengthening, without breaking ranks or
columns, by which the ancient Romans had performed so much excellent work
in their day, and which seemed to have passed entirely into oblivion.
Old colonels and rittmasters, who had never heard of Leo the Thracian nor
the Macedonian phalanx, smiled and shrugged their shoulders, as they
listened to the questions of the young count, or gazed with profound
astonishment at the eccentric evolutions to which he was accustoming his
troops. From the heights of superior wisdom they looked down with pity
upon these innovations on the good old battle order. They were
accustomed to great solid squares of troops wheeling in one way,
steadily, deliberately, all together, by one impulse and as one man.
It was true that in narrow fields, and when the enemy was pressing, such
stately evolutions often became impossible or ensured defeat; but when
the little Stadtholder drilled his soldiers in small bodies of various
shapes, teaching them to turn, advance; retreat; wheel in a variety of
ways, sometimes in considerable masses, sometimes man by man, sending the
foremost suddenly to the rear, or bringing the hindmost ranks to the
front, and began to attempt all this in narrow fields as well as in wide
ones, and when the enemy was in sight, men stood aghast at his want of
reverence, or laughed at him as a pedant. But there came a day when they
did not laugh, neither friends nor enemies. Meantime the two cousins,
who directed all the military operations in the provinces, understood
each other thoroughly and proceeded to perfect their new system, to be
adopted at a later period by all civilized nations.
The regular army of the Netherlands was small in number at that moment--
not more than twenty thousand foot with two thousand horse--but it was
well disciplined, well equipped, and, what was of great importance,
regularly paid. Old campaigners complained that in the halcyon days of
paper enrolments, a captain could earn more out of his company than a
colonel now received for his whole regiment. The days when a thousand
men were paid for, with a couple of hundred in the field, were passing
away for the United Provinces and existed only for Italians and
Spaniards. While, therefore, mutiny on an organised and extensive scale
seemed almost the normal condition of the unpaid legions of Philip, the
little army of Maurice was becoming the model for Europe to imitate.
The United Provinces were as yet very far from being masters of their own
territory. Many of their most important cities still held for the king.
In Brabant, such towns as Breda with its many dependencies and
Gertruydenberg; on the Waal, the strong and wealthy Nymegen which Martin
Schenk had perished in attempting to surprise; on the Yssel, the thriving
city of Zutphen, whose fort had been surrendered by the traitor York, and
the stately Deventer, which had been placed in Philip's possession by the
treachery of Sir William Stanley; on the borders of Drenthe, the almost
impregnable Koevorden, key to the whole Zwollian country; and in the very
heart of ancient Netherland, Groningen, capital of the province of the
same name, which the treason of Renneberg had sold to the Spanish tyrant;
all these flourishing cities and indispensable strongholds were
garrisoned by foreign troops, making the idea of Dutch independence
a delusion.
While Alexander of Parma, sorely against his will and in obedience to
what, he deemed the insane suggestions of his master, was turning his
back on the Netherlands in order to relieve Paris, now hard pressed
by the Bearnese, an opportunity offered itself of making at least a
beginning in the great enterprise of recovering these most valuable
possessions.
The fair and pleasant city of Breda lies on the Merk, a slender stream,
navigable for small vessels, which finds its way to the sea through the
great canal of the Dintel. It had been the property of the Princes of
Orange, Barons of Breda, and had passed with the other possessions of
the family to the house of Chalons-Nassau. Henry of Nassau had, half a
century before, adorned and strengthened it by a splendid palace-fortress
which, surrounded by a deep and double moat, thoroughly commanded the
town. A garrison of five companies of Italian infantry and one of
cavalry lay in this castle, which was under the command of Edward
Lanzavecchia, governor both of Breda and of the neighbouring
Gertruydenberg.
Breda was an important strategical position. It was moreover the feudal
superior of a large number of adjacent villages as well as of the cities
Osterhout, Steenberg and Rosendaal. It was obviously not more desirable
for Maurice of Nassau to recover his patrimonial city than it was for the
States-General to drive the Spaniards from so important a position!
In the month of February, 1590, Maurice, being then at the castle of
Voorn in Zeeland, received a secret visit from a boatman, Adrian van der
Berg by name, who lived at the village of Leur, eight or ten miles from
Breda, and who had long been in the habit of supplying the castle with
turf. In the absence of woods and coal mines, the habitual fuel of the
country was furnished by those vast relics of the antediluvian forests
which abounded in the still partially submerged soil. The skipper
represented that his vessel had passed so often into and out of the
castle as to be hardly liable to search by the guard on its entrance.
He suggested a stratagem by which it might be possible to surprise the
stronghold.
The prince approved of the scheme and immediately consulted with
Barneveld. That statesman at once proposed, as a suitable man to
carry out the daring venture, Captain Charles de Heraugiere, a nobleman
of Cambray, who had been long in the service of the States, had
distinguished himself at Sluys and on other occasions, but who had been
implicated in Leicester's nefarious plot to gain possession of the city
of Leyden a few years before. The Advocate expressed confidence that he
would be grateful for so signal an opportunity of retrieving a somewhat
damaged reputation. Heraugiere, who was with his company in Voorn at the
moment, eagerly signified his desire to attempt the enterprise as soon as
the matter was communicated to him; avowing the deepest devotion to the
house of William the Silent and perfect willingness to sacrifice his
life, if necessary, in its cause and that of the country. Philip Nassau,
cousin of Prince Maurice and brother of Lewis William, governor of
Gorcum, Dorcum, and Lowenstein Castle and colonel of a regiment of
cavalry, was also taken into the secret, as well as Count Hohenlo,
President Van der Myle and a few others; but a mystery was carefully
spread and maintained over the undertaking.
Heraugiere selected sixty-eight men, on whose personal daring and
patience he knew that he could rely, from the regiments of Philip Nassau
and of Famars, governor of the neighbouring city of Heusden, and from his
own company. Besides himself, the officers to command the party were
captains Logier and Fervet, and lieutenant Matthew Held. The names of
such devoted soldiers deserve to be commemorated and are still freshly
remembered by their countrymen.
On the 25th of February, Maurice and his staff went to Willemstad on the
Isle of Klundert, it having been given out on his departure from the
Hague that his destination was Dort. On the same night at about eleven
o'clock, by the feeble light of a waning moon, Heraugiere and his band
came to the Swertsenburg ferry, as agreed upon, to meet the boatman.
They found neither him nor his vessel, and they wandered about half the
night, very cold, very indignant, much perplexed. At last, on their way
back, they came upon the skipper at the village of Terheyde, who made the
extraordinary excuse that he had overslept himself and that he feared the
plot had been discovered. It being too late to make any attempt that
night, a meeting was arranged for the following evening. No suspicion of
treachery occurred to any of the party, although it became obvious that
the skipper had grown faint-hearted. He did not come on the next night
to the appointed place but he sent two nephews, boatmen like himself,
whom he described as dare-devils.
On Monday night, the 26th of February, the seventy went on board the
vessel, which was apparently filled with blocks of turf, and packed
themselves closely in the hold. They moved slowly during a little time
on their perilous voyage; for the winter wind, thick with fog and sleet,
blew directly down the river, bringing along with it huge blocks of ice
and scooping the water out of the dangerous shallows, so as to render the
vessel at any moment liable to be stranded. At last the navigation
became impossible and they came to a standstill. From Monday night till
Thursday morning those seventy Hollanders lay packed like herrings in the
hold of their little vessel, suffering from hunger, thirst, and deadly
cold; yet not one of them attempted to escape or murmured a wish to
abandon the enterprise. Even when the third morning dawned there was no
better prospect of proceeding; for the remorseless east wind still blew a
gale against them, and the shoals which beset their path had become more
dangerous than ever. It was, however, absolutely necessary to recruit
exhausted nature, unless the adventurers were to drop powerless on the
threshold when they should at last arrive at their destination. In all
secrecy they went ashore at a lonely castle called Nordam, where they
remained to refresh themselves until about eleven at night, when one of
the boatmen came to them with the intelligence that the wind had changed
and was now blowing freshly in from the sea. Yet the voyage of a few
leagues, on which they were embarked, lasted nearly two whole days
longer. On Saturday afternoon they passed through the last sluice, and
at about three o'clock the last boom was shut behind them. There was no
retreat possible for them now. The seventy were to take the strong
castle and city of Breda or to lay down their lives, every man of them.
No quarter and short shrift--such was their certain destiny, should that
half-crippled, half-frozen little band not succeed in their task before
another sunrise.
They were now in the outer harbour and not far from the Watergate which
led into the inner castle-haven. Presently an officer of the guard put
off in a skiff and came on board the vessel. He held a little
conversation with the two boatmen, observed that the castle was--much
in want of full, took a survey of the turf with which the ship was
apparently laden, and then lounged into the little cabin. Here he was
only separated by a sliding trap-door from the interior of the vessel.
Those inside could hear and see his every movement. Had there been a
single cough or sneeze from within, the true character of the cargo,
then making its way into the castle, would have been discovered and
every man would within ten minutes have been butchered. But the officer,
unsuspecting, soon took his departure, saying that he would send some men
to warp the vessel into the castle dock.
Meantime, as the adventurers were making their way slowly towards the
Watergate, they struck upon a hidden obstruction in the river and the
deeply laden vessel sprang a leak. In a few minutes those inside were
sitting up to their knees in water--a circumstance which scarcely
improved their already sufficiently dismal condition. The boatmen
vigorously plied the pumps to save the vessel from sinking outright;
a party of Italian soldiers soon arrived on the shore, and in the course
of a couple of hours they had laboriously dragged the concealed
Hollanders into the inner harbour and made their vessel fast, close to
the guard-house of the castle.
And now a crowd of all sorts came on board. The winter nights had been
long and fearfully cold, and there was almost a dearth of fuel both in
town and fortress. A gang of labourers set to work discharging the turf
from the vessel with such rapidity that the departing daylight began to
shine in upon the prisoners much sooner than they wished. Moreover, the
thorough wetting, to which after all their other inconveniences they had
just been exposed in their narrow escape from foundering, had set the
whole party sneezing and coughing. Never was a catarrh so sudden, so
universal, or so ill-timed. Lieutenant Held, unable to control the
violence of his cough, drew his dagger and eagerly implored his next
neighbour to stab him to the heart, lest his infirmity should lead to the
discovery of the whole party. But the calm and wary skipper who stood on
the deck instantly commanded his companion to work at the pump with as
much clatter as possible, assuring the persons present that the hold was
nearly full of water. By this means the noise of the coughing was
effectually drowned. Most thoroughly did the bold boatman deserve the
title of dare-devil, bestowed by his more fainthearted uncle. Calmly
looking death in the face, he stood there quite at his ease, exchanging
jokes with his old acquaintances, chaffering with the eager purchasers of
peat shouting most noisy and superfluous orders to the one man who
composed his crew, doing his utmost, in short, to get rid of his
customers and to keep enough of the turf on board to conceal the
conspirators.
At last, when the case seemed almost desperate, he loudly declared that
sufficient had been unladen for that evening and that it was too dark
and he too tired for further work. So, giving a handful of stivers among
the workmen, he bade them go ashore at once and have some beer and come
next morning for the rest of the cargo. Fortunately, they accepted his
hospitable proposition and took their departure. Only the servant of the
captain of the guard lingered behind, complaining that the turf was not
as good as usual and that his master would never be satisfied with it.
"Ah!" returned the cool skipper, "the best part of the cargo is
underneath. This is expressly reserved for the captain. He
is sure to get enough of it to-morrow."
Thus admonished, the servant departed and the boatman was left to
himself. His companion had gone on shore with secret orders to make the
best of his way to Prince Maurice, to inform him of the arrival of the
ship within the fortress, and of the important fact which they had just
learned, that Governor Lanzavecchia, who had heard rumours of some
projected enterprise and who suspected that the object aimed at was
Gertruydenberg, had suddenly taken his departure for that city, leaving
as his lieutenant his nephew Paolo, a raw lad quite incompetent to
provide for the safety of Breda.
A little before midnight, Captain Heraugiere made a brief address to his
comrades in the vessel, telling them that the hour for carrying out their
undertaking had at length arrived. Retreat was impossible, defeat was
certain death, only in complete victory lay their own safety and a great
advantage for the commonwealth. It was an honor to them to be selected
for such an enterprise. To show cowardice now would be an eternal shame
for them, and he would be the man to strike dead with his own hand any
traitor or poltroon. But if, as he doubted not, every one was prepared
to do his duty, their success was assured, and he was himself ready to
take the lead in confronting every danger.
He then divided the little band into two companies, one under himself to
attack the main guard-house, the other under Fervet to seize the arsenal
of the fortress.
Noiselessly they stole out of the ship where they had so long been
confined, and stood at last on the ground within the precincts of the
castle. Heraugiere marched straight to the guard-house.
"Who goes there?" cried a sentinel, hearing some movement in the
darkness.
"A friend," replied the captain, seizing him, by the throat, and
commanding him, if he valued his life, to keep silence except when
addressed and then to speak in a whisper.
"How many are there in the garrison?" muttered Heraugiere.
"Three hundred and fifty," whispered the sentinel.
"How many?" eagerly demanded the nearest followers, not hearing the
reply.
"He says there are but fifty of them," said Heraugiere, prudently
suppressing the three hundred, in order to encourage his comrades.
Quietly as they had made their approach, there was nevertheless a stir
in the guard-house. The captain of the watch sprang into the courtyard.
"Who goes there?" he demanded in his turn.
"A friend," again replied Heraugiere, striking him dead with a single
blow as he spoke.
Others emerged with torches. Heraugiere was slightly wounded, but
succeeded, after a brief struggle, in killing a second assailant. His
followers set upon the watch who retreated into the guard-house.
Heraugiere commanded his men to fire through the doors and windows, and
in a few minutes every one of the enemy lay dead.
It was not a moment for making prisoners or speaking of quarter.
Meantime Fervet and his band had not been idle. The magazine-house of
the castle was seized, its defenders slain. Young Lanzavecchia made a
sally from the palace, was wounded and driven back together with a few of
his adherents.
The rest of the garrison fled helter-skelter into the town. Never had
the musketeers of Italy--for they all belonged to Spinola's famous
Sicilian Legion--behaved so badly. They did not even take the precaution
to destroy the bridge between the castle and the town as they fled panic-
stricken before seventy Hollanders. Instead of encouraging the burghers
to their support they spread dismay, as they ran, through every street.
Young Lanzavecchia, penned into a corner of the castle; began to parley;
hoping for a rally before a surrender should be necessary. In the midst
of the negotiation and a couple of hours before dawn, Hohenlo; duly
apprised by the boatman, arrived with the vanguard of Maurice's troops
before the field-gate of the fort. A vain attempt was made to force this
portal open, but the winter's ice had fixed it fast. Hohenlo was obliged
to batter down the palisade near the water-gate and enter by the same
road through which the fatal turf-boat had passed.
Soon after he had marched into the town at the head of a strong
detachment, Prince Maurice himself arrived in great haste, attended by
Philip Nassau, the Admiral Justinus Nassau, Count Solms, Peter van der
Does, and Sir Francis Vere, and followed by another body of picked
troops; the musicians playing merrily that national air, then as now so
dear to Netherlanders--
"Wilhelmus van Nassouwen
Ben ick van Duytaem bloed."
The fight was over. Some forty of the garrison had been killed, but not
a man of the attacking party. The burgomaster sent a trumpet to the
prince asking permission to come to the castle to arrange a capitulation;
and before sunrise, the city and fortress of Breda had surrendered to the
authority of the States-General and of his Excellency.
The terms were moderate. The plundering was commuted for the payment of
two months' wages to every soldier engaged in the affair. Burghers who
might prefer to leave the city were allowed to do so with protection to
life, and property. Those who were willing to remain loyal citizens were
not to be molested, in their consciences or their households, in regard
to religion. The public exercise of Catholic rites was however suspended
until the States-General should make some universal provision on this
subject.
Subsequently, it must be allowed, the bargain of commutation proved a bad
one for the burghers. Seventy men had in reality done the whole work,
but so many soldiers, belonging to the detachments who marched in after
the fortress had been taken, came forward to claim their months' wages
as to bring the whole amount required above one hundred thousand florins.
The Spaniards accordingly reproached Prince Maurice with having fined his
own patrimonial city more heavily than Alexander Farnese had mulcted
Antwerp, which had been made to pay but four hundred thousand florins,
a far less sum in proportion to the wealth and importance of the place.
Already the Prince of Parma, in the taking of Breda, saw verified his
predictions of the disasters about to fall on the Spanish interests in
the Netherlands, by reason of Philip's obstinate determination to
concentrate all his energies on the invasion of France. Alexander had
been unable, in the midst of preparations for his French campaign, to
arrest this sudden capture, but his Italian blood was on fire at the
ignominy which had come upon the soldiership of his countrymen. Five
companies of foot and one of horse-picked troops of Spain and Italy--had
surrendered a wealthy, populous town and a well-fortified castle to a
mud-scow, and had fled shrieking in dismay from the onset of seventy
frost-bitten Hollanders.
It was too late to save the town, but he could punish, as it deserved,
the pusillanimity of the garrison.
Three captains--one of them rejoicing in the martial name of Cesar
Guerra--were publicly beheaded in Brussels. A fourth, Ventimiglia,
was degraded but allowed to escape with life, on account of his near
relationship to the Duke of Terranova, while Governor Lanzavecchia was
obliged to resign the command of Gertruydenberg. The great commander
knew better than to encourage the yielding up of cities and fortresses
by a mistaken lenity to their unlucky defenders.
Prince Maurice sent off letters the same night announcing his success to
the States-General. Hohenlo wrote pithily to Olden-Barneveld--"The
castle and town of Breda are ours, without a single man dead on our side.
The garrison made no resistance but ran distracted out of the town."
The church bells rang and bonfires blazed and cannon thundered in every
city in the United Provinces to commemorate this auspicious event.
Olden-Barneveld, too, whose part in arranging the scheme was known to
have been so valuable, received from the States-General a magnificent
gilded vase with sculptured representations of the various scenes in the
drama, and it is probable that not more unmingled satisfaction had been
caused by any one event of the war than by this surprise of Breda.
The capture of a single town, not of first-rate importance either, would
hardly seem too merit so minute a description as has been given in the
preceding pages. But the event, with all its details, has been preserved
with singular vividness in Netherland story. As an example of daring,
patience, and complete success, it has served to encourage the bold
spirits of every generation and will always inspire emulation in
patriotic hearts of every age and clime, while, as the first of a series
of audacious enterprises by which Dutch victories were to take the place
of a long procession of Spanish triumphs on the blood-stained soil of the
provinces, it merits, from its chronological position, a more than
ordinary attention.
In the course of the summer Prince Maurice, carrying out into practice
the lessons which he had so steadily been pondering, reduced the towns
and strong places of Heyl, Flemert, Elshout, Crevecoeur, Hayden,
Steenberg, Rosendaal, and Osterhout. But his time, during the remainder
of the year 1590, was occupied with preparations for a campaign on an
extended scale and with certain foreign negotiations to which it will
soon be necessary to direct the reader's attention.
CHAPTER XXII.
Struggle of the United Provinces against Philip of Spain--Progress
of the Republic--Influence of Geographical position on the fate of
the Netherlands--Contrast offered by America--Miserable state of the
so--called "obedient" provinces--Prosperity of the Commonwealth--Its
internal government--Tendency to provincialism--Quibbles of the
English Members of the Council, Wilkes and Bodley--Exclusion of
Olden-Barneveld from the State Council--Proposals of Philip for
mediation with the United Provinces--The Provinces resolutely
decline all proffers of intervention.
The United Provinces had now been engaged in unbroken civil war for a
quarter of a century. It is, however, inaccurate to designate this great
struggle with tyranny as a civil war. It was a war for independence,
maintained by almost the whole population of the United Provinces against
a foreigner, a despot, alien to their blood, ignorant of their language,
a hater of their race, a scorner of their religion, a trampler upon their
liberties, their laws, and institutions--a man who had publicly declared
that he would rather the whole nation were exterminated than permitted to
escape from subjection to the Church of Rome. Liberty of speech, liberty
of the press, liberty of thought on political, religious, and social
questions existed within those Dutch pastures and Frisian swamps to a far
greater degree than in any other part of the world at that day; than in
very many regions of Christendom in our own time. Personal slavery was
unknown. In a large portion of their territory it had never existed.
The free Frisians, nearest blood-relations of, in this respect, the less
favoured Anglo-Saxons, had never bowed the knee to the feudal system, nor
worn nor caused to be worn the collar of the serf. In the battles for
human liberty no nation has stood with cleaner hands before the great
tribunal, nor offered more spotless examples of patriotism to be emulated
in all succeeding ages, than the Netherlanders in their gigantic struggle
with Philip of Spain. It was not a class struggling for their own
privileges, but trampling on their fellow-men in a lower scale of
humanity. Kings and aristocrats sneered at the vulgar republic where
Hans Miller, Hans Baker, and Hans Brewer enjoyed political rights end
prated of a sovereignty other than that of long-descended races and of
anointed heads. Yet the pikemen of Spain and the splendid cavalry and
musketeers of Italy and Burgundy, who were now beginning to show their
backs both behind entrenchments and in the open field to their republican
foes, could not deny the valour with which the battles of liberty were
fought; while Elizabeth of England, maintainer, if such ever were, of
hereditary sovereignty and hater of popular freedom, acknowledged that
for wisdom in council, dignity and adroitness in diplomatic debate, there
were none to surpass the plain burgher statesmen of the new republic.
And at least these Netherlanders were consistent with themselves. They
had come to disbelieve in the mystery of kingcraft, in the divine
speciality of a few transitory mortals to direct the world's events and
to dictate laws to their fellow-creatures. What they achieved was for
the common good of all. They chose to live in an atmosphere of blood and
fire for generation after generation rather than flinch from their
struggle with despotism, for they knew that, cruel as the sea, it would
swallow them all at last in one common destruction if they faltered or
paused. They fought for the liberty of all. And it is for this reason
that the history of this great conflict deserved to be deeply pondered by
those who have the instinct of human freedom. Had the Hollanders basely
sunk before the power of Spain, the proud history of England, France, and
Germany would have been written in far different terms. The blood and
tears which the Netherlanders caused to flow in their own stormy days
have turned to blessings for remotest climes and ages. A pusillanimous
peace, always possible at any period of their war, would have been hailed
with rapture by contemporary statesmen, whose names have vanished from
the world's memory; but would have sown with curses and misery the soil
of Europe for succeeding ages. The territory of the Netherlands is
narrow and meagre. It is but a slender kingdom now among the powers of
the earth. The political grandeur of nations is determined by physical
causes almost as much as by moral ones. Had the cataclysm which
separated the fortunate British islands from the mainland happened to
occur, instead, at a neighbouring point of the earth's crust; had the
Belgian, Dutch, German and Danish Netherland floated off as one island
into the sea, while that famous channel between two great rival nations
remained dry land, there would have been a different history of the
world.
But in the 16th century the history of one country was not an isolated
chapter of personages and events. The history of the Netherlands is
history of liberty. It was now combined with the English, now with
French, with German struggles for political and religious freedom, but it
is impossible to separate it from the one great complex which makes up
the last half of the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth
centuries.
At that day the Netherland republic was already becoming a power of
importance in the political family of Christendom. If, in spite of her
geographical disadvantages, she achieved so much, how much vaster might
her power have grown, how much stronger through her example might popular
institutions throughout the world have become, and how much more pacific
the relations of European tribes, had nature been less niggard in her
gifts to the young commonwealth. On the sea she was strong, for the
ocean is the best of frontiers; but on land her natural boundaries faded
vaguely away, without strong physical demarcations and with no sharply
defined limits of tongue, history or race. Accident or human caprice
seemed to have divided German Highland from German Netherland; Belgic
Gaul from the rest of the Gallic realm. And even from the slender body,
which an arbitrary destiny had set off for centuries into a separate
organism, tyranny and religious bigotry had just hewn another portion
away. But the commonwealth was already too highly vitalized to permit
peaceful dismemberment. Only the low organisms can live in all their
parts after violent separations. The trunk remained, bleeding but alive
and vigorous, while the amputated portion lay for centuries in fossilized
impotence.
Never more plainly than in the history of this commonwealth was the
geographical law manifested by which the fate of nations is so deeply
influenced. Courage, enterprise amounting almost to audacity, and a
determined will confronted for a long lapse of time the inexorable, and
permitted a great empire to germinate out of a few sand-banks held in
defiance of the ocean, and protected from human encroachments on the
interior only by the artificial barrier of custom-house and fort.
Thus foredoomed at birth, it must increase our admiration of human energy
and of the sustaining influence of municipal liberty that the republic,
even if transitory, should yet have girdled the earth with its
possessions and held for a considerable period so vast a portion
of the world in fee.
What a lesson to our transatlantic commonwealth, whom bountiful nature
had blessed at her birth beyond all the nations of history and seemed to
speed upon an unlimited career of freedom and peaceful prosperity, should
she be capable at the first alarm on her track to throw away her
inestimable advantages! If all history is not a mockery and a fable,
she may be sure that the nation which deliberately carves itself in
pieces and, substitutes artificial boundaries for the natural and
historic ones, condemns itself either to extinction or to the lower life
of political insignificance and petty warfare, with the certain loss of
liberty and national independence at last. Better a terrible struggle,
better the sacrifice of prosperity and happiness for years, than the
eternal setting of that great popular hope, the United American Republic.
I speak in this digression only of the relations of physical nature to
liberty and nationality, making no allusion to the equally stringent
moral laws which no people can violate and yet remain in health and
vigour.
Despite a quarter of a century of what is commonly termed civil war,
the United Netherlands were prosperous and full of life. It was in the
provinces which had seceded from the union of Utrecht that there was
silence as of the grave, destitution, slavery, abject submission to a
foreign foe. The leaders in the movement which had brought about the
scission of 1579--commonly called the 'Reconciliation'--enjoyed military
and civil posts under a foreign tyrant, but were poorly rewarded for
subserviency in fighting against their own brethren by contumely on the
part of their masters. As for the mass of the people it would be
difficult to find a desolation more complete than that recorded of the
"obedient" provinces. Even as six years before, wolves littered their
whelps in deserted farmhouses, cane-brake and thicket usurped the place
of cornfield and, orchard, robbers swarmed on the highways once thronged
by a most thriving population, nobles begged their bread in the streets
of cities whose merchants once entertained emperors and whose wealth and
traffic were the wonder of the world, while the Spanish viceroy formally
permitted the land in the agricultural districts to be occupied and
farmed by the first comer for his own benefit, until the vanished
proprietors of the soil should make their re-appearance.
"Administered without justice or policy," said a Netherlander who was
intensely loyal to the king and a most uncompromising Catholic, "eaten up
and abandoned for that purpose to the arbitrary will of foreigners who
suck the substance and marrow of the land without benefit to the king,
gnaw the obedient cities to the bones, and plunder the open defenceless
country at their pleasure, it may be imagined how much satisfaction these
provinces take in their condition. Commerce and trade have ceased in a
country which traffic alone has peopled, for without it no human
habitation could be more miserable and poor than our land."--[Discours
du Seigneur de Champagny sur les affaires des Pays Bas, 21 Dec. 1589.
Bibl. de Bourgogne, MS. No. 12,962.]
Nothing could be more gloomy than the evils thus described by the
Netherland statesman and soldier, except the remedy which he suggested.
The obedient provinces, thus scourged and blasted for their obedience,
were not advised to improve their condition by joining hands with their
sister States, who had just constituted themselves by their noble
resistance to royal and ecclesiastical tyranny into a free and powerful
commonwealth. On the contrary, two great sources of regeneration and
prosperity were indicated, but very different ones from those in which
the republic had sought and found her strength. In the first place, it
was suggested as indispensable that the obedient provinces should have
more Jesuits and more Friars. The mendicant orders should be summoned to
renewed exertions, and the king should be requested to send seminary
priests to every village in numbers proportionate to the population, who
should go about from house to house, counting the children, and seeing
that they learned their catechism if their parents did not teach them,
and, even in case they did, examining whether it was done thoroughly and
without deception.
In the second place it was laid down as important that the bishops should
confirm no one who had not been sufficiently catechized. "And if the
mendicant orders," said Champagny, "are not numerous enough for these
catechizations, the Jesuits might charge themselves therewith, not more
and not less than the said mendicants, some of each being deputed to each
parish. To this end it would be well if his Majesty should obtain from
the Pope a command to the Jesuits to this effect, since otherwise they
might not be willing to comply. It should also be ordered that all
Jesuits, natives of these provinces, should return hither, instead of
wandering about in other regions as if their help were not so necessary
here."--[Ibid.]
It was also recommended that the mendicant friars should turn their
particular attention to Antwerp, and that one of them should preach in
French, another in German, another in English, every day at the opening
of the Exchange.
With these appliances it was thought that Antwerp would revive out of
its ruins and, despite the blockade of its river, renew its ancient
commercial glories. Founded on the substantial rocks of mendicancy and
jesuitism, it might again triumph over its rapidly rising rival, the
heretic Amsterdam, which had no better basis for its grandeur than
religious and political liberty, and uncontrolled access to the ocean.
Such were the aspirations of a distinguished and loyal Netherlander for
the regeneration of his country. Such were his opinions as to the true
sources of the wealth and greatness of nations. Can we wonder that the
country fell to decay, or that this experienced, statesman and brave
soldier should himself, after not many years, seek to hide his
dishonoured head under the cowl of a monk?
The coast of the obedient provinces was thoroughly blockaded. The United
Provinces commanded the sea, their cruisers, large and small, keeping
diligent watch off every port and estuary of the Flemish coast, so that
not a herringboat could enter without their permission. Antwerp, when it
fell into the hands of the Spaniard, sank for ever from its proud
position. The city which Venetians but lately had confessed with a sigh
to be superior in commercial grandeur to their own magnificent capital,
had ceased to be a seaport. Shut in from the ocean by Flushing--firmly
held by an English garrison as one of the cautionary towns for the
Queen's loan--her world-wide commerce withered before men's eyes. Her
population was dwindling to not much more than half its former numbers,
while Ghent, Bruges, and other cities were diminished by two-thirds.
On the other hand, the commerce and manufactures of the United Republic
had enormously augmented. Its bitterest enemies bore witness to the
sagacity and success by which its political affairs were administered,
and to its vast superiority in this respect over the obedient provinces.
"The rebels are not ignorant of our condition," said Champagny, "they are
themselves governed with consummate wisdom, and they mock at those who
submit themselves to the Duke of Parma. They are the more confirmed in
their rebellion, when they see how many are thronging from us to them,
complaining of such bad government, and that all take refuge in flight
who can from the misery and famine which it has caused throughout these
provinces!" The industrial population had flowed from the southern
provinces into the north, in obedience to an irresistible law. The
workers in iron, paper, silk, linen, lace, the makers of brocade,
tapestry, and satin, as well as of all the coarser fabrics, had fled from
the land of oppression to the land of liberty. Never in the history of
civilisation had there been a more rapid development of human industry
than in Holland during these years of bloodiest warfare. The towns were
filled to overflowing. Amsterdam multiplied in wealth and population as
fast as Antwerp shrank. Almost as much might be said of Middelburg,
Enkhuyzen, Horn, and many other cities. It is the epoch to which the
greatest expansion of municipal architecture is traced. Warehouses,
palaces, docks, arsenals, fortifications, dykes, splendid streets and
suburbs, were constructed on every side, and still there was not room for
the constantly increasing population, large numbers of which habitually
dwelt in the shipping. For even of that narrow span of earth called the
province of Holland, one-third was then interior water, divided into five
considerable lakes, those of Harlem, Schermer, Beemster, Waert, and
Purmer. The sea was kept out by a magnificent system of dykes under
the daily superintendence of a board of officers, called dyke-graves,
while the rain-water, which might otherwise have drowned the soil thus
painfully reclaimed, was pumped up by windmills and drained off through
sluices opening and closing with the movement of the tides.
The province of Zeeland was one vast "polder." It was encircled by an
outer dyke of forty Dutch equal to one hundred and fifty English, miles
in extent, and traversed by many interior barriers. The average cost of
dyke-building was sixty florins the rod of twelve feet, or 84,000 florins
the Dutch mile. The total cost of the Zeeland dykes was estimated at
3,360,000 florins, besides the annual repairs.
But it was on the sea that the Netherlanders were really at home, and
they always felt it in their power--as their last resource against
foreign tyranny--to bury their land for ever in the ocean, and to seek a
new country at the ends of the earth. It has always been difficult to
doom to political or personal slavery a nation accustomed to maritime
pursuits. Familiarity with the boundless expanse of ocean, and the habit
of victoriously contending with the elements in their stormy strength,
would seem to inspire a consciousness in mankind of human dignity and
worth. With the exception of Spain, the chief seafaring nations of the
world were already protestant. The counter-league, which was to do
battle so strenuously with the Holy Confederacy, was essentially a
maritime league. "All the maritime heretics of the world, since heresy
is best suited to navigators, will be banded together," said Champagny,
"and then woe to the Spanish Indies, which England and Holland are
already threatening."
The Netherlanders had been noted from earliest times for a free-spoken
and independent personal demeanour. At this epoch they were taking the
lead of the whole world in marine adventure. At least three thousand
vessels of between one hundred and four hundred tons, besides innumerable
doggers, busses, cromstevens, and similar craft used on the rivers and in
fisheries, were to be found in the United Provinces, and one thousand,
it was estimated, were annually built.
They traded to the Baltic regions for honey, wax, tallow, lumber, iron,
turpentine, hemp. They brought from farthest Indies and from America all
the fabrics of ancient civilisation, all the newly discovered products of
a virgin soil, and dispensed them among the less industrious nations of
the earth. Enterprise, led on and accompanied by science, was already
planning the boldest flights into the unknown yet made by mankind, and
it will soon be necessary to direct attention to those famous arctic
voyages, made by Hollanders in pursuit of the north-west passage to
Cathay, in which as much heroism, audacity, and scientific intelligence
were displayed as in later times have made so many men belonging to both
branches of the Anglo-Saxon race illustrious. A people, engaged in
perennial conflict with a martial and sacerdotal despotism the most
powerful in the world, could yet spare enough from its superfluous
energies to confront the dangers of the polar oceans, and to bring back
treasures of science to enrich the world.
Such was the spirit of freedom. Inspired by its blessed influence this
vigorous and inventive little commonwealth triumphed over all human, all
physical obstacles in its path. It organised armies on new principles
to drive the most famous legions of history from its soil. It built
navies to help rescue, at critical moments, the cause of England, of
Protestantism, of civil liberty, and even of French nationality. More
than all, by its trade with its arch-enemy, the republic constantly
multiplied its resources for destroying his power and aggrandizing its
own.
The war navy of the United Provinces was a regular force of one hundred
ships--large at a period when a vessel of thirteen hundred tons was a
monster--together with an indefinite number of smaller craft, which could
be put into the public service on short notice? In those days of close
quarters and light artillery a merchant ship was converted into a cruiser
by a very simple, process. The navy was a self-supporting one, for it
was paid by the produce of convoy fees and licenses to trade. It must be
confessed that a portion of these revenues savoured much of black-mail to
be levied on friend and foe; for the distinctions between, freebooter,
privateer, pirate, and legitimate sea-robber were not very closely drawn
in those early days of seafaring.
Prince Maurice of Nassau was lord high admiral, but he was obliged to
listen to the counsels of various provincial boards of admiralty, which
often impeded his action and interfered with his schemes.
It cannot be denied that the inherent vice of the Netherland polity was
already a tendency to decentralisation and provincialism. The civil
institutions of the country, in their main characteristics, have been
frequently sketched in these pages. At this period they had entered
almost completely into the forms which were destined to endure until the
commonwealth fell in the great crash of the French Revolution. Their
beneficial effects were more visible now--sustained and bound together as
the nation was by the sense of a common danger, and by the consciousness
of its daily developing strength--than at a later day when prosperity and
luxury had blunted the fine instincts of patriotism.
The supreme power, after the deposition of Philip, and the refusal by
France and by England to accept the sovereignty of the provinces, was
definitely lodged in the States-General. But the States-General did not
technically represent the, people. Its members were not elected by the
people. It was a body composed of, delegates from each provincial
assembly, of which there were now five: Holland, Zeeland, Friesland,
Utrecht, and Gelderland. Each provincial assembly consisted again of
delegates, not from the inhabitants of the provinces, but from the
magistracies of the cities. Those, magistracies, again, were not elected
by the citizens. They elected themselves by renewing their own
vacancies, and were, in short, immortal corporations. Thus, in final
analysis, the supreme power was distributed and localised among the
mayors and aldermen of a large number of cities, all independent alike
of the people below and of any central power above.
It is true that the nobles, as, a class, had a voice in the provincial
and, in the general assembly, both for themselves and as technical
representatives of the smaller towns and of the rural population. But,
as a matter of fact, the influence of this caste had of late years very
rapidly diminished, through its decrease in numbers, and the far more
rapid increase in wealth and power of the commercial and manufacturing
classes. Individual nobles were constantly employed in the military,
civil, and diplomatic service of the republic, but their body had ceased
to be a power. It had been. the policy of William the Silent to
increase the number of cities entitled to send deputies to the States;
for it was among the cities that his resistance to the tyranny of Spain,
and his efforts to obtain complete independence for his country, had been
mainly supported. Many of the great nobles, as has been seen in these
pages, denounced the liberator and took sides with the tyrant. Lamoral
Egmont had walked to the scaffold to which Philip had condemned him,
chanting a prayer for Philip's welfare. Egmont's eldest son was now
foremost in the Spanish army, doing battle against his own country in
behalf of the tyrant who had taken his father's life. Aremberg and
Ligny, Arachot, Chimay, Croy, Caprea, Montigny, and most of the great
patrician families of the Netherlands fought on the royal side.
The revolution which had saved the country from perdition and created the
great Netherland republic was a burgher revolution, and burgher statesmen
now controlled the State. The burgher class of Europe is not the one
that has been foremost in the revolutionary movements of history,
or that has distinguished itself--especially in more modern times--
by a passionate love of liberty. It is always easy to sneer at Hans
Miller and Hans Baker, and at the country where such plebeians are
powerful. Yet the burghers played a prominent part in the great drama
which forms my theme, and there has rarely been seen a more solid or
powerful type of their class than the burgher statesman, John of Olden-
Barneveld, who, since the death of William the Silent and the departure
of Lord Leicester, had mainly guided the destinies of Holland. Certainly
no soldier nor statesman who ever measured intellects with that potent
personage was apt to treat his genius otherwise than with profound
respect.
But it is difficult to form a logical theory of government except on the
fiction of divine right as a basis, unless the fact of popular
sovereignty, as expressed by a majority, be frankly accepted in spite of
philosophical objections.
In the Netherlands there was no king, and strictly speaking no people.
But this latter and fatal defect was not visible in the period of danger
and of contest. The native magistrates of that age were singularly pure,
upright, and patriotic. Of this there is no question whatever. And the
people acquiesced cheerfully in their authority, not claiming a larger
representation than such as they virtually possessed in the multiple
power exercised over them, by men moving daily among them, often of
modest fortunes and of simple lives. Two generations later, and in the
wilderness of Massachusetts, the early American colonists voluntarily
placed in the hands of their magistrates, few in number, unlimited
control of all the functions of government, and there was hardly an
instance known of an impure exercise of authority. Yet out of that
simple kernel grew the least limited and most powerful democracy ever
known.
In the later days of Netherland history a different result became
visible, and with it came the ruin of the State. The governing class, of
burgher origin, gradually separated itself from the rest of the citizens,
withdrew from commercial pursuits, lived on hereditary fortunes in the
exercise of functions which were likewise virtually hereditary, and so
became an oligarchy. This result, together with the physical causes
already indicated, made the downfall of the commonwealth probable
whenever it should be attacked by an overwhelming force from without.
The States-General, however, at this epoch--although they had in a manner
usurped the sovereignty, which in the absence of a feudal lord really
belonged to the whole people, and had silently repossessed themselves of
those executive functions which they had themselves conferred upon the
state council--were at any rate without self-seeking ambition. The
Hollanders, as a race, were not office seekers, but were singularly
docile to constituted authority, while their regents--as the municipal
magistrates were commonly called--were not very far removed above the
mass by birth or habitual occupation. The republic was a social and
political fact, against which there was no violent antagonism either of
laws or manners, and the people, although not technically existing, in
reality was all in all. In Netherland story the People is ever the true
hero. It was an almost unnoticed but significant revolution--that by
which the state council was now virtually deprived of its authority.
During Leicester's rule it had been a most important college of
administration. Since his resignation it had been entrusted by the
States-General with high executive functions, especially in war matters.
It was an assembly of learned counsellors appointed from the various
provinces for wisdom and experience, usually about eighteen in number,
and sworn in all things to be faithful to the whole republic. The
allegiance of all was rendered to the nation. Each individual member was
required to "forswear his native province in order to be true to the
generality." They deliberated in common for the general good, and were
not hampered by instructions from the provincial diets, nor compelled to
refer to those diets for decision when important questions were at issue.
It was an independent executive committee for the whole republic.
But Leicester had made it unpopular. His intrigues, in the name of
democracy, to obtain possession of sovereign power, to inflame the lower
classes against the municipal magistracies, and to excite the clergy to
claim a political influence to which they were not entitled and which was
most mischievous in its effects, had exposed the state council, with
which he had been in the habit of consulting, to suspicion.
The Queen of England, by virtue of her treaty had the right to appoint
two of her subjects to be members of the council. The governor of her
auxiliary forces was also entitled to a seat there. Since the
malpractices of Leicester and the danger to which the country had been,
subjected in consequence had been discovered, it was impossible that
there should be very kindly feeling toward England in the public mind,
however necessary a sincere alliance between the two countries was known
to be for the welfare of both.
The bickering of the two English councillors, Wilkes and Bodley,
and of the governor of the English contingent with the Hollanders,
was incessant. The Englishmen went so far as to claim the right of
veto upon all measures passed by the council, but the States-General
indignantly replied that the matters deliberated and decided upon by that
board were their own affairs, not the state affairs of England. The two
members and the military officer who together represented her Majesty
were entitled to participate in the deliberations and to vote with their
brother members. For them to claim the right, however, at will to annul
the proceedings was an intolerable assumption, and could not be listened
to for a moment. Certainly it would have been strange had two Dutchmen
undertaken to veto every measure passed by the Queen's council at
Richmond or Windsor, and it was difficult to say on what article of the
contract this extraordinary privilege was claimed by Englishmen at the
Hague.
Another cause of quarrel was the inability of the Englishmen to
understand the language in which the debates of the state council were
held.
According to a custom not entirely unexampled in parliamentary history
the members of assembly and council made use of their native tongue in
discussing the state affairs of their native land. It was however
considered a grievance by the two English members that the Dutchmen
should speak Dutch, and it was demanded in the Queen's name that they
should employ some other language which a foreigner could more easily
understand.
The Hollanders however refused this request, not believing that in a
reversed case her Majesty's Council or Houses of Parliament would be
likely or competent to carry on their discussions habitually in Italian
or Latin for the benefit of a couple of strangers who might not be
familiar with English. The more natural remedy would have been for the
foreigners to take lessons in the tongue of the country, or to seek for
an interpreter among their colleagues; especially as the States, when all
the Netherlands were but provinces, had steadily refused to adopt any
language but their mother tongue, even at the demand of their sovereign
prince.
At this moment, Sir Thomas Bodley was mainly entrusted with her Majesty's
affairs at the Hague, but his overbearing demeanour, intemperate
language, and passionate style of correspondence with the States and with
the royal government, did much injury to both countries. The illustrious
Walsingham--whose death in the spring of this year England had so much
reason to deplore--had bitterly lamented, just before his death, having
recommended so unquiet a spirit for so important a place. Ortel, envoy
of the States to London, expressed his hopes that affairs would now be
handled more to the satisfaction of the States; as Bodley would be
obliged, since the death of Sir Francis, to address his letters to the
Lord High Treasurer, with whom it would be impossible for him to obtain
so much influence as he had enjoyed with the late Secretary of State.
Moreover it was exactly at this season that the Advocate of Holland,
Olden-Barneveld, was excluded from the state council. Already the
important province of Holland was dissatisfied with its influence in that
body. Bearing one-half of the whole burthen of the war it was not
content with one-quarter of the council vote, and very soon it became the
custom for the States-General to conduct all the most important affairs
of the republic. The state council complained that even in war matters
it was not consulted, and that most important enterprises were undertaken
by Prince Maurice without its knowledge, and on advice of the Advocate
alone. Doubtless this was true, and thus, most unfortunately, the
commonwealth was degraded to a confederacy instead of becoming an
incorporate federal State. The members of the States-General--as it
has been seen were responsible only to their constituents, the separate
provinces. They avowed allegiance, each to his own province, none to the
central government. Moreover they were not representatives, but envoys,
appointed by petty provinces, bound by written orders, and obliged to
consult at every step with their sovereigns at home. The Netherland
polity was thus stamped almost at its birth with a narrow provincialism:
Delay and hesitation thus necessarily engendered were overcome in the
days of danger by patriotic fervour. The instinct of union for the
sake of the national existence was sufficiently strong, and the robust,
practical common sense of the people sufficiently enlightened to prevent
this weakness from degenerating into impotence so long as the war
pressure remained to mould them into a whole. But a day was to come for
bitterly rueing this paralysis of the imperial instincts of the people,
this indefinite decentralisation of the national strength.
For the present, the legislative and executive body was the States-
General. But the States-General were in reality the States provincial,
and the States provincial were the city municipalities, among which the
magistracies of Holland were preponderant.
Ere long it became impossible for an individual to resist the decrees of
the civic authorities. In 1591, the States-General passed a resolution
by which these arrogant corporations virtually procured their exemption
from any process at the suit of a private person to be placed on record.
So far could the principle of sovereignty be pulverized. City council
boards had become supreme.
It was naturally impossible during the long continuance of this great
struggle, that neutral nations should not be injuriously affected by it
in a variety of ways. And as a matter of course neutral nations were
disposed to counsel peace. Peace, peace; peace was the sigh of the
bystanders whose commerce was impeded, whose international relations.
were complicated, and whose own security was endangered in the course of
the bloody conflict. It was however not very much the fashion of that
day for governments to obtrude advice upon each other; or to read to each
other moral lectures. It was assumed that when the expense and sacrifice
of war had been incurred, it was for cause, and the discovery had not yet
been made that those not immediately interested in the fray were better
acquainted with its merits than, the combatants themselves, and were
moreover endued with, superhuman wisdom to see with perfect clearness
that future issue which to the parties themselves was concealed.
Cheap apothegms upon the blessings of peace and upon the expediency of
curbing the angry passions, uttered by the belligerents of yesterday to
the belligerents of to-day, did not then pass current for profound
wisdom.
Still the emperor Rudolph, abstaining for a time from his star-gazing,
had again thought proper to make a feeble attempt at intervention in
those sublunary matters which were supposed to be within his sphere.
It was perfectly well known that Philip was incapable of abating one jot
of his pretensions, and that to propose mediation to the United Provinces
was simply to request them, for the convenience of other powers, to
return to the slavery out of which, by the persistent efforts of a
quarter of a century, they had struggled. Nevertheless it was formally
proposed to re-open those lukewarm fountains of diplomatic commonplace in
which healing had been sought during the peace negotiations of Cologne in
the year 1579. But the States-General resolutely kept them sealed. They
simply answered his imperial Majesty by a communication of certain
intercepted correspondence between--the King of Spain and his ambassador
at Vienna, San Clemente, through which it was satisfactorily established
that any negotiation would prove as gigantic a comedy on the part of
Spain as had been the memorable conferences at Ostend, by which the
invasion of England had been masked.
There never was a possibility of mediation or of compromise except by
complete submission on the part of the Netherlanders to Crown and Church.
Both in this, as well as in previous and subsequent attempts at
negotiations, the secret instructions of Philip forbade any real
concessions on his side. He was always ready to negotiate, he was
especially anxious to obtain a suspension of arms from the rebels during
negotiation; but his agents were instructed to use great dexterity and
dissimulation in order that the proposal for such armistice, as well as
for negotiation at all, should appear to proceed, not from himself as was
the fact, but from the emperor as a neutral potentate. The king
uniformly proposed three points; firstly, that the rebels should
reconvert themselves to the Catholic religion; secondly, that they should
return to their obedience to himself; thirdly, that they should pay the
expenses of the war. Number three was, however, usually inserted in
order that, by conceding it subsequently, after much contestation, he
might appear conciliatory. It was a vehicle of magnanimity towards men
grown insolent with temporary success. Numbers one and two were
immutable.
Especially upon number one was concession impossible. "The Catholic
religion is the first thing," said Philip, "and although the rebels do
not cease to insist that liberty of conscience should be granted them,
in order that they may preserve that which they have had during these
past years, this is never to be thought of in any event." The king
always made free use of the terrible weapon which the Protestant princes
of Germany had placed in his hands. For indeed if it were right that one
man, because possessed of hereditary power over millions of his fellow
creatures, should compel them all to accept the dogmas of Luther or of
Calvin because agreeable to himself, it was difficult to say why another
man, in a similarly elevated position, might not compel his subjects to
accept the creed of Trent, or the doctrines of Mahomet or Confucius.
The Netherlanders were fighting--even more than they knew-for liberty
of conscience, for equality of all religions; not for Moses, nor for
Melancthon; for Henry, Philip, or Pius; while Philip justly urged that no
prince in Christendom permitted license. "Let them well understand,"
said his Majesty, "that since others who live in error, hold the opinion
that vassals are to conform to the religion of their master, it is
insufferable that it should be proposed to me that my vassals should have
a different religion from mine--and that too being the true religion,
proved by so many testimonies and miracles, while all others are
deception. This must be arranged with the authority of the commissioners
of the emperor, since it is well understood by them that the vassal is
never to differ from the opinion of his master." Certainly it was worth
an eighty years' war to drive such blasphemous madness as this out of
human heads, whether crowned or shaven.
There was likewise a diet held during the summer of this year, of the
circles of the empire nearest to the Netherlands--Westphalia, Cleves,
Juliers, and Saxony--from which commissioners were deputed both to
Brussels and to the Hague, to complain of the misfortunes suffered by
neutral and neighbouring nations in consequence of the civil war.
They took nothing by their mission to the Duke of Parma. At the Hague
the deputies were heard on the 22nd August, 1590. They complained to the
States-General of "brandschatting" on the border, of the holding of forts
beyond the lines, and of other invasions of neutral territory, of the
cruising of the war-vessels of the States off the shores and on the
rivers, and of their interference with lawful traders. Threats were made
of forcible intervention and reprisals.
The united States replied on the 13th September. Expressing deep regret
that neutral nations should suffer, they pronounced it to be impossible
but that some sparks from the great fire, now desolating their land,
should fly over into their neighbours' ground. The States were fighting
the battle of liberty against slavery, in which the future generations of
Germany, as well as of the Netherlands were interested. They were
combating that horrible institution, the Holy Inquisition. They were
doing their best to strike down the universal monarchy of Spain, which
they described as a bloodthirsty, insatiable, insolent, absolute dominion
of Saracenic, Moorish Christians. They warred with a system which placed
inquisitors on the seats of judges, which made it unlawful to read the
Scriptures, which violated all oaths, suppressed all civic freedom,
trampled, on all laws and customs, raised inordinate taxes by arbitrary
decree, and subjected high and low to indiscriminate murder. Spain had
sworn the destruction of the provinces and their subjugation to her
absolute dominion, in order to carry out her scheme of universal empire.
These were the deeds and designs against which the States were waging
that war, concerning some inconvenient results of which their neighbours,
now happily neutral, were complaining. But the cause of the States was
the cause of humanity itself. This Saracenic, Moorish, universal
monarchy had been seen by Germany to murder, despoil, and trample upon
the Netherlands. It had murdered millions of innocent Indians and
Granadians. It had kept Naples and Milan in abject slavery. It had
seized Portugal. It had deliberately planned and attempted an accursed
invasion of England and Ireland. It had overrun and plundered many
cities of the empire. It had spread a web of secret intrigue about
Scotland. At last it was sending great armies to conquer France and
snatch its crown. Poor France now saw the plans of this Spanish tyranny
and bewailed her misery. The subjects of her lawful king were ordered to
rise against him, on account of religion and conscience. Such holy
pretexts were used by these Saracenic Christians in order to gain
possession of that kingdom.
For all these reasons, men should not reproach the inhabitants of the
Netherlands, because seeing the aims of this accursed tyranny, they had
set themselves to resist it. It was contrary to reason to consider them
as disturbers of the general peace, or to hold them guilty of violating
their oaths or their duty to the laws of the holy empire. The States-
General were sure that they had been hitherto faithful and loyal, and
they were resolved to continue in that path.
As members of the holy empire, in part--as of old they were considered to
be--they had rather the right to expect, instead of reproaches,
assistance against the enormous power and inhuman oppression of their
enemies. They had demanded it heretofore by their ambassadors, and they
still continued to claim it. They urged that, according to the laws of
the empire, all foreign soldiers, Spaniards, Saracens, and the like
should be driven out of the limits of the empire. Through these means
the German Highland and the German Netherland might be restored once more
to their old friendship and unity, and might deal with each other again
in amity and commerce.
If, however, such requests could not be granted they at least begged his
electoral highness and the other dukes, lords, and states to put on the
deeds of Netherlanders in this laborious and heavy war the best
interpretation, in order that they might, with the better courage and
resolution, bear those inevitable burthens which were becoming daily
heavier in this task of resistance and self-protection; in order that the
provinces might not be utterly conquered, and serve, with their natural
resources and advantageous situation, as 'sedes et media belli' for the
destruction of neighbouring States and the building up of the
contemplated universal, absolute monarchy.
The United Provinces had been compelled by overpowering necessity to
take up arms. That which had resulted was and remained in 'terminis
defensionis.' Their object was to protect what belonged to them, to
recover that which by force or fraud had been taken from them.
In regard to excesses committed by their troops against neutral
inhabitants on the border, they expressed a strong regret, together with
a disposition to make all proper retribution and to cause all crimes to
be punished.
They alluded to the enormous sins of this nature practised by the enemy
against neutral soil. They recalled to mind that the Spaniards paid
their troops ill or not at all, and that they allowed them to plunder the
innocent and the neutral, while the United States had paid their troops
better wages, and more punctually, than had ever been done by the
greatest potentates of Europe. It was true that the States kept many
cruisers off the coasts and upon the rivers, but these were to protect
their own citizens and friendly traders against pirates and against the
common foe. Germany derived as much benefit from this system as did the
Provinces themselves.
Thus did the States-General, respectfully but resolutely, decline all
proffers of intervention, which, as they were well aware, could only
enure to the benefit of the enemy. Thus did they avoid being entrapped
into negotiations which could only prove the most lamentable of comedies.
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
A pusillanimous peace, always possible at any period
At length the twig was becoming the tree
Being the true religion, proved by so many testimonies
Certainly it was worth an eighty years' war
Chief seafaring nations of the world were already protestant
Conceding it subsequently, after much contestation
Fled from the land of oppression to the land of liberty
German Highland and the German Netherland
Little army of Maurice was becoming the model for Europe
Luxury had blunted the fine instincts of patriotism
Maritime heretics
Portion of these revenues savoured much of black-mail
The divine speciality of a few transitory mortals
The history of the Netherlands is history of liberty
The nation which deliberately carves itself in pieces
They had come to disbelieve in the mystery of kingcraft
Worn nor caused to be worn the collar of the serf
End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v61
by John Lothrop Motley
HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS
From the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce--1609
By John Lothrop Motley
History United Netherlands, Volume 62, 1590
CHAPTER XXIII.
Philip's scheme of aggrandizement--Projected invasion of France--
Internal condition of France--Character of Henry of Navarre--
Preparation for action--Battle of Ivry--Victory of the French king
over the League--Reluctance of the King to attack the French
capital--Siege of Paris--The pope indisposed towards the League--
Extraordinary demonstration of ecclesiastics--Influence of the
priests--Extremities of the siege--Attempted negotiation--State of
Philip's army--Difficult position of Farnese--March of the allies to
the relief of Paris--Lagny taken and the city relieved--Desertion of
the king's army--Siege of Corbeil--Death of Pope Sixtus V.--
Re-capture of Lagny and Corbeil--Return of Parma to the Netherlands
--Result of the expedition.
The scene of the narrative shifts to France. The history of the United
Netherlands at this epoch is a world-history. Were it not so, it would
have far less of moral and instruction for all time than it is really
capable of affording. The battle of liberty against despotism was now
fought in the hop-fields of Brabant or the polders of Friesland, now in
the: narrow seas which encircle England, and now on the sunny plains of
Dauphiny, among the craggy inlets of Brittany, or along the high roads
and rivers which lead to the gates of Paris. But everywhere a noiseless,
secret, but ubiquitous negotiation was speeding with never an instant's
pause to accomplish the work which lansquenettes and riders, pikemen and
carabineers were contending for on a hundred battle-fields and amid a din
of arms which for a quarter of a century had been the regular hum of
human industry. For nearly a generation of mankind, Germans and
Hollanders, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Scotchmen, Irishmen, Spaniards and
Italians seemed to be born into the world mainly to fight for or against
a system of universal monarchy, conceived for his own benefit by a quiet
old man who passed his days at a writing desk in a remote corner of
Europe. It must be confessed that Philip II. gave the world work enough.
Whether--had the peoples governed themselves--their energies might not
have been exerted in a different direction, and on the whole have
produced more of good to the human race than came of all this blood and
awoke, may be questioned.
But the divine right of kings, associating itself with the power supreme
of the Church, was struggling to maintain that old mastery of mankind
which awakening reason was inclined to dispute. Countries and nations
being regarded as private property to be inherited or bequeathed by a few
favoured individuals--provided always that those individuals were
obedient to the chief-priest--it had now become right and proper for the
Spanish monarch to annex Scotland, England, and France to the very
considerable possessions which were already his own. Scotland he claimed
by virtue of the expressed wish of Mary to the exclusion of her heretic
son.
France, which had been unjustly usurped by another family in times past
to his detriment, and which only a mere human invention--a "pleasantry"
as Alva had happily termed it, called the "Salic law"--prevented from
passing quietly to his daughter, as heiress to her mother, daughter of
Henry II., he was now fully bent upon making his own without further loss
of time. England, in consequence of the mishap of the year eighty-eight,
he was inclined to defer appropriating until the possession of the French
coasts, together with those of the Netherlands, should enable him to risk
the adventure with assured chances of success.
The Netherlands were fast slipping beyond his control, to be sure, as he
engaged in these endless schemes; and ill-disposed people of the day said
that the king was like Aesop's dog, lapping the river dry in order to get
at the skins floating on the surface. The Duke of Parma was driven to
his wits' ends for expedients, and beside himself with vexation, when
commanded to withdraw his ill-paid and mutinous army from the Provinces
for the purpose of invading France. Most importunate were the appeals
and potent the arguments by which he attempted to turn Philip from his
purpose. It was in vain. Spain was the great, aggressive, overshadowing
power at that day, before whose plots and whose violence the nations
alternately trembled, and it was France that now stood in danger of being
conquered or dismembered by the common enemy of all. That unhappy
kingdom, torn by intestine conflict, naturally invited the ambition and
the greediness of foreign powers. Civil war had been its condition, with
brief intervals, for a whole generation of mankind. During the last few
years, the sword had been never sheathed, while "the holy Confederacy"
and the Bearnese struggled together for the mastery. Religion was the
mantle under which the chiefs on both sides concealed their real designs
as they led on their followers year after year to the desperate conflict.
And their followers, the masses, were doubtless in earnest. A great
principle--the relation of man to his Maker and his condition in a future
world as laid down by rival priesthoods--has in almost every stage of
history had power to influence the multitude to fury and to deluge the
world in blood. And so long as the superstitious element of human nature
enables individuals or combinations of them to dictate to their fellow-
creatures those relations, or to dogmatize concerning those conditions--
to take possession of their consciences in short, and to interpose their
mummeries between man and his Creator--it is, probable that such scenes
as caused the nations to shudder, throughout so large a portion of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries will continue to repeat themselves at
intervals in various parts of the earth. Nothing can be more sublime
than the self-sacrifice, nothing more demoniac than the crimes, which
human creatures have seemed always ready to exhibit under the name of
religion.
It was and had been really civil war in France. In the Netherlands it
had become essentially a struggle for independence against a foreign
monarch; although the germ out of which both conflicts had grown to their
enormous proportions was an effort of the multitude to check the growth
of papacy. In France, accordingly, civil war, attended by that gaunt
sisterhood, murder, pestilence, and famine, had swept from the soil
almost everything that makes life valuable. It had not brought in its
train that extraordinary material prosperity and intellectual development
at which men wondered in the Netherlands, and to which allusion has just
been made. But a fortunate conjunction of circumstances had now placed
Henry of Navarre in a position of vantage. He represented the principle
of nationality, of French unity. It was impossible to deny that he was
in the regular line of succession, now that luckless Henry of Valois
slept with his fathers, and the principle of nationality might perhaps
prove as vital a force as attachment to the Roman Church. Moreover, the
adroit and unscrupulous Bearnese knew well how to shift the mantle of
religion from one shoulder to the other, to serve his purposes or the
humours of those whom he addressed.
"The King of Spain would exclude me from the kingdom and heritage of my
father because of my religion," he said to the Duke of Saxony; "but in
that religion I am determined to persist so long as I shall live." The
hand was the hand of Henry, but it was the voice of Duplessis Mornay.
"Were there thirty crowns to win," said he, at about the same time to the
States of France, "I would not change my religion on compulsion, the
dagger at my throat. Instruct me, instruct me, I am not obstinate."
There spoke the wily freethinker, determined not to be juggled out of
what he considered his property by fanatics or priests of either church.
Had Henry been a real devotee, the fate of Christendom might have been
different. The world has long known how much misery it is in the power
of crowned bigots to inflict.
On the other hand, the Holy League, the sacred Confederacy, was catholic
or nothing. Already it was more papist than the pope, and loudly
denounced Sixtus V. as a Huguenot because he was thought to entertain a
weak admiration both for Henry the heretic and for the Jezebel of
England.
But the holy confederacy was bent on destroying the national government
of France, and dismembering the national domain. To do this the pretext
of trampling out heresy and indefinitely extending the power of Rome, was
most influential with the multitude, and entitled the leaders to enjoy
immense power for the time being, while maturing their schemes for
acquiring permanent possession of large fragments of the national
territory. Mayenne, Nemours, Aumale, Mercoeur longed to convert
temporary governments into independent principalities. The Duke of
Lorraine looked with longing eyes on Verdun, Sedan, and, the other fair
cities within the territories contiguous--to his own domains. The
reckless house of Savoy; with whom freebooting and landrobbery seemed
geographical, and hereditary necessities, was busy on the southern
borders, while it seemed easy enough for Philip, II., in right of his
daughter, to secure at least the duchy of Brittany before entering on
the sovereignty of the whole kingdom.
To the eyes of the world at large: France might well seem in a condition
of hopeless disintegration; the restoration of its unity and former
position among the nations, under the government of a single chief, a
weak and wicked dream. Furious and incessant were the anathemas hurled
on the head of the Bearnese for his persistence in drowning the land in
blood in the hope of recovering a national capital which never could be
his, and of wresting from the control of the confederacy that power.
which, whether usurped or rightful, was considered, at least by the
peaceably inclined, to have become a solid fact.
The poor puppet locked in the tower of Fontenay, and entitled Charles X.;
deceived and scared no one. Such money as there was might be coined, in
its name, but Madam League reigned supreme in Paris. The confederates,
inspired by the eloquence of a cardinal legate, and supplied with funds
by the faithful, were ready to dare a thousand deaths rather than submit
to the rule of a tyrant and heretic.
What was an authority derived from the laws of the land and the history
of the race compared with the dogmas of Rome and the trained veterans of
Spain? It remained to be seen whether nationality or bigotry would
triumph. But in the early days of 1590 the prospects of nationality were
not encouraging.
Francois de Luxembourg, due de Pincey, was in Rome at that moment,
deputed by such catholic nobles of France as were friendly to Henry of
Navarre. Sixtus might perhaps be influenced as to the degree of respect
to be accorded to the envoy's representations by the events of the
campaign about to open. Meantime the legate Gaetano, young, rich,
eloquent, unscrupulous, distinguished alike for the splendour of his
house and the brilliancy of his intellect, had arrived in Paris.
Followed by a great train of adherents he had gone down to the House of
Parliament, and was about to seat himself under the dais reserved for the
king, when Brisson, first President of Parliament, plucked him back by
the arm, and caused him to take a seat immediately below his own.
Deeply was the bold president to expiate this defence of king and law
against the Holy League. For the moment however the legate contented
himself with a long harangue, setting forth the power of Rome, while
Brisson replied by an oration magnifying the grandeur of France.
Soon afterwards the cardinal addressed himself to the counteraction
of Henry's projects of conversion. For, well did the subtle priest
understand that in purging himself of heresy, the Bearnese was about to
cut the ground from beneath his enemies' feet. In a letter to the
archbishops and bishops of France, he argued the matter at length.
Especially he denied the necessity or the legality of an assembly of all
the prelates of France, such as Henry desired to afford him the requisite
"instruction" as to the respective merits of the Roman and the reformed
Church. Certainly, he urged, the Prince of Bearne could hardly require
instruction as to the tenets of either, seeing that at different times he
had faithfully professed both.
But while benches of bishops and doctors of the Sorbonne were burnishing
all the arms in ecclesiastical and legal arsenals for the approaching
fray, the sound of louder if not more potent artillery began to be heard
in the vicinity of Paris. The candid Henry, while seeking ghostly
instruction with eagerness from his papistical patrons, was equally
persevering in applying for the assistance of heretic musketeers and
riders from his protestant friends in England, Holland, Germany, and
Switzerland.
Queen Elizabeth and the States-General vied with each other in generosity
to the great champion of protestantism, who was combating the holy league
so valiantly, and rarely has a great historical figure presented itself
to the world so bizarre of aspect, and under such shifting perplexity of
light and shade, as did the Bearnese in the early spring of 1590.
The hope of a considerable portion of the catholic nobility of his realm,
although himself an excommunicated heretic; the mainstay of Calvinism
while secretly bending all his energies to effect his reconciliation with
the pope; the idol of the austere and grimly puritanical, while himself a
model of profligacy; the leader of the earnest and the true, although
false as water himself in every relation in which human beings can stand
to each other; a standardbearer of both great branches of the Christian
Church in an age when religion was the atmosphere of men's daily lives,
yet finding his sincerest admirer, and one of his most faithful allies,
in the Grand Turk,
[A portion of the magnificently protective letter of Sultan Amurath,
in which he complimented Henry on his religious stedfastness, might
almost have made the king's cheek tingle.]
the representative of national liberty and human rights against regal and
sacerdotal absolutism, while himself a remorseless despot by nature and
education, and a believer in no rights of the people save in their
privilege to be ruled by himself; it seems strange at first view that
Henry of Navarre should have been for centuries so heroic and popular an
image. But he was a soldier, a wit, a consummate politician; above all,
he was a man, at a period when to be a king was often to be something
much less or much worse.
To those accustomed to weigh and analyse popular forces it might well
seem that he was now playing an utterly hopeless game. His capital
garrisoned by the Pope and the King of Spain, with its grandees and its
populace scoffing at his pretence of authority and loathing his name;
with an exchequer consisting of what he could beg or borrow from Queen
Elizabeth--most parsimonious of sovereigns reigning over the half of a
small island--and from the States-General governing a half-born, half-
drowned little republic, engaged in a quarter of a century's warfare with
the greatest monarch in the world; with a wardrobe consisting of a dozen
shirts and five pocket-handkerchiefs, most of them ragged, and with a
commissariat made up of what could be brought in the saddle-bags of his
Huguenot cavaliers who came to the charge with him to-day, and to-morrow
were dispersed again to their mountain fastnesses; it did not seem likely
on any reasonable theory of dynamics that the power of the Bearnese was
capable of outweighing Pope and Spain, and the meaner but massive
populace of France, and the Sorbonne, and the great chiefs of the
confederacy, wealthy, long descended, allied to all the sovereigns of
Christendom, potent in territorial possessions and skilful in wielding
political influences.
"The Bearnese is poor but a gentleman of good family," said the cheerful
Henry, and it remained to-be seen whether nationality, unity, legitimate
authority, history, and law would be able to neutralise the powerful
combination of opposing elements.
The king had been besieging Dreux and had made good progress in reducing
the outposts of the city. As it was known that he was expecting
considerable reinforcements of English ships, Netherlanders, and Germans,
the chiefs of the league issued orders from Paris for an attack before he
should thus be strengthened.
For Parma, unwillingly obeying the stringent commands of his master, had
sent from Flanders eighteen hundred picked cavalry under Count Philip
Egmont to join the army of Mayenne. This force comprised five hundred
Belgian heavy dragoons under the chief nobles of the land, together with
a selection, in even proportions, of Walloon, German, Spanish, and
Italian troopers.
Mayenne accordingly crossed the Seine at Mantes with an army of ten
thousand foot, and, including Egmont's contingent, about four thousand
horse. A force under Marshal d'Aumont, which lay in Ivry at the passage
of the Eure, fell back on his approach and joined the remainder of the
king's army. The siege of Dreux was abandoned; and Henry withdrew to the
neighbourhood of Nonancourt. It was obvious that the duke meant to offer
battle, and it was rare that the king under any circumstances could be
induced to decline a combat.
On the night of the 12th-13th March, Henry occupied Saint Andre, a
village situated on an elevated and extensive plain four leagues from
Nonancourt, in the direction of Ivry, fringed on three sides by villages
and by a wood, and commanding a view of all the approaches from the
country between the Seine and Eure. It would have been better had
Mayenne been beforehand with him, as the sequel proved; but the duke was
not famed for the rapidity of his movements. During the greater part of
the night, Henry was employed in distributing his orders for that
conflict which was inevitable on the following day. His army was drawn
up according to a plan prepared by himself, and submitted to the most
experienced of his generals for their approval. He then personally
visited every portion of the encampment, speaking words of encouragement
to his soldiers, and perfecting his arrangements for the coming conflict.
Attended by Marshals d'Aumont and Biron he remained on horseback during a
portion of the night, having ordered his officers to their tents and
reconnoitred as well as he could the position of the enemy. Towards
morning he retired to his headquarters at Fourainville, where he threw
himself half-dressed on his truckle bed, and although the night was
bitterly cold, with no covering but his cloak. He was startled from his
slumber before the dawn by a movement of lights in the enemy's camp, and
he sprang to his feet supposing that the duke was stealing a march upon
him despite all his precautions. The alarm proved to be a false one, but
Henry lost no time in ordering his battle. His cavalry he divided in
seven troops or squadrons. The first, forming the left wing, was a body
of three hundred under Marshal d'Aumont, supported by two regiments of
French infantry. Next, separated by a short interval, was another troop
of three hundred under the Duke of Montpensier, supported by two other
regiments of foot, one Swiss and one German. In front of Montpensier was
Baron Biron the younger, at the head of still another body of three
hundred. Two troops of cuirassiers, each four hundred strong, were on
Biron's left, the one commanded by the Grand Prior of France, Charles
d'Angouleme, the other by Monsieur de Givry. Between the Prior and Givry
were six pieces of heavy artillery, while the battalia, formed of eight
hundred horse in six squadrons, was commanded by the king in person, and
covered on both sides by English and Swiss infantry, amounting to some
four thousand in all. The right wing was under the charge of old Marshal
Biron, and comprised three troops of horse, numbering one hundred and
fifty each, two companies of German riders, and four regiments of French
infantry. These numbers, which are probably given with as much accuracy
as can be obtained, show a force of about three thousand horse and twelve
thousand foot.
The Duke of Mayenne, seeing too late the advantage of position which he
might have easily secured the day before, led his army forth with the
early light, and arranged it in an order not very different from that
adopted by the king, and within cannon-shot of his lines. The right wing
under Marshal de la Chatre consisted of three regiments of French and one
of Germans, supporting three regiments of Spanish lancers, two cornets of
German riders under the Bastard of Brunswick, and four hundred
cuirassiers. The battalia, which was composed of six hundred splendid
cavalry, all noblemen of France, guarding the white banner of the Holy
League, and supported by a column of three thousand Swiss and two
thousand French infantry, was commanded by Mayenne in person, assisted by
his half-brother, the Duke of Nemours. In front of the infantry was a
battery of six cannon and three culverines. The left wing was commanded
by Marshal de Rene, with six regiments of French and Lorrainers, two
thousand Germans, six hundred French cuirassiers, and the mounted
troopers of Count Egmont. It is probable that Mayenne's whole force,
therefore, amounted to nearly four thousand cavalry and at least thirteen
thousand foot.
Very different was the respective appearance of the two armies, so far,
especially, as regarded the horsemen on both sides. Gay in their gilded
armour and waving plumes, with silken scarves across their shoulders, and
the fluttering favours of fair ladies on their arms or in their helmets,
the brilliant champions of the Holy Catholic Confederacy clustered around
the chieftains of the great house of Guise, impatient for the conflict.
It was like a muster for a brilliant and chivalrous tournament. The
Walloon and Flemish nobles, outrivalling even the self-confidence of
their companions in arms, taunted them with their slowness. The,
impetuous Egmont, burning to eclipse the fame of his ill-fated father at
Gravelines and St. Quintin in the same holy cause, urged on the battle
with unseemly haste, loudly proclaiming that if the French were faint-
hearted he would himself give a good account of the Navarrese prince
without any assistance from them.
A cannon-shot away, the grim puritan nobles who had come forth from their
mountain fastnesses to do battle for king and law and for the rights of
conscience against the Holy League--men seasoned in a hundred battle-
fields, clad all in iron, with no dainty ornaments nor holiday luxury of
warfare--knelt on the ground, smiting their mailed breasts with iron
hands, invoking blessings on themselves and curses and confusion on their
enemies in the coming conflict, and chanting a stern psalm of homage to
the God of battles and of wrath. And Henry of France and Navarre,
descendant of Lewis the Holy and of Hugh the Great, beloved chief of the
Calvinist cavaliers, knelt among his heretic brethren, and prayed and
chanted with them. But not the staunchest Huguenot of them all, not
Duplessis, nor D'Aubigne, nor De la Noue with the iron arm, was more
devoted on that day to crown and country than were such papist supporters
of the rightful heir as had sworn to conquer the insolent foreigner on
the soil of France or die.
When this brief prelude was over, Henry made an address to his soldiers,
but its language has not been preserved. It is known, however, that he
wore that day his famous snow-white plume, and that he ordered his
soldiers, should his banner go down in the conflict, to follow wherever
and as long as that plume should be seen waving on any part of the field.
He had taken a position by which his troops had the sun and wind in their
backs, so that the smoke rolled toward the enemy and the light shone in
their eyes. The combat began with the play of artillery, which soon
became so warm that Egmont, whose cavalry--suffering and galled--soon
became impatient, ordered a charge. It was a most brilliant one. The
heavy troopers of Flanders and Hainault, following their spirited
chieftain, dashed upon old Marshal Biron, routing his cavalry, charging
clean up to the Huguenot guns and sabring the cannoneers. The shock was
square, solid, irresistible, and was followed up by the German riders
under Eric of Brunswick, who charged upon the battalia of the royal army,
where the king commanded in person.
There was a panic. The whole royal cavalry wavered, the supporting
infantry recoiled, the day seemed lost before the battle was well begun.
Yells of "Victory! Victory! up with the Holy League, down with the
heretic Bearnese," resounded through the Catholic squadrons. The king
and Marshal Biron, who were near each other, were furious with rage, but
already doubtful of the result. They exerted themselves to rally the
troops under their immediate command, and to reform the shattered ranks.
The German riders and French lancers under Brunswick and Bassompierre
had, however, not done their work as thoroughly as Egmont had done. The
ground was so miry and soft that in the brief space which separated the
hostile lines they had not power to urge their horses to full speed.
Throwing away their useless lances, they came on at a feeble canter,
sword in hand, and were unable to make a very vigorous impression on the
more heavily armed troopers opposed to them. Meeting with a firm
resistance to their career, they wheeled, faltered a little and fell a
short distance back. Many of the riders being of the reformed religion,
refused moreover to fire upon the Huguenots, and discharged their
carbines in the air.
The king, whose glance on the battle-field was like inspiration, saw the
blot and charged upon them in person with his whole battalia of cavalry.
The veteran Biron followed hard upon the snow-white plume. The scene was
changed, victory succeeded to impending defeat, and the enemy was routed.
The riders and cuirassiers, broken into a struggling heap of confusion,
strewed the ground with their dead bodies, or carried dismay into the
ranks of the infantry as they strove to escape. Brunswick went down in
the melee, mortally wounded as it was believed. Egmont renewing the
charge at the head of his victorious Belgian troopers, fell dead with a
musket-ball through his heart. The shattered German and Walloon cavalry,
now pricked forward by the lances of their companions, under the
passionate commands of Mayenne and Aumale, now fading back before the
furious charges of the Huguenots, were completely overthrown and cut to
pieces.
Seven times did Henry of Navarre in person lead his troopers to the
charge; but suddenly, in the midst of the din of battle and the cheers of
victory, a message of despair went from lip to lip throughout the royal
lines. The king had disappeared. He was killed, and the hopes of
Protestantism and of France were fallen for ever with him. The white
standard of his battalia had been seen floating wildly and purposelessly
over the field; for his bannerman, Pot de Rhodes, a young noble of
Dauphiny, wounded mortally in the head, with blood streaming over his
face and blinding his sight, was utterly unable to control his horse, who
gallopped hither and thither at his own caprice, misleading many troopers
who followed in his erratic career. A cavalier, armed in proof, and
wearing the famous snow-white plume, after a hand-to-hand struggle with
a veteran of Count Bossu's regiment, was seen to fall dead by the side of
the bannerman: The Fleming, not used to boast, loudly asserted that he
had slain the Bearnese, and the news spread rapidly over the battle-
field. The defeated Confederates gained new courage, the victorious
Royalists were beginning to waver, when suddenly, between the hostile
lines, in the very midst of the battle, the king gallopped forward,
bareheaded, covered with blood and dust, but entirely unhurt. A wild
shout of "Vive le Roi!" rang through the air. Cheerful as ever, he
addressed a few encouraging words to his soldiers, with a smiling face,
and again led a charge. It was all that was necessary to complete the
victory. The enemy broke and ran away on every side in wildest
confusion, followed by the royalist cavalry, who sabred them as they
fled. The panic gained the foot-soldiers, who should have supported the
cavalry, but had not been at all engaged in the action. The French
infantry threw away their arms as they rushed from the field and sought
refuge in the woods. The Walloons were so expeditious in the race, that
they never stopped till they gained their own frontier. The day was
hopelessly lost, and although Mayenne had conducted himself well in the
early part of the day, it was certain that he was excelled by none in the
celerity of his flight when the rout had fairly begun. Pausing to draw
breath as he gained the wood, he was seen to deal blows with his own
sword among the mob of fugitives, not that he might rally them to their
flag and drive them back to another encounter, but because they
encumbered his own retreat.
The Walloon carbineers, the German riders, and the French lancers,
disputing as to the relative blame to be attached to each corps, began
shooting and sabring each other, almost before they were out of the
enemy's sight. Many were thus killed. The lansquenets were all put to
the sword. The Swiss infantry were allowed to depart for their own
country on pledging themselves not again to bear arms against Henry IV.
It is probable that eight hundred of the leaguers were either killed on
the battle-field or drowned in the swollen river in their retreat. About
one-fourth of that number fell in the army of the king. It is certain
that of the contingent from the obedient Netherlands, two hundred and
seventy, including their distinguished general, lost their lives. The
Bastard of Brunswick, crawling from beneath a heap of slain, escaped with
life. Mayenne lost all his standards and all the baggage of his army,
while the army itself was for a time hopelessly dissolved.
Few cavalry actions have attained a wider celebrity in history than the
fight of Ivry. Yet there have been many hard-fought battles, where the
struggle was fiercer and closer, where the issue was for a longer time
doubtful, where far more lives on either side were lost, where the final
victory was immediately productive of very much greater results, and
which, nevertheless, have sunk into hopeless oblivion. The, personal
details which remain concerning the part enacted by the adventurous king
at this most critical period of his career, the romantic interest which
must always gather about that ready-witted, ready-sworded Gascon, at the
moment when, to contemporaries, the result of all his struggles seemed so
hopeless or at best so doubtful; above all, the numerous royal and
princely names which embellished the roll-call of that famous passage of
arms, and which were supposed, in those days at least, to add such lustre
to a battle-field, as humbler names, however illustrious by valour or
virtue, could never bestow, have made this combat for ever famous.
Yet it is certain that the most healthy moral, in military affairs, to be
derived from the event, is that the importance of a victory depends less
upon itself than on the use to be made of it. Mayenne fled to Mantes,
the Duke of Nemours to Chartres, other leaders of the League in various
directions, Mayenne told every body he met that the Bearnese was killed,
and that although his own army was defeated, he should soon have another
one on foot. The same intelligence was communicated to the Duke of
Parma, and by him to Philip. Mendoza and the other Spanish agents went
about Paris spreading the news of Henry's death, but the fact seemed
woefully to lack confirmation, while the proofs of the utter overthrow
and shameful defeat of the Leaguers were visible on every, side. The
Parisians--many of whom the year before had in vain hired windows in the
principal streets, in order to witness the promised entrance of the
Bearnese, bound hand and foot, and with a gag in his mouth, to swell the
triumph of Madam League--were incredulous as to the death now reported to
them of this very lively heretic, by those who had fled so ignominiously
from his troopers.
De la None and the other Huguenot chieftains, earnestly urged upon Henry
the importance of advancing upon Paris without an instant's delay, and it
seems at least extremely probable that, had he done so, the capital would
have fallen at once into his hands. It is the concurrent testimony of
contemporaries that the panic, the destitution, the confusion would have
made resistance impossible had a determined onslaught been made. And
Henry had a couple of thousand horsemen flushed with victory, and a dozen
thousand foot who had been compelled to look upon a triumph in which they
had no opportunity of sharing: Success and emulation would have easily
triumphed over dissension and despair.
But the king, yielding to the councils of Biron and other Catholics,
declined attacking the capital, and preferred waiting the slow, and in
his circumstances eminently hazardous, operations of a regular siege.
Was it the fear of giving a signal triumph to the cause of Protestantism
that caused the Huguenot leader--so soon to become a renegade--to pause
in his career? Was it anxiety lest his victorious entrance into Paris
might undo the diplomacy of his catholic envoys at Rome? or was it simply
the mutinous condition of his army, especially of the Swiss mercenaries,
who refused to advance a step unless their arrears of pay were at once
furnished them out of the utterly empty exchequer of the king? Whatever
may have been the cause of the delay, it is certain that the golden fruit
of victory was not plucked, and that although the confederate army had
rapidly dissolved, in consequence of their defeat, the king's own forces
manifested as little cohesion.
And now began that slow and painful siege, the details of which are as
terrible, but as universally known, as those of any chapters in the
blood-stained history of the century. Henry seized upon the towns
guarding the rivers Seine and Marne, twin nurses of Paris. By
controlling the course of those streams as well as that of the Yonne and
Oise--especially by taking firm possession of Lagny on the Marne, whence
a bridge led from the Isle of France to the Brie country--great
thoroughfare of wine and corn--and of Corbeil at the junction of the
little river Essonne with the Seine-it was easy in that age to stop the
vital circulation of the imperial city.
By midsummer, Paris, unquestionably the first city of Europe at that day,
was in extremities, and there are few events in history in which our
admiration is more excited by the power of mankind to endure almost
preternatural misery, or our indignation more deeply aroused by the
cruelty with which the sublimest principles of human nature may be made
to serve the purposes of selfish ambition and grovelling superstition,
than this famous leaguer.
Rarely have men at any epoch defended their fatherland against foreign
oppression with more heroism than that which was manifested by the
Parisians of 1590 in resisting religious toleration, and in obeying a
foreign and priestly despotism. Men, women, and children cheerfully laid
down their lives by thousands in order that the papal legate and the king
of Spain might trample upon that legitimate sovereign of France who was
one day to become the idol of Paris and of the whole kingdom.
A census taken at the beginning of the siege had showed a populace of two
hundred thousand souls, with a sufficiency of provisions, it was thought,
to last one month. But before the terrible summer was over--so
completely had the city been invested--the bushel of wheat was worth
three hundred and sixty crowns, rye and oats being but little cheaper.
Indeed, grain might as well have cost three thousand crowns the bushel,
for the prices recorded placed it beyond the reach of all but the
extremely wealthy. The flesh of horses, asses, dogs, cats, rats had
become rare luxuries. There was nothing cheap, said a citizen bitterly,
but sermons. And the priests and monks of every order went daily about
the streets, preaching fortitude in that great resistance to heresy, by
which Paris was earning for itself a crown of glory, and promising the
most direct passage to paradise for the souls of the wretched victims
who fell daily, starved to death, upon the pavements. And the monks and
priests did their work nobly, aiding the general resolution by the
example of their own courage. Better fed than their fellow citizens,
they did military work in trench, guard-house and rampart, as the
population became rapidly unfit, from physical exhaustion, for the
defence of the city.
The young Duke of Nemours, governor of the place, manifested as much
resolution and conduct in bringing his countrymen to perdition as if the
work in which he was engaged had been the highest and holiest that ever
tasked human energies. He was sustained in his task by that proud
princess, his own and Mayenne's mother, by Madame Montpensier, by the
resident triumvirate of Spain, Mendoza, Commander Moreo, and John Baptist
Tasais, by the cardinal legate Gaetano, and, more than all, by the
sixteen chiefs of the wards, those municipal tyrants of the unhappy
populace.
Pope Sixtus himself was by no means eager for the success of the League.
After the battle of Ivry, he had most seriously inclined his ear to the
representations of Henry's envoy, and showed much willingness to admit
the victorious heretic once more into the bosom of the Church. Sixtus
was not desirous of contributing to the advancement of Philip's power.
He feared his designs on Italy, being himself most anxious at that time
to annex Naples to the holy see. He had amassed a large treasure, but he
liked best to spend it in splendid architecture, in noble fountains, in
magnificent collections of art, science, and literature, and, above all,
in building up fortunes for the children of his sister the washerwoman,
and in allying them all to the most princely houses of Italy, while never
allowing them even to mention the name of their father, so base was his
degree; but he cared not to disburse from his hoarded dollars to supply
the necessities of the League.
But Gaetano, although he could wring but fifty thousand crowns from his
Holiness after the fatal fight of Ivry, to further the good cause, was
lavish in expenditures from his own purse and from other sources, and
this too at a time when thirty-three per cent. interest was paid to the
usurers of Antwerp for one month's loan of ready money. He was
indefatigable, too, and most successful in his exhortations and ghostly
consolations to the people. Those proud priests and great nobles were
playing a reckless game, and the hopes of mankind beyond the grave were
the counters on their table. For themselves there were rich prizes for
the winning. Should they succeed in dismembering the fair land where
they were enacting their fantastic parts, there were temporal
principalities, great provinces, petty sovereignties, to be carved out
of the heritage which the Bearnese claimed for his own. Obviously then,
their consciences could never permit this shameless heretic, by a
simulated conversion at the critical moment, to block their game and
restore the national unity and laws. And even should it be necessary to
give the whole kingdom, instead of the mere duchy of Brittany, to Philip
of Spain, still there were mighty guerdons to be bestowed on his
supporters before the foreign monarch could seat himself on the throne of
Henry's ancestors.
As to the people who were fighting, starving, dying by thousands in
this great cause, there were eternal rewards in another world profusely
promised for their heroism instead of the more substantial bread and
beef, for lack of which they were laying down their lives.
It was estimated that before July twelve thousand human beings in Paris
had died, for want of food, within three months. But as there were no
signs of the promised relief by the army of Parma and Mayenne, and as the
starving people at times appeared faint-hearted, their courage was
strengthened one day by a stirring exhibition.
An astonishing procession marched through the streets of the city, led by
the Bishop of Senlis and the Prior of Chartreux, each holding a halberd
in one hand and a crucifix in the other, and graced by the presence of
the cardinal-legate, and of many prelates from Italy. A lame monk,
adroitly manipulating the staff of a drum major, went hopping and limping
before them, much to the amazement of the crowd. Then came a long file
of monks-Capuchins, Bernardists, Minimes, Franciscans, Jacobins,
Carmelites, and other orders--each with his cowl thrown back, his long
robes trussed up, a helmet on his head, a cuirass on his breast, and a
halberd in his hand. The elder ones marched first, grinding their teeth,
rolling their eyes, and making other ferocious demonstrations. Then came
the younger friars, similarly attired, all armed with arquebusses, which
they occasionally and accidentally discharged to the disadvantage of the
spectators, several of whom were killed or wounded on the spot. Among
others a servant of Cardinal Gaetano was thus slain, and the even caused
much commotion, until the cardinal proclaimed that a man thus killed in
so holy a cause had gone straight to heaven and had taken his place among
the just. It was impossible, thus argued the people in their simplicity,
that so wise and virtuous a man as the cardinal should not know what was
best.
The procession marched to the church of our Lady of Loretto, where they
solemnly promised to the blessed Virgin a lamp and ship of gold--should
she be willing to use her influence in behalf of the suffering city--to
be placed on her shrine as soon as the siege should be raised.
But these demonstrations, however cheering to the souls, had
comparatively little effect upon the bodies of the sufferers. It was
impossible to walk through the streets of Paris without stumbling over
the dead bodies of the citizens. Trustworthy eye-witnesses of those
dreadful days have placed the number of the dead during the summer at
thirty thousand. A tumultuous assemblage of the starving and the forlorn
rushed at last to the municipal palace, demanding peace or bread. The
rebels were soon dispersed however by a charge, headed by the Chevalier
d'Aumale, and assisted by the chiefs of the wards, and so soon as the
riot was quelled, its ringleader, a leading advocate, Renaud by name, was
hanged.
Still, but for the energy of the priests, it is doubtful whether the city
could have been held by the Confederacy. The Duke of Nemours confessed
that there were occasions when they never would have been able to sustain
a determined onslaught, and they were daily expecting to see the Prince
of Bearne battering triumphantly at their gates.
But the eloquence of the preachers, especially of the one-eyed father
Boucher, sustained the fainting spirits of the people, and consoled the
sufferers in their dying agonies by glimpses of paradise. Sublime was
that devotion, superhuman that craft; but it is only by weapons from the
armoury of the Unseen that human creatures can long confront such horrors
in a wicked cause. Superstition, in those days at least, was a political
force absolutely without limitation, and most adroitly did the agents of
Spain and Rome handle its tremendous enginery against unhappy France.
For the hideous details of the most dreadful sieges recorded in ancient
or modern times were now reproduced in Paris. Not a revolutionary
circumstance, at which the world had shuddered in the accounts of the
siege of Jerusalem, was spared. Men devoured such dead vermin as could
be found lying in the streets. They crowded greedily around stalls in
the public squares where the skin, bones, and offal of such dogs, cats
and unclean beasts as still remained for the consumption of the wealthier
classes were sold to the populace. Over the doorways of these flesh
markets might be read "Haec runt munera pro iis qui vitam pro Philippo
profuderunt." Men stood in archways and narrow passages lying in wait
for whatever stray dogs still remained at large, noosed them, strangled
them, and like savage beasts of prey tore them to pieces and devoured
them alive. And it sometimes happened, too, that the equally hungry dog
proved the more successful in the foul encounter, and fed upon the man.
A lady visiting the Duchess of Nemours--called for the high pretensions
of her sons by her two marriages the queen-mother--complained bitterly
that mothers in Paris had been compelled to kill their own children
outright to save them from starving to death in lingering agony. "And if
you are brought to that extremity," replied the duchess, "as for the sake
of our holy religion to be forced to kill your own children, do you think
that so great a matter after all? What are your children made of more
than other people's children? What are we all but dirt and dust?" Such
was the consolation administered by the mother of the man who governed
Paris, and defended its gates against its lawful sovereign at the command
of a foreigner; while the priests in their turn persuaded the populace
that it was far more righteous to kill their own children, if they had no
food to give them, than to obtain food by recognising a heretic king.
It was related too, and believed, that in some instances mothers had
salted the bodies of their dead children and fed upon them, day by day,
until the hideous repast would no longer support their own life. They
died, and the secret was revealed by servants who had partaken of the
food. The Spanish ambassador, Mendoza, advised recourse to an article of
diet which had been used in some of the oriental sieges. The counsel at
first was rejected as coming from the agent of Spain, who wished at all
hazards to save the capital of France from falling out of the hands of
his master into those of the heretic. But dire necessity prevailed, and
the bones of the dead were taken in considerable quantities from the
cemeteries, ground into flour, baked into bread, and consumed. It was
called Madame Montpensier's cake, because the duchess earnestly
proclaimed its merits to the poor Parisians. "She was never known to
taste it herself, however," bitterly observed one who lived in Paris
through that horrible summer. She was right to abstain, for all who ate
of it died, and the Montpensier flour fell into disuse.
Lansquenets and other soldiers, mad with hunger and rage, when they could
no longer find dogs to feed on, chased children through the streets, and
were known in several instances to kill and devour them on the spot. To
those expressing horror at the perpetration of such a crime, a leading
personage, member of the Council of Nine, maintained that there was less
danger to one's soul in satisfying one's hunger with a dead child, in
case of necessity, than in recognizing the heretic Bearnese, and he added
that all the best theologians and doctors of Paris were of his opinion.
As the summer wore on to its close, through all these horrors, and as
there were still no signs of Mayenne and Parma leading their armies to
the relief of the city, it became necessary to deceive the people by a
show of negotiation with the beleaguering army. Accordingly, the Spanish
ambassador, the legate, and the other chiefs of the Holy League appointed
a deputation, consisting of the Cardinal Gondy, the Archbishop of Lyons,
and the Abbe d'Elbene, to Henry. It soon became evident to the king,
however, that these commissioners were but trifling with him in order to
amuse the populace. His attitude was dignified and determined throughout
the interview. The place appointed was St. Anthony's Abbey, before the
gates of Paris. Henry wore a cloak and the order of the Holy Ghost, and
was surrounded by his council, the princes of the blood, and by more than
four hundred of the chief gentlemen of his army. After passing the
barricade, the deputies were received by old Marshal Biron, and conducted
by him to the king's chamber of state. When they had made their
salutations, the king led the way to an inner cabinet, but his progress
was much impeded by the crowding of the nobles about him. Wishing to
excuse this apparent rudeness, he said to the envoys: "Gentlemen, these
men thrust me on as fast to the battle against the foreigner as they now
do to my cabinet. Therefore bear with them." Then turning to the crowd,
he said: "Room, gentlemen, for the love of me," upon which they all
retired.
The deputies then stated that they had been sent by the authorities of
Paris to consult as to the means of obtaining a general peace in France.
They expressed the hope that the king's disposition was favourable to
this end, and that he would likewise permit them to confer with the Duke
of Mayenne. This manner of addressing him excited his choler. He told
Cardinal Gondy, who was spokesman of the deputation, that he had long
since answered such propositions. He alone could deal with his subjects.
He was like the woman before Solomon; he would have all the child or none
of it. Rather than dismember his kingdom he would lose the whole. He
asked them what they considered him to be. They answered that they knew
his rights, but that the Parisians had different opinions. If Paris
would only acknowledge him to be king there could be no more question of
war. He asked them if they desired the King of Spain or the Duke of
Mayenne for their king, and bade them look well to themselves. The King
of Spain could not help them, for he had too much business on hand; while
Mayenne had neither means nor courage, having been within three leagues
of them for three weeks doing nothing. Neither king nor duke should have
that which belonged to him, of that they might be assured. He told them
he loved Paris as his capital, as his eldest daughter. If the Parisians
wished to see the end of their miseries it was to him they should appeal,
not to the Spaniard nor to the Duke of Mayenne. By the grace of God and
the swords of his brave gentlemen he would prevent the King of Spain from
making a colony of France as he had done of Brazil. He told the
commissioners that they ought to die of shame that they, born Frenchmen,
should have so forgotten their love of country and of liberty as thus to
bow the head to the Spaniard, and--while famine was carrying off
thousands of their countrymen before their eyes--to be so cowardly as not
to utter one word for the public welfare from fear of offending Cardinal.
Gaetano, Mendoza, and Moreo. He said that he longed for a combat to
decide the issue, and that he had charged Count de Brissac to tell
Mayenne that he would give a finger of his right hand for a battle, and
two for a general peace. He knew and pitied the sufferings of Paris, but
the horrors now raging there were to please the King of Spain. That
monarch had told the Duke of Parma to trouble himself but little about
the Netherlands so long as he could preserve for him his city of Paris.
But it was to lean on a broken reed to expect support from this old,
decrepit king, whose object was to dismember the flourishing kingdom of
France, and to divide it among as many tyrants as he had sent viceroys to
the Indies. The crown was his own birthright. Were it elective he
should receive the suffrages of the great mass of the electors. He hoped
soon to drive those red-crossed foreigners out of his kingdom. Should he
fail, they would end by expelling the Duke of Mayenne and all the rest
who had called them in, and Paris would become the theatre of the
bloodiest tragedy ever yet enacted. The king then ordered Sir Roger
Williams to see that a collation was prepared for the deputies, and the
veteran Welshman took occasion to indulge in much blunt conversation with
the guests. He informed them that he, Mr. Sackville, and many other
strangers were serving the king from the hatred they bore the Spaniards
and Mother League, and that his royal mistress had always 8000 Englishmen
ready to maintain the cause.
While the conferences were going on, the officers and soldiers of the
besieging army thronged to the gate, and had much talk with the townsmen.
Among others, time-honoured La None with the iron arm stood near the gate
and harangued the Parisians. "We are here," said he, "five thousand
gentlemen; we desire your good, not your ruin. We will make you rich:
let us participate in your labour and industry. Undo not yourselves to
serve the ambition of a few men." The townspeople hearing the old
warrior discoursing thus earnestly, asked who he was. When informed that
it was La Noue they cheered him vociferously, and applauded his speech
with the greatest vehemence. Yet La Noue was the foremost Huguenot that
the sun shone upon, and the Parisians were starving themselves to death
out of hatred to heresy. After the collation the commissioners were
permitted to go from the camp in order to consult Mayenne.
Such then was the condition of Paris during that memorable summer of
tortures. What now were its hopes of deliverance out of this Gehenna?
The trust of Frenchmen was in Philip of Spain, whose legions, under
command of the great Italian chieftain, were daily longed for to save
them from rendering obedience to their lawful prince.
For even the king of straw--the imprisoned cardinal--was now dead, and
there was not even the effigy of any other sovereign than Henry of
Bourbon to claim authority in France. Mayenne, in the course of long
interviews with the Duke of Parma at Conde and Brussels, had expressed
his desire to see Philip king of France, and had promised his best
efforts to bring about such a result. In that case he stipulated for
the second place in the kingdom for himself, together with a good rich
province in perpetual sovereignty, and a large sum of money in hand.
Should this course not run smoothly, he would be willing to take the
crown himself, in which event he would cheerfully cede to Philip the
sovereignty of Brittany and Burgundy, besides a selection of cities to be
arranged for at a later day. Although he spoke of himself with modesty,
said Alexander, it was very plain that he meant to arrive at the crown
himself: Well had the Bearnese alluded to the judgment of Solomon. Were
not children, thus ready to dismember their mother, as foul and unnatural
as the mother who would divide her child?
And what was this dependence on a foreign tyrant really worth? As we
look back upon those dark days with the light of what was then the almost
immediate future turned full and glaring upon them, we find it difficult
to exaggerate the folly of the chief actors in those scenes of crime.
Did not the penniless adventurer, whose keen eyesight and wise
recklessness were passing for hallucination and foolhardiness in the eyes
of his contemporaries, understand the game he was playing better than did
that profound thinker, that mysterious but infallible politician, who sat
in the Escorial and made the world tremble at every hint of his lips,
every stroke of his pen?
The Netherlands--that most advanced portion of Philip's domain, without
the possession of which his conquest of England and his incorporation of
France were but childish visions, even if they were not monstrous
chimeras at best--were to be in a manner left to themselves, while their
consummate governor and general was to go forth and conquer France at the
head of a force with which he had been in vain attempting to hold those
provinces to their obedience. At that very moment the rising young
chieftain of the Netherlands was most successfully inaugurating his
career of military success. His armies well drilled, well disciplined,
well paid, full of heart and of hope, were threatening their ancient
enemy in every quarter, while the veteran legions of Spain and Italy,
heroes of a hundred Flemish and Frisian battle-fields, were disorganised,
starving, and mutinous. The famous ancient legion, the terzo viejo, had
been disbanded for its obstinate and confirmed unruliness. The legion of
Manrique, sixteen hundred strong, was in open mutiny at Courtray.
Farnese had sent the Prince of Ascoli to negotiate with them, but his
attempts were all in vain. Two years' arrearages--to be paid, not in
cloth at four times what the contractors had paid for it, but in solid
gold--were their not unreasonable demands after years of as hard fighting
and severe suffering as the world has often seen. But Philip, instead of
ducats or cloth, had only sent orders to go forth and conquer a new
kingdom for him. Verdugo, too, from Friesland was howling for money,
garrotting and hanging his mutinous veterans every day, and sending
complaints and most dismal forebodings as often as a courier could make
his way through the enemy's lines to Farnese's headquarters. And
Farnese, on his part, was garrotting and hanging the veterans.
Alexander did not of course inform his master that he was a mischievous
lunatic, who upon any healthy principle of human government ought long
ago to have been shut up from all communion with his species. It was
very plain, however, from his letters, that such was his innermost,
thought, had it been safe, loyal, or courteous to express it in plain
language.
He was himself stung almost to madness moreover by the presence of
Commander Moreo, who hated him, who was perpetually coming over from
France to visit him, who was a spy upon all his actions, and who was
regularly distilling his calumnies into the ears of Secretary Idiaquez
and of Philip himself. The king was informed that Farnese was working
for his own ends, and was disgusted with his sovereign; that there never
had been a petty prince of Italy that did not wish to become a greater
one, or that was not jealous of Philip's power, and that there was not a
villain in all Christendom but wished for Philip's death. Moreo followed
the prince about to Antwerp, to Brussels, to Spa, whither he had gone to
drink the waters for his failing health, pestered him, lectured him,
pried upon him, counselled him, enraged him. Alexander told him at last
that he cared not if the whole world came to an end so long as Flanders
remained, which alone had been entrusted to him, and that if he was
expected to conquer France it would be as well to give him the means of
performing that exploit. So Moreo told the king that Alexander was
wasting time and wasting money, that he was the cause of Egmont's
overthrow, and that he would be the cause of the loss of Paris and of
the downfall of the whole French scheme; for that he was determined to
do nothing to assist Mayenne, or that did not conduce to his private
advantage.
Yet Farnese had been not long before informed in sufficiently plain
language, and by personages of great influence, that in case he wished to
convert his vice-royalty of the Netherlands into a permanent sovereignty,
he might rely on the assistance of Henry of Navarre, and perhaps of Queen
Elizabeth. The scheme would not have been impracticable, but the duke
never listened to it for a moment.
If he were slow in advancing to the relief of starving, agonising
Paris, there were sufficient reasons for his delay. Most decidedly and
bitterly, but loyally, did he denounce the madness of his master's course
in all his communications to that master's private ear.
He told him that the situation in which he found himself was horrible.
He had no money for his troops, he had not even garrison bread to put in
their mouths. He had not a single stiver to advance them on account.
From Friesland, from the Rhine country, from every quarter, cries of
distress were rising to heaven, and the lamentations were just. He was
in absolute penury. He could not negotiate a bill on the royal account,
but had borrowed on his own private security a few thousand crowns which
he had given to his soldiers. He was pledging his jewels and furniture
like a bankrupt, but all was now in vain to stop the mutiny at Courtray.
If that went on it would be of most pernicious example, for the whole
army was disorganised, malcontent, and of portentous aspect. "These
things," said he, "ought not to surprise people of common understanding,
for without money, without credit, without provisions, and in an
exhausted country, it is impossible to satisfy the claims, or even to
support the life of the army." When he sent the Flemish cavalry to
Mayenne in March, it was under the impression that with it that prince
would have maintained his reputation and checked the progress of the
Bearnese until greater reinforcements could be forwarded. He was now
glad that no larger number had been sent, for all would have been
sacrificed on the fatal field of Ivry.
The country around him was desperate, believed itself abandoned, and was
expecting fresh horrors everyday. He had been obliged to remove portions
of the garrisons at Deventer and Zutphen purely to save them from
starving and desperation. Every day he was informed by his garrisons
that they could feed no longer on fine words or hopes, for in them they
found no sustenance.
But Philip told him that he must proceed forthwith to France, where he
was to raise the siege of Paris, and occupy Calais and Boulogne in order
to prevent the English from sending succour to the Bearnese, and in order
to facilitate his own designs on England. Every effort was to be made
before the Bearnese climbed into the seat. The Duke of Parma was to talk
no more of difficulties, but to conquer them; a noble phrase on the
battle field, but comparatively easy of utterance at the writing-desk!
At last, Philip having made some remittances, miserably inadequate for
the necessities of the case, but sufficient to repress in part the
mutinous demonstrations throughout the army, Farnese addressed himself
with a heavy heart to the work required of him. He confessed the deepest
apprehensions of the result both in the Netherlands and in France. He
intimated a profound distrust of the French, who had, ever been Philip's
enemies, and dwelt on the danger of leaving the provinces, unable to
protect themselves, badly garrisoned, and starving. "It grieves me to
the soul, it cuts me to the heart," he said, "to see that your Majesty
commands things which are impossible, for it is our Lord alone that can
work miracles. Your Majesty supposes that with the little money you have
sent me, I can satisfy all the soldiers serving in these provinces,
settle with the Spanish and the German mutineers--because, if they are
to be used in the expedition, they must at least be quieted--give money
to Mayenne and the Parisians, pay retaining wages (wartgeld) to the
German Riders for the protection of these provinces, and make sure of the
maritime places where the same mutinous language is held as at Courtray.
The poverty, the discontent, and the desperation of this unhappy
country," he added, "have, been so often described to your Majesty that I
have nothing to add. I am hanging and garrotting my veterans everywhere,
only because they have rebelled for want of pay without committing any
excess. Yet under these circumstances I am to march into France with
twenty thousand troops--the least number to effect anything withal. I am
confused and perplexed because the whole world is exclaiming against me,
and protesting that through my desertion the country entrusted to my care
will come to utter perdition. On the other hand, the French cry out upon
me that I am the cause that Paris is going to destruction, and with it
the Catholic cause in France. Every one is pursuing his private ends.
It is impossible to collect a force strong enough for the necessary work.
Paris has reached its extreme unction, and neither Mayenne nor any one of
the confederates has given this invalid the slightest morsel to support
her till your Majesty's forces should arrive."
He reminded his sovereign that the country around Paris was eaten bare of
food and forage, and yet that it was quite out of the question for him to
undertake the transportation of supplies for his army all the way--
supplies from the starving Netherlands to starving France. Since the
king was so peremptory, he had nothing for it but to obey, but he
vehemently disclaimed all responsibility for the expedition, and, in case
of his death, he called on his Majesty to vindicate his honour, which his
enemies were sure to assail.
The messages from Mayenne becoming daily more pressing, Farnese hastened
as much as possible those preparations which at best were so woefully
inadequate, and avowed his determination not to fight the Bearnese if it
were possible to avoid an action. He feared, however, that with totally
insufficient forces he should be obliged to accept the chances of an
engagement.
With twelve thousand foot and three thousand horse Farnese left the
Netherlands in the beginning of August, and arrived on the 3rd of that
month at Valenciennes. His little army, notwithstanding his bitter
complaints, was of imposing appearance. The archers and halberdiers of
his bodyguard were magnificent in taffety and feathers and surcoats of
cramoisy velvet. Four hundred nobles served in the cavalry. Arenberg
and Barlaymont and Chimay, and other grandees of the Netherlands, in
company with Ascoli and the sons of Terranova and Pastrana, and many more
great lords of Italy and Spain were in immediate attendance on the
illustrious captain. The son of Philip's Secretary of State, Idiaquez,
and the nephew of the cardinal-legate, Gaetano, were among the marshals
of the camp.
Alexander's own natural authority and consummate powers of organisation
had for the time triumphed over the disintegrating tendencies which, it
had been seen, were everywhere so rapidly destroying the foremost
military establishment of the world. Nearly half his forces, both
cavalry and infantry, were Netherlanders; for--as if there were not
graves enough in their own little territory--those Flemings, Walloons,
and Hollanders were destined to leave their bones on both sides of every
well-stricken field of that age between liberty and despotism. And thus
thousands of them had now gone forth under the banner of Spain to assist
their own tyrant in carrying out his designs upon the capital of France,
and to struggle to the death with thousands of their own countrymen who
were following the fortunes of the Bearnese. Truly in that age it was
religion that drew the boundary line between nations.
The army was divided into three portions. The vanguard was under the
charge of the Netherland General, Marquis of Renty. The battalia was
commanded by Farnese in person, and the rearguard was entrusted to that
veteran Netherlander, La Motte, now called the Count of Everbeck. Twenty
pieces of artillery followed the last division. At Valenciennes
Farnese remained eight days, and from this place Count Charles Mansfeld
took his departure in a great rage--resigning his post as chief of
artillery because La Motte had received the appointment of general-
marshal of the camp--and returned to his father, old Peter Ernest
Mansfeld, who was lieutenant-governor of the Netherlands in Parma's
absence.
Leaving Valenciennes on the 11th, the army proceeded by way of Quesney,
Guise, Soissons, Fritemilon to Meaux. At this place, which is ten
leagues from Paris, Farnese made his junction, on the 22nd of August,
with Mayenne, who was at the head of six thousand infantry--one half of
them Germans under Cobalto, and the other half French--and of two
thousand horse.
On arriving at Meaux, Alexander proceeded straightway to the cathedral,
and there, in presence of all, he solemnly swore that he had not come
to France in order to conquer that kingdom or any portion of it, in the
interests of his master, but only to render succour to the Catholic cause
and to free the friends and confederates of his Majesty from violence and
heretic oppression. Time was to show the value of that oath.
Here the deputation from Paris--the Archbishop of Lyons and his
colleagues, whose interview with Henry has just been narrated--were
received by the two dukes. They departed, taking with them promises of
immediate relief for the starving city. The allies remained five days at
Meaux, and leaving that place on the 27th, arrived in the neighbourhood
of Chelles, on the last day but one of the summer. They had a united
force of five thousand cavalry and eighteen thousand foot.
The summer of horrors was over, and thus with the first days of autumn
there had come a ray of hope for the proud city which was lying at its
last gasp. When the allies, came in sight of the monastery of Chellea
they found themselves in the immediate neighbourhood of the Bearnese.
The two great captains of the age had at last met face to face. They
were not only the two first commanders of their time, but there was not a
man in Europe at that day to be at all compared with either of them. The
youth, concerning whose earliest campaign an account will be given in the
following chapter, had hardly yet struck his first blow. Whether that
blow was to reveal the novice or the master was soon to be seen.
Meantime in 1590 it would have been considered a foolish adulation to
mention the name of Maurice of Nassau in the same breath with that of
Navarre or of Farnese.
The scientific duel which was now to take place was likely to task the
genius and to bring into full display the peculiar powers and defects of
the two chieftains of Europe. Each might be considered to be still in
the prime of life, but Alexander, who was turned of forty-five, was
already broken in health, while the vigorous Henry was eight years
younger, and of an iron constitution. Both had passed then lives in the
field, but the king, from nature, education, and the force of
circumstances, preferred pitched battles to scientific combinations,
while the duke, having studied and practised his art in the great Spanish
and Italian schools of warfare, was rather a profound strategist than a
professional fighter, although capable of great promptness and intense
personal energy when his judgment dictated a battle. Both were born with
that invaluable gift which no human being can acquire, authority, and
both were adored and willingly obeyed by their soldiers, so long as
those soldiers were paid and fed.
The prize now to be contended for was a high one. Alexander's complete
success would tear from Henry's grasp the first city of Christendom, now
sinking exhausted into his hands, and would place France in the power of
the Holy League and at the feet of Philip. Another Ivry would shatter
the confederacy, and carry the king in triumph to his capital and his
ancestral throne. On the approach of the combined armies under Parma and
Mayenne, the king had found himself most reluctantly compelled to suspend
the siege of Paris. His army, which consisted of sixteen thousand foot
and five thousand horse, was not sufficiently numerous to confront at the
same time the relieving force and to continue the operations before the
city. So long, however, as he held the towns and bridges on the great
rivers, and especially those keys to the Seine and Marne, Corbeil and
Lagny, he still controlled the life-blood of the capital, which indeed
had almost ceased to flow.
On the 31st August he advanced towards the enemy. Sir Edward Stafford,
Queen Elizabeth's ambassador, arrived at St. Denis in the night of the
30th August. At a very early hour next morning he heard a shout under
his window, and looking down beheld King Henry at the head of his troops,
cheerfully calling out to his English friend as he passed his door.
"Welcoming us after his familiar manner," said Stafford, "he desired us,
in respect of the battle every hour expected, to come as his friends to
see and help him, and not to treat of anything which afore, we meant,
seeing the present state to require it, and the enemy so near that we
might well have been interrupted in half-an-hour's talk, and necessity
constrained the king to be in every corner, where for the most part we
follow him."
That day Henry took up his headquarters at the monastery of Chelles, a
fortified place within six leagues of Paris, on the right bank of the
Marne. His army was drawn up in a wide valley somewhat encumbered with
wood and water, extending through a series of beautiful pastures towards
two hills of moderate elevation. Lagny, on the left bank of the river,
was within less than a league of him on his right hand. On the other
side of the hills, hardly out of cannon-shot, was the camp of the allies.
Henry, whose natural disposition in this respect needed no prompting, was
most eager for a decisive engagement. The circumstances imperatively
required it of him. His infantry consisted of Frenchmen, Netherlanders,
English, Germans, Scotch; but of his cavalry four thousand were French
nobles, serving at their own expense, who came to a battle as to a
banquet, but who were capable of riding off almost as rapidly, should the
feast be denied them. They were volunteers, bringing with them rations
for but a few days, and it could hardly be expected that they would
remain as patiently as did Parma's veterans, who, now that their mutiny
had been appeased by payment of a portion of their arrearages, had become
docile again. All the great chieftains who surrounded Henry, whether
Catholic or Protestant--Montpensier, Nevers, Soissons, Conti, the Birons,
Lavradin, d'Aumont, Tremouille, Turenne, Chatillon, La Noue--were urgent
for the conflict, concerning the expediency of which there could indeed
be no doubt, while the king was in raptures at the opportunity of dealing
a decisive blow at the confederacy of foreigners and rebels who had so
long defied his authority and deprived him of his rights.
Stafford came up with the king, according to his cordial invitation, on
the same day, and saw the army all drawn up in battle array. While Henry
was "eating a morsel in an old house," Turenne joined him with six or
seven hundred horsemen and between four and five thousand infantry.
"They were the likeliest footmen," said Stafford, "the best
countenanced, the best furnished that ever I saw in my life; the best
part of them old soldiers that had served under the king for the Religion
all this while."
The envoy was especially enthusiastic, however, in regard to the French
cavalry. "There are near six thousand horse," said he, "whereof
gentlemen above four thousand, about twelve hundred other French, and
eight hundred reiters. I never saw, nor I think never any man saw, in
prance such a company of gentlemen together so well horsed and so well
armed."
Henry sent a herald to the camp of the allies, formally challenging them
to a general engagement, and expressing a hope that all differences might
now be settled by the ordeal of battle, rather than that the sufferings
of the innocent people should be longer protracted.
Farnese, on arriving at Meaux, had resolved to seek the enemy and take
the hazards of a stricken field. He had misgivings as to the possible
result, but he expressly announced this intention in his letters to
Philip, and Mayenne confirmed him in his determination. Nevertheless,
finding the enemy so eager and having reflected more maturely, he saw no
reason for accepting the chivalrous cartel. As commanderin-chief--for
Mayenne willingly conceded the supremacy which it would have been absurd
in him to dispute--he accordingly replied that it was his custom to
refuse a combat when a refusal seemed advantageous to himself, and to
offer battle whenever it suited his purposes to fight. When that moment
should arrive the king would find him in the field. And, having sent
this courteous, but unsatisfactory answer to the impatient Bearnese, he
gave orders to fortify his camp, which was already sufficiently strong.
Seven days long the two armies lay face to face--Henry and his chivalry
chafing in vain for the longed-for engagement--and nothing occurred
between those forty or fifty thousand mortal enemies, encamped within a
mile or two of each other, save trifling skirmishes leading to no result.
At last Farnese gave orders for an advance. Renty, commander of the
vanguard, consisting of nearly all the cavalry, was instructed to move
slowly forward over the two hills, and descending on the opposite side,
to deploy his forces in two great wings to the right and left. He was
secretly directed in this movement to magnify as much as possible the
apparent dimensions of his force. Slowly the columns moved over the
hills. Squadron after squadron, nearly all of them lancers, with their
pennons flaunting gaily in the summer wind, displayed themselves
deliberately and ostentatiously in the face of the Royalists. The
splendid light-horse of Basti, the ponderous troopers of the Flemish
bands of ordnance under Chimay and Berlaymont, and the famous Albanian
and Italian cavalry, were mingled with the veteran Leaguers of France who
had fought under the Balafre, and who now followed the fortunes of his
brother Mayenne. It was an imposing demonstration.
Henry could hardly believe his eyes as the much-coveted opportunity,
of which he had been so many days disappointed, at last presented itself,
and he waited with more than his usual caution until the plan of attack
should be developed by his great antagonist. Parma, on his side, pressed
the hand of Mayenne as he watched the movement, saying quietly, "We have
already fought our battle and gained the victory." He then issued orders
for the whole battalia--which, since the junction, had been under command
of Mayenne, Farnese reserving for himself the superintendence of the
entire army--to countermarch rapidly towards the Marne and take up a
position opposite Lagny. La Motte, with the rearguard, was directed
immediately to follow. The battalia had thus become the van, the
rearguard the battalia, while the whole cavalry corps by this movement
had been transformed from the vanguard into the rear. Renty was
instructed to protect his manoeuvres, to restrain the skirmishing as much
as possible, and to keep the commander-in-chief constantly informed of
every occurrence. In the night he was to entrench and fortify himself
rapidly and thoroughly, without changing his position.
Under cover of this feigned attack, Farnese arrived at the river side on
the 15th September, seized an open village directly opposite Lagny, which
was connected with it by a stone bridge, and planted a battery of nine
pieces of heavy artillery directly opposite the town. Lagny was
fortified in the old-fashioned manner, with not very thick walls, and
without a terreplain. Its position, however, and its command of the
bridge, seemed to render an assault impossible, and De la Fin, who lay
there with a garrison of twelve hundred French, had no fear for the
security of the place. But Farnese, with the precision and celerity
which characterized his movements on special occasions, had thrown
pontoon bridges across the river three miles above, and sent a
considerable force of Spanish and Walloon infantry to the other side.
These troops were ordered to hold themselves ready for an assault, so
soon as the batteries opposite should effect a practicable breach. The
next day Henry, reconnoitering the scene, saw, with intense indignation,
that he had been completely out-generalled. Lagny, the key to the Marne,
by holding which he had closed the door on nearly all the food supplies
for Paris, was about to be wrested from him. What should he do? Should
he throw himself across the river and rescue the place before it fell?
This was not to be thought of even by the audacious Bearnese. In the
attempt to cross the river, under the enemy's fire, he was likely to lose
a large portion of his army. Should he fling himself upon Renty's
division which had so ostentatiously offered battle the day before? This
at least might be attempted, although not so advantageously as would have
been the case on the previous afternoon. To undertake this was the
result of a rapid council of generals. It was too late. Renty held the
hills so firmly entrenched and fortified that it was an idle hope to
carry them by assault. He might hurl column after column against those
heights, and pass the day in seeing his men mowed to the earth without
result.
His soldiers, magnificent in the open field, could not be relied upon to
carry so strong a position by sudden storm; and there was no time to be
lost. He felt the enemy a little. There was some small skirmishing, and
while it was going on, Farnese opened a tremendous fire across the river
upon Lagny. The weak walls soon crumbled; a breach was effected, the
signal for assault was given, and the troops posted on the other side,
after a brief but sanguinary straggle, overcame all, resistance, and were
masters of the town. The whole garrison, twelve hundred strong, was
butchered, and the city thoroughly sacked; for Farnese had been brought
up in the old-fashioned school of Alva; and Julian Romero and Com-.
wander Requesens.
Thus Lagny was seized before the eyes of Henry, who was forced to look
helplessly on his great antagonist's triumph. He had come forth in full
panoply and abounding confidence to offer battle. He was foiled of his
combat; and he had lost the prize. Never was blow more successfully
parried, a counter-stroke more ingeniously planted. The bridges of
Charenton and St. Maur now fell into Farnese's hands without a contest.
In an incredibly short space of time provisions and munitions were poured
into the starving city; two thousand boat-loads arriving in a single day.
Paris was relieved. Alexander had made his demonstration, and solved the
problem. He had left the Netherlands against his judgment, but he had at
least accomplished his French work as none but he could have done it.
The king was now in worse plight than ever. His army fell to pieces.
His cavaliers, cheated of their battle; and having neither food nor
forage, rode off by hundreds every day. "Our state is such," said
Stafford; on the 16th September, "and so far unexpected and wonderful,
that I am almost ashamed to write, because methinks everybody should
think I dream. Myself seeing of it methinketh that I dream. For, my
lord, to see an army such a one I think as I shall never see again--
especially for horsemen and gentlemen to take a mind to disband upon the
taking of such a paltry thing as Lagny, a town no better indeed than
Rochester, it is a thing so strange to me that seeing of it I can scarce
believe it. They make their excuses of their want, which I know indeed
is great--for there were few left with one penny in their purses--but yet
that extremity could not be such but that they might have tarried ten
days or fifteen at the most that the king desired of them . . . . . From
six thousand horse that we were and above, we are come to two thousand
and I do not see an end of our leave-takers, for those be hourly.
"The most I can see we can make account of to tarry are the Viscount
Turenne's troops, and Monsieur de Chatillon's, and our Switzers, and
Lanaquenettes, which make very near five thousand. The first that went
away, though he sent word to the king an hour before he would tarry, was
the Count Soissons, by whose parting on a sudden and without leave-taking
we judge a discontentment."
The king's army seemed fading into air. Making virtue of necessity he
withdrew to St. Denis, and decided to disband his forces, reserving to
himself only a flying camp with which to harass the enemy as often as
opportunity should offer.
It must be confessed that the Bearnese had been thoroughly out-
generalled. "It was not God's will," said Stafford, who had been in
constant attendance upon Henry through the whole business; "we deserved
it not; for the king might as easily have had Paris as drunk, four or
five times. And at the last, if he had not committed those faults that
children would not have done, only with the desire to fight and give the
battle (which the other never meant), he had had it in the Duke of
Parma's eight as he took Lagny in ours." He had been foiled of the
battle on which he had set his heart, and, in which he felt confident of
overthrowing the great captain of the age, and trampling the League under
his feet. His capital just ready to sink exhausted into his hands had
been wrested from his grasp, and was alive with new hope and new
defiance. The League was triumphant, his own army scattering to the four
winds. Even a man of high courage and sagacity might have been in
despair. Yet never were the magnificent hopefulness, the wise audacity
of Henry more signally manifested than now when he seemed most blundering
and most forlorn. His hardy nature ever met disaster with so cheerful a
smile as almost to perplex disaster herself.
Unwilling to relinquish his grip without a last effort, he resolved on a
midnight assault upon Paris. Hoping that the joy at being relieved, the
unwonted feasting which had succeeded the long fasting, and the
conciousness of security from the presence of the combined armies of the
victorious League, would throw garrison and citizens off their guard, he
came into the neighbourhood of the Faubourgs St. Jacques, St. Germain,
St. Marcel, and St. Michel on the night of 9th September. A desperate
effort was made to escalade the walls between St. Jacques and St.
Germain. It was foiled, not by the soldiers nor the citizens, but by the
sleepless Jesuits, who, as often before during this memorable siege, had
kept guard on the ramparts, and who now gave the alarm. The first
assailants were hurled from their ladders, the city was roused, and the
Duke of Nemours was soon on the spot, ordering burning pitch hoops,
atones, and other missiles to be thrown down upon the invaders. The
escalade was baffled; yet once more that night, just before dawn, the
king in person renewed the attack on the Faubourg St. Germain. The
faithful Stafford stood by his side in the trenches, and was witness to
his cool determination, his indomitable hope. La None too was there,
and was wounded in the leg--an accident the results of which were soon
to cause much weeping through Christendom. Had one of those garlands of
blazing tar which all night had been fluttering from the walls of Paris
alighted by chance on the king's head there might have been another
history of France. The ladders, too, proved several feet too short,
and there were too few, of them. Had they been more numerous and longer,
the tale might have been a different one. As it was, the king was forced
to retire with the approaching daylight.
The characteristics of the great commander of the Huguenots and of the
Leaguers' chieftain respectively were well illustrated in several
incidents of this memorable campaign. Farnese had been informed by
scouts and spies of this intended assault by Henry on the walls of Paris.
With his habitual caution he discredited the story. Had he believed it,
he might have followed the king in overwhelming force and taken him
captive. The penalty of Henry's unparalleled boldness was thus remitted
by Alexander's exuberant discretion.
Soon afterwards Farnese laid siege to Corbeil. This little place--owing
to the extraordinary skill and determination of its commandant, Rigaut,
an old Huguenot officer, who had fought with La Noue in Flanders--
resisted for nearly four weeks. It was assaulted at last, Rigaut killed,
the garrison of one thousand French soldiers put to the sword, and the
town sacked. With the fall of Corbeil both the Seine and Marne were re-
opened.
Alexander then made a visit to Paris, where he was received with great
enthusiasm. The legate, whose efforts and whose money had so much
contributed to the successful defence of the capital had returned to
Italy to participate in the election of a new pope. For the "Huguenot
pope," Sixtus V., had died at the end of August, having never bestowed
on the League any of his vast accumulated treasures to help it in its
utmost need. It was not surprising that Philip was indignant, and had
resorted to menace of various kinds against the holy father, when he
found him swaying so perceptibly in the direction of the hated Bearnese.
Of course when he died his complaint was believed to be Spanish poison.
In those days, none but the very obscure were thought capable of dying
natural deaths, and Philip was esteemed too consummate an artist to allow
so formidable an adversary as Sixtus to pass away in God's time only.
Certainly his death was hailed as matter of great rejoicing by the
Spanish party in Rome, and as much ignominy bestowed upon his memory as
if he had been a heretic; while in Paris his decease was celebrated with
bonfires and other marks of popular hilarity.
To circumvent the great Huguenot's reconciliation with the Roman Church
was of course an indispensable portion of Philip's plan; for none could
be so dull as not to perceive that the resistance of Paris to its heretic
sovereign would cease to be very effective, so soon as the sovereign had
ceased to be heretic. It was most important therefore that the successor
of Sixtus should be the tool of Spain. The leading confederates were
well aware of Henry's intentions to renounce the reformed faith, and to
return to the communion of Rome whenever he could formally accomplish
that measure. The crafty Bearnese knew full well that the road to Paris
lay through the gates of Rome. Yet it is proof either of the privacy
with which great public matters were then transacted, or of the
extraordinary powers of deceit with which Henry was gifted, that the
leaders of protestantism were still hoodwinked in regard to his attitude.
Notwithstanding the embassy of Luxembourg, and the many other indications
of the king's intentions, Queen Elizabeth continued to regard him as the
great champion of the reformed faith. She had just sent him an emerald,
which she had herself worn, accompanied by the expression of her wish
that the king in wearing it might never strike a blow without demolishing
an enemy, and that in his farther progress he might put all his enemies
to rout and confusion. "You will remind the king, too," she added, "that
the emerald has this virtue, never to break so long as faith remains
entire and firm."
And the shrewd Stafford, who was in daily attendance upon him, informed
his sovereign that there were no symptoms of wavering on Henry's part.
"The Catholics here," said he, "cry hard upon the king to be a Catholic
or else that he is lost, and they would persuade him that for all their
calling in the Spaniards, both Paris and all other towns will yield to
him, if he will but assure them that he will become a Catholic. For my
part, I think they would laugh at him when he had done so, and so I find
he believeth the same, if he had mind to it, which I find no disposition
in him unto it." The not very distant future was to show what the
disposition of the bold Gascon really was in this great matter, and
whether he was likely to reap nothing but ridicule from his apostasy,
should it indeed become a fact. Meantime it was the opinion of the
wisest sovereign in Europe, and of one of the most adroit among her
diplomatists, that there was really nothing in the rumours as to the
king's contemplated conversion.
It was, of course, unfortunate for Henry that his staunch friend and
admirer Sixtus was no more. But English diplomacy could do but little in
Rome, and men were trembling with apprehension lest that arch-enemy of
Elizabeth, that devoted friend of Philip, the English Cardinal Allen,
should be elected to the papal throne. "Great ado is made in Rome," said
Stafford, "by the Spanish ambassador, by all corruptions and ways that
may be, to make a pope that must needs depend and be altogether at the
King of Spain's devotion. If the princes of Italy put not their hands
unto it, no doubt they will have their wills, and I fear greatly our
villainous Allen, for, in my judgment, I can comprehend no man more with
reason to be tied altogether to the King of Spain's will than he.
I pray God send him either to God or the Devil first. An evil-minded
Englishman, tied to the King of Spain by necessity, finding almost four
millions of money, is a dangerous beast for a pope in this time."
Cardinal Allen was doomed to disappointment. His candidacy was not
successful, and, after the brief reign--thirteen days long--of Urban VII,
Sfondrato wore the triple tiara with the title of Gregory XIV. Before
the year closed, that pontiff had issued a brief urging the necessity of
extirpating heresy in France, and of electing a Catholic king, and
asserting his determination to send to Paris--that bulwark of the
Catholic faith--not empty words alone but troops, to be paid fifteen
thousand crowns of gold each month, so long as the city should need
assistance. It was therefore probable that the great leader of the
Huguenots, now that he had been defeated by Farnese, and that his
capital was still loyal to the League, would obtain less favour--however
conscientiously he might instruct himself--from Gregory XIV. than he had
begun to find in the eyes of Sixtus after the triumph of Ivry.
Parma refreshed his army by a fortnight's repose, and early in November
determined on his return to the Netherlands. The Leaguers were aghast at
his decision, and earnestly besought him to remain. But the duke had
given them back their capital, and although this had been accomplished
without much bloodshed in their army or his own, sickness was now making
sad ravages among his troops, and there was small supply of food or
forage for such large forces as had now been accumulated, in the
neighbourhood of Paris. Moreover, dissensions were breaking out.
between the Spaniards, Italians, and Netherlanders of the relieving army
with their French allies. The soldiers and peasants hated the foreigners
who came there as victors, even although to assist the Leaguers in
overthrowing the laws, government, and nationality of France. The
stragglers and wounded on Farnese's march were killed by the country
people in considerable numbers, and it was a pure impossibility for him
longer to delay his return to the provinces which so much against his
will he had deserted.
He marched back by way of Champagne rather than by that of Picardy, in
order to deceive the king. Scarcely had he arrived in Champagne when he
heard of the retaking of Lagny and Corbeil. So soon as his back was
turned, the League thus showed its impotence to retain the advantage
which his genius had won. Corbeil, which had cost him a month of hard
work, was recaptured in two days. Lagny fell almost as quickly.
Earnestly did the confederates implore him to return to their rescue,
but he declined almost contemptuously to retrace his steps. His march
was conducted in the same order and with the same precision which--had
marked his advance. Henry, with his flying camp, hung upon his track,
harassing him now in front, now in rear, now in flank. None of the
skirmishes were of much military importance. A single cavalry combat,
however, in which old Marshal Biron was nearly surrounded and was in
imminent danger of death or capture, until chivalrously rescued by the
king in person at the head of a squadron of lancers, will always possess
romantic interest. In a subsequent encounter, near Baroges on the Yesle,
Henry had sent Biron forward with a few companies of horse to engage some
five hundred carabineers of Farnese on their march towards the frontier,
and had himself followed close upon the track with his usual eagerness to
witness or participate in every battle. Suddenly Alphonse Corse, who
rode at Henry's aide, pointed out to him, not more than a hundred paces
off, an officer wearing a felt hat, a great ruff, and a little furred
cassock, mounted on a horse without armour or caparisons, galloping up
and down and brandishing his sword at the carabineers to compel them to
fall back.
This was the Duke of Parma, and thus the two great champions of the
Huguenots and of the Leaguers--the two foremost captains of the age--had
met face to face. At that moment La Noue, riding up, informed the king
that he had seen the whole of the enemy's horse and foot in battle array,
and Henry, suspecting the retreat of Farnese to be a feint for the
purpose of luring him on with his small force to an attack, gave orders
to retire as soon as possible.
At Guise, on the frontier, the duke parted with Mayenne, leaving with him
an auxiliary force of four thousand foot and five hundred horse, which he
could ill spare. He then returned to Brussels, which city he reached on
the 4th December, filling every hotel and hospital with his sick
soldiers, and having left one-third of his numbers behind him. He had
manifested his own military skill in the adroit and successful manner in
which he had accomplished the relief of Paris, while the barrenness of
the result from the whole expedition vindicated the political sagacity
with which he had remonstrated against his sovereign's infatuation.
Paris, with the renewed pressure on its two great arteries at Lagny and
Corbeil, soon fell into as great danger as before; the obedient
Netherlands during the absence of Farnese had been sinking rapidly to
ruin, while; on the other hand, great progress and still greater
preparations in aggressive warfare had been made by the youthful general
and stadtholder of the Republic.
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
Alexander's exuberant discretion
Divine right of kings
Ever met disaster with so cheerful a smile
Future world as laid down by rival priesthoods
Invaluable gift which no human being can acquire, authority
King was often to be something much less or much worse
Magnificent hopefulness
Myself seeing of it methinketh that I dream
Nothing cheap, said a citizen bitterly, but sermons
Obscure were thought capable of dying natural deaths
Philip II. gave the world work enough
Righteous to kill their own children
Road to Paris lay through the gates of Rome
Shift the mantle of religion from one shoulder to the other
Thirty-three per cent. interest was paid (per month)
Under the name of religion (so many crimes)
End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v62
by John Lothrop Motley
HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS
From the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce--1609
By John Lothrop Motley
History United Netherlands, Volume 63, 1590-1592
CHAPTER XXIV.
Prince Maurice--State of the Republican army--Martial science of the
period--Reformation of the military system by Prince Maurice--His
military genius--Campaign in the Netherlands--The fort and town of
Zutphen taken by the States' forces--Attack upon Deventer--Its
capitulation--Advance on Groningen, Delfzyl, Opslag, Yementil,
Steenwyk, and other places--Farnese besieges Fort Knodsenburg--
Prince Maurice hastens to its relief--A skirmish ensues resulting in
the discomfiture of the Spanish and Italian troops--Surrender of
Hulat and Nymegen--Close of military, operations of the year.
While the events revealed in the last chapter had been occupying the
energies of Farnese and the resources of his sovereign, there had been
ample room for Prince Maurice to mature his projects, and to make a
satisfactory beginning in the field. Although Alexander had returned to
the Netherlands before the end of the year 1590, and did not set forth on
his second French campaign until late in the following year, yet the
condition of his health, the exhaustion of his funds, and the dwindling
of his army, made it impossible for him to render any effectual
opposition to the projects of the youthful general.
For the first time Maurice was ready to put his theories and studies into
practice on an extensive scale. Compared with modern armaments, the
warlike machinery to be used for liberating the republic from its foreign
oppressors would seem almost diminutive. But the science and skill of a
commander are to be judged by the results he can work out with the
materials within reach. His progress is to be measured by a comparison
with the progress of his contemporaries--coheirs with him of what Time
had thus far bequeathed.
The regular army of the republic, as reconstructed, was but ten thousand
foot and two thousand horse, but it was capable of being largely expanded
by the trainbands of the cities, well disciplined and enured to hardship,
and by the levies of German reiters and other, foreign auxiliaries in
such numbers as could be paid for by the hard-pressed exchequer of the
provinces.
To the state-council, according to its original constitution, belonged
the levying and disbanding of troops, the conferring of military offices,
and the supervision of military operations by sea and land. It was its
duty to see that all officers made oath of allegiance to the United
Provinces.
The course of Leicester's administration, and especially the fatal
treason of Stanley and of York, made it seem important for the true
lovers of their country to wrest from the state-council, where the
English had two seats, all political and military power. And this, as
has been seen, was practically but illegally accomplished. The silent
revolution by which at this epoch all the main attributes of government
passed into the hands of the States-General-acting as a league of
sovereignties--has already been indicated. The period during which the
council exercised functions conferred on it by the States-General
themselves was brief and evanescent. The jealousy of the separate
provinces soon prevented the state-council--a supreme executive body
entrusted with the general defence of the commonwealth--from causing
troops to pass into or out of one province or another without a patent
from his Excellency the Prince, not as chief of the whole army, but as
governor and captain-general of Holland, or Gelderland, or Utrecht, as
the case might be.
The highest military office in the Netherlands was that of captain-
general or supreme commander. This quality was from earliest times
united to that of stadholder, who stood, as his title implied, in the
place of the reigning sovereign, whether count, duke, king, or emperor.
After the foundation of the Republic this dynastic form, like many
others, remained, and thus Prince Maurice was at first only captain-
general of Holland and Zeeland, and subsequently of Gelderland, Utrecht,
and Overyssel, after he had been appointed stadholder of those three
provinces in 1590 on the death of Count Nieuwenaar. However much in
reality he was general-in-chief of the army, he never in all his life
held the appointment of captain-general of the Union.
To obtain a captain's commission in the army, it was necessary to have
served four years, while three years' service was the necessary
preliminary to the post of lieutenant or ensign. Three candidates were
presented by the province for each office, from whom the stadholder
appointed one.--The commissions, except those of the highest commanders,
were made out in the name of the States-General, by advice and consent of
the council of state. The oath of allegiance, exacted from soldiers as
well as officers; mentioned the name of the particular province to which
they belonged, as well as that of the States-Generals. It thus appears
that, especially after Maurice's first and successful campaigns; the
supreme authority over the army really belonged to the States-General,
and that the powers of the state-council in this regard fell, in the
course of four years, more and more into the back-ground, and at last
disappeared almost entirely. During the active period of the war,
however; the effect of this revolution was in fact rather a greater
concentration of military power than its dispersion, for the States-
General meant simply the province of Holland. Holland was the republic.
The organisation of the infantry was very simple. The tactical unit
was the company. A temporary combination of several companies--made a
regiment, commanded by a colonel or lieutenant-colonel, but for such
regiments there was no regular organisation. Sometimes six or seven
companies were thus combined, sometimes three times that number, but the
strength of a force, however large, was always estimated by the number of
companies, not of regiments.
The normal strength of an infantry company, at the beginning of Maurice's
career, may be stated at one hundred and thirteen, commanded by one
captain, one lieutenant, one ensign, and by the usual non-commissioned
officers. Each company was composed of musketeers, harquebusseers,
pikemen, halberdeers, and buckler-men. Long after, portable firearms had
come into use, the greater portion of foot soldiers continued to be armed
with pikes, until the introduction of the fixed bayonet enabled the
musketeer to do likewise the duty of pikeman. Maurice was among the
first to appreciate the advantage of portable firearms, and he
accordingly increased the proportion of soldiers armed with the musket
in his companies. In a company of a hundred and thirteen, including
officers, he had sixty-four armed with firelocks to thirty carrying pikes
and halberds. As before his time the proportion between the arms had
been nearly even; he thus more than doubled the number of firearms.
Of these weapons there were two sorts, the musket and the harquebus. The
musket was a long, heavy, unmanageable instrument. When fired it was-
placed upon an iron gaffle or fork, which: the soldier carried with him,
and stuck before him into the ground. The bullets of the musket were
twelve to the pound.
The harquebus--or hak-bus, hook-gun, so called because of the hook in the
front part of the barrel to give steadiness in firing--was much lighter,
was discharged from the hand; and carried bullets of twenty-four to the
pound. Both weapons had matchlocks.
The pike was eighteen feet long at least, and pikemen as well as
halberdsmen carried rapiers.
There were three buckler-men to each company, introduced by Maurice for
the personal protection of the leader of the company. The prince was
often attended by one himself, and, on at least one memorable occasion,
was indebted to this shield for the preservation of his life.
The cavalry was divided into lancers and carabineers. The unit was the
squadron, varying in number from sixty to one hundred and fifty, until
the year 1591, when the regular complement of the squadron was fixed at
one hundred and twenty.
As the use of cavalry on the battle-field at that day, or at least in the
Netherlands, was not in rapidity of motion, nor in severity of shock--the
attack usually taking place on a trot--Maurice gradually displaced the
lance in favour of the carbine. His troopers thus became rather mounted
infantry than regular cavalry.
The carbine was at least three feet long, with wheel-locks, and carried
bullets of thirty to the pound.
The artillery was a peculiar Organisation. It was a guild of citizens,
rather than a strictly military force like the cavalry and infantry. The
arm had but just begun to develop itself, and it was cultivated as a
special trade by the guild of the holy Barbara existing in all the
principal cities. Thus a municipal artillery gradually organised itself,
under the direction of the gun-masters (bus-meesters), who in secret
laboured at the perfection of their art, and who taught it to their
apprentices and journeymen; as the principles of other crafts were
conveyed by master to pupil. This system furnished a powerful element of
defence at a period when every city had in great measure to provide for
its own safety.
In the earlier campaigns of Maurice three kinds of artillery were used;
the whole cannon (kartow) of forty-eight pounds; the half-cannon, or
twenty-four pounder, and the field-piece carrying a ball of twelve
pounds. The two first were called battering pieces or siege-guns. All
the guns were of bronze.
The length of the whole cannon was about twelve feet; its weight one
hundred and fifty times that of the ball, or about seven thousand pounds.
It was reckoned that the whole kartow could fire from eighty to one
hundred shots in an hour. Wet hair cloths were used to cool the piece
after every, ten or twelve discharges. The usual charge was twenty
pounds of powder.
The whole gun was drawn by thirty-one horses, the half-cannon by twenty-
three.
The field-piece required eleven horses, but a regular field-artillery, as
an integral part of the army, did not exist, and was introduced in much
later times. In the greatest pitched battle ever fought by Maurice, that
of Nieuport, he had but six field-pieces.
The prince also employed mortars in his sieges, from which were thrown
grenades, hot shot, and stones; but no greater distance was reached than
six hundred yards. Bomb-shells were not often used although they had
been known for a century.
Before the days of Maurice a special education for engineers had never
been contemplated. Persons who had privately acquired a knowledge of
fortification and similar branches of the science were employed, upon
occasion, but regular corps of engineers there were none. The prince
established a course of instruction in this profession at the University
of Leyden, according to a system drawn up by the celebrated Stevinus.
Doubtless the most important innovation of the prince, and the one which
required the most energy to enforce, was the use of the spade. His
soldiers were jeered at by the enemy as mere boors and day labourers who
were dishonouring themselves and their profession by the use of that
implement instead of the sword. Such a novelty was a shock to all the
military ideas of the age, and it was only the determination and vigour
of the prince and of his cousin Lewis William that ultimately triumphed
over the universal prejudice.
The pay of the common soldier varied from ten to twenty florins the
month, but every miner had eighteen florins, and, when actually working
in the mines, thirty florins monthly. Soldiers used in digging trenches
received, over and above their regular pay, a daily wage of from ten to
fifteen styvers, or nearly a shilling sterling.
Another most wholesome improvement made by the prince was in the payment
of his troops. The system prevailing in every European country at that
day, by which Governments were defrauded and soldiers starved, was most
infamous. The soldiers were paid through the captain, who received the
wages of a full company, when perhaps not one-third of the names on the
master-roll were living human beings. Accordingly two-thirds of all the
money stuck to the officer's fingers, and it was not thought a disgrace
to cheat the Government by dressing and equipping for the day a set of
ragamuffins, caught up in the streets for the purpose, and made to pass
muster as regular soldiers.
These parse-volants, or scarecrows, were passed freely about from one
company to another, and the indecency of the fraud was never thought a
disgrace to the colours of the company.
Thus, in the Armada year, the queen had demanded that a portion of her
auxiliary force in the Netherlands should be sent to England. The States
agreed that three thousand of these English troops, together with a few
cavalry companies, should go, but stipulated that two thousand should
remain in the provinces. The queen accepted the proposal, but when the
two thousand had been counted out, it appeared that there was scarcely a
man left for the voyage to England. Yet every one of the English
captains had claimed full pay for his company from her Majesty's
exchequer.
Against this tide of peculation and corruption the strenuous Maurice set
himself with heart and soul, and there is no doubt that to his
reformation in this vital matter much of his military success was owing.
It was impossible that roguery and venality should ever furnish a solid
foundation for the martial science.
To the student of military history the campaigns and sieges of Maurice,
and especially the earlier: ones, are of great importance. There is no
doubt whatever, that the youth who now, after deep study and careful
preparation, was measuring himself against the first captains of the age,
was founding the great modern school of military science. It was in this
Netherland academy, and under the tuition of its consummate professor,
that the commanders of the seventeenth century not only acquired the
rudiments, but perfected themselves in the higher walks of their art.
Therefore the siege operations, in which all that had been invented by
modern genius, or rescued from the oblivion which had gathered over
ancient lore during the more vulgar and commonplace practice of the
mercenary commanders of the day was brought into successful application,
must always engage the special attention of the military student.
To the general reader, more interested in marking the progress of
civilisation and the advance of the people in the path of development
and true liberty, the spectacle of tho young stadholder's triumphs has
an interest of another kind. At the moment when a thorough practical
soldier was most needed by the struggling little commonwealth, to enable
it to preserve liberties partially secured by its unparalleled sacrifices
of blood and treasure during a quarter of a century, and to expel the
foreign invader from the soil which he had so long profaned, it was
destined that a soldier should appear.
Spade in hand, with his head full of Roman castrametation and geometrical
problems, a prince, scarce emerged from boyhood, presents himself on that
stage where grizzled Mansfelds, drunken Hohenlos, and truculent Verdugos
have been so long enacting, that artless military drama which consists
of hard knocks and wholesale massacres. The novice is received with
universal hilarity. But although the machinery of war varies so steadily
from age to age that a commonplace commander of to-day, rich in the
spoils of preceding time, might vanquish the Alexanders, and Caesars,
and Frederics, with their antiquated enginery, yet the moral stuff out of
which great captains, great armies, great victories are created, is the
simple material it was in the days of Sesostris or Cyrus. The moral and
physiological elements remain essentially the same as when man first
began to walk up and down the earth and destroy his fellow-creatures.
To make an army a thorough mowing-machine, it then seemed necessary that
it should be disciplined into complete mechanical obedience. To secure
this, prompt payment of wages and inexorable punishment of delinquencies
were indispensable. Long arrearages were now converting Farnese's
veterans into systematic marauders; for unpaid soldiers in every age
and country have usually degenerated into highwaymen, and it is an
impossibility for a sovereign, with the strictest intentions, to persist
in starving his soldiers and in killing them for feeding themselves. In
Maurice's little army, on the contrary, there were no back-wages and no
thieving. At the siege of Delfzyl Maurice hung two of his soldiers for
stealing, the one a hat and the other a poniard, from the townsfolk,
after the place had capitulated. At the siege of Hulst he ordered
another to be shot, before the whole camp, for robbing a woman.
This seems sufficiently harsh, but war is not a pastime nor a very humane
occupation. The result was, that robbery disappeared, and it is better
for all that enlisted men should be soldiers rather than thieves. To
secure the ends which alone can justify war--and if the Netherlanders
engaged in defending national existence and human freedom against foreign
tyranny were not justifiable then a just war has never been waged--
a disciplined army is vastly more humane in its operations than a band
of brigands. Swift and condign punishments by the law-martial, for even
trifling offences, is the best means of discipline yet devised.
To bring to utmost perfection the machinery already in existence,
to encourage invention, to ponder the past with a practical application
to the present, to court fatigue, to scorn pleasure, to concentrate the
energies on the work in hand, to cultivate quickness of eye and calmness
of nerve in the midst of danger, to accelerate movements, to economise
blood even at the expense of time, to strive after ubiquity and
omniscience in the details of person and place, these were the
characteristics of Maurice, and they have been the prominent traits of
all commanders who have stamped themselves upon their age. Although his
method of war-making differed as far as possible from that quality in
common, of the Bearnese, yet the two had one personal insensibility to
fear. But in the case of Henry, to confront danger for its own sake
was in itself a pleasure, while the calmer spirit of Maurice did not
so much seek the joys of the combat as refuse to desist from scientific
combinations in the interests of his personal safety. Very frequently,
in the course of his early campaigns, the prince was formally and
urgently requested by the States-General not to expose his life so
recklessly, and before he had passed his twenty-fifth year he had
received wounds which, but for fortunate circumstances, would have proved
mortal, because he was unwilling to leave special operations on which
much was depending to other eyes than his own. The details of his
campaigns are, of necessity, the less interesting to a general reader
from their very completeness. Desultory or semi-civilised warfare, where
the play of the human passions is distinctly visible, where individual
man, whether in buff jerkin or Milan coat of proof, meets his fellow man
in close mortal combat, where men starve by thousands or are massacred by
town-fulls, where hamlets or villages blaze throughout whole districts or
are sunk beneath the ocean--scenes of rage, hatred, vengeance, self-
sacrifice, patriotism, where all the virtues and vices of which humanity
is capable stride to and fro in their most violent colours and most
colossal shape where man in a moment rises almost to divinity, or sinks
beneath the beasts of the field--such tragical records of which the
sanguinary story of mankind is full--and no portion of them more so than
the Netherland chronicles appeal more vividly to the imagination than the
neatest solution of mathematical problems. Yet, if it be the legitimate
end of military science to accomplish its largest purposes at the least
expense of human suffering; if it be progress in civilisation to acquire
by scientific combination what might be otherwise attempted, and perhaps
vainly attempted, by infinite carnage, then is the professor with his
diagrams, standing unmoved amid danger, a more truly heroic image than
Coeur-de-Lion with his battle-axe or Alva with his truncheon.
The system--then a new one--which Maurice introduced to sustain that
little commonwealth from sinking of which he had become at the age of
seventeen the predestined chief, was the best under the circumstances
that could have been devised. Patriotism the most passionate, the most
sublime, had created the republic. To maintain its existence against
perpetual menace required the exertion of perpetual skill.
Passionless as algebra, the genius of Maurice was ready for the task.
Strategic points of immense value, important cities and fortresses, vital
river-courses and communications--which foreign tyranny had acquired
during the tragic past with a patient iniquity almost without a parallel,
and which patriotism had for years vainly struggled to recover--were the
earliest trophies and prizes of his art. But the details of his
victories may be briefly indicated, for they have none of the
picturesqueness of crime. The sieges of Naarden, Harlem, Leyden, were
tragedies of maddening interest, but the recovery of Zutphen, Deventer,
Nymegen, Groningen, and many other places--all important though they
were--was accomplished with the calmness of a consummate player, who
throws down on the table the best half dozen invincible cards which it
thus becomes superfluous to play.
There were several courses open to the prince before taking the field.
It was desirable to obtain control of the line of the Waal, by which that
heart of the republic--Holland--would be made entirely secure. To this
end, Gertruydenberg--lately surrendered to the enemy by the perfidy of
the Englishman Wingfield, to whom it had been entrusted--Bois le Duc, and
Nymegen were to be wrested from Spain.
It was also important to hold the Yssel, the course of which river led
directly through the United Netherlands, quite to the Zuyder Zee, cutting
off Friesland, Groningen, and Gelderland from their sister provinces of
Holland and Zeeland. And here again the keys to this river had been lost
by English treason. The fort of Zutphen and the city of Deventer had
been transferred to the Spaniard by Roland York and Sir William Stanley,
in whose honour the republic had so blindly confided, and those cities it
was now necessary to reduce by regular siege before the communications
between the eastern and western portions of the little commonwealth could
ever be established.
Still farther in the ancient Frisian depths, the memorable treason of
that native Netherlander, the high-born Renneberg, had opened the way
for the Spaniard's foot into the city of Groningen. Thus this whole
important province--with its capital--long subject to the foreign
oppressor, was garrisoned with his troops.
Verdugo, a veteran officer of Portuguese birth, who had risen from the
position of hostler to that of colonel and royal stadholder, commanded in
Friesland. He had in vain demanded reinforcements and supplies from
Farnese, who most reluctantly was obliged to refuse them in order that he
might obey his master's commands to neglect everything for the sake of
the campaign in France.
And Verdugo, stripped of all adequate forces to protect his important
province, was equally destitute of means for feeding the troops that were
left to him. "I hope to God that I may do my duty to the king and your
Highness," he cried, "but I find myself sold up and pledged to such an
extent that I am poorer than when I was a soldier at four crowns a month.
And everybody in the town is as desperate as myself."
Maurice, after making a feint of attacking Gertruydenberg and Bois le
Duc, so that Farnese felt compelled, with considerable difficulty, to
strengthen the garrison of those places, came unexpectedly to Arnhem
with a force of nine thousand foot and sixteen hundred horse. He had
previously and with great secrecy sent some companies of infantry under
Sir Francis Vere to Doesburg.
On the 23rd May (1591) five peasants and six peasant women made their
appearance at dawn of day before the chief guard-house of the great fort
in the Badmeadow (Vel-uwe), opposite Zutphen, on the west side of the
Yssel. It was not an unusual occurrence. These boors and their wives
had brought baskets of eggs, butter, and cheese, for the garrison, and
they now set themselves quietly down on the ground before the gate,
waiting for the soldiers of the garrison to come out and traffic with
them for their supplies. Very soon several of the guard made their
appearance, and began to chaffer with the peasants, when suddenly one of
the women plucked a pistol from under her petticoats and shot dead the
soldier who was cheapening her eggs. The rest of the party, transformed
in an instant from boors to soldiers, then sprang upon the rest of the
guard, overpowered and bound them, and took possession of the gate. A
considerable force, which had been placed in ambush by Prince Maurice
near the spot, now rushed forward, and in a few minutes the great fort of
Zutphen was mastered by the States' forces without loss of a man. It was
a neat and perfectly successful stratagem.
Next day Maurice began the regular investment of the city. On the 26th,
Count Lewis William arrived with some Frisian companies. On the 27th,
Maurice threw a bridge of boats from the Badmeadow side, across the river
to the Weert before the city. On the 28th he had got batteries, mounting
thirty-two guns, into position, commanding the place at three points. On
the 30th the town capitulated. Thus within exactly one week from the
firing of the pistol shot by the supposed butterwoman, this fort and
town, which had so long resisted the efforts of the States, and were such
important possessions of the Spaniards, fell into the hands of Maurice.
The terms of surrender were easy. The city being more important than
its garrison, the soldiers were permitted to depart with bag and baggage.
The citizens were allowed three days to decide whether to stay under
loyal obedience to the States-General, or to take their departure.
Those who chose to remain were to enjoy all the privileges of citizens
of the United Provinces.
But very few substantial citizens were left, for such had been the
tyranny, the misery, and the misrule during the long occupation by a
foreign soldiery of what was once a thriving Dutch town, that scarcely
anybody but paupers and vagabonds were left. One thousand houses were
ruined and desolate. It is superfluous to add that the day of its
restoration to the authority of the Union was the beginning of its
renewed prosperity.
Maurice, having placed a national garrison in the place, marched the same
evening straight upon Deventer, seven miles farther down the river,
without pausing to sleep upon his victory. His artillery and munitions
were sent rapidly down the Yssel.
Within five days he had thoroughly invested the city, and brought twenty-
eight guns to bear upon the weakest part of its defences.
It was a large, populous, well-built town, once a wealthy member of the
Hanseatic League, full of fine buildings, both public and private, the
capital of the rich and fertile province of Overyssel, and protected by a
strong wall and moat--as well-fortified a place as could be found in the
Netherlands. The garrison consisted of fourteen hundred Spaniards and
Walloons, under the command of Count Herman van den Berg, first cousin of
Prince Maurice.
No sooner had the States army come before the city than a Spanish captain
observed--"We shall now have a droll siege--cousins on the outside,
cousins on the inside. There will be a sham fight or two, and then the
cousins will make it up, and arrange matters to suit themselves."
Such hints had deeply wounded Van den Berg, who was a fervent Catholic,
and as loyal a servant to Philip II. as he could have been, had that
monarch deserved, by the laws of nature and by his personal services and
virtues, to govern all the swamps of Friesland. He slept on the gibe,
having ordered all the colonels and captains of the garrison to attend at
solemn mass in the great church the next morning. He there declared to
them all publicly that he felt outraged at the suspicions concerning his
fidelity, and after mass he took the sacrament, solemnly swearing never
to give up the city or even to speak of it until he had made such
resistance that he must be carried from the breach. So long as he could
stand or sit he would defend the city entrusted to his care.
The whole council who had come from Zutphen to Maurice's camp were
allowed to deliberate concerning the siege. The, enemy had been seen
hovering about the neighbourhood in considerable numbers, but had not
ventured an attempt to throw reinforcements into the place. Many of the
counsellors argued against the siege. It was urged that the resistance
would be determined and protracted, and that the Duke of Parma was sure
to take the field in person to relieve so important a city, before its
reduction could be effected.
But Maurice had thrown a bridge across the Yssel above, and another below
the town, had carefully and rapidly taken measures in the success of
which he felt confident, and now declared that it would be cowardly and
shameful to abandon an enterprise so well begun.
The city had been formally summoned to surrender, and a calm but most
decided refusal had been returned.
On the 9th June the batteries began playing, and after four thousand six
hundred shots a good breach had been effected in the defences along the
Kaye--an earthen work lying between two strong walls of masonry.
The breach being deemed practicable, a storm was ordered. To reach the
Kaye it was necessary to cross a piece of water called the Haven, over
which a pontoon bridge was hastily thrown. There was now a dispute among
the English, Scotch, and Netherlanders for precedence in the assault.
It was ultimately given to the English, in order that the bravery of that
nation might now on the same spot wipe out the disgrace inflicted upon
its name by the treason of Sir William Stanley. The English did their
duty well and rushed forward merrily, but the bridge proved too short.
Some sprang over and pushed boldly for the breach. Some fell into the
moat and were drowned. Others, sustained by the Netherlanders under
Solms, Meetkerke, and Brederode, effected their passage by swimming,
leaping, or wading, so that a resolute attack was made. Herman van den
Berg met them in the breach at the head of seven companies. The
defenders were most ferocious in their resistance. They were also very
drunk. The count had placed many casks of Rhenish and of strong beer
within reach, and ordered his soldiers to drink their fill as they
fought. He was himself as vigorous in his potations as he was chivalrous
with sword and buckler. Two pages and two lieutenants fell at his side,
but still he fought at the head of his men with a desperation worthy of
his vow, until he fell wounded in the eye and was carried from the place.
Notwithstanding this disaster to the commander of the town, the
assailants were repulsed, losing two hundred-and twenty-five in killed
and wounded--Colonel Meetkerke and his brother, two most valuable Dutch
officers, among them.
During the whole of the assault, a vigorous cannonade had been kept up
upon other parts of the town, and houses and church-towers were toppling
down in all directions. Meanwhile the inhabitants--for it was Sunday--
instead of going to service were driven towards the breach by the
serjeant-major, a truculent Spaniard, next in command to Van den Berg,
who ran about the place with a great stick, summoning the Dutch burghers
to assist the Spanish garrison on the wall. It was thought afterwards
that this warrior would have been better occupied among the soldiers, at
the side of his commander.
A chivalrous incident in the open field occurred during the assault.
A gigantic Albanian cavalry officer came prancing out of Deventer into
the spaces between the trenches, defying any officer in the States' army
to break a lance with him. Prince Maurice forbade any acceptance of the
challenge, but Lewis van der Cathulle, son of the famous Ryhove of Ghent,
unable to endure the taunts and bravado of this champion, at last
obtained permission to encounter him in single combat. They met
accordingly with much ceremony, tilted against each other, and shivered
their lances in good style, but without much effect. The Albanian then
drew a pistol. Cathulle had no weapon save a cutlass, but with this
weapon he succeeded in nearly cutting off the hand which held the pistol.
He then took his enemy prisoner, the vain-glorious challenger throwing
his gold chain around his conqueror's neck in token of his victory.
Prince Maurice caused his wound to be bound up and then liberated him,
sending him into the city with a message to the governor.
During the following night the bridge, over which the assailants had
nearly forced their way into the town, was vigorously attacked by the
garrison, but Count Lewis William, in person, with a chosen band defended
it stoutly till morning, beating back the Spaniards with heavy loss in a
sanguinary midnight contest.
Next morning there was a unanimous outcry on the part of the besieged for
a capitulation. It was obvious that, with the walls shot to ruins as
they had been, the place was no longer tenable against Maurice's superior
forces. A trumpet was sent to the prince before the dawn of day, and on
the 10th of June, accordingly, the place capitulated.
It was arranged that the garrison should retire with arms and baggage
whithersoever they chose. Van den Berg stipulated nothing in favour of
the citizens, whether through forgetfulness or spite does not distinctly
appear. But the burghers were received like brothers. No plunder was
permitted, no ransom demanded, and the city took its place among its
sisterhood of the United Provinces.
Van den Berg himself was received at the prince's head, quarters with
much cordiality. He was quite blind; but his wound seemed to be the
effect of exterior contusions, and he ultimately recovered the sight of
one eye. There was mach free conversation between himself and his
cousins during the brief interval in which he was their guest.
"I've often told Verdugo," said he, "that the States had no power to make
a regular siege, nor to come with proper artillery into the field, and he
agreed with me. But we were both wrong, for I now see the contrary."
To which Count Lewis William replied with a laugh: "My dear cousin, I've
observed that in all your actions you were in the habit of despising us
Beggars, and I have said that you would one day draw the shortest straw
in consequence. I'm glad to hear this avowal from your own lips."
Herman attempted no reply but let the subject drop, seeming to regret
having said so much.
Soon afterwards he was forwarded by Maurice in his own coach to Ulff,
where he was attended by the prince's body physician till he was re-
established in health.
Thus within ten days of his first appearance before its walls, the city
of Deventer, and with it a whole province, had fallen into the hands of
Maurice. It began to be understood that the young pedant knew something
about his profession, and that he had not been fagging so hard at the
science of war for nothing.
The city was in a sorry plight when the States took possession of it.
As at Zutphen, the substantial burghers had wandered away, and the
foreign soldiers bivouacking there so long had turned the stately old
Hanseatic city into a brick and mortar wilderness. Hundreds of houses
had been demolished by the garrison, that the iron might be sold and the
woodwork burned for fuel; for the enemy had conducted himself as if
feeling in his heart that the occupation could not be a permanent one,
and as if desirous to make the place as desolate as possible for the
Beggars when they should return.
The dead body of the traitor York, who had died and been buried in
Deventer, was taken from the tomb, after the capture of the city, and
with the vulgar ferocity so characteristic of the times, was hung, coffin
and all, on the gibbet for the delectation of the States' soldiery.
Maurice, having thus in less than three weeks recovered two most
important cities, paused not an instant in his career but moved at once
on Groningen. There was a strong pressure put upon him to attempt the
capture of Nymegen, but the understanding with the Frisian stadholders
and his troops had been that the enterprise upon Groningen should follow
the reduction of Deventer.
On the 26th June Maurice appeared before Groningen. Next day, as a
precautionary step, he moved to the right and attacked the strong city of
Delfzyl. This place capitulated to him on the 2nd July. The fort of
Opslag surrendered on the 7th July. He then moved to the west of
Groningen, and attacked the forts of Yementil and Lettebaest, which fell
into his hands on the 11th July. He then moved along the Nyenoort
through the Seven Wolds and Drenthe to Steenwyk, before which strongly
fortified city he arrived on the 15th July.
Meantime, he received intercepted letters from Verdugo to the Duke of
Parma, dated 19th June from Groningen. In these, the Spanish stadholder
informed Farnese that the enemy was hovering about his neighbourhood, and
that it would be necessary for the duke to take the field in person in
considerable force, or that Groningen would be lost, and with it the
Spanish forces in the province. He enclosed a memorial of the course
proper to be adopted by the duke for his relief.
Notwithstanding the strictness by which Philip had tied his great
general's hands, Farnese felt the urgency of the situation. By the end
of June, accordingly, although full of his measures for marching to the
relief of the Leaguers in Normandy, he moved into Gelderland, coming by
way of Xanten, Rees, and neighbouring places. Here he paused for a
moment perplexed, doubting whether to take the aggressive in Gelderland
or to march straight to the relief of Groningen. He decided that it was
better for the moment to protect the line of the Waal. Shipping his army
accordingly into the Batavian Island or Good-meadow (Bet-uwe), which lies
between the two great horns of the Rhine, he laid siege to Fort
Knodsenburg, which Maurice had built the year before, on the right bank
of the Waal for the purpose of attacking Nymegen. Farnese, knowing that
the general of the States was occupied with his whole army far away to
the north, and separated from him by two great rivers, wide and deep, and
by the whole breadth of that dangerous district called the Foul-meadow
(Vel-uwe), and by the vast quagmire known as the Rouvenian morass, which
no artillery nor even any organised forces had ever traversed since the
beginning of the world, had felt no hesitation in throwing his army in
boats across the Waal. He had no doubt of reducing a not very powerful
fortress long before relief could be brought to it, and at the same time
of disturbing by his presence in Batavia the combinations of his young
antagonist in Friesland and Groningen.
So with six thousand foot and one thousand horse, Alexander came before
Knodsenburg. The news reached Maurice at Steenwyk on the 15th July.
Instantly changing his plans, the prince decided that Farnese must be
faced at once, and, if possible, driven from the ground, thinking it more
important to maintain, by concentration, that which had already been
gained, than to weaken and diffuse his forces in insufficient attempts to
acquire more. Before two days had passed, he was on the march southward,
having left Lewis William with a sufficient force to threaten Groningen.
Coming by way of Hasselt Zwol to Deventer, he crossed the Yssel on a
bridge of boats on the 18th of July, 1591 and proceeded to Arnhem.
His army, although excessively fatigued by forced marches in very hot
weather, over nearly impassable roads, was full of courage and
cheerfulness, having learned implicit confidence in their commander.
On the 20th he was at Arnhem. On the 22nd his bridge of boats was made,
and he had thrown his little army across the Rhine into Batavia, and
entrenched himself with his six thousand foot and fourteen hundred horse
in the immediate neighbourhood of Farnese--Foul-meadow and Good-meadow,
dyke, bog, wold, and quagmire, had been successfully traversed, and
within one week of his learning that the great viceroy of Philip had
reached the Batavian island, Maurice stood confronting that famous
chieftain in battle-array.
On the 22nd July, Farnese, after firing two hundred and eighty-five shots
at Fort Knodsenburg, ordered an assault, expecting that so trifling a
work could hardly withstand a determined onslaught by his veterans.
To his surprise they were so warmly received that two hundred of the
assailants fell at the first onset, and the attack was most conclusively
repulsed.
And now Maurice had appeared upon the scene, determined to relieve a
place so important for his ulterior designs. On the 24th July he sent
out a small but picked force of cavalry to reconnoitre the enemy. They
were attacked by a considerable body of Italian and Spanish horse from
the camp before Knodsenburg, including Alexander's own company of lancers
under Nicelli. The States troops fled before them in apparent dismay for
a little distance, hotly pursued by the royalists, until, making a sudden
halt, they turned to the attack, accompanied by five fresh companies of
cavalry and a thousand musketeers, who fell upon the foe from all
directions. It was an ambush, which had been neatly prepared by Maurice
in person, assisted by Sir Francis Vere. Sixty of the Spaniards and
Italians were killed and one hundred and fifty prisoners, including
Captain Nicelli, taken, while the rest of the party sought safety in
ignominious flight. This little skirmish, in which ten companies of the
picked veterans of Alexander Farnese had thus been utterly routed before
his eyes, did much to inspire the States troops with confidence in
themselves and their leader.
Parma was too experienced a campaigner, and had too quick an eye, not to
recognise the error which he had committed in placing the dangerous river
Waal, without a bridge; between himself and his supplies. He had not
dreamed that his antagonist would be capable of such celerity of movement
as he had thus displayed, and his first business now was to extricate
himself from a position which might soon become fatal. Without
hesitation, he did his best to amuse the enemy in front of the fort, and
then passed the night in planting batteries upon the banks of the river,
under cover of which he succeeded next day in transporting in ferry-boats
his whole force, artillery and: baggage, to the opposite shore, without
loss, and with his usual skill.
He remained but a short time in Nymegen, but he was hampered by the
express commands of the king. Moreover, his broken health imperatively
required that he should once more seek the healing influence of the
waters of Spa, before setting forth on his new French expedition.
Meanwhile, although he had for a time protected the Spanish possessions
in the north by his demonstration in Gelderland, it must be confessed
that the diversion thus given to the plans of Maurice was but a feeble
one.
Having assured the inhabitants of Nymegen that he would watch over the
city like the apple of, his eye, he took his departure on the 4th of
August for Spa. He was accompanied on his journey by his son, Prince
Ranuccio, just arrived from Italy.
After the retreat of Farnese, Maurice mustered his forces at Arnhem, and
found himself at the head of seven thousand foot and fifteen hundred
horse. It was expected by all the world that, being thus on the very
spot, he would forthwith proceed to reduce the ancient, wealthy, imperial
city of Nynegen. The garrison and burghers accordingly made every
preparation to resist the attack, disconcerted as they were, however,
by the departure of Parma, and by the apparent incapacity of Verdugo to
bring them effectual relief.
But to the surprise of all men, the States forces suddenly disappeared
from the scene, having been, as it were, spirited away by night-time,
along those silent watery highways and crossways of canal, river, and
estuary--the military advantages of which to the Netherlands, Maurice was
the first thoroughly to demonstrate. Having previously made great
preparations of munitions and provisions in Zeeland, the young general,
who was thought hard at work in Gelderland, suddenly presented himself
on the 19th September, before the gates of Hulst, on the border of
Zeeland and Brabant.
It was a place of importance from its situation, its possession by the
enemy being a perpetual thorn in the side of the States, and a constant
obstacle to the plans of Maurice. His arrangements having been made with
the customary, neatness, celerity, and completeness, he received the
surrender of the city on the fifth day after his arrival.
Its commander, Castillo, could offer no resistance; and was subsequently,
it is said, beheaded by order of the Duke of Parma for his negligence.
The place is but a dozen miles from Antwerp, which city was at the very,
moment keeping great holiday and outdoing itself in magnificent festivals
in honour of young Ranuccio. The capture of Hulst before his eyes was a
demonstration quite unexpected by the prince, and great was the wrath of
old Mondragon, governor of Antwerp, thus bearded in his den. The veteran
made immediate preparations for chastising the audacious Beggars of
Zeeland and their, pedantic young commander, but no sooner had the
Spaniards taken the field than the wily foe had disappeared as magically
as he had come.
The Flemish earth seemed to have bubbles as the water hath, and while
Mondragon was beating the air in vain on the margin of the Scheld,
Maurice was back again upon the Waal, horse, foot, and artillery, bag,
baggage, and munition, and had fairly set himself down in earnest to
besiege Nymegen, before the honest burghers and the garrison had finished
drawing long breaths at their recent escape. Between the 14th and 16th
October he had bridged the deep, wide, and rapid river, had transported
eight thousand five hundred infantry and, sixteen companies of cavalry to
the southern side, had entrenched his camp and made his approaches, and
had got sixty-eight pieces of artillery into three positions commanding
the weakest part of the defences of the city between the Falcon Tower and
the Hoender gate. The fort of Knodsenburg was also ready to throw hot
shot across the river into the town. Not a detail in all these
preparations escaped the vigilant eye of the Commander-in-Chief, and
again and again was he implored not so recklessly to expose a life
already become precious to his country. On the 20th October, Maurice
sent to demand the surrender of the city. The reply was facetious but
decisive.
The prince was but a young suitor, it was said, and the city a spinster
not so lightly to be won. A longer courtship and more trouble would be
necessary.
Whereupon the suitor opened all his batteries without further delay, and
the spinster gave a fresh example of the inevitable fate of talking
castles and listening ladies.
Nymegen, despite her saucy answer on the 20th, surrendered on the 21st.
Relief was impossible. Neither Parma, now on his way to France, nor
Verdugo, shut up in Friesland, could come to the rescue of the place,
and the combinations of Maurice were an inexorable demonstration.
The terms of the surrender were similar to those accorded to Zutphen and
Deventer. In regard to the religious point it was expressly laid down by
Maurice that the demand for permission to exercise publicly the Roman
Catholic religion should be left to the decision of the States-General.
And thus another most important city had been added to the domains of the
republic. Another triumph was inscribed on the record of the young
commander. The exultation was very great throughout the United
Netherlands, and heartfelt was the homage rendered by all classes of his
countrymen to the son of William the Silent.
Queen Elizabeth wrote to congratulate him in warmest terms on his great
successes, and even the Spaniards began to recognise the merits of the
new chieftain. An intercepted letter from Verdugo, who had been foiled
in his efforts to arrest the career of Maurice, indicated great respect
for his prowess. "I have been informed," said the veteran, "that Count
Maurice of Nassau wishes to fight me. Had I the opportunity I assure you
that I should not fail him, for even if ill luck were my portion, I
should at least not escape the honour of being beaten by such a
personage. I beg you to tell him so with my affectionate compliments.
Yours, FRANCIS VERDUGO."
These chivalrous sentiments towards Prince Maurice had not however
prevented Verdugo from doing his best to assassinate Count Lewis William.
Two Spaniards had been arrested in the States camp this summer, who came
in as deserters, but who confessed "with little, or mostly without
torture," that they had been sent by their governor and colonel with
instructions to seize a favourable opportunity to shoot Lewis William and
set fire to his camp. But such practices were so common on the part of
the Spanish commanders as to occasion no surprise whatever.
It will be remembered that two years before, the famous Martin Schenk had
come to a tragic end at Nymegen. He had been drowned, fished up, hanged,
drawn, and quartered; after which his scattered fragments, having been
exposed on all the principal towers of the city, had been put in
pickle and deposited in a chest. They were now collected and buried
triumphantly in the tomb of the Dukes of Gelderland. Thus the shade
of the grim freebooter was at last appeased.
The government of the city was conferred upon Count Lewis William, with
Gerard de Jonge as his lieutenant. A substantial garrison was placed in
the city, and, the season now far advanced Maurice brought the military
operations of the year, saving a slight preliminary demonstration against
Gertruydenberg, to a close. He had deserved and attained--considerable
renown. He had astonished the leisurely war-makers and phlegmatic
veterans of the time, both among friends and foes, by the unexampled
rapidity of his movements and the concentration of his attacks. He had
carried great waggon trains and whole parks of siege artillery--the
heaviest then known--over roads and swamps which had been deemed
impassable even for infantry. He had traversed the length and breadth of
the republic in a single campaign, taken two great cities in Overyssel,
picked up cities and fortresses in the province of Groningen, and
threatened its capital, menaced Steenwyk, relieved Knodsenburg though
besieged in person by the greatest commander of the age, beaten the most
famous cavalry of Spain and Italy under the eyes of their chieftain,
swooped as it were through the air upon Brabant, and carried off an
important city almost in the sight of Antwerp, and sped back again in the
freezing weather of early autumn, with his splendidly served and
invincible artillery, to the imperial city of Nymegen, which Farnese had
sworn to guard like the apple of his eye, and which, with consummate
skill, was forced out of his grasp in five days.
"Some might attribute these things to blind fortune," says an honest
chronicler who had occupied important posts in the service of the prince
and of his cousin Lewis William, "but they who knew the prince's constant
study and laborious attention to detail, who were aware that he never
committed to another what he could do himself, who saw his sobriety,
vigilance, his perpetual study and holding of council with Count Lewis
William (himself possessed of all these good gifts, perhaps even in
greater degree), and who never found him seeking, like so many other
commanders, his own ease and comfort, would think differently."
CHAPTER XXV
War in Brittany and Normandy--Death of La Noue--Religious and
political persecution in Paris--Murder of President Brisson,
Larcher, and Tardif--The sceptre of France offered to Philip--The
Duke of Mayenne punishes the murderers of the magistrates--Speech of
Henry's envoy to the States-General--Letter of Queen Elizabeth to
Henry--Siege of Rouen--Farnese leads an army to its relief--The king
is wounded in a skirmish--Siege of Rue by Farnese--Henry raises the
siege of Rouen--Siege of Caudebec--Critical position of Farnese and
his army--Victory of the Duke of Mercoeur in Brittany.
Again the central point towards which the complicated events to be
described in this history gravitate is found on the soil of France.
Movements apparently desultory and disconnected--as they may have seemed
to the contemporaneous observer, necessarily occupied with the local and
daily details which make up individual human life--are found to be
necessary parts of a whole, when regarded with that breadth and clearness
of vision which is permitted to human beings only when they can look
backward upon that long sequence of events which make up the life of
nations and which we call the Past. It is only by the anatomical study
of what has ceased to exist that we can come thoroughly to comprehend the
framework and the vital conditions of that which lives. It is only by
patiently lifting the shroud from the Past that we can enable ourselves
to make even wide guesses at the meaning of the dim Present and the
veiled Future. It is only thus that the continuity of human history
reveals itself to us as the most important of scientific facts.
If ever commonwealth was apparently doomed to lose that national
existence which it had maintained for a brief period at the expense of
infinite sacrifice of blood and treasure, it was the republic of the
United Netherlands in the period immediately succeeding the death of
William the Silent. Domestic treason, secession of important provinces,
religious-hatred, foreign intrigue, and foreign invasion--in such a sea
of troubles was the republic destined generations long to struggle. Who
but the fanatical, the shallow-minded, or the corrupt could doubt the
inevitable issue of the conflict? Did not great sages and statesmen
whose teachings seemed so much wiser in their generation than the
untaught impulses of the great popular heart, condemn over and over again
the hopeless struggles and the atrocious bloodshed which were thought to
disgrace the age, and by which it was held impossible that the cause of
human liberty should ever be advanced?
To us who look back from the vantage summit which humanity has reached--
thanks to the toil and sacrifices of those who have preceded us--it may
seem doubtful whether premature peace in the Netherlands, France, and
England would have been an unmitigated blessing, however easily it might
have been purchased by the establishment all over Europe of that holy
institution called the Inquisition, and by the tranquil acceptance of the
foreign domination of Spain.
If, too; ever country seemed destined to the painful process of national
vivisection and final dismemberment, it was France: Its natural guardians
and masters, save one, were in secret negotiation with foreign powers to
obtain with their assistance a portion of the national territory under
acknowledgment of foreign supremacy. There was hardly an inch of French
soil that had not two possessors. In Burgundy Baron Biron was battling
against the Viscount Tavannes; in the Lyonese and Dauphiny Marshal des
Digiueres was fighting with the Dukes of Savoy and Nemours; in Provence,
Epernon was resisting Savoy; in Languedoc, Constable Montmorency
contended with the Duke of Joyeuse; in Brittany, the Prince of Dombes was
struggling with the Duke of Mercoeur.
But there was one adventurer who thought he could show a better legal
title to the throne of France than all the doctors of the Sorbonne could
furnish to Philip II. and his daughter, and who still trusted, through
all the disasters which pursued him, and despite the machinations of
venal warriors and mendicant princes, to his good right and his good
sword, and to something more potent than both, the cause of national
unity. His rebuke to the intriguing priests at the interview of St.
Denis, and his reference to the judgment of Solomon, formed the text to
his whole career.
The brunt of the war now fell upon Brittany and Normandy. Three thousand
Spaniards under Don John de Aquila had landed in the port of Blavet which
they had fortified, as a stronghold on the coast. And thither, to defend
the integrity of that portion of France, which, in Spanish hands, was a
perpetual menace to her realm, her crown, even to her life, Queen
Elizabeth had sent some three thousand Englishmen, under commanders well
known to France and the Netherlands. There was black Norris again
dealing death among the Spaniards and renewing his perpetual squabbles
with Sir Roger Williams. There was that doughty Welshman himself,
truculent and caustic as ever--and as ready with sword or pen, foremost
in every mad adventure or every forlorn hope, criticising with sharpest
tongue the blunders and shortcomings of friend and foe, and devoting the
last drop in his veins with chivalrous devotion to his Queen. "The world
cannot deny," said he, "that any carcase living ventured himself freer
and oftener for his prince, state, and friends than I did mine. There is
no more to be had of a poor beast than his skin, and for want of other
means I never respected mine in the least respect towards my sovereign's
service, or country." And so passing his life in the saddle and under
fire, yet finding leisure to collect the materials for, and to complete
the execution of, one of the most valuable and attractive histories of
the age, the bold Welshman again and again appears, wearing the same
humorous but truculent aspect that belonged to him when he was wont to
run up and down in a great morion and feathers on Flemish battlefields,
a mark for the Spanish sharpshooters.
There, too, under the banner of the Bearnese, that other historian of
those sanguinary times, who had fought on almost every battle-field where
tyranny and liberty had sought to smite each other dead, on French or
Flemish soil, and who had prepared his famous political and military
discourses in a foul dungeon swarming with toads and rats and other
villainous reptiles to which the worse than infernal tyranny of Philip
II. had consigned him for seven years long as a prisoner of war--the
brave and good La Noue, with the iron arm, hero of a hundred combats,
was fighting his last fight. At the siege of Lamballe in Brittany, he
had taken off his calque and climbed a ladder to examine the breach
effected by the batteries. An arquebus shot from the town grazed his
forehead, and, without inflicting a severe wound, stunned him so much
that he lost his balance and fell head foremost towards the ground; his
leg, which had been wounded at the midnight assault upon Paris, where he
stood at the side of King Henry, caught in the ladder and held him
suspended. His head was severely bruised, and the contusions and shock
to his war-worn frame were so great that he died after lingering eighteen
days.
His son de Teligny; who in his turn had just been exchanged and released
from the prison where he had lain since his capture before Antwerp, had
hastened with joy to join his father in the camp, but came to close his
eyes. The veteran caused the chapter in Job on the resurrection of the
body to be read to him on his death-bed, and died expressing his firm
faith in a hereafter. Thus passed away, at the age of sixty, on the 4th
August, 1591, one of the most heroic spirits of France. Prudence,
courage, experience, military knowledge both theoretic and practical,
made him one of the first captains of the age, and he was not more
distinguished for his valour than for the purity of his life, and the
moderation, temperance, and justice of his character. The Prince of
Dombes, in despair at his death, raised the siege of Lamballe.
There was yet another chronicler, fighting among the Spaniards, now in
Brittany, now in Normandy, and now in Flanders, and doing his work as
thoroughly with his sword as afterwards with his pen, Don Carlos Coloma,
captain of cavalry, afterwards financier, envoy, and historian. For it
was thus that those writers prepared themselves for their work. They
were all actors in the great epic, the episodes of which they have
preserved. They lived and fought, and wrought and suffered and wrote.
Rude in tongue; aflame with passion, twisted all awry by prejudice,
violent in love and hate, they have left us narratives which are at
least full of colour and thrilling with life.
Thus Netherlanders, Englishmen, and Frenchmen were again mingling their
blood and exhausting their energies on a hundred petty battle-fields of
Brittany and Normandy; but perhaps to few of those hard fighters was it
given to discern the great work which they were slowly and painfully
achieving.
In Paris the League still maintained its ascendancy. Henry, having again
withdrawn from his attempts to reduce the capital, had left the sixteen
tyrants who governed it more leisure to occupy themselves with internal
politics. A network of intrigue was spread through the whole atmosphere
of the place. The Sixteen, sustained by the power of Spain and Rome, and
fearing nothing so much as the return of peace, by which their system of
plunder would come to an end, proceeded with their persecution of all
heretics, real or supposed, who were rich enough to offer a reasonable
chance of spoil. The soul of all these intrigues was the new legate,
Sego, bishop of Piacenza. Letters from him to Alexander Farnese,
intercepted by Henry, showed a determination to ruin the Duke of Mayenne
and Count Belin governor of Paris, whom he designated as Colossus and
Renard, to extirpate the magistrates, and to put Spanish partizans in
their places, and in general to perfect the machinery by which the
authority of Philip was to be established in France. He was perpetually
urging upon that monarch the necessity of spending more money among his
creatures in order to carry out these projects.
Accordingly the attention of the Sixteen had been directed to President
Brisson, who had already made himself so dangerously conspicuous by his
resistance to the insolent assumption of the cardinal-legate. This
eminent juris-consult had succeeded Pomponne de Bellievre as first
president of the Parliament of Paris. He had been distinguished for
talent, learning, and eloquence as an advocate; and was the author of
several important legal works. His ambition to fill the place of first
president had caused him to remain in Paris after its revolt against
Henry III. He was no Leaguer; and, since his open defiance of the ultra-
Catholic party, he had been a marked man--doomed secretly by the
confederates who ruled the capital. He had fondly imagined that he could
govern the Parisian populace as easily as he had been in the habit of
influencing the Parliament or directing his clients. He expected to
restore the city to its obedience to the constituted authorities. He
hoped to be himself the means of bringing Henry IV. in triumph to the
throne of his ancestors. He found, however, that a revolution was more
difficult to manage than a law case; and that the confederates of the
Holy League were less tractable than his clients had usually been found.
On the night of the 14th November; 1591; he was seized on the bridge St.
Michel, while on his way to parliament, and was told that he was expected
at the Hotel de Ville. He was then brought to the prison of the little
Chatelet.
Hardly had he been made secure in the dimly-lighted dungeon, when Crome,
a leader among the Parisian populacey made his appearance, accompanied by
some of his confederates, and dressed in a complete suit of mail. He
ordered the magistrate to take off his hat and to kneel. He then read a
sentence condemning him to death. Profoundly astonished, Brisson
demanded to know of what crime he was accused; and under what authority.
The answer was a laugh; and an assurance that he had no time to lose.
He then begged that at least he might be imprisoned long enough to enable
him to complete a legal work on which he was engaged, and which, by his
premature death, would be lost to the commonwealth. This request
produced no doubt more merriment than his previous demands. His judges
were inflexible; and allowed him hardly time to confess himself. He was
then hanged in his dungeon.
Two other magistrates, Larcher and Tardif, were executed in the same
way, in the same place, and on the same night. The crime charged against
them was having spoken in a public assembly somewhat freely against the
Sixteen, and having aided in the circulation in Paris of a paper drawn
up by the Duke of Nevers, filled with bitterness against the Lorraine
princes and the League, and addressed to the late Pope Sixtus.
The three bodies were afterwards gibbeted on the Greve in front of the
Hotel de Ville, and exposed for two days to the insults and fury of the
populace.
This was the culminating point of the reign of terror in Paris. Never
had the sixteen tyrants; lords of the market halls, who governed the
capital by favour of and in the name of the populace, seemed more
omnipotent. As representatives or plenipotentiaries of Madam League they
had laid the crown. at the feet of the King of Spain, hoping by still
further drafts on his exchequer and his credulity to prolong indefinitely
their own ignoble reign. The extreme democratic party, which had
hitherto supported the House of Lorraine and had seemed to idolize that
family in the person of the great Balafre, now believed themselves
possessed of sufficient power to control the Duke of Mayenne and all his
adherents. They sent the Jesuit Claude Mathieu with a special memorial
to Philip II. That monarch was implored to take, the sceptre of France,
and to reign over them, inasmuch as they most willingly threw themselves
into his arms? They assured him that all reasonable people, and
especially the Holy League, wished him to take the reins of Government,
on condition of exterminating heresy throughout the kingdom by force of
arms, of publishing the Council of Trent, and of establishing everywhere
the Holy inquisition--an institution formidable only to the wicked and
desirable for the good. It was suggested that Philip should not call
himself any longer King of Spain nor adopt the title of King of France,
but that he should proclaim himself the Great King, or make use of some
similar designation, not indicating any specialty but importing universal
dominion.
Should Philip, however, be disinclined himself to accept the monarchy,
it was suggested that the young Duke of Guise, son of the first martyr
of France, would be the most appropriate personage to be honoured with
the hand of the legitimate Queen of France, the Infanta Clara Isabella.
But the Sixteen were reckoning without the Duke of Mayenne. That great
personage, although an indifferent warrior and an utterly unprincipled
and venal statesman, was by no means despicable as a fisherman in the
troubled waters of revolution. He knew how to manage intrigues with both
sides for his own benefit. Had he been a bachelor he might have obtained
the Infanta and shared her prospective throne. Being encumbered with a
wife he had no hope of becoming the son-in-law of Philip, and was
determined that his nephew Guise should not enjoy a piece of good fortune
denied to himself. The escape of the young duke from prison had been the
signal for the outbreak of jealousies between uncle and nephew, which
Parma and other agents had been instructed by their master to foster to
the utmost. "They must be maintained in such disposition in regard to
me," he said, "that the one being ignorant of my relations to the other,
both may without knowing it do my will."
But Mayenne, in this grovelling career of self-seeking, in this perpetual
loading of dice and marking of cards, which formed the main occupation of
so many kings and princes of the period, and which passed for
Machiavellian politics, was a fair match for the Spanish king and his
Italian viceroy. He sent President Jeannin on special mission to Philip,
asking for two armies, one to be under his command, the other under that
of Farnese, and assured him that he should be king himself, or appoint
any man he liked to the vacant throne. Thus he had secured one hundred
thousand crowns a month to carry on his own game withal. "The
maintenance of these two armies costs me 261,000 crowns a month," said
Philip to his envoy Ybarra.
And what was the result of all this expenditure of money, of all this
lying and counter-lying, of all this frantic effort on the part of the
most powerful monarch of the age to obtain property which did not belong
to him--the sovereignty of a great kingdom, stocked with a dozen millions
of human beings--of all this endless bloodshed of the people in the
interests of a high-born family or two, of all this infamous brokerage
charged by great nobles for their attempts to transfer kingdoms like
private farms from one owner to another? Time was to show. Meanwhile
men trembled at the name of Philip II., and grovelled before him as the
incarnation of sagacity, high policy, and king-craft.
But Mayenne, while taking the brokerage, was less anxious about the
transfer. He had fine instinct enough to suspect that the Bearnese,
outcast though he seemed, might after all not be playing so desperate a
game against the League as it was the fashion to suppose. He knew
whether or not Henry was likely to prove a more fanatical Huguenot in
1592 than he bad shown himself twenty years before at the Bartholomew
festival. And he had wit enough to foresee that the "instruction" which
the gay free-thinker held so cautiously in his fingers might perhaps turn
out the trump card. A bold, valorous Frenchman with a flawless title,
and washed whiter than snow by the freshet of holy water, might prove a
more formidable claimant to the allegiance of Frenchmen than a foreign
potentate, even though backed by all the doctors of the Sorbonne.
The murder of President Brisson and his colleagues by the confederates of
the sixteen quarters, was in truth the beginning of the end. What seemed
a proof of supreme power was the precursor of a counter-revolution,
destined ere long to lead farther than men dreamed. The Sixteen believed
themselves omnipotent. Mayenne being in their power, it was for them to
bestow the crown at their will, or to hold it suspended in air as long as
seemed best to them. They felt no doubt that all the other great cities
in the kingdom would follow the example of Paris.
But the lieutenant-general of the realm felt it time for him to show that
his authority was not a shadow--that he was not a pasteboard functionary
like the deceased cardinal-king, Charles X. The letters entrusted by the
Sixteen to Claude Mathieu were intercepted by Henry, and, very probably,
an intimation of their contents was furnished to Mayenne. At any rate,
the duke, who lacked not courage nor promptness when his own interests
were concerned, who felt his authority slipping away from him, now that
it seemed the object of the Spaniards to bind the democratic party to
themselves by a complicity in crime, hastened at once to Paris,
determined to crush these intrigues and to punish the murderers of the
judges. The Spanish envoy Ybarra, proud, excitable, violent, who had
been privy to the assassinations, and was astonished that the deeds had
excited indignation and fury instead of the terror counted upon,
remonstrated with Mayenne, intimating that in times of civil commotion it
was often necessary to be blind and deaf.
In vain. The duke carried it with a high and firm hand. He arrested the
ringleaders, and hanged four of them in the basement of the Louvre within
twenty days after the commission of their crime. The energy was well-
timed and perfectly successful. The power of the Sixteen was struck to
the earth at a blow. The ignoble tyrants became in a moment as
despicable as they had been formidable and insolent. Crome, more
fortunate than many of his fellows, contrived to make his escape
out of the kingdom.
Thus Mayenne had formally broken with the democratic party, so called-
with the market-halls oligarchy. In thus doing, his ultimate rupture
with the Spaniards was foreshadowed. The next combination for him to
strive for would be one to unite the moderate Catholics and the Bearnese.
Ah! if Henry would but "instruct" himself out of hand, what a game the
duke might play!
The burgess-party, the mild royalists, the disgusted portion of the
Leaguers, coalescing with those of the Huguenots whose fidelity might
prove stanch even against the religious apostasy contemplated by their
chief--this combination might prove an over-match for the ultra-leaguers,
the democrats, and the Spaniards. The king's name would be a tower of
strength for that "third party," which began to rear its head very boldly
and to call itself "Politica." Madam League might succumb to this new
rival in the fickle hearts of the French.
At the beginning of the year 1591; Buzanval had presented his credentials
to the States-General at the Hague as envoy of Henry IV. In the speech
which he made on this occasion he expressed the hope that the mission of
the Viscount Turenne, his Majesty's envoy to England and to the
Netherlands, had made known the royal sentiments towards the States and
the great satisfaction of the king with their energetic sympathy and
assistance. It was notorious, said Buzanval, that the King of Spain for
many years had been governed by no other motive than to bring all the
rest of Christendom under his dominion, while at the same time he forced
upon those already placed under his sceptre a violent tyranny, passing
beyond all the bounds that God, nature, and reason had set to lawful
forms of government. In regard to nations born under other laws than
his, he had used the pretext of religion for reducing them to servitude.
The wars stirred up by his family in Germany, and his recent invasion of
England, were proofs of this intention, still fresh in the memory of all
men. Still more flagrant were his machinations in the present troubles
of France. Of his dealings with his hereditary realms, the condition of
the noble provinces of the Netherlands, once so blooming under reasonable
laws, furnished, a sufficient illustration. You see, my masters,
continued the envoy, the subtle plans of the Spanish king and his
counsellors to reach with certainty the object of their ambition.
They have reflected that Spain, which is the outermost corner of Europe,
cannot conveniently make war upon other Christian realms. They have seen
that a central position is necessary to enable them to stretch their arms
to every side. They have remembered that princes who in earlier days
were able to spread their wings over all Christendom had their throne in
France, like Charles the Great and his descendants. Therefore the king
is now earnestly bent on seizing this occasion to make himself master of
France. The death of the late king (Henry III.) had no sooner occurred,
than--as the blood through great terror rushes from the extremities and
overflows the heart--they here also, fearing to lose their opportunity
and astonished at the valour of our present king, abandoned all their
other enterprises in order to pour themselves upon France.
Buzanval further reminded the States that Henry had received the most
encouraging promises from the protestant princes of Germany, and that so
great a personage as the Viscount Turenne, who had now gone thither to
reap the fruit of those promises, would not have been sent on such a
mission except that its result was certain. The Queen of England, too,
had promised his Majesty most liberal assistance.
It was not necessary to argue as to the close connection between the
cause of the Netherlands and that of France. The king had beaten down
the mutiny of his own subjects, and repulsed the invasion of the Dukes of
Savoy and of Lorraine. In consideration of the assistance promised by
Germany and England--for a powerful army would be at the command of Henry
in the spring--it might be said that the Netherlands might repose for a
time and recruit their exhausted energies, under the shadow of these
mighty preparations.
"I do not believe, however," said the minister, "that you will all answer
me thus. The faint-hearted and the inexperienced might flatter
themselves with such thoughts, and seek thus to cover their cowardice,
but the zealous and the courageous will see that it is time to set sail
on the ship, now that the wind is rising so freshly and favourably.
"For there are many occasions when an army might be ruined for want of
twenty thousand crowns. What a pity if a noble edifice, furnished to the
roof-tree, should fall to decay for want of a few tiles. No doubt your
own interests are deeply connected with our own. Men may say that our
proposals should be rejected on the principle that the shirt is nearer
to the skin than the coat, but it can be easily proved that our cause
is one. The mere rumour of this army will prevent the Duke of Parma from
attacking you. His forces will be drawn to France. He will be obliged
to intercept the crash of this thunderbolt. The assistance of this army
is worth millions to you, and has cost you nothing. To bring France into
hostility with Spain is the very policy that you have always pursued and
always should pursue in order to protect your freedom. You have always
desired a war between France and Spain, and here is a fierce and cruel
one in which you have hazarded nothing. It cannot come to an end without
bringing signal advantages to yourselves.
"You have always desired an alliance with a French sovereign, and here is
a firm friendship offered you by our king, a natural alliance.
"You know how unstable are most treaties that are founded on shifting
interests, and do not concern the freedom of bodies and souls. The first
are written with pen upon paper, and are generally as light as paper.
They have no roots in the heart. Those founded on mutual assistance on
trying occasions have the perpetual strength of nature. They bring
always good and enduring fruit in a rich soil like the heart of our king;
that heart which is as beautiful and as pure from all untruth as the lily
upon his shield.
"You will derive the first profits from the army thus raised. From the
moment of its mustering under a chief of such experience as Turenne, it
will absorb the whole attention of Spain, and will draw her thoughts from
the Netherlands to France."
All this and more in the same earnest manner did the envoy urge upon the
consideration of the States-General, concluding with a demand of 100,000
florins as their contribution towards the French campaign.
His eloquence did not fall upon unwilling ears; for the States-General,
after taking time to deliberate, replied to the propositions by an
expression of the strongest sympathy with, and admiration for, the heroic
efforts of the King of France. Accordingly, notwithstanding their own
enormous expenses, past and present, and their strenuous exertions at
that very moment to form an army of foot and horse for the campaign, the
brilliant results of which have already been narrated, they agreed to
furnish the required loan of 100,000 florins to be repaid in a year,
besides six or seven good ships of war to co-operate with the fleets of
England and France upon the coasts of Normandy. And the States were
even better than their word.
Before the end of autumn of the year 1591, Henry had laid siege to Rouen,
then the second city of the kingdom. To leave much longer so important a
place--dominating, as it did, not only Normandy but a principal portion
of the maritime borders of France--under the control of the League and of
Spain was likely to be fatal to Henry's success. It was perfectly sound
in Queen Elizabeth to insist as she did, with more than her usual
imperiousness towards her excellent brother, that he should lose no more
time before reducing that city. It was obvious that Rouen in the hands
of her arch-enemy was a perpetual menace to the safety of her own
kingdom. It was therefore with correct judgment, as well as with that
high-flown gallantry so dear to the heart of Elizabeth, that her royal
champion and devoted slave assured her of his determination no longer to
defer obeying her commands in this respect.
The queen had repeatedly warned him of the necessity of defending the
maritime frontier of his kingdom, and she was not sparing of her
reproaches that the large sums which she expended in his cause had been
often ill bestowed. Her criticisms on what she considered his military
mistakes were not few, her threats to withdraw her subsidies frequent.
"Owning neither the East nor the West Indies," she said, "we are unable
to supply the constant demands upon us; and although we have the
reputation of being a good housewife, it does not follow that we can be a
housewife for all the world." She was persistently warning the king of
an attack upon Dieppe, and rebuking him for occupying himself with petty
enterprises to the neglect of vital points. She expressed her surprise
that after the departure of Parma, he had not driven the Spaniards out of
Brittany, without allowing them to fortify themselves in that country.
"I am astonished," she said to him, "that your eyes are so blinded as not
to see this danger. Remember, my dear brother," she frankly added, "that
it is not only France that I am aiding, nor are my own natural realms of
little consequence to me. Believe me, if I see that you have no more
regard to the ports and maritime places nearest to us, it will be
necessary that my prayers should serve you in place of any other
assistance, because it does not please me to send my people to the
shambles where they may perish before having rendered you any assistance.
I am sure the Spaniards will soon besiege Dieppe. Beware of it, and
excuse my bluntness, for if in the beginning you had taken the maritime
forts, which are the very gates of your kingdom, Paris would not have
been so well furnished, and other places nearer the heart of the kingdom
would not have received so much foreign assistance, without which the
others would have soon been vanquished. Pardon my simplicity as
belonging to my own sex wishing to give a lesson to one who knows better,
but my experience in government makes me a little obstinate in believing
that I am not ignorant of that which belongs to a king, and I persuade
myself that in following my advice you will not fail to conquer your
assailants."
Before the end of the year Henry had obtained control of the, Seine, both
above and below the city, holding Pont de l'Arche on the north--where was
the last bridge across the river; that of Rouen, built by the English
when they governed Normandy, being now in ruins--and Caudebec on the
south in an iron grasp. Several war-vessels sent by the Hollanders,
according to the agreement with Buzanval, cruised in the north of the
river below Caudebec, and rendered much service to the king in cutting
off supplies from the beleaguered place, while the investing army of
Henry, numbering twenty-five thousand foot--inclusive of the English
contingent, and three thousand Netherlanders--and ten thousand cavalry,
nearly all French, was fast reducing the place to extremities.
Parma, as usual, in obedience to his master's orders, but entirely
against his own judgment, had again left the rising young general of the
Netherlands to proceed from one triumph to another, while he transferred
beyond the borders of that land which it was his first business to
protect, the whole weight of his military genius and the better portion
of his well disciplined forces.
Most bitterly and indignantly did he express himself, both at the outset
and during the whole progress of the expedition, concerning the utter
disproportions between the king's means and aims. The want of money was
the cause of wholesale disease, desertion, mutiny, and death in his
slender army.
Such great schemes as his master's required, as he perpetually urged,
liberality of expenditure and measures of breadth. He protested that he
was not to blame for the ruin likely to come upon the whole enterprise.
He had besought, remonstrated, reasoned with the king in vain. He had
seen his beard first grow, he said, in the king's service, and he had
grown gray in that service, but rather than be kept longer in such a
position, without money, men, or means to accomplish the great purposes
on which he was sent, he protested that he would "abandon his office and
retire into the woods to feed on roots." Repeatedly did he implore his
master for a large and powerful army; for money and again money. The
royal plans should be enforced adequately or abandoned entirely. To
spend money in small sums, as heretofore, was only throwing it into the
sea.
It was deep in the winter however before he could fairly come to the
rescue of the besieged city. Towards the end of January, 1592, he moved
out of Hainault, and once more made his junction at Guise with the Duke
of Mayenne. At a review of his forces on 16th January, 1592, Alexander
found himself at the head of thirteen thousand five hundred and sixteen
infantry and four thousand and sixty-one cavalry. The Duke of Mayenne's
army, for payment of which that personage received from Philip 100,000
dollars a month, besides 10,000 dollars a month for his own pocket, ought
to have numbered ten thousand foot and three thousand horse, according to
contract, but was in reality much less.
The Duke of Montemarciano, nephew of Gregory XIV., had brought two
thousand Swiss, furnished by the pontiff to the cause of the League,
and the Duke of Lorraine had sent his kinsmen, the Counts Chaligny and
Vaudemont, with a force of seven hundred lancers and cuirassiers.
The town of Fere was assigned in pledge to Farnese to hold as a
convenient: mustering-place and station in proximity to his own borders,
and, as usual, the chief command over the united armies was placed in his
hands. These arrangements concluded, the allies moved slowly forward
much in the same order as in the previous year. The young Duke of Guise,
who had just made his escape from the prison of Tours, where he had been
held in durance since the famous assassination of his father and uncle,
and had now come to join his uncle Mayenne, led the vanguard. Ranuccio,
son of the duke, rode also in the advance, while two experienced
commanders, Vitry and De la Chatre, as well as the famous Marquis del
Vasto, formerly general of cavalry in the Netherlands, who had been
transferred to Italy but was now serving in the League's army as a
volunteer, were associated with the young princes. Parma, Mayenne, and
Montemarciano rode in the battalia, the rear being under command of the
Duke of Aumale and the Count Chaligny. Wings of cavalry protected the
long trains of wagons which were arranged on each flank of the invading
army. The march was very slow, a Farnese's uniform practice to guard
himself scrupulously against any possibility of surprise and to entrench
himself thoroughly at nightfall.
By the middle of February they reached the vicinity of Aumale in Picardy.
Meantime Henry, on the news of the advance of the relieving army, had
again the same problem to solve that had been presented to him before
Paris in the summer of 1590. Should he continue in the trenches,
pressing more and more closely the city already reduced to great straits?
Should he take the open field against the invaders and once more attempt
to crush the League and its most redoubtable commander in a general
engagement? Biron strenuously advised the continuance of the siege.
Turenne, now, through his recent marriage with the heiress, called Duc
de Bouillon, great head of the Huguenot party in France, counselled as
warmly the open attack. Henry, hesitating more than was customary with
him, at last decided on a middle course. The resolution did not seem a
very wise one, but the king, who had been so signally out-generalled in
the preceding campaign by the great Italian, was anxious to avoid his
former errors, and might perhaps fall into as great ones by attempting
two inconsistent lines of action. Leaving Biron in command of the
infantry and a portion of the horse to continue the siege, he took the
field himself with the greater part of the cavalry, intending to
intercept and harass the enemy and to prevent his manifest purpose of
throwing reinforcements and supplies into the invested city.
Proceeding to Neufchatel and Aumale, he soon found himself in the
neighbourhood of the Leaguers, and it was not long before skirmishing
began. At this time, on a memorable occasion, Henry, forgetting as
usual, in his eagerness for the joys of the combat that he was not a
young captain of cavalry with his spurs to win by dashing into every mad
adventure that might present itself, but a king fighting for his crown,
with the welfare of a whole people depending on his fortunes, thought
proper to place himself at the head of a handful of troopers to
reconnoitre in person the camp of the Leaguers. Starting with five
hundred horse, and ordering Lavardin and Givry to follow with a larger
body, while the Dukes of Nevers and Longueville were to move out, should
it prove necessary, in force, the king rode forth as merrily as to a
hunting party, drove in the scouts and pickets of the confederated
armies, and, advancing still farther in his investigations, soon found
himself attacked by a cavalry force of the enemy much superior to his
own. A skirmish began, and it was necessary for the little troop to beat
a hasty retreat, fighting as it ran. It was not long before Henry was
recognised by the enemy, and the chase became all the more lively; George
Basti, the famous Albanian trooper, commanding the force which pressed
most closely upon the king. The news spread to the camp of the League
that the Bearnese was the leader of the skirmishers. Mayenne believed
it, and urged the instant advance of the flying squadron and of the whole
vanguard. Farnese refused. It was impossible that the king should be
there, he said, doing picket duty at the head of a company. It was a
clumsy ambush to bring on a general engagement in the open field, and he
was not to be drawn out of his trenches into a trap by such a shallow
device. A French captain, who by command of Henry had purposely allowed
himself to be taken, informed his captors that the skirmishers were in
reality supported by a heavy force of infantry. This suggestion of the
ready Bearnese confirmed the doubts of Alexander. Meantime the
skirmishing steeplechase went on before his eyes. The king dashing down
a hill received an arquebus shot in his side, but still rode for his
life. Lavardin and Givry came to the rescue, but a panic seized their
followers as the rumour flew that the king was mortally wounded--was
already dead--so that they hardly brought a sufficient force to beat back
the Leaguers. Givry's horse was soon killed under him, and his own thigh
crushed; Lavardin was himself dangerously wounded. The king was more
hard pressed than ever, men were falling on every side of him, when four
hundred French dragoons--as a kind of musketeers who rode on hacks to the
scene of action but did their work on foot, were called at that day--now
dismounted and threw themselves between Henry and his pursuers. Nearly
every man of them laid down his life, but they saved the king's. Their
vigorous hand to hand fighting kept off the assailants until Nevers and
Longueville received the king at the gates of Aumale with a force before
which the Leaguers were fain to retreat as rapidly as they had come.
In this remarkable skirmish of Aumale the opposite qualities of Alexander
and of Henry were signally illustrated. The king, by his constitutional
temerity, by his almost puerile love of confronting danger for the
danger's sake, was on the verge of sacrificing himself with all the hopes
of his house and of the nobler portion of his people for an absolute
nothing; while the duke, out of his superabundant caution, peremptorily
refused to stretch out his hand and seize the person of his great enemy
when directly within his, grasp. Dead or alive, the Bearnese was
unquestionably on that day in the power of Farnese, and with him the
whole issue of the campaign and of the war. Never were the narrow limits
that separate valour on the one side and discretion on the other from
unpardonable lunacy more nearly effaced than on that occasion.'
When would such an opportunity occur again?
The king's wound proved not very dangerous, although for many days
troublesome, and it required, on account of his general state of health,
a thorough cure. Meantime the royalists fell back from Aumale and
Neufchatel, both of which places were at once occupied by the Leaguers:
In pursuance of his original plan, the Duke of Parma advanced with his
customary steadiness and deliberation towards Rouen. It was his
intention to assault the king's army in its entrenchments in combination
with a determined sortie to be made by the besieged garrison. His
preparations for the attack were ready on the 26th February, when he
suddenly received a communication from De Villars, who had thus far most
ably and gallantly conducted the defence of the place, informing him that
it was no longer necessary to make a general attack. On the day before
he had made a sally from the four gates of the city, had fallen upon the
besiegers in great force, had wounded Biron and killed six hundred of his
soldiers, had spiked several pieces of artillery and captured others
which he had successfully brought into the town, and had in short so
damaged the enemy's works and disconcerted him in all his plans, that he
was confident of holding the place longer than the king could afford to
stay in front of him. All he wished was a moderate reinforcement of men
and munitions. Farnese by no means sympathized with the confident tone
of Villars nor approved of his proposition. He had come to relieve Rouen
and to raise the siege, and he preferred to do his work thoroughly.
Mayenne was however most heartily in favour of taking the advice of
Villars. He urged that it was difficult for the Bearnese to keep an army
long in the field, still more so in the trenches. Let them provide for
the immediate wants of the city; then the usual process of decomposition
would soon be witnessed in the ill-paid, ill-fed, desultory forces of the
heretic pretender.
Alexander deferred to the wishes of Mayenne, although against his better
judgment. Eight hundred infantry, were successfully sent into Rouen.
The army of the League then countermarched into Picardy near the confines
of Artois.
They were closely followed by Henry at the head of his cavalry, and
lively skirmishes were of frequent occurrence. In a military point of
view none of these affairs were of consequence, but there was one which
partook at once of the comic and the pathetic. For it chanced that in a
cavalry action of more than common vivacity the Count Chaligny found
himself engaged in a hand to hand conflict with a very dashing swordsman,
who, after dealing and receiving many severe blows, at last succeeded in
disarming the count and taking him prisoner. It was the fortune of war,
and, but a few days before, might have been the fate of the great Henry
himself. But Chaligny's mortification at his captivity became intense
when he discovered that the knight to whom he had surrendered was no
other than the king's jester. That he, a chieftain of the Holy League,
the long-descended scion of the illustrious house of Lorraine, brother of
the great Duke of Mercoeur, should become the captive of a Huguenot
buffoon seemed the most stinging jest yet perpetrated since fools had
come in fashion. The famous Chicot--who was as fond of a battle as of a
gibe, and who was almost as reckless a rider as his master--proved on
this occasion that the cap and bells could cover as much magnanimity as
did the most chivalrous crest. Although desperately wounded in the
struggle which had resulted in his triumph, he generously granted to the
Count his freedom without ransom. The proud Lorrainer returned to his
Leaguers and the poor fool died afterwards of his wounds.
The army of the allies moved through Picardy towards the confines of
Artois, and sat down leisurely to beleaguer Rue, a low-lying place on the
banks and near the mouth of the Somme, the only town in the province
which still held for the king. It was sufficiently fortified to
withstand a good deal of battering, and it certainly seemed mere trifling
for the great Duke of Parma to leave the Netherlands in such confusion,
with young Maurice of Nassau carrying everything before him, and to come
all the way into Normandy in order, with the united armies of Spain and
the League, to besiege the insignificant town of Rue.
And this was the opinion of Farnese, but he had chosen throughout the
campaign to show great deference to the judgment of Mayenne. Meantime
the month of March wore away, and what had been predicted came to pass.
Henry's forces dwindled away as usual. His cavaliers rode off to forage
for themselves, when their battles were denied them, and the king was now
at the head of not more than sixteen thousand foot and five thousand
horse. On the other hand the Leaguers' army had been melting quite as
rapidly. With the death of Pope Sfondrato, his nephew Montemarciano had
disappeared with his two thousand Swiss; while the French cavalry and
infantry, ill-fed and uncomfortable, were diminishing daily. Especially
the Walloons, Flemings, and other Netherlanders of Parma's army, took
advantage of their proximity to the borders and escaped in large numbers
to their own homes. It was but meagre and profitless campaigning on both
sides during those wretched months of winter and early spring, although
there was again an opportunity for Sir Roger Williams, at the head of two
hundred musketeers and one hundred and fifty pikemen, to make one of his
brilliant skirmishes under the eye of the Bearnese. Surprised and
without armour, he jumped, in doublet and hose, on horseback, and led his
men merrily against five squadrons of Spanish and Italian horse, and six
companies of Spanish infantry; singled out and unhorsed the leader of the
Spanish troopers, and nearly cut off the head, of the famous Albanian
chief George Basti with one swinging blow of his sword. Then, being
reinforced by some other English companies, he succeeded in driving the
whole body of Italians and Spaniards, with great loss, quite into their
entrenchments. "The king doth commend him very highly," said Umton,
"and doth more than wonder at the valour of our nation. I never heard
him give more honour to any service nor to any man than he doth to Sir
Roger Williams and the rest, whom he held as lost men, and for which he
has caused public thanks to be given to God."
At last Villars, who had so peremptorily rejected assistance at the end
of February, sent to say that if he were not relieved by the middle of
April he should be obliged to surrender the city. If the siege were not
raised by the twentieth of the month he informed Parma, to his profound
astonishment, that Rouen would be in Henry's hands.
In effecting this result the strict blockade maintained by the Dutch
squadron at the mouth of the river, and the resolute manner in which
those cruisers dashed at every vessel attempting to bring relief to
Rouen, were mainly instrumental. As usual with the stern Hollanders and
Zeelanders when engaged at sea with the Spaniards, it was war to the
knife. Early in April twelve large vessels, well armed and manned,
attempted to break the blockade. A combat ensued, at the end of which
eight of the Spanish ships were captured, two were sunk, and two were set
on fire in token of victory, every man on board of all being killed and
thrown into the sea. Queen Elizabeth herself gave the first news of this
achievement to the Dutch envoy in London. "And in truth," said he, "her
Majesty expressed herself, in communicating these tidings, with such
affection and extravagant joy to the glory and honour of our nation and
men-of-war's-men, that it wonderfully delighted me, and did me good into
my very heart to hear it from her."
Instantly Farnese set himself to the work which, had he followed his own
judgment, would already have been accomplished. Henry with his cavalry
had established himself at Dieppe and Arques, within a distance of five
or six leagues from the infantry engaged in the siege of Rouen.
Alexander saw the profit to be derived from the separation between the
different portions of the enemy's forces, and marched straight upon the
enemy's entrenchments. He knew the disadvantage of assailing a strongly
fortified camp, but believed that by a well-concerted, simultaneous
assault by Villars from within and the Leaguers from without, the king's
forces would be compelled to raise the siege or be cut up in their
trenches.
But Henry did not wait for the attack. He had changed his plan, and,
for once in his life, substituted extreme caution for his constitutional
temerity. Neither awaiting the assault upon his entrenchments nor
seeking his enemy in the open field, he ordered the whole camp to be
broken up, and on the 20th of April raised the siege.
Farnese marched into Rouen, where the Leaguers were received with
tumultuous joy, and this city, most important for the purposes of the
League and for Philip's ulterior designs, was thus wrested from the grasp
just closing upon it. Henry's main army now concentrated itself in the
neighbourhood of Dieppe, but the cavalry under his immediate
superintendence continued to harass the Leaguers. It was now determined
to lay siege to Caudebec, on the right bank of the Seine, three leagues
below Rouen; the possession of this place by the enemy being a constant.
danger and difficulty to Rouen, whose supplies by the Seine were thus cut
off.
Alexander, as usual, superintended the planting of the batteries against
the place. He had been suffering during the whole campaign with those
dropsical ailments which were making life a torture to him; yet his
indomitable spirit rose superior to his physical disorders, and he
wrought all day long on foot or on horseback, when he seemed only fit to
be placed on his bed as a rapid passage to his grave. On this occasion,
in company with the Italian engineer Properzio, he had been for some time
examining with critical nicety the preliminaries, for the siege, when it
was suddenly observed by those around him that he was growing pale. It
then appeared that he had received a musket-ball between the wrist and
the elbow, and had been bleeding profusely; but had not indicated by a
word or the movement of a muscle that he had been wounded, so intent was
he upon carrying out the immediate task to which he had set himself. It
was indispensable, however, that he should now take to his couch. The
wound was not trifling, and to one in his damaged and dropsical condition
it was dangerous. Fever set in, with symptoms of gangrene, and it became
necessary to entrust the command of the League to Mayenne. But it was
hardly concealed from Parma that the duke was playing a double game.
Prince Ranuccio, according to his father's express wish, was placed
provisionally at the head of the Flemish forces. This was conceded;
however, with much heart-burning, and with consequences easily to be
imagined.
Meantime Caudebec fell at once. Henry did nothing to relieve it, and the
place could offer but slight resistance to the force arrayed against it.
The bulk of the king's army was in the neighbourhood of Dieppe, where
they had been recently strengthened by twenty companies of Netherlanders
and Scotchmen brought by Count Philip Nassau. The League's headquarters
were in the village of Yvetot, capital of the realm of the whimsical
little potentate so long renowned under that name.
The king, in pursuance of the plan he had marked out for himself,
restrained his skirmishing more than was his wont. Nevertheless he lay
close to Yvetot. His cavalry, swelling and falling as usual like an
Alpine torrent, had now filled up its old channels again, for once more
the mountain chivalry had poured themselves around their king. With ten
thousand horsemen he was now pressing the Leaguers, from time to time,
very hard, and on one occasion the skirmishing became so close and so
lively that a general engagement seemed imminent. Young Ranuccio had a
horse shot under him, and his father--suffering as he was--had himself
dragged out of bed and brought on a litter into the field, where he was
set on horseback, trampling on wounds and disease, and, as it were, on
death itself, that he might by his own unsurpassed keenness of eye and
quickness of resource protect the army which had been entrusted to his
care. The action continued all day; young Bentivoglio, nephew of the
famous cardinal, historian and diplomatist, receiving a bad wound in the
leg, as he fought gallantly at the side of Ranuccio. Carlo Coloma also
distinguished himself in the engagement. Night separated the combatants
before either side had gained a manifest advantage, and on the morrow it
seemed for the interest of neither to resume the struggle.
The field where this campaign was to be fought was a narrow peninsula
enclosed between the sea and the rivers Seine and Dieppe. In this
peninsula, called the Land of Caux, it was Henry's intention to shut up
his enemy. Farnese had finished the work that he had been sent to do,
and was anxious, as Henry was aware, to return to the Netherlands. Rouen
was relieved, Caudebec had fallen. There was not food or forage enough
in the little peninsula to feed both the city and the whole army of the
League. Shut up in this narrow area, Alexander must starve or surrender.
His only egress was into Picardy and so home to Artois, through the base
of the isosceles triangle between the two rivers and on the borders of
Picardy. On this base Henry had posted his whole army. Should Farnese
assail him, thus provided with a strong position and superiority of
force, defeat was certain. Should he remain where he was, he must
inevitably starve. He had no communications with the outside. The
Hollanders lay with their ships below Caudebec, blockading the river's
mouth and the coast. His only chance of extrication lay across the
Seine. But Alexander was neither a bird nor a fish, and it was
necessary, so Henry thought, to be either the one or the other to cross
that broad, deep, and rapid river, where there were no bridges, and where
the constant ebb and flow of the tide made transportation almost
impossible in face of a powerful army in rear and flank. Farnese's
situation seemed, desperate; while the shrewd Bearnese sat smiling
serenely, carefully watching at the mouth of the trap into which he had
at last inveigled his mighty adversary. Secure of his triumph, he seemed
to have changed his nature, and to have become as sedate and wary as, by
habit, he was impetuous and hot.
And in truth Farnese found himself in very narrow quarters. There was no
hay for his horses, no bread for his men. A penny loaf was sold for two
shillings. A jug of water was worth a crown. As for meat or wine, they
were hardly to be dreamed of. His men were becoming furious at their
position. They had enlisted to fight, not to starve, and they murmured
that it was better for an army to fall with weapons in its hands than to
drop to pieces hourly with the enemy looking on and enjoying their agony.
It was obvious to Farnese that there were but two ways out of his
dilemma. He might throw himself upon Henry--strongly entrenched as he
was, and with much superior forces to his own, upon ground deliberately
chosen for himself--defeat him utterly, and march over him back to the
Netherlands. This would be an agreeable result; but the undertaking
seemed difficult, to say the least. Or he might throw his army across
the Seine and make his escape through the isle of France and Southern
Picardy back to the so-called obedient provinces. But it seemed,
hopeless without bridges or pontoons to attempt the passage of the Seine.
There was; however, no time left, for hesitation. Secretly he took his
resolution and communicated it in strict confidence to Mayenne, to
Ranuccio, and to one or two other chiefs. He came to Caudebec, and
there, close to the margin of the river, he threw up a redoubt. On the
opposite bank, he constructed another. On both he planted artillery,
placing a force of eight hundred Netherlanders under Count Bossu in the
one, and an equal number of the same nation, Walloons chiefly, under
Barlotte in the other. He collected all the vessels, flatboats,--
wherries,--and rafts that could be found or put together at Rouen, and
then under cover of his forts he transported all the Flemish infantry,
and the Spanish, French, and Italian cavalry, during the night of 22nd
May to the 22 May, opposite bank of the Seine. Next morning he sent up
all the artillery together with the Flemish cavalry to Rouen, where,
making what use he could by temporary contrivances of the broken arches
of the broken bridge, in order to shorten the distance from shore to
shore, he managed to convey his whole army with all its trains across the
river.
A force was left behind, up to the last moment, to engage in the
customary skirmishes, and to display themselves as largely as possible
for the purpose of imposing upon the enemy. The young Prince of Parma
had command of this rearguard. The device was perfectly successful. The
news of the movement was not brought to the ears of Henry until after it
had been accomplished. When the king reached the shore of the Seine, he
saw to his infinite chagrin and indignation that the last stragglers of
the army, including the garrison of the fort on the right bank, were just
ferrying themselves across under command of Ranuccio.
Furious with disappointment, he brought some pieces of artillery to bear
upon the triumphant fugitives. Not a shot told, and the Leaguers had the
satisfaction of making a bonfire in the king's face of the boats which
had brought them over. Then, taking up their line of march rapidly
inland, they placed themselves completely out of the reach of the
Huguenot guns.
Henry had a bridge at Pont de l'Arche, and his first impulse was to
pursue with his cavalry, but it was obvious that his infantry could never
march by so circuitous a route fast enough to come up with the enemy, who
had already so prodigious a stride in advance.
There was no need to disguise it to himself. Henry saw himself for the
second time out-generalled by the consummate Farnese. The trap was
broken, the game had given him the slip. The manner in which the duke
had thus extricated himself from a profound dilemma; in which his
fortunes seemed hopelessly sunk, has usually been considered one of the
most extraordinary exploits of his life.
Precisely at this time, too, ill news reached Henry from Brittany and the
neighbouring country. The Princes Conti and Dombes had been obliged, on
the 13th May, 1592, to raise the siege of Craon, in consequence of the
advance of the Duke of Mercoeur, with a force of seven thousand men.
They numbered, including lanzknechts and the English contingent, about
half as many, and before they could effect their retreat, were attacked
by Mercoeur, and utterly routed. The English, who alone stood to their
colours, were nearly all cut to pieces. The rest made a disorderly
retreat, but were ultimately, with few exceptions, captured or slain.
The duke, following up his victory, seized Chateau Gontier and La Val,
important crossing places on the river Mayenne, and laid siege to
Mayenne, capital city of that region. The panic, spreading through
Brittany and Maine, threatened the king's cause there with complete
overthrow, hampered his operations in Normandy, and vastly encouraged the
Leaguers. It became necessary for Henry to renounce his designs upon
Rouen, and the pursuit of Parma, and to retire to Vernon, there to occupy
himself with plans for the relief of Brittany. In vain had the Earl of
Essex, whose brother had already been killed in the campaign, manifested
such headlong gallantry in that country as to call forth the sharpest
rebukes from the admiring but anxious Elizabeth. The handful of brave
Englishmen who had been withdrawn from the Netherlands, much to the
dissatisfaction of the States-General, in order to defend the coasts of
Brittany, would have been better employed under Maurice of Nassau. So
soon as the heavy news reached the king, the faithful Umton was sent for.
"He imparted the same unto me," said the envoy, "with extraordinary
passion and discontent. He discoursed at large of his miserable estate,
of the factions of his servants, and of their ill-dispositions, and then
required my opinion touching his course for Brittan, as also what further
aid he might expect from her Majesty; alleging that unless he were
presently strengthened by England it was impossible for him, longer to
resist the greatness of the King of Spain, who assailed his country by
Brittany, Languedoc, the Low Countries by the Duke of Saxony and the Duke
of Lorraine, and so ended his speech passionately." Thus adjured, Sir
Henry spoke to the king firmly but courteously, reminding him how,
contrary to English advice, he had followed other counsellors to the
neglect of Brittany, and had broken his promises to the queen. He
concluded by urging him to advance into that country in person, but did
not pledge himself on behalf of her Majesty to any further assistance.
"To this," said Umton, "the king gave a willing ear, and replied, with
many thanks, and without disallowing of anything that I alleged, yielding
many excuses of his want of means, not of disposition, to provide a
remedy, not forgetting to acknowledge her Majesty's care of him and his
country, and especially of Brittany, excusing much the bad disposition of
his counsellors, and inclining much to my motion to go in person thither,
especially because he might thereby give her Majesty better satisfaction;
. . . . and protesting that he would either immediately himself make
war there in those parts or send an army thither. I do not doubt," added
the ambassador, "but with good handling her Majesty may now obtain any
reasonable matter for the conservation of Brittany, as also for a place
of retreat for the English, and I urge continually the yielding of Brest
into her Majesty's hands, whereunto I find the king well inclined, if he
might bring it to pass."
Alexander passed a few days in Paris, where he was welcomed with much
cordiality, recruiting his army for a brief period in the land of Brie,
and then--broken in health but entirely successful--he dragged himself
once more to Spa to drink the waters. He left an auxiliary force with
Mayenne, and promised--infinitely against his own wishes--to obey his
master's commands and return again before the winter to do the League's
work.
And thus Alexander had again solved a difficult problem. He had saved
for his master and for the League the second city of France and the whole
coast of Normandy. Rouen had been relieved in masterly manner even as
Paris had been succoured the year before. He had done this, although
opposed by the sleepless energy and the exuberant valour of the quick-
witted Navarre, and although encumbered by the assistance of the
ponderous Duke of Mayenne. His military reputation, through these
two famous reliefs and retreats, grew greater than ever.
No commander of the age was thought capable of doing what he had thus
done. Yet, after all, what had he accomplished? Did he not feel in his
heart of hearts that he was but a strong and most skilful swimmer
struggling for a little while against an ocean-tide which was steadily
sweeping him and his master and all their fortunes far out into the
infinite depths?
Something of this breathed ever in his most secret utterances. But, so
long as life was in him, his sword and his genius were at the disposal of
his sovereign, to carry out a series of schemes as futile as they were
nefarious.
For us, looking back upon the Past, which was then the Future, it is
easy to see how remorselessly the great current of events was washing
away the system and the personages seeking to resist its power and to
oppose the great moral principles by which human affairs in the long run
are invariably governed. Spain and Rome were endeavouring to obliterate
the landmarks of race, nationality, historical institutions, and the
tendencies of awakened popular conscience, throughout Christendom,
and to substitute for them a dead level of conformity to one regal
and sacerdotal despotism.
England, Holland, the Navarre party in France, and a considerable part of
Germany were contending for national unity and independence, for vested
and recorded rights. Much farther than they themselves or their
chieftains dreamed those millions of men were fighting for a system
of temperate human freedom; for that emancipation under just laws from
arbitrary human control, which is the right--however frequently trampled
upon--of all classes, conditions, and races of men; and for which it is
the instinct of the human race to continue to struggle under every
disadvantage, and often against all hope, throughout the ages, so long
as the very principle of humanity shall not be extinguished in those
who have been created after their Maker's image.
It may safely be doubted whether the great Queen, the Bearnese, Alexander
Farnese, or his master, with many of their respective adherents, differed
very essentially from each other in their notions of the right divine and
the right of the people. But history has shown us which of them best
understood the spirit of the age, and had the keenest instinct to keep
themselves in the advance by moving fastest in the direction whither it
was marshalling all men. There were many, earnest, hard-toiling men in
those days, men who believed in the work to which they devoted their
lives. Perhaps, too, the devil-worshippers did their master's work as
strenuously and heartily as any, and got fame and pelf for their pains.
Fortunately, a good portion of what they so laboriously wrought for has
vanished into air; while humanity has at least gained something from
those who deliberately or instinctively conformed themselves to her
eternal laws.
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
Anatomical study of what has ceased to exist
Artillery
Bomb-shells were not often used although known for a century
Court fatigue, to scorn pleasure
For us, looking back upon the Past, which was then the Future
Hardly an inch of French soil that had not two possessors
Holy institution called the Inquisition
Inevitable fate of talking castles and listening ladies
Life of nations and which we call the Past
Often necessary to be blind and deaf
Picturesqueness of crime
Royal plans should be enforced adequately or abandoned entirely
Toil and sacrifices of those who have preceded us
Use of the spade
Utter disproportions between the king's means and aims
Valour on the one side and discretion on the other
Walk up and down the earth and destroy his fellow-creatures
We have the reputation of being a good housewife
Weapons
End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v63
by John Lothrop Motley
HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS
From the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce--1609
By John Lothrop Motley
History United Netherlands, Volume 64, 1592
CHAPTER XXVI.
Return of Prince Maurice to the siege of Steenwyck--Capitulation of
the besieged--Effects of the introduction of mining operations--
Maurice besieges Coeworden--Verdugo attempts to relieve the city,
but fails--The city capitulates, and Prince Maurice retreats into
winter quarters.
While Farnese had thus been strengthening the bulwarks of Philip's
universal monarchy in that portion of his proposed French dominions which
looked towards England, there had been opportunity for Prince Maurice to
make an assault upon the Frisian defences of this vast realm. It was
difficult to make half Europe into one great Spanish fortification,
guarding its every bastion and every point of the curtain, without far
more extensive armaments than the "Great King," as the Leaguers proposed
that Philip should entitle himself, had ever had at his disposal. It
might be a colossal scheme to stretch the rod of empire over so large a
portion of the earth, but the dwarfish attempts to carry the design into
execution hardly reveal the hand of genius. It is astonishing to
contemplate the meagre numbers and the slender funds with which this
world-empire was to be asserted and maintained. The armies arrayed at
any important point hardly exceeded a modern division or two; while the
resources furnished for a year would hardly pay in later days for a few
weeks' campaign.
When Alexander, the first commander of his time, moved out of Flanders
into France with less than twenty thousand men, he left most vital
portions of his master's hereditary dominions so utterly unprotected that
it was possible to attack them with a handful of troops. The young
disciple of Simon Stevinus now resumed that practical demonstration of
his principles which had been in the previous year so well begun.
On the 28th May, 1592, Maurice, taking the field with six thousand foot
and two thousand horse, came once more before Steenwyck. It will be
remembered that he had been obliged to relinquish the siege of this place
in order to confront the Duke of Parma in July, 1591, at Nymegen.
The city--very important from its position, being the key to the province
of Drenthe as well as one of the safeguards of Friesland--had been
besieged in vain by Count Renneberg after his treasonable surrender of
Groningen, of which he was governor, to the Spaniards, but had been
subsequently surprised by Tassis. Since that time it had held for the
king. Its fortifications were strong, and of the best description known
at that day. Its regular garrison was sixteen companies of foot and some
cavalry under Antoine de Quocqueville, military governor. Besides these
troops were twelve hundred Walloon infantry, commanded by Lewis, youngest
Count van den Berg, a brave lad of eighteen years, with whom were the
lord of Waterdyck and other Netherland nobles.
To the military student the siege may possess importance as marking a
transitional epoch in the history of the beleaguering science. To the
general reader, as in most of the exploits of the young Poliorcetes, its
details have but slender interest. Perhaps it was here that the spade
first vindicated its dignity, and entitled itself to be classed as a
military weapon of value along with pike and arquebus. It was here that
the soldiers of Maurice, burrowing in the ground at ten stuyvers a day,
were jeered at by the enemy from the battlements as boors and ditchers,
who had forfeited their right to be considered soldiers--but jeered at
for the last time.
From 30th May to 9th June the prince was occupied in throwing up
earthworks on the low grounds in order to bring his guns into position.
On the 13th June he began to batter with forty-five pieces, but effected
little more than to demolish some of the breast-works. He threw hot shot
into the town very diligently, too, but did small damage. The
cannonading went on for nearly a week, but the practice was so very
indifferent--notwithstanding the protection of the blessed Barbara and
the tuition of the busmasters--that the besieged began to amuse
themselves with these empty and monotonous salvos of the honourable
Artillery Guild. When all this blazing and thundering had led to no
better result than to convert a hundred thousand good Flemish florins
into noise and smoke, the thrifty Netherlanders on both sides of the
walls began to disparage the young general's reputation. After all,
they said, the Spaniards were right when they called artillery mere
'espanta-vellacos' or scare-cowards. This burrowing and bellowing must
at last give place to the old-fashioned push of pike, and then it would
be seen who the soldiers were. Observations like these were freely made
under a flag of truce; for on the 19th June--notwithstanding their
contempt for the 'espanta-vellacos'--the besieged had sent out a
deputation to treat for an honourable surrender. Maurice entertained the
negotiators hospitably in his own tent, but the terms suggested to him
were inadmissible. Nothing came of the conference therefore but mutual
criticisms, friendly enough, although sufficiently caustic.
Maurice now ceased cannonading, and burrowed again for ten days without
interruption. Four mines, leading to different points of the defences,
were patiently constructed, and two large chambers at the terminations,
neatly finished off and filled respectively with five thousand and
twenty-five hundred pounds of powder, were at last established under two
of the principal bastions.
During all this digging there had been a couple of sorties in which the
besieged had inflicted great damage on their enemy, and got back into the
town with a few prisoners, having lost but six of their own men. Sir
Francis Vere had been severely wounded in the leg, so that he was obliged
to keep his bed during the rest of the siege. Verdugo, too, had made a
feeble attempt to reinforce the place with three hundred men, sixty or
seventy of whom had entered, while the rest had been killed or captured.
On such a small scale was Philip's world-empire contended for by his
stadholder in Friesland; yet it was certainly not the fault of the stout
old Portuguese. Verdugo would rather have sent thirty thousand men to
save the front door of his great province than three hundred. But every
available man--and few enough of them they were--had been sent out of the
Netherlands, to defend the world-empire in its outposts of Normandy and
Brittany.
This was Philip the Prudent's system for conquering the world, and men
looked upon him as the consummation of kingcraft.
On the 3rd July Maurice ordered his whole force to be in readiness for
the assault. The mines were then sprung.
The bastion of the east gate was blown to ruins. The mine under the
Gast-Huys bulwark, burst outwardly, and buried alive many Hollanders
standing ready for the assault. At this untoward accident Maurice
hesitated to give the signal for storming the breach, but the panic
within the town was so evident that Lewis William lost no time in seizing
the overthrown eastern bulwark, from the ruins of which he looked over
the whole city. The other broken bastion was likewise easily mastered,
and the besieged, seeing the storm about to burst upon them with
irresistible fury, sent a trumpet. Meantime Maurice, inspecting the
effects of the explosion and preparing for the assault, had been shot
through the left cheek. The wound was not dangerous, and the prince
extracted the bullet with his own hand, but the change of half an inch
would have made it fatal. He was not incapacitated--after his wound had
been dressed, amidst the remonstrances of his friends for his temerity-
from listening to the propositions of the city. They were refused, for
the prince was sure of having his town on his own terms.
Next day he permitted the garrison to depart; the officers and soldiers
promising not to serve the King of Spain on the Netherland side of the
Rhine for six months. They were to take their baggage, but to leave
arms, flags, munitions, and provisions. Both Maurice and Lewis William
were for insisting on sterner conditions, but the States' deputies and
members of the council who were present, as usual, in camp urged the
building of the golden bridge. After all, a fortified city, the second
in importance after Groningen of all those regions, was the real prize
contended for. The garrison was meagre and much reduced during the
siege. The fortifications, of masonry and earthwork combined, were
nearly as strong as ever. Saint Barbara had done them but little damage,
but the town itself was in a sorry plight. Churches and houses were
nearly all shot to pieces, and the inhabitants had long been dwelling in
the cellars. Two hundred of the garrison remained, severely wounded, in
the town; three hundred and fifty had been killed, among others the young
cousin of the Nassaus, Count Lewis van den Berg. The remainder of the
royalists marched out, and were treated with courtesy by Maurice, who
gave them an escort, permitting the soldiers to retain their side-arms,
and furnishing horses to the governor.
In the besieging army five or six hundred had been killed and many
wounded, but not in numbers bearing the same proportion to the slain as
in modern battles.
The siege had lasted forty-four days. When it was over, and men came out
from the town to examine at leisure the prince's camp and his field of
operations, they were astounded at the amount of labor performed in so
short a time. The oldest campaigners confessed that they never before
had understood what a siege really was, and they began to conceive a
higher respect for the art of the engineer than they had ever done
before. "Even those who were wont to rail at science and labour," said
one who was present in the camp of Maurice, "declared that the siege
would have been a far more arduous undertaking had it not been for those
two engineers, Joost Matthes of Alost, and Jacob Kemp of Gorcum. It is
high time to take from soldiers the false notion that it is shameful to
work with the spade; an error which was long prevalent among the
Netherlanders, and still prevails among the French, to the great
detriment of the king's affairs, as may be seen in his sieges."
Certainly the result of Henry's recent campaign before Rouen had proved
sufficiently how much better it would have been for him had there been
some Dutch Joosts and Jacobs with their picks and shovels in his army at
that critical period. They might perhaps have baffled Parma as they had
done Verdugo.
Without letting the grass grow under his feet, Maurice now led his army
from Steenwyck to Zwol and arrived on the 26th July before Coeworden.
This place, very strong by art and still stronger by-nature, was the
other key to all north Netherland--Friesland, Groningen, and Drenthe.
Should it fall into the hands of the republic it would be impossible for
the Spaniards to retain much longer the rich and important capital of all
that country, the city of Groningen. Coeworden lay between two vast
morasses, one of which--the Bourtange swamp--extended some thirty miles
to the bay of the Dollart; while the other spread nearly as far in a
westerly direction to the Zuyder Zee. Thus these two great marshes were
a frame--an almost impassable barrier--by which the northern third of the
whole territory of the republic was encircled and defended. Throughout
this great morass there was not a hand-breadth of solid ground--not a
resting-place for a human foot, save the road which led through
Coeworden. This passage lay upon a natural deposit of hard, dry sand,
interposed as if by a caprice of nature between the two swamps; and was
about half a mile in width.
The town itself was well fortified, and Verdugo had been recently
strengthening the position with additional earthworks. A thousand
veterans formed the garrison under command of another Van den Berg, the
Count Frederic. It was the fate of these sister's-children of the great
founder of the republic to serve the cause of foreign despotism with
remarkable tenacity against their own countrymen, and against their
nearest blood relations. On many conspicuous occasions they were almost
as useful to Spain and the Inquisition as the son and nearly all the
other kinsmen of William the Silent had rendered themselves to the cause
of Holland and of freedom.
Having thoroughly entrenched his camp before Coeworden and begun the
regular approaches, Maurice left his cousin Lewis William to superintend
the siege operations for the moment, and advanced towards Ootmarsum, a
frontier town which might give him trouble if in the hands of a relieving
force. The place fell at once, with the loss of but one life to the
States army, but that a very valuable one; General de Famars, one of the
original signers of the famous Compromise; and a most distinguished
soldier of the republic, having been killed before the gates.
On the 31st July, Maurice returned to his entrenchments. The enemy
professed unbounded confidence; Van den Berg not doubting that he should
be relieved by Verdugo, and Verdugo being sure that Van den Berg would
need no relief. The Portuguese veteran indeed was inclined to wonder at
Maurice's presumption in attacking so impregnable a fortress. "If
Coeworden does not hold," said he, "there is no place in the world that
can hold."
Count Peter Ernest, was still acting as governor-general for Alexander
Farnese, on returning from his second French campaign, had again betaken
himself, shattered and melancholy, to the waters of Spa, leaving the
responsibility for Netherland affairs upon the German octogenarian. To
him; and to the nonagenarian Mondragon at Antwerp, the veteran Verdugo
now called loudly for aides against the youthful pedant, whom all men had
been laughing at a twelvemonth or so before. The Macedonian phalanx,
Simon Stevinus and delving Dutch boors--unworthy of the name of soldiers-
-seemed to be steadily digging the ground from under Philip's feet in his
hereditary domains.
What would become of the world-empire, where was the great king--not of
Spain alone, nor of France alone--but the great monarch of all
Christendom, to plant his throne securely, if his Frisian strongholds,
his most important northern outposts, were to fall before an almost
beardless youth at the head of a handful of republican militia?
Verdugo did his best, but the best was little. The Spanish and Italian
legions had been sent out of the Netherlands into France. Many had died
there, many were in hospital after their return, nearly all the rest were
mutinous for want of pay.
On the 16th August, Maurice formally summoned Coeworden to surrender.
After the trumpeter had blown thrice; Count Van den Berg, forbidding all
others, came alone upon the walls and demanded his message. "To claim
this city in the name of Prince Maurice of Nassau and of the States-
General," was the reply.
"Tell him first to beat down my walls as flat as the ditch," said Van den
Berg, "and then to bring five or six storms. Six months after that I
will think whether I will send a trumpet."
The prince proceeded steadily with his approaches, but he was infinitely
chagrined by the departure out of his camp of Sir Francis Vere with his
English contingent of three regiments, whom Queen Elizabeth had
peremptorily ordered to the relief of King Henry in Brittany.
Nothing amazes the modern mind so much as the exquisite paucity of forces
and of funds by which the world-empire was fought for and resisted in
France, Holland, Spain, and England. The scenes of war were rapidly
shifted--almost like the slides of a magic-lantern--from one country to
another; the same conspicuous personages, almost the same individual
armies, perpetually re-appearing in different places, as if a wild
phantasmagoria were capriciously repeating itself to bewilder the
imagination. Essex, and Vere, and Roger Williams, and Black Norris-Van
der Does, and Admiral Nassau, the Meetkerks and Count Philip-Farnese and
Mansfeld, George Basti, Arenberg, Berlaymont, La None and Teligny, Aquila
and Coloma--were seen alternately fighting, retreating, triumphant,
beleaguering, campaigning all along the great territory which extends
from the Bay of Biscay to the crags of Brittany, and across the narrow
seas to the bogs of Ireland, and thence through the plains of Picardy and
Flanders to the swamps of Groningen and the frontiers of the Rhine.
This was the arena in which the great struggle was ever going on, but the
champions were so few in number that their individual shapes become
familiar to us like the figures of an oft-repeated pageant. And now the
withdrawal of certain companies of infantry and squadrons of cavalry from
the Spanish armies into France, had left obedient Netherland too weak to
resist rebellious Netherland, while, on the other hand, the withdrawal of
some twenty or thirty companies of English auxiliaries--most hard-
fighting veterans it is true, but very few in number--was likely to
imperil the enterprise of Maurice in Friesland.
The removal of these companies from the Low Countries to strengthen the
Bearnese in the north of France, formed the subject of much bitter
diplomatic conference between the States and England; the order having
been communicated by the great queen herself in many a vehement epistle
and caustic speech, enforced by big, manly oaths.
Verdugo, although confident in the strength of the place, had represented
to Parma and to Mansfeld the immense importance of relieving Coeworden.
The city, he said, was more valuable than all the towns taken the year
before. All Friesland hung upon it, and it would be impossible to save
Groningen should Coeworden fall.
Meantime Count Philip Nassau arrived from the campaign in France with his
three regiments which he threw into garrison, and thus set free an equal
number of fresh troops, which were forthwith sent to the camp of Maurice.
The prince at the same time was made aware that Verdugo was about to
receive important succour, and he was advised by the deputies of the
States-General present at his headquarters to send out his German Reiters
to intercept them. Maurice refused. Should his cavalry be defeated, he
said, his whole army would be endangered. He determined to await within
his fortified camp the attack of the relieving force.
During the whole month of August he proceeded steadily with his sapping
and mining. By the middle of the month his lines had come through the
ditch, which he drained of water into the counterscarp. By the beginning
of September he had got beneath the principal fort, which, in the course
of three or four days, he expected to blow into the air. The rainy
weather had impeded his operations and the march of the relieving army.
Nevertheless that army was at last approaching. The regiments of
Mondragon, Charles Mansfeld, Gonzaga, Berlaymont, and Arenberg had been
despatched to reinforce Verdugo. On the 23rd August, having crossed the
Rhine at Rheinberg, they reached Olfen in the country of Benthem, ten
miles from Coeworden. Here they threw up rockets and made other signals
that relief was approaching the town. On the 3rd of September Verdugo,
with the whole force at his disposal, amounting to four thousand foot and
eighteen hundred horse, was at the village of Emblichen, within a league
of the besieged city. That night a peasant was captured with letters
from Verdugo to the Governor of Coeworden, giving information that he
intended to make an assault on the besiegers on the night of 6th-7th
September.
Thus forewarned, Maurice took the best precautions and calmly within his
entrenchments awaited the onslaught. Punctual to his appointment,
Verdugo with his whole force, yelling "Victoria! Victoria!" made a
shirt-attack, or camiciata--the men wearing their shirts outside their
armour to distinguish each other in the darkness--upon that portion of
the camp which was under command of Hohenlo. They were met with
determination and repulsed, after fighting all night, with a loss of
three hundred killed and a proportionate number of wounded. The
Netherlanders had but three killed and six wounded. Among the latter,
however, was Lewis William, who received a musket-ball in the belly, but
remained on the ground until the enemy had retreated. It was then
discovered that his wound was not mortal--the intestines not having been
injured--and he was soon about his work again. Prince Maurice, too, as
usual, incurred the remonstrances of the deputies and others for the
reckless manner in which he exposed himself wherever the fire was hottest
He resolutely refused, however, to permit his cavalry to follow the
retreating enemy. His object was Coeworden--a prize more important than
a new victory over the already defeated Spaniards would prove--and this
object he kept ever before his eyes.
This was Verdugo's first and last attempt to relieve the city. He had
seen enough of the young prince's tactics and had no further wish to
break his teeth against those scientific entrenchments. The Spaniards at
last, whether they wore their shirts inside or outside their doublets,
could no longer handle the Dutchmen at pleasure. That people of butter,
as the iron duke of Alva was fond of calling the Netherlanders, were
grown harder with the pressure of a twenty-five years' war.
Five days after the sanguinary 'camiciata' the besieged offered to
capitulate. The trumpet at which the proud Van den Berg had hinted for
six months later arrived on the 12th September. Maurice was glad to get
his town. His "little soldiers" did not insist, as the Spaniards and
Italians were used to do in the good old days, on unlimited murder, rape,
and fire, as the natural solace and reward of their labours in the
trenches. Civilization had made some progress, at least in the
Netherlands. Maurice granted good terms, such as he had been in the
habit of conceding to all captured towns. Van den Berg was courteously
received by his cousins, as he rode forth from the place at the head of
what remained of his garrison, five hundred in number, with colours
flying, matches burning, bullet in mouth, and with all their arms and
baggage except artillery and ammunition, and the heroic little Lewis,
notwithstanding the wound in his belly, got on horseback and greeted him
with a cousinly welcome in the camp.
The city was a most important acquisition, as already sufficiently set
forth, but Queen Elizabeth, much misinformed on this occasion, was
inclined to undervalue it. She wrote accordingly to the States,
reproaching them for using all that artillery and that royal force
against a mere castle and earthheap, instead of attempting some
considerable capital, or going in force to the relief of Brittany. The
day was to come when she would acknowledge the advantage of not leaving
this earth-heap in the hands of the Spaniard. Meantime, Prince Maurice--
the season being so far advanced--gave the world no further practical
lessons in the engineering science, and sent his troops into winter
quarters.
These were the chief military phenomena in France and Flanders during
three years of the great struggle to establish Philip's universal
dominion.
CHAPTER XXVII.
Negotiations between Queen Elizabeth and the States--Aspect of
affair between England and the Netherlands--Complaints of the
Hollanders on the piratical acts of the English--The Dutch Envoy and
the English Government--Caron's interview with Elizabeth--The Queen
promises redress of grievances.
It is now necessary to cast a glance at certain negotiations on delicate
topics which had meantime been occurring between Queen Elizabeth and the
States.
England and the republic were bound together by ties so close that it was
impossible for either to injure the other without inflicting a
corresponding damage on itself. Nevertheless this very community of
interest, combined with a close national relationship--for in the
European family the Netherlanders and English were but cousins twice
removed--with similarity of pursuits, with commercial jealousy, with an
intense and ever growing rivalry for that supremacy on the ocean towards
which the monarchy and the republic were so earnestly struggling, with a
common passion for civil and religious freedom, and with that inveterate
habit of self-assertion--the healthful but not engaging attribute of all
vigorous nations--which strongly marked them both, was rapidly producing
an antipathy between the two countries which time was likely rather to
deepen than efface. And the national divergences were as potent as the
traits of resemblance in creating this antagonism.
The democratic element was expanding itself in the republic so rapidly
as to stifle for a time the oligarchical principle which might one day
be developed out of the same matrix; while, despite the hardy and
adventurous spirit which characterised the English nation throughout all
its grades, there was never a more intensely aristocratic influence in
the world than the governing and directing spirit of the England of that
age.
It was impossible that the courtiers of Elizabeth and the burgher-
statesmen of Holland and Friesland should sympathize with each other in
sentiment or in manner. The republicans in their exuberant consciousness
of having at last got rid of kings and kingly paraphernalia in their own,
land--for since the rejection of the sovereignty offered to France and
England in 1585 this feeling had become so predominant as to make it
difficult to believe that those offers had been in reality so recent--
were insensibly adopting a frankness, perhaps a roughness, of political
and social demeanour which was far from palatable to the euphuistic
formalists of other, countries.
Especially the English statesmen, trained to approach their sovereign
with almost Oriental humility, and accustomed to exact for themselves
a large amount of deference, could ill brook the free and easy tone
occasionally adopted in diplomatic and official intercourse by these
upstart republicans.
[The Venetian ambassador Contarin relates that in the reign of James
I. the great nobles of England were served at table by lackeys on
they knees.]
A queen, who to loose morals, imperious disposition, and violent temper
united as inordinate a personal vanity as was ever vouchsafed to woman,
and who up to the verge of decrepitude was addressed by her courtiers in
the language of love-torn swain to blooming shepherdess, could naturally
find but little to her taste in the hierarchy of Hans Brewer and Hans
Baker. Thus her Majesty and her courtiers, accustomed to the faded
gallantries with which the serious affairs of State were so grotesquely
intermingled, took it ill when they were bluntly informed, for instance,
that the State council of the Netherlands, negotiating on Netherland
affairs, could not permit a veto to the representatives of the queen,
and that this same body of Dutchmen discussing their own business
insisted upon talking Dutch and not Latin.
It was impossible to deny that the young Stadholder was a gentleman of a
good house, but how could the insolence of a common citizen like John of
Olden-Barneveld be digested? It was certain that behind those shaggy,
overhanging brows there was a powerful brain stored with legal and
historic lore, which supplied eloquence to an ever-ready tongue and pen.
Yet these facts, difficult to gainsay, did not make the demands so
frequently urged by the States-General upon the English Government for
the enforcement of Dutch rights and the redress of English wrongs the
more acceptable.
Bodley, Gilpin, and the rest were in a chronic state of exasperation
with the Hollanders, not only because of their perpetual complaints,
but because their complaints were perpetually just.
The States-General were dissatisfied, all the Netherlanders were
dissatisfied--and not entirely without reason--that the English, with
whom the republic was on terms not only of friendship but of alliance,
should burn their ships on the high seas, plunder their merchants, and
torture their sea-captains in order to extort information as to the most
precious portions of their cargoes. Sharp language against such
malpractices was considered but proof of democratic vulgarity. Yet it
would be hard to maintain that Martin Frobisher, Mansfield, Grenfell, and
the rest of the sea-kings, with all their dash and daring and patriotism,
were not as unscrupulous pirates as ever sailed blue water, or that they
were not apt to commit their depredations upon friend and foe alike.
On the other hand; by a liberality of commerce in extraordinary contrast
with the practice of modern times, the Netherlanders were in the habit of
trading directly with the arch-enemy of both Holland and England, even in
the midst of their conflict with him, and it was complained of that even
the munitions of war and the implements of navigation by which Spain had
been enabled to effect its foot-hold in Brittany, and thus to threaten
the English coast, were derived from this very traffic.
The Hollanders replied, that, according to their contract with England,
they were at liberty to send as many as forty or fifty vessels at a time
to Spain and Portugal, that they had never exceeded the stipulated
number, that England freely engaged in the same traffic herself with the
common enemy, that it was not reasonable to consider cordage or dried
fish or shooks and staves, butter, eggs, and corn as contraband of war,
that if they were illegitimate the English trade was vitiated to the same
degree, and that it would be utterly hopeless for the provinces to
attempt to carry on the war, except by enabling themselves, through the
widest and most unrestricted foreign commerce, even including the enemy's
realms, to provide their nation with the necessary wealth to sustain so
gigantic a conflict.
Here were ever flowing fountains of bitterest discussion and
recrimination. It must be admitted however that there was occasionally
an advantage in the despotic and summary manner in which the queen took
matters into her own hands. It was refreshing to see this great
sovereign--who was so well able to grapple with questions of State, and
whose very imperiousness of temper impelled her to trample on shallow
sophistries and specious technicalities--dealing directly with cases of
piracy and turning a deaf ear to the counsellors, who in that, as in
every age, were too prone to shove by international justice in order to
fulfil municipal forms.
It was, however, with much difficulty that the envoy of the republic was
able to obtain a direct hearing from her Majesty in order to press the
long list of complaints on account of the English piratical proceedings
upon her attention. He intimated that there seemed to be special reasons
why the great ones about her throne were disposed to deny him access to
the queen, knowing as they did in what intent he asked for interviews.
They described in strong language the royal wrath at the opposition
recently made by the States to detaching the English auxiliaries in the
Netherlands for the service of the French king in Normandy, hoping
thereby to deter him from venturing into her presence with a list of
grievances on the part of his government. "I did my best to indicate the
danger incurred by such transferring of troops at so critical a moment,"
said Noel de Canon, "showing that it was directly in opposition to the
contract made with her Majesty. But I got no answer save very high words
from the Lord Treasurer, to the effect that the States-General were never
willing to agree to any of her Majesty's prepositions, and that this
matter was as necessary to the States' service as to that of the French
king. In effect, he said peremptorily that her Majesty willed it and
would not recede from her resolution."
The envoy then requested an interview with the queen before her departure
into the country.
Next day, at noon, Lord Burghley sent word that she was to leave between
five and six o'clock that evening, and that the minister would be welcome
meantime at any hour.
"But notwithstanding that I presented myself," said Caron, "at two
o'clock in the afternoon, I was unable to speak to her Majesty until a
moment before she was about to mount her horse. Her language was then
very curt. She persisted in demanding her troops, and strongly expressed
her dissatisfaction that we should have refused them on what she called
so good an occasion for using them. I was obliged to cut my replies very
short, as it was already between six and seven o'clock, and she was to
ride nine English miles to the place where she was to pass the night.
I was quite sensible, however; that the audience was arranged to be thus
brief, in order that I should not be able to stop long enough to give
trouble, and perhaps to find occasion to renew our complaints touching
the plunderings and robberies committed upon us at sea. This is what
some of the great personages here, without doubt, are afraid of, for they
were wonderfully well overhauled in my last audience. I shall attempt to
speak to her again before she goes very deep into the country."
It was not however before the end of the year, after Caron had made a
voyage to Holland and had returned, that he 14 Nov. was able to bring the
subject thoroughly before her Majesty. On the 14th November he had
preliminary interviews with the Lord High Admiral and the Lord Treasurer
at Hampton Court, where the queen was then residing. The plundering
business was warmly discussed between himself and the Admiral, and there
was much quibbling and special pleading in defence of the practices which
had created so much irritation and pecuniary loss in Holland. There was
a good deal of talk about want of evidence and conflict of evidence,
which, to a man who felt as sure of the facts and of the law as the Dutch
envoy did--unless it were according to public law for one friend and,
ally to plunder and burn the vessels of another friend and ally--was not
encouraging as to the probable issue of his interview with her Majesty.
It would be tedious to report the conversation as fully as it was laid by
Noel de Caron before the States-General; but at last the admiral
expressed a hope that the injured parties would be able to make good
their, case. At any rate he assured the envoy that he would take care of
Captain Mansfield for the present, who was in prison with two other
captains, so that proceedings might be had against them if it was thought
worth while.
Caron answered with Dutch bluntness. "I recommended him very earnestly
to do this," he said, "and told him roundly that this was by all means
necessary for the sake of his own honour. Otherwise no man could ever be
made to believe that his Excellency was not seeking to get his own profit
out of the affair. But he vehemently swore and protested that this was
not the case."
He then went to the Lord Treasurer's apartment, where a long and stormy
interview followed on the subject of the withdrawal of the English
troops. Caron warmly insisted that the measure had been full of danger,
for the States; that they had been ordered out of Prince Maurice's camp
at a most critical moment; that; had it not, been for the Stallholder's
promptness and military skill; very great disasters to the common cause
must have ensued; and that, after all, nothing had been done by the
contingent in any other field, for they had been for six months idle and
sick, without ever reaching Brittany at all.
"The Lord Treasurer, who, contrary to his custom," said the envoy, "had
been listening thus long to what I had to say, now observed that the
States had treated her Majesty very ill, that they had kept her running
after her own troops nearly half a year, and had offered no excuse for
their proceedings."
It would be superfluous to repeat the arguments by which Caron
endeavoured to set forth that the English troops, sent to the Netherlands
according to a special compact, for a special service, and for a special
consideration and equivalent, could not honestly be employed, contrary to
the wishes of the States-General, upon a totally different service and in
another country. The queen willed it, he was informed, and it was ill-
treatment of her Majesty on the part of the Hollanders to oppose her
will. This argument was unanswerable.
Soon afterwards, Caron was admitted to the presence of Elizabeth. He
delivered, at first, a letter from the States-General, touching the
withdrawal of the troops. The queen, instantly broke the seal and read
the letter to the end. Coming to the concluding passage, in which the
States observed that they had great and just cause highly to complain on
that subject, she paused, reading the sentences over twice or thrice, and
then remarked:
"Truly these are comical people. I have so often been complaining that
they refused to send my troops, and now the States complain that they are
obliged to let them go. Yet my intention is only to borrow them for a
little while, because I can give my brother of France no better succour
than by sending him these soldiers, and this I consider better than if I
should send him four thousand men. I say again, I am only borrowing
them, and surely the States ought never to make such complaints, when
the occasion was such a favourable one, and they had received already
sufficient aid from these troops, and had liberated their whole country.
I don't comprehend these grievances. They complain that I withdraw my
people, and meantime they are still holding them and have brought them
ashore again. They send me frivolous excuses that the skippers don't
know the road to my islands, which is, after all, as easy to find as the
way to Caen, for it is all one. I have also sent my own pilots; and I
complain bitterly that by making this difficulty they will cause the loss
of all Brittany. They run with their people far away from me, and
meantime they allow the enemy to become master of all the coasts lying
opposite me. But if it goes badly with me they will rue it deeply
themselves."
There was considerable reason, even if there were but little justice,
in this strain of remarks. Her Majesty continued it for some little time
longer, and it is interesting to see the direct and personal manner in
which this great princess handled the weightiest affairs of state. The
transfer of a dozen companies of English infantry from Friesland to
Brittany was supposed to be big with the fate of France, England, and the
Dutch republic, and was the subject of long and angry controversy, not as
a contested point of principle, in regard to which numbers, of course,
are nothing, but as a matter of practical and pressing importance.
"Her Majesty made many more observations of this nature," said Caron,
"but without getting at all into a passion, and, in my opinion, her
discourse was sensible, and she spoke with more moderation than she is
wont at other times."
The envoy then presented the second letter from the States-General in
regard to the outrages inflicted on the Dutch merchantmen. The queen
read it at once, and expressed herself as very much displeased with her
people. She said that she had received similar information from
Counsellor Bodley, who had openly given her to understand that the
enormous outrages which her people were committing at sea upon the
Netherlanders were a public scandal. It had made her so angry, she said,
that she knew not which way to turn. She would take it in hand at once,
for she would rather make oath never more to permit a single ship of war
to leave her ports than consent to such thieveries and villanies. She
told Caron that he would do well to have his case in regard to these
matters verified, and then to give it into her own hands, since otherwise
it would all be denied her and she would find herself unable to get at
the truth."
"I have all the proofs and documents of the merchants by me, "replied the
envoy, "and, moreover, several of the sea-captains who have been robbed
and outraged have come over with me, as likewise some merchants who were
tortured by burning of the thumbs and other kinds of torments."
This disturbed the queen very much, and she expressed her wish that Caron
should not allow himself to be put off with, delays by the council, but
should insist upon all due criminal punishment, the infliction of which
she promised in the strongest terms to order; for she could never enjoy
peace of mind, she said; so long as such scoundrels were tolerated in her
kingdom.
The envoy had brought with him a summary of the cases, with the names of
all the merchants interested, and a list of all the marks on the sacks of
money which had been stolen. The queen looked over it very carefully,
declaring it to be her intention that there should be no delays
interposed in the conduct of this affair by forms of special pleading,
but that speedy cognizance should be taken of the whole, and that the
property should forthwith be restored.
She then sent for Sir Robert Cecil, whom she directed to go at once and
tell his father, the Lord Treasurer, that he was to assist Caron in this
affair exactly as if it were her own. It was her intention, she said,
that her people were in no wise to trouble the Hollanders in legitimate
mercantile pursuits. She added that it was not enough for her people to
say that they had only been seizing Spaniards' goods and money, but she
meant that they should prove it, too, or else they should swing for it.
Caron assured her Majesty that he had no other commission from his
masters than to ask for justice, and that he had no instructions to claim
Spanish property or enemy's goods. He had brought sufficient evidence
with him, he said, to give her Majesty entire satisfaction.
It is not necessary to pursue the subject any farther. The great nobles
still endeavoured to interpose delays, and urged the propriety of taking
the case before the common courts of law. Carom strong in the support of
the queen, insisted that it should be settled, as her Majesty had
commanded, by the council, and it was finally arranged that the judge of
admiralty should examine the evidence on both sides, and then communicate
the documents at once to the Lord Treasurer. Meantime the money was to
be deposited with certain aldermen of London, and the accused parties
kept in prison. The ultimate decision was then to be made by the
council, "not by form of process but by commission thereto ordained."
In the course of the many interviews which followed between the Dutch
envoy and the privy counsellors, the Lord Admiral stated that an English
merchant residing in the Netherlands had sent to offer him a present of
two thousand pounds sterling, in case the affair should be decided
against the Hollanders. He communicated the name of the individual to
Caron, under seal of secrecy, and reminded the Lord Treasurer that he too
had seen the letter of the Englishman. Lord Burghley observed that he
remembered the fact that certain letters had been communicated to him by
the Lord Admiral, but that he did not know from whence they came, nor
anything about the person of the writer.
The case of the plundered merchants was destined to drag almost as slowly
before the council as it might have done in the ordinary tribunals, and
Caron was "kept running," as he expressed it, "from the court to London,
and from London to the court," and it was long before justice was done to
the sufferers. Yet the energetic manner in which the queen took the case
into her own hands, and the intense indignation with which she denounced
the robberies and outrages which had been committed by her subjects upon
her friends and allies, were effective in restraining such wholesale
piracy in the future.
On the whole, however, if the internal machinery is examined by which the
masses of mankind were moved at epoch in various parts of Christendom, we
shall not find much reason to applaud the conformity of Governments to
the principles of justice, reason, or wisdom.
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
Accustomed to the faded gallantries
Conformity of Governments to the principles of justice
Considerable reason, even if there were but little justice
Disciple of Simon Stevinus
Self-assertion--the healthful but not engaging attribute
End of this Project Gutenberg Etext History of United Netherlands, v64
by John Lothrop Motley
HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS
From the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce--1609
By John Lothrop Motley
History United Netherlands, Volume 65, 1592-1594
CHAPTER XXVIII
Influence of the rule and character of Philip II.--Heroism of the
sixteenth century--Contest for the French throne--Character and
policy of the Duke of Mayenne--Escape of the Duke of Guise from
Castle Tours--Propositions for the marriage of the Infanta--Plotting
of the Catholic party--Grounds of Philip's pretensions to the crown
of France--Motives of the Duke of Parma maligned by Commander Moreo
--He justifies himself to the king--View of the private relations
between Philip and the Duke of Mayenne and their sentiments towards
each other--Disposition of the French politicians and soldiers
towards Philip--Peculiar commercial pursuits of Philip--Confused
state of affairs in France--Treachery of Philip towards the Duke of
Parma--Recall of the duke to Spain--His sufferings and death.
The People--which has been generally regarded as something naturally
below its rulers, and as born to be protected and governed, paternally or
otherwise, by an accidental selection from its own species, which by some
mysterious process has shot up much nearer to heaven than itself--is
often described as brutal, depraved, self-seeking, ignorant, passionate,
licentious, and greedy.
It is fitting, therefore, that its protectors should be distinguished, at
great epochs of the world's history, by an absence of such objectionable
qualities.
It must be confessed, however, that if the world had waited for heroes--
during the dreary period which followed the expulsion of something that
was called Henry III. of France from the gates of his capital, and
especially during the time that followed hard upon the decease of that
embodiment of royalty--its axis must have ceased to turn for a long
succession of years. The Bearnese was at least alive, and a man. He
played his part with consummate audacity and skill; but alas for an epoch
or a country in which such a shape--notwithstanding all its engaging and
even commanding qualities--looked upon as an incarnation of human
greatness!
But the chief mover of all things--so far as one man can be prime mover--
was still the diligent scribe who lived in the Escorial. It was he whose
high mission it was to blow the bellows of civil war, and to scatter
curses over what had once been the smiling abodes of human creatures,
throughout the leading countries of Christendom. The throne of France
was vacant, nominally as well as actually, since--the year 1589. During
two-and-twenty years preceding that epoch he had scourged the provinces,
once constituting the richest and most enlightened portions of his
hereditary domains, upon the theory that without the Spanish Inquisition
no material prosperity was possible on earth, nor any entrance permitted
to the realms of bliss beyond the grave. Had every Netherlander
consented to burn his Bible, and to be burned himself should he be found
listening to its holy precepts if read to him in shop, cottage, farm-
house, or castle; and had he furthermore consented to renounce all the
liberal institutions which his ancestors had earned, in the struggle of
centuries, by the sweat of their brows and the blood of, their hearts;
his benignant proprietor and master, who lived at the ends of the earth,
would have consented at almost any moment to peace. His arms were ever
open. Let it not be supposed that this is the language of sarcasm or
epigram. Stripped of the decorous sophistication by which human beings
are so fond of concealing their naked thoughts from each other, this was
the one simple dogma always propounded by Philip. Grimace had done its
worst, however, and it was long since it had exercised any power in the
Netherlands. The king and the Dutchmen understood each other; and the
plain truths with which those republicans answered the imperial proffers
of mediation, so frequently renewed, were something new, and perhaps not
entirely unwholesome in diplomacy.
It is not an inviting task to abandon the comparatively healthy
atmosphere of the battle-field, the blood-stained swamp, the murderous
trench--where human beings, even if communing only by bullets and push of
pike, were at least dealing truthfully with each other--and to descend
into those subterranean regions where the effluvia of falsehood becomes
almost too foul for ordinary human organisation.
Heroes in those days, in any country, there were few. William the Silent
was dead. De la Noue was dead. Duplessis-Mornay was living, but his
influence over his royal master was rapidly diminishing. Cecil, Hatton,
Essex, Howard, Raleigh, James Croft, Valentine Dale, John Norris, Roger
Williams, the "Virgin Queen" herself--does one of these chief agents in
public affairs, or do all of them together, furnish a thousandth part of
that heroic whole which the England of the sixteenth century presents to
every imagination? Maurice of Nassau-excellent soldier and engineer as
he had already proved himself--had certainly not developed much of the
heroic element, although thus far he was walking straightforward like a
man, in the path of duty, with the pithy and substantial Lewis William
ever at his side. Olden-Barneveld--tough burgher-statesman, hard-headed,
indomitable man of granite--was doing more work, and doing it more
thoroughly, than any living politician, but he was certainly not of the
mythological brotherhood who inhabit the serene regions of space beyond
the moon. He was not the son of god or goddess, destined, after removal
from this sphere, to shine with planetary lustre, among other
constellations, upon the scenes of mortal action. Those of us who are
willing to rise-or to descend if the phrase seems wiser--to the idea of
a self-governing people must content ourselves, for this epoch, with the
fancy of a hero-people and a people-king.
A plain little republic, thrusting itself uninvited into the great
political family-party of heaven-anointed sovereigns and long-descended
nobles, seemed a somewhat repulsive phenomenon. It became odious and
dangerous when by the blows it could deal in battle, the logic it could
chop in council, it indicated a remote future for the world, in which
right divine and regal paraphernalia might cease to be as effective
stage-properties as they had always been considered.
Yet it will be difficult for us to find the heroic individualised very
perceptibly at this period, look where we may. Already there seemed
ground for questioning the comfortable fiction that the accidentally
dominant families and castes were by nature wiser, better, braver than
that much-contemned entity, the People. What if the fearful heresy
should gain ground that the People was at least as wise, honest, and
brave as its masters? What if it should become a recognised fact that
the great individuals and castes, whose wealth and station furnished them
with ample time and means for perfecting themselves in the science of
government, were rather devoting their leisure to the systematic filling
of their own pockets than to the hiving up of knowledge for the good of
their fellow creatures? What if the whole theory of hereditary
superiority should suddenly exhale? What if it were found out that we
were all fellow-worms together, and that those which had crawled highest
were not necessarily the least slimy?
Meantime it will be well for us, in order to understand what is called
the Past, to scrutinise somewhat closely that which was never meant to be
revealed. To know the springs which once controlled the world's
movements, one must ponder the secret thoughts, purposes, aspirations,
and baffled attempts of the few dozen individuals who once claimed that
world in fee-simple. Such researches are not in a cheerful field; for
the sources of history are rarely fountains of crystal, bubbling through
meadows of asphodel. Vast and noisome are the many sewers which have
ever run beneath decorous Christendom.
Some of the leading military events in France and Flanders, patent to all
the world, which grouped themselves about the contest for the French
throne, as the central point in the history of Philip's proposed world-
empire, have already been indicated.
It was a species of triangular contest--so far as the chief actors were
concerned--for that vacant throne. Philip, Mayenne, Henry of Navarre,
with all the adroitness which each possessed, were playing for the
splendid prize.
Of Philip it is not necessary to speak. The preceding volumes of this
work have been written in vain, if the reader has not obtained from
irrefragable testimony--the monarch's own especially--a sufficient
knowledge of that human fetish before which so much of contemporary
humanity grovelled.
The figure of Navarre is also one of the most familiar shapes in history.
As for the Duke of Mayenne, he had been, since the death of his brother
the Balafre, ostensible leader of the League, and was playing, not
without skill, a triple game.
Firstly, he hoped for the throne for himself.
Secondly, he was assisting the King of Spain to obtain that dignity.
Thirdly, he was manoeuvring in dull, dumb, but not ineffective manner, in
favour of Navarre.
So comprehensive and self-contradictory a scheme would seem to indicate
an elasticity of principle and a fertility of resource not often
vouchsafed to man.
Certainly one of the most pregnant lessons of history is furnished in
the development of these cabals, nor is it, in this regard, of great
importance whether the issue was to prove them futile or judicious. It
is sufficient for us now, that when those vanished days constituted the
Present--the vital atmosphere of Christendom--the world's affairs were
controlled by those plotters and their subordinates, and it is therefore
desirable for us to know what manner of men they were, and how they
played their parts.
Nor should it ever be forgotten that the leading motive with all was
supposed to be religion. It was to maintain the supremacy of the Roman
Church, or to vindicate, to a certain extent, liberty of conscience,
through the establishment of a heterodox organisation, that all these
human beings of various lineage and language throughout Christendom had
been cutting each other's throats for a quarter of a century.
Mayenne was not without courage in the field when he found himself there,
but it was observed of him that he spent more time at table than the
Bearnese in sleep, and that he was so fat as to require the assistance of
twelve men to put him in the saddle again whenever he fell from his
horse. Yet slow fighter as he was, he was a most nimble intriguer. As
for his private character, it was notoriously stained with every vice,
nor was there enough of natural intelligence or superior acquirement to
atone for his, crapulous; licentious, shameless life. His military
efficiency at important emergencies was impaired and his life endangered
by vile diseases. He was covetous and greedy beyond what was considered
decent even in that cynical age. He received subsidies and alms with
both hands from those who distrusted and despised him, but who could not
eject him from his advantageous position.
He wished to arrive at the throne of France. As son of Francis of Guise,
as brother of the great Balafre, he considered himself entitled to the
homage of the fishwomen and the butchers' halls. The constitution of the
country in that age making a People impossible, the subtle connection
between a high-born intriguer and the dregs of a populace, which can only
exist in societies of deep chasms and precipitous contrasts, was easily
established.
The duke's summary dealing with the sixteen tyrants of Paris in the
matter of the president's murder had, however, loosened his hold on what
was considered the democracy; but this was at the time when his schemes
were silently swinging towards the Protestant aristocracy; at the moment
when Politica was taking the place of Madam League in his secret
affections. Nevertheless, so long as there seemed a chance, he was
disposed to work the mines for his own benefit. His position as
lieutenant-general gave him an immense advantage for intriguing with both
sides, and--in case his aspirations for royalty were baffled--for
obtaining the highest possible price for himself in that auction in which
Philip and the Bearnese were likely to strain all their resources in
outbidding each other.
On one thing his heart was fixed. His brother's son should at least not
secure the golden prize if he could prevent it. The young Duke of Guise,
who had been immured in Castle Tours since the famous murder of his
father and uncle, had made his escape by a rather neat stratagem. Having
been allowed some liberty for amusing himself in the corridors in the
neighbourhood of his apartment, he had invented a game of hop, skip, and
jump up stairs and down, which he was wont to play with the soldiers of
the guard, as a solace to the tediousness of confinement. One day he
hopped and skipped up the staircase with a rapidity which excited the
admiration of the companions of his sport, slipped into his room, slammed
and bolted the doors, and when the guard, after in vain waiting a
considerable tine for him to return and resume the game, at last forced
an entrance, they found the bird flown out of window. Rope-ladders,
confederates, fast-galloping post-horses did the rest, and at last the
young duke joined his affectionate uncle in camp, much to that eminent
relative's discomfiture. Philip gave alternately conflicting
instructions to Farnese--sometimes that he should encourage the natural
jealousy between the pair; sometimes that he should cause them to work
harmoniously together for the common good--that common good being the
attainment by the King of Spain of the sovereignty of France.
But it was impossible, as already intimated, for Mayenne to work
harmoniously with his nephew. The Duke of Guise might marry with the
infanta and thus become King of France by the grace of God and Philip.
To such a consummation in the case of his uncle there stood, as we know,
an insuperable obstacle in the shape of the Duchess of Mayenne. Should
it come to this at last, it was certain that the Duke would make any and
every combination to frustrate such a scheme. Meantime he kept his own
counsel, worked amiably with Philip, Parma, and the young duke, and
received money in overflowing measure, and poured into his bosom from
that Spanish monarch whose veterans in the Netherlands were maddened by
starvation into mutiny.
Philip's plans were a series of alternatives. France he regarded as the
property of his family. Of that there could be no doubt at all. He
meant to put the crown upon his own head, unless the difficulties in the
way should prove absolutely insuperable. In that case he claimed France
and all its inhabitants as the property of his daughter. The Salic law
was simply a pleasantry, a bit of foolish pedantry, an absurdity. If
Clara Isabella, as daughter of Isabella of France, as grandchild of Henry
II., were not manifestly the owner of France--queen-proprietary, as the
Spanish doctors called it--then there was no such thing, so he thought,
as inheritance of castle, farm-house, or hovel--no such thing as property
anywhere in the world. If the heiress of the Valois could not take that
kingdom as her private estate, what security could there ever be for any
possessions public or private?
This was logical reasoning enough for kings and their counsellors. There
was much that might be said, however, in regard to special laws. There
was no doubt that great countries, with all their livestock--human or
otherwise--belonged to an individual, but it was not always so clear who
that individual was. This doubt gave much work and comfortable fees to
the lawyers. There was much learned lore concerning statutes of descent,
cutting off of entails, actions for ejectment, difficulties of enforcing
processes, and the like, to occupy the attention of diplomatists,
politicians and other sages. It would have caused general hilarity,
however, could it have been suggested that the live-stock had art or part
in the matter; that sheep, swine, or men could claim a choice of their
shepherds and butchers.
Philip--humbly satisfied, as he always expressed himself, so long as the
purity of the Roman dogmas and the supremacy of the Romish Church over
the whole earth were maintained--affected a comparative indifference as
to whether he should put the crown of St. Louis and of Hugh Capet upon
his own grey head or whether he should govern France through his daughter
and her husband. Happy the man who might exchange the symbols of mutual
affection with Philip's daughter.
The king had various plans in regard to the bestowal of the hand thus
richly endowed. First and foremost it was suggested--and the idea was
not held too monstrous to be even believed in by some conspicuous
individuals--that he proposed espousing his daughter himself. The pope
was to be relied on, in this case, to give a special dispensation. Such
a marriage, between parties too closely related to be usually united in
wedlock, might otherwise shock the prejudices of the orthodox. His late
niece and wife was dead, so that there was no inconvenience on that
score, should the interests of his dynasty, his family, and, above all,
of the Church, impel him, on mature reflection, to take for his fourth
marriage one step farther within the forbidden degrees than he had done
in his third. Here is the statement, which, if it have no other value,
serves to show the hideous designs of which the enemies of Philip
sincerely believed that monarch capable.
"But God is a just God," wrote Sir Edward Stafford, "and if with all
things past, that be true that the king ('videlicet' Henry IV.) yesterday
assured me to be true, and that both his ambassador from Venice writ to
him and Monsieur de Luxembourg from Rome, that the Count Olivarez had
made a great instance to the pope (Sixtus V.) a little afore his death,
to permit his master to marry his daughter, no doubt God will not leave
it long unpunished."
Such was the horrible tale which was circulated and believed in by Henry
the Great of France and by eminent nobles and ambassadors, and at least
thought possible by the English envoy. By such a family arrangement it
was obvious that the conflicting claims of father and daughter to the
proprietorship of France would be ingeniously adjusted, and the children
of so well assorted a marriage might reign in undisputed legitimacy over
France and Spain, and the rest of the world-monarchy. Should the king
decide on the whole against this matrimonial project, should Innocent or
Clement prove as intractable as Sixtus, then it would be necessary to
decide among various candidates for the Infanta's hand.
In Mayenne's Opinion the Duke of Guise was likely to be the man; but
there is little doubt that Philip, in case these more cherished schemes
should fail, had made up his mind--so far as he ever did make up his mind
upon anything--to select his nephew the Archduke Ernest, brother of the
Emperor Rudolph, for his son-in-law. But it was not necessary to make an
immediate choice. His quiver was full of archdukes, any one of whom
would be an eligible candidate, while not one of them would be likely to
reject the Infanta with France on her wedding-finger. Meantime there was
a lion in the path in the shape of Henry of Navarre.
Those who disbelieve in the influence of the individual on the fate of
mankind may ponder the possible results to history and humanity, had the
dagger of Jacques Clement entered the stomach of Henry IV. rather than of
Henry III. in the summer of 1589, or the perturbations in the world's
movements that might have puzzled philosophers had there been an
unsuspected mass of religious conviction revolving unseen in the mental
depths of the Bearnese. Conscience, as it has from time to time
exhibited itself on this planet of ours, is a powerful agent in
controlling political combinations; but the instances are unfortunately
not rare, so far as sublunary progress is concerned, in which the absence
of this dominant influence permits a prosperous rapidity to individual
careers. Eternal honour to the noble beings, true chieftains among men,
who have forfeited worldly power or sacrificed life itself at the dictate
of religious or moral conviction--even should the basis of such
conviction appear to some of us unsafe or unreal. Shame on the tongue
which would malign or ridicule the martyr or the honest convert to any
form of Christian faith! But who can discover aught that is inspiring to
the sons of men in conversions--whether of princes or of peasants--
wrought, not at risk of life and pelf, but for the sake of securing and
increasing the one and the other?
Certainly the Bearnese was the most candid of men. It was this very
candour, this freedom from bigotry, this want of conviction, and this
openness to conviction, that made him so dangerous and caused so much
anxiety to Philip. The Roman Church might or might not be strengthened
by the re-conversion of the legitimate heir of France, but it was certain
that the claims of Philip and the Infanta to the proprietorship of that
kingdom would be weakened by the process. While the Spanish king knew
himself to be inspired in all his actions by a single motive, the
maintenance of the supremacy of the Roman Church, he was perfectly aware
that the Prince of Bearne was not so single-hearted nor so conscientious
as himself.
The Prince of Bearne--heretic, son of heretics, great chieftain of
heretics--was supposed capable of becoming orthodox whenever the Pope
would accept his conversion. Against this possibility Philip struggled
with all his strength.
Since Pope Sixtus V., who had a weakness for Henry, there had been
several popes. Urban VII., his immediate successor, had reigned but
thirteen days. Gregory XIV. (Sfondrato) had died 15th October, 1591,
ten months after his election. Fachinetti, with the title of Innocent
IX., had reigned two months, from 29th October to 29th December, 1591.
He died of "Spanish poison," said Envoy Umton, as coolly as if speaking
of gout, or typhus, or any other recognised disorder. Clement VIII.
(Aldobrandini) was elected 30th January, 1592. He was no lover of Henry,
and lived in mortal fear of Philip, while it must be conceded that the
Spanish ambassador at Rome was much given to brow-beating his Holiness.
Should he dare to grant that absolution which was the secret object of
the Bearnese, there was no vengeance, hinted the envoy, that Philip would
not wreak on the holy father. He would cut off his supplies from Naples
and Sicily, and starve him and all-his subjects; he would frustrate all
his family schemes, he would renounce him, he would unpope him, he would
do anything that man and despot could do, should the great shepherd dare
to re-admit this lost sheep, and this very black sheep, into the fold of
the faithful.
As for Henry himself, his game--for in his eyes it was nothing but a
game--lay every day plainer and plainer before him. He was indispensable
to the heretics. Neither England, nor Holland, nor Protestant Germany,
could renounce him, even should he renounce "the religion." Nor could
the French Huguenots exist without that protection which, even although
Catholic, he could still extend to them when he should be accepted as
king by the Catholics.
Hereditary monarch by French law and history, released from his heresy by
the authority that could bind and loose, purged as with hyssop and washed
whiter than snow, it should go hard with him if Philip, and Farnese, and
Mayenne, and all the pikemen and reiters they might muster, could keep
him very long from the throne of his ancestors.
Nothing could match the ingenuousness with which he demanded the
instruction whenever the fitting time for it should arrive; as if,
instead of having been a professor both of the Calvinist and Catholic
persuasion, and having relapsed from both, he had been some innocent
Peruvian or Hindoo, who was invited to listen to preachings and to
examine dogmas for the very first time in his life.
Yet Philip had good grounds for hoping a favourable result from his
political and military manoeuvre. He entertained little doubt that
France belonged to him or to his daughter; that the most powerful party
in the country was in favour of his claims, provided he would pay the
voters liberally enough for their support, and that if the worst came to
the worst it would always be in his power to dismember the kingdom, and
to reserve the lion's share for himself, while distributing some of the
provinces to the most prominent of his confederates.
The sixteen tyrants of Paris had already, as we have seen, urged the
crown upon him, provided he would establish in France the Inquisition,
the council of Trent, and other acceptable institutions, besides
distributing judiciously a good many lucrative offices among various
classes of his adherents.
The Duke of Mayenne, in his own name and that of all the Catholics of
France, formally demanded of him to maintain two armies, forty thousand
men in all, to be respectively under command of the duke himself and of
Alexander Farnese, and regularly to pay for them. These propositions,
as has been seen, were carried into effect as nearly as possible, at
enormous expense to Philip's exchequer, and he naturally expected as good
faith on the part of Mayenne.
In the same paper in which the demand was made Philip was urged to
declare himself king of France. He was assured that the measure could
be accomplished "by freely bestowing marquisates, baronies, and peerages,
in order to content the avarice and ambition of many persons, without at
the same time dissipating the greatness from which all these members
depended. Pepin and Charlemagne," said the memorialists, "who were
foreigners and Saxons by nation, did as much in order to get possession
of a kingdom to which they had no other right except that which they
acquired there by their prudence and force, and after them Hugh Capet,
much inferior to them in force and authority, following their example,
had the same good fortune for himself and his posterity, and one which
still endures.
"If the authority of the holy see could support the scheme at the same
time," continued Mayenne and friends, "it would be a great help. But it
being perilous to ask for that assistance before striking the blow, it
would be better to obtain it after the execution."
That these wholesome opinions were not entirely original on the
part of Mayenne, nor produced spontaneously, was plain from the secret
instructions given by Philip to his envoys, Don Bernardino de Mendoza,
John Baptist de Tassis, and the commander Moreo, whom he had sent soon
after the death of Henry III. to confer with Cardinal Gaetano in Paris.
They were told, of course, to do everything in their power to prevent the
election of the Prince of Bearne, "being as he was a heretic, obstinate
and confirmed, who had sucked heresy with his mother's milk." The legate
was warned that "if the Bearnese should make a show of converting
himself, it would be frigid and fabricated."
If they were asked whom Philip desired for king--a question which
certainly seemed probable under the circumstances--they were to reply
that his foremost wish was to establish the Catholic religion in the
kingdom, and that whatever was most conducive to that end would be most
agreeable to him. "As it is however desirable, in order to arrange
matters, that you should be informed of everything," said his Majesty,
"it is proper that you should know that I have two kinds of right to all
that there is over there. Firstly, because the crown of France has been
usurped from me, my ancestors having been unjustly excluded by foreign
occupation of it; and secondly, because I claim the same crown as first
male of the house of Valois."
Here certainly were comprehensive pretensions, and it was obvious that
the king's desire for the establishment of the Catholic religion must
have been very lively to enable him to invent or accept such astonishing
fictions.
But his own claims were but a portion of the case. His daughter and
possible spouse had rights of her own, hard, in his opinion, to be
gainsaid. "Over and above all this," said Philip, "my eldest daughter,
the Infanta, has two other rights; one to all the states which as dower-
property are joined by matrimony and through females to this crown, which
now come to her in direct line, and the other to the crown itself, which
belongs directly to the said Infanta, the matter of the Salic law being a
mere invention."
Thus it would appear that Philip was the legitimate representative, not
only of the ancient races of French monarchs--whether Merovingians,
Carlovingians, or otherwise was not stated but also of the usurping
houses themselves, by whose intrusion those earlier dynasties had been
ejected, being the eldest male heir of the extinct line of Valois, while
his daughter was, if possible, even more legitimately the sovereign and
proprietor of France than he was himself.
Nevertheless in his magnanimous desire for the peace of the world and
the advancement of the interests of the Church, he was, if reduced to
extremities, willing to forego his own individual rights--when it should
appear that they could by no possibility be enforced--in favour of his
daughter and of the husband whom he should select for her.
"Thus it may be seen," said the self-denying man, "that I know how, for
the sake of the public repose, to strip myself of my private property."
Afterwards, when secretly instructing the Duke of Feria, about to proceed
to Paris for the sake of settling the sovereignty of the kingdom, he
reviewed the whole subject, setting forth substantially the same
intentions. That the Prince of Bearne could ever possibly succeed to the
throne of his ancestors was an idea to be treated only with sublime scorn
by all right-minded and sensible men. "The members of the House of
Bourbon," said he, "pretend that by right of blood the crown belongs to
them, and hence is derived the pretension made by the Prince of Bearne;
but if there were wanting other very sufficient causes to prevent this
claim--which however are not wanting--it is quite enough that he is
a relapsed heretic, declared to be such by the Apostolic See, and
pronounced incompetent, as well as the other members of his house, all
of them, to say the least, encouragers of heresy; so that not one of them
can ever be king of France, where there have been such religious princes
in time past, who have justly merited the name of Most Christian; and so
there is no possibility of permitting him or any of his house to aspire
to the throne, or to have the subject even treated of in the estates.
It should on the contrary be entirely excluded as prejudicial to the
realm and unworthy to be even mentioned among persons so Catholic as
those about to meet in that assembly."
The claims of the man whom his supporters already called Henry the
Fourth of France being thus disposed of, Philip then again alluded with
his usual minuteness to the various combinations which he had formed for
the tranquillity and good government of that kingdom and of the other
provinces of his world-empire.
It must moreover be never forgotten that what he said passed with his
contemporaries almost for oracular dispensations. What he did or ordered
to be done was like the achievements or behests of a superhuman being.
Time, as it rolls by, leaves the wrecks of many a stranded reputation to
bleach in the sunshine of after-ages. It is sometimes as profitable to
learn what was not done by the great ones of the earth, in spite of all
their efforts, as to ponder those actual deeds which are patent to
mankind. The Past was once the Present, and once the Future, bright with
rainbows or black with impending storm; for history is a continuous whole
of which we see only fragments.
He who at the epoch with which we are now occupied was deemed greatest
and wisest among the sons of earth, at whose threats men quailed, at
whose vast and intricate schemes men gasped in palefaced awe, has left
behind him the record of his interior being. Let us consider whether he
was so potent as his fellow mortals believed, or whether his greatness
was merely their littleness; whether it was carved out, of the
inexhaustible but artificial quarry of human degradation. Let us see
whether the execution was consonant with the inordinate plotting; whether
the price in money and blood--and certainly few human beings have
squandered so much of either as did Philip the Prudent in his long
career--was high or low for the work achieved.
Were after generations to learn, only after curious research,
of a pretender who once called himself, to the amusement of his
contemporaries, Henry the Fourth of France; or was the world-empire for
which so many armies were marshalled, so many ducats expended, so many
falsehoods told, to prove a bubble after all? Time was to show.
Meantime wise men of the day who, like the sages of every generation,
read the future like a printed scroll, were pitying the delusion and
rebuking the wickedness of Henry the Bearnese; persisting as he did in
his cruel, sanguinary, hopeless attempt to establish a vanished and
impossible authority over a land distracted by civil war.
Nothing could be calmer or more reasonable than the language of the great
champion of the Inquisition.
"And as President Jeannin informs me," he said, "that the Catholics have
the intention of electing me king, that appearing to them the gentlest
and safest method to smooth all rivalries likely to arise among the
princes aspiring to the crown, I reply, as you will see by the copy
herewith sent. You will observe that after not refusing myself to that
which may be the will of our Lord, should there be no other mode of
serving Him, above all I desire that which concerns my daughter, since to
her belongs the kingdom. I desire nothing else nor anything for myself,
nor for anybody else, except as a means for her to arrive at her right."
He had taken particular pains to secure his daughter's right in Brittany,
while the Duchess of Mercoeur, by the secret orders of her husband, had
sent a certain ecclesiastic to Spain to make over the sovereignty of this
province to the Infanta. Philip directed that the utmost secrecy should
be observed in regard to this transaction with the duke and duchess,
and promised the duke, as his reward for these proposed services in
dismembering his country, the government of the province for himself and
his heirs.
For the king was quite determined--in case his efforts to obtain the
crown for himself or for his daughter were unsuccessful--to dismember
France, with the assistance of those eminent Frenchmen who were now so
industriously aiding him in his projects.
"And in the third place," said he, in his secret instructions to Feria,
"if for the sins of all, we don't manage to make any election, and if
therefore the kingdom (of France) has to come to separation and to be
divided into many hands; in this case we must propose to the Duke of
Mayenne to assist him in getting possession of Normandy for himself, and
as to the rest of the kingdom, I shall take for myself that which seems
good to me--all of us assisting each other."
But unfortunately it was difficult for any of these fellow-labourers to
assist each other very thoroughly, while they detested each other so
cordially and suspected each other with such good reason.
Moreo, Ybarra, Feria, Parma, all assured their master that Mayenne was
taking Spanish money as fast as he could get it, but with the sole
purpose of making himself king. As to any of the House of Lorraine
obtaining the hand of the Infanta and the throne with it, Feria assured
Philip that Mayenne "would sooner give the crown to the Grand Turk."
Nevertheless Philip thought it necessary to continue making use of the
duke. Both were indefatigable therefore in expressing feelings of
boundless confidence each in the other.
It has been seen too how entirely the king relied on the genius and
devotion of Alexander Farnese to carry out his great schemes; and
certainly never had monarch a more faithful, unscrupulous, and dexterous
servant. Remonstrating, advising, but still obeying--entirely without
conscience, unless it were conscience to carry out his master's commands,
even when most puerile or most diabolical--he was nevertheless the object
of Philip's constant suspicion, and felt himself placed under perpetual
though secret supervision.
Commander Moreo was unwearied in blackening the duke's character, and in
maligning his every motive and action, and greedily did the king incline
his ear to the calumnies steadily instilled by the chivalrous spy.
"He has caused all the evil we are suffering," said Moreo. "When he sent
Egmont to France 'twas without infantry, although Egmont begged hard for
it, as did likewise the Legate, Don Bernardino, and Tassis. Had he done
this there is no doubt at all that the Catholic cause in France would
have been safe, and your Majesty would now have the control over that
kingdom which you desire. This is the opinion of friends and foes. I
went to the Duke of Parma and made free to tell him that the whole world
would blame him for the damage done to Christianity, since your Majesty
had exonerated yourself by ordering him to go to the assistance of the
French Catholics with all the zeal possible. Upon this he was so
disgusted that he has never shown me a civil face since. I doubt whether
he will send or go to France at all, and although the Duke of Mayenne
despatches couriers every day with protestations and words that would
soften rocks, I see no indications of a movement."
Thus, while the duke was making great military preparations far invading
France without means; pawning his own property to get bread for his
starving veterans, and hanging those veterans whom starving had made.
mutinous, he was depicted, to the most suspicious and unforgiving mortal
that ever wore a crown, as a traitor and a rebel, and this while he was
renouncing his own judicious and well-considered policy in obedience to
the wild schemes of his master.
"I must make bold to remind your Majesty," again whispered the spy, "that
there never was an Italian prince who failed to pursue his own ends, and
that there are few in the world that are not wishing to become greater
than they are. This man here could strike a greater blow than all the
rest of them put together. Remember that there is not a villain anywhere
that does not desire the death of your Majesty. Believe me, and send to
cut off my head if it shall be found that I am speaking from passion, or
from other motive than pure zeal for your royal service."
The reader will remember into what a paroxysm of rage Alexander was
thrown on, a former occasion, when secretly invited to listen to
propositions by which the sovereignty over the Netherlands was to be
secured to himself, and how near he was to inflicting mortal punishment
with his own hand on the man who had ventured to broach that treasonable
matter.
Such projects and propositions were ever floating, as it were, in the
atmosphere, and it was impossible for the most just men to escape
suspicion in the mind of a king who fed upon suspicion as his daily
bread. Yet nothing could be fouler or falser than the calumny which
described Alexander as unfaithful to Philip. Had he served his God as he
served his master perhaps his record before the highest tribunal would
have been a clearer one.
And in the same vein in which he wrote to the monarch in person did the
crafty Moreo write to the principal secretary of state, Idiaquez, whose
mind, as well as his master's, it was useful to poison, and who was in
daily communication with Philip.
"Let us make sure of Flanders," said he, "otherwise we shall all of us be
well cheated. I will tell you something of that which I have already
told his Majesty, only not all, referring you to Tassis, who, as a
personal witness to many things, will have it in his power to undeceive
his Majesty, I have seen very clearly that the duke is disgusted with his
Majesty, and one day he told me that he cared not if the whole world went
to destruction, only not Flanders."
"Another day he told me that there was a report abroad that his Majesty
was sending to arrest him, by means of the Duke of Pastrana, and looking
at me he said: 'See here, seignior commander, no threats, as if it were
in the power of mortal man to arrest me, much less of such fellows as
these.'"
"But this is but a small part of what I could say," continued the
detective knight-commander, "for I don't like to trust these ciphers.
But be certain that nobody in Flanders wishes well to these estates or to
the Catholic cause, and the associates of the Duke of Parma go about
saying that it does not suit the Italian potentates to have his Majesty
as great a monarch as he is trying to be."
This is but a sample of the dangerous stuff with which the royal mind was
steadily drugged, day after day, by those to whom Farnese was especially
enjoined to give his confidence.
Later on it will be seen how-much effect was thus produced both upon the
king and upon the duke. Moreo, Mendoza, and Tasais were placed about the
governor-general, nominally as his counsellors, in reality as police-
officers.
"You are to confer regularly with Mendoza, Tassis, and Moreo," said
Philip to Farnese.
"You are to assist, correspond, and harmonize in every way with the Duke
of Parma," wrote Philip to Mendoza, Tassis, and Moreo. And thus cordially
and harmoniously were the trio assisting and corresponding with the duke.
But Moreo was right in not wishing to trust the ciphers, and indeed he
had trusted them too much, for Farnese was very well aware of his
intrigues, and complained bitterly of them to the king and to Idiaquez.
Most eloquently and indignantly did he complain of the calumnies, ever
renewing themselves, of which he was the subject. "'Tis this good Moreo
who is the author of the last falsehoods," said he to the secretary; "and
this is but poor payment for my having neglected my family, my parents
and children for so many years in the king's service, and put my life
ever on the hazard, that these fellows should be allowed to revile me
and make game of me now, instead of assisting me."
He was at that time, after almost superhuman exertions, engaged in the
famous relief of Paris. He had gone there, he said, against his judgment
and remonstrating with his Majesty on the insufficiency of men and money
for such an enterprise. His army was half-mutinous and unprovided with
food, artillery, or munitions; and then he found himself slandered,
ridiculed, his life's life lied away. 'Twas poor payment for his
services, he exclaimed, if his Majesty should give ear to these
calumniators, and should give him no chance of confronting his accusers
and clearing his reputation. Moreo detested him, as he knew, and Prince
Doria said that the commander once spoke so ill of Farnese in Genoa that
he was on the point of beating him; while Moreo afterwards told the story
as if he had been maltreated because of defending Farnese against Doria's
slanders.
And still more vehemently did he inveigh against Moreo in his direct
appeals to Philip. He had intended to pass over his calumnies, of which
he was well aware, because he did not care to trouble the dead--for Moreo
meantime had suddenly died, and the gossips, of course, said it was of
Farnese poison--but he had just discovered by documents that the
commander had been steadily and constantly pouring these his calumnies
into the monarch's ears. He denounced every charge as lies, and demanded
proof. Moreo had further been endeavouring to prejudice the Duke of
Mayenne against the King of Spain and himself, saying that he, Farnese,
had been commissioned to take Mayenne into custody, with plenty of
similar lies.
"But what I most feel," said Alexander, with honest wrath, "is to see
that your Majesty gives ear to them without making the demonstration
which my services merit, and has not sent to inform me of them, seeing
that they may involve my reputation and honour. People have made more
account of these calumnies than of my actions performed upon the theatre
of the world. I complain, after all my toils and dangers in your
Majesty's service, just when I stood with my soul in my mouth and death
in my teeth, forgetting children, house, and friends, to be treated thus,
instead of receiving rewards and honour, and being enabled to leave to my
children, what was better than all the riches the royal hand could
bestow, an unsullied and honourable name."
He protested that his reputation had so much suffered that he would
prefer to retire to some remote corner as a humble servant of the king,
and leave a post which had made him so odious to all. Above all, he
entreated his Majesty to look upon this whole affair "not only like a
king but like a gentleman."
Philip answered these complaints and reproaches benignantly, expressed
unbounded confidence in the duke, assured him that the calumnies of his
supposed enemies could produce no effect upon the royal mind, and coolly
professed to have entirely forgotten having received any such letter as
that of which his nephew complained. "At any rate I have mislaid it," he
said, "so that you see how much account it was with me."
As the king was in the habit of receiving such letters every week, not
only from the commander, since deceased, but from Ybarra and others, his
memory, to say the least, seemed to have grown remarkably feeble. But
the sequel will very soon show that he had kept the letters by him and
pondered them to much purpose. To expect frankness and sincerity from
him, however, even in his most intimate communications to his most
trusted servants, would have been to "swim with fins of lead."
Such being the private relations between the conspirators, it is
instructive to observe how they dealt with each other in the great game
they were playing for the first throne in Christendom. The military
events have been sufficiently sketched in the preceding pages, but the
meaning and motives of public affairs can be best understood by
occasional glances behind the scenes. It is well for those who would
maintain their faith in popular Governments to study the workings of the
secret, irresponsible, arbitrary system; for every Government, as every
individual, must be judged at last by those moral laws which no man born
of woman can evade.
During the first French expedition-in the course of which Farnese had
saved Paris from falling into, the hands of Henry, and had been doing his
best to convert it prospectively into the capital of his master's empire-
-it was his duty, of course, to represent as accurately as possible the
true state of France. He submitted his actions to his master's will, but
he never withheld from him the advantage that he might have derived, had
he so chosen, from his nephew's luminous intelligence and patient
observation.
With the chief personage he had to deal with he professed himself, at
first, well satisfied. "The Duke of Mayenne," said he to Philip,
"persists in desiring your Majesty only as King of France, and will hear
of no other candidate, which gives me satisfaction such as can't be
exaggerated." Although there were difficulties in the way, Farnese
thought that the two together with God's help might conquer them.
"Certainly it is not impossible that your Majesty may succeed," he said,
"although very problematical; and in case your Majesty does succeed in
that which we all desire and are struggling for, Mayenne not only demands
the second place in the kingdom for himself, but the fief of some great
province for his family."
Should it not be possible for Philip to obtain the crown, Farnese was,
on the whole, of opinion that Mayenne had better be elected. In that
event he would make over Brittany and Burgundy to Philip, together with
the cities opposite the English coast. If they were obliged to make the
duke king, as was to be feared, they should at any rate exclude the
Prince of Bearne, and secure, what was the chief point, the Catholic
religion. "This," said Alexander, "is about what I can gather of
Mayenne's views, and perhaps he will put them down in a despatch to your
Majesty."
After all, the duke was explicit enough. He was for taking all he could
get--the whole kingdom if possible--but if foiled, then as large a slice
of it as Philip would give him as the price of his services. And
Philip's ideas were not materially different from those of the other
conspirator.
Both were agreed on one thing. The true heir must be kept out of his
rights, and the Catholic religion be maintained in its purity. As to the
inclination of the majority of the inhabitants, they could hardly be in
the dark. They knew that the Bearnese was instinctively demanded by the
nation; for his accession to the throne would furnish the only possible
solution to the entanglements which had so long existed.
As to the true sentiments of the other politicians and soldiers of the
League with whom Bearnese came in contact in France, he did not disguise
from his master that they were anything but favourable.
"That you may know, the, humour of this kingdom," said he, "and the
difficulties in which I am placed, I must tell you that I am by large
experience much confirmed in that which I have always suspected. Men
don't love nor esteem the royal name of your Majesty, and whatever the
benefits and assistance they get from you they have no idea of anything
redounding to your benefit and royal service, except so far as implied in
maintaining the Catholic religion and keeping out the Bearne. These two
things, however, they hold to be so entirely to your Majesty's profit,
that all you are doing appears the fulfilment of a simple obligation.
They are filled with fear, jealousy, and suspicion of your Majesty. They
dread your acquiring power here. Whatever negotiations they pretend
in regard to putting the kingdom or any of their cities under your
protection, they have never had any real intention of doing it, but their
only object is to keep up our vain hopes while they are carrying out
their own ends. If to-day they seem to have agreed upon any measure,
tomorrow they are sure to get out of it again. This has always been the
case, and all your Majesty's ministers that have had dealings here would
say so, if they chose to tell the truth. Men are disgusted with the
entrance of the army, and if they were not expecting a more advantageous
peace in the kingdom with my assistance than without it, I don't know
what they would do; for I have heard what I have heard and seen what I
have seen. They are afraid of our army, but they want its assistance and
our money."
Certainly if Philip desired enlightenment as to the real condition of the
country he had determined to, appropriate; and the true sentiments of its
most influential inhabitants, here, was the man most competent of all the
world to advise him; describing the situation for him, day by day, in the
most faithful manner. And at every, step the absolutely puerile
inadequacy of the means, employed by the king to accomplish his gigantic
purposes became apparent. If the crime of subjugating or at least
dismembering the great kingdom of France were to, be attempted with any
hope of success, at least it might have been expected that the man
employed to consummate the deed would be furnished with more troops and
money than would be required to appropriate a savage island off the
Caribbean, or a German. principality. But Philip expected miracles to
be accomplished by the mere private assertion of his will. It was so
easy to conquer realms the writing table.
"I don't say," continued Farnese, "if I could have entered France with a
competent army, well paid and disciplined, with plenty of artillery, and
munitions, and with funds enough to enable Mayenne to buy up the nobles
of his party, and to conciliate the leaders generally with presents and
promises, that perhaps they might not have softened. Perhaps interest
and fear would have made that name agreeable which pleases them so
little, now that the very reverse of all this has occurred. My want of
means is causing a thousand disgusts among the natives of the country,
and it is this penury that will be the chief cause of the disasters which
may occur."
Here was sufficiently plain speaking. To conquer a war-like nation
without an army; to purchase a rapacious nobility with an empty purse,
were tasks which might break the stoutest heart. They were breaking
Alexander's.
Yet Philip had funds enough, if he had possessed financial ability
himself, or any talent for selecting good financiers. The richest
countries of the old world and the new were under his sceptre; the mines
of Peru and Mexico; the wealth of farthest Ind, were at his disposition;
and moreover he drove a lucrative traffic in the sale of papal bulls and
massbooks, which were furnished to him at a very low figure, and which he
compelled the wild Indians of America and the savages of the Pacific to
purchase of him at an enormous advance. That very year, a Spanish
carrack had been captured by the English off the Barbary coast, with an
assorted cargo, the miscellaneous nature of which gives an idea of royal
commercial pursuits at that period. Besides wine in large quantities
there were fourteen hundred chests of quicksilver, an article
indispensable to the working of the silver mines, and which no one but
the king could, upon pain of death, send to America. He received,
according to contract; for every pound of quicksilver thus delivered a
pound of pure silver, weight for weight. The ship likewise contained ten
cases of gilded mass-books and papal bulls. The bulls, two million and
seventy thousand in number, for the dead and the living, were intended
for the provinces of New Spain, Yucatan, Guatemala, Honduras, and the
Philippines. The quicksilver and the bulls cost the king three hundred
thousand florins, but he sold them for five million. The .price at,
which the bulls were to be sold varied-according to the letters of advice
found in the ships--from two to four reals a piece, and the inhabitants
of those conquered regions were obliged to buy them. "From all this,"
says a contemporary chronicler; "is to be seen what a thrifty trader was
the king."
The affairs of France were in such confusion that it was impossible for
them, according to Farnese, to remain in such condition much longer
without bringing about entire decomposition. Every man was doing as he
chose--whether governor of a city, commander of a district, or gentleman
in his castle. Many important nobles and prelates followed the Bearnese
party, and Mayenne was entitled to credit for doing as well as he did.
There was no pretence, however, that his creditable conduct was due to
anything but the hope of being well paid. "If your Majesty should decide
to keep Mayenne," said Alexander, "you can only do it with large: sums of
money. He is a good Catholic and very firm in his purpose, but is so
much opposed by his own party, that if I had not so stimulated him by
hopes of his own grandeur, he would have grown desperate--such small
means has he of maintaining his party--and, it is to be feared, he would
have made arrangements with Bearne, who offers him carte-blanche."
The disinterested man had expressed his assent to the views of Philip in
regard to the assembly of the estates and the election of king, but had
claimed the sum of six hundred thousand dollars as absolutely necessary
to the support of himself and followers until those events should occur.
Alexander not having that sum at his disposal was inclined to defer
matters, but was more and more confirmed in his opinion that the Duke was
a "man of truth, faith, and his word." He had distinctly agreed that no
king should be elected, not satisfactory to Philip, and had "stipulated
in return that he should have in this case, not only the second place in
the kingdom, but some very great and special reward in full property."
Thus the man of truth, faith, and his word had no idea of selling himself
cheap, but manifested as much commercial genius as the Fuggers themselves
could have displayed, had they been employed as brokers in these
mercantile transactions.
Above all things, Alexander implored the king to be expeditious,
resolute, and liberal; for, after all, the Bearnese might prove a more
formidable competitor than he was deemed. "These matters must be
arranged while the iron is hot," he said, "in order that the name and
memory of the Bearne and of all his family may be excluded at once and
forever; for your Majesty must not doubt that the whole kingdom inclines
to him, both because he is natural successor, to the crowns and because
in this way the civil war would cease. The only thing that gives trouble
is the religions defect, so that if this should be remedied in
appearance, even if falsely, men would spare no pains nor expense in his
cause."
No human being at that moment, assuredly, could look into the immediate
future accurately enough to see whether the name and memory of the man,
whom his adherents called Henry the Fourth of France, and whom Spaniards,
legitimists and enthusiastic papists, called the Prince of Bearne, were
to be for ever excluded from the archives of France; whether Henry, after
spending the whole of his life as a pretender, was destined to bequeath
the same empty part to his descendants, should they think it worth their
while to play it. Meantime the sages smiled superior at his delusion;
while Alexander Farnese, on the contrary, better understanding the
chances of the great game which they were all playing, made bold to tell
his master that all hearts in France were inclining to their natural
lord. "Differing from your Majesty," said he, "I am of opinion that
there is no better means of excluding him than to make choice of the Duke
of Mayenne, as a person agreeable to the people, and who could only reign
by your permission and support."
Thus, after much hesitation and circumlocution, the nephew made up his
mind to chill his uncle's hopes of the crown, and to speak a decided
opinion in behalf of the man of his word, faith and truth.
And thus through the whole of the two memorable campaigns made by
Alexander in France, he never failed to give his master the most accurate
pictures of the country, and an interior view of its politics; urging
above all the absolute necessity of providing much more liberal supplies
for the colossal adventure in which he was engaged. "Money and again
money is what is required," he said. "The principal matter is to be
accomplished with money, and the particular individuals must be bought
with money. The good will of every French city must be bought with
money. Mayenne must be humoured. He is getting dissatisfied. Very
probably he is intriguing with Bearne. Everybody is pursuing his private
ends. Mayenne has never abandoned his own wish to be king, although he
sees the difficulties in the way; and while he has not the power to do us
as much good as is thought, it is certainly in his hands to do us a great
deal of injury."
When his army was rapidly diminishing by disease, desertion, mutiny, and
death, he vehemently and perpetually denounced the utter inadequacy of
the king's means to his vast projects. He protested that he was not to
blame for the ruin likely to come upon the whole enterprise. He had
besought, remonstrated, reasoned with Philip--in vain. He assured his
master that in the condition of weakness in which they found themselves,
not very triumphant negotiations could be expected, but that he would do
his best. "The Frenchmen," he said, "are getting tired of our disorders,
and scandalized by our weakness, misery, and poverty. They disbelieve
the possibility of being liberated through us."
He was also most diligent in setting before the king's eyes the dangerous
condition of the obedient Netherlands, the poverty of the finances, the
mutinous degeneration of the once magnificent Spanish army, the misery of
the country, the ruin of the people, the discontent of the nobles, the
rapid strides made by the republic, the vast improvement in its military
organization, the rising fame of its young stadholder, the thrift of its
exchequer, the rapid development of its commerce, the menacing aspect
which it assumed towards all that was left of Spanish power in those
regions.
Moreover, in the midst of the toils and anxieties of war-making and
negotiation, he had found time to discover and to send to his master
the left leg of the glorious apostle St. Philip, and the head of the
glorious martyr St. Lawrence, to enrich his collection of relics; and it
may be doubted whether these treasures were not as welcome to the king as
would have been the news of a decisive victory.
During the absence of Farnese in his expeditions against the Bearnese,
the government of his provinces was temporarily in the hands of Peter
Ernest Mansfeld.
This grizzled old fighter--testy, choleric, superannuated--was utterly
incompetent for his post. He was a mere tool in the hands of his son.
Count Charles hated Parma very cordially, and old Count Peter was made
to believe himself in danger of being poisoned or poniarded by the duke.
He was perpetually wrangling with, importuning and insulting him in
consequence, and writing malicious letters to the king in regard to him.
The great nobles, Arschot, Chimay, Berlaymont, Champagny, Arenberg, and
the rest, were all bickering among themselves, and agreeing in nothing
save in hatred to Farnese.
A tight rein, a full exchequer, a well-ordered and well-paid army, and
his own constant patience, were necessary, as Alexander too well knew,
to make head against the republic, and to hold what was left of the
Netherlands. But with a monthly allowance, and a military force not
equal to his own estimates for the Netherland work, he was ordered to go
forth from the Netherlands to conquer France--and with it the dominion of
the world--for the recluse of the Escorial.
Very soon it was his duty to lay bare to his master, still more
unequivocally than ever, the real heart of Mayenne. No one could surpass
Alexander in this skilful vivisection of political characters; and he
soon sent the information that the Duke was in reality very near closing
his bargain with the Bearnese, while amusing Philip and drawing largely
from his funds.
Thus, while faithfully doing his master's work with sword and pen, with
an adroitness such as no other man could have matched, it was a necessary
consequence that Philip should suspect, should detest, should resolve to
sacrifice him. While assuring his nephew, as we have seen, that
elaborate, slanderous reports and protocols concerning him, sent with
such regularity by the chivalrous Moreo and the other spies, had been
totally disregarded, even if they had ever met his eye, he was quietly
preparing--in the midst of all these most strenuous efforts of Alexander,
in the field at peril of his life, in the cabinet at the risk of his
soul--to deprive him of his office, and to bring him, by stratagem if
possible, but otherwise by main force, from the Netherlands to Spain.
This project, once-resolved upon, the king proceeded to execute with
that elaborate attention to detail, with that feline stealth which
distinguished him above all kings or chiefs of police that have ever
existed. Had there been a murder at the end of the plot, as perhaps
there was to be--Philip could not have enjoyed himself more. Nothing
surpassed the industry for mischief of this royal invalid.
The first thing to be done was of course the inditing of a most
affectionate epistle to his nephew.
"Nephew," said he, "you know the confidence which I have always placed in
you and all that I have put in your hands, and I know how much you are to
me, and how earnestly you work in my service, and so, if I could have you
at the same time in several places, it would be a great relief to me.
Since this cannot be however, I wish to make use of your assistance,
according to the times and occasions, in order that I may have some
certainty as to the manner in which all this business is to be managed,
may see why the settlement of affairs in France is thus delayed, and what
the state of things in Christendom generally is, and may consult with,
you about an army which I am getting levied here, and about certain
schemes now on foot in regard to the remedy for all this; all which makes
me desire your presence here for some time, even if a short time, in
order to resolve upon and arrange with the aid of your advice and
opinion, many affairs concerning the public good and facilitate their
execution by means of your encouragement and presence, and to obtain the
repose which I hope for in putting them into your hands. And so I charge
and command you that, if you desire to content me, you use all possible
diligence to let me see you here as soon as possible, and that you start
at once for Genoa."
He was further directed to leave Count Mansfeld at the head of affairs
during this temporary absence, as had been the case so often before,
instructing him to make use of the Marquis of Cerralbo, who was already
there, to lighten labours that might prove too much for a man of
Mansfeld's advanced age.
"I am writing to the marquis," continued the king, "telling him that he
is to obey all your orders. As to the reasons of your going away, you
will give out that it is a decision of your own, founded on good cause,
or that it is a summons of mine, but full of confidence and good will
towards you, as you see that it is."
The date of this letter was 20th February, 1592.
The secret instructions to the man who was thus to obey all the duke's
orders were explicit enough upon that point, although they were wrapped
in the usual closely-twisted phraseology which distinguished Philip's
style when his purpose was most direct.
Cerralbo was entrusted with general directions as to the French matter,
and as to peace negotiations with "the Islands;" but the main purport of
his mission was to remove Alexander Farnese. This was to be done by fair
means, if possible; if not, he was to be deposed and sent home by force.
This was to be the reward of all the toil and danger through which he had
grown grey and broken in the king's service.
"When you get to the Netherlands" (for the instructions were older than
the letter to Alexander just cited), "you are," said the king, "to treat
of the other two matters until the exact time arrives for the third,
taking good care not to, cut the thread of good progress in the affairs
of France if by chance they are going on well there.
"When the time arrives to treat of commission number three," continued
his Majesty, "you will take occasion of the arrival of the courier of
20th February, and will give with much secrecy the letter of that date to
the duke; showing him at the same time the first of the two which you
will have received."
If the duke showed the letter addressed to him by his uncle--which the
reader has already seen--then the marquis was to discuss with him the
details of the journey, and comment upon the benefits and increased
reputation which would be the result of his return to Spain.
"But if the duke should not show you the letter," proceeded Philip, "and
you suspect that he means to conceal and equivocate about the particulars
of it, you can show him your letter number two, in which it is stated
that you have received a copy of the letter to the duke. This will make
the step easier."
Should the duke declare himself ready to proceed to Spain on the ground
indicated--that the king had need of his services--the marquis was then
to hasten his departure as earnestly as possible. Every pains were to be
taken to overcome any objections that might be made by the duke on the
score of ill health, while the great credit which attached to this
summons to consult with the king in such arduous affairs was to be duly
enlarged upon. Should Count Mansfeld meantime die of old age, and should
Farnese insist the more vehemently, on that account, upon leaving his son
the Prince Ranuccio in his post as governor, the marquis was authorised
to accept the proposition for the moment--although secretly instructed
that such an appointment was really quite out of the question--if by so
doing the father could be torn from the place immediately.
But if all would not do, and if it should become certain that the duke
would definitively refuse to take his departure, it would then become
necessary to tell him clearly, but secretly, that no excuse would be
accepted, but that go he must; and that if he did not depart voluntarily
within a fixed time, he would be publicly deprived of office and
conducted to Spain by force.
But all these things were to be managed with the secrecy and mystery so
dear to the heart of Philip. The marquis was instructed to go first to
the castle of Antwerp, as if upon financial business, and there begin his
operations. Should he find at last all his private negotiations and
coaxings of no avail, he was then to make use of his secret letters from
the king to the army commanders, the leading nobles of the country, and
of the neighbouring princes, all of whom were to be undeceived in regard
to the duke, and to be informed of the will of his majesty.
The real successor of Farnese was to be the Archduke Albert, Cardinal of
Austria, son of Archduke Ferdinand, and the letters on this subject were
to be sent by a "decent and confidential person" so soon as it should
become obvious that force would be necessary in order to compel the
departure of Alexander. For if it came to open rupture, it would be
necessary to have the cardinal ready to take the place. If the affair
were arranged amicably, then the new governor might proceed more at
leisure. The marquis was especially enjoined, in case the duke should be
in France, and even if it should be necessary for him to follow him there
on account of commissions number one and two, not to say a word to him
then of his recall, for fear of damaging matters in that kingdom. He was
to do his best to induce him to return to Flanders, and when they were
both there, he was to begin his operations.
Thus, with minute and artistic treachery, did Philip provide for the
disgrace and ruin of the man who was his near blood relation, and who had
served him most faithfully from earliest youth. It was not possible to
carry out the project immediately, for, as it has already been narrated,
Farnese, after achieving, in spite of great obstacles due to the dulness
of the king alone, an extraordinary triumph, had been dangerously
wounded, and was unable for a brief interval to attend to public affairs.
On the conclusion of his Rouen campaign he had returned to the
Netherlands, almost immediately betaking himself to the waters of Spa.
The Marquis de Cerralbo meanwhile had been superseded in his important
secret mission by the Count of Fuentes, who received the same
instructions as had been provided for the marquis.
But ere long it seemed to become unnecessary to push matters to
extremities. Farnese, although nominally the governor, felt himself
unequal to take the field against the vigorous young commander who was
carrying everything before him in the north and east. Upon the Mansfelds
was the responsibility for saving Steenwyk and Coeworden, and to the
Mansfelds did Verdugo send piteously, but in vain, for efficient help.
For the Mansfelds and other leading personages in the obedient
Netherlands were mainly occupied at that time in annoying Farnese,
calumniating his actions, laying obstacles in the way of his
administration, military and civil, and bringing him into contempt with
the populace. When the weary soldier--broken in health, wounded and
harassed with obtaining triumphs for his master such as no other living
man could have gained with the means placed at his disposal--returned
to drink the waters, previously to setting forth anew upon the task of
achieving the impossible, he was made the mark of petty insults on the
part of both the Mansfelds. Neither of them paid their respects to him;
ill as he was, until four days after his arrival. When the duke
subsequently called a council; Count Peter refused to attend it on
account of having slept ill the night before. Champagny; who was one of,
the chief mischief-makers, had been banished by Parma to his house in
Burgundy. He became very much alarmed, and was afraid of losing his
head. He tried to conciliate the duke, but finding it difficult he
resolved to turn monk, and so went to the convent of Capuchins, and
begged hard to be admitted a member. They refused him on account of his
age and infirmities. He tried a Franciscan monastery with not much
better success, and then obeyed orders and went to his Burgundy mansion;
having been assured by Farnese that he was not to lose his head.
Alexander was satisfied with that arrangement, feeling sure, he said,
that so soon as his back was turned Champagny would come out of his
convent before the term of probation had expired, and begin to make
mischief again. A once valiant soldier, like Champagny, whose conduct in
the famous "fury of Antwerp" was so memorable; and whose services both in
field and-cabinet had, been so distinguished, fallen so low as to, be
used as a tool by the Mansfelds against a man like Farnese; and to be
rejected as unfit company by Flemish friars, is not a cheerful spectacle
to contemplate.
The walls of the Mansfeld house and gardens, too, were decorated by Count
Charles with caricatures, intending to illustrate the indignities put
upon his father: and himself.
Among others, one picture represented Count Peter lying tied hand and
foot, while people were throwing filth upon him; Count Charles being
pourtrayed as meantime being kicked away from the command of a battery
of cannon by, De la Motte. It seemed strange that the Mansfelds should,
make themselves thus elaborately ridiculous, in order to irritate
Farnese; but thus it was. There was so much stir, about these works of
art that Alexander transmitted copies of them to the king, whereupon
Charles Mansfeld, being somewhat alarmed, endeavoured to prove that they
had been entirely misunderstood. The venerable personage lying on the
ground, he explained, was not his father, but Socrates. He found it
difficult however to account for the appearance of La Motte, with his one
arm wanting and with artillery by his side, because, as Farnese justly
remarked, artillery had not been invented in the time of Socrates, nor
was it recorded that the sage had lost an arm.
Thus passed the autumn of 1592, and Alexander, having as he supposed
somewhat recruited his failing strength, prepared, according to his
master's orders for a new campaign in France. For with almost
preterhuman malice Philip was employing the man whom he had doomed to
disgrace, perhaps to death, and whom he kept under constant secret
supervision, in those laborious efforts to conquer without an army and
to purchase a kingdom with an empty purse, in which, as it was destined,
the very last sands of Parma's life were to run away.
Suffering from a badly healed wound, from water on the chest,
degeneration of the heart, and gout in the limbs, dropsical, enfeebled,
broken down into an old man before his time, Alexander still confronted
disease and death with as heroic a front as he had ever manifested in the
field to embattled Hollanders and Englishmen, or to the still more
formidable array of learned pedants and diplomatists in the hall of
negotiation. This wreck of a man was still fitter to lead armies and
guide councils than any soldier or statesman that Philip could call into
his service, yet the king's cruel hand was ready to stab the dying man in
the dark.
Nothing could surpass the spirit with which the soldier was ready to do
battle with his best friend, coming in the guise of an enemy. To the
last moment, lifted into the saddle, he attended personally as usual to
the details of his new campaign, and was dead before he would confess
himself mortal. On the 3rd of December, 1592, in the city of Arran, he
fainted after retiring at his usual hour to bed, and thus breathed his
last.
According to the instructions in his last will, he was laid out barefoot
in the robe and cowl of a Capuchin monk. Subsequently his remains were
taken to Parma, and buried under the pavement of the little Franciscan
church. A pompous funeral, in which the Italians and Spaniards
quarrelled and came to blows for precedence, was celebrated in Brussels,
and a statue of the hero was erected in the capitol at Rome.
The first soldier and most unscrupulous diplomatist of his age, he died
when scarcely past his prime, a wearied; broken-hearted old man. His
triumphs, military and civil, have been recorded in these pages, and his
character has been elaborately pourtrayed. Were it possible to conceive
of an Italian or Spaniard of illustrious birth in the sixteenth century,
educated in the school of Machiavelli, at the feet of Philip, as anything
but the supple slave of a master and the blind instrument of a Church,
one might for a moment regret that so many gifts of genius and valour had
been thrown away or at least lost to mankind. Could the light of truth
ever pierce the atmosphere in which such men have their being; could the
sad music of humanity ever penetrate to their ears; could visions of a
world--on this earth or beyond it--not exclusively the property of kings
and high-priests be revealed to them, one might lament that one so
eminent among the sons of women had not been a great man. But it is a
weakness to hanker for any possible connection between truth and Italian
or Spanish statecraft of that day. The truth was not in it nor in him,
and high above his heroic achievements, his fortitude, his sagacity, his
chivalrous self-sacrifice, shines forth the baleful light of his
perpetual falsehood.
[I pass over, as beneath the level of history, a great variety of
censorious and probably calumnious reports as to the private
character of Farnese, with which the secret archives of the times
are filled. Especially Champagny, the man by whom the duke was most
hated and feared, made himself busy in compiling the slanderous
chronicle in which the enemies of Farnese, both in Spain and the
Netherlands, took so much delight. According to the secret history
thus prepared for the enlightenment of the king and his ministers,
the whole administration of the Netherlands--especially the
financial department, with the distribution of offices--was in the
hands of two favourites, a beardless secretary named Cosmo e Massi,
and a lady of easy virtue called Franceline, who seems to have had a
numerous host of relatives and friends to provide for at the public
expense. Towards the latter end of the duke's life, it was even
said that the seal of the finance department was in the hands of his
valet-de-chambre, who, in his master's frequent absences, was in the
habit of issuing drafts upon the receiver-general. As the valet-
dechambre was described as an idiot who did not know how to read, it
may be believed that the finances fell into confusion. Certainly,
if such statements were to be accepted, it would be natural enough
that for every million dollars expended by the king in the
provinces, not more than one hundred thousand were laid out for the
public service; and this is the estimate made by Champagny, who, as
a distinguished financier and once chief of the treasury in the
provinces, might certainly be thought to know something of the
subject. But Champagny was beside himself with rage, hatred.]
CHAPTER XXIX.
Effect of the death of Farnese upon Philip's schemes--Priestly
flattery and counsel--Assembly of the States-General of France--
Meeting of the Leaguers at the Louvre--Conference at Surene between
the chiefs of the League and the "political" leaders--Henry convokes
an assembly of bishops, theologians, and others--Strong feeling on
all sides on the subject of the succession--Philip commands that the
Infanta and the Duke of Guise be elected King and Queen of France--
Manifesto of the Duke of Mayenne--Formal re-admission of Henry to
the Roman faith--The pope refuses to consent to his reconciliation
with the Church--His consecration with the sacred oil--Entry of the
king into Paris--Departure of the Spanish garrison from the capital
--Dissimulation of the Duke of Mayenne--He makes terms with Henry--
Grief of Queen Elizabeth on receipt of the communications from
France.
During the past quarter of a century there had been tragic scenes enough
in France, but now the only man who could have conducted Philip's schemes
to a tragic if not a successful issue was gone. Friendly death had been
swifter than Philip, and had removed Alexander from the scene before his
master had found fitting opportunity to inflict the disgrace on which he
was resolved. Meantime, Charles Mansfeld made a feeble attempt to lead
an army from the Netherlands into France, to support the sinking fortunes
of the League; but it was not for that general-of-artillery to attempt
the well-graced part of the all-accomplished Farnese with much hope of
success. A considerable force of Spanish infantry, too, had been sent to
Paris, where they had been received with much enthusiasm; a very violent
and determined churchman, Sega, archbishop of Piacenza, and cardinal-
legate, having arrived to check on the part of the holy father any
attempt by the great wavering heretic to get himself readmitted into the
fold of the faithful.
The King of Spain considered it his duty, as well as his unquestionable
right, to interfere in the affairs of France, and to save the cause of
religion, civilization and humanity, in the manner so dear to the
civilization-savers, by reducing that distracted country--utterly unable
to govern itself--under his sceptre. To achieve this noble end no
bribery was too wholesale, no violence too brutal, no intrigue too
paltry. It was his sacred and special mission to save France from
herself. If he should fail, he could at least carve her in pieces, and
distribute her among himself and friends. Frenchmen might assist him in
either of these arrangements, but it was absurd to doubt that on him
devolved the work and the responsibility. Yet among his advisers were
some who doubted whether the purchase of the grandees of France was
really the most judicious course to pursue. There was a general and
uneasy feeling that the grandees were making sport of the Spanish
monarch, and that they would be inclined to remain his stipendiaries for
an indefinite period, without doing their share of the work. A keen
Jesuit, who had been much in France, often whispered to Philip that he
was going astray. "Those who best understand the fit remedy for this
unfortunate kingdom, and know the tastes and temper of the nation," said
he, "doubt giving these vast presents and rewards in order that the
nobles of France may affect your cause and further your schemes. It is
the greatest delusion, because they love nothing but their own interest,
and for this reason wish for no king at all, but prefer that the kingdom
should remain topsy-turvy in order that they may enjoy the Spanish
doubloons, as they say themselves almost publicly, dancing and feasting;
that they may take a castle to-day, and to-morrow a city, and the day,
after a province, and so on indefinitely. What matters it to them that
blood flows, and that the miserable people are destroyed, who alone are
good for anything?"
"The immediate cause of the ruin of France," continued the Jesuit, "comes
from two roots which must be torn up; the one is the extreme ignorance
and scandalous life of the ecclesiastics, the other is the tyranny and
the abominable life of the nobility, who with sacrilege and insatiable
avarice have entered upon the property of the Church. This nobility is
divided into three factions. The first, and not the least, is heretic;
the second and the most pernicious is politic or atheist; the third and
last is catholic. All these, although they differ in opinion, are the
same thing in corruption of life and manners, so that there is no choice
among them." He then proceeded to set forth how entirely, the salvation
of France depended on the King of Spain. "Morally speaking," he said,
"it is impossible for any Frenchman to apply the remedy. For this two
things are wanting; intense zeal for the honour of God, and power. I ask
now what Frenchman: has both these, or either of them. No one certainly
that we know. It is the King of Spain who alone in the world has the
zeal and the power. No man who knows the insolence and arrogance of the
French nature will believe that even if a king should be elected out of
France he would be obeyed by the others. The first to oppose him would
be Mayenne; even if a king were chosen from his family, unless everything
should be given him that he asked; which would be impossible."
Thus did the wily Priest instil into the ready ears of Philip additional
reasons for believing himself the incarnate providence of God. When were
priestly flatterers ever wanting to pour this poison into the souls of
tyrants? It is in vain for us to ask why it is permitted that so much
power for evil should be within the grasp of one wretched human creature,
but it is at least always instructive to ponder the career of these
crowned conspirators, and sometimes consoling to find its conclusion
different from the goal intended. So the Jesuit advised the king not to
be throwing away his money upon particular individuals, but with the
funds which they were so unprofitably consuming to form a jolly army
('gallardo egercito') of fifteen thousand foot, and five thousand-horse,
all Spaniards, under a Spanish general--not a Frenchman being admitted
into it--and then to march forward, occupy all the chief towns, putting
Spanish garrisons into them, but sparing the people, who now considered
the war eternal, and who were eaten up by both armies. In a short time
the king might accomplish all he wished, for it was not in the power of
the Bearnese to make considerable resistance for any length of time.
This was the plan of Father Odo for putting Philip on the throne of
France, and at the same time lifting up the downtrodden Church, whose
priests, according to his statement, were so profligate, and whose tenets
were rejected by all but a small minority of the governing classes of the
country. Certainly it did not lack precision, but it remained to be seen
whether the Bearnese was to prove so very insignificant an antagonist as
the sanguine priest supposed.
For the third party--the moderate Catholics--had been making immense
progress in France, while the diplomacy of Philip had thus far steadily
counteracted their efforts at Rome. In vain had the Marquis Pisani,
envoy of the politicians' party, endeavoured to soften the heart of
Clement towards Henry. The pope lived in mortal fear of Spain, and the
Duke of Sessa, Philip's ambassador to the holy see, denouncing all these
attempts on the part of the heretic, and his friends, and urging that it
was much better for Rome that the pernicious kingdom of France should be
dismembered and subdivided, assured his holiness that Rome should be
starved, occupied, annihilated, if such abominable schemes should be for
an instant favoured.
Clement took to his bed with sickness brought on by all this violence,
but had nothing for it but to meet Pisani and other agents of the same
cause with a peremptory denial, and send most, stringent messages to his
legate in Paris, who needed no prompting.
There had already been much issuing of bulls by the pope, and much
burning of bulls by the hangman, according to decrees of the parliament
of Chalons and other friendly tribunals, and burning of Chalons decrees
by Paris hangmen, and edicts in favour of Protestants at Nantz and other
places--measures the enactment, repeal, and reenactment of which were to
mark the ebb and flow of the great tide of human opinion on the most
important of subjects, and the traces of which were to be for a long time
visible on the shores of time.
Early in 1593 Mayenne, yielding to the pressure of the Spanish party,
reluctantly consented to assemble the States-General of France, in order
that a king might be chosen. The duke, who came to be thoroughly known
to Alexander Farnese before the death of that subtle Italian, relied on
his capacity to outwit all the other champions of the League and agents
of Philip now that the master-spirit had been removed. As firmly opposed
as ever to the election of any other candidate but himself, or possibly
his son, according to a secret proposition which he had lately made to
the pope, he felt himself obliged to confront the army of Spanish
diplomatists, Roman prelates, and learned doctors, by whom it was
proposed to exclude the Prince of Bearne from his pretended rights. But
he did not, after all, deceive them as thoroughly as he imagined. The
Spaniards shrewdly suspected the French tactics, and the whole business
was but a round game of deception, in which no one was much deceived, who
ever might be destined ultimately, to pocket the stakes: "I know from a
very good source," said Fuentes, "that Mayenne, Guise, and the rest of
them are struggling hard in order not to submit to Bearne, and will
suffer everything your Majesty may do to them, even if you kick them in
the mouth, but still there is no conclusion on the road we are
travelling, at least not the one which your Majesty desires. They will go
on procrastinating and gaining time, making authority for themselves out
of your Majesty's grandeur, until the condition of things comes which
they are desiring. Feria tells me that they are still taking your
Majesty's money, but I warn your Majesty that it is only to fight off
Bearne, and that they are only pursuing their own ends at your Majesty's
expense."
Perhaps Mayenne had already a sufficiently clear insight into the not
far-distant future, but he still presented himself in Spanish cloak and
most ultramontane physiognomy. His pockets were indeed full of Spanish
coin at that moment, for he had just claimed and received eighty-eight
thousand-nine hundred dollars for back debts, together with one hundred
and eighty, thousand dollars more to distribute among the deputies of the
estates. "All I can say about France," said Fuentes, "is that it is one
great thirst for money. The Duke of Feria believes in a good result, but
I think that Mayenne is only trying to pocket as much money as he can."
Thus fortified, the Duke of Mayenne issued the address to the States-
General of the kingdom, to meet at an early day in order to make
arrangements to secure religion and peace, and to throw off the possible
yoke of the heretic pretender. The great seal affixed to the document
represented an empty throne, instead of the usual effigy of a king.
The cardinal-legate issued a thundering manifesto at the same time
sustaining Mayenne and virulently denouncing the Bearnese.
The politicians' party now seized the opportunity to impress upon Henry
that the decisive moment was come.
The Spaniard, the priest; and the League, had heated the furnace.
The iron was at a white heat. Now was the time to strike. Secretary
of State Revol Gaspar de Schomberg, Jacques Auguste de Thou, the eminent
historian, and other influential personages urged the king to give to
the great question the only possible solution.
Said the king with much meekness, "If I am in error, let those who attack
me with so much fury instruct me, and show me the way of salvation. I
hate those who act against their conscience. I pardon all those who are
inspired by truly religious motives, and I am ready to receive all into
favour whom the love of peace, not the chagrin of ill-will, has disgusted
with the war."
There was a great meeting of Leaguers at the Louvre, to listen to
Mayenne, the cardinal-legate, Cardinal Pelleve, the Duke of Guise, and
other chieftains. The Duke of Feria made a long speech in Latin, setting
forth the Spanish policy, veiled as usual, but already sufficiently well
known, and assuring the assembly that the King of Spain desired nothing
so much as the peace of France and of all the world, together with the
supremacy of the Roman Church. Whether these objects could best be
attained by the election of Philip or of his daughter, as sovereign, with
the Archduke Ernest as king-consort, or with perhaps the Duke of Guise
or some other eligible husband, were fair subjects for discussion.
No selfish motive influenced the king, and he placed all his wealth and
all his armies at the disposal of the League to carry out these great
projects.
Then there was a conference at Surene between the chiefs the League and
the "political" leaders; the Archbishop of Lyons, the cardinal-legate,
Villars, Admiral of France and defender of Rouen, Belin, Governor of
Paris, President Jeannin, and others upon one side; upon the other, the
Archbishop of Bourges, Bellievre, Schomberg, Revol, and De Thou.
The Archbishop of Lyons said that their party would do nothing either to
frustrate or to support the mission of Pisani, and that the pope would,
as ever, do all that could be done to maintain the interests of the true
religion.
The Archbishop of Bourges, knowing well the meaning of such fine phrases,
replied that he had much respect for the holy father, but that popes had
now, become the slaves and tools of the King of Spain, who, because he
was powerful, held them subject to his caprice.
At an adjourned meeting at the same place, the Archbishop of Lyons said
that all questions had been asked and answered. All now depended on the
pope, whom the League would always obey. If the pope would accept the
reconciliation of the Prince of Bearne it was well. He, hoped that his
conversion would be sincere.
The political archbishop (of Bourges) replied to the League's archbishop,
that there was no time for delays, and for journeys by land and sea to
Rome. The least obstruction might prove fatal to both parties. Let the
Leaguers now show that the serenity of their faces was but the mirror of
their minds.
But the Leaguers' archbishop said that he could make no further advances.
So ended the conference.'
The chiefs of the politicians now went to the king and informed him that
the decisive moment had arrived.
Henry had preserved: his coolness throughout. Amid all the hubbub of
learned doctors of law, archbishops-Leaguer and political-Sorbonne
pedants, solemn grandees from Spain with Latin orations in their pockets,
intriguing Guises, huckstering Mayennes, wrathful Huguenots, sanguinary
cardinal-legates, threatening world-monarchs--heralded by Spanish
musketeers, Italian lancers, and German reiters--shrill screams of
warning from the English queen, grim denunciations from Dutch Calvinists,
scornful repulses from the holy father; he kept his temper and his eye-
sight, as perfectly as he had ever done through the smoke and din of
the wildest battle-field. None knew better than he how to detect the
weakness of the adversary, and to sound the charge upon his wavering
line.
He blew the blast--sure that loyal Catholics and Protestants alike would
now follow him pell-mell.
On the 16th, May, 1593, he gave notice that he consented to get himself
instructed, and that he summoned an assembly at Mantes on the 15th July,
of bishops, theologians, princes, lords, and courts of parliament to hold
council, and to advise him what was best to do for religion and the
State.
Meantime he returned to the siege of Dreux, made an assault on the place,
was repulsed, and then hung nine prisoners of war in full sight of the
garrison as a punishment for their temerity in resisting him. The place
soon after capitulated (8th July, 1593).
The interval between the summons and the assembling of the clerical and
lay notables at Mantes was employed by the Leaguers in frantic and
contradictory efforts to retrieve a game which the most sagacious knew to
be lost. But the politicians were equal to the occasion, and baffled
them at every point.
The Leaguers' archbishop inveighed bitterly against the abominable edicts
recently issued in favour of the Protestants.
The political archbishop (of Bourges) replied not by defending; but by
warmly disapproving, those decrees of toleration, by excusing the king
for having granted them for a temporary purpose, and by asserting
positively that, so soon as the king should be converted, he would no
longer countenance such measures.
It is superfluous to observe that very different language was held on the
part of Henry to the English and Dutch Protestants, and to the Huguenots
of his own kingdom.
And there were many meetings of the Leaguers in Paris, many belligerent
speeches by the cardinal legate, proclaiming war to the knife rather
than that the name of Henry the heretic should ever be heard of again as
candidate for the throne, various propositions spasmodically made in full
assembly by Feria, Ybarra, Tassis, the jurisconsult Mendoza, and other
Spanish agents in favour of the Infanta as queen of France, with Archduke
Ernest or the Duke of Guise, or any other eligible prince, for her
husband.
The League issued a formal and furious invective in answer to Henry's
announcement; proving by copious citations from Jeremiah, St. Epiphany;
St. Jerome, St. Cyprian, and St. Bernard, that it was easier for a
leopard to change his spots or for a blackamoor to be washed white; than
for a heretic to be converted, and that the king was thinking rather of
the crown of France than of a heavenly crown, in his approaching
conversion--an opinion which there were few to gainsay.
And the Duke of Nemours wrote to his half-brother, the Duke of Mayenne;
offering to use all his influence to bring about Mayenne's election as
king on condition that if these efforts failed, Mayenne should do his
best to procure the election of Nemours.
And the Parliament of Paris formally and prospectively proclaimed any
election of a foreigner null and void, and sent deputies to Mayenne
urging him never to consent to the election of the Infanta.
What help, said they, can the League expect from the old and broken
Philip; from a king who in thirty years has not been able, with all the
resources of his kingdoms, to subdue the revolted provinces of the
Netherlands? How can he hope to conquer France? Pay no further heed
to the legate, they said, who is laughing in his sleeve at the miseries
and distractions of our country. So spake the deputies of the League-
Parliament to the great captain of the League, the Duke of Mayenne.
It was obvious that the "great and holy confederacy" was becoming less
confident of its invincibility. Madame League was suddenly grown
decrepit in the eyes of her adorers.
Mayenne was angry at the action of the Parliament, and vehemently swore
that he would annul their decree. Parliament met his threats with
dignity, and resolved to stand by the decree, even if they all died in
their places.
At the same time the Duke of Feria suddenly produced in full assembly
of Leaguers a written order from Philip that the Duke of Guise and the
Infanta should at once be elected king and queen. Taken by surprise,
Mayenne dissembled his rage in masterly-fashion, promised Feria to
support the election, and at once began to higgle for conditions. He
stipulated that he should have for himself the governments of Champagne,
Burgundy, and La Brie, and that they should be hereditary in his family:
He furthermore demanded that Guise should cede to him the principality
of Joinville, and that they should pay him on the spot in hard money two
hundred thousand crowns in gold, six hundred thousand more in different
payments, together with an annual payment of fifty thousand crowns.
It was obvious that the duke did not undervalue himself; but he had after
all no intention of falling into the trap set for him. "He has made
these promises (as above given) in writing," said the Duke of Savoy's
envoy to his master, but he will never keep them. The Duchess of Mayenne
could not help telling me that her husband will never consent that the
Duke of Guise should have the throne." From this resolve he had never
wavered, and was not likely to do so now. Accordingly the man "of his
word, of faith, and truth," whom even the astute Farnese had at times
half believed in, and who had received millions of Philip's money, now
thought it time to break with Philip. He issued a manifesto, in which he
observed that the States-General of France had desired that Philip should
be elected King of France, and carry out his design of a universal
monarchy, as the only-means of ensuring the safety of the Catholic
religion and the pacification of the world. It was feared, however, said
Mayenne; that the king might come to the same misfortunes which befell
his father, who, when it was supposed that he was inspired only by
private ambition; and by the hope of placing a hereditary universal crown
in his family, had excited the animosity of the princes of the empire.
"If a mere suspicion had caused so great a misfortune in the empire,"
continued the man of his word, "what will the princes of all Europe do
when they find his Majesty elected king of France, and grown by increase
of power so formidable to the world? Can it be doubted that they will
fly to arms at once, and give all their support to the King of Navarre,
heretic though he be? What motive had so many princes to traverse
Philip's designs in the Netherlands, but desire to destroy the enormous
power which they feared? Therefore had the Queen, of England, although
refusing the sovereignty, defended the independence of the Netherlands
these fifteen years.
"However desirable," continued Mayenne, "that this universal monarchy,
for which the house of Austria has so long been working, should be
established, yet the king is too prudent not to see the difficulties
in his way. Although he has conquered Portugal, he is prevented by the
fleets of Holland and England from taking possession of the richest of
the Portuguese possessions, the islands and the Indies. He will find in
France insuperable objections to his election as king, for he could in
this case well reproach the Leaguers with having been changed from
Frenchmen into Spaniards. He must see that his case is hopeless in
France, he who for thirty years has been in vain endeavouring to re-
establish his authority in the Netherlands. It would be impossible in
the present position of affairs to become either the king or the
protector of France. The dignity of France allows it not."
Mayenne then insisted on the necessity of a truce with the royalists or
politicians, and, assembling the estates at the Louvre on the 4th July,
he read a written paper declining for the moment to hold an election for
king.
John Baptist Tassis, next day, replied by declaring that in this case
Philip would send no more succours of men or money; for that the only
effectual counter-poison to the pretended conversion of the Prince of
Bearne was the immediate election of a king.
Thus did Mayenne escape from the snare in which the Spaniards thought to
catch the man who, as they now knew, was changing every day, and was true
to nothing save his own interests.
And now the great day had come. The conversion of Henry to the Roman
faith, fixed long before for--the 23rd July,--1593, formally took place
at the time appointed.
From six in the morning till the stroke of noon did Henry listen to the
exhortations and expoundings of the learned prelates and doctors whom he
had convoked, the politic Archbishop of Bourges taking the lead in this
long-expected instruction. After six mortal hours had come to an end,
the king rose from his knees, somewhat wearied, but entirely instructed
and convinced. He thanked the bishops for having taught him that of
which he was before quite ignorant, and assured them that; after having
invoked the light, of the Holy Ghost upon his musings, he should think
seriously over what they had just taught him, in order to come to a
resolution salutary to himself and to the State.
Nothing could be more candid. Next day, at eight in the morning, there
was a great show in the cathedral of Saint Denis, and the population of
Paris, notwithstanding the prohibition of the League authorities, rushed
thither in immense crowds to witness the ceremony of the reconciliation
of the king. Henry went to the church, clothed as became a freshly
purified heretic, in white satin doublet and hose, white silk stockings,
and white silk shoes with white roses in them; but with a black hat and
a black mantle. There was a great procession with blare of trumpet and
beat of drum. The streets were strewn with flowers.
As Henry entered the great portal of the church, he found the Archbishop
of Bourges, seated in state, effulgent in mitre and chasuble, and
surrounded by other magnificent prelates in gorgeous attire.
"Who are you, and what do you want?" said the arch-bishop.
"I am the king," meekly replied Henry, "and I demand to be received into
the bosom of the Roman Catholic Church."
"Do you wish it sincerely?" asked the prelate.
"I wish it with all my heart," said the king.
Then throwing himself on his knees, the Bearne--great champion of the
Huguenots--protested before God that he would live and die in the
Catholic faith, and that he renounced all heresy. A passage was with
difficulty opened through the crowd, and he was then led to the high
altar, amid the acclamations of the people. Here he knelt devoutly and
repeated his protestations. His unction and contrition were most
impressive, and the people, of course, wept piteously. The king, during
the progress of the ceremony, with hands clasped together and adoring the
Eucharist with his eyes, or, as the Host was elevated, smiting himself
thrice upon the breast, was a model of passionate devotion.
Afterwards he retired to a pavilion behind the altar, where the
archbishop confessed and absolved him. Then the Te Deum sounded,
and high mass was celebrated by the Bishop of Nantes. Then, amid
acclamations and blessings, and with largess to the crowd, the king
returned to the monastery of Saint Denis, where he dined amid a multitude
of spectators, who thronged so thickly around him that his dinner-table
was nearly overset. These were the very Parisians, who, but three years
before, had been feeding on rats and dogs and dead men's bones, and the
bodies of their own children, rather than open their gates to this same
Prince of Bearne.
Now, although Mayenne had set strong guards at those gates, and had most
strictly prohibited all egress, the city was emptied of its populace,
which pressed in transports of adoration around the man so lately the
object of their hate. Yet few could seriously believe that much change
had been effected in the inner soul of him, whom the legate, and the
Spaniard, and the holy father at Rome still continued to denounce as the
vilest of heretics and the most infamous of impostors.
The comedy was admirably played out and was entirely successful. It may
be supposed that the chief actor was, however, somewhat wearied. In
private, he mocked at all this ecclesiastical mummery, and described
himself as heartily sick of the business. "I arrived here last evening,"
he wrote to the beautiful Gabrielle, "and was importuned with 'God save
you' till bed-time. In regard to the Leaguers I am of the order of St.
Thomas. I am beginning to-morrow morning to talk to the bishops, besides
those I told you about yesterday. At this moment of writing I have a
hundred of these importunates on my shoulders, who will make me hate
Saint Denis as much as you hate Mantes. 'Tis to-morrow that I take the
perilous leap. I kiss a million times the beautiful hands of my angel
and the mouth of my dear mistress."
A truce--renewed at intervals--with the Leaguers lasted till the end of
the year. The Duke of Nevers was sent on special mission to Rome to
procure the holy father's consent to the great heretic's reconciliation
to the Church, and he was instructed to make the king's submission in
terms so wholesale and so abject that even some of the life-long papists
of France were disgusted, while every honest Protestant in Europe shrank
into himself for shame. But Clement, overawed by Philip and his
ambassador, was deaf to all the representations of the French envoy.
He protested that he would not believe in the sincerity of the Bearne's
conversion unless an angel from Heaven should reveal it to him. So
Nevers left Rome, highly exasperated, and professing that he would rather
have lost a leg, that he would rather have been sewn in a sack and tossed
into the Tiber, than bear back such a message. The pope ordered the
prelates who had accompanied Nevers to remain in Rome and be tried by
the Inquisition for misprision of heresy, but the duke placed them by
his side and marched out of the Porta del Popolo with them, threatening
to kill any man who should attempt to enforce the command.
Meantime it became necessary to follow up the St. Denis comedy with a
still more exhilarating popular spectacle. The heretic had been
purified, confessed, absolved. It was time for a consecration. But
there was a difficulty. Although the fever of loyalty to the ancient
house of Bourbon, now redeemed from its worship of the false gods, was
spreading contagiously through the provinces; although all the white silk
in Lyons had been cut into scarves and banners to celebrate the
reconciliation of the candid king with mother Church; although that
ancient city was ablaze with bonfires and illuminations, while its
streets ran red, with blood no longer, but with wine; and although Madam
League, so lately the object of fondest adoration, was now publicly
burned in the effigy of a grizzly hag; yet Paris still held for that
decrepit beldame, and closed its gates to the Bearnese.
The city of Rheims, too, had not acknowledged the former Huguenot,
and it was at Rheims, in the church of St. Remy, that the Holy Bottle was
preserved. With what chrism, by what prelate, should the consecration of
Henry be performed? Five years before, the League had proposed in the
estates of Blois to place among the fundamental laws of the kingdom that
no king should be considered a legitimate sovereign whose head had not
been anointed by the bishop at Rheims with oil from that holy bottle.
But it was now decided that to ascribe a monopoly of sanctity to that
prelate and to that bottle would be to make a schism in the Church.
Moreover it was discovered that there was a chrism in existence still
more efficacious than the famous oil of St. Remy. One hundred and twelve
years before the baptism of Clovis, St. Martin had accidentally tumbled
down stairs, and lay desperately bruised and at the point of death. But,
according to Sulpicius Severus, an angel had straightway descended from
heaven, and with a miraculous balsam had anointed the contusions of the
saint, who next day felt no farther inconveniences from his fall. The
balsam had ever since been preserved in the church of Marmoutier near
Tours. Here, then, was the most potent of unguents brought directly from
heaven. To mix a portion thereof with the chrism of consecration was
clearly more judicious than to make use of the holy bottle, especially as
the holy bottle was not within reach. The monks of Marmoutier consented
to lend the sacred phial containing the famous oil of St. Martin for the
grand occasion of the royal consecration.
Accompanied by a strong military escort provided by Giles de Souvri,
governor of Touraine, a deputation of friars brought the phial to
Chartres, where the consecration was to take place. Prayers were offered
up, without ceasing, in the monastery during their absence that no mishap
should befal the sacred treasure. When the monks arrived at Chartres,
four young barons of the first nobility were assigned to them as hostages
for the safe restoration of the phial, which was then borne in triumph to
the cathedral, the streets through which it was carried being covered
with tapestry. There was a great ceremony, a splendid consecration; six
bishops, with mitres on their heads and in gala robes, officiating; after
which the king knelt before the altar and took the customary oath.
Thus the champion of the fierce Huguenots, the well-beloved of the dead
La Noue and the living Duplessis Mornay, the devoted knight of the
heretic Queen Elizabeth, the sworn ally of the stout Dutch Calvinists,
was pompously reconciled to that Rome which was the object of their
hatred and their fear.
The admirably arranged spectacles of the instruction at St. Denis and the
consecration at Chartres were followed on the day of the vernal equinox
by a third and most conclusive ceremony:
A secret arrangement had been made with De Cosse-Brissac, governor of
Paris, by the king, according to which the gates of Paris were at last to
be opened to him. The governor obtained a high price for his services--
three hundred thousand livres in hard cash, thirty thousand a year for
his life, and the truncheon of marshal of France. Thus purchased,
Brissac made his preparations with remarkable secrecy and skill. Envoy
Ybarra, who had scented something suspicious in the air, had gone
straight to the governor for information, but the keen Spaniard was
thrown out by the governor's ingenuous protestations of ignorance. The
next morning, March 22nd, was stormy and rainy, and long before daylight
Ybarra, still uneasy despite the statements of Brissac, was wandering
about the streets of Paris when he became the involuntary witness of an
extraordinary spectacle.
Through the wind and the rain came trampling along the dark streets of
the capital a body of four thousand troopers and lansquenettes. Many
torch-bearers attended on the procession, whose flambeaux threw a lurid
light upon the scene.
There, surrounded by the swart and grizzly bearded visages of these
strange men-at-arms, who were discharging their arquebuses, as they
advanced upon any bystanders likely to oppose their progress; in the very
midst of this sea of helmed heads, the envoy was enabled to recognise the
martial figure of the Prince of Bearne. Armed to the teeth, with sword
in hand and dagger at side, the hero of Ivry rode at last through the
barriers which had so long kept him from his capital. "'Twas like
enchantment," said Ybarra. The first Bourbon entered the city through
the same gate out of which the last Valois had, five years before, so
ignominiously fled. It was a midnight surprise, although not fully
accomplished until near the dawn of day. It was not a triumphal
entrance; nor did Henry come as the victorious standard-bearer of a great
principle. He had defeated the League in many battle-fields, but the
League still hissed defiance at him from the very hearthstone of his
ancestral palace. He had now crept, in order to conquer, even lower
than the League itself; and casting off his Huguenot skin at last,
he had soared over the heads of all men, the presiding genius of the
holy Catholic Church.
Twenty-one years before, he had entered the same city on the conclusion
of one of the truces which had varied the long monotony of the religious
wars of France. The youthful son of Antony Bourbon and Joan of Albret
had then appeared as the champion and the idol of the Huguenots. In the
same year had come the fatal nuptials with the bride of St. Bartholomew,
the first Catholic conversion of Henry and the massacre at which the
world still shudders.
Now he was chief of the "Politicians," and sworn supporter of the Council
of Trent. Earnest Huguenots were hanging their heads in despair.
He represented the principle of national unity against national
dismemberment by domestiv, treason and foreign violence. Had that
principle been his real inspiration, as it was in truth his sole support,
history might judge him more leniently. Had he relied upon it entirely
it might have been strong enough to restore him to the throne of his
ancestors, without the famous religious apostacy with which his name is
for ever associated. It is by no means certain that permanent religious
toleration might not have been the result of his mounting the throne,
only when he could do so without renouncing the faith of his fathers.
A day of civilization may come perhaps, sooner or later, when it will be
of no earthly cousequence to their fellow creatures to what creed, what
Christian church, what religious dogma kings or humbler individuals may
be partial; when the relations between man and his Maker shall be
undefiled by political or social intrusion. But the day will never
come when it will be otherwise than damaging to public morality and
humiliating to human dignity to forswear principle for a price, and to
make the most awful of mysteries the subject of political legerdemain and
theatrical buffoonery.
The so-called conversion of the king marks an epoch in human history.
It strengthened the Roman Church and gave it an indefinite renewal of
life; but it sapped the foundations of religious faith. The appearance
of Henry the Huguenot as the champion of the Council of Trent was of
itself too biting an epigram not to be extensively destructive. Whether
for good or ill, religion was fast ceasing to be the mainspring of
political combinations, the motive of great wars and national
convulsions. The age of religion was to be succeeded by the
age of commerce.
But the king was now on his throne. All Paris was in rapture. There was
Te Deum with high mass in Notre Dame, and the populace was howling itself
hoarse with rapture in honour of him so lately the object of the general
curse. Even the Sorbonne declared in favour of the reclaimed heretic,
and the decision of those sages had vast influence with less enlightened
mortals. There was nothing left for the Duke of Feria but to take
himself off and make Latin orations in favour of the Infanta elsewhere,
if fit audience elsewhere could be found. A week after the entrance of
Henry, the Spanish garrison accordingly was allowed to leave Paris with
the honours of war.
"We marched out at 2 P.M.," wrote the duke to his master, "with closed
ranks, colours displayed, and drums beating. First came the Italians and
then the Spaniards, in the midst of whom was myself on horseback, with
the Walloons marching near me. The Prince of Bearne"--it was a solace to
the duke's heart, of which he never could be deprived, to call the king
by that title--"was at a window over the gate of St. Denis through which
we took our departure. He was dressed in light grey, with a black hat
surmounted by a great white feather. Our displayed standards rendered
him no courteous salute as we passed."
Here was another solace!
Thus had the game been lost and won, but Philip as usual did not
acknowledge himself beaten. Mayenne, too, continued to make the most
fervent promises to all that was left of the confederates. He betook
himself to Brussels, and by the king's orders was courteously received by
the Spanish authorities in the Netherlands. In the midst of the tempest
now rapidly destroying all rational hopes, Philip still clung to Mayenne
as to a spar in the shipwreck. For the king ever possessed the virtue,
if it be one, of continuing to believe himself invincible and infallible,
when he had been defeated in every quarter, and when his calculations had
all proved ridiculous mistakes.
When his famous Armada had been shattered and sunk, have we not seen him
peevishly requiring Alexander Farnese to construct a new one immediately
and to proceed therewith to conquer England out of hand? Was it to be
expected that he would renounce his conquest of France, although the
legitimate king had entered his capital, had reconciled himself to the
Church, and was on the point of obtaining forgiveness of the pope? If
the Prince of Bearne had already destroyed the Holy League, why should
not the Duke of Mayenne and Archduke Ernest make another for him,
and so conquer France without further delay?
But although it was still possible to deceive the king, who in the
universality of his deceptive powers was so prone to delude himself,
it was difficult even for so accomplished an intriguer as Mayenne to
hoodwink much longer the shrewd Spaniards who were playing so losing a
game against him.
"Our affairs in France," said Ybarra, "are in such condition that
we are losing money and character there, and are likely to lose all the
provinces here, if things are not soon taken up in a large and energe |
