II William the Silent 1533–1584
Je maintiendrai
William of Orange of Nassau, or William the Silent as he is known, was an extraordinarily interesting man, if only from the fact that everything about him, from his titles and his circumstances to his character, was a contradiction. For one thing, the name “Silent” gives quite a wrong impression of him. It sounds as though he might have been taciturn, shy, or difficult to get on with, but he happened to be particularly easy and sympathetic, delightful as a companion, and eloquent in speech. How this misnomer came about will be related later.
William of Orange took his title from the smallest of his lands, a tiny province in France, near Avignon, of which he was the sovereign prince. He was a German count and a Flemish magnate; a Lutheran by birth, he was educated as a Catholic, but died a Calvinist. His character was just as varied and full of contrasts as his circumstances, so he interests and appeals to a great number of people, and we are agreed that he is one of the most lovable and heroic characters in history.
William was born in 1533 in the German castle of Dillenburg, the eldest of twelve children. His mother, Juliana of Stolberg, was a woman of great character—a wise woman and religious in the truest sense of the word. To the end of her life she was the adviser of her sons and a support and comfort to her many children. Several of them inherited her character, and principally William of Orange himself, and another, Louis. William’s father, also called William, was a good man who had gone through hard times, and who had finally, slowly but surely embraced the Protestant religion. He appears to us to be rather a washed-out edition of his remarkable son.
Orange spent the first eleven years of his life at Dillenburg. The great fortress rose from a rocky bend of a river, with towers and battlements and gateways such as one sees in mediæval pictures, and could hold a thousand people. Here all his mother’s children were born, and she managed her huge household in such a way as to become quite celebrated as the best mother and housewife in the country.
When William was eleven years old he inherited, through the death of a cousin, great lands in the Netherlands, and the little province of Orange. Thus he became, in spite of his tender years, a very important person, and through the wish of the Emperor Charles V, King of Spain and the Netherlands, who had a great regard for the Nassau family, he was sent to Brussels to be educated as a Catholic. Also at the Emperor’s request he became a page at his court, and by the time he was fifteen the Emperor had made an intimate friend of him, taking him into his complete confidence, and allowing him to be present at the gravest and most secret conclaves. He would ask William’s advice about important matters of State and go by his judgments. This might have been enough to turn the head of any one more than double the boy’s age, but it did not appear to spoil William. He seemed only to profit and to put to the best possible use all the knowledge he got of human nature and of public affairs by being, so to speak, behind the scenes in this very confidential and important position. Charles, who took pride in discovering great men, showed in the case of Orange a great deal of insight into character.
When he was eighteen the Emperor gave him a wife, a young girl of noble family, Anne of Egmont. She lived six years and they had two children. Judging by Orange’s letters to his wife he must have been a faithful and loving husband, but he could not have seen much of her, as he was nearly always away from home fighting for his master. Charles had made him, at the age of twenty-one, General-in-Chief of his army on the frontier of France, with which country Charles was at war.
It was on young William’s shoulder that the Emperor leant on the celebrated occasion of his abdication, when, worn out with illness, old before his time—for he was only fifty-five—sick of life and of his own schemes and wars, he gave up his crown and titles to his son, Philip, himself retiring into a monastery in the depths of Spain.
The superstition was still held at that period of history (and, in fact, up to more recent days) that a king is a king by divine right, and that he can therefore do no wrong. Charles’s record in crime is no mean one, though it does not perhaps equal that of his son Philip II. He was a despot, and a cruel despot, though he liked to regard himself, as many kings have before and since him, as merely fatherly. But he had behind his actions some sort of principle, while his son appeared to have none whatever. Charles had never let the system of Inquisition die down in the Netherlands, and on his accession he had immediately made efforts to bring the people to submission, visiting one of its principal towns with an army and taking away by force all its privileges, and imposing heavy fines upon its inhabitants. He passed edicts against the Protestantism of Luther, “to exterminate the root and ground of this pest,” and it is said burnt in his lifetime at the least fifty thousand people. How Charles could have been of service to the Netherlands it is difficult to see, for he only committed crimes against the people, crushing their independence wherever he could, and using their great industry as revenue for his endless wars in other parts of the world. Yet, as some of his admiring biographers tell us, no man could have gone to church more regularly. He attended Mass constantly, and listened to a sermon every Sunday.
On this occasion of giving up his crown he stood before the people of the Netherlands, in the great hall of his palace at Brussels, clothed in black Imperial robes, with a pale face and tears streaming down his cheeks. He had a great sense of dramatic effect, and it was an impressive spectacle. He had persuaded himself that he had nothing on his conscience, and by so doing he persuaded his subjects too. He told them in a choking voice that he had been nothing but a benefactor, and that he had acted as he had done only for their good and because he cared for them. He told them how he regretted leaving the Netherlands and his reasons for going. A greater contrast could hardly be imagined than this worn-out man and the young and noble-looking being on whose shoulder he leant. But the Emperor, with a real regard for Orange, which was a bright spot in his character, passed him on with words of advice to Philip: for, believing as he did in young William’s great powers of statesmanship, he wished that his own son might defer to him and regard him as an adviser in time to come.
Philip at once set Orange to bring about peace between Spain and France, and this he accomplished with brilliant success, securing excellent terms for his master. Philip saw how great were Orange’s persuasive powers as a diplomatist, and realized how valuable he could be in his schemes.
Philip II was twenty-eight when he became king. He had not the pleasant manner of his father, and he was not nearly so cultivated or so diplomatic. Unlike Charles, he knew no language but Spanish. He was a small and wretched-looking creature in appearance, with thin legs and a narrow chest. His lower jaw protruded most horribly, and he had a heavy hanging lip and enormous mouth, inherited from his father. He was fair, with a yellow beard, and had a habit of always looking on the ground when he spoke, as if he had some crime to hide or as though he were suffering. This, it is said, came from pains in his stomach, the result of too great a love of pastry. It had been thought politic that he should marry Mary Tudor of England; and when Philip became king she had been his wife two years. They ought certainly to have been very happy together, having the same tastes—a hatred of Protestants and a delight in burning and massacring—but in spite of this they did not get on. Mary was older than Philip and very unattractive, so he neglected her completely and left her to herself in England, where she shortly afterwards died.
Philip’s ambition on his accession was to make peace with Europe in order to be able to devote himself to putting down what he called heresy. Orange was meanwhile chosen as a hostage by the King of France while the treaty between the two countries was being completed, and it was during his stay in France that Orange made the discovery which was to influence his whole life.
While he was hunting one day with the King of France (Henry II) in the Forest of Vincennes, he found himself alone with the King, who at once began to talk of all his plans and schemes, of which he was full to overflowing. The gist of the matter was a plot just formed between himself and the other Catholic sovereigns to put a final end to Protestantism or heresy. They had, Henry confided to Orange, solemnly bound themselves to kill all the converts to the New Religion in France and the Netherlands, and the Duke of Alva—a Spaniard and fellow-hostage of Orange—was to carry out their schemes. The King described exactly how they would set about ridding the world of “that accursed vermin,” how they were to be discovered and how massacred. In his excitement and enthusiasm the French King never observed how Orange was taking it. He believed him to be party to the whole arrangement. He failed to notice that Orange never opened his lips or spoke a word—for though absolutely horrified, the Prince managed to control his expression and to remain silent—and thus he earned his well-known but misleading title. But Orange, hearing all this, made up his mind. His purpose was fixed, and as soon as possible he got permission to visit the Netherlands, where he was determined to persuade the people to show opposition to the presence of the Spanish troops and to get them out of the country. They were put there by Philip for the one and only purpose of crushing independence and stamping on Protestantism. Orange found that an Inquisition had been decided upon, more terrible than anything that had gone before.
We have seen that already under Philip’s father the Netherlands had been treated with great cruelty, and the Papal Inquisition had been used to put a stop to Lutheranism. The spirit of the great Reformer had taken a firm hold in this country, and Luther’s work, combined with the work of Calvin in France, had made the country keenly Protestant and determined to resist any sort of Catholic domination. The Netherlands character itself was marked by one great quality which, in the words of the historian Motley, was “the love of liberty and the instinct of self-government.” The country was composed of brave and hardy races who for centuries had been fighting for their liberty against great odds. Divided as their country was into provinces, they had had no king of their own, but had been governed by feudal lords and treated as slaves and dependents, with no power or voice in their own government. From this wretched position they emerged by their own efforts. By their great industry and character they made themselves rich and powerful, and, forming themselves in the cities into trade guilds and leagues, they fought against, and in many cases turned out, the feudal lords, governing themselves by their own laws and choosing their own governors from among themselves. Seeing their great wealth and prosperity, neighboring countries were desirous of adding these riches to their own territories, and thus, through war and purchase, the Netherlands fell under the dominion of Burgundy with its powerful reigning dukes, and under Austria through further wars, and finally, by a marriage of a Prince of Burgundy with a Princess of Spain, they became subjects of the latter country.
Charles V was the first King of Spain and the Netherlands, and with his rule the worst of their trials began. Under the Burgundian dukes the people of the Netherlands had managed to retain self-government, firmly clinging to their liberties, and at no price would they consent to become a province of Spain. No two peoples could have been more opposite in character—Spain quite behind the age, bigoted, superstitious, violently Catholic, cruel and aristocratic; and the Netherlands, full of life and activity, the rival of Italy in art and learning, ready to go ahead and adopt all the advanced and enlightened thought of the Reformation. In trade they had no rivals, for they were the busiest manufacturers in the world. Their stuffs were celebrated everywhere, and their ships visited all the ports in the world. This happy, brave little people were to be crushed and persecuted for their valor. But they were to find a deliverer—a leader who was to be the source of their inspiration and courage in the awful days to come—one who was willing, though he could gain nothing by it, to throw in his lot with theirs, to suffer and endure the same as they.
Orange had not much sympathy with the Reformers. He was an aristocrat and a Catholic, and had never thought of being anything but completely loyal to kings—after all he was one of them: he had what is considered the privilege of addressing crowned heads as “cousin.” But his sense of justice was one of the strongest things in his character, and he was quite determined to protect the harmless multitudes in the Netherlands from the horrible punishments and deaths which were in store for them, and these people were all his inferiors by birth—what are termed “the masses.” Dyers, tanners, and trades-people were the only Protestants in those days, so it was a more tremendous thing than one thinks for an aristocrat to take up the cause of the people as Orange was about to do. It is generally some remarkable man among the people who fights for justice for his own class, and it was, as I have said, the more wonderful for William to have taken up the cause of the people as his sympathy did not come from his agreement with them on religion, but purely from his manly, just, and generous disposition.
At this time in his twenty-seventh year, William was very rich, prosperous, and powerful. Few perhaps realized that there lay within him the seeds of future greatness. But though he had a thoughtful and an intellectual nature, he also had a pleasure-loving, easygoing nature, and nothing could exceed the luxury and magnificence of the life he led in his great palace at Brussels. It was a life full of color, variety, and amusement, with masquerades, banquets, chases, and tourneys from morning till night. Twenty-four noblemen and eighteen pages of gentle birth served in his household. One day, in order to economize, Orange dismissed twenty-eight cooks! Princely houses in Germany sent their cooks to learn in his kitchen, so celebrated was the excellence of his dishes. He kept, as princes and noblemen did in those days, open house, but he did not keep his money. A contemporary historian—a Catholic and an opponent—describes him at this time:
Never did arrogant or indiscreet word issue from his mouth under the impulse of anger or other passion. If any of his servants committed a fault, he was satisfied to admonish them gently, without resorting to menace or to abusive language. He was master of a sweet and winning power of persuasion, by means of which he gave form to the great ideas within him, and thus he succeeded in bending to his will the other lords about the court as he chose, beloved and in high favour above all men with the people by reason of a gracious manner that he had of saluting and addressing in a fascinating and familiar way all whom he met.
Orange had become a widower at twenty-five, but two years later he married again; his bride was Anne of Saxony, the daughter of a great German Lutheran magnate. The marriage met with great opposition from the Catholics, and this seemed to make Orange only more determined. There was nothing to recommend Anne except her wealth and lands. She was lame and had no charm, and became later an odious and impossible woman who made her husband very unhappy.
King Philip meanwhile continued to shower honors upon Orange. He made him a Councilor of State and Stadtholder or Governor of Holland, Zeeland, and Utrecht, and head of the troops in those provinces. If Orange had been content to do as he was told, his prosperous, pleasant life might have continued. Fortune from his birth had smiled upon him, and everything that the heart of man could desire seemed to lie within the hollow of his hand. But at the risk of losing everything—his high honors and worldly position—he was to speak and to act as his heart and conscience told him to, which was in direct opposition to the King and to his own material welfare. From this time onwards Orange, in a quiet, determined way, resisted Philip and his commands. His resistance was so far guarded, as he could not as yet defy him openly. His first step by way of protecting the Netherlanders was to use his position to persuade some powerful members of the States General (a form of Parliament,) to refuse supplies unless the Spanish troops were removed. Philip had given Orange the names of “several excellent persons” suspected of the New Religion and commanded Orange to put them to death. Orange not only did not do this, but gave them warning so that they might escape. Philip now issued an edict that no one should read or copy any of the writings of Luther or Calvin, or discuss any doubtful matters in the Scriptures, or break images, on pain of death by fire, or by being beheaded or buried alive if a woman. The troops were to be there to enforce the edicts. He made more bishoprics in the Netherlands in order that the ruffian bishops might spy and pry and assist in finding heretics. The principal ruffian was one Granvelle, on whom the Pope conferred the title of cardinal.
Philip himself left the Netherlands for Spain, and made his half-sister, Margaret of Parma, Regent. She was thirty-seven and an ardent Catholic. Her recommendation to Philip was that she felt greater horror for heretics than for any other form of evil-doer. She was not particularly clever, but she had learnt to dissimulate—in other words, to tell stories—and never to give a direct answer to a question. She looked mannish, having a mustache, and she suffered from gout. This gave the impression that she was masterful and like a man, which she was not at all.
It was not long before Philip discovered that Orange was not seeing eye to eye with him. He found out that, as commander of the Spanish troops, he was using his position to check persecution. Philip therefore ceased to admit him and Count Egmont, another suspect, to the inner councils. But he was not willing to get rid of Orange or to drive him into rebellion. He knew his power, and the service he could still render, and he realized the great anger it would cause in the Netherlands were William to be dismissed. When the persecution under Granvelle and the enormities committed by the Spanish troops on innocent people became too much for Orange to bear without open protest, Philip, fearing a general revolt, undertook to do what Orange asked him. He dismissed the troops temporarily, and the Cardinal retired into Spain to hatch more horrible plots, especially against Orange, whom he hated more than any one in the world. Orange had threatened to resign if he remained. In doing this he was not in a temper; that was not his way, for he scarcely ever lost his head. When he addressed himself to Philip with these requests, he faced the consequences. He knew that he would almost certainly incur the everlasting anger of the King.
The country having a moment’s respite from Granvelle, Orange now set himself to obtain three things:
1. A regular meeting of the States General (or Parliament).
2. The organization of a real, single, and efficient Council of State that should be the supreme source of government.
3. A relaxation of the persecution of heresy.
He worked ceaselessly amongst the nobles trying to get their powerful aid on the side of the people and the Protestant Revolution, persuading Count Egmont, one of the foremost and most powerful of the Flemish noblemen, to go on a mission to Philip in Spain to beg him to relax his persecutions.
William of Orange’s younger brother, Louis, had also taken up the cause of the Reformers in a whole-hearted and enthusiastic spirit. He had the advantage over his brother of being an avowed anti-Catholic, and being perfectly free and fearless, he was able to do the most useful work in the way of propaganda and in inspiring resistance to the Catholics. He gathered together several violent and reckless young men, young aristocrats of spirit but of bad reputation, and he gave these young wastrels something to think about, something to work and to live for. Under his leadership they held meetings, and formed themselves into a League of Protest against the Inquisition, drawing up, as a result of their meetings, a petition to the Regent, Margaret of Parma, entitled The Request. But the writing of it was in such violent language—though perfectly justifiable in the circumstances—that Orange, who was more of a statesman than his brother, could not advise the Regent to accept it. He believed it would do more harm than good. But finally it was put into humbler and more polite language, and being signed by two hundred nobles and burghers in Holland, it was presented to the Regent. She was upset, and tried to get out of giving them any answer to their requests. She assured them she would ask the King. One of her court turned to her saying, “Is Your Highness to be terrorized by these beggars?” and hereafter the Leaguers took upon themselves this title, and went about in beggars’ garb of loose grey frieze, a terror to the Catholics and a great force, as their numbers increased, in the coming Revolution.
The position of Orange at this time, trying as he was to keep loyal to the King and yet to protect the people against him, was becoming more and more difficult to himself. At thirty, Orange was a very different man from what he had been at twenty-six. He had much changed, and was no longer the prosperous and brilliant grandee of those times, but worn and thin and sad. He could not sleep. His position was an impossible one. He could not yet be quite openly against the Catholics; he saw no prospect at present of throwing off the Spanish yoke, and he was not yet prepared for rebellion. He hated what we call propaganda, and the narrowness of the Calvinists. He was charged with treason on one side—the Spanish rulers regarded him as a rebel—and on the other he was looked upon by the Beggars as a lukewarm friend. He was between the devil and the deep sea, desperate and puzzled and seeing no way out. But this state of things did not last long. The excesses of the Spaniards were fast exasperating the Netherlanders. There were constant small outbreaks of rebellion, and finally a great riot of image-breaking in Antwerp. The troops were all recalled, and Orange was commanded to put down the rebels, to quell and to destroy them by the most extreme methods. Tumult, confusion, and outrage were everywhere, and as Orange refused to punish in the way he was requested, his command was brought to an end.
The Regent, through the advice of her brother, challenged him to take the oath “to serve His Majesty, and to act toward and against all and every as shall be ordered on his behalf, without limitation or restriction.” The Prince refused. He might, he said, be asked to kill his own wife. The Regent, still recognizing Orange’s power and qualities, and always hoping to get him on her side, begged him to remain with her and retain his offices. She pressed him to meet Egmont and other influential Flemish magnates to discuss the situation. Orange consented to this, and, seeing Egmont, begged him not to wait and become a party to the frightful holocaust of blood which was about to swamp the Netherlands. Egmont refused, partly out of loyalty to the sovereign and partly out of weakness. Orange, in taking farewell of him, embraced him and was convinced he would never see him again. He never did, for Egmont was, a little later, taken and put to death by the Catholics as a traitor.
This must have been the moment when Orange ceased to have any sympathy with the Catholic Church. But he so far had not joined any other sect, and had apparently no sympathy with the Calvinism which he was afterwards to embrace. He retired now to his palace at Brussels and gave up all his offices. Philip wrote him sham letters of regret while, secretly, he advised Alva to seize Orange and bring him to punishment. They had made their plans, and Orange was then formally outlawed as a rebel, and his eldest son, who was at the University, seized and taken to Spain—his father never saw him again. Orange left Brussels as an outlaw, retiring to his brother’s castle of Dillenburg, where he lived with his mother. Alva then arrived in Brussels at the head of a Spanish army, one of the most splendid ever seen—healthy, well-trained, and courageous. The outbursts of revolt had filled Philip and Granvelle with a perfect fury of vengeance; there in the depths of Spain they had been planning and hatching horrible plots together, and now they set to and worked the Inquisition for all it was worth. The head Inquisitor, Piter Titelman, with his underlings, would scour the country, rushing into people’s houses, dragging out so-called heretics, accusing them, and hanging or burning them without any evidence whatever.
What was the result? The more these fine people of the Netherlands were trampled on, the stronger their spirit of resistance grew. Orange set himself to raise and organize troops to protect them from Alva. He got together some French Huguenots and Flemish refugees, but he was doomed for the present to failure. He had not realized the strength of Alva as a general and of his magnificently organized troops. Only the valiant Louis, his brother, managed by extreme dash and courage to win one victory. Orange struggled on, in spite of reverses. “With God’s help,” he writes to his brother, “I am determined to go on”; but through lack of funds he had to disband his mercenaries, or paid soldiers, and retire again to Dillenburg. This was perhaps the most unhappy period of Orange’s life. He was outlawed and almost a beggar, for he had sold all he possessed—his jewels, his plate, and his lands; his wife was showing signs of losing her mind, and instead of being a comfort to her husband, she hurled abuse and cruel and unjust accusations at him, blaming him for all their misfortunes and giving him no comfort whatever. Only his wonderful mother stood by him and showed her strength and understanding until she died.
Still Orange, with his fortunes at their lowest ebb, did not lose heart or hope. He was lonely and abandoned, indeed, by most people; his resources seem to have come to an end; still he continued to make plans for saving his country. Every nerve he strained to get support for his cause. Day and night he worked—sending messengers to France and England to beg support and money for troops. He was finally supplied with eighteen vessels, and, looking back on the course of the struggle, this seems to have been the turning-point in the future of the Netherlands. They were to suffer still untold misfortunes, but from the moment that the struggle was carried on by sea, so, in proportion, the Spaniards ceased to tell. “The Beggars of the Sea,” as they now termed themselves, were an adventurous and fearless band. They had several successes, and seized the town of Brill and some smaller places. The revolt, gaining courage, spread like fire through Holland and Zeeland, Utrecht and Friesland; all the principal towns of these provinces hailed Orange as their leader and submitted themselves to his authority. Louis of Nassau dashed into France and seized Valenciennes and Mons. Orange himself was nearly taken by the Spaniards in a surprise night attack. They came to his camp when he was asleep with all his clothes on, as his habit was then, his arms beside him, and his horse saddled; but he was awakened by his favorite lapdog, which lay on his couch. So, in the statues of the Prince in Delft and The Hague, the little dog lies at his feet in bronze.
A terrible event now crushed Orange and temporarily set back the cause of Protestantism and freedom. This was the Massacre of St. Bartholomew in Paris, when Coligny, the leader of the Huguenots—the French Protestants—who had promised to come to the assistance of Orange, was murdered by the Catholics.
Orange went to live in Delft, which became his home. He had made up his mind to cast his lot for good and all with the Hollanders and Zeelanders in their struggle for freedom. There in their midst he continued to inspire their spirit of resistance and independence. His was the moving spirit which helped the Dutch gradually by their extraordinary endurance to wear down the Spanish armies. It was his spirit, too, that kept the Spanish at bay at the celebrated siege of Haarlem, when for seven months the inhabitants endured terrible sufferings—the women fighting for their lives as well as the men—until they were starved out. The relief of Leyden was effected by Orange’s own personal exertions, though ill with fever.
In 1573 Orange became a Calvinist, so as to identify himself more completely with the cause he had at heart. But he was not a bigoted Calvinist any more than he had been a devoted Catholic. He had always been ready to respect the good side of every religion. He never could understand why people should not live happily together, praying in their own way. The spirit of Religion appealed to him, not the letter or the doctrine. He would have been content to remain a Catholic, had it not been for the Church’s persecutions.
Now, his wife, Anne of Saxony, having left him and become insane, Orange married again for the third time—Charlotte of Bourbon, who had been a nun. This gave further offense to the Catholics.
The years 1576–78 were almost the most crowded, the most desperate, and yet the most triumphant of William’s life. He was, he writes to his brother, overwhelmed with work and grief and care. The terrible Spanish army, storming the cities of the Netherlands and butchering their inhabitants, seemed to have got the best of it. Many towns fell to them, and Orange at one moment felt at the end of his tether, when the fortunate occurrence of a mutiny for pay in the Spanish army and the death of its Grand Commander gave Orange his opportunity. While Philip hesitated, Orange acted. This brought about the union of Holland and Zeeland, which is known as the Union of Delft, a crucial act and the foundation of a great Power to come. Orange was given supreme authority as ruler. He was to support the Reformed Religion, but no inquisition was to be allowed into any man’s faith or conscience. For not only had Orange to fight the Catholics, but he had to hold back the Calvinists, who, immediately their power and numbers increased, revenged themselves most horribly on those of different creeds. The horrors of the Spanish Fury continued to increase. William called a conference of the States General and drew up the Pacification of Ghent. By this treaty all the seventeen provinces bound themselves into a solemn league to expel the Spaniards, and made it law that the ultimate settlement of all questions was to rest with the States General.
William’s appeals to the people of the Netherlands were masterpieces of eloquence and reason. He put it that disunion had been their ruin—union would save them. A stick is, he said, easily broken; a faggot of sticks bound together resists. He appealed not only to Protestants but to Catholics, asking them not to be taken in by the superstitious idea that loyalty means absolutely cringing to the every wish of a king, who is probably of all the people the most ignorant as to all that is being done in his name. The States were stirred by his appeals, and the Pacification was hailed with shouts of joy and relief. Orange at this moment reached the height of his career, and he was persuaded by his people to make a public entry into Brussels as their acknowledged leader. He received a tremendously enthusiastic and brilliant welcome. A little later, however, he had to suffer disappointment in the breaking away of the Southern from the Northern Netherlands. The persecution in the South had done its work and Philip gained the allegiance of Belgium. Henceforward they had separate histories and are known as Holland and Belgium. In his further struggles against Philip, Orange felt scarcely strong enough to hold his United Provinces without assistance from another country. He turned to France, offering to make the Duc d’Anjou, brother of the French King, sovereign of the United Provinces. His offer was accepted. The Duke proved to be a weak and treacherous man; he was a complete failure, and, making himself odious and impossible to his subjects, his rule was brought to an end.
The awful Granvelle had meanwhile whispered to Philip that they might assassinate Orange (1580), and they finally drew up together a ban putting a price upon the Prince’s head. They declared him a traitor and as such banished him “perpetually from our realms.”
Orange, living quietly with his wife at Delft, took it very calmly. He showed no fear; the Lord, he said, would dispose as He thought fit. But he wrote and published his famous Apology, a very lengthy document which is interesting as a history of his life. In it he answers the accusations brought against him in the ban—that he is a foreigner, a heretic, an enemy, a rebel, and so on.
The ban soon began to bear fruit, and several attempts were made on the Prince’s life; one, a year later, was very nearly successful. A youth offered him a petition, and as Orange took it he discharged a pistol at the Prince’s head. The bullet went through his neck and through the roof of his mouth, carrying away some teeth. The Prince was blinded and stunned. When he came to his senses he called out, “Don’t kill him! I forgive him my death.” Every one thought he had been mortally wounded, and crowds went to the churches to offer up prayers for his recovery; and he did recover, but his poor wife Charlotte, who had nursed him devotedly, died of the shock. This had been a perfect marriage, lasting seven years, and Charlotte had had six daughters, all of whom had afterwards interesting and eventful histories. A year later William married Louise de Coligny, the daughter of the famous French general. She was one of the noblest and most attractive women of her day, and gave her husband one son, a remarkable person and the first of many illustrious Stadtholders.
In Delft, William with his wife, surrounded by his many children, ranging in age from two to nearly thirty years, lived a very happy, simple life. Their large plain house was in a pleasant street planted with lime-trees, so that in June the surface of the canal they looked upon was covered with their fallen blossoms. There in the street William of Orange would sometimes be seen looking like any ordinary burgher, very plainly dressed in a loose coat of gray frieze over a tawny leather doublet, a high ruff round his neck and a wide-brimmed hat of dark felt with a cord round it. In appearance, Orange was rather tall, well-made and strong, but thin. His hair and complexion were brown, and his eyes were brown, too, and very bright and large. His head was small and well-shaped, but the brow was broad, and now, late in life, very much wrinkled and furrowed with thought and care. His mouth was firmly closed and rather melancholy. His whole appearance was that of a man of great strength of character and of self-control. At this time, though weary after many strenuous years of toil, he was never more cheerful, amusing, and sympathetic. He was busy still as the practical ruler of his devoted people—“Father of the Country,” as they called him; but when the States begged him to become their sovereign he refused. He had quite enough reward and consolation, he said, in the devotion of Holland and Zeeland, and he wanted rest in his advanced age. He was only fifty-one, but no doubt felt old, for he was old in experience and sorrow, and so he asked to be excused more cares and responsibilities.
In the summer of 1584, the Prince was one day with his wife going to his dining-room for dinner, when a man presented himself at the door of the dining-room and demanded a passport. The Princess was so much alarmed at the man’s looks that she asked her husband about him. The Prince said he was only a man who wanted a passport, and ordered his secretary to prepare one. He then ate his meal quite calmly and happily, and at the end of it walked out of the room leading the way to his own apartments up some stairs. He had just begun to ascend them when a figure emerged from a dark archway near the staircase and shot a pistol straight at the Prince’s heart. One bullet went right through him, and he, feeling his wound, cried out, “Oh, my God, have mercy upon my soul! Oh, my God, have mercy upon this poor people!” and then he died.
The murderer’s name was Balthazar Gerard. He had pretended to be a Calvinist, and in this manner had approached Orange with all sorts of pathetic stories to arouse his sympathy, and had got to know all Orange’s habits and movements. Now he was seized by the Prince’s devoted people and, in the barbarous custom of that day, tortured in a most hideous fashion until he died, all of which he bore with great bravery. He was an absolute fanatic, and believed he was doing a very fine thing in ridding the world of Orange. Being dead, he could not receive himself the reward promised by Philip, but his parents were enriched and ennobled for their son’s act.
The Great Leader was no more, and it is easy to picture the indignation and misery among his people. How were they to get on without his kind, commanding figure, without his tact, his patience and resolution? His death was indeed a calamity which put back the fortunes of the Netherlands for many years, for his second son Maurice, who became Governor, was only seventeen years old, and it was hard work to continue the struggle. But Orange’s labors had not been in vain. He was the real founder of the Dutch Republic, and he knew before he died that the cause he had suffered for would at last succeed, that the Hollanders were now in a position to offer successful resistance to Philip. And his blood ran, too, in the veins of many noble descendants—his children, and later his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, who were to carry on his work. Some inherited his extraordinary powers of statesmanship and others became great soldiers.
William of Orange, like all great men of character, had his enemies and critics. He was accused of being governed by ambition and the desire to see himself in high positions. He has been called insincere, and even accused of cowardice on the field of battle. If we study his life carefully it seems to be a complete refutation of these accusations. If he had only cared for high posts and honors, how easily he might have retained them! He need not have taken the line he did against Philip. He might, as he was a Catholic, have overcome the feeling he had that persecution was an intolerable thing and agreed to the general system of Inquisition. In the beginning he owed everything to Charles V, so it was not natural or possible to throw over his son immediately. Besides, he was a statesman—one of the greatest of that age: he wanted to do the best for his country. Like many open-minded persons, he was able to see two sides to a question and to see it in its widest sense. He was tolerant and ahead of his times. To be all this in an age of bigotry and intolerance was to be insincere.
By circumstance William the Silent was placed in an extremely difficult position, and all must admit that he came out of it with the greatest glory. His troubles came upon him only because he was too honest. It is a difficult thing to understand, but a man’s sufferings and troubles are often a result of his own finest qualities, and so it was with Orange. As to his lack of physical bravery, his life was also a living contradiction of this criticism, as witness his indifference to the ban put upon him. It did not make him in the least nervous, and he took no precautions for protecting himself against assassins. For years, too, his life was spent on the field of battle, meeting with great reverses and hairbreadth escapes, yet he never shirked it, but endured and faced it. It is true that, unlike his brother Louis, he had no actual joy in battle. His blood was not stirred by the clash of arms, for he was not naturally a soldier, any more than he was a rebel; circumstances and his own fair-mindedness had made him so; while rebelling against an utterly unfair and unlawful condition of things, he used all his powers to moderate people’s passions, and to make them live peacefully together. The end part of his life was spent in drawing up laws to that purpose.
In thinking over the character of Orange, the fact that strikes one most is that his character deepened and strengthened as he grew older and in proportion to his sufferings. If he had not been tried to the very limit by misfortunes, and if he had always been rich and prosperous, the finest things in his character might have remained untried and unknown to us. We should not have realized that beside his charming qualities, his great understanding of men, his gentleness and generosity, there lay heroic qualities of endurance, devotion, and courage. That he should not by nature have been an ascetic, despising amusements, good food, and fine clothes, and the lighter side of existence, but an aristocrat, easygoing, enjoying possessions and the beauty of life, and with some human weaknesses, only draws us more closely to him, for it makes us understand the struggles and difficulties he had to overcome in himself in order to do what he did. He gave away everything he had, and at one time possessed hardly the common necessaries of life, so that he was almost a beggar as well as an outlaw. In the darkest hours of his life he tried to smile and to appear cheerful for the sake of his people, and to encourage them, which made his enemies say he was flippant and heartless. But he was a truly religious man, inheriting from his mother the religious spirit—reverence and belief in good and trust in God.
In the words of Motley, “He went through life bearing the load of a people’s sorrow upon his shoulders with a smiling face, and when he died the little children cried in the streets.”
D. P.