History of The Reign of Philip The Second King of Spain History of the Reign of Philip the Second, King of Spain Part 16

The tendency of things, however, was still to maintain the distinct individuality of the provinces, rather than to unite them into a common political body. They were peopled by different races, speaking different languages. In some of the provinces French was spoken, in others a dialect of the German. Their position, moreover, had often brought these petty states into rivalry, and sometimes into open war, with one another. The effects of these feuds continued after the causes of them had pa.s.sed away; and mutual animosities still lingered in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the inhabitants, operating as a permanent source of disunion.

From these causes, after the greater part of the provinces had been brought together under the sceptre of the ducal house of Burgundy, in the fifteenth century, it was found impossible to fuse them into one nation. Even Charles the Fifth, with all his power and personal influence, found himself unequal to the task.[370] He was obliged to relinquish the idea of consolidating the different states into one monarchy, and to content himself with the position--not too grateful to a Spanish despot--of head of a republic, or, to speak more properly, of a confederacy of republics.

There was, however, some approach made to a national unity in the inst.i.tution which grew up after the states were brought together under one sceptre. Thus, while each of the provinces maintained its own courts of justice, there was a supreme tribunal established at Mechlin, with appellate jurisdiction over all the provincial tribunals. In like manner, while each state had its own legislative a.s.sembly, there were the states-general, consisting of the clergy, the n.o.bles, and the representatives of the towns, from each of the provinces. In this a.s.sembly--but rarely convened--were discussed the great questions having reference to the interests of the whole country. But the a.s.sembly was vested with no legislative authority. It could go no further than to present pet.i.tions to the sovereign for the redress of grievances. It possessed no right beyond the right of remonstrance. Even in questions of taxation, no subsidy could be settled in that body, without the express sanction of each of the provincial legislatures. Such a form of government, it must be admitted, was altogether too c.u.mbrous in its operations for efficient executive movement. It was by means favorable to the promptness and energy demanded for military enterprise. But it was a government which, however ill-suited in this respect to the temper of Charles the Fifth, was well suited to the genius of the inhabitants, and to their circ.u.mstances, which demanded peace. They had no ambition for foreign conquest. By the arts of peace they had risen to this unprecedented pitch of prosperity, and by peace alone, not by war, could they hope to maintain it.

But under the long rule of the Burgundian princes, and still more under that of Charles the Fifth, the people of the Netherlands felt the influence of those circ.u.mstances which in other parts of Europe were gradually compelling the popular, or rather the feudal element, to give way to the spirit of centralization. Thus in time the sovereign claimed the right of nominating all the higher clergy. In some instances he appointed the judges of the provincial courts; and the supreme tribunal of Mechlin was so far dependent on his authority, that all the judges were named and their salaries paid by the crown. The sovereign's authority was even stretched so far as to interfere not unfrequently with the rights exercised by the citizens in the election of their own magistrates,--rights that should have been cherished by them as of the last importance. As for the n.o.bles, we cannot over-estimate the ascendancy which the master of an empire like that of Charles the Fifth must have obtained over men to whom he could open such boundless prospects in the career of ambition.[371]

But the personal character and the peculiar position of Charles tended still further to enlarge the royal authority. He was a Fleming by birth.

He had all the tastes and habits of a Fleming. His early days had been pa.s.sed in Flanders, and he loved to return to his native land as often as his busy life would permit him, and to seek in the free and joyous society of the Flemish capitals some relief from the solemn ceremonial of the Castilian court. This preference of their lord was repaid by the people of the Netherlands with feelings of loyal devotion.

[Sidenote: THEIR COMMERCIAL PROSPERITY.]

But they had reason for feelings of deeper grat.i.tude in the substantial benefits which the favor of Charles secured to them. It was for Flemings that the highest posts even in Spain were reserved, and the marked preference thus shown by the emperor to his countrymen was one great source of the troubles in Castile. The soldiers of the Netherlands accompanied Charles on his military expeditions, and their cavalry had the reputation of being the best appointed and best disciplined in the imperial army. The vast extent of his possessions, spreading over every quarter of the globe, offered a boundless range for the commerce of the Netherlands, which was everywhere admitted on the most favorable footing. Notwithstanding his occasional acts of violence and extortion, Charles was too sagacious not to foster the material interests of a country which contributed so essentially to his own resources. Under his protecting policy, the industry and ingenuity of the Flemings found ample scope in the various departments of husbandry, manufactures, and trade. The country was as thickly studded with large towns as other countries were with villages. In the middle of the sixteenth century it was computed to contain above three hundred and fifty cities, and more than six thousand three hundred towns of a smaller size.[372] These towns were not the resort of monks and mendicants, as in other parts of the Continent, but they swarmed with a busy, laborious population. No man ate the bread of idleness in the Netherlands. At the period with which we are occupied Ghent counted 70,000 inhabitants, Brussels 75,000, and Antwerp 100,000. This was at a period when London itself contained but 150,000.[373]

The country, fertilized by its countless ca.n.a.ls and sluices, exhibited everywhere that minute and patient cultivation which distinguishes it at the present day, but which in the middle of the sixteenth century had no parallel but in the lands tilled by the Moorish inhabitants of the south of Spain. The ingenious spirit of the people was shown in their dexterity in the mechanical arts, and in the talent for invention which seems to be characteristic of a people accustomed from infancy to the unfettered exercise of their faculties. The processes for simplifying labor were carried so far, that children, as we are a.s.sured, began, at four or five years of age, to earn a livelihood.[374] Each of the princ.i.p.al cities became noted for its excellence in some branch or other of manufacture. Lille was known for its woollen cloths, Brussels for its tapestry and carpets, Valenciennes for its camlets, while the towns of Holland and Zealand furnished a simpler staple in the form of cheese, b.u.t.ter, and salted fish.[375] These various commodities were exhibited at the great fairs held twice a year, for the s.p.a.ce of twenty days each, at Antwerp, which were thronged by foreigners as well as natives.

In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the Flemings imported great quant.i.ties of wool from England, to be manufactured into cloth at home.

But Flemish emigrants had carried that manufacture to England; and in the time of Philip the Second the cloths themselves were imported from the latter country to the amount of above five millions of crowns annually, and exchanged for the domestic products of the Netherlands.[376] This single item of trade with one of their neighbors may suggest some notion of the extent of the commerce of the Low Countries at this period.

But in truth the commerce of the country stretched to the remotest corners of the globe. The inhabitants of the Netherlands, trained from early youth to battle with the waves, found their true element on the ocean. "As much as Nature," says an enthusiastic writer, "restricted their domain on the land, so much the more did they extend their empire on the deep."[377] Their fleets were to be found on every sea. In the Euxine and in the Mediterranean they were rivals of the Venetian and the Genoese, and they contended with the English, and even with the Spaniards, for superiority on the "narrow seas" and the great ocean.

The wealth which flowed into the country from this extended trade was soon shown in the crowded population of its provinces and the splendor of their capitals. At the head of these stood the city of Antwerp, which occupied the place in the sixteenth century that Bruges had occupied in the fifteenth, as the commercial metropolis of the Netherlands. Two hundred and fifty vessels might often be seen at the same time taking in their cargoes at her quays.[378] Two thousand loaded wagons from the neighboring countries of France, Germany, and Lorraine daily pa.s.sed through her gates;[379] and a greater number of vessels, freighted with merchandise from different quarters of the world, were to be seen floating at the same time on the waters of the Scheldt.[380]

The city, in common with the rest of Brabant, was distinguished by certain political privileges, which commended it as a place of residence even to foreigners. Women of the other provinces, it is said, when the time of their confinement drew near, would come to Brabant, that their offspring might claim the franchises of this favored portion of the Netherlands.[381] So jealous were the people of this province of their liberties, that in their oath of allegiance to their sovereign, on his accession, it was provided that this allegiance might lawfully be withheld whenever he ceased to respect their privileges.[382]

Under the shelter of its munic.i.p.al rights, foreigners settled in great numbers in Antwerp. The English established a factory there. There was also a Portuguese company, an Italian company, a company of merchants from the Hanse Towns, and, lastly, a Turkish company, which took up its residence there for the purpose of pursuing a trade with the Levant. A great traffic was carried on in bills of exchange. Antwerp, in short, became the banking-house of Europe; and capitalists, the Rothschilds of their day, whose dealings were with sovereign princes, fixed their abode in Antwerp, which was to the rest of Europe in the sixteenth century what London is in the nineteenth,--the great heart of commercial circulation.[383]

[Sidenote: PROTESTANT DOCTRINES]

In 1531, the public Exchange was erected, the finest building of its kind at that time anywhere to be seen. The city, indeed, was filled with stately edifices, the largest of which, the great cathedral, having been nearly destroyed by fire, soon after the opening of the Exchange, was rebuilt, and still remains a n.o.ble specimen of the architectural science of the time. Another age was to see the walls of the same cathedral adorned with those exquisite productions of Rubens and his disciples, which raised the Flemish school to a level with the great Italian masters.

The rapidly increasing opulence of the city was visible in the luxurious accommodations and sumptuous way of living of the inhabitants. The merchants of Antwerp rivalled the n.o.bles of other lands in the splendor of their dress and domestic establishments. Something of the same sort showed itself in the middle cla.s.ses; and even in those of humbler condition, there was a comfort approaching to luxury in their households, which attracted the notice of an Italian writer of the sixteenth century. He commends the scrupulous regard to order and cleanliness observed in the arrangement of the dwellings, and expresses his admiration, not only of the careful attention given by the women to their domestic duties, but also of their singular capacity for conducting those business affairs usually reserved for the other s.e.x.

This was particularly the case in Holland.[384] But this freedom of intercourse was no disparagement to their feminine qualities. The liberty they a.s.sumed did not degenerate into licence; and he concludes his animated portraiture of these Flemish matrons by p.r.o.nouncing them as discreet as they were beautiful.

The humbler cla.s.ses, in so abject a condition in other parts of Europe at that day, felt the good effects of this general progress in comfort and civilization. It was rare to find one, we are told, so illiterate as not to be acquainted with the rudiments of grammar; and there was scarcely a peasant who could not both read and write;[385]--this at a time when to read and write were accomplishments not always possessed, in other countries, by those even in the higher walks of life.

It was not possible that a people so well advanced in the elements of civilization should long remain insensible to the great religious reform which, having risen on their borders, was now rapidly spreading over Christendom. Besides the contiguity of the Netherlands to Germany, their commerce with other countries had introduced them to Protestantism as it existed there. The foreign residents, and the Swiss and German mercenaries quartered in the provinces, had imported along with them these same principles of the Reformation; and lastly the Flemish n.o.bles, who, at that time, were much in the fas.h.i.+on of going abroad to study in Geneva, returned from that stronghold of Calvin well fortified with the doctrines of the great Reformer.[386] Thus the seeds of the Reformation, whether in the Lutheran or the Calvinistic form, were scattered wide over the land, and took root in a congenial soil. The phlegmatic temperament of the northern provinces, especially, disposed them to receive a religion which addressed itself so exclusively to the reason, while they were less open to the influences of Catholicism, which, with its gorgeous accessories, appealing to the pa.s.sions, is better suited to the lively sensibilities and kindling imaginations of the south.

It is not to be supposed that Charles the Fifth could long remain insensible to this alarming defection of his subjects in the Netherlands; nor that the man whose life was pa.s.sed in battling with the Lutherans of Germany could patiently submit to see their detested heresy taking root in his own dominions. He dreaded this innovation no less in a temporal than in a spiritual view. Experience had shown that freedom of speculation in affairs of religion naturally led to free inquiry into political abuses; that the work of the reformer was never accomplished so long as anything remained to reform, in state as well as in church.

Charles, with the instinct of Spanish despotism, sought a remedy in one of those acts of arbitrary power in which he indulged without scruple when the occasion called for them.

In March, 1520, he published the first of his barbarous edicts for the suppression of the new faith. It was followed by several others of the same tenor, repeated at intervals throughout his reign. The last appeared in September, 1550.[387] As this in a manner suspended those that had preceded it, to which, however, it substantially conformed, and as it became the basis of Philip's subsequent legislation, it will be well to recite its chief provisions.

By this edict, or "placard," as it was called, it was ordained that all who were convicted of heresy should suffer death "by fire, by the pit, or by the sword;"[388] in other words, should be burned alive, be buried alive, or be beheaded. These terrible penalties were incurred by all who dealt in heretical books, or copied or bought them, by all who held or attended conventicles, by all who disputed on the Scriptures in public or private, by all who preached or defended the doctrines of reform.

Informers were encouraged by the promise of one half of the confiscated estate of the heretic. No suspected person was allowed to make any donation, or sell any of his effects, or dispose of them by will.

Finally, the courts were instructed to grant no remission or mitigation of punishment under the fallacious idea of mercy to the convicted party, and it was made penal for the friends of the accused to solicit such indulgence on his behalf.[389]

The more thoroughly to enforce these edicts, Charles took a hint from the terrible tribunal with which he was familiar in Spain,--the Inquisition. He obtained a bull from his old preceptor, Adrian the Sixth, appointing an inquisitor-general, who had authority to examine persons suspected of heresy, to imprison and torture them, to confiscate their property, and finally sentence them to banishment or death. These formidable powers were intrusted to a layman,--a lawyer of eminence, and one of the council of Brabant. But this zealous functionary employed his authority with so good effect, that it speedily roused the general indignation of his countrymen, who compelled him to fly for his life.

By another bull from Rome, four inquisitors were appointed in the place of the fugitive. These inquisitors were ecclesiastics, not of the fierce Dominican order, as in Spain, but members of the secular clergy. All public officers were enjoined to aid them in detecting and securing suspected persons, and the common prisons were allotted for the confinement of their victims.

[Sidenote: PERSECUTION BY CHARLES THE FIFTH.]

The people would seem to have gained little by the subst.i.tution of four inquisitors for one. But in fact they gained a great deal. The st.u.r.dy resistance made to the exercise of the unconst.i.tutional powers of the inquisitor-general compelled Charles to bring those of the new functionaries more within the limits of the law. For twenty years or more their powers seem not to have been well defined. But in 1546 it was decreed that no sentence whatever could be p.r.o.nounced by an inquisitor without the sanction of some member of the provincial council. Thus, however barbarous the law against heresy, the people of the Netherlands had this security, that it was only by their own regular courts of justice that this law was to be interpreted and enforced.[390]

Such were the expedients adopted by Charles the Fifth for the suppression of heresy in the Netherlands. Notwithstanding the name of "inquisitors," the new establishment bore faint resemblance to the dread tribunal of the Spanish Inquisition, with which it has been often confounded.[391] The Holy Office presented a vast and complicated machinery, skilfully adapted to the existing inst.i.tutions of Castile. It may be said to have formed part of the government itself, and, however restricted in its original design, it became in time a formidable political engine, no less than a religious one. The grand-inquisitor was clothed with an authority before which the monarch himself might tremble. On some occasions, he even took precedence of the monarch. The courts of the Inquisition were distributed throughout the country, and were conducted with a solemn pomp that belonged to no civil tribunal.

s.p.a.cious buildings were erected for their accommodation, and the gigantic prisons of the Inquisition rose up, like impregnable fortresses, in the princ.i.p.al cities of the kingdom. A swarm of menials and officials waited to do its bidding. The proudest n.o.bles of the land held it an honor to serve as familiars of the Holy Office. In the midst of this external pomp, the impenetrable veil thrown over its proceedings took strong hold of the imagination, investing the tribunal with a sort of supernatural terror. An individual disappeared from the busy scenes of life. No one knew whither he had gone, till he reappeared, clothed in the fatal garb of the _san benito_, to take part in the tragic spectacle of an _auto da fe_. This was the great triumph of the Inquisition, rivalling the ancient Roman triumph in the splendor of the show, and surpa.s.sing it in the solemn and mysterious import of the ceremonial. It was hailed with enthusiasm by the fanatical Spaniard of that day, who, in the martyrdom of the infidel, saw only a sacrifice most acceptable to the Deity. The Inquisition succeeded in Spain, for it was suited to the character of the Spaniard.

But it was not suited to the free and independent character of the people of the Netherlands. Freedom of thought they claimed as their birthright; and the attempt to crush it by introducing the pernicious usages of Spain was everywhere received with execration. Such an inst.i.tution was an accident, and could not become an integral part of the const.i.tution. It was a vicious graft on a healthy stock. It could bear no fruit, and sooner or later it must perish.

Yet the Inquisition, such as it was, did its work while it lasted in the Netherlands. This is true, at least, if we are to receive the popular statement, that fifty thousand persons, in the reign of Charles the Fifth, suffered for their religious opinions by the hand of the executioner![392] This monstrous statement has been repeated by one historian after another, with apparently as little distrust as examination. It affords one among many examples of the facility with which men adopt the most startling results, especially when conveyed in the form of numerical estimates. There is something that strikes the imagination, in a numerical estimate, which settles a question so summarily, in a form so precise and so portable. Yet whoever has had occasion to make any researches into the past,--that land of uncertainty,--will agree that there is nothing less ent.i.tled to confidence.

In the present instance, such a statement might seem to carry its own refutation on the face of it. Llorente, the celebrated secretary of the Holy Office, whose estimates will never be accused of falling short of the amount, computes the whole number of victims sacrificed during the first eighteen years of the Inquisition in Castile, when it was in most active operation, at about ten thousand.[393] The storm of persecution there, it will be remembered, fell chiefly on the Jews,--that ill-omened race, from whom every pious Catholic would have rejoiced to see his land purified by fire and f.a.got. It will hardly be believed that five times the number of these victims perished in a country like the Netherlands, in a term of time not quite double that occupied for their extermination in Spain;--the Netherlands, where every instance of such persecution, instead of being hailed as a triumph of the Cross, was regarded as a fresh outrage on the liberties of the nation. It is not too much to say, that such a number of martyrs as that pretended would have produced an explosion that would have unsettled the authority of Charles himself, and left for his successor less territory in the Netherlands at the beginning of his reign, than he was destined to have at the end of it.

Indeed, the frequent renewal of the edicts, which was repeated no less than nine times during Charles's administration, intimates plainly enough the very sluggish and unsatisfactory manner in which they had been executed. In some provinces, as Luxembourg and Groningen, the Inquisition was not introduced at all. Gueldres stood on its privileges, guaranteed to it by the emperor on his accession. And Brabant so effectually remonstrated on the mischief which the mere name of the Inquisition would do to the trade of the country, and especially of Antwerp, its capital, that the emperor deemed it prudent to qualify some of the provisions, and to drop the name of Inquisitor altogether.[394]

There is no way more sure of rousing the sensibilities of a commercial people, than by touching their pockets. Charles did not care to press matters to such extremity. He was too politic a prince, too large a gainer by the prosperity of his people, willingly to put it in peril, even for conscience' sake. In this lay the difference between him and Philip.

[Sidenote: UNPOPULAR MANNERS OF PHILIP.]

Notwithstanding, therefore, his occasional abuse of power, and the little respect he may have had at heart for the civil rights of his subjects, the government of Charles, as already intimated, was on the whole favorable to their commercial interests. He was well repaid by the enlarged resources of the country, and the aid they afforded him for the prosecution of his ambitious enterprises. In the course of a few years, as we are informed by a contemporary, he drew from the Netherlands no less than twenty-four millions of ducats.[395] And this supply--furnished not ungrudgingly, it is true--was lavished, for the most part, on objects in which the nation had no interest. In like manner, it was the revenues of the Netherlands which defrayed great part of Philip's expenses in the war that followed his accession. "Here,"

exclaims the Venetian envoy, Soriano, "were the true treasures of the king of Spain; here were his mines, his Indies, which furnished Charles with the means of carrying on his wars for so many years with the French, the Germans, the Italians, which provided for the defence of his own states, and maintained his dignity and reputation."[396]

Such then was the condition of the country at the time when the sceptre pa.s.sed from the hands of Charles the Fifth into those of Philip the Second;--its broad plains teeming with the products of an elaborate culture; its cities swarming with artisans, skilled in all kinds of ingenious handicraft; its commerce abroad on every sea, and bringing back rich returns from distant climes. The great body of its people, well advanced in the arts of civilization, rejoiced in "such abundance of all things," says a foreigner who witnessed their prosperity, "that there was no man, however humble, who did not seem rich for his station."[397] In this active development of their powers, the inquisitive mind of the inhabitants naturally turned to those great problems in religion which were agitating the neighboring countries of France and Germany. All the efforts of Charles were unavailing to check the spirit of inquiry; and in the last year of his reign he bitterly confessed the total failure of his endeavor to stay the progress of heresy in the Netherlands.[398] Well had it been for his successor, had he taken counsel by the failure of his father, and subst.i.tuted a more lenient policy for the ineffectual system of persecution. But such was not the policy of Philip.

CHAPTER II.

SYSTEM ESTABLISHED BY PHILIP.

Unpopular Manners of Philip.--He enforces the Edicts.--Increase of Bishoprics.--Margaret of Parma Regent.--Meeting of the States-General.--Their spirited Conduct.--Organization of the Councils.--Rise and Character of Granvelle.--Philip's Departure.

1559.

Philip the Second was no stranger to the Netherlands. He had come there, as it will be remembered, when very young, to be presented by his father to his future subjects. On that occasion he had greatly disgusted the people by that impenetrable reserve which they construed into haughtiness, and which strongly contrasted with the gracious manners of the emperor. Charles saw with pain the impression which his son had left on his subjects; and the effects of his paternal admonitions were visible in a marked change in Philip's deportment on his subsequent visit to England. But nature lies deeper than manner; and when Philip returned, on his father's abdication, to a.s.sume the sovereignty of the Netherlands, he wore the same frigid exterior as in earlier days.

His first step was to visit the different provinces, and receive from them their oaths of allegiance. No better occasion could be offered for conciliating the good-will of the inhabitants. Everywhere his approach was greeted with festivities and public rejoicing. The gates of the capitals were thrown open to receive him, and the population thronged out, eager to do homage to their new sovereign. It was a season of jubilee for the whole nation.

In this general rejoicing, Philip's eye alone remained dark.[399] Shut up in his carriage, he seemed desirous to seclude himself from the gaze of his new subjects, who crowded around, anxious to catch a glimpse of their young monarch.[400] His conduct seemed like a rebuke of their enthusiasm. Thus chilled as they were in the first flow of their loyalty, his progress through the land, which should have won him all hearts, closed all hearts against him.

The emperor, when he visited the Netherlands, was like one coming back to his native country. He spoke the language of the people, dressed in their dress, conformed to their usages and way of life. But Philip was in everything a Spaniard. He spoke only the Castilian. He adopted the Spanish etiquette and burdensome ceremonial. He was surrounded by Spaniards, and, with few exceptions, it was to Spaniards only that he gave his confidence. Charles had disgusted his Spanish subjects by the marked preference he had given to his Flemish. The reverse now took place, and Philip displeased the Flemings by his partiality for the Spaniards. The people of the Netherlands felt with bitterness that the sceptre of their country had pa.s.sed into the hands of a foreigner.

During his progress Philip caused reports to be prepared for him of the condition of the several provinces, their population and trade,--presenting a ma.s.s of statistical details, in which, with his usual industry, he was careful to instruct himself. On his return, his first concern was to provide for the interests of religion. He renewed his father's edicts relating to the Inquisition, and in the following year confirmed the "placard" respecting heresy. In doing this, he was careful, by the politic advice of Granvelle, to conform as nearly as possible to the language of the original edicts, that no charge of innovation might be laid to him, and thus the odium of these unpopular measures might remain with their original author.[401]

[Sidenote: UNPOPULAR MANNERS OF PHILIP.]