Chapter IV: Holland (1)

NOTE ON LITERATURE

The special interest of Dutch history for English and other readers led in past generations to a more general sociological study of it than was given to almost any other. L. Guicciardini's _Description of the Low Countries_ (_Descrizione ... di tutti Paesi Bassi_, etc., Anversa, folio, 1567, 1581, etc.; trans. in French, 1568, etc.; in English, 1593; in Dutch, 1582; in Latin, 1613, etc.) is one of the fullest surveys of the kind made till recent times. Sir William Temple's _Observations upon the United Provinces of the Netherlands_ (1672) laid for English readers further foundations of an intelligent knowledge of the vital conditions of the State which had been in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the great commercial rival of England; and in the eighteenth century many English writers discussed the fortunes of Dutch commerce. An English translation was made of the remarkably sagacious work variously known as the _Memoirs of John de Witt_, the _True Interest of Holland_, and _Political Maxims of the State of Holland_ (really written by De Witt's friend, Pierre Delacourt; De Witt, however, contributing two chapters), and much attention was given to it here and on the Continent. In addition to the many and copious histories written in the eighteenth century in Dutch, three or four voluminous and competent histories of the Low Countries were written in French--_e.g._, those of Dujardin (1757, etc., 8 vols. 4to), Cerisier (1777, etc., 10 vols. 12mo), Le Clerc (1723-28, 3 vols. folio), Wicquefort (1719, folio, proceeding from Peace of Münster). Of late years, though the lesson is as important as ever, it appears to be less generally attended to. In our own country, however, have appeared Davies' _History of Holland_ (1841, 3 vols.), a careful but not often an illuminating work, which oddly begins with the statement that "there is scarcely any nation whose history has been so little understood or so generally neglected as that of Holland"; T. Colley Grattan's earlier and shorter book (_The Netherlands_, 1830), which is still worth reading for a general view based on adequate learning; and the much better known works of Motley, _The Rise of the Dutch Republic_ (1856) and the _History of the United Netherlands_ (1861-68), which deal minutely with only a period of fifty-five years of Dutch history, and of which, as of the work of Davies, the sociological value is much below the annalistic. All three are impaired as literature by their stale rhetoric. The same malady infects the second volume of the _Industrial History of the Free Nations_ (1846), by W. Torrens M'Cullagh (afterwards M'Cullagh Torrens); but this, which deals with Holland, is the better section of that treatise, and it gives distinct help to a scientific conception of the process of Dutch history, as does J.R. M'Culloch's _Essay on the Rise, Progress, and Decline of Commerce in Holland_, which is one of the best of his _Essays and Treatises_ (2nd ed. 1859). The _Holland_ of the late Professor Thorold Rogers has merit as a vivacious conspectus, but hardly rises to the opportunity.

Of the many French, Belgian, and German works on special periods of the history of the Low Countries, some have a special and general scientific interest. Among these is the research of M. Alphonse Wauters on _Les libertés communales_ (Bruxelles, 1878). Barante's _Histoire des Ducs de Bourgogne_ (4th ed. 1838-40) contains much interesting matter on the Burgundian period. The assiduous research of M. Lefèvre Pontalis, _Jean de Witt, Grand Pensionnaire de Hollande_ (2 tom. 1884; Eng. trans. 2 vols.), throws a full light on one of the most critical periods of Dutch history.

Dutch works on the history of the Low Countries in general, and the United Provinces in particular, are many and voluminous; indeed, no history has been more amply written. The good general history of the Netherlands by N.G. van Kampen, which appeared in German in the series of Heeren and Uckert (1831-33), is only partially superseded by the _Geschichte der Niederlande_ of Wenzelburger (Bd. i, 1879; ii, 1886), which is not completed. But the most readable general history of the Netherlands yet produced is that of P.J. Blok, _Geschiedenis van het Nederlandsche Volk_ (1892, etc.), of which there is a competent but unfortunately abridged English translation (Putnams, vol. i, 1898). Standard modern Dutch works are those of J.A. Vijnne, _Geschiedenis van het Vaderland_, and J. van Lennep, _De Geschiedenis van Nederland_. For Belgian history in particular the authorities are similarly numerous. The _Manuel de l'histoire de Belgique_, by J. David (Louvain, 1847), will be found a good handbook of authorities, episodes, and chronology, though without any sociological element. The _Histoire de Belgique_ of Th. Juste (Bruxelles, 1895, 3 tom. 4to) is comprehensive, but disfigured by insupportable illustrations.

§ 1. _The Rise of the Netherlands_

The case of Holland is one of those which at first sight seem to flout the sociological maxim that civilisations flourish in virtue partly of natural advantages and partly of psychological pressures. On the face of things, it would seem that the original negation of natural advantage could hardly be carried farther than here. A land pieced together out of drained marshes certainly tells more of man's effort than of Nature's bounty. Yet even here the process of natural law is perfectly sequent and intelligible.

One of the least-noted influences of the sea on civilisation is the economic basis it yields in the way of food-supply. Already in Cæsar's time the Batavians were partly fishermen; and it may be taken as certain that through all the troubled ages down to the period of industry and commerce it was the resource of fishing that mainly maintained and retained population in the sea-board swamps of the Low Countries. Here was a harvest that enemies could not destroy, that demanded no ploughing and sowing, and that could not well be reaped by the labour of slaves. When war and devastation could absolutely depopulate the cultivated land, forcing all men to flee from famine, the sea for ever yielded some return to him who could but get afloat with net or line; and he who could sail the sea had a double chance of life and freedom as against land enemies. Thus a sea marsh could be humanly advantaged as against a fruitful plain, and could be a surer dwelling-place. The tables were first effectually turned when the Norse pirates attacked from the sea--an irresistible inroad which seems to have driven the sea-board Frisians (as it did the coast inhabitants of France) in crowds into slavery for protection, thus laying a broad foundation of popular serfdom.[725] When, however, the Norse empire began to fail, the sea as a source of sustenance again counted for civilisation; and when to this natural basis of population and subsistence there was added the peculiar stimulus set up by a religious inculcation or encouragement of a fish diet, the fishing-grounds of the continent became relatively richer estates than mines and vineyards. Venice and Holland alike owed much to the superstition which made Christians akreophagous on Fridays and fast-days and all through the forty days of Lent. When the plan of salting herrings was hit upon,[726] all Christian Europe helped to make the fortunes of the fisheries.

Net-making may have led to weaving; in any case weaving is the first important industry developed in the Low Countries. It depended mainly on the wool of England; and on the basis of the ancient seafaring there thus arose a sea-going commerce.[727] Further, the position of Flanders,[728] as a trade-centre for northern and southern Europe, served to make it a market for all manner of produce; and round such a market population and manufactures grew together. It belonged to the conditions that, though the territory came under feudal rule like every other in the medieval military period, the cities were relatively energetic all along,[729] theirs being (after the Dark Ages, when the work was largely done by the Church) the task of maintaining the sea-dykes[730] and water-ways, and theirs the wealth on which alone the feudal over-lords could hope to flourish in an unfruitful land. The over-lords, on their part, saw the expediency of encouraging foreigners to settle and add to their taxable population,[731] thus establishing the tradition of political tolerance long before the Protestant period. Hence arose in the Netherlands, after the Renaissance, the phenomenon of a dense industrial population flourishing on a soil which finally could not be made to feed them,[732] and carrying on a vast shipping trade without owning a single good harbour and without possessing home-grown timber wherewith to build their ships, or home-products to freight them.[733]

One of the determinants of this growth on a partially democratic footing was clearly the primary and peculiar necessity for combination by the inhabitants to maintain the great sea-dykes, the canals, and the embankments of the low-lying river-lands in the interior.[734] It was a public bond in peace, over and above the normal tie of common enmities. The result was a development of civic life still more rapid and more marked in inland Flanders,[735] where the territorial feudal power was naturally greater than in the maritime Dutch provinces. Self-ruling cities, such as Ghent and Antwerp, at their meridian, were too powerful to be effectively menaced by their immediate feudal lords. But on the side of their relations with neighbouring cities or States they all exhibited the normal foible; and it was owing only to the murderous compulsion put upon them by Spain in the sixteenth century that any of the provinces of the Netherlands became a federal republic. For five centuries after Charlemagne, who subdued them to his system, the Low Countries had undergone the ordinary slow evolution from pure feudalism to the polity of municipalities. In the richer inland districts the feudal system, lay and clerical, was at its height, the baronial castles being "here more numerous than in any other part of Christendom";[736] and when the growing cities began to feel their power to buy charters, the feudal formula was unchallenged,[737] while the mass of the outside population were in the usual "Teutonic" state of partial or complete serfdom. It was only by burning their suburbs and taking to the walled fortress that the people of Utrecht escaped the yoke of the Norsemen.[738]

Mr. Torrens M'Cullagh is responsible for the statement that "it
seems doubtful whether any portion of the inhabitants of Holland
were ever in a state of actual servitude or bondage," and that the
northern provinces were more generally free from slavery than the
others (_Industrial History of the Free Nations_, 1846, ii, 39).
Motley (_Rise of the Dutch Republic_, as cited, pp. 17, 18)
pronounces, on the contrary, that "in the northern Netherlands the
degraded condition of the mass continued longest," and that "the
number of slaves throughout the Netherlands was very large; the
number belonging to the bishopric of Utrecht enormous." This is
substantially borne out by Grattan, _Netherlands_, pp. 18, 34;
Blok, _Geschiedenis van het Nederlandsche Volk_, i, 159, 160,
305-11, Eng. tr. i, 203-8; Wauters, _Les libertés communales_,
1878, pp. 222-30. As is noted by Blok, the status of the peasantry
fluctuated, the thirteenth century being one of partial
retrogression. Cp. pp. 318, 319, as to the general depression of
the peasant class. The great impulse to slavery, as above noted,
seems to have been given by the Norse pirates in general and the
later Norman invaders, who, under Godfrey, forced every "free"
Frisian to wear a halter. The comparative protection accruing to
slaves of the Church was embraced by multitudes. In the time of the
Crusades, again, many serfs were sold or mortgaged to the Church by
the nobles in order to obtain funds for their expedition.

The cities were thus the liberating and civilising forces;[739] and the application of townsmen's capital to the land was an early influence in improving rural conditions.[740] But there was no escape from the fatality of strife in the Teutonic any more than in the ancient Greek or in the contemporary Italian world. Flanders, having the large markets of France at hand, developed its clothmaking and other industries more rapidly than the Frisian districts, where weaving was probably earlier carried on;[741] and here serfdom disappeared comparatively early,[742] the nobility dwindling through their wars; but the new industrial strifes of classes, which grew up everywhere in the familiar fashion, naturally matured the sooner in the more advanced civilisation; and already at the beginning of the fourteenth century we find a resulting disintegration. The monopoly methods of the trade gilds drove much of the weaving industry into the villages; then the Franco-Flemish wars, wherein the townspeople, by expelling the French in despite of the nobility, greatly strengthened their position,[743] nevertheless tended, as did the subsequent civil wars, to drive trade into South Brabant.

In Flemish Ghent and Bruges the clashing interests of weavers and woollen-traders, complicated by the strife of the French (aristocratic) and anti-French (popular) factions, led to riots in which citizens and magistrates were killed (1301). At times these enmities reached the magnitude of civil war. At Ypres (1303) a combination of workmen demanded the suppression of rival industries in neighbouring villages, and in an ensuing riot the mayor and all the magistrates were slain; at Bruges (1302) a trade riot led to the loss of fifteen hundred lives.[744] When later the weaving trade had flourished in Brabant, the same fatality came about: plebeians rebelled against patrician magistrates--themselves traders or employers of labour--in the principal cities; and Brussels (1312) was for a time given up to pillage and massacre, put down only by the troops of the reigning duke. A great legislative effort was made in the "Laws of Cortenberg," framed by an assembly of nobles and city deputies, to regulate fiscal and industrial affairs in a stable fashion;[745] but after fifty years the trouble broke out afresh, and was ill-healed.[746] At length, in a riot in the rich city of Louvain (1379), sixteen of its patrician magistrates were slain, whereupon many took flight to England, but many more to Haarlem, Amsterdam, Leyden, and other Dutch cities.[747] Louvain never again recovered its trade and wealth;[748] and since the renewed Franco-Flemish wars of this period had nearly destroyed the commerce of Flanders,[749] there was a general gravitation of both merchandise and manufacture to Holland.[750] Thus arose Dutch manufactures in an organic connection with maritime commerce, the Dutch municipal organisation securing a balance of trade interests where that of the Flemish industrial cities had partially failed.

The commercial lead given by the Hanseatic League was followed in the Netherlands with a peculiar energy, and till the Spanish period the main part of Dutch maritime commerce was with northern Europe and the Hansa cities. So far as the language test goes, the original Hansards and the Dutch were of the same "Low Dutch" stock, which was also that of the Anglo-Saxons.[751] Thus there was seen the phenomenon of a vigorous maritime and commercial development among the continental branches of the race; while the English, having lost its early seafaring habits on its new settlement, lagged far behind in both developments. Kinship, of course, counted for nothing towards goodwill between the nations when it could not keep peace within or between the towns; and in the fifteenth century the Dutch cities are found at war with the Hansa, as they had been in the thirteenth with England, and were to be again. But the spirit of strife did its worst work at home. On the one hand, a physical schism had been set up in Friesland in the thirteenth century by the immense disaster of the inundation which enlarged the Zuyder Zee.[752] Of that tremendous catastrophe there are singularly few historic traces; but it had the effect of making two small countries where there had been one large one, what was left of West Friesland being absorbed in the specific province of Holland, while East Friesland, across the Zuyder Zee, remained a separate confederation of maritime districts.[753] To the south-west, again, the great Flemish cities were incurably jealous of each other's prosperity, as well as inwardly distracted by their class disputes; and within the cities of Holland, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, while intelligible lines of cleavage between trades or classes are hard to find, the factions of Hoek and Kabbeljauw, the "Hooks" and the "Codfish," appear to have carried on a chronic strife, as irrational as any to be noted in the cities of Italy. Thus in the north as in the south, among Teutons as among "Latins" and among ancient Greeks, the primary instincts of separation checked democratic growth and coalition; though after the period of local feudal sovereignties the powerful monarchic and feudal forces in the Netherlands withheld the cities from internecine wars.

The most sympathetic historians are forced from the first to note
the stress of mutual jealousy among the cities and districts of the
Netherlands. "The engrained habit of municipal isolation," says
one, "was the cause why the general liberties of the Netherlands
were imperilled, why the larger part of the country was ultimately
ruined, and why the war of independence was conducted with so much
risk and difficulty, even in the face of the most serious perils"
(Thorold Rogers, _Holland_, p. 26. Cp. pp. 35, 43; Motley, pp. 29,
30, 43; Grattan, pp. 39, 50, 51). Van Kampen avows (_Geschichte der
Niederlande_, i, 131) that throughout the Middle Ages Friesland was
unprogressive owing to constant feuds. Even as late as 1670 Leyden
refused to let the Harle Maer be drained, because it would
advantage other cities; and Amsterdam in turn opposed the reopening
of the old Rhine channel because it would make Leyden maritime
(Temple, _Observations_, i, 130, ch. iii).

As regards the early factions of the "Hooks" and the "Codfish" in
the Dutch towns, the historic obscurity is so great that historians
are found ascribing the names in contrary ways. Grattan (p. 49)
represents the Hooks as the town party, and the Codfish as the
party of the nobles; Motley (p. 21) reverses the explanation,
noting, however, that there was no consistent cleavage of class or
of principle (cp. M'Cullagh, pp. 99, 100). This account is
supported by Van Kampen, i, 170, 171. The fullest survey of the
Hook and Cod feud is given by Wenzelburger, _Geschichte der
Niederlande_, i, 210-42. As to feuds of other parties in some of
the cities see Van Kampen, i, 172. They included, for example, a
class feud between the rich _Vetkooper_ (fat-dealers) and the poor
_Schieringer_ (eel-fishers). See Davies, i, 180.

Thus dissident, and with feudal wars breaking out in every generation, the cities and provinces could win concessions from their feudal chiefs when the latter were in straits, as in the famous case of the "Great Privilege" extorted from the Duchess Mary, daughter of Charles the Bold of Burgundy, after her father's overthrow by the Swiss; again in the case of her husband Maximilian after her death; and previously in the reaffirmation of the ill-observed Laws of Cortenberg, secured from the Duke of Brabant by the Louvainers in 1372; but they could never deliver themselves from the feudal superstition, never evolve the republican ideal. When the rich citizens exploited the poor, it was the local sovereign's cue, as of old, to win the populace; whereupon the patricians leant to the over-lord, were he even the King of France; or it might be that the local lord himself sought the intervention of his suzerain, who again was at times the first to meddle, and against whom, as against rival potentates, the cities would at times fight desperately for their recognised head, when he was not overtaxing or thwarting them, or endangering their commerce.[754] It was a medley of clashing interests, always in unstable equilibrium. And so when sovereign powers on a great scale, as the Dukes of Burgundy, followed by the Archduke Maximilian, and later by the Emperor Charles, came into the inheritance of feudal prestige, the Dutch and Flemish cities became by degrees nearly as subordinate as those of France and Germany, losing one by one their municipal privileges.[755] The monarchic superstition overbore the passions of independence and primary interest; and a strong feudal ruler could count on a more general and durable loyalty than was ever given to any citizen-statesman. James van Arteveldt, who guided Ghent in the fourteenth century, and whose policy was one of alliance with the English king against the French, the feudal over-lord, was "the greatest personality Flanders ever produced."[756] But though Arteveldt's policy was maintained even by his murderers, murdered he was by his fellow-citizens, as the great De Witt was to be murdered in Holland three hundred years later. The monarchised Netherlanders were republicans only in the last resort, as against insupportable tyranny. Philip of Burgundy, who heavily oppressed them, they called "The Good." At the end of the fifteenth century Maximilian was able, even before he became Emperor, not only to crush the "bread-and-cheese" rebellion of the exasperated peasantry in Friesland and Guelderland,[757] but to put down all the oligarchs who had rebelled against him, and finally to behead them by the dozen,[758] leaving the land to his son as a virtually subject State.

In the sixteenth century, under Charles V, the men of Ghent, grown once again a great commercial community,[759] exhibited again the fatal instability of the undeveloped democracy of all ages. Called upon to pay their third of a huge subsidy of 1,200,000 _caroli_ voted by the Flemish States to the Emperor, they rang their bell of revolt and defied him, offering their allegiance to the King of France. That monarch, by way of a bargain, promptly betrayed the intrigue to his "brother," who thereupon marched in force through France to the rebel city, now paralysed by terror; and without meeting a shadow of resistance, penalised it to the uttermost, beheading a score of leading citizens, banishing many more, annulling its remaining municipal rights, and exacting an increased tribute.[760] It needed an extremity of grievance to drive such communities to an enduring rebellion. When Charles V abdicated at Brussels in favour of his son Philip in 1555, he had already caused to be put to death Netherlanders to the number at least of thousands for religious heresy;[761] and still the provinces were absolutely submissive, and the people capable of weeping collectively out of sympathy with the despot's infirmities.[762] He, on his part, born and educated among them, and knowing them well, was wont to say of them that there was not a nation under the sun which more detested the _name_ of slavery, or that bore the reality more patiently when managed with discretion.[763] He spoke whereof he knew.

§ 2. _The Revolt against Spain_

That the people who endured so much at the hands of a despot should have revolted unsubduably against his son is to be explained in terms of certain circumstances little stressed in popular historiography. In the narratives of the rhetorical historians, no real explanation arises. The revolt figures as a stand for personal and religious freedom. But when Charles abdicated, after slaying his thousands, the Reformation had been in full tide for over thirty years; Calvin had built up Protestant Geneva to the point of burning Servetus; England had been for twenty years depapalised; France, with many scholars and nobles converted to Calvinism, was on the verge of a civil war of Huguenots and Catholics; the Netherlands themselves had been drenched in the blood of heretics; and still no leading man had thought of repudiating either Spain or Rome. Yet within thirteen years they were in full revolt, led by William of Orange, now turned Protestant. Seeing that mere popular Protestantism had spread far and gone fast, religious opinion was clearly not the determining force.

In reality, the _conditio sine qua non_ was the psychological reversal effected by Philip when he elected to rule as a Spaniard, where his father had in effect ruled as a Fleming. Charles had always figured as a native of the Netherlands, at home among his people, friendly to their great men, ready to employ them in his affairs, even to the extent of partly ruling Spain through them. After his punishment of Ghent they were his boon subjects; and in his youth it was the Spaniards who were jealous of the Flemish and Dutch. This state of things had begun under his Flemish-German father, Philip I, who became King of Spain by marriage, and under whom the Netherland nobles showed in Spain a rapacity that infuriated the Spaniards against them. It was a question simply of racial predominance; and had the dynasty chosen to fix its capital in the north rather than in the south, it would have been the lot of the Netherlanders to exploit Spain--a task for which they were perfectly ready.

The gross rapacity of the Flemings in Spain under Philip I is
admitted by Motley (_Rise_, as cited, pp. 31, 75); but on the same
score feeling was passionately strong in Spain in the earlier years
of the reign of Charles. Cp. Robertson, _Charles V_, bk. i (Works,
ed. 1821, iv, 37, 40, 43, 44, 46, 47, 52, 53, 55, 77 78); and van
Kampen, _Geschichte der Niederlande_, i, 277, 278. It took more
than ten years to bring Charles in good relations with the
Spaniards. See Mr. E. Armstrong's _Introduction_ to Major Martin
Hume's _Spain_, 1898, pp. 31-37, 57, 76. Even in his latter years
they are found protesting against his customary absence from Spain,
and his perpetual wars. Robertson, bk. vi, p. 494. Cp. bk. xii,
vol. v, p. 417, as to the disregard shown him after his abdication.

While it lasted, the Flemish exploitation of Spain was as shameless
as the Spanish exploitation of Italy. The Italian Peter Martyr
Angleria, residing at the court of Spain, reckoned that in ten
months the Flemings there remitted home over a million ducats
(Robertson, bk. i, p. 53). A lad, nephew of Charles's Flemish
minister Chievres, was appointed to the archbishopric of Toledo, in
defiance of general indignation. The result was a clerico-popular
insurrection. Everything goes to show that but for the Emperor's
prudence his Flemings would have ruined him in Spain, by getting
him to tyrannise for their gain, as Philip II later did for the
Church's sake in the Netherlands.

It is not unwarrantable to say that had not Charles had the sagacity to adapt himself to the Spanish situation, learning to speak the language and even to tolerate the pride of the nobles[764] to a degree to which he never yielded before the claims of the burghers of the Netherlands, and had he not in the end identified himself chiefly with his Spanish interests, the history of Spain and the Netherlands might have been entirely reversed. Had he, that is, kept his seat of rule in the Netherlands, drawing thither the unearned revenues of the Americas, and still contrived to keep Spain subject to his rule, the latter country would have been thrown back on her great natural resources, her industry, and her commerce, which, as it was, developed markedly during his reign,[765] despite the heavy burdens of his wars. And in that case Spain might conceivably have become the Protestant and rebellious territory, and the Netherlands on the contrary have remained Catholic and grown commercially decrepit, having in reality the weaker potential economic basis.

The theorem that the two races were vitally opposed in "religious
sentiment," and that "it was as certain that the Netherlanders
would be fierce reformers as that the Spaniards would be
uncompromising persecutors" (Motley, p. 31), is part of the common
pre-scientific conception of national development, and proceeds
upon flat disregard of the historical evidence. It is well
established that there was as much heresy of the more rational
Protestant and Unitarian sort in Spain, to begin with, as in
Holland. Under Ferdinand and Isabella the Inquisition seems to
have struck mainly at Judaic and Moorish monotheistic heresy, which
was not uncommon among the upper classes, while the lower were for
the most part orthodox (Armstrong, _Introd._ to Major Hume's
_Spain_, pp. 14, 18). Thus there is good ground for the surmise
that Ferdinand's object was primarily the confiscation of the
wealth of Jews and other rich heretics. (See U.R. Burke, _History
of Spain_, 1895, ii, 101; Hume's ed. 1900, ii, 74.) In Aragon,
Valencia, and Catalonia there was general resistance to the
Inquisition; in Cordova there was a riot against it; in Saragossa
the Inquisitor was murdered before the altar (Armstrong, p. 18;
Llorente, _Hist. crit. de l'Inquisition d'Espagne_, éd. 1818, i,
185-213; M'Crie, _Reformation in Spain_, ed. 1856, pp. 52-53. Cp.
U.R. Burke, as cited, ii, 97, 98, 101, 103, 111; Hume's ed. ii, 66,
70-71, 74-77, 82; as to the general and prolonged resistance of the
people). During that reign Torquemada is credited with burning ten
thousand persons in eighteen years (Prescott, _History of Ferdinand
and Isabella_, Kirk's ed. 1889, p. 178, citing Llorente. But see p.
746, _note_, as to possible exaggeration. Cp. Burke, ii, 113;
Hume's ed. ii, 84). In the early Lutheran period the spread of
scholarly Protestantism in Spain was extremely rapid (La
Rigaudière, _Histoire des persécutions religieuses en Espagne_,
1860, p. 245 sq.), and in the early years of Philip II it needed
furious persecution to crush it, thousands leaving the kingdom
(Prescott, _Philip II_, bk. ii, ch. iii; M'Crie, _Reformation in
Spain_, ch. viii; De Castro, _History of the Spanish Protestants_,
Eng. tr. 1851, _passim_). At the outset, 800 persons were arrested
in Seville alone in one day; and the Venetian ambassador in 1562
testifies to the large number of Huguenots in Spain (Ranke, _Hist.
of the Popes_, bk. v, Eng. tr. 1-vol. ed. p. 136).

Had Philip II had Flemish sympathies and chosen to make Brussels
his capital, the stress of the Inquisition could have fallen on the
Netherlands as successfully as it actually did on Spain. His
father's reign had proved as much. According to Motley, not only
multitudes of Anabaptists but "thousands and tens of thousands of
virtuous and well-disposed men and women" had then been "butchered
in cold blood" (_Rise_, p. 43), without any sign of rebellion on
the part of the provinces, whose leading men remained Catholic. In
1600 most of the inhabitants of Groningen were Catholics (Davies,
ii, 347). A Protestant historian (Grattan, p. 93) admits that the
Protestants "never, and least of all in these days, formed the
mass." Another has admitted, as regards those of Germany, that
"nothing had contributed more to the undisturbed progress of their
opinions than the interregnum after Maximilian's death, the long
absence of Charles, and the slackness of the reins of government
which these occasioned" (Robertson, _Charles V_, bk. v, ed. cited
of _Works_, vol. iv, p. 387). "It was only tanners, dyers, and
apostate priests who were Protestants at that day in the
Netherlands" (Motley, p. 124). The same conditions would have had
similar results in Spain, where many Catholics thought Philip much
too religious for his age and station (Motley, p. 76).

It seems necessary to insist on the elementary fact that it was
Netherlanders who put Protestants to death in the Netherlands; and
that it was Spaniards who were burnt in Spain. In the Middle Ages
"nowhere was the persecution of heretics more relentless than in
the Netherlands" (Motley, p. 36; cp. p. 132). Grenvelle, most
zealous of heresy-hunters, was a Burgundian; Viglius, an even
bitterer persecutor, was a Frisian. The statement of Prescott
(_Philip II_, Kirk's ed. 1894, p. 149) that the Netherlanders
"claimed freedom of thought as their birthright" is a gratuitous
absurdity. As regards, further, the old hallucination of "race
types," it has to be noted that Charles, a devout Catholic and
persecutor, was emphatically _Teutonic_, according to the
established canons. His stock was Burgundo-Austrian on the father's
side; his Spanish mother was of Teutonic descent; he had the fair
hair, blue eyes, and hanging jaw and lip of the Teutonic Hapsburgs
(see Menzel, _Geschichte der Deutschen_, cap. 341), and so had his
descendants after him. On the other hand, William the Silent was
markedly "Spanish" in his physiognomy (Motley, p. 56), and his
reticence would in all ages pass for a Spanish rather than a
"Teutonic" characteristic. Motley is reduced to such shifts of
rhetoric concerning Philip II as the proposition (p. 75) that "the
Burgundian and Austrian elements of his blood seemed to have
evaporated." But his descendant, Philip IV, as seen in the great
portraits of Velasquez, is, like him, a "typical" Teuton; and the
stock preserved the Teutonic physiological tendency to gluttony, a
most "un-Spanish" characteristic.

It is true that, as Buckle argues, the many earthquakes in Spain
tended to promote superstitious fear; but then on his principles
the Dutch seafaring habits, and the constant risks and frequent
disasters of inundation, had the same primary tendency. For the
rest, the one serious oversight in Buckle's theory of Spanish
civilisation is his assumption (cp. 3-vol. ed. ii, 455-61; 1-vol.
ed. p. 550) that Spanish "loyalty" was abnormal and continuous from
the period of the first struggles with the Moors. As to this see
the present writer's notes in the 1-vol. ed. of Buckle, as cited.
Even Ferdinand, as an Aragonese, was disrespectfully treated by the
Castilians (cp. Armstrong as cited, pp. 5, 31, etc.; De Castro,
_History of Religious Intolerance in Spain_, Eng. tr. 1853, pp. 40,
41); and Philip I and Charles V set up a new resistance. An alien
dynasty could set up disaffection in Spain as elsewhere.

It should be noted, finally, that the stiff ceremonialism which is
held to be the special characteristic of Spanish royalty was a
Burgundo-Teutonic innovation, dating from Philip I, and that even
in the early days of Philip the Cortes petitioned "that the
household of the Prince Don Carlos should be arranged on the old
Spanish lines, and not in the pompous new-fangled way of the House
of Burgundy" (Major Hume's _Spain_, p. 127). Prescott (_Philip II_,
ed. cited, pp. 655, 659) makes the petition refer to the king's own
household, and shows it to have condemned the king's excessive
expenditure in very strong terms, saying the expense of his
household was "as great as would be required for the conquest of a
kingdom." At the same time the Cortes petitioned against
bull-fights, which appear to have originated with the Moors, were
strongly opposed by Isabella the Catholic, and were much encouraged
by the Teutonic Charles V (U.R. Burke, _History of Spain_, 1895,
ii, 2-4; Hume's ed. i, 328 _sq._). In fine, the conventional Spain
is a manufactured system, developed under a Teutonic dynasty. "To a
German race of sovereigns Spain finally owed the subversion of her
national system and ancient freedom" (Stubbs, _Const. Hist._ 4th
ed. i, 5).

No doubt the Dutch disaffection to Philip, which began to reveal itself immediately after his accession, may be conceived as having economic grounds. Indeed, his creation of fresh bishoprics, and his manipulation of the abbey revenues, created instant and general resentment among churchmen and nobles,[766] as compared with his mere continuation of religious persecution; and despite his pledges to the contrary, certain posts in the Low Countries were conferred on Spaniards.[767] But had he shown his father's adaptability, all this could have been adjusted. Had he either lived at Brussels or made the Flemings feel that he held them an integral part of his empire, he would have had the zealous support of the upper classes in suppressing the popular heresy, which repelled them. Heresy in the Netherlands, indeed, seems thus far to have been on the whole rather licentious and anarchic than austere or "spiritual." The pre-Protestant movements of the Béguines, Beghards, and Lollards, beginning well, had turned out worse than the orders of friars in the south; and the decorous "Brethren of the Common Lot" were in the main "good churchmen," only a minority accepting Protestantism.[768] In face of the established formulas concerning the innate spirituality of the Teuton, and of the play of his "conscience" in his course at the Reformation, there stand the historic facts that in the Teutonic world alone was the Reformation accompanied by widespread antinomianism, debauchery, and destructive violence. In France, Spain, and Italy there were no such movements as the Anabaptist, which so far as it could go was almost a dissolution of sane society.[769] From Holland that movement drew much of its strength and leadership, even as, in a previous age, the antinomian movement of Tanquelin had there had its main success.[770] Such was the standing of Dutch Protestantism in 1555; and no edict against heresy could be more searching and merciless than that drawn up by Charles in 1550[771] without losing any upper-class loyalty. Philip did but strive to carry it out.[772]

Had Philip, further, maintained a prospect of chronic war for the nobility of the Netherlands, the accruing chances of wealth[773] would in all likelihood have sufficed to keep them loyal. In the early wars of his reign with France immense gains had been made by them in the way of ransoms and booty. When these ceased, luxury continuing, embarrassment became general.[774] But when Philip's energies were seen to be mainly bent on killing out heresy, the discontented nobles began to lean to the side of the persecuted commonalty. At the first formation of the Confederacy of the "Beggars" in 1566, almost the only zealous Protestant among the leaders was William's impetuous brother Louis of Nassau, a Calvinist by training, who had for comrade the bibulous Brederode. The name of "Gueux," given to the malcontents in contempt by the councillor Berlaimont, had direct application to the known poverty or embarrassment of the great majority.[775] There was thus undisguisedly at work in the Netherlands the great economic force which had brought about "the Reformation" in all the Teutonic countries; and the needy nobles insensibly grew Protestant as it became more and more clear that only the lands of the Church could restore their fortunes.[776] This holds despite the fact that the more intelligent Protestantism which latterly spread among the people was the comparatively democratic form set up by Calvin, which reached the Low Countries through France, finding the readier reception among the serious because of the prestige accruing to its austerity as against the moral disrepute which now covered the German forms.

[As to the proportional success of Lutheranism and Calvinism, see Motley, pp. 132, 133; and Grattan, pp. 110, 111. (On p. 110 of Grattan there is a transposition of "second" and "third" groups, which the context corrects.) Motley, an inveterate Celtophobe, is at pains to make out that the Walloons rebelled first and were first reconciled to Rome, "exactly like their Celtic ancestors, fifteen centuries earlier." He omits to comment on the fact that it was only the French form of Protestantism, that of Calvin, that became viable in the Netherlands at all, or on the fact that indecent Anabaptism flourished mainly in Friesland; though he admits that the Lutheran movement left all religious rights in the hands of the princes, the people having to follow the creed of their rulers. The "racial" explanation is mere obscurantism, here as always. The Walloons of South Flanders were first affected simply because they were first in touch with Huguenotism. That they were never converted in large numbers to Protestantism is later admitted by Motley himself (p. 797), who thereupon speaks of the "intense attachment to the Roman ceremonial which distinguished the Walloon population." Thus his earlier statement that they had rebelled against "papal Rome" is admittedly false. They had rebelled simply against the Spanish tyranny. Yet the false statement is left standing--one more illustration of the havoc that may be worked in a historian's intelligence by a prejudice. (For other instances see, in the author's volume _The Saxon and the Celt_, the chapters dealing with Mommsen and Burton.)

It was the Teutonic-speaking city populations of North Flanders and Brabant who became Protestants in mass after the troubles had begun (Motley, p. 798). When the Walloon provinces withdrew from the combination against Spain, the cities of Ghent, Antwerp, Bruges, and Ypres joined the Dutch Union of Utrecht. They were one and all reduced by the skill and power of Alexander of Parma, who thereupon abolished the freedom of Protestant worship. The Protestants fled in thousands to England and the Dutch provinces, the remaining population, albeit mostly Teutonic, becoming Catholic. At this moment one-and-a-half of the four-and-a-half millions of Dutch are Catholics; while in Belgium, where there are hardly any Protestants, the Flemish-speaking and French-speaking populations are nearly equal in numbers.

Van Kampen, who anticipated Motley in disparaging the Walloons as being Frenchly fickle (_Geschichte_, i, 366), proceeds to contend that even the Flemings are more excitable than the Dutch and other Teutons; but he notes later that as the Dutch poet Cats was much read and imitated in Belgium, he was thus proved to have expressed the spirit of the whole Netherlands (ii, 109). Once more, then, the racial theory collapses.]

Thus the systematic savagery of the Inquisition under Philip, for which the people at first blamed not at all the king but his Flemish minister, Cardinal Granvelle, served rather to make a basis and pretext for organised revolt than directly to kindle it. In so far as the people spontaneously resorted to violence, in the image-breaking riots, they compromised and imperilled the nationalist movement in the act of precipitating it. The king's personal equation, finally, served to make an enemy of the masterly William of Orange, who, financially embarrassed like the lesser nobility,[777] could have been retained as an administrator by a wise monarch. A matter so overlaid with historical declamation is hard to set in a clear light; but it may serve to say of William that he was made a "patriot," as was Robert the Bruce, by stress of circumstances;[778] and that in the one case as in the other it was exceptional character and capacity that made patriotism a success;[779] William in particular having to maintain himself against continual domestic enmity, patrician as well as popular. Nothing short of the ferocity and rapacity of the Spanish attack, indeed, could have long united the Netherlands. The first confederacy dissolved at the approach of Alva, who, strong in soldiership but incapable of a statesmanlike settlement, drove the Dutch provinces to extremities by his cruelty, caused a hundred thousand artisans and traders to fly with their industry and capital, exasperated even the Catholic ministers in Flanders by his proposed taxes, and finally by imposing them enraged into fresh revolt the people he had crushed and terrorised, till they were eager to offer the sovereignty to the queen of England. When Requesens came with pacificatory intentions, it was too late; and the Pacification of Ghent (1576) was but a breathing-space between grapples.

What finally determined the separation and independence of the Dutch Provinces was their maritime strength. Antwerp, trading largely on foreign bottoms, represented wealth without the then indispensable weapons. Dutch success begins significantly with the taking of Brill (1572) by the gang of William van der Marck, mostly pirates and ruffians, whose methods William of Orange could not endure.[780] But they had shown the military basis for the maritime States. It was the Dutch fleet that prevented Parma's from joining "the" Armada under Medina-Sidonia,[781] thereby perhaps saving England. Such military genius and energy as Parma's might have made things go hard with the Dutch States had he lived, or had he not been called off against his judgment to fight in France; but his death well balanced the assassination of William of Orange, who had thus far been the great sustainer and welder of the movement of independence. Plotted against and vilified by the demagogues of Ghent, betrayed by worthless fellow nobles, Teutonic and French alike; chronically insulted in his own person and humiliated in that of his brother John, whom the States treated with unexampled meanness; stupidly resisted in his own leadership by the same States, whose egoism left Maestricht to its fate when he bade them help, and who cast on him the blame when it fell; thwarted and crippled by the fanaticism and intolerant violence of the Protestant mobs of the towns; bereaved again and again in the vicissitude of the struggle, William turned to irrelevance all imputations of self-seeking; and in his unfailing sagacity and fortitude he finally matches any aristocrat statesman in history. Doubtless he would have served Philip well had Philip chosen him and trusted him. But as it lay in one thoroughly able man, well placed for prestige in a crisis, to knit and establish a new nation, so it lay in one fanatical dullard[782] to wreck half of his own empire, with the greatest captains of his age serving him; and to bring his fabled treasury to ruin while his despised rebels grew rich.

As to the vice of the Dutch constitution, the principle of the
supremacy of "State rights," see M'Cullagh, p. 215; Motley, _Rise_,
pp. 794, 795 (Pt. vi, ch. ii, _end_), and _United Netherlands_, ed.
1867, iv, 564. Wicquefort (_L'histoire des Provinces-Unies_, La
Haye, 1719, pp. 5, 16), following Grotius, laid stress long ago on
the fact that the Estates of each province recognised no superior,
not even the entire body of the Republic. It was only the measure
of central government set up in the Burgundo-Austrian and Spanish
periods that made the Seven Provinces capable of enough united
action to repel Spanish rule during a chronic struggle of eighty
years. Cp. Van Kampen (i, 304), who points out (p. 306) that the
word "State" first appears in Holland in the fifteenth century. It
arose in Flanders in the thirteenth, and in Brabant in the
fourteenth. Only in 1581, after some years of war, did the United
Provinces set up a General Executive Council. In the same year the
Prince of Orange was chosen sovereign (Motley, pp. 838, 841).

§ 3. _The Supremacy of Dutch Commerce_

The conquest of Flanders by Alexander of Parma, reducing its plains to wolf-haunted wildernesses, and driving the great mass of the remaining artisans from its ruined towns,[783] helped to consummate the prosperity of the United Provinces, who took over the industry of Ghent with the commerce of Antwerp.[784] Getting the start of all northern Europe in trade, they had become at the date of their assured independence the chief trading State in the world. Whatever commercial common sense the world had yet acquired was there in force. And inasmuch as the wealth and strength of these almost landless States, with their mostly poor soil and unavoidably heavy imposts, depended so visibly on quantity of trade turnover, they not only continued to offer a special welcome to all immigrants, but gradually learned to forego the congenial Protestant strife of sects. It was indeed a reluctantly-learned lesson. Even as local patriotisms constantly tended to hamper unity during the very period of struggle, so the primary spirit of self-assertion set the ruling Calvinistic party upon persecuting not only Catholics and Lutherans, but the new heresy of Arminianism:[785] so little does "patriotic" warfare make for fraternity in peace. The judicial murder of the statesman John van Olden Barneveldt (1619) at the hands of Maurice of Orange, whom he had guarded in childhood and trained to statesmanship, was accomplished as a sequel to the formal proscription of the Arminian heresy in the Synod of Dort; and Barneveldt was formally condemned for "troubling God's Church" as well as on the charge of treason.[786] On the same pretexts Grotius was thrown into prison; and the freedom of the press was suspended.[787] It was doubtless the shame of the memory of the execution of Barneveldt (the true founder of the Republic as such),[788] on an absolutely false charge of treason, and the observation of how, as elsewhere, persecution drove away population, that mainly wrought for the erection of tolerance (at least as between Protestant sects) into a State principle.

The best side of the Dutch polity was its finance, which was a lesson to all Europe. Already in the early stages of the struggle with Spain, the States were able on credit to make war, in virtue of their character for commercial honour. Where the king of Spain, with all his revenues mortgaged past hope,[789] got from the Pope an absolution from the payment of interest on the sums borrowed from Spanish and Genoese merchants, and so ruined his credit,[790] the Dutch issued tin money and paper money, and found it readily pass current with friends and foes.[791]

Of all the Protestant countries, excepting Switzerland, the Dutch States alone disposed of their confiscated church lands in the public interest.[792] There was indeed comparatively little to sell,[793] and the money was sorely needed to carry on the war; but the transaction seems to have been carried through without any corruption. It was the suggestion of what might be accomplished in statecraft by the new _expertise_ of trade, forced into the paths of public spirit and checked by a stress of public opinion such as had never come into play in Venice. Against such a power as Spain, energy ruled by unteachable unintelligence, a world-empire financed by the expedients of provincial feudalism, the Dutch needed only an enduring resentment to sustain them, and this Philip amply elicited. Had he spent on light cruisers for the destruction of Dutch commerce the treasure he wasted on the Armadas against England and on his enormous operations by land, typified in the monstrous siege of Antwerp, he might have struck swiftly and surely at the very arteries of Dutch life; but in yielding to them the command of their primary source and channel of wealth, the sea, he insured their ultimate success. In the Franco-Spanish war of 1521-25 the French cruisers nearly ruined the herring fishery of Holland and Zealand;[794] and it was doubtless the memory of that plight that set the States on maintaining predominant power at sea.[795]

Throughout the war, which from first to last spread over eighty years, the Dutch commerce grew while that of Spain dwindled. Under Charles V, Flanders and Brabant alone had paid nearly two-thirds of the whole imperial taxation of the Netherlands;[796] but after a generation or two the United Provinces must have been on an equality of financial resources with those left under Spanish rule, even in a state of peace. Yet in this posture of things there had grown up a burden which represented, in the warring commercial State, the persistent principle of class parasitism; for at the Peace of Münster (1648) the funded public debt of the province of Holland alone amounted to nearly 150,000,000 florins, bearing interest at five per cent.[797] Of this annual charge, the bulk must have gone into the pockets of the wealthier citizens, who had thus secured a mortgage on the entire industry of the nation. All the while, Holland was nominally rich in "possessions" beyond sea. When, in 1580, Philip annexed Portugal, with which the Dutch had hitherto carried on a profitable trade for the eastern products brought as tribute to Lisbon, they began to cast about for an Asiatic trade of their own, first seeking vainly for a north-east passage. The need was heightened when in 1586 Philip, who as a rule ignored the presence of Dutch traders in his ports under friendly flags, arrested all the Dutch shipping he could lay hands on;[798] and when in 1594 he closed to them the port of Lisbon, he forced them to a course which his successors bitterly rued. In 1595 they commenced trading by the Cape passage to the Indies, and a fleet sent out by Spain to put down their enterprise was as usual defeated.[799] Then arose a multitude of companies for the East Indian trade, which in 1602 were formed by the government into a great semi-official joint-stock concern, at once commercial and military, reminiscent of the Hanseatic League. The result was a long series of settlements and conquests. Amboyna and the Moluccas were seized from the Portuguese, now subordinate to Spain; Java, where a factory was founded in 1597, was in the next generation annexed; Henry Hudson, an English pilot in the Dutch Company's service, discovered the Hudson River and Bay in 1609, and founded New Amsterdam about 1624. In 1621 was formed the Dutch West India Company, which in fifteen years fitted out 800 ships of trade and war, captured 545 from the Spanish and Portuguese, with cargoes valued at 90,000,000 florins, and conquered the greater part of what had been the Portuguese empire in Brazil.