Chapter VI: The Edicts

Throughout the Netherlands the Inquisition was again formally and officially proclaimed; it was answered by a cry of passionate wrath and hate, and bitter despair and agony, intense enough to have reached Philip in the cells of the Escorial.

Foreign merchants and workers fled, houses of business were shut up, shops closed, banks ruined; commerce—nay, the ordinary business of life—was almost suspended; whole districts emigrated, abandoning their work and their property. In a short time famine threatened, riots broke out, and the daily barbarous executions were scenes of frantic rage on the part of the maddened population which the officers of the Crown sometimes found it difficult or impossible to repress; more than once the victims were rescued from the very stake.

Brabant hotly protested that the introduction of the Inquisition was illegal and expressly against the distinct provisions of "the joyous entry," and the four principal cities came forward with a petition to Margaret which she could not ignore. The matter was referred to the Council of Brabant; even the creatures of the Government had to admit that no ecclesiastical tribunal had ever been allowed jurisdiction in Brabant, and the great province was declared free of the Inquisition—with the result that it was soon overcrowded with desperate refugees from all other parts of the ravaged Netherlands.

Pasquils, lampoons, open letters issued by the thousand from the secret presses, and every morning saw fresh ones pasted on the gates of the great nobles in Brussels. Egmont and Orange, as the most powerful and most popular nobles, were passionately called upon to come forward and protect the country.

Nor did these people—middle-class artisans, weavers, tanners, dyers, printers, carvers, merchants, shop-keepers, farmers, all the great mass of the population, the industrious, sober, quiet men who were slowly building up the prosperity of the country—lack for generous championship, even from those nobles who were Catholics.

Baron Montigny, in the first flush of his joyous marriage, the Marquis Berghen, who had always been unflinching in his refusal to acknowledge the Inquisition, the younger Mansfeld, refused to enforce the Edicts within their provinces.

Egmont lent his authority to the work of persecution in Flanders, but Orange declined to support the Inquisition within his Stadtholderships.

Meanwhile Louis of Nassau was consolidating the famous Compromise or League of which he and Ste Aldegonde had laid the foundations during their meeting at Spa, and which had been joined by a considerable number of the younger nobility; while Hoorne and Orange, Hoogstraaten and Montigny, had been jousting in the lists at the Château d'Antoine before the beautiful bride, Hélène d'Espinoy, Louis and Ste Aldegonde were going from tent to tent, from cavalier to cavalier, laughing, jesting, and secretly obtaining promises of signatures to the Compromise, which consisted of a vow to resist "the tyranny of foreigners, and especially the Holy Inquisition, as contrary to all laws human and divine, and the mother of all iniquity and disorder."

By early in the new year, the energies of Louis and Ste Aldegonde, both of whom had been active during the extravagant marriage feasts of the proud Parma Prince, had secured over two thousand signatures from the younger nobility.

The great nobles and Stadtholders they did not attempt to approach; the secret Compromise, being so zealously passed from one eager young hand to another, was scarcely a document anyone in authority could sign.

But Montigny and Berghen knew of the League, and were prepared to protect the members; the Prince of Orange, if he did not openly encourage, at least made no effort to check the ardent labours of his brother.

The full details of the scheme, nor the heights of daring to which the covenanters had gone, were not disclosed to him; Louis feared the disapproval of the Prince's wise patience, and the other young nobles were even doubtful as to which side His Highness would ultimately espouse, so delicately did his discretion hold the balance, so completely was every one in the dark as to his final intentions.

On the very day of the Parma wedding, while the princely couple were being united with the full magnificence of the rites of the Catholic Church, twenty gentlemen of the Reformed Faith gathered in the house of Count Culemburg on the horse market and listened to the preaching of a famous Huguenot, Francis Junius, the pastor of a secret congregation at Antwerp. This man, young, brave, eloquent, already in hiding, combined with Louis of Nassau to draw up a petition or protest to the Government on the ever-important subject of the Edicts.

So came in the first stormy months of the year 1566.

The price of grain rose to hitherto unheard-of figures, for the ground was untilled, the harvests unsown; all business with foreign lands was at a standstill, for no stranger would venture into a country which lay under such a ban, nor trust their goods in Dutch ports. Industry was paralysed; the great busy cities, formerly some of the finest and busiest in the world, were silent, deserted, and desolate under the monstrous tyranny which had overwhelmed them.

The Inquisitors-General, De Bay and Tiletanus, had received personal letters of encouragement from the King; Peter Titelmann too received the Royal praise; and the three continued their work of horror and terror, agony and blood.

Towards the beginning of the year Berghen resigned his posts, pleading his inability to obey His Majesty in the matter of religion; Meghem soon followed his example; Egmont lamented that he had not resigned all his offices when in Spain—"As he would have done," he declared, "had he known what His Majesty's intentions were."

He, however, maintained his official position, and continued to behave with severity against the heretics in Flanders; so he vacillated, pleasing neither the nobles nor the Regent, neither of whom dared rely on him.

William addressed a letter of remonstrance and protest to the Duchess, plainly avowing his views, pointing to the state of the land, and condemning the policy of the King.

Margaret, in despair, wrote to Philip, putting all these things before him, and beseeching him to reconsider the decision with regard to the Inquisition.

Philip did not answer, and William of Orange, who did not lack spies in Madrid, knew why: the King was preparing the levies with which Alva was to try his hand at bringing the rebellious Netherlands to subjection.

But if Philip was making busy preparations in secret, William was not inactive; still hoping by calm and patience to avert the worst of the disaster that still threatened—the arrival, namely, of Alva's army—he summoned a meeting of the nobles and grandees at Breda, and in a series of conferences, disguised as hunting parties, endeavoured to bring all to concur in some reasonable petition to be presented to the Regent, the main scope of which was to be an appeal for the convocation of the States-General.

But this project was too daring for the loyal nobles and too quiet for the leaguers; the conferences ended with no result, save that of sending Meghem, alarmed and disgusted by the violence of the younger nobles, definitely over to the side of the Government.

Indeed, soon after Meghem announced to Margaret his discovery of a widespread conspiracy among the heretics, who were ready, he declared, to the number of thirty-five thousand armed men to march against Brussels, and he placed before the Regent a copy of the Compromise.

These extravagant statements were supported by Egmont, who declared that there were great tumults preparing among the heretics, and that the Government must act without delay.

The alarm of the Regent was intense and was scarcely soothed by the Prince of Orange's calm recital of the sober truth—namely, that a great number of nobles and gentlemen were coming to Brussels to lay a petition or request at the feet of the Regent.

Meeting after meeting of councillors, of grandees, of Knights of the Golden Fleece, were now held, while the question was hotly argued whether or no the covenanters were to be suffered to present their petition—the Prince of Orange claiming that they were entitled to all respect; Meghem, Aremberg, and Barlaymont insisting that the palace doors should be closed in their faces. The case grew so desperate that the Duchess proposed to fly to Mons, and was only with difficulty persuaded to hold her post.

As to the petitioners, it was decided they should be admitted, but unarmed; the guards at the city gates being strengthened to prevent any armed followers gaining the entrance to the city.

Brussels ran mad with joy at this concession; it was almost as if the Inquisition had been abolished.

Margaret of Parma, sick with agitation and dread, shut herself up in her chamber and wept by the hour together. To her brother she wrote that the time had now come to either use force or withdraw the Inquisition and the Edicts. Philip, intent on gathering together Alva's army, kept his sister in an agony of suspense, and neither let her know that her successor was already preparing to take her place, nor that he had finally decided to crush the Netherlands under the weight of the secular sword, since the spiritual authority of the Inquisition had failed.

All through the tumultuous, anxious days, March sweetening into April, Rénèe le Meung watched the comings and goings of the Prince from the window of her high little chamber.

Early in the morning she would be awake and watching till the hour when he rode forth. Well she came to know that early view of Brussels wrapt in the blue haze of morning with the gleam of the faint spring sun on the twin towers of Ste Gudule; well did she come to know the figure of the man she watched for, his way of sitting the saddle, the trick of throwing his cloak, the fashion of touching up his horse as he passed the gates.

Sometimes he did not come before she was called to her duties, and the vigil would have been in vain; sometimes she was not able to get back to her post before he returned; but there was hardly a day passed that she did not contrive to see him once—if it was only that distant glimpse.

She had not spoken to him since he had caught the pigeon for her, and her days were now entirely occupied with Anne, whose melancholy and fury daily increased. Since Duprès and all appertaining to him had left the palace, the Princess hated Rénèe with a bitter, cowering hate that sometimes cringed and sometimes threatened and sometimes railed, and at all times made life a torment for the waiting-woman—a torment which was only endurable because of those moments when she could escape to her room, and perhaps also because of some inner and consoling conviction that she was standing at the post of duty, and that perhaps in the great events, the terrible events so rapidly shaping, she too might take a not unworthy part.

The very spring itself seemed sad that year; the green on the trees, the violets and daffodils in the Prince's gardens brought no joyousness with them; the low winds were laden with melancholy; the long pale days, the chill nights, the cloudless sunsets, the cold dawns held no comfort nor cheer.

In Rénèe's mind, as in the mind of every other man and woman of the Netherlands, was the thought of the fires in the market-places, of the daily hideous executions, of the cries of agony and despair, bereavement and madness rising from every town, from every village; of the exiles fleeing to England, carrying with them their skill, their knowledge, which was the wealth of the nation; of broken fields and unsown harvests, of children starving and lamenting in the streets. She thought of the great, magnificent churches all over the land, where every day costly and solemn ritual was performed, and where in the grave, rich gloom of sanctified beauty, gorgeous music, gorgeous vestures, the loveliness of art, the splendour of texture, marble, silk, tapestry, coloured glass, crystal, gold, jewels were all dedicated to the service of the God to Whom were sent up the flames of the living torches which lit the market-place, to Whom was offered the blood of maids and boys, mothers and children who had no sin beyond their steadfastness to the Truth as they believed it.

"And still He makes no sign," thought Rénèe. "And still He sends none—angel nor man—to smite and deliver."

When the first days of April came, she saw the Confederates, headed by Brederode and Count Louis, go past the Orange palace on their entry into Brussels; the two leaders halted with the Prince, who was entertaining them, and Rénèe, leaning from the window, heard Brederode say as he crossed the courtyard, "Eh, well, here I am, and perhaps I shall depart in another manner."

The splendour of the Nassau mansion was no longer what it had been, though it was still magnificent. Richly appointed tables no longer stood ready for all comers at all hours of the day and night; the great number of servants was reduced; there were fewer balls, concerts, and feasts; the Prince bought no more tapestries, pictures, statues, rare books, nor costly plants; the jewel and the silk merchants no longer waited every morning in his antechamber, nor were vast sums any longer expended on hawks and hounds.

But for these two guests a generous welcome was prepared, and William himself met them on the stairs, kissing each on either cheek.

Rénèe crept back to Anne, who sat among her German women, lamenting, complaining against her husband, against the Netherlands, against her own miserable fate.

The child played at her knee, but she regarded it with utter indifference. Rénèe picked up the little girl and carried her away; the sound of the Princess's voice travelled across the apartments.

"Am I to be ruined for a parcel of heretics? Curse the day of my birth, curse my marriage day!"