X.
SPAIN AND THE NETHERLANDS.[1]
Tandem fit surculus arbor: the twig which Mr.
Motley in his earlier volumes has described as slowly
putting forth its leaves and rootless, while painfully
struggling for existence in a hostile soil, has at last
grown into a mighty tree of liberty, drawing sustenance
from all lands, and protecting all civilized peoples with
its pleasant shade. We congratulate Mr. Motley upon
the successful completion of the second portion of his
great work; and we think that the Netherlanders of our
time have reason to be grateful to the writer who has
so faithfully and eloquently told the story of their country's
fearful struggle against civil and ecclesiastical
tyranny, and its manifold contributions to the advancement
of European civilization.
Mr. Motley has been fortunate in his selection of a
subject upon which to write. Probably no century of
modern times lends itself to the purposes of the descriptive
historian so well as the sixteenth. While on the
one hand the problems which it presents are sufficiently
near for us to understand them without too great an
effort of the imagination, on the other hand they are
sufficiently remote for us to study them without passionate
and warping prejudice. The contest between
Catholicism and the reformed religion—between ecclesiastical
autocracy and the right of private investigation—has
become a thing of the past, and constitutes
a closed chapter in human history. The epoch which
begins where Mr. Motley's history is designed to close—
at the peace of Westphalia—is far more complicated.
Since the middle of the seventeenth century a double
movement has been going on in religion and philosophy,
society and politics,—a movement of destruction typified
by Voltaire and Rousseau, and a constructive movement
represented by Diderot and Lessing. We are
still living in the midst of this great epoch: the questions
which it presents are liable to disturb our prejudices
as well as to stimulate our reason; the results to
which it must sooner or later attain can now be only
partially foreseen; and even its present tendencies are
generally misunderstood, and in many quarters wholly
ignored. With the sixteenth century, as we have said,
the case is far different. The historical problem is far
less complex. The issues at stake are comparatively
simple, and the historian has before him a straightforward
story.
From the dramatic, or rather from the epic, point of
view, the sixteenth century is pre-eminent. The essentially
transitional character of modern history since the
breaking up of the papal and feudal systems is at no
period more distinctly marked. In traversing the sixteenth
century we realize that we have fairly got out of
one state of things and into another. At the outset,
events like the challenge of Barletta may make us doubt
whether we have yet quite left behind the Middle Ages.
The belief in the central position of the earth is still
universal, and the belief in its rotundity not yet, until
the voyage of Magellan, generally accepted. We find
England—owing partly to the introduction of gunpowder
and the consequent disuse of archery, partly to
the results of the recent integration of France under
Louis XI.—fallen back from the high relative position
which it had occupied under the rule of the
Plantagenets; and its policy still directed in accordance
with reminiscences of Agincourt, and garnet,
and Burgundian alliances. We find France just beginning
her ill-fated career of intervention in the affairs
of Italy; and Spain, with her Moors finally vanquished
and a new world beyond the ocean just added
to her domain, rapidly developing into the greatest empire
which had been seen since the days of the first
Cæsars. But at the close of the century we find feudal
life in castles changed into modern life in towns; chivalric
defiances exchanged for over-subtle diplomacy;
Maurices instead of Bayards; a Henry IV. instead of a
Gaston de Foix. We find the old theory of man's central
position in the universe—the foundation of the
doctrine of final causes and of the whole theological
method of interpreting nature—finally overthrown by
Copernicus. Instead of the circumnavigability of the
earth, the discovery of a Northwest passage—as instanced
by the heroic voyage of Barendz, so nobly
described by Mr. Motley—is now the chief geographical
problem. East India Companies, in place of petty
guilds of weavers and bakers, bear witness to the vast
commercial progress. We find England, fresh from her
stupendous victory over the whole power of Spain, again
in the front rank of nations; France, under the most
astute of modern sovereigns, taking her place for a time
as the political leader of the civilized world; Spain,
with her evil schemes baffled in every quarter, sinking
into that terrible death-like lethargy, from which she
has hardly yet awakened, and which must needs call
forth our pity, though it is but the deserved retribution
for her past behaviour. While the little realm of the
Netherlands, filched and cozened from the unfortunate
Jacqueline by the "good" Duke of Burgundy, carried
over to Austria as the marriage-portion of Lady Mary,
sent down to Spain as the personal inheritance of the
"prudent" Philip, and by him intolerably tormented
with an Inquisition, a Blood-Council, and a Duke of
Alva, has after a forty years' war of independence taken
its position for a time as the greatest of commercial
nations, with the most formidable navy and one of the
best disciplined armies yet seen upon the earth.
But the central phenomenon of the sixteenth century
is the culmination of the Protestant movement in its
decisive proclamation by Luther. For nearly three
hundred years already the power of the Church had
been declining, and its function as a civilizing agency
had been growing more and more obsolete. The first
great blow at its supremacy had been directed with
partial success in the thirteenth century by the Emperor
Frederick II. Coincident with this attack from without,
we find a reformation begun within, as exemplified
in the Dominican and Franciscan movements. The
second great blow was aimed by Philip IV. of France,
and this time it struck with terrible force. The removal
of the Papacy to Avignon, in 1305, was the
virtual though unrecognized abdication of its beneficent
supremacy. Bereft of its dignity and independence,
from that time forth it ceased to be the defender of
national unity against baronial anarchy, of popular
rights against monarchical usurpation, and became a
formidable instrument of despotism and oppression.
Through the vicissitudes of the great schism in the
fourteenth century, and the refractory councils in the
fifteenth, its position became rapidly more and more
retrograde and demoralized. And when, in 1530, it
joined its forces with those of Charles V., in crushing
the liberties of the worthiest of mediæval republics, it
became evident that the cause of freedom and progress
must henceforth be intrusted to some more faithful
champion. The revolt of Northern Europe, led by
Luther and Henry VIII. was but the articulate announcement
of this altered state of affairs. So long as
the Roman Church had been felt to be the enemy of
tyrannical monarchs and the steadfast friend of the
people, its encroachments, as represented by men like
Dunstan and Becket, were regarded with popular favour.
The strength of the Church lay ever in its democratic
instincts; and when these were found to have abandoned
it, the indignant protest of Luther sufficed to
tear away half of Europe from its allegiance.
By the end of the sixteenth century, we find the territorial
struggle between the Church and the reformed
religion substantially decided. Protestantism and Catholicism
occupied then the same respective areas which
they now occupy. Since 1600 there has been no instance
of a nation passing from one form of worship to
the other; and in all probability there never will be.
Since the wholesale dissolution of religious beliefs
wrought in the last century, the whole issue between
Romanism and Protestantism, regarded as dogmatic systems,
is practically dead. M. Renan is giving expression
to an almost self-evident truth, when he says that
religious development is no longer to proceed by way
of sectarian proselytism, but by way of harmonious
internal development. The contest is no longer between
one theology and another, but it is between
the theological and the scientific methods of interpreting
natural phenomena. The sixteenth century has
to us therefore the interest belonging to a rounded and
completed tale. It contains within itself substantially
the entire history of the final stage of the theological
reformation.
This great period falls naturally into two divisions,
the first corresponding very nearly with the reigns of
Charles V. and Henry VIII., and the second with the
age of Philip II. and Elizabeth. The first of these
periods was filled with the skirmishes which were to
open the great battle of the Reformation. At first the
strength and extent of the new revolution were not
altogether apparent. While the Inquisition was vigorously
crushing out the first symptoms of disaffection
in Spain, it at one time seemed as if the Reformers
were about to gain the whole of the Empire, besides
acquiring an excellent foothold in France. Again,
while England was wavering between the old and the
new faith, the last hopes of the Reform in Germany
seemed likely to be destroyed by the military genius
of Charles. But in Maurice, the red-bearded hero of
Saxony, Charles found more than his match. The
picture of the rapid and desperate march of Maurice
upon Innspruck, and of the great Emperor flying for his
life at the very hour of his imagined triumph, has still
for us an intenser interest than almost any other scene
of that age; for it was the event which proved that
Protestantism was not a mere local insurrection which
a monarch like Charles could easily put down, but a
gigantic revolution against which all the powers in the
world might well strive in vain.
With the abdication of Charles in 1556 the new
period may be said to begin, and it is here that Mr.
Motley's history commences. Events crowded thick
and fast. In 1556 Philip II., a prince bred and educated
for the distinct purpose of suppressing heresy,
succeeded to the rule of the most powerful empire
which had been seen since the days of the Antonines.
In the previous year a new era had begun at the court
of Rome. The old race of pagan pontiffs, the Borgias,
the Farneses, and the Medicis, had come to an end,
and the papal throne was occupied by the puritanical
Caraffa, as violent a fanatic as Robespierre, and a foe
of freedom as uncompromising as Philip II. himself.
Under his auspices took place the great reform in the
Church signalized by the rise of the Jesuits, as the
reform in the thirteenth century had been attended
by the rise of the Cordeliers and Dominicans. His
name should not be forgotten, for it is mainly owing
to the policy inaugurated by him that Catholicism was
enabled to hold its ground as well as it did. In 1557
the next year, the strength of France was broken at
St. Quentin, and Spain was left with her hands free
to deal with the Protestant powers. In 1558, by the
accession of Elizabeth, England became committed to
the cause of Reform. In 1559 the stormy administration
of Margaret began in the Netherlands. In 1560
the Scotch nobles achieved the destruction of Catholicism
in North Britain. By this time every nation
except France, had taken sides in the conflict which
was to last, with hardly any cessation, during two
generations.
Mr. Motley, therefore, in describing the rise and
progress of the united republic of the Netherlands, is
writing not Dutch but European history. On his pages
France, Spain, and England make almost as large a
figure as Holland itself. He is writing the history of
the Reformation during its concluding epoch, and he
chooses the Netherlands as his main subject, because
during that period the Netherlands were the centre of
the movement. They constituted the great bulwark of
freedom, and upon the success or failure of their cause
the future prospect of Europe and of mankind depended.
Spain and the Netherlands, Philip II. and
William the Silent, were the two leading antagonists
and were felt to be such by the other nations and rulers
that came to mingle in the strife. It is therefore a
stupid criticism which we have seen made upon Mr.
Motley, that, having brought his narrative down to the
truce of 1609, he ought, instead of describing the Thirty
Years' War, to keep on with Dutch history, and pourtray
the wars against Cromwell and Charles II., and
the struggle of the second William of Orange against
Louis XIV. By so doing he would only violate the
unity of his narrative. The wars of the Dutch against
England and France belong to an entirely different
epoch in European history,—a modern epoch, in which
political and commercial interests were of prime importance,
and theological interests distinctly subsidiary.
The natural terminus of Mr. Motley's work is the
Peace of Westphalia. After bringing down his history
to the time when the independence of the Netherlands
was virtually acknowledged, after describing the principal
stages of the struggle against Catholicism and universal
monarchy, as carried on in the first generation
by Elizabeth and William, and in the second by Maurice
and Henry, he will naturally go on to treat of the
epilogue as conducted by Richelieu and Gustavus, ending
in the final cessation of religious wars throughout
Europe.
The conflict in the Netherlands was indeed far more
than a mere religious struggle. In its course was distinctly
brought into prominence the fact which we
have above signalized, that since the Roman Church
had abandoned the liberties of the people they had
found a new defender in the reformed religion. The
Dutch rebellion is peculiarly interesting, because it was
a revolt not merely against the Inquisition, but also
against the temporal sovereignty of Philip. Besides
changing their religion, the sturdy Netherlanders saw
fit to throw off the sway of their legitimate ruler, and
to proclaim the thrice heretical doctrine of the sovereignty
of the people. In this one respect their views
were decidedly more modern than those of Elizabeth
and Henry IV. These great monarchs apparently neither
understood nor relished the republican theories of the
Hollanders; though it is hardly necessary for Mr. Motley
to sneer at them quite so often because they were
not to an impossible degree in advance of their age.
The proclamation of a republic in the Netherlands
marked of itself the beginning of a new era,—an era
when flourishing communities of men were no longer
to be bought and sold, transferred and bequeathed like
real estate and chattels, but were to have and maintain
the right of choosing with whom and under whom
they should transact their affairs. The interminable
negotiations for a truce, which fill nearly one third of Mr.
Motley's concluding volume, exhibit with striking distinctness
the difference between the old and new points
of view. Here again we think Mr. Motley errs slightly,
in calling too much attention to the prevaricating diplomacy
of the Spanish court, and too little to its
manifest inability to comprehend the demands of the
Netherlanders. How should statesmen brought up
under Philip II. and kept under the eye of the Inquisition
be expected to understand a claim for liberty
originating in the rights of the common people and not
in the gracious benevolence or intelligent policy of the
King? The very idea must have been practically
inconceivable by them. Accordingly, they strove by
every available device of chicanery to wheedle the
Netherlanders into accepting their independence as a
gift from the King of Spain. But to such a piece of
self-stultification the clear-sighted Dutchmen could by
no persuasion be brought to consent. Their independence,
they argued, was not the King's to give.
They had won it from him and his father, in a war of
forty years, during which they had suffered atrocious
miseries, and all that the King of Spain could do was
to acknowledge it as their right, and cease to molest
them in future. Over this point, so simple to us but
knotty enough in those days, the commissioners wrangled
for nearly two years. And when the Spanish government,
unable to carry on the war any longer without
risk of utter bankruptcy, and daily crippled in its
resources by the attacks of the Dutch navy, grudgingly
a reed to a truce upon the Netherlanders' terms, it
virtually acknowledged its own defeat and the downfall
of the principles for which it had so obstinately fought.
By the truce of 1609 the republican principle was
admitted by the most despotic of governments.
Here was the first great triumph of republicanism
over monarchy; and it was not long in bearing fruits.
For the Dutch revolution, the settlement of America
by English Puritans, the great rebellion of the Commons,
the Revolution of 1688, the revolt of the American
Colonies, and the general overthrow of feudalism
in 1789, are but successive acts in the same drama
William the Silent was the worthy forerunner of Cromwell
and Washington; and but for the victory which
he won, during his life and after his untimely death,
the subsequent triumphs of civil liberty might have
been long, postponed.
Over the sublime figure of William—sævis tranquillus
in undis—we should be glad to dwell, but we
are not reviewing the "Rise of the Dutch Republic,"
and in Mr. Motley's present volumes the hero of toleration
appears no longer. His antagonist, however,—the
Philip whom God for some inscrutable purpose permitted
to afflict Europe during a reign of forty-two
years,—accompanies us nearly to the end of the present
work, dying just in time for the historian to sum up the
case against him, and pronounce final judgment. For
the memory of Philip II. Mr. Motley cherishes no weak
pity. He rarely alludes to him without commenting
upon his total depravity, and he dismisses him with the
remark that "if there are vices—as possibly there are
—from which he was exempt, it is because it is not
permitted to human nature to attain perfection in evil."
The verdict is none the less just because of its conciseness.
If there ever was a strife between Hercules and
Cacus, between Ormuzd and Ahriman, between the
Power of Light and the Power of Darkness, it was
certainly the strife between the Prince of Orange and
the Spanish Monarch. They are contrasted like the
light and shade in one of Doré's pictures. And yet it
is perhaps unnecessary for Mr. Motley to say that if
Philip had been alive when Spinola won for him the
great victory of Ostend, "he would have felt it his duty
to make immediate arrangements for poisoning him."
Doubtless the imputation is sufficiently justified by
what we know of Philip; but it is uncalled for. We
do not care to hear about what the despot might have
done. We know what he did do, and the record is sufficiently
damning. There is no harm in our giving the
Devil his due, or as Llorente wittily says, "
Il ne faut
pas calomnier même l'Inquisition."
Philip inherited all his father's bad qualities, without
any of his good ones; and so it is much easier to judge
him than his father. Charles, indeed, is one of those
characters whom one hardly knows whether to love or
hate, to admire or despise. He had much bad blood in
him. Charles the Bold and Ferdinand of Aragon were
not grandparents to be proud of. Yet with all this he
inherited from his grandmother Isabella much that one
can like, and his face, as preserved by Titian, in spite
of its frowning brow and thick Burgundian lip, is rather
prepossessing, while the face of Philip is simply odious.
In intellect he must probably be called great, though
his policy often betrayed the pettiness of selfishness.
If, in comparison with the mediæval emperor whose
fame he envied, he may justly be called Charles the
Little, he may still, when compared to a more modern
emulator of Charlemagne,—the first of the Bonapartes,
—be considered great and enlightened. If he could lie
and cheat more consummately than any contemporary
monarch, not excepting his rival, Francis, he could still
be grandly magnanimous, while the generosity of Francis
flowed only from the shallow surface of a maudlin
good-nature. He spoke many languages and had the
tastes of a scholar, while his son had only the inclinations
of an unfeeling pedagogue. He had an inkling
of urbanity, and could in a measure become all things
to all men, while Philip could never show himself except
as a gloomy, impracticable bigot. It is for some
such reasons as these, I suppose, that Mr. Buckle—no
friend to despots—speaks well of Charles, and that Mr.
Froude is moved to tell the following anecdote: While
standing by the grave of Luther, and musing over the
strange career of the giant monk whose teachings had
gone so far to wreck his most cherished schemes and
render his life a failure, some fanatical bystander advised
the Emperor to have the body taken up and
burned in the market-place. "There was nothing," says
Mr. Froude, "unusual in the proposal; it was the common
practice of the Catholic Church with the remains
of heretics, who were held unworthy to be left in repose
in hallowed ground. There was scarcely, perhaps
another Catholic prince who would have hesitated to
comply. But Charles was one of nature's gentlemen.
He answered, `I war not with the dead.' " Mr. Motley
takes a less charitable view of the great Emperor. His
generous indignation against all persecutors makes him
severe; and in one of his earlier volumes, while speaking
of the famous edicts for the suppression of heresy
in the Netherlands, he somewhere uses the word "murder."
Without attempting to palliate the crime of persecution,
I doubt if it is quite fair to Charles to call
him a murderer. We must not forget that persecution,
now rightly deemed an atrocious crime, was once really
considered by some people a sacred duty; that it was none
other than the compassionate Isabella who established
the Spanish Inquisition; and that the "bloody" Mary
Tudor was a woman who would not wilfully have done
wrong. With the progress of civilization the time
will doubtless come when warfare, having ceased to be
necessary, will be thought highly criminal; yet it will
not then be fair to hold Marlborough or Wellington
accountable for the lives lost in their great battles. We
still live in an age when war is, to the imagination of
some persons, surrounded with false glories; and the
greatest of modern generals
[2]
has still many undiscriminating
admirers. Yet the day is no less certainly at
hand when the edicts of Charles V. will be deemed a
more pardonable offence against humanity than the
wanton march to Moscow.
Philip II. was different from his father in capacity as
a drudging clerk, like Boutwell, is different from a brilliant
financier like Gladstone. In organization he differed
from him as a boor differs from a gentleman. He
seemed made of a coarser clay. The difference between
them is well indicated by their tastes at the table.
Both were terrible gluttons, a fact which puritanic criticism
might set down as equally to the discredit of each
of them. But even in intemperance there are degrees
of refinement, and the impartial critic of life and manners
will no doubt say that if one must get drunk, let
it be on Château Margaux rather than on commissary
whiskey. Pickled partridges, plump capons, syrups of
fruits, delicate pastry, and rare fish went to make up
the diet of Charles in his last days at Yuste. But the
beastly Philip would make himself sick with a surfeit
of underdone pork.
Whatever may be said of the father, we can hardly
go far wrong in ascribing the instincts of a murderer to
the son. He not only burned heretics, but he burned
them with an air of enjoyment and self-complacency.
His nuptials with Elizabeth of France were celebrated
by a vast auto-da-fé. He studied murder as a fine art,
and was as skilful in private assassinations as Cellini
was in engraving on gems. The secret execution of
Montigny, never brought to light until the present century,
was a veritable
chef d'œuvre of this sort. The cases
of Escobedo and Antonio Perez may also be cited in point.
Dark suspicions hung around the premature death of
Don John of Austria, his too brilliant and popular half-brother. He planned the murder of William the Silent,
and rewarded the assassin with an annuity furnished by
the revenues of the victim's confiscated estates. He
kept a staff of ruffians constantly in service for the purpose
of taking off Elizabeth, Henry IV., Prince Maurice,
Olden-Barneveldt, and St. Aldegonde. He instructed
Alva to execute sentence of death upon the whole population
of the Netherlands. He is partly responsible
for the martyrdoms of Ridley and Latimer, and the judicial
murder of Cranmer. He first conceived the idea
of the wholesale massacre of St. Bartholomew, many years
before Catharine de' Medici carried it into operation.
His ingratitude was as dangerous as his revengeful fanaticism.
Those who had best served his interests were
the least likely to escape the consequences of his jealousy.
He destroyed Egmont, who had won for him the
splendid victories of St. Quentin and Gravelines; and
"with minute and artistic treachery" he plotted "the
disgrace and ruin" of Farnese, "the man who was his
near blood-relation, and who had served him most faithfully
from earliest youth." Contemporary opinion even
held him accountable for the obscure deaths of his wife
Elizabeth and his son Carlos; but M. Gachard has shown
that this suspicion is unfounded. Philip appears perhaps
to better advantage in his domestic than in his
political relations. Yet he was addicted to vulgar and
miscellaneous incontinence; toward the close of his life
he seriously contemplated marrying his own daughter
Isabella; and he ended by taking for his fourth wife his
niece, Anne of Austria, who became the mother of his
half-idiotic son and successor. We know of no royal
family, unless it may be the Claudians of Rome, in
which the transmission of moral and intellectual qualities
is more thoroughly illustrated than in this Burgundian
race which for two centuries held the sceptre of
Spain. The son Philip and the grandmother Isabella
are both needful in order to comprehend the strange
mixture of good and evil in Charles. But the descendants
of Philip—two generations of idiocy, and a third
of utter impotence—are a sufficient commentary upon
the organization and character of their progenitor.
Such was the man who for two generations had been
considered the bulwark of the Catholic Church; who,
having been at the bottom of nearly all the villany that
had been wrought in Europe for half a century, was yet
able to declare upon his death-bed that "in all his life
he had never consciously done wrong to any one." At
a ripe old age he died of a fearful disease. Under the
influence of a typhus fever, supervening upon gout, he
had begun to decompose while yet alive. "His sufferings,"
says Mr. Motley, "were horrible, but no saint
could have manifested in them more gentle resignation
or angelic patience. He moralized on the condition to
which the greatest princes might thus be brought at last
by the hand of God, and bade the Prince observe well
his father's present condition, in order that when he too
should be laid thus low, he might likewise be sustained
by a conscience void of offence." What more is needed
to complete the disgusting picture? Philip was fanatical
up to the point where fanaticism borders upon hypocrisy.
He was possessed with a "great moral idea,"
the idea of making Catholicism the ruler of the world,
that he might be the ruler of Catholicism. Why, it may
be said, shall the charge of fanaticism be allowed to absolve
Isabella and extenuate the guilt of Charles, while
it only strengthens the case against Philip? Because
Isabella persecuted heretics in order to save their souls
from a worse fate, while Philip burnt them in order to
get them out of his way. Isabella would perhaps have
gone to the stake herself, if thereby she might have put
an end to heresy. Philip would have seen every soul
in Europe consigned to eternal perdition before he would
have yielded up an iota of his claims to universal dominion.
He could send Alva to browbeat the Pope, as
well as to oppress the Netherlanders. He could compass
the destruction of the orthodox Egmont and Farnese, as
well as of the heretical William. His unctuous piety
only adds to the abhorrence with which we regard him;
and his humility in face of death is neither better nor
worse than the assumed humility which had become
second nature to Uriah Heep. In short, take him for
all in all, he was probably the most loathsome character
in all European history. He has frequently been
called, by Protestant historians, an incarnate devil;
but we do not think that Mephistopheles would
acknowledge him. He should rather be classed among
those creatures described by Dante as "a Dio spiacenti
ed ai nemici sui."
The abdication of Charles V. left Philip ruler over
wider dominions than had ever before been brought together
under the sway of one man. In his own right
Philip was master not only of Spain, but of the Netherlands,
Franche Comté, Lombardy, Naples, and Sicily,
with the whole of North and South America; besides
which he was married to the Queen of England. In the
course of his reign he became possessed of Portugal, with
all its vast domains in the East Indies. His revenues
were greater than those of any other contemporary monarch;
his navy was considered invincible, and his army
was the best disciplined in Europe. All these great
advantages he was destined to throw to the winds. In
the strife for universal monarchy, in the mad endeavour
to subject England, Scotland, and France to his own
dominion and the tyranny of the Inquisition, besides re-conquering the Netherlands, all his vast resources were
wasted. The Dutch war alone, like a bottomless pit,
absorbed all that he could pour into it. Long before the
war was over, or showed signs of drawing to an end, his
revenues were wasted, and his troops in Flanders were
mutinous for want of pay. He had to rely upon energetic
viceroys like Farnese and the Spinolas to furnish
funds out of their own pockets. Finally, he was obliged
to repudiate all his debts; and when he died the Spanish
empire was in such a beggarly condition that it
quaked at every approach of a hostile Dutch fleet. Such
a result is not evidence of a statesmanlike ability; but
Philip's fanatical selfishness was incompatible with
statesmanship. He never could be made to believe that his
projects had suffered defeat. No sooner had the Invincible
Armada been sent to the bottom by the guns of
the English fleet and the gales of the German Ocean,
than he sent orders to Farnese to invade England at
once with the land force under his command! He
thought to obtain Scotland, when, after the death of
Mary, it had passed under the undisputed control of the
Protestant noblemen. He dreamed of securing for his
family the crown of France, even after Henry, with free
consent of the Pope, had made his triumphal entry into
Paris. He asserted complete and entire sovereignty
over the Netherlands, even after Prince Maurice had
won back from him the last square foot of Dutch territory.
Such obstinacy as this can only be called fatuity.
If Philip had lived in Pagan times, he would doubtless,
like Caligula, have demanded recognition of his
own divinity.
The miserable condition of the Spanish people under
this terrible reign, and the causes of their subsequent
degeneracy, have been well treated by Mr. Motley. The
causes of the failure of Spanish civilization are partly
social and partly economical; and they had been operating
for eight hundred years when Philip succeeded to
the throne. The Moorish conquest in 711 had practically
isolated Spain from the rest of Europe. In the
Crusades she took no part, and reaped none of the signal
advantages resulting from that great movement.
Her whole energies were directed toward throwing off
the yoke of her civilized but "unbelieving" oppressors.
For a longer time than has now elapsed since the Norman
Conquest of England, the entire Gothic population
of Spain was engaged in unceasing religious and patriotic
warfare. The unlimited power thus acquired by
an unscrupulous clergy, and the spirit of uncompromising
bigotry thus imparted to the whole nation, are in
this way readily accounted for. But in spite of this,
the affairs of Spain at the accession of Charles V. were
not in an unpromising condition. The Spanish Visigoths
had been the least barbarous of the Teutonic
settlers within the limits of the Empire; their civil
institutions were excellent; their cities had obtained
municipal liberties at an earlier date than those of England;
and their Parliaments indulged in a liberty of
speech which would have seemed extravagant even to
De Montfort. So late as the time of Ferdinand, the
Spaniards were still justly proud of their freedom; and
the chivalrous ambition which inspired the marvellous
expedition of Cortes to Mexico, and covered the soil of
Italy with Spanish armies, was probably in the main a
healthy one. But the forces of Spanish freedom were
united at too late an epoch; in 1492, the power of
despotism was already in the ascendant. In England the
case was different. The barons were enabled to combine
and wrest permanent privileges from the crown, at
a time when feudalism was strong. But the Spanish
communes waited for combined action until feudalism
had become weak, and modern despotism, with its
standing armies and its control of the spiritual power,
was arrayed in the ranks against them. The War of
the Communes, early in the reign of Charles V., irrevocably
decided the case in favour of despotism, and
from that date the internal decline of Spain may be said
to have begun.
But the triumphant consolidation of the spiritual and
temporal powers of despotism, and the abnormal development
of loyalty and bigotry, were not the only evil
results of the chronic struggle in which Spain had been
engaged. For many centuries, while Christian Spain
had been but a fringe of debatable border-land on the
skirts of the Moorish kingdom, perpetual guerilla warfare
had rendered consecutive labour difficult or impracticable;
and the physical configuration of the country
contributed in bringing about this result. To plunder
the Moors across the border was easier than to till the
ground at home. Then as the Spaniards, exemplifying
the military superiority of the feudal over the sultanic
form of social organization, proceeded steadily to recover
dominion over the land, the industrious Moors, instead
of migrating backward before the advance of their
conquerors, remained at home and submitted to them.
Thus Spanish society became compounded of two distinct
castes,—the Moorish Spaniards, who were skilled
labourers, and the Gothic Spaniards, by whom all labour,
crude or skilful, was deemed the stigma of a conquered
race, and unworthy the attention of respectable people.
As Mr. Motley concisely says:—
"The highest industrial and scientific civilization that
had been exhibited upon Spanish territory was that of
Moors and Jews. When in the course of time those
races had been subjugated, massacred, or driven into
exile, not only was Spain deprived of its highest intellectual
culture and its most productive labour, but intelligence,
science, and industry were accounted degrading,
because the mark of inferior and detested peoples."
This is the key to the whole subsequent history of
Spain. Bigotry, loyalty, and consecrated idleness are
the three factors which have made that great country
what it is to-day,—the most backward region in Europe.
In view of the circumstances just narrated, it is not
surprising to learn that in Philip II.'s time a vast portion
of the real estate of the country was held by the
Church in mortmain; that forty-nine noble families
owned all the rest; that all great estates were held in
tail; and that the property of the aristocracy and the
clergy was completely exempt from taxation. Thus the
accumulation and the diffusion of capital were alike
prevented; and the few possessors of property wasted
it in unproductive expenditure. Hence the fundamental
error of Spanish political economy, that wealth
is represented solely by the precious metals; an error
which well enough explains the total failure, in spite of
her magnificent opportunities, of Spain's attempts to
colonize the New World. Such was the frightful condition
of Spanish society under Philip II.; and as if
this state of things were not bad enough, the next king,
Philip III., at the instigation of the clergy, decided to
drive into banishment the only class of productive labourers
yet remaining in the country. In 1610, this
stupendous crime and blunder—unparalleled even in
Spanish history—was perpetrated. The entire Moorish
population were expelled from their homes and
driven into the deserts of Africa. For the awful consequences
of this mad action no remedy was possible. No
system of native industry could be created on demand,
to take the place of that which had been thus wantonly
crushed forever. From this epoch dates the social ruin
of Spain. In less than a century her people were riotous
with famine; and every sequestered glen and mountain
pathway throughout the country had become a
lurking-place for robbers. Whoever would duly realize
to what a lamentable condition this beautiful peninsula
had in the seventeenth century been reduced, let him
study the immortal pages of Lesage. He will learn
afresh the lesson, not yet sufficiently regarded in the
discussion of social problems, that the laws of nature cannot
be violated without entailing a penalty fearful in
proportion to the extent of the violation. But let him
carefully remember also that the Spaniards are not and
never have been a despicable people. If Spain has produced
one of the lowest characters in history, she has also
produced one of the highest. That man was every inch
a Spaniard who, maimed, diseased, and poor, broken
down by long captivity, and harassed by malignant persecution,
lived nevertheless a life of grandeur and beauty
fit to be a pattern for coming generations,—the author
of a book which has had a wider fame than any other in
the whole range of secular literature, and which for delicate
humour, exquisite pathos, and deep ethical sentiment,
remains to-day without a peer or a rival. If
Philip II. was a Spaniard, so, too, was Cervantes.
Spain could not be free, for she violated every condition
by which freedom is secured to a people. "Acuteness
of intellect, wealth of imagination, heroic qualities
of heart and hand and brain, rarely surpassed in any
race and manifested on a thousand battle-fields, and in
the triumphs of a magnificent and most original literature,
had not been able to save a whole nation from the
disasters and the degradation which the mere words
Philip II. and the Holy Inquisition suggest to every
educated mind." Nor could Spain possibly become
rich, for, as Mr. Motley continues, "nearly every law,
according to which the prosperity of a country becomes
progressive, was habitually violated." On turning to
the Netherlands we find the most complete contrast,
both in historical conditions and in social results; and
the success of the Netherlands in their long struggle
becomes easily intelligible. The Dutch and Flemish
provinces had formed a part of the renovated Roman
Empire of Charles the Great and the Othos. Taking
advantage of the perennial contest for supremacy between
the popes and the Roman emperors, the constituent
baronies and municipalities of the Empire succeeded
in acquiring and maintaining a practical though unrecognized
independence; and this is the original reason
why Italy and Germany, unlike the three western European
communities, have remained fragmentary until
our own time. By reason of the practical freedom of
action thus secured, the Italian civic republics, the
Hanse towns, and the cities of Holland and Flanders,
were enabled gradually to develop a vast commerce.
The outlying position of the Netherlands, remote from
the imperial authorities, and on the direct line of commerce
between Italy and England, was another and a
peculiar advantage. Throughout the Middle Ages the
Flemish and Dutch cities were of considerable political
importance, and in the fifteenth century the Netherland
provinces were the most highly civilized portion of Europe
north of the Alps. For several generations they
had enjoyed, and had known how to maintain, civic
liberties, and when Charles and Philip attempted to
fasten upon them their "peculiar institution," the Spanish
Inquisition, they were ripe for political as well
as theological revolt. Natural laws were found to operate
on the Rhine as well as on the Tagus, and at the
end of the great war of independence, Holland was
not only better equipped than Spain for a European
conflict, but was rapidly ousting her from the East Indian
countries which she had in vain attempted to
colonize.
But if we were to take up all the interesting and instructive
themes suggested by Mr. Motley's work, we
should never come to an end. We must pass over
the exciting events narrated in these last volumes;
the victory of Nieuport, the siege of Ostend, the marvellous
career of Maurice, the surprising exploits of
Spinola. We have attempted not so much to describe
Mr. Motley's book as to indulge in sundry reflections
suggested by the perusal of it. But we cannot close
without some remarks upon a great man, whose character
Mr. Motley seems to have somewhat misconceived.
If Mr. Motley exhibits any serious fault, it is perhaps
the natural tendency to take sides in the events
which he is describing, which sometimes operates as
a drawback to complete and thoroughgoing criticism.
With every intention to do justice to the Catholics, Mr.
Motley still writes as a Protestant, viewing all questions
from the Protestant side. He praises and condemns
like a very fair-minded Huguenot, but still like a Huguenot.
It is for this reason that he fails to interpret
correctly the very complex character of Henry IV., regarding
him as a sort of selfish renegade whom he cannot
quite forgive for accepting the crown of France at
the hands of the Pope. Now this very action of Henry,
in the eye of an impartial criticism, must seem to be
one of his chief claims to the admiration and gratitude
of posterity. Henry was more than a mere Huguenot:
he was a far-seeing statesman. He saw clearly what no
ruler before him, save William the Silent, had even
dimly discerned, that not Catholicism and not Protestantism,
but absolute spiritual freedom was the true end
to be aimed at by a righteous leader of opinion. It was
as a Catholic sovereign that he could be most useful
even to his Huguenot subjects; and he shaped his course
accordingly. It was as an orthodox sovereign, holding
his position by the general consent of Europe, that he
could best subserve the interests of universal toleration.
This principle he embodied in his admirable edict of
Nantes. What a Huguenot prince might have done,
may be seen from the shameful way in which the French
Calvinists abused the favour which Henry—and Richelieu
afterwards—accorded to them. Remembering how
Calvin himself "dragooned" Geneva, let us be thankful
for the fortune which, in one of the most critical periods
of history, raised to the highest position in Christendom
a man who was something more than a sectarian.
With this brief criticism, we must regretfully take
leave of Mr. Motley's work. Much more remains to be
said about a historical treatise which is, on the whole,
the most valuable and important one yet produced by
an American; but we have already exceeded our limits.
We trust that our author will be as successful in the
future as he has been in the past; and that we shall
soon have an opportunity of welcoming the first instalment
of his "History of the Thirty Years' War."
March, 1868.
[[1]]
History of the United Netherlands: from the Death of William
the Silent to the Twelve Years' Truce, 1609. By John Lothrop Motley,
D. C. L. In four volumes. Vols. III. and IV. New York.
1868.
[[2]]
This was written before the deeds of Moltke had eclipsed those of
Napoleon.