rect communication of its clergy with the Holy See, and little
by little the Catholic sovereigns appropriated a part of those
prerogatives which the Protestant princes had seized by
force. Against these rights of civil authority the Church has
struggled during the last eighty years with increasing energy.
Ultramontanism has reundertaken in the nineteenth century
the work of the sixteenth: it is too late, for if the Church is
more compact it is less forceful, and the spirit of the world
has entered upon other paths.



CHAPTER XV.
THE RELIGIOUS WARS (1559-98).



The Catholic Chiefs and the Protestant Chiefs. Struggle of the Two
Religions in the Netherlands ; Formation of the Republic of the
United Provinces (1566-1609). Struggle of the Two Religions in
England ; Elizabeth and Mary Stuart ; the Great Armada (1559-
88). Religious Wars in France (1562-98).



THE restored Church could now combat with words; she
needed an arm to combat also with the sword.

Uc ^ a ^t' 6 distance from Madrid in a fright-
chiefs and the ful solitude upon the slopes of the Guadarrama,
chiefe stant swept by winds of extreme violence, rises an

immense monument of granite; seventeen
main buildings cut each other at right angles and form
twenty-two courts: the whole represents an overturned
gridiron in memory of the instrument of torture which
served for capital punishment to St. Lawrence. The door
of the grand entrance of this somber edifice, where, how-
ever, the court came every year to spend the latter part
of autumn, opens only twice for princes, at their birth and
death. It is at once a monastery and a palace, the Versailles
and St. Denis of Spain: they call it the Escurial. There
in this sad dwelling lived a man who reigned forty-two years
over the vastest empire of the world, and whom Protestant
writers have named the "demon of the south." In Spain
he wore four crowns: those of Castile, Navarre, Aragon, and
later that of Portugal. He was master of Sicily and Sardi-
nia; of Naples and Milan in Italy; of Roussillon, Franche
Comte, Charolais, Artois, and Flanders in France; of the
Netherlands at the mouths of the Scheldt, Meuse, and Rhine ;
of Tunis and Oran on the northern coast of Africa; of Cape
Verd, the Canaries, the islands of Fernando Po, Annobon,
and St. Helena, that is to say, of the Atlantic ; of Mexico,



202 THE CATHOLIC RESTORATION. [ BOOK IV.

Peru, and Chili, that is to say, of America; of Cuba, St.
Domingo, Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Jamaica, that is to
say, of the Gulf of Mexico. Finally, in Oceanica he pos-
sessed the Philippines, and he was to inherit the Portuguese
colonies upon the coasts of Africa, India, and Oceanica.
The sun did not set upon his states, and they were wont to
say, "When Spain moves, the world trembles."

To defend so many kingdoms he had the golden harvests
of the New World, of which Charles V. had only the first
fruits, the best disciplined troops, the most skillful generals
of Europe Philibert Emmanuel, the conqueror of St.
Quentin; the Duke of Alva, the conqueror of Muhlburg;
his natural brother Don Juan of Austria, who was to gain the
great victory of Lepanto; the Duke of Parma, the most skill-
ful tactician of that century. In his ports of war were found
one hundred ships of the line, in his ports of commerce a
thousand merchantmen ; in all his states, finally, he had abso-
lute power, and in Spain the devotion of a whole people.
"The Spaniards do not love him," said Contarini "they
adore him; and they would fear to offend God himself by
transgressing his revered commands." To all these forces
we must add that which Philip II. derived from himself.

We have seen him after the abdication of his father,
Charles V., pursue against France a first war, which the treaty
of Cateau-Cambresis terminated (1559). He had then re-
turned to Spain, no more to leave it. Henceforward it
was from the recesses of his cabinet that he governed, by
the eloquence of his diplomats that he negotiated, by the
sword of his generals that he fought. But Philip had in the
highest degree a passion for power, great persistency in
labor, eyes always open upon the world from Mexico to the
extremity of Sicily to inspect his ministers and his empire;
finally, he knew how to preserve an impassive soul, a severe
and unmoved bearing in the midst of the disappointments
of politics and the excitement of passions. When he learned
that his invincible fleet was annihilated, he simply said, "I
did not send it to fight against the elements."

But what was this man to do who already commanded
so many nations? Charles V. had dreamed of preponderance,
if not of universal dominion, and had died in the struggle;
the son undertook the idea of the father with a political and
religious exaltation that the conqueror of Pavia had not
known. In the eyes of Philip II. the Protestants were ene-



CHAP. XV.] THE RELIGIOUS WARS (1559-98). 2O 3

mies not only of the altar but of the throne. Thus he made
himself the champion of Catholicism as much by policy as by
conviction; for he well understood that the Church with its
unity and rigid discipline was the firmest support of absolute
crowns, and he destroyed the Reformers not only in his states,
where he stifled even the least germs of heresy, but through-
out the earth. As he hated Protestantism as much as he
feared it, he recoiled before no means of crushing this hos-
tile principle. This was the thought of his entire life. To
it he consecrated rare talents; for it he expended all his mili-
tary forces, all his gold, which he threw away by handfuls to
subsidize in Holland assassination, in England conspiracies,
in France civil war. The world knows with what success
and also with what results.

When the two kings of France and Spain had signed so
speedily the peace of Cateau-Cambresis, it was to carry into
the government the new spirit which animated the Church
and to wage against heresy a pitiless combat. The one took
upon himself to smother it in France, the other to hinder its
birth in Italy and Spain, then to crush it out in the Nether-
lands and England. Henry II. dead, his sons, the last
Valois, continued his design, and at first had need only of the
counsels of Spain.

The first, Francis II., reigned less then a year and a half
(1559-60); the second, Charles IX., was twenty-four years
old when he died (1574); the third, who alone reached
mature age, remained always as to certain sides of his char-
acter in a sort of minority or tutelage whence he issued only
by furious transports of anger. This line of the Valois was
therefore incapable of controlling the great battle of creeds in
France; but at its side were found other minds powerful and
keen, but unfortunately more ready for evil than for good.

First was their mother, the Italian Catherine de Medici,
of a mind without conviction, of a character without scruple,
who wished to have under her sons a power she had not
possessed under her husband, and who never endeavored to
govern save by influencing men through their vices and bad
passions. Two families disputed with her this power: the
one foreign, that of the Guises ; the other most national,
that of the Bourbons, whom their birth brought near the
throne, but who were separated from it by the recollection
of the Constable's treason.

Younger members of the house of the Duke of Lorraine,



204 THE CA THOLIC RESTORA TION. [BOOK IV.

the Guises had come into France very poor and had there
risen rapidly by their services. They had early formed in-
timate relations with Rome and were actuated by a high
ambition. They declared themselves heirs of the house of
Anjou, and had claimed the crown of Naples, which had
drawn closer their connections with the Holy See. Their
niece, Mary Stuart, was Queen of Scotland; they made her
Queen of France by espousing her to Francis II. At the
court they asserted their right to the title and honors of for-
eign princes; they displeased the nobility by claiming preced-
ence, and discontented the first prince of the blood, the chief
of the house of Bourbon, by causing the king, now become
their nephew, to intrust to them all the administration of
the country. Men of ambition much more than of faith,
they organized the Catholics into a party when they saw the
Protestants form a faction around the Bourbons their rivals;
so that the religious wars were in France, at least for the
majority of leaders, a struggle of politics as much as of creeds,
and in certain respects the last great battle of feudalism
against triumphant royal authority. To sustain it the Guises
naturally drew still nearer Rome, and after having for a long
time taken the advice of Philip II. took his gold, his sol-
diers, and were on the point of placing France at his feet.

Confronting these defenders of Catholicism the Protes-
tant chiefs were Conde, of the house of Bourbon, the Prince
of Orange, or the Taciturn, and Elizabeth of England, who
probably reached the same religious convictions only through
political interest; finally, Coligny, a. man who from a moral
point of view is superior to all the rest. As to Henry of
Navarre, he was still only a child.

These are the actors: let us gaze at the drama which is
unfolding on three principal stages in France, England,
and the Netherlands. The spectacle seems to lack unity
through this diversity of theaters, which have each their
independent action, and also through the diversity of the
interests engaged. The seven provinces of the Netherlands
wished to have their ancient liberties respected, and England
its independence. In France the contest goes even farther,
and at the crisis of the struggle ends by becoming a ques-
tion of government and social order: it is that the Middle
Ages seek to return with their privileges of cities, castles,
and provinces. But every century prints its own peculiar
character upon affairs, because there are moral epidemics



CHAP. XV.] THE RELIGIOUS WARS (1559-98). 205

just as there are physical, and quite as contagious. In the
second half of the sixteenth century every question takes on
a religious form, and looking upon Europe from the height
of the Vatican or the Escurial we shall see a like end pur-
sued: the triumph of the Church as it had just been consti-
tuted by the Council of Trent, and the domination or pre-
ponderance of Philip, its military chief.

It would be interesting to follow this grand drama in its
entirety:

To the declaration of war made by the kings of France
and Spain against heresy as early as 1559 answer the Acts of
Parliament which establish Elizabeth as supreme chief of the
Anglican Church (1559), the conspiracy of Amboise (1560),
the secularization of all the bishoprics of Brandenburg, and
the suppression of the religious and military order of Livonia.

The death of Francis II. (1560) suspends the crisis in
France; but it breaks out with the massacre of Vassy(i562).
Elizabeth gives succor to the Reform party in France; the
death of the Duke of Guise before Orleans arrests the war,
which Philip II. and Catherine de Medici secretly continue.

In 1564 the Pope confirms by a bull the decrees of the
Council of Trent, and the following year the conferences of
Bayonne mark the good understanding of the governments
of France and Spain for the extirpation of heresy.

Persecution redoubling, the fire bursts forth in the Nether-
lands and reaches France: compromise of Breda (1564);
second and third wars of religion (1567 and 1568).

In 1568 Philip II. drives his son to suicide, his wife to
death, and the Moors to revolt. He establishes the Inquisi-
tion in the Spanish colonies, and has Egmont and Horn be-
headed in the Netherlands. But in Scotland the errors and
the fall of Mary Stuart assure the victory to the Reformers.

As the forces of Spain are employed in Andalusia against
the Moors, on the Mediterranean against the Ottomans, in
the Netherlands against the "Beggars," she possesses for
France and England only the resource of conspiracies. The
victory of Lepanto (1571) encourages them, and Norfolk
endeavors to overthrow Elizabeth for the profit of Mary
Stuart; Catherine de Medici endeavors to end with the Cal-
vinist party by the massacre of St. Bartholomew. Catholi-
cism triumphs!

But mutilated and bloody, Protestantism arises again
stronger than before; the Belgians unite with the Batavians



206 THE CA THOLIC RESTORA TION. [BOOK IV.

(1576) and Elizabeth takes them under her protection (1578).
The Ottomans themselves drive out the Spaniards from
Tunis (1574). The acquisition of Portugal is by no means
an increase of force to Philip II., since he employs this
advantage poorly (1580), and the assassination of the Silent
exasperates the Dutch and all Protestant peoples instead
of depressing them. The English ravage with impunity
the Spanish colonies, the Dutch those of Portugal. In 1585
the Duke of Anjou dies, the King of Navarre becomes the
heir of the French crown, and the following year Elizabeth
begins the trial of Mary Stuart, whose head falls some months
later upon the scaffold. Everywhere Protestantism becomes
menacing. A supreme effort is needed: the Guises treat with
Philip II. (1586), the league makes ready to open France
to his armies, all the states of the Catholic king exhaust
themselves in giving him the fleet and army which shall bring
back the Netherlands and England, and then France, under
the Catholic faith and the law of Spain.

But the Invincible Armada is destroyed (1588), the Guises
are assassinated (1589), the league conquered (1593).
Elizabeth and Henry IV. triumph. The edict of Nantes
and the peace of Vervins are signed three weeks apart, and
Philip II. dies four months later (1598). The independence
of Europe is saved, toleration has gained its first victory,
and intellectual liberty begins. A new state, the United
Provinces, seats itself among the nations ; an ancient state,
England, has the revelation of its future power; and
France is placed by a great prince at the head of Europe.
But so powerful had been the opposing effort that Spain
remained as if broken for more than 200 years.

Such is the general outline of this great picture; to paint
it there is needed a canvas larger than I can control here,
and I am reduced to present successively these three his-
tories which it would have been better to portray together.

The Netherlands were in the sixteeenth century the richest

country of Europe; in the single year 1566 they had received

from Lisbon, Italy, and England 80,000,000

two'reWgtons^n francs' worth of commodities. Bruges alone

the Netherlands: h ac j bought nearly io.ooo.ooo francs' worth

formation of . , ' . . -jj-j

the republic of of Spanish wool. Antwerp it was said did
ir^S^-Sr more business in a month than Venice in two
years. In 1566 she had a thousand commer-
cial houses. Every day 300 ships entered her harbor, and



CHAP. XV.J THE RELIGIOUS WARS (1559-98). 207

every week 2000 wagons reached her from Germany, France,
or Lorraine. Lille, Courtai, Valenciennes, Douai, Brussels,
were almost equally active. "Flanders," says a Spanish
writer, "seemed then to make only a single city, prosperous
communities so pressed upon each other." ("Flandriam
continuam urbem.") It is not surprising, if the taxes of
the Netherlands brought in more than those of Castile, that
Philip II. could derive from this country as much as
35,000,000 francs in 1588.

Charles V., his father, had cruelly persecuted the Reform
party in the Netherlands they speak of 50,000 victims;
but Fleming in heart as well as by birth, his adminis-
tration, save as concerned with heresy, had in general
been benevolent and able. He had favored the commerce
of the Flemings by opening outlets for it; he loved them as
his compatriots, surrounded himself with them, and intrusted
to them the principal offices of his empire. Everything
changed under Philip II. The Flemish nobility lost its
credit at court to the profit of Spanish grandeeship. Men
accustomed to the splendor of great affairs, to the movement
of war and politics, saw themselves condemned to inaction.

The people were not better treated. They had lent their
ears to the sermons of Reformers which re-echoed around
them. Philip II. to arrest the progress of heresy created
four new bishoprics in the Netherlands, which he endowed
at the expense of the abbeys of the country ; he introduced
the decrees of the Council of Trent, and to secure the execu-
tion of these measures he garrisoned the principal cities with
Spanish troops and conferred on foreigners the principal
offices. It seemed like a Spanish invasion of the Nether-
lands. This little country, which asked only freedom to
manufacture and sell, saw itself chained to a monarchy
which exhausted its resources in impossible projects, which
each day demanded more, and which each day gave less
repose and security.

Attacked in their national self-love, menaced in their
religious as well as in their political liberties, the Nether-
landers, nobles and burgesses, great and small, Catholics and
Reformers, made complaint. The opposition was especially
keen against Cardinal Granvelle, who was intrusted with the
establishment in the Netherlands of absolute power and
religious unity. The governor, Margaret of Parma, endeav-
ored to banish public discontent by concessions. The



208 THE CA THOLIC RESTORA TION. [BOOK IV.

Spanish troops were recalled, Granvelle was removed, but
the edicts which he had promulgated remained ; and the
nobility, giving in 1566 the example of resistance, signed the
compromise of Breda by which the majority of the Flemish
gentlemen promised each other mutual assistance. They
then demanded of the governor the redress of their griev-
ances.

Margaret replied that she would support their demands
before the king. Philip II. himself had appeared disposed
to modify his severity; he had at least given such assurance
to the Count of Egmont. A compromise was still possible.
But the people, less patient than the nobility, rushed to arms,
everywhere broke the images of the saints, overturned the
altars, burned the pulpits, and showed in their retaliation as
much violence as their enemies had shown cruelty in perse-
cution. The terrified nobles rallied around the governor;
the insurrection, isolated by its very excesses, was every-
where conquered.

Clemency could have rendered this victory fruitful. But
in these troubles Philip II. saw only the justification of his
preceding measures. He wrote to the Pope "that he would
lose the provinces or would maintain there the Catholic
religion"; he sent into the Netherlands his best army and
the Duke of Alva, his best general (1567). No one was
more capable of understanding and executing the intentions
of Philip II. Cruel by system and not by passion, thereby
keeping his conscience quiet, he looked upon force as the
only means of government. An exceptional tribunal, com-
posed of foreigners, and which received the too well merited
name of "blood tribunal," entered at once upon its functions.
Eighteen thousand persons were executed, among them the
counts of Horn and Egmont, 30,000 despoiled of their
goods; 100,000 quitted the country. The Duke of Alva
had himself represented upon the public square of Antwerp
trampling upon the prostrate Flemings. To better hold
them in dependence he proposed to ruin them by subjecting
them to a disastrous tax of one-tenth upon the price of
merchandise sold. This tax was levied in such fashion
that it absorbed seven-tenths of the value of certain mer-
chandises of cloth, for example. It was the destruction
of Flemish manufactures. The burgesses of Brussels rose
in insurrection. Seventeen were about to be hung when
arrived the news of the capture of Briel by the "Beggars."



CHAP. XV.] THE RELIGIOUS WARS (1559-98). 209

When the 200 deputies had come to ask of Margaret of
Parma redress of grievances, a lord to reassure the governor,
who showed herself greatly terrified, had said to her, "They
are only beggars." The rebels received this contemp-
tuous name as an honor, and assumed it to indicate their
party. The barbarous rigor of the Duke of Alvagave them
numerous recruits. After having long carried on a piratical
war, which accomplished nothing, they undertook war on
land, which might effect something; they made themselves
masters of Briel, and forthwith Holland and Zealand took
arms (1572).

This was the signal of a struggle lasting thirty-seven years,
at the end of which the northern provinces established them-
selves as a republic. At the beginning of the war the insur-
gents asked only religious liberty. Without doubt, having
to struggle against an enemy so formidable as the King of
Spain, they would have succumbed despite their heroic
courage if they had remained without support; but they
were sustained by the Protestants of Germany, England, and
France ; moreover, they were aided by the nature of their
country, cut up with canals, and by the ambition even of
Philip II., who pursued too many great affairs at once to be
able to bring a single one to a satisfactory conclusion.

Especially they had the good fortune to find as chief
William of Nassau, Prince of Orange. Great in reverses
like Coligny, whose daughter he espoused, none knew better
how to profit by the least success. He concentrated in his
hands all the operations of war and politics, and made a
powerful state of a few small revolted cities. The saying of
Granvelle is well known when it was announced to him that
the Duke of Alva had destroyed the army of the Prince of
Orange: "Was the Silent captured?" "No." "Well, the
duke has done nothing."

Violence having failed, Philip replaced Alva by Don Luis
de Requesens (1573). This new governor was unable to cap-
ture Leyden, which liberated Holland, nor to save Middle-
burg, which made him lose Zealand. After his death the
army, left three years without pay and food, took care of
itself by sacking the principal cities, among others Maest-
richt and Antwerp. As a result the Catholics united with the
Protestants, the Walloon provinces with the Batavian prov-
inces, and the Confederation of Ghent was concluded (1576).

Philip II. then sent into the Netherlands the conqueror



210 THE C A 7^ HO LIC RESTORATION. [BOOK IV.

of Lepanto, Don Juan of Austria, who endeavored to make
them believe in his moderation and his desire for peace.
He was foiled by the distrust of the Protestants. He suc-
ceeded at least in introducing germs of discord between the
Batavians and the Walloons. The latter, distrusting the
Calvinist William of Orange, in 1577 invited to direct the
war against Spain the Catholic Mathias, Archduke of Austria,
then the Duke of Anjou, brother of Henry III. of France
(1578). Don Juan died at the age of thirty-one; his suc-
cessor, the Duke of Parma, Alexander Farnese, profited by
these divisions: skillfully mingling diplomacy and war, he
succeeded in breaking the Union of Ghent ; the ten Walloon
provinces being manufacturing and Catholic, the seven Bata-
vian provinces being commercial and Calvinist, the opposi-
tion of interest and creed brought about opposition of
political views. The Walloons recognized Philip II. as king
by the treaty of Maestricht (1579). But already the seven
northern provinces (Holland, Zealand, Guelderland, Utrecht,
Friesland, Overyssel, and Groningen) had drawn their union
closer at Utrecht and had constituted themselves a federal
republic, each preserving its distinct administration, but all
subjected to the assembly of the States General, and having a
stallholder, or governor general, who was William of Orange
(January 23, 1579). Two years later the States General of
The Hague, the federal capital of the United Provinces, sepa-
rated solemnly from the crown of Spain, broke the seal of
Philip II., and declared him deprived of all authority in the
Netherlands. This declaration was the fundamental title of
the new republic (1581).

The definitive result of the war was attained. With all
his genius and despite the assassination of the Prince of
Orange by an agent of Spain (1584) Farnese could not reduce
the northern provinces. Those of the south (Brabant,
Limburg, Luxemburg, Flanders, Artois, Hainault, Namur,
Zutphen, Antwerp, and Malines) attempted for a moment
to make themselves an independent state under the Duke
of Anjou (1581); but this prince committed only faults and
quitted the Netherlands in shame. Leicester, whom Eliza-
beth sent to sustain them, had no better success (1585).
The queen best succored the republic by destroying the In-
vincible Armada (1588). Exhausted by this great effort,