History of the Reign of Philip the Second, King of Spain Part 35 (1/2)
The prince, during his residence in Germany, experienced all those alleviations of his misfortunes which the sympathy and support of powerful friends could afford. Among these the most deserving of notice was William the Wise, a worthy son of the famous old landgrave of Hesse who so stoutly maintained the Protestant cause against Charles the Fifth. He and the elector of Saxony, both kinsmen of William's wife, offered to provide an establishment for the prince, while he remained in Germany, which, if it was not on the magnificent scale to which he had been used in the Netherlands, was still not unsuited to the dignity of his rank.[1031]
[Sidenote: CIVIL WAR IN FRANCE.]
The little court of William received every day fresh accessions from those who fled from persecution in the Netherlands. They brought with them appeals to him from his countrymen to interpose in their behalf.
The hour had not yet come. But still he was not idle. He was earnestly endeavoring to interest the German princes in the cause, was strengthening his own resources, and steadily, though silently, making preparation for the great struggle with the oppressors of his country.
While these events were pa.s.sing in the Netherlands, the neighboring monarchy of France was torn by those religious dissensions, which, at this period, agitated, in a greater or less degree, most of the states of Christendom. One half of the French nation was in arms against the other half. At the time of our history, the Huguenots had gained a temporary advantage; their combined forces were beleaguering the capital, in which the king and Catherine de Medicis, his mother, were then held prisoners. In this extremity, Catherine appealed to Margaret to send a body of troops to her a.s.sistance. The regent hesitated as to what course to take, and referred the matter to Alva. He did not hesitate. He knew Philip's disposition in regard to France, and had himself, probably, come to an understanding on the subject with the queen-mother in the famous interview at Bayonne. He proposed to send a body of three thousand horse to her relief. At the same time he wrote to Catherine, offering to leave the Low Countries, and march himself to her support with his whole strength, five thousand horse and fifteen thousand foot, all his Spanish veterans included, provided she would bring matters to an issue, and finish at once with the enemies of their religion. The duke felt how powerfully such a result would react on the Catholic cause in the Netherlands.
He besought Catherine to come to no terms with the rebels; above all, to make them no concessions. ”Such concessions must, of necessity, be either spiritual or temporal. If spiritual, they would be opposed to the rights of G.o.d; if temporal, to the rights of the king. Better to reign over a ruined land, which yet remains true to its G.o.d and its king, than over one left unharmed for the benefit of the Devil and his followers the heretics.”[1032] In this declaration, breathing the full spirit of religious and political absolutism, may be found the true key to the policy of Alva and of his master.
Philip heartily approved of the views taken by his general.[1033] As the great champion of Catholicism, he looked with the deepest interest on the religious struggle going forward in the neighboring kingdom, which exercised so direct an influence on the revolutionary movements in the Netherlands. He strongly encouraged the queen-mother to yield nothing to the heretics. ”With his own person,” he declared, ”and with all that he possessed, he was ready to serve the French crown in its contests with the rebels.”[1034] Philip's zeal in the cause was so well understood in France, that some of the Catholic leaders did not scruple to look to him, rather than to their own government, as the true head of their party.[1035]
Catherine de Medicis did not discover the same uncompromising spirit, and had before this disgusted her royal son-in-law by the politic views which mingled with her religion. On the present occasion she did not profit by the brilliant offer made to her by Alva to come in person at the head of his army. She may have thought so formidable a presence might endanger the independence of the government. Roman Catholic as she was at heart, she preferred, with true Italian policy, balancing the rival factions against each other, to exterminating either of them altogether. The duke saw that Catherine was not disposed to strike at the root of the evil, and that the advantages to be secured by success would be only temporary. He contented himself, therefore, with despatching a smaller force, chiefly of Flemish troops, under Aremberg.
Before the count reached Paris, the battle of St. Denis had been fought.
Montmorenci fell; but the royal party was victorious. Catherine made a treaty with the discomfited Huguenots, as favorable to them as if they, not she, had won the fight. Alva, disgusted with the issue, ordered the speedy return of Aremberg, whose presence, moreover, was needed, on a more active theatre of operations.
During all this while Margaret's position afforded a pitiable contrast to the splendid elevation which she had occupied for so many years as head of the government. Not only had the actual power pa.s.sed from her hands, but she felt that all her influence had gone with it. She hardly enjoyed even the right of remonstrance. In this position, she had the advantage of being more favorably situated for criticizing the conduct of the administration, than when she was herself at the head of it. She became more sensible of the wrongs of the people,--now that they were inflicted by other hands than her own. She did not refuse to intercede in their behalf. She deprecated the introduction of a garrison into the good city of Brussels. If this were necessary, she still besought the duke not to allow the loyal inhabitants to be burdened with the maintenance of the soldiers.[1036] But he turned a deaf ear to her pet.i.tion. She urged that, after the chastis.e.m.e.nt already inflicted on the nation, the only way to restore quiet was by a general amnesty. The duke replied, that no amnesty could be so general but there must be some exceptions, and it would take time to determine who should be excepted.
She recommended that the states be called together to vote the supplies.
He evaded this also by saying it would be necessary first to decide on the amount of the subsidy to be raised.[1037] The regent felt that in all matters of real moment she had as little weight as any private individual in the country.
[Sidenote: DEPARTURE OF MARGARET]
From this state of humiliation she was at last relieved by the return of her secretary, Machiavelli, who brought with him despatches from Ruy Gomez, Philip's favorite minister. He informed the d.u.c.h.ess that the king, though, reluctantly, had at last acceded to her request, and allowed her to resign the government of the provinces. In token of his satisfaction with her conduct, his majesty had raised the pension which she had hitherto enjoyed, of eight thousand florins, to fourteen thousand, to be paid her yearly during the remainder of her life. This letter was dated on the sixth of October.[1038] Margaret soon after received one, dated four days later, from Philip himself, of much the same tenor with that of his minister. The king, in a few words, intimated the regret he felt at his sister's retirement from office, and the sense he entertained of the services she had rendered him by her long and faithful administration.[1039]
The increase of the pension showed no very extravagant estimate of these services; and the parsimonious tribute which, after his long silence, he now, in a few brief sentences, paid to her deserts, too plainly intimated, that all she had done had failed to excite even a feeling of grat.i.tude in the bosom of her brother.[1040] At the same time with the letter to Margaret came a commission to the duke of Alva, investing him with the t.i.tle of regent and governor-general, together with all the powers that had been possessed by his predecessor.[1041]
Margaret made only one request of Philip previous to her departure. This he denied her. Her father, Charles the Fifth, at the time of his abdication, had called the states-general together, and taken leave of them in a farewell address, which was still cherished as a legacy by his subjects. Margaret would have imitated his example. The grandeur of the spectacle pleased her imagination; and she was influenced, no doubt, by the honest desire of manifesting, in the hour of separation, some feelings of a kindly nature for the people over whom she had ruled for so many years.
But Philip, as we have seen, had no relish for these meetings of the states. He had no idea of consenting to them on an emergency no more pressing than the present. Margaret was obliged, therefore, to relinquish the pageant, and to content herself with taking leave of the people by letters addressed to the princ.i.p.al cities of the provinces. In these she briefly touched on the difficulties which had lain in her path, and on the satisfaction which she felt at having, at length, brought the country to a state of tranquillity and order. She besought them to remain always constant in the faith in which they had been nurtured, as well as in their loyalty to a prince so benign and merciful as the king, her brother. In so doing the blessing of Heaven would rest upon them; and for her own part, she would ever be found ready to use her good offices in their behalf.[1042]
She proved her sincerity by a letter written to Philip, before her departure, in which she invoked his mercy in behalf of his Flemish subjects. ”Mercy,” she said, ”was a divine attribute. The greater the power possessed by a monarch, the nearer he approached the Deity, and the more should he strive to imitate the divine clemency and compa.s.sion.[1043] His royal predecessors had contented themselves with punis.h.i.+ng the leaders of sedition, while they spared the ma.s.ses who repented. Any other course would confound the good with the bad, and bring such calamities on the country as his majesty could not fail to appreciate.”[1044]--Well had it been for the fair fame of Margaret, if her counsels had always been guided by such wise and magnanimous sentiments.
The tidings of the regent's abdication were received with dismay throughout the provinces. All the errors of her government, her acts of duplicity, the excessive rigor with which she had of late visited offences,--all were forgotten in the regret felt for her departure. Men thought only of the prosperity which the country had enjoyed under her rule, the confidence which in earlier years she had bestowed on the friends of the people, the generous manner in which she had interposed, on more than one occasion, to mitigate the hard policy of the court of Madrid. And as they turned from these more brilliant pa.s.sages of her history, their hearts were filled with dismay while they looked gloomily into the future.
Addresses poured in upon her from all quarters. The different cities vied with one another in expressions of regret for her departure, while they invoked the blessings of Heaven on her remaining days. More than one of the provinces gave substantial evidence of their good-will by liberal donatives. Brabant voted her the sum of twenty-five thousand florins, and Flanders, thirty thousand.[1045] The neighboring princes, and among them Elizabeth of England, joined with the people of the Netherlands in professions of respect for the regent, as well as of regret that she was to relinquish the government.[1046]
Cheered by these a.s.surances of the consideration in which she was held both at home and abroad, Margaret quitted Brussels at the close of December, 1567. She was attended to the borders of Brabant by Alva, and thence conducted to Germany, by Count Mansfeldt and an escort of Flemish n.o.bles.[1047] There bidding adieu to all that remained of her former state, she pursued her journey quietly to Italy. For some time she continued with her husband in his ducal residence at Parma. But, wherever lay the fault, it was Margaret's misfortune to taste but little of the sweets of domestic intercourse. Soon afterwards she removed to Naples, and there permanently established her abode on estates which had been granted her by the crown. Many years later, when her son, Alexander Farnese, was called to the government of the Netherlands, she quitted her retirement to take part with him in the direction of public affairs.
It was but for a moment; and her present departure from the Netherlands may be regarded as the close of her political existence.
[Sidenote: HER ADMINISTRATION REVIEWED.]
The government of Margaret continued from the autumn of 1559 to the end of 1567, a period of eight years. It was a stormy and most eventful period; for it was then that the minds of men were agitated to their utmost depths by the new doctrines which gave birth to the revolution.
Margaret's regency, indeed, may be said to have furnished the opening scenes of that great drama. The inhabitants of the Low Countries were accustomed to the sway of a woman. Margaret was the third of her line that had been intrusted with the regency. In qualifications for the office she was probably not inferior to her predecessors. Her long residence in Italy had made her acquainted with the principles of government in a country where political science was more carefully studied than in any other quarter of Europe. She was habitually industrious; and her robust frame was capable of any amount of labor. If she was too masculine in her nature to allow of the softer qualities of her s.e.x, she was, on the other hand, exempt from the fondness for pleasure and from most of the frivolities which belonged to the women of the voluptuous clime in which she had lived. She was stanch in her devotion to the Catholic faith; and her loyalty was such, that, from the moment of a.s.suming the government, she acknowledged no stronger motive than that of conformity to the will of her sovereign. She was fond of power; and she well knew that, with Philip, absolute conformity to his will was the only condition on which it was to be held.
With her natural good sense, and the general moderation of her views, she would, doubtless, have ruled over the land as prosperously as her predecessors, had the times been like theirs. But, unhappily for her, the times had greatly changed. Still Margaret, living on the theatre of action, and feeling the pressure of circ.u.mstances, would have gone far to conform to the change. But unfortunately she represented a prince, dwelling at a distance, who knew no change himself, allowed no concessions to others,--whose conservative policy rested wholly on the past.