Part 8 (1/2)
VI
FORCE AND FRAUD
As you stand on the Piazza dei Signori at Verona, at one side rises the ma.s.sive red-brick tower of the Scaliger palace, lofty, castellated at its top, with here and there a small window, deep set in the old masonry, and the light that is allowed to pa.s.s inwards, grudgingly crossed by bars of rusty iron--a place of defence and perhaps of tyranny, within which life is secure indeed, but grim and sombre.
Opposite, in an angle of the square, stands a very different building, the Palazzo del Consiglio. It has only two storeys, but each of these is high and airy; above is a fine chamber, through whose ample windows streams in the sun; below is a pleasant loggia, supported by slender columns. Marble cornices and bal.u.s.trades give a sense of richness, and the wall-s.p.a.ces are bright with painting and ornament. The s.p.a.cious galleries invite to enjoyment, to pace their length in free light-hearted talk, or to stand and watch the life moving below, with the sense of gay predominance that the advantage of height confers.
The two buildings typify most aptly the ages to which they belong: the contrast between them is as the gulf between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Step back in thought to the twelfth century, and we find civilization struggling for its very existence. Few careers were possible. Above all was the soldier, ruthlessly spreading murder and desolation, and expecting no mercy when his own turn came; in the middle were the merchant and the craftsman, relying on strong city walls and union with their fellows, and the lawyer building up a system, and profiting when men fell out; underneath was the peasant, pitiably dependent on others. On all sides was b.e.s.t.i.a.l cruelty and reckless ignorance: the overmastering care of life to find shelter and protection. How strong, how luxuriously strong seemed that tower, with so few apertures to admit the enemy and the pursuer! once inside, who would wish to stir abroad? For the man who would think or study there was only one way of life, to become sacrosanct in the direct service of G.o.d. The Church, with splendid ideals before it, was exerting itself to crush barbarism, and its forts were garrisoned by men of spirit, whose courage was not that of the destroyer. In the monasteries, if anywhere, was to be found that peace which the world cannot give, the life of contemplation, in which can be felt the hunger and thirst after knowledge.
By the middle of the sixteenth century the scene has changed. Much blood has flowed through the arches of time; and now the conqueror has learnt from the Church to be merciful, from nascent science to be strong. He can spread peace wherever his sword reaches; and fear that of old ruled all under the sun, now can walk only in dark places.
Walls no longer bring comfort, and soon they are to be thrown down to make way for the broad streets which will carry the movement outwards; and, most significant change, the country house with 'its gardens and its gallant walks' takes the place of the grange. From the thraldom of terror what an escape, to light, air, freedom, activity! The gates of joy are opened, the private citizen learns to live, to follow choice not necessity, to give the reins to his spirit and take hold on the gifts that Nature spreads before him.
In the pursuit of peace, human progress has lain in the enlargement of the units of government capable of holding together; from villages to towns, from towns to provinces, from provinces to nations. The last step had been the achievement of the Middle Ages, though even by the end of the fifteenth century it was not yet complete: the twentieth century finds us reaching forward to a new advance. We have spoken of Erasmus' efforts to bring back peace from her exile, of the experiences of his youth when Holland had wept for her children. In 1517, when he wrote his 'Complaint of Peace cast forth from all lands', he was a man and one of Charles' councillors; but Holland was still weeping and refusing comfort. She had good reason. The provinces of the Netherlands were disunited, no sway imposed upon them with strength enough first to restrain and then to knit together. On either side of the Zuider Zee lay two bitter enemies: Holland, which had accepted the Burgundian yoke, and Friesland, which after a long struggle against foreign domination, had been reduced by the rule of Saxon governors, Duke Albert and Duke George. To the south was Gueldres, which, under its Duke, Charles of Egmont, had thrown in its lot with France against Burgundy, and was continually instigating the subjugated Frieslanders to rebellion. Then was war in the gates.
This was the kind of thing that happened. In 1516, after a fresh outbreak of the ceaseless struggle, Henry of Na.s.sau, Stadhouder of Holland and Zeeland, ordered that all Gueldrians or Frieslanders who showed their faces in his dominions should be put to death; and some who were resident at the Hague were executed on the charge of sending aid to their compatriots. A raid by the Gueldrians ended in the ma.s.sacre of Nieuwpoort. Na.s.sau replied by ravaging the country up to the walls of Arnhem, the Gueldres capital.
Duke Charles had terrible forces at command. A body of mercenary troops, known as the Black Band, had been used by George of Saxony for the repression of Friesland in 1514, and since then had been seeking employment wherever they could find it. At the same time, one of the conquered Frieslanders, known as Long Peter, had turned to piracy as an effective way of revenging himself on Holland. Proclaiming himself 'King of the Sea', he seized every s.h.i.+p that came in his way, showing no mercy to Hollanders and holding all others to ransom.
In May 1517, the Duke, violating a truce not yet expired, renewed hostilities. The Black Band, some of whom had strayed as far as Rouen in quest of fighting, flocked back. At the end of June 3000 of them crossed the Zuider Zee in Long Peter's s.h.i.+ps and disembarked suddenly at Medemblik, in North Holland. The town was quickly set on fire, and everything destroyed except the citadel; the fleet carrying back the first spoils. Then they marched southwards, burning what they list; and happy were those whose offer of ransom was accepted, to escape with plunder only.
There was no fixed plan. The murderous horde wandered along, turning to right or left as fancy suggested. After burning five country towns, they appeared at Alcmar, the chief town of North Holland, into which the most precious possessions of the neighbourhood had been hurriedly conveyed. By a heavy payment, the burghers purchased immunity from the flames; but for eight days the town was given up to the l.u.s.t and ferocity of an uncontrolled soldiery, from whose senseless destruction it took thirty years to recover. Egmond, with its great abbey, was pillaged; and then it was Haarlem's turn to suffer. But by this time resistance had been organized. Troops had been called back from garrison work in Friesland, and a strong line drawn in front of Haarlem. Headed off, the Black Band turned suddenly away. Pa.s.sing Amsterdam and Culemborg, it penetrated down into South Holland, whence it would be easy to pa.s.s back into Gueldres. Asperen was its next prey. Three times the citizens beat off the cruel foe: a few more to man their walls, and they might have driven him right away, to overwhelm others less fortunate and less brave.
But it was not to be. At the fourth attempt the marauders were successful, and ma.s.sacre ensued. Death to the men, worse than death to the women: nor age nor innocence could touch those black hearts. A schoolmaster with his boys fled into a church and hid trembling in the rood-loft. Before long they were discovered. Thirsting for blood, some of the monsters rushed up the steps and tossed the shrieking victims over on to the pikes of their comrades below. When all the butchery was finished, a few helpless and infirm survivors were dragged out of hiding-places. The miserable creatures were driven out of the city and the gates barred in their faces. For a month the Black Band held Asperen as a standing camp, living upon the provisions stored up by the dead. Then Na.s.sau came with troops and drove them forth, pursuing into Gueldres, where he burned '46 good villages' in revenge. The sight of fire blazing to heaven is appalling enough when men are ranged all on one side, and the battle is with the element alone. Our peace-lapped imaginations cannot picture the terror of flames kindled aforethought. As those poor fugitives scattered over the country, cowering into the darkness out of the fire's searching glow, they cannot but have recalled the words: 'Woe unto them that are with child and to them that give suck in those days.' At least they could give thanks that their flight was not in the winter.
Meanwhile Long Peter had not been idle. On 14 August he had a great battle with the Hollanders off Hoorn. Eleven s.h.i.+ps he took, and cast their crews into the sea: 500 men, save one, a Gueldrian, struggling in the calm summer waters and stretching out their hands to a foe who knew no pity. In September he surrounded a merchant fleet. The Easterlings escaped at heavy ransom; but the crews of three Holland vessels were flung to the waves. Then he carried the war on to the land, to glean what the Black Band had left. With 1200 men he took Hoorn by escalade; plunder-laden and sated, they returned to the sea.
Nothing was too small or too helpless for his rapacity. Along the coast they picked up a barge of Enckhuizen. Its only crew, master and mate, were thrown overboard, and Peter's fleet sailed upon its way. We must remember that the provinces engaged in this internecine strife were not widely diverse in race, and that to-day they are peacefully united under one governance.
The winter of 1517-18 was spent by the Black Band in Friesland. Three thousand men who are prepared to take by force what is not given to them, do not lie hungry in the cold. We may be sure that under them the land had no rest. At Easter they began to move southwards in quest of other victims and other employ. But as they halted between Venlo and Roermond, resistance confronted them. Na.s.sau had arrayed by his side the Archbishop of Cologne and the Dukes of Juliers and Cleves: the gates of the cities were closed and the ferry-boats that would have carried them across the Maas had been kept on the other side.
Caught in a trap, the freebooters promised to lay down their weapons and disperse. The disarmament proceeded quietly till one of the company-leaders refused to part with a bombard, the new invention, of which he was very proud. A trumpeter, seeing the man hesitate, sounded a warning, and the containing troops stood on the alert. Readiness led to action. Suddenly they fell on the helpless horde, for whom there was no safety but in flight. A thousand were ma.s.sacred before Na.s.sau and his confederates could check their men.
Erasmus was about to set out from Louvain to Basle, to work at a new edition of the New Testament. Bands such as these were, of course, a peril to travellers. Half exultant, half disgusted, he wrote to More: 'These fellows were stripped before disbandment: so they will have all the more excuse for fresh plundering. This is consideration for the people! They were so hemmed in that not one of them could have escaped: yet the Dukes were for letting them go scot-free. It was mere chance that any of them were killed. Fortunately, a man blew his trumpet: there was at once an uproar, and more than a thousand were cut down. The Archbishop alone was sound. He said that, priest though he was, if the matter were left to him, he would see that such things should never occur again. The people understand the position, but are obliged to acquiesce.' To Colet he exclaimed more bitterly: 'It is cruel! The n.o.bles care more for these ruffians than for their own subjects. The fact is, they count on them to keep the people down.'
Let us be thankful that Europe to-day has no experience of such mercenaries.
A sign of the troubles of the times was the existence of the French order of Trinitarians for the redemption of prisoners. This need had been known even when Rome's power was at its height, for Cicero[25]
specifies the redemption of men captured by pirates as one of the ways in which the generously minded were wont to spend their money. The practice lasted down continuously through the Middle Ages. Gaguin, the historian of France, Erasmus' first patron in Paris, was for many years General of the Trinitarians, and made a journey to Granada to redeem prisoners who had been taken fighting against the Moors. Even in the eighteenth century, church offertories in England were asked and given to loose captives out of prison.
[25] _De Officiis_, 2. 16.
Where the king's peace is not kept and the king's writ does not run, men learn to rely on themselves. Those who protect themselves with strength, discover the efficacy of force, and soon are not content to apply it merely on the defensive. It is not surprising, therefore, to find in Erasmus' day many cases of resort to violence to remedy defective t.i.tles. Nowadays we never hear of a defeated candidate for a coveted post trying to obtain by force and right of possession the position which has been given to another. It is unthinkable, for instance, that a Warden of Merton duly elected should have to eject from college some disappointed rival who had possessed himself of the Warden's office and house: as actually happened in 1562. It is, perhaps, not so much that we have become more law-abiding, as that we realize that any such attempt must be fruitless when the strong arm of the State is at hand, ready to a.s.sert the rights of the lawful claimant.
In Erasmus' day might was often right. Thus in 1492 the Abbot of St.
Bertin's at St. Omer died, and the monks elected in his place a certain James du Val, who was duly consecrated in July 1493. The Bishop of Cambray, however, had had the abbey in his eye for his younger brother Antony, who had been ejected ten years before by the powerful family of Arenberg from the Abbey of St. Trond in Limburg, and meanwhile had been living unemployed at Louvain. The Bishop persuaded the Pope to annul du Val's election and appoint Antony in his place, probably on some technical ground. Armed with this permission he appeared at St. Omer in October 1493 and violently installed his brother; who held the abbey undisturbed till his death nearly forty years later. The Bishop's success with the Pope is the more noteworthy, as for a period of seven years he himself had refused to surrender an abbey near Mons to a papal nominee, who was not strong enough to wrest it from him. Again, during the five years of the English occupation of Tournay, 1513-18, there was a continual struggle between two rival bishops, appointed when the see fell vacant in 1513--Wolsey nominated by Henry VIII and Louis Guillard by the Pope.
It goes without saying that Wolsey won; and Guillard did not get in till 1519, the year after the evacuation by the English.
Fernand tells a story of violence at the monastery of Souillac, which was closely connected with his own at Chezal-Benoit. When the Abbot died, a monk of St. Martin's at Tours, who was a native of Souillac, with the aid of a brother who was a court official, got himself put in as abbot before the monks had time to elect. They appealed to the king, but quite in vain; for instead of giving ear to their complaint he sent down a troop of soldiers to support the invading Abbot. It was a grievous time for the poor monks. The garrison did whatever they pleased: imprisoned the faithful servants of the monastery, introduced hunting-dogs and birds, roared out their licentious choruses to the sound of lute and pipe, and gave up the whole day to games of every sort, in which the weaker brethren joined. Those who refused to do so or to violate their vows by eating flesh were insulted; and as they held divine service, coa.r.s.e laughter and clamour interrupted them.
Strict watch was kept upon them, too, lest they should speak or write to any one of their injuries. We need not deplore the pa.s.sing of such 'good old days'.
It is necessary to realize the certainty which in the sixteenth century men allowed themselves to feel on subjects of the highest importance; for nothing short of this intense conviction is adequate to explain the ferocity with which they treated those over whom they had triumphed in matters of religion. Burning at the stake was the common method of expiation. The fires of Smithfield consumed brave, humble victims, while Erasmus jested over the rising price of wood, In France the Inquisition entrapped many men of literary distinction, Louis de Berquin 1529, John de Caturce 1532, Stephen Dolet 1546; on the charge of heresy or atheism which could only with great difficulty be refuted. To kill a fellow-creature or to watch him put to death would be physically impossible to most of us, in our unruffled lives; where from year's-end to year's-end we hardly even hear a word spoken in anger. In consequence it is difficult for us to understand the indifference with which in the sixteenth century men of the most advanced refinement regarded the sufferings of others. Between rival combatants and claimants for thrones fierce measures are more intelligible; especially in days when stone walls did not a prison make--such a prison, at least, as the prisoner might not some day hope to break. Things had improved somewhat since the Middle Ages. We hear less of the varieties of mutilation, the blinding, loss of nose, hands, b.r.e.a.s.t.s, which were the portion of either s.e.x indiscriminately, when the death-penalty had not been fully earned. But it was still fas.h.i.+onable to suspend your adversary in a cage and torture him, or to confine him for years in a dungeon which light and air could never reach. The executions of heretics became public shows, carefully arranged beforehand, and attended by rank and fas.h.i.+on; to whom to show any sign of sensibility would have been disgrace. Impossible it seems to believe. We must remember that the perpetrators of such n.o.ble acts had persuaded themselves that they were serving G.o.d. They were as confident as Joshua or as Jehu that they knew His will; and they had no hesitation in carrying it out.
If you may take a man's life in G.o.d's name, there can be no objection to telling him a lie. The violation of the safe-conduct which brought Hus to Constance was a fine precedent for breaking faith with a heretic. When Luther came to Worms to answer for himself before Emperor and Diet, the Pope's representatives reminded Charles of the principle which had lighted the fires at Constance and ridded the world of a dangerous fellow. Fortunately Charles had German subjects to consider, and the Germans had a reputation for good faith of which they were proud. Let us credit him too with some generosity; he was scarcely 21, and the young find the arguments of expediency difficult.