Motley's United Netherlands.

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ART. IV.-1. History of the United Netherlands, from the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Years' Truce, 1609. By JOHN LоTHROP MOTLEY, D.C.L., Corresponding Member to the Institute of France. Vols. III. and IV. London: John Murray. 1867.

2.-Historic Progress and American Democracy: an Address delivered before the New York Historical Society, at their Sixty-fourth Anniversary. By JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY, LL.D., D.C.L. London: Stephens Brothers. 1869.

THE two volumes before us form the third instalment of Mr. Motley's history, and carry the story of the War of Independence in the Netherlands to the conclusion of the truce with Spain in 1609. The author, as he informs us, is now engaged on another work which will be mainly devoted to the history of the Thirty Years' War, and will include a history of the United Netherlands to the peace of Westphalia in 1648.

Mr. Motley's former volumes have been so universally read that it is almost superfluous to enlarge on his qualifications for the great task he has set himself to perform. Some practical acquaintance with diplomacy, much industry in research, considerable skill in grouping a vast mass of complicated materials, hearty sympathy for what is great and noble, an almost exuberant hatred of tyranny and wrong, a fervidly liberal spirit in civil and religious matters-these, added to a graphic and often impassioned style, are great gifts. When we remember that they have been devoted to a subject eminently thrilling and dramatic, it is not difficult to understand the interest of Mr. Motley's books. Of course, there is a reverse, though a very faint one, to this picture. Mr. Motley has what Frenchmen call the defects of his qualities-that is to say, his literary excellences are sometimes exaggerated till they become akin to faults. Thus, his style has a tendency to become turgid and inflated, and his passionate feeling seems sometimes to cloud that calm serenity of judgment which all parties in the past, especially all sincere parties, have a right to demand from the future. This, however, as we hasten to admit, is a mere question of individual feeling. The degree of reverence with which different people regard the

past simply because it is the past, and because they can at best form a very imperfect estimate of the conditions under which it existed, will vary infinitely. Mr. Motley carries his partisanship farther than we do, that is all. But there is another matter nearly akin to this, and of greater importance: to be convinced that the institutions of the United States of America are the most perfect fruit produced by the tree of time, and in some sort the ideal towards which mankind has been striving for countless ages, is an amiable weakness on the part of a citizen of the Great Republic. The man who entertains such opinions is fitted to hold his own in the diplomatic struggle which must, sooner or later, be resumed respecting the Alabama claims. There firmness rather than pliability of intellect will be required. But such a conviction cannot but add to the difficulty of writing a history of our complicated European past. It cannot but foster a habit of referring everything to an ideal standard, without taking due account of differences of time, race, and circumstance. Human civilisation is too wide and multiform to fit into any Procrustean bed, even though that bed be as large as the Great Republic. There is much of the doctrinaire in the views which Mr. Motley has developed in his Lecture on Historic Progress, and which manifest themselves here and there in his history.* But all this is by the way, and for the discharge of our conscience. When all has been said, Mr. Motley's work remains a noble monument of research and ability.

To us moderns, looking at the matter in the broad, if somewhat pale, light of history, it seems evident that in the year 1590 the power of Spain was on the ebb. A bad Government, wedded to a reactionary policy, was slowly reducing that great nation to the abject condition from which she has never yet recovered. A prey to the Inquisition, her liberties trampled upon, her commerce languishing in an insane contempt for industry, she was poor with all the wealth of the Indies at her command, and poor unfortunately in more than gold. And what internal despotism and incapacity had commenced, foreign arms had materially assisted. For nearly twenty-five years the sturdy "Beggars" of the Low Countries had held their own, with varying success truly, but with unvarying fortitude, against the picked troops of their king, draining his treasury,

*It is but just to remark that any defects of thought or style which may be ascribed to Mr. Motley, are very much more prominent in this lecture than in the history-and not unnaturally, for he is rather an excellent narrator and critic of human action than a philosopher.

The Decay of Spain.

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and causing the best blood in his dominions to flow like water. England, too, had done her part, with some vacillation perhaps, but on the whole nobly, in what was then the great war of independence of Christendom. Her seamen had been the scourge of Spanish commerce, harassing the enemy's distant possessions, cutting off his resources, and defying his unwieldy power. And, last and greatest blow of all, it was less than two years since the invincible Armada had, God so helping with His winds, been shattered to pieces upon her shores.

But to the insurgent Netherlands the state of affairs can scarcely have seemed so hopeful, or their own ultimate success secure. The signs of Spanish exhaustion and decay, very visible to us, were to them mostly matter of conjecture and hope. True they had struggled unconquered for a quarter of a century, but during all that time their heroic efforts had proved unavailing to shake themselves altogether free from the tyrant. Some of their most important military positions and strongholds were still in the hands of the enemy, and the sister provinces of the South had bowed their necks to the yoke, and were lost beyond all chance of recovery. Nor was it of little moment that the Spanish army was under the command of Alexander Farnese, unquestionably the greatest general of the age. Altogether, therefore, in the opening of that year 1590, with which these two volumes commence, the Dutch had real cause for anxiety, and might be excused for thinking that the future looked even more dark and gloomy than it really was.

Fortunately, however, at this crisis the overweening ambition of the Spanish king proved of inestimable service to the young Republic. Not content with his enormous dominions, and undeterred by the dread of adding to the number of his political difficulties, Philip was harbouring serious designs upon the crown of France. To that veteran schemer the opportunity of fishing in the troubled waters of French anarchy had proved too great a temptation; and more than ordinarily troubled those waters unquestionably were. For on the second of the preceding August, the dagger of Jacques Clément, the fanatic friar, had cut short the life of the fribble king, Henry III., extinguishing the line of Valois, and leaving the country as a prize to be disputed by the League and Henry of Navarre. With the League, Philip, of course, was on the best of terms. Its leaders were in his pay, perfectly ready to cheat him certainly, and equally certain to be cheated in return, but still capable of being used as in

struments for his purpose. Alexander of Parma was therefore ordered, sorely against his will, to detach as many of his troops as he could spare to support their cause in France; and when that cause seemed well-nigh lost by the defeat of Mayenne at Ivry, and when the brave, witty Béarnese, through weeks of famine, was slowly reducing Paris, Alexander was directed to leave the Netherlands to take care of themselves, and at once to proceed in person to the relief of the beleaguered capital.

The work was admirably done. Weakened by disease, goaded almost to madness by the distrust of the master in whose service he had spent health and private fortune, with troops mutinous for want of pay, and resources altogether inadequate, Alexander left the Netherlands in the beginning of August, and marched into France by way of Valenciennes, Soissons, and Meaux. Almost without a blow he thoroughly out-generalled his opponent-himself a master in the art of war-wresting from him the prize he had toiled for through the summer. Paris, that could only have borne the horrors of utter famine for a few days longer, was relieved. The army of Henry, composed chiefly of Huguenot volunteers, who had joined for a limited period, dwindled away, and the Béarnese was left with only such resources as he could derive from his own matchless good spirits, never so buoyant as in disaster. Then, when these results had been attained, Alexander Farnese marched back to Brussels, which he reached on the 4th of December.

So far so good. But while the great commander's attention was thus occupied with France, and during the months which it took to recruit his shattered health at the waters of Spa and to give rest to his army, the Netherlands were enjoying a precious breathing time. A general, young and hitherto untried, was organising the forces of the Republic, and maturing his plans of victory. Maurice of Nassau, then some three-and-twenty years of age, was the second son of William the Silent," the founder of Dutch independence. the second son who had thus inherited the honour due to the grand character and noble services of the father, for the elder brother, alas! had been kidnapped by Philip's order when a boy of thirteen, and kept a prisoner in Spain, under the tutelage of Jesuits, till a blind instinctive reverence for his father's name was the only link that bound him to his race.

*

* At page 14 of the first volume of the United Netherlands he is said to have been kidnapped from school, at Leyden, in 1567. These are apparently misprints for Louvain, and 1568.

But Maurice had been brought up under better auspices, and inherited many of the paternal characteristics. Though a man of far less heroic mould than he whom a reverent and grateful country called "Father William," he was prepared to walk worthily in the same footsteps. This is the account which Mr. Motley gives of the youth as he appeared some three years before this time :

"A florid-complexioned, fair-haired young man of sanguine-bilious temperament; reserved, quiet, reflective, singularly self-possessed; meriting at that time, more than his father had ever done, the appellation of the taciturn;' discreet, sober, studious-Count Maurice saith but little, but I cannot tell what he thinketh,' wrote Leicester's eavesdropper-in-chief. Mathematics, fortification, the science of war-these were his daily pursuits. 'The sapling was to become a tree,' and meantime the youth was preparing for the great destiny which, he felt, lay before him. To ponder over the works and the daring conceptions of Stevinus, to build up and to batter the wooden blocks of mimic citadels; to arrange, in countless combinations, great armies of pewter soldiers; these were the occupations of his leisure hours. Yet he was hardly suspected of bearing within him the germs of the great military commander. . . . A modest young man, who could bide his time-but who, meanwhile, under the guidance of his elders, was doing his best, both in field and cabinet, to learn the great lessons of the age-he had already enjoyed much solid practical instruction, under such a desperate fighter as Hohenlo, and under so profound a statesman as Barneveld.”

Such had been the youth of Maurice of Nassau,-a "young gentleman of a solemn sly wit," and again, of "sullen deep wit," as Leicester described him; and now the time had arrived when his studies in mathematics and mechanics were to bear fruit. Not for long would his enemies be tempted to deride his new-fangled notions of military organisation, and to despise his scientific strategy.

His first efforts were directed against Zutphen. On the 23rd of May, 1591, a great fort opposite the town was surprised by eleven soldiers, disguised as peasants and peasant women. Within a week the place capitulated. Five days afterwards, Maurice had thoroughly invested Dewenter, a large town some seven miles lower down the Yssel, well fortified, and defended by fourteen hundred soldiers, under the command of Count Herman van den Berg, his first cousin.

"Tandem fit surculus arbor;" this was the device he had adopted at his father's death.