Holland - Thomas Colley Grattan
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Opposed to Maurice in almost every one of his acts, was, as we
have already seen, Barneveldt, one of the truest patriots of any
time or country; and, with the exception of William the Great,
prince of Orange, the most eminent citizen to whom the affairs
of the Netherlands have given celebrity. A hundred pens have
labored to do honor to this truly virtuous man. His greatness
has found a record in every act of his life; and his death, like
that of William, though differently accomplished, was equally
a martyrdom for the liberties of his country. We cannot enter
minutely into the train of circumstances which for several years
brought Maurice and Barneveldt into perpetual concussion with
each other. Long after the completion of the truce, which the
latter so mainly aided in accomplishing, every minor point in the
domestic affairs of the republic seemed merged in the conflict
between the stadtholder and the pensionary. Without attempting
to specify these, we may say, generally, that almost every one
redounded to the disgrace of the prince and the honor of the
patriot. But the main question of agitation was the fierce dispute
which soon broke out between two professors of theology of the
university of Leyden, Francis Gomar and James Arminius. We do
not regret on this occasion that our confined limits spare us the
task of recording in detail controversies on points of speculative
doctrine far beyond the reach of the human understanding, and
therefore presumptuous, and the decision of which cannot be regarded
as of vital importance by those who justly estimate the grand
principles of Christianity. The whole strength of the intellects
which had long been engaged in the conflict for national and
religious liberty, was now directed to metaphysical theology,
and wasted upon interminable disputes about predestination and
grace. Barneveldt enrolled himself among the partisans of Arminius;
Maurice became a Gomarist.
It was, however, scarcely to be wondered at that a country so
recently delivered from slavery both in church and state should
run into wild excesses of intolerance, before sectarian principles
were thoroughly understood and definitively fixed. Persecutions
of various kinds were indulged in against Papists, Anabaptists,
Socinians, and all the shades of doctrine into which Christianity
had split. Every minister who, in the milder spirit of Lutheranism,
strove to moderate the rage of Calvinistic enthusiasm, was openly
denounced by its partisans; and one, named Gaspard Koolhaas,
was actually excommunicated by a synod, and denounced in plain
terms to the devil. Arminius had been appointed professor at
Leyden in 1603, for the mildness of his doctrines, which were
joined to most affable manners, a happy temper, and a purity
of conduct which no calumny could successfully traduce.
His colleague Gomar, a native of Bruges, learned, violent, and
rigid in sectarian points, soon became jealous of the more popular
professor's influence. A furious attack on the latter was answered
by recrimination; and the whole battery of theological authorities
was reciprocally discharged by one or other of the disputants.
The states-general interfered between them: they were summoned to
appear before the council of state; and grave politicians listened
for hours to the dispute. Arminius obtained the advantage, by the
apparent reasonableness of his creed, and the gentleness and
moderation of his conduct. He was meek, while Gomar was furious;
and many of the listeners declared that they would rather die
with the charity of the former than in the faith of the latter.
A second hearing was allowed them before the states of Holland.
Again Arminius took the lead; and the controversy went on
unceasingly, till this amiable man, worn out by his exertions
and the presentiment of the evil which these disputes were
engendering for his country, expired in his forty-ninth year,
piously persisting in his opinions.
The Gomarists now loudly called for a national synod, to regulate
the points of faith. The Arminians remonstrated on various grounds,
and thus acquired the name of Remonstrants, by which they were
soon generally distinguished. The most deplorable contests ensued.
Serious riots occurred in several of the towns of Holland; and
James I. of England could not resist the temptation of entering
the polemical lists, as a champion of orthodoxy and a decided
Gomarist. His hostility was chiefly directed against Vorstius,
the successor and disciple of Arminius. He pretty strongly
recommended to the states-general to have him burned for heresy.
His inveterate intolerance knew no bounds; and it completed the
melancholy picture of absurdity which the whole affair presents
to reasonable minds.
In this dispute, which occupied and agitated all, it was impossible
that Barneveldt should not choose the congenial temperance and
toleration of Arminius. Maurice, with probably no distinct conviction
or much interest in the abstract differences on either side, joined
the Gomarists. His motives were purely temporal; for the party
he espoused was now decidedly as much political as religious.
King James rewarded him by conferring on him the ribbon of the
Order of the Garter, vacant by the death of Henry IV. of France.
The ceremony of investment was performed with great pomp by the
English ambassador at The Hague; and James and Maurice entered
from that time into a closer and more uninterrupted correspondence
than before.
During the long continuance of the theological disputes, the
United Provinces had nevertheless made rapid strides toward
commercial greatness; and the year 1616 witnessed the completion
of an affair which was considered the consolidation of their
independence. This important matter was the recovery of the towns
of Brille and Flessingue, and the fort of Rammekins, which had
been placed in the hands of the English as security for the loan
granted to the republic by Queen Elizabeth. The whole merit of
the transaction was due to the perseverance and address, of
Barneveldt acting on the weakness and the embarrassments of King
James. Religious contention did not so fully occupy Barneveldt
but that he kept a constant eye on political concerns. He was
well informed on all that passed in the English court; he knew
the wants of James, and was aware of his efforts to bring about
the marriage of his son with the infanta of Spain. The danger
of such an alliance was evident to the penetrating Barneveldt,
who saw in perspective the probability of the wily Spaniards
obtaining from the English monarch possession of the strong places
in question. He therefore resolved on obtaining their recovery; and
his great care was to get them back with a considerable abatement
of the enormous debt for which they stood pledged, and which now
amounted to eight million florins.
Barneveldt commenced his operations by sounding the needy monarch
through the medium of Noel Caron, the ambassador from the
states-general; and he next managed so as that James himself
should offer to give up the towns, thereby allowing a fair pretext
to the states for claiming a diminution of the debt. The English
garrisons were unpaid and their complaints brought down a strong
remonstrance from James, and excuses from the states, founded
on the poverty of their financial resources. The negotiation
rapidly went on, in the same spirit of avidity on the part of
the king, and of good management on that of his debtors. It was
finally agreed that the states should pay in full of the demand
two million seven hundred and twenty-eight thousand florins (about
two hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling), being about
one-third of the debt. Prince Maurice repaired to the cautionary
towns in the month of June, and received them at the hands of
the English governors; the garrisons at the same time entering
into the service of the republic.
The accomplishment of this measure afforded the highest satisfaction
to the United Provinces. It caused infinite discontent in England;
and James, with the common injustice of men who make a bad bargain
(even though its conditions be of their own seeking and suited to
their own convenience), turned his own self-dissatisfaction into
bitter hatred against him whose watchful integrity had successfully
labored for his country's good. Barneveldt's leaning toward France
and the Arminians filled the measure of James's unworthy enmity.
Its effects were soon apparent, on the arrival at The Hague of
Carleton, who succeeded Winwood as James's ambassador. The haughty
pretensions of this diplomatist, whose attention seemed turned to
theological disputes rather than politics, gave great disgust;
and he contributed not a little to the persecution which led to
the tragical end of Barneveldt's valuable life.
While this indefatigable patriot was busy in relieving his country
from its dependence on England, his enemies accused him of the
wish to reduce it once more to Spanish tyranny. Francis Aarsens,
son to him who proved himself so incorruptible when attempted
to be bribed by Neyen, was one of the foremost of the faction
who now labored for the downfall of the pensionary. He was a
man of infinite dissimulation; versed in all the intrigues of
courts; and so deep in all their tortuous tactics that Cardinal
Richelieu, well qualified to prize that species of talent, declared
that he knew only three great political geniuses, of whom Francis
Aarsens was one.
Prince Maurice now almost openly avowed his pretensions to absolute
sovereignty: he knew that his success wholly depended on the
consent of Barneveldt. To seduce him to favor his designs he had
recourse to the dowager princess of Orange, his mother-in-law,
whose gentle character and exemplary conduct had procured her
universal esteem and the influence naturally attendant on it.
Maurice took care to make her understand that her interest in
his object was not trifling. Long time attached to Gertrude van
Mechlen, his favorite mistress, who had borne him several children,
he now announced his positive resolution to remain unmarried;
so that his brother Frederick Henry, the dowager's only son,
would be sure to succeed to the sovereignty he aimed at. The
princess, not insensible to this appeal, followed the instructions
of Maurice, and broached the affair to Barneveldt; but he was
inexorable. He clearly explained to her the perilous career on
which the prince proposed to enter; he showed how great, how
independent, how almost absolute, he might continue, without
shocking the principles of republicanism by grasping at an empty
dignity, which could not virtually increase his authority, and
would most probably convulse the state to its foundation and
lead to his own ruin. The princess, convinced by his reasoning,
repaired to Maurice; but instead of finding him as ready a convert
as she herself had been, she received as cold an answer as was
compatible with a passionate temper, wounded pride, and disappointed
ambition. The princess and Barneveldt recounted the whole affair
to Maurier, the French ambassador; and his son has transmitted
it to posterity.
We cannot follow the misguided prince in all the winding ways
of intrigue and subterfuge through which he labored to reach his
object. Religion, the holiest of sentiments, and Christianity,
the most sacred of its forms, were perpetually degraded by being
made the pretexts for that unworthy object. He was for a while
diverted from its direct pursuit by the preparation made to afford
assistance to some of the allies of the republic. Fifty thousand
florins a month were granted to the duke of Savoy, who was at
war with Spain; and seven thousand men, with nearly forty ships,
were despatched to the aid of the republic of Venice, in its
contest with Ferdinand, archduke of Gratz, who was afterward
elected emperor. The honorary empire of the seas seems at this
time to have been successfully claimed by the United Provinces.
They paid back with interest the haughty conduct with which they
had been long treated by the English; and they refused to pay
the fishery duties to which the inhabitants of Great Britain
were subject. The Dutch sailors had even the temerity, under
pretext of pursuing pirates, to violate the British territory.
They set fire to the town of Crookhaven, in Ireland, and massacred
several of the inhabitants. King James, immersed in theological
studies, appears to have passed slightly over this outrage. More
was to have been expected from his usual attention to the affairs
of Ireland; his management of which ill-fated country is the
best feature of his political character, and ought, to Irish
feelings at least, to be considered to redeem its many errors.
But he took fire at the news that the states had prohibited the
importation of cloth dyed and dressed in England. It required
the best exertion of Barneveldt's talents to pacify him; and
it was not easy to effect this through the jaundiced medium of
the ambassador Carleton. But it was unanswerably argued by the
pensionary that the manufacture of cloth was one of those ancient
and natural sources of wealth which England had ravished from the
Netherlands, and which the latter was justified in recovering by
every effort consistent with national honor and fair principles
of government.
The influence of Prince Maurice had gained complete success for
the Calvinist party, in its various titles of Gomarists,
non-remonstrants, etc. The audacity and violence of these ferocious
sectarians knew no bounds. Outrages, too many to enumerate, became
common through the country; and Arminianism was on all sides assailed
and persecuted. Barneveldt frequently appealed to Maurice without
effect; and all the efforts of the former to obtain justice by
means of the civil authorities were paralyzed by the inaction in
which the prince retained the military force. In this juncture,
the magistrates of various towns, spurred on by Barneveldt, called
out the national militia, termed Waardegelders, which possessed
the right of arming at its own expense for the protection of the
public peace. Schism upon schism was the consequence, and the
whole country was reduced to that state of anarchy so favorable
to the designs of an ambitious soldier already in the enjoyment
of almost absolute power. Maurice possessed all the hardihood and
vigor suited to such an occasion. At the head of two companies
of infantry, and accompanied by his brother Frederick Henry, he
suddenly set out at night from The Hague; arrived at the Brille;
and in defiance of the remonstrances of the magistrates, and
in violation of the rights of the town, he placed his devoted
garrison in that important place. To justify this measure, reports
were spread that Barneveldt intended to deliver it up to the
Spaniards; and the ignorant, insensate, and ungrateful people
swallowed the calumny.
This and such minor efforts were, however, all subservient to the
one grand object of utterly destroying, by a public proscription,
the whole of the patriot party, now identified with Arminianism.
A national synod was loudly clamored for by the Gomarists; and in
spite of all opposition on constitutional grounds, it was finally
proclaimed. Uitenbogaard, the enlightened pastor and friend of
Maurice, who on all occasions labored for the general good, now
moderated, as much as possible, the violence of either party; but
he could not persuade Barneveldt to render himself, by compliance,
a tacit accomplice with a measure that he conceived fraught with
violence to the public privileges. He had an inflexible enemy
in Carleton, the English ambassador. His interference carried
the question; and it was at his suggestion that Dordrecht, or
Dort, was chosen for the assembling of the synod. Du Maurier,
the French ambassador, acted on all occasions as a mediator; but
to obtain influence at such a time it was necessary to become
a partisan. Several towns--Leyden, Gouda, Rotterdam, and some
others--made a last effort for their liberties, and formed a
fruitless confederation.
Barneveldt solicited the acceptance of his resignation of all
his offices. The states-general implored him not to abandon the
country at such a critical moment: he consequently maintained
his post. Libels the most vindictive and atrocious were published
and circulated against him; and at last, forced from his silence
by these multiplied calumnies, he put forward his "Apology,"
addressed to the States of Holland.
This dignified vindication only produced new outrages; Maurice,
now become Prince of Orange by the death of his elder brother
without children, employed his whole authority to carry his object,
and crush Barneveldt. At the head of his troops he seized on
towns, displaced magistrates, trampled under foot all the ancient
privileges of the citizens, and openly announced his intention to
overthrow the federative constitution. His bold conduct completely
terrified the states-general. They thanked him; they consented to
disband the militia; formally invited foreign powers to favor
and protect the synod about to be held at Dort. The return of
Carleton from England, where he had gone to receive the more
positive promises of support from King James, was only wanting,
to decide Maurice to take the final step; and no sooner did the
ambassador arrive at The Hague than Barneveldt and his most able
friends, Grotius, Hoogerbeets, and Ledenberg, were arrested in
the name of the states-general.
The country was taken by surprise; no resistance was offered.
The concluding scenes of the tragedy were hurried on; violence
was succeeded by violence, against public feeling and public
justice. Maurice became completely absolute in everything but
in name. The supplications of ambassadors, the protests of
individuals, the arguments of statesmen, were alike unavailing
to stop the torrent of despotism and injustice. The synod of
Dort was opened on the 13th of November, 1618. Theology was
mystified; religion disgraced; Christianity outraged. And after
one hundred and fifty-two sittings, during six months' display
of ferocity and fraud, the solemn mockery was closed on the 9th
of May, 1619, by the declaration of its president, that "its
miraculous labors had made hell tremble."
Proscriptions, banishments, and death were the natural consequences
of this synod. The divisions which it had professed to extinguish
were rendered a thousand times more violent than before. Its
decrees did incalculable ill to the cause they were meant to
promote. The Anglican Church was the first to reject the canons
of Dort with horror and contempt. The Protestants of France and
Germany, and even Geneva, the nurse and guardian of Calvinism,
were shocked and disgusted, and unanimously softened down the
rigor of their respective creeds. But the moral effects of this
memorable conclave were too remote to prevent the sacrifice which
almost immediately followed the celebration of its rites. A trial
by twenty-four prejudiced enemies, by courtesy called judges,
which in its progress and its result throws judicial dignity into
scorn, ended in the condemnation of Barneveldt and his fellow
patriots, for treason against the liberties they had vainly labored
to save. Barneveldt died on the scaffold by the hands of the
executioner on the 13th of May, 1619, in the seventy-second year
of his age. Grotius and Hoogerbeets were sentenced to perpetual
imprisonment. Ledenberg committed suicide in his cell, sooner
than brave the tortures which he anticipated at the hands of
his enemies.
Many more pages than we are able to afford sentences might be
devoted to the details of these iniquitous proceedings, and an
account of their awful consummation. The pious heroism of Barneveldt
was never excelled by any martyr to the most holy cause. He appealed
to Maurice against the unjust sentence which condemned him to death;
but he scorned to beg his life. He met his fate with such temperate
courage as was to be expected from the dignified energy of his
life. His last words were worthy a philosopher whose thoughts,
even in his latest moments, were superior to mere personal hope
or fear, and turned to the deep mysteries of his being. "O God!"
cried De Barneveldt, "what then is man?" as he bent his head to
the sword that severed it from his body, and sent the inquiring
spirit to learn the great mystery for which it longed.
CHAPTER XVII
TO THE DEATH OF PRINCE MAURICE
A.D. 1619--1625
The princess-dowager of Orange, and Du Maurier, the French
ambassador, had vainly implored mercy for the innocent victim at
the hands of the inexorable stadtholder. Maurice refused to see
his mother-in-law: he left the ambassador's appeal unanswered.
This is enough for the rigid justice of history that cannot be
blinded by partiality, but hands over to shame, at the close
of their career, even those whom she nursed in the very cradle
of heroism. But an accusation has become current, more fatal
to the fame of Prince Maurice, because it strikes at the root
of his claims to feeling, which could not be impugned by a mere
perseverance in severity that might have sprung from mistaken
views. It is asserted, but only as general belief, that he witnessed
the execution of Barneveldt. The little window of an octagonal
tower, overlooking the square of the Binnenhof at The Hague,
where the tragedy was acted, is still shown as the spot from
which the prince gazed on the scene. Almost concealed from view
among the clustering buildings of the place, it is well adapted
to give weight to the tradition; but it may not, perhaps, even
now be too late to raise a generous incredulity as to an assertion
of which no eye-witness attestation is recorded, and which might
have been the invention of malignity. There are many statements
of history which it is immaterial to substantiate or disprove.
Splendid fictions of public virtue have often produced their
good if once received as fact; but, when private character is
at stake, every conscientious writer or reader will cherish his
"historic doubts," when he reflects on the facility with which
calumny is sent abroad, the avidity with which it is received,
and the careless ease with which men credit what it costs little
to invent and propagate, but requires an age of trouble and an
almost impossible conjunction of opportunities effectually to
refute.
Grotius and Hoogerbeets were confined in the castle of Louvestein.
Moersbergen, a leading patriot of Utrecht, De Haan, pensionary
of Haarlem, and Uitenbogaard, the chosen confidant of Maurice,
but the friend of Barneveldt, were next accused and sentenced
to imprisonment or banishment. And thus Arminianism, deprived of
its chiefs, was for the time completely stifled. The Remonstrants,
thrown into utter despair, looked to emigration as their last
resource. Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden, and Frederick, duke
of Holstein, offered them shelter and protection in their respective
states. Several availed themselves of these offers; but the
states-general, alarmed at the progress of self-expatriation,
moderated their rigor, and thus checked the desolating evil.
Several of the imprisoned Arminians had the good fortune to elude
the vigilance of their jailers; but the escape of Grotius is
the most remarkable of all, both from his own celebrity as one
of the first writers of his age in the most varied walks of
literature, and from its peculiar circumstances, which only found
a parallel in European history after a lapse of two centuries.
We allude to the escape of Lavalette from the prison of the
Conciergerie in Paris in 1815, which so painfully excited the
interest of all Europe for the intended victim's wife, whose
reason was the forfeit of her exertion.
Grotius was freely allowed during his close imprisonment all the
relaxations of study. His friends supplied him with quantities of
books, which were usually brought into the fortress in a trunk two
feet two inches long, which the governor regularly and carefully
examined during the first year. But custom brought relaxation in
the strictness of the prison rules; and the wife of the illustrious
prisoner, his faithful and constant visitor, proposed the plan of
his escape, to which he gave a ready and, all hazards considered,
a courageous assent. Shut up in this trunk for two hours, and
with all the risk of suffocation, and of injury from the rude
handling of the soldiers who carried it out of the fort, Grotius
was brought clear off by the very agents of his persecutors,
and safely delivered to the care of his devoted and discreet
female servant, who knew the secret and kept it well. She attended
the important consignment in the barge to the town of Gorcum;
and after various risks of discovery, providentially escaped,
Grotius at length found himself safe beyond the limits of his
native land. His wife, whose torturing suspense may be imagined
the while, concealed the stratagem as long as it was possible
to impose on the jailer with the pardonable and praiseworthy
fiction of her husband's illness and confinement to his bed.
The government, outrageous at the result of the affair, at first
proposed to hold this interesting prisoner in place of the prey
they had lost, and to proceed criminally against her. But after
a fortnight's confinement she was restored to liberty, and the
country saved from the disgrace of so ungenerous and cowardly
a proceeding. Grotius repaired to Paris, where he was received
in the most flattering manner, and distinguished by a pension
of one thousand crowns allowed by the king. He soon published
his vindication--one of the most eloquent and unanswerable
productions of its kind, in which those times of unjust accusations
and illegal punishments were so fertile.