Part 80 (2/2)
She then sent for Sir Robert Cecil, whom she directed to go at once and tell his father, the Lord Treasurer, that he was to a.s.sist Caron in this affair exactly as if it were her own. It was her intention, she said, that her people were in no wise to trouble the Hollanders in legitimate mercantile pursuits. She added that it was not enough for her people to say that they had only been seizing Spaniards' goods and money, but she meant that they should prove it, too, or else they should swing for it.
Caron a.s.sured her Majesty that he had no other commission from his masters than to ask for justice, and that he had no instructions to claim Spanish property or enemy's goods. He had brought sufficient evidence with him, he said, to give her Majesty entire satisfaction.
It is not necessary to pursue the subject any farther. The great n.o.bles still endeavoured to interpose delays, and urged the propriety of taking the case before the common courts of law. Carom strong in the support of the queen, insisted that it should be settled, as her Majesty had commanded, by the council, and it was finally arranged that the judge of admiralty should examine the evidence on both sides, and then communicate the doc.u.ments at once to the Lord Treasurer. Meantime the money was to be deposited with certain aldermen of London, and the accused parties kept in prison. The ultimate decision was then to be made by the council, ”not by form of process but by commission thereto ordained.” In the course of the many interviews which followed between the Dutch envoy and the privy counsellors, the Lord Admiral stated that an English merchant residing in the Netherlands had sent to offer him a present of two thousand pounds sterling, in case the affair should be decided against the Hollanders. He communicated the name of the individual to Caron, under seal of secrecy, and reminded the Lord Treasurer that he too had seen the letter of the Englishman. Lord Burghley observed that he remembered the fact that certain letters had been communicated to him by the Lord Admiral, but that he did not know from whence they came, nor anything about the person of the writer.
The case of the plundered merchants was destined to drag almost as slowly before the council as it might have done in the ordinary tribunals, and Caron was ”kept running,” as he expressed it, ”from the court to London, and from London to the court,” and it was long before justice was done to the sufferers. Yet the energetic manner in which the queen took the case into her own hands, and the intense indignation with which she denounced the robberies and outrages which had been committed by her subjects upon her friends and allies, were effective in restraining such wholesale piracy in the future.
On the whole, however, if the internal machinery is examined by which the ma.s.ses of mankind were moved at epoch in various parts of Christendom, we shall not find much reason to applaud the conformity of Governments to the principles of justice, reason, or wisdom.
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
Accustomed to the faded gallantries Conformity of Governments to the principles of justice Considerable reason, even if there were but little justice Disciple of Simon Stevinus Self-a.s.sertion--the healthful but not engaging attribute
HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS
From the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce--1609
By John Lothrop Motley
History United Netherlands, Volume 65, 1592-1594
CHAPTER XXVIII.
Influence of the rule and character of Philip II.--Heroism of the sixteenth century--Contest for the French throne--Character and policy of the Duke of Mayenne--Escape of the Duke of Guise from Castle Tours--Propositions for the marriage of the Infanta--Plotting of the Catholic party--Grounds of Philip's pretensions to the crown of France--Motives of the Duke of Parma maligned by Commander Moreo --He justifies himself to the king--View of the private relations between Philip and the Duke of Mayenne and their sentiments towards each other--Disposition of the French politicians and soldiers towards Philip--Peculiar commercial pursuits of Philip--Confused state of affairs in France--Treachery of Philip towards the Duke of Parma--Recall of the duke to Spain--His sufferings and death.
The People--which has been generally regarded as something naturally below its rulers, and as born to be protected and governed, paternally or otherwise, by an accidental selection from its own species, which by some mysterious process has shot up much nearer to heaven than itself--is often described as brutal, depraved, self-seeking, ignorant, pa.s.sionate, licentious, and greedy.
It is fitting, therefore, that its protectors should be distinguished, at great epochs of the world's history, by an absence of such objectionable qualities.
It must be confessed, however, that if the world had waited for heroes--during the dreary period which followed the expulsion of something that was called Henry III. of France from the gates of his capital, and especially during the time that followed hard upon the decease of that embodiment of royalty--its axis must have ceased to turn for a long succession of years. The Bearnese was at least alive, and a man. He played his part with consummate audacity and skill; but alas for an epoch or a country in which such a shape--notwithstanding all its engaging and even commanding qualities--looked upon as an incarnation of human greatness!
But the chief mover of all things--so far as one man can be prime mover--was still the diligent scribe who lived in the Escorial. It was he whose high mission it was to blow the bellows of civil war, and to scatter curses over what had once been the smiling abodes of human creatures, throughout the leading countries of Christendom. The throne of France was vacant, nominally as well as actually, since--the year 1589.
During two-and-twenty years preceding that epoch he had scourged the provinces, once const.i.tuting the richest and most enlightened portions of his hereditary domains, upon the theory that without the Spanish Inquisition no material prosperity was possible on earth, nor any entrance permitted to the realms of bliss beyond the grave. Had every Netherlander consented to burn his Bible, and to be burned himself should he be found listening to its holy precepts if read to him in shop, cottage, farm-house, or castle; and had he furthermore consented to renounce all the liberal inst.i.tutions which his ancestors had earned, in the struggle of centuries, by the sweat of their brows and the blood of, their hearts; his benignant proprietor and master, who lived at the ends of the earth, would have consented at almost any moment to peace. His arms were ever open. Let it not be supposed that this is the language of sarcasm or epigram. Stripped of the decorous sophistication by which human beings are so fond of concealing their naked thoughts from each other, this was the one simple dogma always propounded by Philip. Grimace had done its worst, however, and it was long since it had exercised any power in the Netherlands. The king and the Dutchmen understood each other; and the plain truths with which those republicans answered the imperial proffers of mediation, so frequently renewed, were something new, and perhaps not entirely unwholesome in diplomacy.
It is not an inviting task to abandon the comparatively healthy atmosphere of the battle-field, the blood-stained swamp, the murderous trench--where human beings, even if communing only by bullets and push of pike, were at least dealing truthfully with each other--and to descend into those subterranean regions where the effluvia of falsehood becomes almost too foul for ordinary human organisation.
Heroes in those days, in any country, there were few. William the Silent was dead. De la Noue was dead. Duplessis-Mornay was living, but his influence over his royal master was rapidly diminis.h.i.+ng. Cecil, Hatton, Ess.e.x, Howard, Raleigh, James Croft, Valentine Dale, John Norris, Roger Williams, the ”Virgin Queen” herself--does one of these chief agents in public affairs, or do all of them together, furnish a thousandth part of that heroic whole which the England of the sixteenth century presents to every imagination? Maurice of Na.s.sau-excellent soldier and engineer as he had already proved himself--had certainly not developed much of the heroic element, although thus far he was walking straightforward like a man, in the path of duty, with the pithy and substantial Lewis William ever at his side. Olden-Barneveld--tough burgher-statesman, hard-headed, indomitable man of granite--was doing more work, and doing it more thoroughly, than any living politician, but he was certainly not of the mythological brotherhood who inhabit the serene regions of s.p.a.ce beyond the moon. He was not the son of G.o.d or G.o.ddess, destined, after removal from this sphere, to s.h.i.+ne with planetary l.u.s.tre, among other constellations, upon the scenes of mortal action. Those of us who are willing to rise-or to descend if the phrase seems wiser--to the idea of a self-governing people must content ourselves, for this epoch, with the fancy of a hero-people and a people-king.
A plain little republic, thrusting itself uninvited into the great political family-party of heaven-anointed sovereigns and long-descended n.o.bles, seemed a somewhat repulsive phenomenon. It became odious and dangerous when by the blows it could deal in battle, the logic it could chop in council, it indicated a remote future for the world, in which right divine and regal paraphernalia might cease to be as effective stage-properties as they had always been considered.
Yet it will be difficult for us to find the heroic individualised very perceptibly at this period, look where we may. Already there seemed ground for questioning the comfortable fiction that the accidentally dominant families and castes were by nature wiser, better, braver than that much-contemned ent.i.ty, the People. What if the fearful heresy should gain ground that the People was at least as wise, honest, and brave as its masters? What if it should become a recognised fact that the great individuals and castes, whose wealth and station furnished them with ample time and means for perfecting themselves in the science of government, were rather devoting their leisure to the systematic filling of their own pockets than to the hiving up of knowledge for the good of their fellow creatures? What if the whole theory of hereditary superiority should suddenly exhale? What if it were found out that we were all fellow-worms together, and that those which had crawled highest were not necessarily the least slimy?
Meantime it will be well for us, in order to understand what is called the Past, to scrutinise somewhat closely that which was never meant to be revealed. To know the springs which once controlled the world's movements, one must ponder the secret thoughts, purposes, aspirations, and baffled attempts of the few dozen individuals who once claimed that world in fee-simple. Such researches are not in a cheerful field; for the sources of history are rarely fountains of crystal, bubbling through meadows of asphodel. Vast and noisome are the many sewers which have ever run beneath decorous Christendom.
Some of the leading military events in France and Flanders, patent to all the world, which grouped themselves about the contest for the French throne, as the central point in the history of Philip's proposed world-empire, have already been indicated.
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