No More Learning

All buying and selling ceased, the value of houses fell, the employment
of artisans stopped. Money disappeared from the hands of the citizen.
The ruin of that flourishing commercial city was inevitable had not
Charles V. listened to the representations of the Duchess of Parma, and
abandoned this perilous resolve. The tribunal, therefore, was ordered
not to interfere with the foreign merchants, and the title of Inquisitor
was changed unto the milder appellation of Spiritual Judge. But in the
other provinces that tribunal proceeded to rage with the inhuman
despotism which has ever been peculiar to it. It has been computed that
during the reign of Charles V. fifty thousand persons perished by the
hand of the executioner for religion alone.

When we glance at the violent proceedings of this monarch we are quite
at a loss to comprehend what it was that kept the rebellion within
bounds during his reign, which broke out with so much violence under his
successor. A closer investigation will clear up this seeming anomaly.
Charles's dreaded supremacy in Europe had raised the commerce of the
Netherlands to a height which it had never before attained. The majesty
of his name opened all harbors, cleared all seas for their vessels, and
obtained for them the most favorable commercial treaties with foreign
powers. Through him, in particular, they destroyed the dominion of the
Hanse towns in the Baltic. Through him, also, the New World, Spain,
Italy, Germany, which now shared with them a common ruler, were, in a
measure, to be considered as provinces of their own country, and opened
new channels for their commerce. He had, moreover, united the remaining
six provinces with the hereditary states of Burgundy, and thus given to
them an extent and political importance which placed them by the side of
the first kingdoms of Europe.

[He had, too, at one time the intention of raising it to a kingdom;
but the essential points of difference between the provinces, which
extended from constitution and manners to measures and weights,
soon made him abandon this design. More important was the service
which he designed them in the Burgundian treaty, which settled its
relation to the German empire. According to this treaty the
seventeen provinces were to contribute to the common wants of the
German empire twice as much as an electoral prince; in case of a
Turkish war three times as much; in return for which, however, they
were to enjoy the powerful protection of this empire, and not to be
injured in any of their various privileges. The revolution, which
under Charles' son altered the political constitution of the
provinces, again annulled this compact, which, on account of the
trifling advantage that it conferred, deserves no further notice. ]

By all this he flattered the national pride of this people. Moreover,
by the incorporation of Gueldres, Utrecht, Friesland, and Groningen with
these provinces, he put an end to the private wars which had so long
disturbed their commerce; an unbroken internal peace now allowed them to
enjoy the full fruits of their industry. Charles was therefore a
benefactor of this people. At the same time, the splendor of his
victories dazzled their eyes; the glory of their sovereign, which was
reflected upon them also, had bribed their republican vigilance; while
the awe-inspiring halo of invincibility which encircled the conqueror of
Germany, France, Italy, and Africa terrified the factious. And then,
who knows not on how much may venture the man, be he a private
individual or a prince, who has succeeded in enchaining the admiration
of his fellow-creatures! His repeated personal visits to these lands,
which he, according to his own confession, visited as often as ten
different times, kept the disaffected within bounds; the constant
exercise of severe and prompt justice maintained the awe of the royal
power. Finally, Charles was born in the Netherlands, and loved the
nation in whose lap he had grown up. Their manners pleased him, the
simplicity of their character and social intercourse formed for him a
pleasing recreation from the severe Spanish gravity. He spoke their
language, and followed their customs in his private life. The
burdensome ceremonies which form the unnatural barriers between king and
people were banished from Brussels. No jealous foreigner debarred
natives from access to their prince; their way to him was through their
own countrymen, to whom he entrusted his person. He spoke much and
courteously with them; his deportment was engaging, his discourse
obliging. These simple artifices won for him their love, and while
his armies trod down their cornfields, while his rapacious imposts
diminished their property, while his governors oppressed, his
executioners slaughtered, he secured their hearts by a friendly
demeanor.

Gladly would Charles have seen this affection of the nation for himself
descend upon his son. On this account he sent for him in his youth from
Spain, and showed him in Brussels to his future subjects. On the solemn
day of his abdication he recommended to him these lands as the richest
jewel in his crown, and earnestly exhorted him to respect their laws and
privileges.

Philip II. was in all the direct opposite of his father. As ambitious
as Charles, but with less knowledge of men and of the rights of man, he
had formed to himself a notion of royal authority which regarded men as
simply the servile instruments of despotic will, and was outraged by
every symptom of liberty. Born in Spain, and educated under the iron
discipline of the monks, he demanded of others the same gloomy formality
and reserve as marked his own character. The cheerful merriment of his
Flemish subjects was as uncongenial to his disposition and temper as
their privileges were offensive to his imperious will. He spoke no
other language but the Spanish, endured none but Spaniards about his
person, and obstinately adhered to all their customs. In vain did the
loyal ingenuity of the Flemish towns through which he passed vie with
each other in solemnizing his arrival with costly festivities.

[The town of Antwerp alone expended on an occasion of this kind two
hundred and sixty thousand gold florins. ]

Philip's eye remained dark; all the profusion of magnificence, all the
loud and hearty effusions of the sincerest joy could not win from him
one approving smile.

Charles entirely missed his aim by presenting his son to the Flemings.
They might eventually have endured his yoke with less impatience if he
had never set his foot in their land. But his look forewarned them what
they had to expect; his entry into Brussels lost him all hearts. The
Emperor's gracious affability with his people only served to throw a
darker shade on the haughty gravity of his son. They read in his
countenance the destructive purpose against their liberties which, even
then, he already revolved in his breast. Forewarned to find in him a
tyrant they were forearmed to resist him.

The throne of the Netherlands was the first which Charles V. abdicated.
Before a solemn convention in Brussels he absolved the States-General of
their oath, and transferred their allegiance to King Philip, his son.
"If my death," addressing the latter, as he concluded, "had placed you
in possession of these countries, even in that case so valuable a
bequest would have given me great claims on your gratitude. But now
that of my free will I transfer them to you, now that I die in order to
hasten your enjoyment of them, I only require of you to pay to the
people the increased obligation which the voluntary surrender of my
dignity lays upon you. Other princes esteem it a peculiar felicity to
bequeath to their children the crown which death is already ravishing
from then. This happiness I am anxious to enjoy during my life. I wish
to be a spectator of your reign. Few will follow my example, as few
have preceded me in it. But this my deed will be praised if your future
life should justify my expectations, if you continue to be guided by
that wisdom which you have hitherto evinced, if you remain inviolably
attached to the pure faith which is the main pillar of your throne. One
thing more I have to add: may Heaven grant you also a son, to whom you
may transmit your power by choice, and not by necessity. "

After the Emperor had concluded his address Philip kneeled down before
him, kissed his hand, and received his paternal blessing. His eyes for
the last time were moistened with a tear. All present wept. It was an
hour never to be forgotten.

This affecting farce was soon followed by another. Philip received the
homage of the assembled states. He took the oath administered in the
following words: "I, Philip, by the grace of God, Prince of Spain, of
the two Sicilies, etc. , do vow and swear that I will be a good and just
lord in these countries, counties, and duchies, etc. ; that I will well
and truly hold, and cause to be held, the privileges and liberties of
all the nobles, towns, commons, and subjects which have been conferred
upon them by my predecessors, and also the customs, usages and rights
which they now have and enjoy, jointly and severally, and, moreover,
that I will do all that by law and right pertains to a good and just
prince and lord, so help me God and all His Saints. "

The alarm which the arbitrary government of the Emperor had inspired,
and the distrust of his son, are already visible in the formula of this
oath, which was drawn up in far more guarded and explicit terms than
that which had been administered to Charles V. himself and all the Dukes
in Burgundy. Philip, for instance, was compelled to swear to the
maintenance of their customs and usages, what before his time had never
been required. In the oath which the states took to him no other
obedience was promised than such as should be consistent with the
privileges of the country. His officers then were only to reckon on
submission and support so long as they legally discharged the duties
entrusted to them. Lastly, in this oath of allegiance, Philip is simply
styled the natural, the hereditary prince, and not, as the Emperor had
desired, sovereign or lord; proof enough how little confidence was
placed in the justice and liberality of the new sovereign.




PHILIP II. , RULER OF THE NETHERLANDS.

Philip II. received the lordship of the Netherlands in the brightest
period of their prosperity. He was the first of their princes who
united them all under his authority. They now consisted of seventeen
provinces; the duchies of Brabant, Limburg, Luxembourg, and Gueldres,
the seven counties of Artois, Hainault, Flanders, Namur, Zutphen,
Holland, and Zealand, the margravate of Antwerp, and the five lordships
of Friesland, Mechlin (Malines), Utrecht, Overyssel, and Groningen,
which, collectively, formed a great and powerful state able to contend
with monarchies. Higher than it then stood their commerce could not
rise. The sources of their wealth were above the earth's surface, but
they were more valuable and inexhaustible and richer than all the mines
in America. These seventeen provinces which, taken together, scarcely
comprised the fifth part of Italy, and do not extend beyond three
hundred Flemish miles, yielded an annual revenue to their lord, not much
inferior to that which Britain formerly paid to its kings before the
latter had annexed so many of the ecclesiastical domains to their crown.
Three hundred and fifty cities, alive with industry and pleasure, many
of them fortified by their natural position and secure without bulwarks
or walls; six thousand three hundred market towns of a larger size;
smaller villages, farms, and castles innumerable, imparted to this
territory the aspect of one unbroken flourishing landscape. The nation
had now reached the meridian of its splendor; industry and abundance had
exalted the genius of the citizen, enlightened his ideas, ennobled his
affections; every flower of the intellect had opened with the
flourishing condition of the country. A happy temperament under a
severe climate cooled the ardor of their blood, and moderated the rage
of their passions; equanimity, moderation, and enduring patience, the
gifts of a northern clime; integrity, justice, and faith, the necessary
virtues of their profession; and the delightful fruits of liberty,
truth, benevolence, and a patriotic pride were blended in their
character, with a slight admixture of human frailties. No people on
earth was more easily governed by a prudent prince, and none with more
difficulty by a charlatan or a tyrant. Nowhere was the popular voice so
infallible a test of good government as here. True statesmanship could
be tried in no nobler school, and a sickly artificial policy had none
worse to fear.

A state constituted like this could act and endure with gigantic energy
whenever pressing emergencies called forth its powers and a skilful and
provident administration elicited its resources. Charles V. bequeathed
to his successor an authority in these provinces little inferior to that
of a limited monarchy. The prerogative of the crown had gained a
visible ascendancy over the republican spirit, and that complicated
machine could now be set in motion, almost as certainly and rapidly as
the most absolutely governed nation. The numerous nobility, formerly so
powerful, cheerfully accompanied their sovereign in his wars, or, on the
civil changes of the state, courted the approving smile of royality.
The crafty policy of the crown had created a new and imaginary good, of
which it was the exclusive dispenser. New passions and new ideas of
happiness supplanted at last the rude simplicity of republican virtue.
Pride gave place to vanity, true liberty to titles of Honor, a needy
independence to a luxurious servitude. To oppress or to plunder their
native land as the absolute satraps of an absolute lord was a more
powerful allurement for the avarice and ambition of the great, than in
the general assembly of the state to share with the monarch a hundredth
part of the supreme power. A large portion, moreover, of the nobility
were deeply sunk in poverty and debt. Charles V. had crippled all the
most dangerous vassals of the crown by expensive embassies to foreign
courts, under the specious pretext of honorary distinctions. Thus,
William of Orange was despatched to Germany with the imperial crown, and
Count Egmont to conclude the marriage contract between Philip and Queen
Mary. Both also afterwards accompanied the Duke of Alva to France to
negotiate the peace between the two crowns, and the new alliance of
their sovereign with Madame Elizabeth. The expenses of these journeys
amounted to three hundred thousand florins, towards which the king did
not contribute a single penny. When the Prince of Orange was appointed
generalissimo in the place of the Duke of Savoy he was obliged to defray
all the necessary expenses of his office. When foreign ambassadors or
princes came to Brussels it was made incumbent on the nobles to maintain
the honor of their king, who himself always dined alone, and never kept
open table. Spanish policy had devised a still more ingenious
contrivance gradually to impoverish the richest families of the land.
Every year one of the Castilian nobles made his appearance in Brussels,
where he displayed a lavish magnificence. In Brussels it was accounted
an indelible disgrace to be distanced by a stranger in such munificence.
All vied to surpass him, and exhausted their fortunes in this costly
emulation, while the Spaniard made a timely retreat to his native
country, and by the frugality of four years repaired the extravagance of
one year. It was the foible of the Netherlandish nobility to contest
with every stranger the credit of superior wealth, and of this weakness
the government studiously availed itself. Certainly these arts did not
in the sequel produce the exact result that had been calculated on; for
these pecuniary burdens only made the nobility the more disposed for
innovation, since he who has lost all can only be a gainer in the
general ruin.

The Roman Church had ever been a main support of the royal power, and it
was only natural that it should be so. Its golden time was the bondage
of the human intellect, and, like royalty, it had gained by the
ignorance and weakness of men. Civil oppression made religion more
necessary and more dear; submission to tyrannical power prepares the
mind for a blind, convenient faith, and the hierarchy repaid with usury
the services of despotism. In the provinces the bishops and prelates
were zealous supporters of royalty, and ever ready to sacrifice the
welfare of the citizen to the temporal advancement of the church and the
political interests of the sovereign.

Numerous and brave garrisons also held the cities in awe, which were
at the same time divided by religious squabbles and factions, and
consequently deprived of their strongest support--union among
themselves. How little, therefore, did it require to insure this
preponderance of Philip's power, and how fatal must have been the folly
by which it was lost.

But Philip's authority in these provinces, however great, did not
surpass the influence which the Spanish monarchy at that time enjoyed
throughout Europe. No state ventured to enter the arena of contest with
it. France, its most dangerous neighbor, weakened by a destructive war,
and still more by internal factions, which boldly raised their heads
during the feeble government of a child, was advancing rapidly to that
unhappy condition which, for nearly half a century, made it a theatre of
the most enormous crimes and the most fearful calamities. In England
Elizabeth could with difficulty protect her still tottering throne
against the furious storms of faction, and her new church establishment
against the insidious arts of the Romanists. That country still awaited
her mighty call before it could emerge from a humble obscurity, and had
not yet been awakened by the faulty policy of her rival to that vigor
and energy with which it finally overthrew him. The imperial family of
Germany was united with that of Spain by the double ties of blood and
political interest; and the victorious progress of Soliman drew its
attention more to the east than to the west of Europe. Gratitude and
fear secured to Philip the Italian princes, and his creatures ruled the
Conclave. The monarchies of the North still lay in barbarous darkness
and obscurity, or only just began to acquire form and strength, and were
as yet unrecognized in the political system of Europe. The most skilful
generals, numerous armies accustomed to victory, a formidable marine,
and the golden tribute from the West Indies, which now first began to
come in regularly and certainly--what terrible instruments were these in
the firm and steady hand of a talented prince Under such auspicious
stars did King Philip commence his reign.

Before we see him act we must first look hastily into the deep recesses
of his soul, and we shall there find a key to his political life. Joy
and benevolence were wholly wanting in the composition of his character.
His temperament, and the gloomy years of his early childhood, denied him
the former; the latter could not be imparted to him by men who had
renounced the sweetest and most powerful of the social ties. Two ideas,
his own self and what was above that self, engrossed his narrow and
contracted mind. Egotism and religion were the contents and the
title-page of the history of his whole life. He was a king and a
Christian, and was bad in both characters; he never was a man among men,
because he never condescended but only ascended. His belief was dark and
cruel; for his divinity was a being of terror, from whom he had nothing
to hope but everything to fear. To the ordinary man the divinity appears
as a comforter, as a Saviour; before his mind it was set up as an image
of fear, a painful, humiliating check to his human omnipotence. His
veneration for this being was so much the more profound and deeply rooted
the less it extended to other objects. He trembled servilely before God
because God was the only being before whom he had to tremble. Charles V.
was zealous for religion because religion promoted his objects. Philip
was so because he had real faith in it. The former let loose the fire and
the sword upon thousands for the sake of a dogma, while he himself, in
the person of the pope, his captive, derided the very doctrine for which
he had sacrificed so much human blood. It was only with repugnance and
scruples of conscience that Philip resolved on the most just war against
the pope, and resigned all the fruits of his victory as a penitent
malefactor surrenders his booty. The Emperor was cruel from calculation,
his son from impulse. The first possessed a strong and enlightened
spirit, and was, perhaps, so much the worse as a man; the second was
narrow-minded and weak, but the more upright.

Both, however, as it appears to me, might have been better men than they
actually were, and still, on the whole, have acted on the very same
principles. What we lay to the charge of personal character of an
individual is very often the infirmity, the necessary imperfection of
universal human nature. A monarchy so great and so powerful was too
great a trial for human pride, and too mighty a charge for human power.
To combine universal happiness with the highest liberty of the
individual is the sole prerogative of infinite intelligence, which
diffuses itself omnipresently over all. But what resource has man
when placed in the position of omnipotence? Man can only aid his
circumscribed powers by classification; like the naturalist, he
establishes certain marks and rules by which to facilitate his own
feeble survey of the whole, to which all individualities must conform.
All this is accomplished for him by religion. She finds hope and fear
planted in every human breast; by making herself mistress of these
emotions, and directing their affections to a single object, she
virtually transforms millions of independent beings into one uniform
abstract. The endless diversity of the human will no longer embarrasses
its ruler--now there exists one universal good, one universal evil,
which he can bring forward or withdraw at pleasure, and which works in
unison with himself even when absent. Now a boundary is established
before which liberty must halt; a venerable, hallowed line, towards
which all the various conflicting inclinations of the will must finally
converge. The common aim of despotism and of priestcraft is uniformity,
and uniformity is a necessary expedient of human poverty and
imperfection. Philip became a greater despot than his father because
his mind was more contracted, or, in other words, he was forced to
adhere the more scrupulously to general rules the less capable he was of
descending to special and individual exceptions. What conclusion could
we draw from these principles but that Philip II. could not possibly
have any higher object of his solicitude than uniformity, both in
religion and in laws, because without these he could not reign?

And yet he would have shown more mildness and forbearance in his
government if he had entered upon it earlier. In the judgment which is
usually formed of this prince one circumstance does not appear to be
sufficiently considered in the history of his mind and heart, which,
however, in all fairness, ought to be duly weighed. Philip counted
nearly thirty years when he ascended the Spanish throne, and the early
maturity of his understanding had anticipated the period of his
majority. A mind like his, conscious of its powers, and only too early
acquainted with his high expectations, could not brook the yoke of
childish subjection in which he stood; the superior genius of the
father, and the absolute authority of the autocrat, must have weighed
heavily on the self-satisfied pride of such a son. The share which the
former allowed him in the government of the empire was just important
enough to disengage his mind from petty passions and to confirm the
austere gravity of his character, but also meagre enough to kindle a
fiercer longing for unlimited power. When he actually became possessed
of uncontrolled authority it had lost the charm of novelty. The sweet
intoxication of a young monarch in the sudden and early possession of
supreme power; that joyous tumult of emotions which opens the soul to
every softer sentiment, and to which humanity has owed so many of the
most valuable and the most prized of its institutions; this pleasing
moment had for him long passed by, or had never existed. His character
was already hardened when fortune put him to this severe test, and his
settled principles withstood the collision of occasional emotion. He had
had time, during fifteen years, to prepare himself for the change; and
instead of youthful dallying with the external symbols of his new
station, or of losing the morning of his government in the intoxication
of an idle vanity, he remained composed and serious enough to enter at
once on the full possession of his power so as to revenge himself
through the most extensive employment of it for its having been so long
withheld from him.




THE TRIBUNAL OF THE INQUISITION

Philip II. no sooner saw himself, through the peace of Chateau-Cambray,
in undisturbed enjoyment of his immense territory than he turned his
whole attention to the great work of purifying religion, and verified
the fears of his Netherlandish subjects. The ordinances which his
father had caused to be promulgated against heretics were renewed in all
their rigor, and terrible tribunals, to whom nothing but the name of
inquisition was wanting, were appointed to watch over their execution.
But his plan appeared to him scarcely more than half-fulfilled so long
as he could not transplant into these countries the Spanish Inquisition
in its perfect form--a design in which the Emperor had already suffered
shipwreck.

The Spanish Inquisition is an institution of a new and peculiar kind,
which finds no prototype in the whole course of time, and admits of
comparison with no ecclesiastical or civil tribunal. Inquisition had
existed from the time when reason meddled with what is holy, and from
the very commencement of scepticism and innovation; but it was in the
middle of the thirteenth century, after some examples of apostasy had
alarmed the hierarchy, that Innocent III. first erected for it a
peculiar tribunal, and separated, in an unnatural manner, ecclesiastical
superintendence and instruction from its judicial and retributive
office. In order to be the more sure that no human sensibilities or
natural tenderness should thwart the stern severity of its statutes, he
took it out of the hands of the bishops and secular clergy, who, by the
ties of civil life, were still too much attached to humanity for his
purpose, and consigned it to those of the monks, a half-denaturalized
race of beings who had abjured the sacred feelings, of nature, and were
the servile tools of the Roman See. The Inquisition was received in
Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and France; a Franciscan monk sat as
judge in the terrible court, which passed sentence on the Templars. A
few states succeeded either in totally excluding or else in subjecting
it to civil authority. The Netherlands had remained free from it until
the government of Charles V. ; their bishops exercised the spiritual
censorship, and in extraordinary cases reference was made to foreign
courts of inquisition; by the French provinces to that of Paris, by the
Germans to that of Cologne.

But the Inquisition which we are here speaking of came from the west of
Europe, and was of a different origin and form. The last Moorish throne
in Granada had fallen in the fifteenth century, and the false faith of
the Saracens had finally succumbed before the fortunes of Christianity.
But the gospel was still new, and but imperfectly established in this
youngest of Christian kingdoms, and in the confused mixture of
heterogeneous laws and manners the religions had become mixed. It is
true the sword of persecution had driven many thousand families to
Africa, but a far larger portion, detained by the love of climate and
home, purchased remission from this dreadful necessity by a show of
conversion, and continued at Christian altars to serve Mohammed and
Moses. So long as prayers were offered towards Mecca, Granada was not
subdued; so long as the new Christian, in the retirement of his house,
became again a Jew or a Moslem, he was as little secured to the throne
as to the Romish See. It was no longer deemed sufficient to compel a
perverse people to adopt the exterior forms of a new faith, or to wed it
to the victorious church by the weak bands of ceremonials; the object
now was to extirpate the roots of an old religion, and to subdue an
obstinate bias which, by the slow operation of centuries, had been
implanted in their manners, their language, and their laws, and by the
enduring influence of a paternal soil and sky was still maintained in
its full extent and vigor.

If the church wished to triumph completely over the opposing worship,
and to secure her new conquest beyond all chance of relapse, it was
indispensable that she should undermine the foundation itself on which
the old religion was built. It was necessary to break to pieces the
entire form of moral character to which it was so closely and intimately
attached. It was requisite to loosen its secret roots from the hold
they had taken in. the innermost depths of the soul; to extinguish all
traces of it, both in domestic life and in the civil world; to cause all
recollection of it to perish; and, if possible, to destroy the very
susceptibility for its impressions. Country and family, conscience and
honor, the sacred feelings of society and of nature, are ever the first
and immediate ties to which religion attaches itself; from these it
derives while it imparts strength. This connection was now to be
dissolved; the old religion was violently to be dissevered from the holy
feelings of nature, even at the expense of the sanctity itself of these
emotions. Thus arose that Inquisition which, to distinguish it from the
more humane tribunals of the same name, we usually call the Spanish.
Its founder was Cardinal Ximenes, a Dominican monk. Torquemada was the
first who ascended its bloody throne, who established its statutes, and
forever cursed his order with this bequest. Sworn to the degradation of
the understanding and the murder of intellect, the instruments it
employed were terror and infamy. Every evil passion was in its pay; its
snare was set in every joy of life. Solitude itself was not safe from
it; the fear of its omnipresence fettered the freedom of the soul in its
inmost and deepest recesses. It prostrated all the instincts of human
nature before it yielded all the ties which otherwise man held most
sacred.
A heretic forfeited all claims upon his race; the most trivial
infidelity to his mother church divested him of the rights of his
nature. A modest doubt in the infallibility of the pope met with the
punishment of parricide and the infamy of sodomy; its sentences
resembled the frightful corruption of the plague, which turns the most
healthy body into rapid putrefaction. Even the inanimate things
belonging to a heretic were accursed. No destiny could snatch the
victim of the Inquisition from its sentence. Its decrees were carried
in force on corpses and on pictures, and the grave itself was no asylum
from its tremendous arm. The presumptuous arrogance of its decrees
could only be surpassed by the inhumanity which executed them. By
coupling the ludicrous with the terrible, and by amusing the eye with
the strangeness of its processions, it weakened compassion by the
gratification of another feeling; it drowned sympathy in derision and
contempt. The delinquent was conducted with solemn pomp to the place of
execution, a blood-red flag was displayed before him, the universal
clang of all the bells accompanied the procession. First came the
priests, in the robes of the Mass and singing a sacred hymn; next
followed the condemned sinner, clothed in a yellow vest, covered with
figures of black devils. On his head he wore a paper cap, surmounted by
a human figure, around which played lambent flames of fire, and ghastly
demons flitted. The image of the crucified Saviour was carried before,
but turned away from the eternally condemned sinner, for whom salvation
was no longer available. His mortal body belonged to the material fire,
his immortal soul to the flames of bell. A gag closed his mouth, and
prevented him from alleviating his pain by lamentations, from awakening
compassion by his affecting tale, and from divulging the secrets of the
holy tribunal. He was followed by the clergy in festive robes, by the
magistrates, and the nobility; the fathers who had been his judges
closed the awful procession. It seemed like a solemn funeral
procession, but on looking for the corpse on its way to the grave,
behold! it was a living body whose groans are now to afford such
shuddering entertainment to the people. The executions were generally
held on the high festivals, for which a number of such unfortunate
sufferers were reserved in the prisons of the holy house, in order to
enhance the rejoicing by the multitude of the victims, and on these
occasions the king himself was usually present. He sat with uncovered
head, on a lower chair than that of the Grand Inquisitor, to whom, on
such occasions, he yielded precedence; who, then, would not tremble
before a tribunal at which majesty must humble itself?

The great revolution in the church accomplished by Luther and Calvin
renewed the causes to which this tribunal owed its first origin; and
that which, at its commencement, was invented to clear the petty kingdom
of Granada from the feeble remnant of Saracens and Jews was now required
for the whole of Christendom. All the Inquisitions in Portugal, Italy,
Germany, and France adopted the form of the Spanish; it followed
Europeans to the Indies, and established in Goa a fearful tribunal,
whose inhuman proceedings make us shudder even at the bare recital.
Wherever it planted its foot devastation followed; but in no part of the
world did it rage so violently as in Spain. The victims are forgotten
whom it immolated; the human race renews itself, and the lands, too,
flourish again which it has devastated and depopulated by its fury; but
centuries will elapse before its traces disappear from the Spanish
character. A generous and enlightened nation has been stopped by it on
its road to perfection; it has banished genius from a region where it
was indigenous, and a stillness like that which hangs over the grave has
been left in the mind of a people who, beyond most others of our world,
were framed for happiness and enjoyment.

The first Inquisitor in Brabant was appointed by Charles V. in the year
1522. Some priests were associated with him as coadjutors; but he
himself was a layman. After the death of Adrian VI. , his successor,
Clement VII. , appointed three Inquisitors for all the Netherlands; and
Paul III. again reduced them to two, which number continued until the
commencement of the troubles. In the year 1530, with the aid and
approbation of the states, the edicts against heretics were promulgated,
which formed the foundation of all that followed, and in which, also,
express mention is made of the Inquisition. In the year 1550, in
consequence of the rapid increase of sects, Charles V. was under the
necessity of reviving and enforcing these edicts, and it was on this
occasion that the town of Antwerp opposed the establishment of the
Inquisition, and obtained an exemption from its jurisdiction. But the
spirit of the Inquisition in the Netherlands, in accordance with the
genius of the country, was more humane than in Spain, and as yet had
never been administered by a foreigner, much less by a Dominican. The
edicts which were known to everybody served it as the rule of its
decisions. On this very account it was less obnoxious; because, however
severe its sentence, it did not appear a tool of arbitrary power, and it
did not, like the Spanish Inquisition, veil itself in secrecy.

Philip, however, was desirous of introducing the latter tribunal into
the Netherlands, since it appeared to him the instrument best adapted to
destroy the spirit of this people, and to prepare them for a despotic
government. He began, therefore, by increasing the rigor of the
religious ordinances of his father; by gradually extending the power of
the inquisitors; by making the proceedings more arbitrary, and more
independent of the civil jurisdiction. The tribunal soon wanted little
more than the name and the Dominicans to resemble in every point the
Spanish Inquisition. Bare suspicion was enough to snatch a citizen from
the bosom of public tranquillity, and from his domestic circle; and the
weakest evidence was a sufficient justification for the use of the rack.
Whoever fell into its abyss returned no more to the world. All the
benefits of the laws ceased for him; the maternal care of justice no
longer noticed him; beyond the pale of his former world malice and
stupidity judged him according to laws which were never intended for
man. The delinquent never knew his accuser, and very seldom his crime,
--a flagitious, devilish artifice which constrained the unhappy victim
to guess at his error, and in the delirium of the rack, or in the
weariness of a long living interment, to acknowledge transgressions
which, perhaps, had never been committed, or at least had never come
to the knowledge of his judges. The goods of the condemned were
confiscated, and the informer encouraged by letters of grace and
rewards. No privilege, no civil jurisdiction was valid against the holy
power; the secular arm lost forever all whom that power had once
touched. Its only share in the judicial duties of the latter was to
execute its sentences with humble submissiveness. The consequences of
such an institution were, of necessity, unnatural and horrible; the
whole temporal happiness, the life itself, of an innocent man was at
the mercy of any worthless fellow. Every secret enemy, every envious
person, had now the perilous temptation of an unseen and unfailing
revenge. The security of property, the sincerity of intercourse were
gone; all the ties of interest were dissolved; all of blood and of
affection were irreparably broken. An infectious distrust envenomed
social life; the dreaded presence of a spy terrified the eye from
seeing, and choked the voice in the midst of utterance. No one believed
in the existence of an honest man, or passed for one himself. Good
name, the ties of country, brotherhood, even oaths, and all that man
holds sacred, were fallen in estimation. Such was the destiny to which
a great and flourishing commercial town was subjected, where one hundred
thousand industrious men had been brought together by the single tie of
mutual confidence,--every one indispensable to his neighbor, yet every
one distrusted and distrustful,--all attracted by the spirit of gain,
and repelled from each other by fear,--all the props of society torn
away, where social union was the basis of all life and all existence.




OTHER ENCROACHMENTS ON THE CONSTITUTION OF THE NETHERLANDS.

No wonder if so unnatural a tribunal, which had proved intolerable even
to the more submissive spirit of the Spaniard, drove a free state to
rebellion. But the terror which it inspired was increased by the
Spanish troops, which, even after the restoration of peace, were kept in
the country, and, in violation of the constitution, garrisoned border
towns. Charles V. had been forgiven for this introduction of foreign
troops so long as the necessity of it was evident, and his good
intentions were less distrusted. But now men saw in these troops only
the alarming preparations of oppression and the instruments of a
detested hierarchy. Moreover, a considerable body of cavalry, composed
of natives, and fully adequate for the protection of the country, made
these foreigners superfluous. The licentiousness and rapacity, too,
of the Spaniards, whose pay was long in arrear, and who indemnified
themselves at the expense of the citizens, completed the exasperation of
the people, and drove the lower orders to despair. Subsequently, when
the general murmur induced the government to move them from the
frontiers and transport them into the islands of Zealand, where ships
were prepared for their deportation, their excesses were carried to such
a pitch that the inhabitants left off working at the embankments, and
preferred to abandon their native country to the fury of the sea rather
than to submit any longer to the wanton brutality of these lawless
bands.

Philip, indeed, would have wished to retain these Spaniards in the
country, in order by their presence to give weight to his edicts,
and to support the innovations which he had resolved to make in the
constitution of the Netherlands. He regarded them as a guarantee for
the submission of the nation and as a chain by which he held it captive.
Accordingly, he left no expedient untried to evade the persevering
importunity of the states, who demanded the withdrawal of these troops;
and for this end he exhausted all the resources of chicanery and
persuasion. At one time he pretended to dread a sudden invasion by
France, although, torn by furious factions, that country could scarce
support itself against a domestic enemy; at another time they were, he
said, to receive his son, Don Carlos, on the frontiers; whom, however,
he never intended should leave Castile. Their maintenance should not be
a burden to the nation; he himself would disburse all their expenses
from his private purse. In order to detain them with the more
appearance of reason he purposely kept back from them their arrears of
pay; for otherwise he would assuredly have preferred them to the troops
of the country, whose demands he fully satisfied. To lull the fears of
the nation, and to appease the general discontent, he offered the chief
command of these troops to the two favorites of the people, the Prince
of Orange and Count Egmont. Both, however, declined his offer, with the
noble-minded declaration that they could never make up their minds to
serve contrary to the laws of the country. The more desire the king
showed to have his Spaniards in the country the more obstinately the
states insisted on their removal. In the following Diet at Ghent he was
compelled, in the very midst of his courtiers, to listen to republican
truth. "Why are foreign hands needed for our defence? " demanded the
Syndic of Ghent. "Is it that the rest of the world should consider us
too stupid, or too cowardly, to protect ourselves? Why have we made
peace if the burdens of war are still to oppress us? In war necessity
enforced endurance; in peace our patience is exhausted by its burdens.
Or shall we be able to keep in order these licentious bands which thine
own presence could not restrain? Here, Cambray and Antwerp cry for
redress; there, Thionville and Marienburg lie waste; and, surely, thou
hast not bestowed upon us peace that our cities should become deserts,
as they necessarily must if thou freest them not from these destroyers?
Perhaps then art anxious to guard against surprise from our neighbors?
This precaution is wise; but the report of their preparations will long
outrun their hostilities. Why incur a heavy expense to engage
foreigners who will not care for a country which they must leave
to-morrow? Hast thou not still at thy command the same brave
Netherlanders to whom thy father entrusted the republic in far more
troubled times? Why shouldest thou now doubt their loyalty, which, to
thy ancestors, they have preserved for so many centuries inviolate?
Will not they be sufficient to sustain the war long enough to give time
to thy confederates to join their banners, or to thyself to send succor
from the neighboring country? " This language was too new to the king,
and its truth too obvious for him to be able at once to reply to it.
"I, also, am a foreigner," he at length exclaimed, "and they would like,
I suppose, to expel me from the country! " At the same time he descended
from the throne, and left the assembly; but the speaker was pardoned for
his boldness. Two days afterwards he sent a message to the states that
if he had been apprised earlier that these troops were a burden to them
he would have immediately made preparation to remove them with himself
to Spain. Now it was too late, for they would not depart unpaid; but he
pledged them his most sacred promise that they should not be oppressed
with this burden more than four months. Nevertheless, the troops
remained in this country eighteen months instead of four; and would not,
perhaps, even then have left it so soon if the exigencies of the state
had not made their presence indispensable in another part of the world.

The illegal appointment of foreigners to the most important offices of
the country afforded further occasion of complaint against the
government. Of all the privileges of the provinces none was so
obnoxious to the Spaniards as that which excluded strangers from office,
and none they had so zealously sought to abrogate. Italy, the two
Indies, and all the provinces of this vast Empire, were indeed open to
their rapacity and ambition; but from the richest of them all an
inexorable fundamental law excluded them. They artfully persuaded their
sovereign that his power in these countries would never be firmly
established so long as he could not employ foreigners as his
instruments. The Bishop of Arras, a Burgundian by birth, had already
been illegally forced upon the Flemings; and now the Count of Feria, a
Castilian, was to receive a seat and voice in the council of state. But
this attempt met with a bolder resistance than the king's flatterers had
led him to expect, and his despotic omnipotence was this time wrecked by
the politic measures of William of Orange and the firmness of the
states.




WILLIAM OF ORANGE AND COUNT EGMONT.

By such measures, did Philip usher in his government of the Netherlands,
and such were the grievances of the nation when he was preparing to
leave them. He had long been impatient to quit a country where he was a
stranger, where there was so much that opposed his secret wishes, and
where his despotic mind found such undaunted monitors to remind him of
the laws of freedom. The peace with France at last rendered a longer
stay unnecessary; the armaments of Soliman required his presence in the
south, and the Spaniards also began to miss their long-absent king. The
choice of a supreme Stadtholder for the Netherlands was the principal
matter which still detained him. Emanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy, had
filled this place since the resignation of Mary, Queen of Hungary,
which, however, so long as the king himself was present, conferred more
honor than real influence. His absence would make it the most important
office in the monarchy, and the most splendid aim for the ambition of a
subject. It had now become vacant through the departure of the duke,
whom the peace of Chateau-Cambray had restored to his dominions. The
almost unlimited power with which the supreme Statholder would be
entrusted, the capacity and experience which so extensive and delicate
an appointment required, but, especially, the daring designs which the
government had in contemplation against the freedom of the country, the
execution of which would devolve on him, necessarily embarrassed the
choice. The law, which excluded all foreigners from office, made an
exception in the case of the supreme Stadtholder. As he could not be at
the same time a native of all the provinces, it was allowable for him
not to belong to any one of them; for the jealousy of the man of Brabant
would concede no greater right to a Fleming, whose home was half a mile
from his frontier, than to a Sicilian, who lived in another soil and
under a different sky. But here the interests of the crown itself
seemed to favor the appointment of a native. A Brabanter, for instance,
who enjoyed the full confidence of his countrymen if he were a traitor
would have half accomplished his treason before a foreign governor could
have overcome the mistrust with which his most insignificant measures
would be watched. If the government should succeed in carrying through
its designs in one province, the opposition of the rest would then be a
temerity, which it would be justified in punishing in the severest
manner. In the common whole which the provinces now formed their
individual constitutions were, in a measure, destroyed; the obedience of
one would be a law for all, and the privilege, which one knew not how to
preserve, was lost for the rest.

Among the Flemish nobles who could lay claim to the Chief
Stadtholdership, the expectations and wishes of the nation were divided
between Count Egmont and the Prince of Orange, who were alike qualified
for this high dignity by illustrious birth and personal merits, and by
an equal share in the affections of the people. Their high rank placed
them both near to the throne, and if the choice of the monarch was to
rest on the worthiest it must necessarily fall upon one of these two.
As, in the course of our history, we shall often have occasion to
mention both names, the reader cannot be too early made acquainted with
their characters.

William I. , Prince of Orange, was descended from the princely German
house of Nassau, which had already flourished eight centuries, had long
disputed the preeminence with Austria, and had given one Emperor to
Germany. Besides several extensive domains in the Netherlands, which
made him a citizen of this republic and a vassal of the Spanish
monarchy, he possessed also in France the independent princedom of
Orange. William was born in the year 1533, at Dillenburg, in the
country of Nassau, of a Countess Stolberg. His father, the Count of
Nassau, of the same name, had embraced the Protestant religion, and
caused his son also to be educated in it; but Charles V. , who early
formed an attachment for the boy, took him when quite young to his
court, and had him brought up in the Romish church. This monarch, who
already in the child discovered the future greatness of the man, kept
him nine years about his person, thought him worthy of his personal
instruction in the affairs of government, and honored him with a
confidence beyond his years. He alone was permitted to remain in the
Emperor's presence when he gave audience to foreign ambassadors--a proof
that, even as a boy, he had already begun to merit the surname of the
Silent. The Emperor was not ashamed even to confess openly, on one
occasion, that this young man had often made suggestions which would
have escaped his own sagacity. What expectations might not be formed of
the intellect of a man who was disciplined in such a school.

William was twenty-three years old when Charles abdicated the
government, and had already received from the latter two public marks of
the highest esteem. The Emperor had entrusted to him, in preference to
all the nobles of his court, the honorable office of conveying to his
brother Ferdinand the imperial crown. When the Duke of Savoy, who
commanded the imperial army in the Netherlands, was called away to Italy
by the exigency of his domestic affairs, the Emperor appointed him
commander-in-chief against the united representations of his military
council, who declared it altogether hazardous to oppose so young a tyro
in arms to the experienced generals of France. Absent, and
unrecommended by any, he was preferred by the monarch to the
laurel-crowned band of his heroes, and the result gave him no cause
to repent of his choice.

The marked favor which the prince had enjoyed with the father was in
itself a sufficient ground for his exclusion from the confidence of the
son. Philip, it appears, had laid it down for himself as a rule to
avenge the wrongs of the Spanish nobility for the preference which
Charles V. had on all important occasions shown to his Flemish nobles.
Still stronger, however, were the secret motives which alienated him
from the prince. William of Orange was one of those lean and pale men
who, according to Caesar's words, "sleep not at night, and think too
much," and before whom the most fearless spirits quail.

The calm tranquillity of a never-varying countenance concealed a busy,
ardent soul, which never ruffled even the veil behind which it worked,
and was alike inaccessible to artifice and love; a versatile,
formidable, indefatigable mind, soft, and ductile enough to be
instantaneously moulded into all forms; guarded enough to lose itself in
none; and strong enough to endure every vicissitude of fortune. A
greater master in reading and in winning men's hearts never existed than
William. Not that, after the fashion of courts, his lips avowed a
servility to which his proud heart gave the lie; but because he was
neither too sparing nor too lavish of the marks of his esteem, and
through a skilful economy of the favors which mostly bind men, he
increased his real stock in them. The fruits of his meditation were as
perfect as they were slowly formed; his resolves were as steadily and
indomitably accomplished as they were long in maturing. No obstacles
could defeat the plan which he had once adopted as the best; no
accidents frustrated it, for they all had been foreseen before they
actually occurred. High as his feelings were raised above terror and
joy, they were, nevertheless, subject in the same degree to fear; but
his fear was earlier than the danger, and he was calm in tumult because
he had trembled in repose. William lavished his gold with a profuse
hand, but he was a niggard of his movements. The hours of repast were
the sole hours of relaxation, but these were exclusively devoted to his
heart, his family, and his friends; this the modest deduction he allowed
himself from the cares of his country. Here his brow was cleared with
wine, seasoned by temperance and a cheerful disposition; and no serious
cares were permitted to enter this recess of enjoyment. His household
was magnificent; the splendor of a numerous retinue, the number and
respectability of those who surrounded his person, made his habitation
resemble the court of a sovereign prince. A sumptuous hospitality, that
master-spell of demagogues, was the goddess of his palace. Foreign
princes and ambassadors found here a fitting reception and
entertainment, which surpassed all that luxurious Belgium could
elsewhere offer. A humble submissiveness to the government bought off
the blame and suspicion which this munificence might have thrown on his
intentions. But this liberality secured for him the affections of the
people, whom nothing gratified so much as to see the riches of their
country displayed before admiring foreigners, and the high pinnacle of
fortune on which he stood enhanced the value of the courtesy to which he
condescended. No one, probably, was better fitted by nature for the
leader of a conspiracy than William the Silent. A comprehensive and
intuitive glance into the past, the present, and the future; the talent
for improving every favorable opportunity; a commanding influence over
the minds of men, vast schemes which only when viewed from a distance
show form and symmetry; and bold calculations which were wound up in the
long chain of futurity; all these faculties he possessed, and kept,
moreover, under the control of that free and enlightened virtue which
moves with firm step even on the very edge of the abyss.

A man like this might at other times have remained unfathomed by his
whole generation; but not so by the distrustful spirit of the age in
which he lived. Philip II. saw quickly and deeply into a character
which, among good ones, most resembled his own. If he had not seen
through him so clearly his distrust of a man, in whom were united nearly
all the qualities which he prized highest and could best appreciate,
would be quite inexplicable. But William had another and still more
important point of contact with Philip II. He had learned his policy
from the same master, and had become, it was to be feared, a more apt
scholar. Not by making Machiavelli's 'Prince' his study, but by having
enjoyed the living instruction of a monarch who reduced the book to
practice, had he become versed in the perilous arts by which thrones
rise and fall. In him Philip had to deal with an antagonist who was
armed against his policy, and who in a good cause could also command the
resources of a bad one. And it was exactly this last circumstance which
accounts for his having hated this man so implacably above all others of
his day, and his having had so supernatural a dread of him.

The suspicion which already attached to the prince was increased by the
doubts which were entertained of his religious bias. So long as the
Emperor, his benefactor, lived, William believed in the pope; but it was
feared, with good ground, that the predilection for the reformed
religion, which had been imparted into his young heart, had never
entirely left it. Whatever church he may at certain periods of his life
have preferred each might console itself with the reflection that none
other possessed him more entirely. In later years he went over to
Calvinism with almost as little scruple as in his early childhood he
deserted the Lutheran profession for the Romish. He defended the rights
of the Protestants rather than their opinions against Spanish
oppression; not their faith, but their wrongs, had made him their
brother.

These general grounds for suspicion appeared to be justified by a
discovery of his real intentions which accident had made. William had
remained in France as hostage for the peace of Chateau-Cambray, in
concluding which he had borne a part; and here, through the imprudence
of Henry II. , who imagined he spoke with a confidant of the King of
Spain, he became acquainted with a secret plot which the French and
Spanish courts had formed against Protestants of both kingdoms. The
prince hastened to communicate this important discovery to his friends
in Brussels, whom it so nearly concerned, and the letters which he
exchanged on the subject fell, unfortunately, into the hands of the King
of Spain. Philip was less surprised at this decisive disclosure of
William's sentiments than incensed at the disappointment of his scheme;
and the Spanish nobles, who had never forgiven the prince that moment,
when in the last act of his life the greatest of Emperors leaned upon
his shoulders, did not neglect this favorable opportunity of finally
ruining, in the good opinion of their king, the betrayer of a state
secret.

Of a lineage no less noble than that of William was Lamoral, Count
Egmont and Prince of Gavre, a descendant of the Dukes of Gueldres, whose
martial courage had wearied out the arms of Austria. His family was
highly distinguished in the annals of the country; one of his ancestors,
had, under Maximilian, already filled the office of Stadtholder over
Holland. Egmont's marriage with the Duchess Sabina of Bavaria reflected
additional lustre on the splendor of his birth, and made him powerful
through the greatness of this alliance. Charles V. had, in the year
1516, conferred on him at Utrecht the order of the Golden Fleece; the
wars of this Emperor were the school of his military genius, and the
battle of St. Quentin and Gravelines made him the hero of his age.
Every blessing of peace, for which a commercial people feel most
grateful, brought to mind the remembrance of the victory by which it was
accelerated, and Flemish pride, like a fond mother, exulted over the
illustrious son of their country, who had filled all Europe with
admiration. Nine children who grew up under the eyes of their
fellow-citizens, multiplied and drew closer the ties between him and his
fatherland, and the people's grateful affection for the father was kept
alive by the sight of those who were dearest to him. Every appearance
of Egmont in public was a triumphal procession; every eye which was
fastened upon him recounted his history; his deeds lived in the plaudits
of his companions-in-arms; at the games of chivalry mothers pointed him
out to their children. Affability, a noble and courteous demeanor, the
amiable virtues of chivalry, adorned and graced his merits. His liberal
soul shone forth on his open brow; his frank-heartedness managed his
secrets no better than his benevolence did his estate, and a thought was
no sooner his than it was the property of all. His religion was gentle
and humane, but not very enlightened, because it derived its light from
the heart and not from, his understanding. Egmont possessed more of
conscience than of fixed principles; his head had not given him a code
of its own, but had merely learnt it by rote; the mere name of any
action, therefore, was often with him sufficient for its condemnation.
In his judgment men were wholly bad or wholly good, and had not
something bad or something good; in this system of morals there was no
middle term between vice and virtue; and consequently a single good
trait often decided his opinion of men. Egmont united all the eminent
qualities which form the hero; he was a better soldier than the Prince
of Orange, but far inferior to him as a statesman; the latter saw the
world as it really was; Egmont viewed it in the magic mirror of an
imagination that embellished all that it reflected. Men, whom fortune
has surprised with a reward for which they can find no adequate ground
in their actions, are, for the most part, very apt to forget the
necessary connection between cause and effect, and to insert in the
natural consequences of things a higher miraculous power to which, as
Caesar to his fortune, they at last insanely trust. Such a character
was Egmont. Intoxicated with the idea of his own merits, which the love
and gratitude of his fellow-citizens had exaggerated, he staggered on in
this sweet reverie as in a delightful world of dreams. He feared not,
because he trusted to the deceitful pledge which destiny had given him
of her favor, in the general love of the people; and he believed in its
justice because he himself was prosperous. Even the most terrible
experience of Spanish perfidy could not afterwards eradicate this
confidence from his soul, and on the scaffold itself his latest feeling
was hope. A tender fear for his family kept his patriotic courage
fettered by lower duties. Because he trembled for property and life he
could not venture much for the republic. William of Orange broke with
the throne because its arbitrary power was offensive to his pride;
Egmont was vain, and therefore valued the favors of the monarch. The
former was a citizen of the world; Egmont had never been more than a
Fleming.

Philip II. still stood indebted to the hero of St. Quentin, and the
supreme stadtholdership of the Netherlands appeared the only appropriate
reward for such great services. Birth and high station, the voice of
the nation and personal abilities, spoke as loudly for Egmont as for
Orange; and if the latter was to be passed by it seemed that the former
alone could supplant him.

Two such competitors, so equal in merit, might have embarrassed Philip
in his choice if he had ever seriously thought of selecting either of
them for the appointment. But the pre-eminent qualities by which they
supported their claim to this office were the very cause of their
rejection; and it was precisely the ardent desire of the nation for
their election to it that irrevocably annulled their title to the
appointment. Philip's purpose would not be answered by a stadtholder in
the Netherlands who could command the good-will and the energies of the
people. Egmont's descent from the Duke of Gueldres made him an
hereditary foe of the house of Spain, and it seemed impolitic to place
the supreme power in the hands of a man to whom the idea might occur of
revenging on the son of the oppressor the oppression of his ancestor.