The Story of Nations - Holland

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HOLLAND

Preface

The story which is contained in the following pages is, of necessity, brief, for I cannot go beyond the limits of the series. But it need not be given in great detail. It is possible by a short narrative to recount the principal facts in the greatest and most important of all European wars, that in which the seven provinces of Holland secured their independence against the monarch who was supposed to possess, the mightiest powers of the age. Holland was won by its people acre by acre, field by field, against the best European troops of the time, the most practised generals, and what seemed to be boundless resources. The details of the struggle are dry and tedious. The interest in the story lies in the spirit and resolution of the Hollanders, in the tenacity with which they clung to their purposes, in the entire success which attended their efforts, and the great results which followed from the victory which they won, after a war of unparalleled duration. The Spanish king, their foe, represented the two principles of sixteenth-century despotism, entire authority over the lives and fortunes of his subjects, entire authority over their consciences. The Hollanders resisted him, defeated him, and gave the first precedent for civil and religious liberty.

Their success was the stimulant to similar efforts in other countries. These efforts were not always successful; sometimes, indeed, they were defeated, and governments were apparently all the stronger by reason of the failure in the attempt to control them. But the example of the Dutch was never forgotten, and the prosperity of free Holland was always a stimulant to those other races which struggled for freedom. The Huguenots attempted to follow their example, and failed. The Protestant states of Northern and Central Germany strove to free themselves, quarrelled among each other, and after thirty years of desperate and sanguinary warfare, the battle was drawn. England grappled with the despotism of the Stewarts, put it down for a time, suffered from the effects of a shameful reaction, and finally established constitutional monarchy, i.e., an aristocratic republic, disguised by the fiction of a powerless sovereign.

The precedent of the Dutch revolt was before the minds of those who drew up the Declaration of American Independence. I cannot say that the Colonies would not have resisted the British Parliament after the Stamp Act was passed, even if there had been no history of Holland. But precedents, are of the highest value in political action, especially if the precedent is one of signal success. In absolute ignorance of what the result would be, the French Government, which was utterly corrupt, selfish, cruel, religious equality. Holland was the solitary European state for a long time, in which a man’s religious opinions were no bar to his exercise of all civil rights. At the present time, most civilized communities have followed this excellent example.

The student of history is bidden to take notice of the heroic resistance which Athens first, and much of Southern Greece afterwards made to the Persian king twenty-three centuries ago. The resistance which Holland made to the Spanish king was infinitely more heroic, far more desperate, much more successful, and infinitely more significant, because it was a war in which the highest principles were vindicated, and vindicated irreversibly. In those principles, secured by the efforts of a small and, at first sight, of a feeble people, lies the very life of modern liberty. The debt which rational and just government owes to the seven provinces is incalculable. To the true lover of liberty, Holland is the Holy Land of modern Europe, and should be held sacred.

But the debt of modern Europe to Holland is by no means limited to the lessons which it taught as to the true purposes of civil government. It taught Europe nearly everything else. It instructed communities in progressive and rational agriculture. It was the pioneer in navigation and in discovery; and, according to the lights of the age, was the founder of intelligent commerce. It produced the greatest jurists of the seventeenth century. It was pre-eminent in the arts of peace. The presses of Holland put forth more books than all the rest of Europe did. It had the most learned scholars. The languages of the East were first given to the world by Dutchmen. It was foremost in physical research, in rational medicine. It instructed statesmen in finance, traders in banking and credit, philosophers in the speculative science. For a long time that little storm-vexed nook of North-western Europe was the university of the civilized world, the centre of European trade, the admiration, the envy, the example of nations.

Holland, it is true, committed political and commercial errors, which it dearly expiated, of which malignant use was made by states and statesmen who committed ten times as many crimes. But the annals of Holland are singularly free from deliberate wrong-doing. Its worst acts were defensive, into which it was led by intriguers, such as the judicial murder of Olden Barneveldt, the foolish advocacy of the exiled Stewarts, the shameful murder of the De Witts. But in these doings it was the accomplice of the house of Orange, which after great services led it into disgrace, and finally into ruin. It was an evil day for Holland, when this degenerate family began to marry into the houses of Stewart and Hanover, of Prussia and Russia.

I would have gladly brought the story to a close with the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, after which, by no fault of its own, Holland became of little account in the councils of Europe, and was finally overrun by France. But the facts had to be told, and they are a striking lesson. in the shameful humiliation of Holland, Great Britain, to its dishonour, took the most active part. From the days of Selden down to the days of Canning, it was the policy of British statesmen to pander to the most sordid instincts of British traders, and to truckle to the designs of the houses of Stewart and Hanover against the independence of the gallant Republic. From their own point of view, that of securing allies on the European continent, the policy was entirely unwise; from the point of view of international morality it was supremely dishonest.

My principal authorities are Davies, Motley, and especially Wagenaar. The annals of the Dutch nation are exceedingly copious and accurate. I wish indeed that we knew more in detail about the particulars of the great manufacturing towns of Flanders before the revolt of the Netherlands, of the great trading towns of the seven provinces during and after the War of Independence. The publication of such records would be of real interest to those who study the stirring history of the Republic, and follow out the process by which such important results ensued from what seemed to be such inadequate means.

Chapter I: Early Days

The great river of Western Europe whose head waters are collected in the Lake of Constance, and lose themselves in the German Ocean by a thousand channels, was for centuries the highway of Western commerce and civilization. It was for a long time the north-eastern boundary of the Roman Empire, and many of the cities which studded its banks were the outposts of garrisons of the Roman army. In later times certainly, perhaps even in earlier ages, these cities were enriched by the merchandise which was carried down the stream.

As the Rhine approaches the borders of the country now known collectively as Holland, it begins to divide its stream, and the divisions are multiplied at short intervals. The flow of its waters once rapid is now sluggish. The delta of the Rhine is an accretion from the soil which the stream has collected during its course. The first Napoleon laid claim to the territory of Holland on the ground that its surface was a deposit from the distant regions in which the earth was collected, was hurried along by, the rapid river, and dropped by, the sluggish water courses into which the Rhine divided itself. “Now,” he argued, “the uplands are mine by right of conquest. The lowlands, which owe their existence to the river which I have appropriated, are mine by right of devolution.” One may dispute the logic of the great captain, but the accuracy of his geology, is incontestable. Holland is the creation of the Rhine.

The rest of the Netherlands, now known politically as the Belgium kingdom, is not so obviously the product of great rivers. But the greater part of it is an unbroken flat, suggesting that its area was once a shallow sea from which the waters have retreated. The inhabitants of Holland were, for the most part, of Teutonic origin, as were also those of the western seaboard of the Netherlands. The south-western district was inhabited mainly by a people of Celtic origin. These two races were known as Flemish and Walloon.

In the dawn of history, i.e., for this country, in the days when Julius Cæsar was engaged in extending the Roman Empire over Northern Gaul, and the western tribes of the great Teutonic race, the greater part of modern Holland was an extensive morass, covered by almost impenetrable forests. From time to time the barrier which the river was depositing against the ocean was invaded by furious storms, and the land was submerged. But the river was always building up what the sea was occasionally destroying, and the earliest instincts of the Hollanders were directed towards the protection of the land on which they dwelt, the land which the sea was always threatening. This land, enclosed between the two principal arms of the Rhine, was called Batavia, and its inhabitants got the name of their country.

After the conquest of the Belgian races, the Batavians became the allies of Rome, at first of the fortunes of Cæsar, and afterwards of the legions which were posted on the German frontier. They remained faithful to the Roman Empire till its final extinction, with only one interval, that occupied with the revolt of Claudius Civilis, a Romanised Batavian, who sought to bring about the political independence of his race. But the revolt was unsuccessful. The Batavian people despaired of success, and fell away from their national leader. He resolved on making terms with his old comrades, and his recent enemies, and to relinquish the cause of those who had no heart to defend it themselves. So he sought a negotiation and an interview. How it was concluded we do not know, for the narrative of the historian is abruptly broken off here, and the sequel of the fortunes of Civilis is irreparably lost to history.

The Batavians aided the Emperor Julian in his victory over the Germans at Strasburg (A.D. 357). Shortly after this, the inhabitants of the Rhine island, the so-called Batavians, disappear from history, and are merged in the Frisian, perhaps in the Frankish tribes who were now swarming over the Rhine into Northwestern Europe. The Frankish sovereigns, at any rate, were the nominal sovereigns of what is now Holland. One of these sovereigns, Dagobert II., founded the first Christian church at Utrecht.

Out of the Brabant town of Landen came the family from which Charles the Great was descended. The great-grand father of Charles the Great began the conquests of the Frisians; his grandfather all but completed it. The founders of the first two French dynasties were Germans, their language was German, and their administration was entirely Teutonic. The third dynasty, which is of more obscure origin, and survives to our day, is said by some early historians to have also been Teutonic.

The modern Holland, the Batavian inhabitants of which were merged in the Frisian race inhabiting the extreme north-east of the present kingdom, was continuous with Friesland. The great tract now known as the Zuyder Zee was land originally, or had been fenced from the irruptions of the German Ocean. This ocean burst over the land in the thirteenth century, and buried towns and villages permanently beneath its waters. These Batavians and Frisians came under the control of the great Charles, who left them their native customs, they obeying those chiefs whom the Emperor of the West put over them. The laws of the Frisians declare that the race shall be free, as long as the wind blows out of the clouds and the world stands. More than seven centuries after the reign of Charles the Great had come to an end, this charter of freedom was the rallying cry of the Dutch patriots.

The principle upon which the empire of Charles the Great was founded was that the chiefs of the several races subordinated to the central imperial authority should be the emperor’s delegates and dependents, but that the several races should be governed civilly by their own traditions or customs. The emperor should have the control of such military forces as the several states or races could furnish, and the deputy, count, or duke as he might be called, was to be answerable to the head of the state for his tribute, or his militia, or for both. In the hands of so vigorous, so shrewd, and so capable a man as Charles the Great, a system of government like this was possible. It was possible in his descendants or successors only if they inherited his capacity as well as his empire. But the descendants of Charles's sons proved themselves as incapable as the descendants of Clovis were, and in a far briefer period of time. Within three-quarters of a century, the emperors of this dynasty ceased to rule, sank into petty chieftains, and were finally superseded in their French dominions by the third dynasty to which I have alluded.

The succession of the French monarchs and the succession of German emperors are equally dated from the rise of the house of Charles the Great. The French historians ignored the kings of the first dynasty, for Louis I. is the son of Charles, just as the Norman sovereigns of England ignored the Edwards of the race of Egbert. But they recognized as their kings those Germans who nominally ruled as the successors of the great Charles from the Pyrenees to the Ems, and from the German Ocean to the Tiber. So the Holy Roman Empire dates its origin from the coronation of Charles the Great.

Charles the Simple (these latter descendants of the first German Emperor always had uncomplimentary titles) was ruling in 922 over a fragment of the vast empire which had existed a century before, that portion which is contained in the modern Belgium and Holland. In this year, in accordance with the custom which has been referred to above, the simple king created one Dirk the Count of Holland. The descendants of Dirk were in existence during the war of independence, and took the side of the patriots. But Henry the Fowler, Emperor of Germany, had been recognized as the successor of Charles the Simple. In 925, the subjects of the simple king dethroned and imprisoned him, and the Netherlands, as yet loosely connected with what afterwards became France, were as loosely connected with what is known in history as the Holy Roman Empire. We shall see hereafter how slight the bond was.

Part of the policy of Charles the Great was to invest the bishops of the newly converted Frisians, Saxons and other German tribes with great wealth and great political power. He foresaw in all likelihood how difficult it would be to prevent laymen from making those dignities hereditary, which his policy intended to keep precarious and dependent on submission and good behaviour. But it was otherwise with the clergy. Their offices were elective or subject to the Crown’s nomination. They had no heirs, only successors, and the succession required the royal confirmation. Hence what is known in history as the prince bishoprics were created. These prince bishops for near a thousand years were characteristic factors in the German Empire.

One of these prince bishops was the Bishop of Utrecht. Christianity had been preached especially by English missionaries along the Rhine to the sea. Wilfrid, Willibrod, and Winfrid, the latter known also as Boniface, were the apostles of Germany and the Netherlands. The last of these was the first Bishop of Mainz, and afterwards Bishop of Utrecht. He was slain by the pagan Frisians at the little town of Dokkum in Friesland, and is honoured as the great saint and proto-martyr of Catholic Germany.

In point of fact, the spread of Christianity in these pagan countries entailed great political and pecuniary sacrifices on the converts. Large tracts of land were confiscated in order to form the domain of the new bishops, the dues of the Church were rigorously enacted from landowners whose religion had not hitherto involved such liabilities, and the slaves and vassals of the prince prelates increased with the unsuccessful struggles of the reluctant pagans, for defeat meant confiscation to the wealthy and slavery to the poor. But in the end, after half the population had been slaughtered in war, the other half submitted to a form of Christianity, which was forcible rather than persuasive. The Bishop of Utrecht became the spiritual chief, and in many particulars the temporal chief of all Friesland. It was not till the great war of independence that an attempt was made to multiply bishoprics in the Netherlands, and when it was made it was in the interests of Philip's tyranny and for the purpose of strengthening the Spanish Inquisition. The character of the Church in the Netherlands must be seen, in order to understand the nature of the great struggle which will, by and by, be narrated.

The two potentates of what in after times constituted the, seven United Provinces, the Dutch Republic of later history, and their High Mightinesses, the States-General, were in this early time the Count of Holland and the Bishop of Utrecht. In the rest of the Netherlands, the petty sovereigns became far more numerous. The most important of these were the Dukes of Brabant, and the Earls of Flanders. But there were numerous independent princes of the district now known as Belgium, all privileged to take toll and tax from the people whom they had under their sway. No central authority controlled them, for the German Empire to which they nominally belonged, by reason of its own internal dissensions and its long struggles with the Pope, waxed feebler and feebler, and the French kings had enough to do in their efforts to restrain a turbulent and almost independent aristocracy within their own borders.

This aristocracy was the common and ever-vigilant, ever-conspiring enemy of government, religion, and industry. In these remote times the king was the exponent of the government, the Church of religion, and the town of industry. In order to sustain the first, the doctrine of the divine right of kings was invented; in order to aid the second, the theory of priestcraft, was inculcated and enforced; in order to preserve the third, the charter of the town was purchased. The French and English kings saw how important it was to strengthen themselves against their natural and persistent foes by the aid of the towns, and they granted their towns charters innumerable, the fullest and widest being often conceded by the worst and most unpopular monarchs. If indeed king, Church, and burgher had always been united against the encroachment of the nobles, the victory would soon have been won. But the alliance of what may be called the conservative forces of society against the disturbing and destructive elements was rarely close and still more rarely enduring. The king and the Church were constantly quarrelling, and with varied fortunes, till at last the Church became the willing instrument of despotism, and the king after having reduced the nobles, and employed the Church as his agent began to pillage and harry those who had been the means for achieving his victory over the other two.

Now there was no king in the Netherlands, not even a lord paramount, but a host of small autocrats, quarrelling for ever among themselves, and therefore at their wits’ end for the means of maintaining their own existence and their feuds.

But there is no history in these times, nothing, as Milton said, but the quarrel of the kites and the crows, or as they called themselves in the Netherlands, the Hooks and the Kabejauws, the grotesque factions of these flats and swamps.

Chapter II: The Rise of the Chartered Towns

The municipal institution of the Roman Empire survived, in many places, the downfall of Rome. Towns whose comparatively free institutions tower above the barbarism of the inroads of Hun, Goth, Frank, and Saxon, still exist, whose rights of local self-government are in succession from the Roman period, though these rights are constantly guaranteed by the grant of fresh charters. These towns were specially numerous in the South of France. They existed in Italy, so long a battlefield for rival invaders. They continued on the banks of the Rhine. Such places as Marseilles and Nismes in France, Milan and Pisa in Italy, Coblentz, Bonn, and Cologne on the Rhine, to quote a few instances out of many, never seem to have lost their local liberties entirely. The life of these liberties may have been feeble, and to all appearance, frail, but it was never extinct. Among the towns of Roman Britain, some survived the dark ages of the Saxon conquest. London is plainly one of these. So are probably York in the north, and Exeter in the west.

The modern towns of the Netherlands cannot be traced back to the Roman Empire. The Belgians and Batavians were not colonized as the greater part of the empire was. Hence the rise of the chartered town was later in the Netherlands than it was in the rest of Western Europe, though when it became a municipality the growth of its opulence was rapid.

The period of the Crusades, in which the Flemish counts took a notable part, was the beginning of a new epoch. The tide of human emigration flowed back for a time from the west to the east, not in the permanent form of a race settlement, but in the transient one of armed hosts seeking one spot by land or sea. The Crusades gave an enormous impulse to trade, and enriched the commercial cities of Italy, such as Venice, Genoa, Pisa, and Florence. They elevated the condition of those who survived and returned, for a Crusader gained substantial benefits by his venture. They elevated the condition of those who remained, for the funds needed in order to carry on the expedition were supplied in exchange for local liberties and the right of trade associations. Besides, the exodus left higher wages, higher profits, and more secure institutions for those who laboured at home. The nobles began to see that voluntary grants, and the regular payment of dues from prosperous towns were a more certain source of income than the plunder of impoverished peasants and burghers, and the rapine of what was left to the miserable. Commercial prosperity constantly appears to accompany war, though re-action is sure to supervene. But the liberties which were purchased by solid gold and silver could not easily be purloined. Besides, the immediate return to violence was not safe or politic. The nobles soon saw that the improvement of their own fortunes and prospects depended on the opulence of the towns which were under their sway.

The form of these early charters is generally the same. The municipal authorities guarantee the fixed dues which they acknowledge themselves indebted in to their lord. In other words, he enters into the enjoyment of a fixed rent charge, secured on the revenues of the city and the goods of the citizens. The lord gives them the right of being tried by their own magistrates; in other words, of regaining a custom which was traditional among all Germanic tribes. These magistrates, mayors, and aldermen in England, Echevins or Schepens, in the Netherlands, were at first nominated by the overlord, and for long periods, but were soon elected by the citizens. As was customary, almost universal, offences were expiated by fines, which went to the count or the town exchequer, or even to the local judges, The municipality, in short, was constructed on the model of a manor, wherever in the manor the traditional customs of the people were respected and preserved. Only the strength of the town gave a more enduring guarantee to the grant of local liberties. It was a peculiarity in these towns that the inhabitants were free men. In England residence for a year and a day in a chartered town barred for ever all rights of a lord over his serf.

In order to prevent these towns from becoming a mere asylum for runaway serfs, vagabonds, outlaws, and the like, the institution of guilds or trading companies was essential to municipal liberties and contemporaneous with them. Every freeman had to be enrolled in a guild. Generally the entrance to this guild was obtained by a seven years’ apprenticeship, during which the aspirant to municipal rights underwent a qualified servitude. In most towns, membership in a guild became an hereditary right, descending from father to son. As the town became more opulent, the rights of a freeman were obtained by purchase. In course of time the lesser nobles sought admission into these trading companies, and, at last, even some of the greater nobles. The deans and masters of these guilds eventually monopolized the municipal government, and extinguished the ancient right of free election. It might well be asserted, however, that the process was really elective, more certain to select the most competent men, and more safe than a popular, perhaps tumultuous, election.

Still these Netherland towns might have remained small and struggling municipalities, but for the fortunate concurrence of several facts which, taken together, raised them rapidly to opulence. They became almost suddenly the traders and manufacturers of Northern Europe.

1. The Crusades had developed an extraordinary military activity in Western Europe, had generally suspended war at home, and had greatly stimulated commerce. The spirit of the Crusaders died out, the wars of Europe recommenced, but commercial activity survived. The spices and other goods of the East, sometimes conveyed by overland caravans and through towns, then flourishing, but afterwards destroyed by hordes of barbarians from Central and far Eastern Asia—sometimes by the Red Sea and Egypt—were collected at Venice and Genoa, and thence transmitted to Europe. These goods went over the passes of the Alps to the Rhine, and thence were conveyed down the river way, chiefly to Bruges, the city of the Bridges. It was but a slender rivulet of trade compared with the volume which the Dutch Republic carried, but it was singularly fertilizing. During its continuance, however, Bruges was in the first rank of commercial towns.

2. At an early date, and after the pacification of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, a century or so after these countries had ceased to swarm with the pirates who desolated the shores of Northern Europe and even penetrated into the Mediterranean, a number of towns on the coast of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and the Baltic, associated themselves together for trading purposes and mutual defence under the name of the Hanseatic League. The centre of this league is said to have been Bergen on the coast of Norway; the treasury of the traders to have been Wisby in the island of Gothland. The rapidity with which this league grew and flourished, the favour which it received from princes and prelates, are evidence of the value and volume of the merchandise in which they trafficked, and the magnitude of the markets which they visited. Their factories were planted in or gave occasion to the numerous free towns on the coast of Northern Europe; into the association with which European capitals and cities on the seaboard were glad to be introduced. The trade of the Hanseatic League was specially in raw materials, and the Netherland towns were eager customers for these materials. Hemp and flax, fur and hides, were regularly transmitted to these towns, and formed the means by which the Flemish burghers monopolized the industry of Western Europe and accumulated their wealth.

3. Perhaps the most important factor in the wealth of the Netherlands at this early period was that it became in one town or another the sole market for English wool, and England in the early ages of Flemish industry was the only country from which this indispensable article could be supplied, at least in any quantity, and the only country also from which it was supplied of good quality. The fact is, England was well-nigh the only European country where the peace was kept, where robbery and violence, such as ran riot in most European countries, owing to the insubordination and ferocity of the nobles, were repressed, and the law by which the farmer’s stock was protected was universally obeyed. The writer has read many thousands of farm accounts in the period to which he is referring, and it is rare indeed, in the elaborate and exact enumeration of all farm stock and produce from year to year, that complaint is made of losses by theft or violence. It was not so with the rest of Europe. What was a safe agricultural pursuit in England, was so dangerous and risky on the Continent, that the calling of the shepherd and the rearing of sheep were always rare and often unknown.

Not only was this the case, but the varieties of English wool in quality and therefore in value were numerous. The brands of wool, as merchants would say, were as many, as important, and as variable in value, as the qualities of wine are at the present time. Now it is true that there were woollen manufactures in England, perhaps sufficient to supply the ordinary wants of most Englishmen, but the skill of the English weaver was far below that of the Flemish. The finest cloths were woven in Flanders, and were thence distributed over Europe.