In commemoration of this union, the Dutch, according to their usual practice at every interesting change in their affairs, struck a medal, exhibiting two ships with the motto, • Frangimur, si collidimur.' On the reverse, were two oxen drawing a plough, with the motto, Trahite, æquo jugo.' [Hist. Medal. des Pays Bas.]

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Never were the affairs of any people in a condition apparently more desperate, than were at this time those of the new confederates. The ship, labouring among the waves without sails or oars, and the words incertum quo fata ferant,' which appeared on their first coin, were strong, but faithful indications of their feebleness and their fears. Not long after, as we are informed by Temple, pressed by the extremity of their affairs, they made an earnest and solemn offer of the dominion of these provinces, both to England and France, but were refused by both crowns,' and when they could find no master to protect them, and their affairs grew desperate, they were once certainly upon the counsel of burning their great towns, wasting and drowning what they could of their own country, and going to seek some new seats in the Indies, which they might have executed, if they had found shipping enough to carry off all their numbers, and had not been detained by the compassion of them, that must have been left behind, at the mercy of an incensed and conquering master.'

So doubtful, at the first, was the issue of the attempt in which these provinces had embarked. But no sooner, by a national compact, had they become capable of regular and combined action, than they received, from the genius and conduct of the Prince of Orange, an impulse, which, continued and aided by his successours, carried them in a few years to the first rank among the nations of Europe. They maintained for eighty years, a contest with their former masters, which terminated in the complete recognition of their independence at the peace of Munster in the year 1648. In this interval, during which they were so constantly at war, that, to borrow a remark of Strada, Mars might be said to go abroad, and to carry war into other countries, but in this he seemed to have fixed his chosen seat and habitation;'* in this comparatively short interval we find them acquiring pos

* ‹ Plané ut in alias terras peregrinari Mars, ac circumferre bellum, his armorum sedem fixisse videatur. De bello Belgico.

sions, and planting colonies in the East and West Indies ;* carrying on the commerce of the world; forming the mart for the exchange of the products of the North and South, and thus opening new fields for industry and new sources of wealth. In nearly the same period they added to the rolls of fame Van Tromp and De Ruyter in arms, De Witt in politicks, Erasmus in literature, and Grotius in jurisprudence and morals. Soon after the recognition of their independence, we see them maintaining a long and furious conHlict with England, and on the point of becoming masters of the seas. In the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries, they were at the head of the alliance, which first set bounds to the power of Louis XIV, and the ambassadours of this haughty monarch humbly sued for peace to the unaccredited deputies of the States General. And when concession after concession had been offered in vain, the French minister himself made a rapid journey to the Hague, and negotiated in person with the pensionary of Holland. A few words from the account which this minister has given of the negotiations of that period will serve to shew the important part, which Holland then acted. The once humble republick of Holland,' says De Torcy, [Memoirs, vol. i. p. 214.] now performed the office of arbiter among the powers of Europe. She seemed possessed of the right to dispose, at her pleasure, of their dominions, to reserve for herself such as she thought convenient, and to distribute the rest according to her will;' and again,[p. 255.] The general opinion then was, that peace could only be had by the offices and intervention of the Dutch. They might be considered as the guardians of her temple; the key was in their hands, and none could enter whom they did not introduce.'

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The causes of this rapid advancement are to be sought in the persevering character of the Dutch; that plain downright sense to understand and do their business both publick and private,' of which they possess a larger share, than any other people; their singular good fortune in having several successive princes of the House of Orange of eminent character and abilities, and lastly in that love of liberty, which has come down to them from their remotest ancestors. The history of the world affords no example of a contest so long

* The Dutch East India Company was established in 1602. That of the West Indies in 1621.

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and so successfully maintained by subjects against their sovereign; by a people just beginning their national existence against a monarch, who had lately received from the hands of his father a kingdom then in the plenitude of its grandeur and power; by men habitually peaceful, against those, who had been trained to arms in the school of a conqueror. When we compare the resources of Philip with those of the republick, we are at a loss to know by what means it could have been saved from being instantly crushed. Nor were the difficulties, which it encountered, in fact, few or easily overcome. No state,' says Temple, was ever born with stronger throes, or nursed up with harder fare, or inured to greater labours or dangers in the whole course of its youth.' Perhaps the love of freedom alone would not have triumphed over so severe a trial, had it not been seconded by religious zeal, and by that strong hatred of the Spanish name and character, which had been excited by the oppressions of Philip, and the insolence of his ministers. Of the cruelty of that gloomy bigot, some idea may be formed from the exulting exclamation of one of his apologists, Iconomachi passim et undique sine misericordia necantur. Replentur cruces cadaveribus, Germania exulibus.' [Burgundius, p. 346.] He had declared, that he would rather not be a king, than have hereticks for his subjects,' and he acted in the spirit of this declaration. Deaf to all remonstrances and entreaties, and even to the claims upon his gratitude arising from services the most faithful and the most important, he suffered the Counts Egmont and Horne to be sacrificed to the vindictive spirit of his minister. He violated, without scruple, the most solemn engagements. He persisted, against the fundamental laws, in introducing fourteen new bishops, and thus awakened fears for the safety of privileges, which his subjects numbered among their most valued possessions, and their most sacred rights. He sent Alva, whose council of blood' confirmed all that had been feared, and whose statue, treading and insulting on the two estates,' enkindled feelings perhaps still more difficult to appease.* We ought not then much to wonder, that the inhabitants of these provinces pre

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* Alva returned to Brussels with the triumph of a conqueror, and had a statue of himself cast from the cannon taken from Lewis of Nassau, treading and insulting on two smaller statues, representing the two es tates, and this he erected at Antwerp in the citadel.' Temple's Observations, &c. p. 16.

ferred any fate to that of being again subjects of Spain. If more be thought necessary to account for the spirit, which supported the Dutch in their struggle against the gigantick power of Philip, the reader may turn to De Thou's narrative of the eight months' siege and obstinate defence of Haarlem in 1573. This siege is among the most remarkable in modern history. The melting of the ice having made the roads impassable for carriers, recourse was had to an expedient known in ancient times. Doves were carried in cages to the neighbouring friendly towns, and were let fly, when it was wished to give intelligence to the besieged, with letters fastened to their wings, which they never failed to bear directly to Haarlem. During the siege, there were 10,256 discharges of cannon. The besiegers lost several generals, and four thousand soldiers. The besieged were reduced by slaughter, sickness and famine, from four thousand to fifteen hundred. There were two grand assaults vigorously made and more vigorously repelled. Several naval battles were fought, particularly one on the 28th of May between the Prince of Orange's fleet, consisting of one hundred sail, and that commanded by the Count of Bossu of about sixty sail. The former was defeated and put to flight after a loss of twenty one sail.

But the cruelty of the Spaniards after the surrender is what principally demands our attention. It is thus related by De Thou, who wrote within thirty years after the event.

• After the surrender, the Duke of Alva came from Amsterdam, and had hardly arrived, when he caused three hundred Flemings to be hanged. The next day, he beheaded Riperda, the commander, who from the first had opposed a surrender, and his second in command shared the same fate. Four days afterwards, he ordered the throats of three hundred common soldiers to be cut by the executioner, without the gates of the city. He suffered some days interval to elapse, that the horrour of the spectacle might be greater and make a deeper impression. Four days after this, he beheaded Brederod, Rosony and the Treasurer of the Briel, and after four days more, he imprisoned all who were suspected on account of religion, every one of whom, in one way or another, he soon found means to destroy.' [De Thou, Hist. Univ. tom. vi. p. 55.] And again-[p. 583.] Some weeks after the surrender, three hundred French, English and Flemings, who had been kept in prison from the time of the surrender, were

put to death by order of Frederick, the son of Alva. A few days before this, the principal inhabitants of Haarlem, and the leaders of the Flemish troops, that had defended the place, were removed to Schooten, where they were put to death on the 16th of that month."

An anecdote of this siege is related by the Abbé Raynal, in his very inaccurate history of the Stadtholders, which is also hinted at by Temple and by Strada, viz. that the women formed themselves into a company, and were about to sally out from the town, and assist in attacking the besiegers, had not the alarm, which the report of this intention produced among the Spaniards, caused them to offer terms of capitulation. The name even of the matron (Kennava) who proposed this spirited effort is handed down to posterity. But as the story is not related by De Thou, who wrote so near the time, and who seems to have collected every minute particular of the siege, we conclude it to be a mistake, and to have been founded on another fact mentioned by him, viz. that, when reduced to despair, and perishing by famine, the besieged resolved, as one last effort, to attempt their escape from the city, by placing seven companies of harquebussiers in front, nine more in the rear, and the magistrates with the women and children in the centre, and thus marching out in the face of the enemy. While they were preparing for this, proposals for a capitulation were received.

It is further to be remembered, that such of the inhabitants of the Southern provinces as were animated with the most resolute hostility to Spain, sought refuge in those of the North, and thus was produced a concentration of force and of zeal, which contributed not a little to secure the independence of the latter. But, at the same time, this retreat of all the more violent and heated spirits, to the newly confederated states, served to introduce into their composition a more than ordinary share of the elements of political combustion. They had besides from the earliest times been accustomed to the constitution of the three estates, and under the government of the House of Burgundy, and afterwards of that of Austria, each province had tenaciously maintained its local privileges and rights. There was therefore a spirit of liberty, and a jealousy of oppression and wrong, which, combined with the cause just mentioned, could hardly fail to shoot up into parties and factions. The nature of the government encouraged this tendency. It was an aristocracy, or rather a gradation of