History of the Reign of Philip the Second, King of Spain Part 34 (2/2)
[Sidenote: THE COUNCIL OF BLOOD.]
It was composed of twelve judges, ”the most learned, upright men, and of the purest lives”--if we may take the duke's word for it--that were to be found in the country.[1004] Among them were Noircarmes and Barlaimont, both members of the council of state. The latter was a proud n.o.ble, of one of the most ancient families in the land, inflexible in his character, and stanch in his devotion to the crown. Besides these there were the presidents of the councils of Artois and Flanders, the chancellor of Gueldres, and several jurists of repute in the country.
But the persons of most consideration in the body were two lawyers who had come in the duke's train from Castile. One of these, the doctor Del Rio, though born in Bruges, was of Spanish extraction. His most prominent trait seems to have been unlimited subserviency to the will of his employer.[1005] The other, Juan de Vargas, was to play the most conspicuous part in the b.l.o.o.d.y drama that followed. He was a Spaniard, and had held a place in the council of the Indies. His character was infamous; and he was said to have defrauded an orphan ward of her patrimony.[1006] When he left Spain, two criminal prosecutions are reported to have been hanging over him. This only made him the more dependent on Alva's protection. He was a man of great energy of character, unwearied in application to business, unscrupulous in the service of his employer, ready at any price to sacrifice to his own interest, not only every generous impulse, but the common feelings of humanity. Such, at least, are the dark colors in which he is portrayed by the writers of a nation which held him in detestation. Yet his very vices made him so convenient to the duke, that the latter soon bestowed on him more of his confidence than on any other of his followers;[1007]
and in his correspondence with Philip we perpetually find him commending Vargas to the monarch's favor, and contrasting his ”activity, altogether juvenile,” with the apathy of others of the council.[1008] As Vargas was unacquainted with Flemish, the proceedings of the court were conducted, for his benefit, in Latin.[1009] Yet he was such a bungler, even in this language, that his blunders furnished infinite merriment to the people of Flanders, who took some revenge for their wrongs in the ridicule of their oppressor.
As the new court had cognizance of all cases, civil as well as criminal, which grew out of the late disorders, the amount of business soon pressed on them so heavily, that it was found expedient to distribute it into several departments among the different members. Two of the body had especial charge of the processes of the prince of Orange, his brother Louis, Hoogstraten, Culemborg, and the rest of William's n.o.ble companions in exile. To Vargas and Del Rio was intrusted the trial of the Counts Egmont and Hoorne. And two others, Blasere and Hessels, had the most burdensome and important charge of all such causes as came from the provinces.[1010]
The latter of these two worthies was destined to occupy a place second only to that of Vargas on the b.l.o.o.d.y roll of persecution. He was a native of Ghent, of sufficient eminence in his profession to fill the office of attorney-general of his province under Charles the Fifth. In that capacity he enforced the edicts with so much rigor as to make himself odious to his countrymen. In the new career now opened to him, he found a still wider field for his mischievous talents, and he entered on the duties of his office with such hearty zeal as soon roused general indignation in the people, who at a later day took terrible vengeance on their oppressor.[1011]
As soon as the Council of Troubles was organized, commissioners were despatched into the provinces to hunt out the suspected parties. All who had officiated as preachers, or had harbored or aided them, who had joined the consistories, who had a.s.sisted in defacing or destroying the Catholic churches or in building the Protestant, who had subscribed the Compromise, or who, in short, had taken an active part in the late disorders, were to be arrested as guilty of treason. In the hunt after victims informations were invited from every source. Wives were encouraged to depose against husbands, children against parents. The prisons were soon full to overflowing, and the provincial and the local magistrates were busy in filing informations of the different cases, which were forwarded to the court at Brussels. When deemed of sufficient importance, the further examination of a case was reserved for the council itself. But for the most part the local authorities, or a commission sent expressly for the purpose, were authorized to try the cause, proceeding even to a definitive sentence, which, with the grounds of it, they were to lay before the Council of Troubles. The process was then revised by the committee for the provinces, who submitted the result of their examination to Vargas and Del Rio. The latter were alone empowered to vote in the matter; and their sentence, prepared in writing, was laid before the duke, who reserved to himself the right of a final decision. This he did, as he wrote to Philip, that he might not come too much under the direction of the council. ”Your majesty well knows,” he concludes, ”that gentlemen of the law are unwilling to decide anything except upon evidence, while measures of state policy are not to be regulated by the laws.”[1012]
It might be supposed that the different judges to whom the prisoner's case was thus separately submitted for examination, would have afforded an additional guaranty for his security. But quite the contrary; it only multiplied the chances of his conviction. When the provincial committee presented their report to Vargas and Del Rio,--to whom a Spanish jurist, auditor of the chancery of Valladolid, named Roda, was afterwards added,--if it proposed sentence of death, these judges declared it ”was right, and that there was no necessity of reviewing the process.” If, on the contrary, a lower penalty was recommended, the worthy ministers of the law were in the habit of returning the process, ordering the committee, with bitter imprecations, to revise it more carefully![1013]
[Sidenote: THE COUNCIL OF BLOOD.]
As confiscation was one of the most frequent as well as momentous penalties adjudged by the Council of Blood, it necessarily involved a large number of civil actions; for the estate thus forfeited was often burdened with heavy claims on it by other parties. These were all to be established before the council. One may readily comprehend how small was the chance of justice before such a tribunal, where the creditor was one of the parties, and the crown the other. Even if the suit was decided in favor of the creditor, it was usually so long protracted, and attended with such ruinous expense, that it would have been better for him never to have urged it.[1014]
The jurisdiction of the court, within the limits a.s.signed to it, wholly superseded that of the great court of Mechlin, as well as of every other tribunal, provincial or munic.i.p.al, in the country. Its decisions were final. By the law of the land, established by repeated royal charters in the provinces, no man in the Netherlands could be tried by any but a native judge. But of the present court, one member was a native of Burgundy, and two were Spaniards.
It might be supposed that a tribunal with such enormous powers, which involved so gross an outrage on the const.i.tutional rights and long-established usages of the nation, would at least have been sanctioned by some warrant from the crown. It could pretend to nothing of the kind,--not even a written commission from the duke of Alva, the man who created it. By his voice alone he gave it an existence. The ceremony of induction into office was performed by the new member placing his hands between those of the duke, and swearing to remain true to the faith; to decide in all cases according to his sincere conviction; finally, to keep secret all the doings of the council, and to denounce any one who disclosed them.[1015] A tribunal clothed with such unbounded power, and conducted on a plan so repugnant to all principles of justice, fell nothing short, in its atrocity, of that inquisition so much dreaded in the Netherlands.
Alva, in order to be the better able to attend the council, appointed his own palace for the place of meeting. At first the sittings were held morning and afternoon, lasting sometimes seven hours in a day.[1016]
There was a general attendance of the members, the duke presiding in person. After a few months, as he was drawn to a distance by more pressing affairs, he resigned his place to Vargas. Barlaimont and Noircarmes, disgusted with the atrocious character of the proceedings, soon absented themselves from the meetings. The more respectable of the members imitated their example. One of the body, a Burgundian, a follower of Granvelle, having criticised the proceedings somewhat too freely, had leave to withdraw to his own province;[1017] till at length only three or four councillors remained,--Vargas, Del Rio, Hessels, and his colleague,--on whom the despatch of the momentous business wholly devolved. To some of the processes we find not more than three names subscribed. The duke was as indifferent to forms, as he was to the rights of the nation.[1018]
It soon became apparent, that, as in most proscriptions, wealth was the mark at which persecution was mainly directed. At least, if it did not actually form a ground of accusation, it greatly enhanced the chances of a conviction. The commissioners sent to the provinces received written instructions to ascertain the exact amount of property belonging to the suspected parties. The expense incident to the maintenance of so many officials, as well as of a large military force, pressed heavily on the government; and Alva soon found it necessary to ask for support from Madrid. It was in vain he attempted to obtain a loan from the merchants.
”They refuse,” he writes; ”to advance a _real_ on the security of the confiscations, till they see how _the game_ we have begun is likely to prosper!”[1019]
In another letter to Philip, dated on the twenty-fourth of October, Alva, expressing his regret at the necessity of demanding supplies, says that the Low Countries ought to maintain themselves, and be no tax upon Spain. He is constantly thwarted by the d.u.c.h.ess, and by the council of finance, in his appropriation of the confiscated property. Could he only manage things in his own way, he would answer for it that the Flemish cities, uncertain and anxious as to their fate, would readily acquiesce in the fair means of raising a revenue proposed by the king.[1020] The ambitious general, eager to secure the sole authority to himself, artfully touched on the topic which would be most likely to operate with his master. In a note on this pa.s.sage, in his own handwriting, Philip remarked that this was but just; but as he feared that supplies would never be raised with the consent of the states, Alva must devise some expedient by which their consent in the matter might be dispensed with, and communicate it _privately_ to him.[1021] This pregnant thought he soon after develops more fully in a letter to the duke.[1022]--It is edifying to observe the cool manner in which the king and his general discuss the best means for filching a revenue from the pockets of the good people of the Netherlands.
[Sidenote: GENERAL PROSECUTIONS.]
Margaret,--whose name now rarely appears,--scandalized by the plan avowed of wholesale persecution, and satisfied that blood enough had been shed already, would fain have urged her brother to grant a general pardon. But to this the duke strongly objected. ”He would have every man,” he wrote to Philip, ”feel that any day his house might fall about his ears.[1023] Thus private individuals would be induced to pay larger sums by way of composition for their offences.”
As the result of the confiscations, owing to the drains upon them above alluded to, proved less than he expected, the duke, somewhat later, proposed a tax of one per cent. on all property, personal and real. But to this some of the council had the courage to object, as a thing not likely to be relished by the states. ”That depends,” said Alva, ”on the way in which they are approached.” He had as little love for the states-general as his master, and looked on applications to them for money as something derogatory to the crown. ”I would take care to ask for it,” he said, ”as I did when I wanted money to build the citadel of Antwerp,--in such a way that they should not care to refuse it.”[1024]
The most perfect harmony seems to have subsisted between the king and Alva in their operations for destroying the liberties of the nation,--so perfect, indeed, that it could have been the result only of some previous plan, concerted probably while the duke was in Castile. The details of the execution were doubtless left, as they arose, to Alva's discretion. But they so entirely received the royal sanction,--as is abundantly shown by the correspondence,--that Philip may be said to have made every act of his general his own. And not unfrequently we find the monarch improving on the hints of his correspondent by some additional suggestion.[1025] Whatever evils grew out of the male-administration of the duke of Alva, the responsibility for the measures rests ultimately on the head of Philip.
One of the early acts of the new council was to issue a summons to the prince of Orange, and to each of the n.o.ble exiles in his company, to present themselves at Brussels, and answer the charges against them. In the summons addressed to William, he was accused of having early encouraged a spirit of disaffection in the nation; of bringing the Inquisition into contempt; of promoting the confederacy of the n.o.bles, and opening his own palace of Breda for their discussions; of authorizing the exercise of the reformed religion in Antwerp; in fine, of being at the bottom of the troubles, civil and religious, which had so long distracted the land. He was required, therefore, under pain of confiscation of his property and perpetual exile, to present himself before the council at Brussels within the s.p.a.ce of six weeks, and answer the charges against him. This summons was proclaimed by the public crier, both in Brussels and in William's own city of Breda; and a placard containing it was affixed to the door of the princ.i.p.al church in each of those places.[1026]
Alva followed up this act by another, which excited general indignation through the country. He caused the count of Buren, William's eldest son, then a lad pursuing his studies at Louvain, to be removed from the university, and sent to Spain. His tutor and several of his domestics were allowed to accompany him. But the duke advised the king to get rid of these attendants as speedily as possible, and fill their places with Spaniards.[1027] This unwarrantable act appears to have originated with Granvelle, who recommends it in one of his letters from Rome.[1028] The object, no doubt, was to secure some guaranty for the father's obedience, as well as to insure the loyalty of the heir of the house of Na.s.sau, and to retain him in the Catholic faith. In the last object the plan succeeded. The youth was kindly treated by Philip; and his long residence in Spain nourished in him so strong an attachment to both Church and crown, that he was ever after divorced from the great cause in which his father and his countrymen were embarked.
The prince of Orange published to the world his sense of the injury done to him by this high-handed proceeding of the duke of Alva; and the university of Louvain boldly sent a committee to the council to remonstrate on the violation of their privileges. Vargas listened to them with a smile of contempt, and, as he dismissed the deputation, exclaimed, ”_Non curamus vestros privilegios_,”--an exclamation long remembered for its bad Latin as well as for its insolence.[1029]
It may well be believed that neither William nor his friends obeyed the summons of the Council of Blood. The prince, in a reply which was printed and circulated abroad, denied the authority of Alva to try him.
As a knight of the Golden Fleece, he had a right to be tried by his peers; as a citizen of Brabant, by his countrymen. He was not bound to present himself before an incompetent tribunal,--one, moreover, which had his avowed personal enemy at its head.[1030]
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