Contemporary Literature [pp. 729-761]

754 CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE. [Oct.
to arm themselves, or provide a home militia for their own protection, was an
offence that could not be forgiven. No doubt his enemies could plausibly in sist that his course tended to divide the Republic and palsy its energy. But
he too, with perhaps more plausibility, might retort the charge. There can
be no valid excuse for the crime of his judicial murder. The only palliation
is that it might be considered in the light of a political necessity.
That many at the time so regarded it we can readily believe. The modern
doctrine of toleration found but a very partial reception even in Holland,
although at this very time the Calvinistic Puritans of England had been
sheltered at Leyden from the wrath of a king who was as violent on the side
of the Calvinists of Holland as he was bitter against Calvinists at home.
One party or the other-it was almost universally felt-must be in the ascendant. War was imminent moreover, and the Dutch Republic, which it
seemed must bear the brunt of the conflict, could not afford to present a
divided front. Nor was it quite immaterial to whose charge the national
banner should be conceded. Mr. Motley pays an eloquent but just tribute
to that unconquerable spirit, that daring energy, that self-sacrificing devotion,
by which Calvinism had already triumphed in the sternest conflicts. It had
proved its capacity. It had done what no other form of faith had done
hitherto; it had defied Rome, and fought out its battle with her till it had
shown itself invincible. And ere long the conflict must open again. It
might be daily, or even hourly expected. For ten years it seemed as if
Romanism and Protestantism were each waiting for the signal to rush
to arms. Only a wholesome terror on the part of the Romish party
kept them from at once unsheathing the sword. But they were making
ready. They were laying their plans. They were compacting their league.
They were marshalling and massing their forces.
It is in the light of these facts that the domestic tragedy of the Dutch Republic needs to be read. It needs to be read, too, in the light of the slippery
and unreliable alliances to which alone the Republic could look for aid.
France had lost her Henry IV. At the very moment when he was about to
strike the blow that might for centuries have changed the map of Europe,
he was himself fatally struck down by the dagger of the assassin. Almost
before his body was coffined, the war treasures that Sully had amassed were
scattered or appropriated by ravenous courtiers, or plunderers, by the side of
whose vices treason might wear almost the aspect of a virtue. Thenceforth
France was a mere cipher instead of a leader. Ravaillac's dagger struck
down not merely a monarch but a State.
In this emergency it might have been supposed that England would rush
to the rescue. All her interests dictated it. Popular feeling demanded it.
The memory of the Spanish Armada-just thirty years before had not yet
died out of the minds of men. But the England of Elizabeth belonged only
to the past. Her successor was the most despicable of monarchs, and Mr.
Motley has done no more than justice to his pedantry, his cowardice, his
poltroonery, as the dupe of the long-sought but never realized Spanish marriage for his son. In Dutch affairs he intermeddled only to produce mischief.