L." vision DJI03 ,G 55 Section IPtlltam 0* (55rtfife, 5D. £)♦ CHINA’S STORY, IN MYTH, LEGEND, ART AND AN¬ NALS. Illustrated. i2mo, $1.25, net. Postage extra. THE STORY OF NEW NETHER LAND. Illustrated. i2mo, $1.25, net. Postage 12 cents. YOUNG PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF HOLLAND. Illus¬ trated. Crown 8vo, $1.50, net. Postage extra. BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND, AND WHAT SHE TAUGHT US. Illustrated. i6mo, $1.25. In Riverside Library for Young People. Small i6mo, 75 cents. In Riverside School Library. Half leather, i6mo, 60 cents, net. THE AMERICAN IN HOLLAND. Sentimental Rumblings in the Eleven Provinces of the Netherlands. With a map and illustrations. Crown 8vo, $1.50. THE PILGRIMS IN THEIR THREE HOMES, —ENG¬ LAND, HOLLAND, AND AMERICA. Illustrated. i6mo, $1.25. In Riverside Library for Young People. Small i6mo, 75 cents. JAPAN:. I N HISTORY, FOLK-LORE, AND ART. In Riverside Library for Young People. Small i6mo, 75 cents. MATTHEW CALBRAITH PERRY. A typical American Naval officer. Illustrated. Crown 8vo, gilt top, $1.00. TOWNSEND HARRIS, First American Envoy in Japan. With portrait. Crown 8vo, $2.00. THE LILY AMONG THORNS. A Study of the Biblical Drama entitled The Song of Songs. i6mo, $1.25 ; white cloth, gilt top, $1.50. HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY Boston and New York %i)t Iftfoersfoe 3Ltbrarp for gating People ■ ♦ 1 ■ ■■ Number 11 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND, AND WHAT SHE TAUGHT US By WILLIAM ELLIOT GRIFFIS ' V BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND, AND WHAT SHE TAUGHT BY FEB 18 1915 &EI DAL WILLIAM ELLIOT GRIFFIS AUTHOR OF “ THE MIKADO’S EMPIRE,” “ THE INFLUENCE OF THE NETHERLANDS,” “ SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON,” ETC. “In love of liberty and bravery in the defense of it, she has been our great example.” — Benjamin Franklin REVISED EDITION. BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY (£be fitoet^ibe pre?£ Cambridge Copyright, 1894, By WILLIAM ELLIOT GRIFFIS All rights reserved . DEDICATED TO THAT IiAHGE NUMBER OF AMERICAN PEOPLE WHO, WHETHER THEY KNOW IT OR NOT, HAVE IN THEIR VEINS ,, 9?eberlanbM) Stoeb." PREFACE. My interest in Holland extends back to boy¬ hood’s days in Philadelphia, the city founded by the son of a Dutch mother, and partly settled by the learned and industrious Netherlander who accompanied William Penn to America. Educa¬ tion at Rutgers College — begun and nourished by men of Dutch name and descent, who kept alive the memories of their ancestors — was fol¬ lowed by a visit to Holland in 1869. Then came four years of life among the Japanese, whose only teachers of science and European civiliza¬ tion for over two hundred years had been Dutch' men. Nine years’ service as pastor of the First Reformed Dutch Church in Schenectady, N. Y., enabled me to become acquainted with the con¬ tents both of the deacon’s chest at home and the rich collection of documents illustrating Dutch- American history in the State Library and City Hall in Albany. During a residence of seven years in Boston, I made two literary journeys through Nederland and its libraries. I learned, PREFACE. • • • Vlll also, both the special richness and the astonish¬ ing poverty as to Dutch books and manuscripts of the libraries of those twin cities, divided by the Charles River, in which most of the histories of the United States have been written. At some future day, I hope, despite an otherwise busy life, to give the full results of my studies, with references and authorities. Meanwhile I have written this story in simple language for the young folks of America, and trust that it may incite a deeper interest in the little country wherein John Adams wrote, “ The originals of the two Republicks are so much alike, that the History of One seems but a Trans¬ cript from that of the other.” The chief authorities which have most aided me are Prof. P. J. Blok’s works, especially his “Geschiedenis van het Nederlandsche Yolk;” the writings of Bor, Wagenaar, van Prinsterer, Fruin, Delprat, Scheffer, Brandt, Bizot, Kist, Sillem, Winkler, Huet, and various Dutch mono¬ graphs and works of reference; and, in American history, the papers of Bradford, Van der Capel- len, Adams, and of the Pilgrim, Revolutionary, and Constitutional fathers. If here and there I have disagreed with Motley, it is because I have PREFACE. IX thought that illustrious writer more dramatic and subjective than scientific in some of his statements. Brave little Holland taught our fathers many things which the true historian of the American republic can no longer afford to ignore. W. E. G. Ithaca, N. Y., January 29,1894. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE * I. A Berd’s-Eye View.1 II. Entering the Country .... 12 III. How a Dam became a City . . . .19 IV. The First Inhabitants of Nederland . 26 V. The Roman Occupation.32 VI. The Saxo-Frisian Movement ... 38 VII. What has come to us from the Frisians . 45 VIII. Karel de Groote.52 IX. The Incursions of the Northmen . . 57 X. The Feudal System.64 XI. Holland and the Counts . , . .72 XH. The Dutch Crusaders.79 XIII. What followed the Crusades . . .87 XIV. The Codfishes and the Fish-Hooks . 99 XV. How a Mud-Hole became a Garden . .110 XVI. Intellectual Movements in Nederland. 122 XVII. Erasmus and the Heretics .... 131 XVin. The Troubles in the Low Countries . 139 XIX. The First Battle — Heiliger Lee . . 151 XX. Brave Little Holland defies Spain . 160 XXI. The Dutch United States .... 169 XXII. Spain recognizes the Republic . . 175 XXIII. State Rights, Secession, and Union . . 179 XXIV. The Union Must and Shall be Preserved 185 XXV. The Pilgrim Fathers in Leyden . . 192 XXVI. The Pilgrims emigrate to America . 201 XXVII. The Dutch in America.210 XXVIII. A Century of Prosperity .... 220 XXIX. Nederland and the American Revolution 226 XXX. The Dutch and American Constitutions . 235 XXXI. “ The Dutch have taken Holland ” . 240 XXXII. The Reign of Queen Wilhelmina . . 247 BRAYE LITTLE HOLLAND. CHAPTER I. a bird’s-eye view. English-speaking people usually refer to the European Kingdom of Nederland by mention¬ ing the name of a single one of its eleven provinces, Holland. The Dutch call their coun¬ try Nederland. The Kingdom of the Nether¬ lands, or Nederlanden, means Nederland and its colonies. The 44 Low Countries ” is the old term for the Netherlands, the seventeen provinces, which included what is now Belgium and Ne¬ derland, that is both the southern and the north¬ ern provinces. Since 1579, the two countries, except for a period between 1815 and 1830, have been separate. When the Dutch settled the country which now includes our four Middle States, they named it New Netherland, not New Netherlands. The Dutch flag is red, white, and blue ; that of Belgium has the tri-color of old Brabant, red, yellow, and black. In this book, when we say Netherlands, we mean the Low 2 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. Countries, or the seventeen provinces; by Neder¬ land we mean the land included in the Dutch Republic, or the modern kingdom north of the Scheldt River. All who speak the English language should visit Nederland, or be interested in its story. It was the older home of tribes and people now called English. The largest emigration from the continent into Great Britain was from its shores. The language very much like the English is the Dutch, and most like it is the Frisian or North Dutch. Many of the arts, sciences, inventions, and improvements which have made Great Brit¬ ain so rich and powerful came from Holland. One of the very best of her kings, William III., Prince of Orange, was a Dutchman. In a thou¬ sand ways England owes much to the Dutch, who are rather more like the English than they are like the Germans. The American, even more than the Briton, should know about Netherland. It was the Fa¬ therland of the first settlers of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. In the United States of Netherland we had the first ex¬ ample of a federal republic with a written con¬ stitution. Seven states formed a union under the orange, white, and blue flag. This Dutch repub¬ lic had a senate of sovereign states or States- General, in which each state, large or small, had one vote. The capital lay in a small district and A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW . 3 was without a vote, like our District of Columbia. In this little republic of seven states there were differences almost as great as between Massachu¬ setts and Louisiana, Ohio and New Mexico. One was ultra democratic like Friesland, another was aristocratic like Holland. Some were maritime, others inland. Some were violently Protestant, others intensely Roman Catholic. There were variations in local customs, religion, and social organization, yet all were loyal to the Union made about two hundred years before ours, that is, in 1579. In their public schools, sustained by taxation, the Dutch were trained to be intelli¬ gent as well as brave, so as to use their liberty aright. The Dutch cast off the yoke of the Spaniards just as our fathers threw off the yoke of the British, because their rights were invaded and they were taxed without their consent. Like our fathers, also, they first formed a Union of states, and then made themselves free by a declaration of independence. Like us, they had a long war for freedom; like us, they had trouble about threatened secession. They talked much about State Rights and the Union, but the Union was maintained. For two hundred and fifteen years the Dutch United States remained a republic, though surrounded by proud and strong mon¬ arch s that hated republics. In our Revolutionary War the Dutch sympa* 4 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. thized with us, gave us aid, and lent us money. The first salute ever fired by foreigners in honor of the American flag was from the Dutch. Gov¬ ernor Johannes de Graeff, at the port of St. Eustachius in the West Indies, November 16, 1776, ordered the “ honor-shots.” After the States - General had formally recognized the United States of America as a nation, the loan by the Dutch merchants of fourteen millions of dollars came when our country needed it most. When in 1787 our fathers made the Constitu¬ tion, the Dutch republic was a living example before their eyes. They borrowed many things directly from the Dutch system, though they also rejected many and improved most of its features. Dutch history had shown them what to select and what to avoid. “ In love of liberty and bravery in the defense of it, she has been our great ex¬ ample,” is what Benjamin Franklin said of brave little Holland. For a thousand years the Dutch fought the sea waves and the river floods. They dyked their land, which is lower than the ocean. While thus engaged, they were rearing also the bulwarks of freedom. They beat off the Spaniard; they helped to make England and America free. Grand as is her story, the size of Nederland is almost ridiculously small. The whole king¬ dom of eleven provinces is less than half the size of South Carolina, or one third the area of Ohio, A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW. 5 and hardly bigger than Maryland. Twenty such countries could be dropped into the one State of Texas. On her 12,650 square miles of land and water live over four millions of people, or fewer than in the Empire State. After the English, the Dutch have been the most successful colonizers. In the East Indies they possess Java, Sumatra, Borneo, Celebes, and St. Eustachius in the West Indies, besides part of Guiana. Many thousands of Hollanders live abroad in these and other colonies, which together form a domain of 766,000 square miles, or five times the area of California. By a few thousand Dutchmen, the thirty millions of Malays and other natives are easily governed. Except the long and costly war with the Atchinese, peace is the rule in the Dutch colonial dominions. There is a vast difference between Cuba and Java. In the one are despotism and constant insurrection, in the other are peace, law, good government. South Africa has been largely settled by Ne- derlanders, many of whom still live under British rule in Cape Colony. Others have, since 1854, formed the Orange Free State and the Transvaal Republic. The Dutch Boers handle the rifle and ride on horses from childhood. Thus far their dauntless spirit, sure aim, and intense patriotism have enabled them to resist British aggression. Nederland lies between Belgium and Germany, facing the North Sea, opposite England and near 6 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. France. The great rivers of western Europe have their mouths in and near Holland, so that the country has always been one of traders. It is in the track of commerce, yet is most strangely situated. Most of the country is not visible from the sea, because it is actually below the water- level. By nature the land has been made up by the mud and silt brought down from the high¬ lands of Germany. For ages the rivers have de¬ posited clay and the ocean sand, and these two have made Holland. The war of wind and wave has gone on from geological aeons. At first, the ocean was con¬ queror. The result of the victory was a great wall of earth heaved up along the coast from near the Texel on the north to Zeeland or sea- land on the south. These hills, called dunes, are sand heaps from thirty to nearly two hundred feet high. As natural dykes they keep out the sea. They are full of rabbit burrows, and hunt¬ ing “ Molly cotton-tail ” furnishes fine sport for the boys. The Dutch word for rabbit is \ 46 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. ert Burns’s poetry or the local idioms in Sir Walter Scott’s novels more than the average Englishman. The Scottish lowland dialect is only old English, that is, modified Dutch, uninflu¬ enced by Norman elements. To this day many Scottish cattle dealers, uneducated men, linguists though they are not, can deal in the Frisian mar¬ kets without an interpreter, with men “ whose talk is of cattle.” On both island and continent the three classes of people among the Saxo-Frisians were nobles, freemen, and serfs. The one lived in his castle, the other in his home, the third in his master’s huts. All these terms, “ castle,” “ home,” and “ hut,” like many of the words we love most to speak, were Dutch before they were English. In England the word “ home ” became ham when united to a name, as in Nottingham. In Neder¬ land we find the forms heim, hem, um , as in Windesheim, Zelhem, Ulrum. Our idea of home is best found in Teutonic Europe, and the two coun¬ tries especially renowned for their homes — as we use the word — are England and Holland. These two also are the successful colonizing na¬ tions, and mothers of republics. The country Yankee’s idioms, as in the question, “ How are the folks to hum ? ” are but survivals of ancient Dutch. Many New England family names are pure Dutch. In New England the town and the common are WHAT HAS COME FROM THE FRISIANS. 47 historic features. The Pilgrims and Puritans were more English than the Englanders left be* hind, and also more Germanic. Landing on the continent, first called “America” by the Ger¬ man Waldseemiiller, they reverted to primitive Teutonic life. Their units of government were the town and the common land. What was the original town ? In Dutch the word turn now means a garden, and has thus kept more closely to the ancient meaning than the English town or ton. Of old the tuin meant, and was, the hedge or fence on the earthen wall sur¬ rounding the settlement of homes within. Usually there was a ditch at the base of the earthen em¬ bankment, which was pierced with gates for en¬ trance. The “ common,” or common land, including forest for the material of bow, spear, hoe, and fuel, as well as for pasture and play-ground, was outside the tuin. In Friesland one can still occa¬ sionally trace out, on the heath or in the woods where no people now live, the round lines of an¬ cient tuins or towns. Even yet, in certain places, the common forest and pasture land is held. Many villagers still pay their taxes, or otherwise raise revenue from their shares in the common land, dig turf from the common veld , or field, or drive to and bring back daily their fat black and white cattle of the Holstein-Frisian breed. Here, in northern Nederland, is the ancestral 48 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. seat of the home, the town, the common, the Eng¬ lish folk and speech. The early New England settlements and the Dutch villages along the Hudson and Mohawk rivers, outside of the Pa- troon’s estates, were begun in the old Frisian way. There were the common lands, the palisades, with the earth hank and ditch, the cattle and swine led out daily to pasture. These were only the things Germanic reappearing again, as naturally as the Roman nose, the Hapsburg jaw, or the an¬ cestral color of eye or hair reappears in descend¬ ants. It was in this period, from the sixth to the ninth century, that those events took place which Dutch national art and literature love to repre¬ sent. In charming story, drama, and fairy tale, striking picture, and statue, the old life of our fathers is transfigured. In the perspective of the imagination this period is as a gorgeous sunset, in which artist and romancer delight to revel. The historian also enjoys the dumb, fossil wit¬ nesses to the manners, customs, and faith of his ancestors. He reconstructs the story of their life, with its joys and woes, ambitions and hates, hopes and fears. At Dokkum the traveler looks on the scene of the martyrdom of Boniface. Near Alk- maar he tastes the brackish water from Saint Wilbrord’s put , or well. Though enjoying the liquid less than those to whom it was fresh and sweet when they quenched their thirst a thousand WHAT HAS COME FROM THE FRISIANS. 49 years ago, he learns what useful men and true civilizers, as well as clerics, those old missionaries were. The names of the vanquished gods are embalmed in the names of the villages. The pale reflection of the old pagan world is detected in the folk-lore and idioms. In Ulrum was the w, or home of the ice-god. In Stavoren, on one side of the Zuyder Zee, is reechoed the name of Sta- vor, the local god. At Medemblik we hear the legend which tells of the origin of the helmet of gold and lace which still encases the cranium of wife and maid in Friesland. Originally, says the .story, it signified the history of the cross and the adoption of Christianity by the wearer. Is it the glorified crown of thorns ? When, however, we come to the dear old story of Radbod, king of the Frisians, and his post¬ poned immersion, we are at sea. . He is said to have drawn out his royal leg from the baptismal font when told by the bishop that his ancestors were all in hell. His answer was, “ Then I ’ll go there too.” We find the legend located in nearly as many places as Homer is alleged to have been born. This incident is a great favorite with ar¬ tists and wood-engravers. Popular customs and pleasing fashions are as old as religion, and older than any one religion which the descendants of the ancient Teutons have adopted. In our Christian homes and churches we still enjoy ourselves much as our 50 BBAVE LITTLE HOLLAND , Dutch ancestors did ages ago. Despite the Friends who protest, we call the days of the week after the ancient gods. We “nominate in our bond,” Monday the day of the moon, Tuesday the day of the sword-god Twi or Teu, Wednes¬ day, like many towns in England and America, takes its name from Woden, the king of all gods, on whose shoulders sit the ravens of Observation and Memory. The name of Thor, the hammer- god, maker of the world, is embalmed in Thurs¬ day. Lovely Fri, or Freya, the bright goddess of springtime, warmth, and fruitfulness, has her memento in Friday. Saturn in Saturday, and the Sun in Sunday, complete the space of time measured by a moon-space, or month. Oestre, the goddess whom the Saxons loved, had her joyful spring festival, which the mission¬ aries were not able to abolish, but only to change to Paasch, Paschal feast, or Easter. In the Paasch-fires which Frisian boys still kindle, when the rubbish and useless stuff accumulated during the year is burned up, we see a healthy custom as old as the town or common, and popular long before Christianity. The same may be said of the wheel-cakes or cookies indicating the course of the year. In the honor of Oestre, also, eggs were dyed in many colors and then eaten. Our Easter eggs, tinted with aniline at the anniversary of Christ’s resurrection, are in principle the same as those which long ago, in forest, hut, and helm , WHAT HAS COME FROM THE FRISIANS. 51 were colored with vegetable dyes. The Yule (juul or wheel) feast, lasting from December 25th to January 6th was not abolished ; it was merged into Christmas, and forgotten in the story of the Bethlehem babe. The herfst-rit , or late autumn- ride of the god Woden on the horse Sleipnir, be¬ came the ride of Santa Claus on his deer-drawn sled. The great festival for boys and girls in the land of dykes falls on December 5th. This is the day of Saint Nicholas, or as the Dutch say Sint Niklaas, which in New Netherland became Santa Claus. We still walk in the footsteps of our pagan ancestors, but as men, not as pagans, when we bake Jcerst-koeJcen or Christmas cake, or dance around the maypole, or crown the Queen of May. In a word, all that was best, as well as some things that were not so good, were absorbed by Christianity when the northern men of the forest, fen, and shore were wholly or partially converted. It was a good thing when the Nederlanders were brought to believe in the doctrines and to obey the discipline of the church. It was far better when they understood what were sometimes quite different, the spirit and the teachings of Jesus. CHAPTER VIII. KAREL DE GROOTE. While the Byzantine or Eastern empire flour¬ ished, with Constantinople as its centre, and Greek as the official language, order was kept among the nations of western Europe by Charle¬ magne. This restorer of the Roman empire was so named among the Franks, but in Nederland he was called Karel de Groote. In English he is known as Charles the Great. He was the son of Pepin the Short, the grandson of Charles Martel, and the dynasty to which he belonged is known in history as the Carlovingian. When the Roman empire broke up into the fragments which afterwards became the states of modern Europe, the title of Caesar also suffered change. As Latin ceased to be spoken and be¬ came a dead language, the modern languages grew into form. They may be grouped into the three families, Romance, Germanic, and Slavic. In the southern countries the title of the emperor was pronounced with a soft c or s sound ; in north¬ ern Europe with a hard or Jc sound; in Russia with emphasis on the last syllable. Whether Caesar, Keizer or Tsar, Karel was known all over KABEL BE GBOOTE. 53 Europe, after his coronation as emperor in St. Peter’s church in Rome on Christmas Day, in the year 800. He was then fifty-eight years old. Most of Karel’s life was spent in war. He pounded the Saxons as his grandfather Charles the Hammer had beaten flat the Saracens. Sev¬ enteen out of thirty-five of his campaigns were against the Saxons or Frisians, and other Ger¬ manic tribes that made common cause with these yellow-haired and long-knived warriors. As con¬ queror, he compelled them to be baptized and accept Christianity. Driven into the rivers at the point of the spear, they agreed to renounce their paganism and hostility. Keizer Karel was not only a mighty warrior, but also a great civilizer. He established churches, schools, and monasteries throughout his empire. Alcuin, the most learned man of his age, was his superintendent of education. Most of the old schools in France owe their existence to Alcuin, as well as several of those in Nederland. Though Karel had many palaces in various parts of his realm, his favorite residence was at Nymegen. Here, on the splendid plateau over¬ looking the Waal River, and on the site of the old Roman castle, he built the Valkhof. Some scanty ruins of this imperial residence still re¬ main. They once formed part of the choir of the palace church. The tourist who rambles through the public park in Nymegen, one of the few Dutch 54 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. towns which require the visitor to climb a hill, can still see these and the landscape as of yore. Here great Charles loved to rest after his wars and administer the affairs of his vast empire, which extended from the Elbe and Eider rivers in the north, to the Tiber and Ebro in the south of Europe. Gathering judges, poets, scholars, and singers around him, he enjoyed his home during the winters, for in the summer he put on the hel¬ met and took the field. For beauty of scenery he could hardly have chosen a lovelier spot. The prospect embraces fertile fields, rich pastures, azure hills, the old home of the Batavians, the Waal, Rhine, Maas and Yssel rivers, the fields of Brabant and the scene of the legend of the Knight of the Swan celebrated in Lohengrin. No other city excels Nymegen in its richness of memories of the great Frank. The curfew or old couvre-feu , or fire-bell, which nightly rings at 8.30 p. M. is called Keizer Karel’s Klok, or clock, — for a clock was a bell before it was a measurer of time. The finest square in the new quarter of the city is named Keizer Karel’s Plein, or plain. The sixteen-sided Gothic baptistery, consecrated by Pope Leo III. in 799 and rebuilt in the twelfth century, is still carefully preserved. In the city museum, one of the best in Nederland, are many other reminders of the great man who “ came an age too soon.” Here are the eloquent relics both of the Romans and of the mediaeval KAREL DE GROOTE. 55 restorer of the Roman empire. How they touch the imagination and make the dead world live again! He who sees them becomes a Methuselah “ without wrinkles or gray hairs.” The centuries move before him in panorama. Under Karel de Groote, the northern and the southern Netherlands were again united under one crown. They remained so for nearly eight centu¬ ries. From the year T85, when the Frisians were fully subjugated, along with the Saxons, they were more or less tributary to foreign rulers. These included Frankish, Burgundian, Austrian, nr Spanish monarchs, until the rise of the Dutch republic; then they cast them off and became their own masters. Yet the men of our old fatherland remained “free Frisians,” for they retained their own soil as their own property, and were governed accord¬ ing to their own laws. Even the rulers sent by Karel de Groote and his successors to rule over Nederland were obliged to obey these Frisian laws. The general nature of these laws we know, but not their details; for the collection or code known as the Asega book is the work of four cen¬ turies later. Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that while the feudal system became so deeply rooted in some parts of the empire that relics and traces are even to-day quite manifest, in Frisia feudalism never took root. In other parts of Europe the ’emperor or king could give land to any one he 56 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. pleased, or take it away when he would. In Frisia the land belonged to the people, and could not be made into benefices or feuds, or given to imperial favorites, whether priests or soldiers. One part of the empire remained as of old democratic, and that part was Friesland. The emperors who succeeded Karel de Groote formed the Carlovingian dynasty, as they are known in history. Louis I., or the Debonair, feebly followed up his father’s work in schools and education, but those who came after him could not carry out the plans of their great ancestor. That part of their empire north of the Maas River was named Austrie, or the Eastland, a word which is also found in the name Austerfield, in England, where Bradford of the Pilgrim Fathers was born. The region south of the Scheldt was called Neus- tria. Much war and strife followed the death of the great Charles, and his empire gradually fell to pieces. We need not dwell upon the names or deeds of the figure-heads who sat on thrones, but we shall look at the people, and the conditions of trade, social life, and religion during this epoch from the eighth to the eleventh century. CHAPTER IX. THE INCURSIONS OF THE NORTHMEN. In our day, Yon Moltke used to say that “Ge¬ ography is half of war,” and we may add, of com¬ merce also. A great seaport, a city at the head of river or lake navigation, a site at which natural paths converge, is sure to thrive while the people are there with their wants. Even when destroyed by earthquake, flood, fire, or war, a centre of trade will be rebuilt and thrive again. Unless new routes be opened for the ships of the desert or wagons of the sea, caravans or fleets, the old lines of traffic and the old market-places will remain. ' So in Nederland. From the first, Utrecht was the middle point of traffic. Here came the but¬ ter, cheese, honey, wheat, rye, wool, and hemp. There were busy markets and great sales. Eng¬ land, noted for her sheep, sent their fleeces. Down the Rhine came the riches of Germany, and near at hand lay the products of the Belgic Nether¬ lands and of France. Dutch cities, sharing in the prosperity which came in peace and from settled society, were Maastricht, Dorestad, Deventer, and Stavoren. Other places which were once flour¬ ishing seaports are now obscure villages, dried up 58 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. ports, or dead cities. Amsterdam and Rotterdam were as yet unheard of. The Hague had not even become’s Gravenhaag, or the Count’s Hedge, as later on. In these early Middle Ages, despite many wars, there was a rich bloom of farms and cities and trade by land and water that made Nederland flourish like a garden. It was also, alas, a source of temptation to the hardy robbers of the north. In Denmark, Sweden, and Norway each of the Ten Commandments is now well known and kept. By the Norsemen the eighth commandment, in reference to their southern neighbors, was unknown. In the history of Europe and Asia we find that the rich and fertile south tempts marauders out of the cold north. This is especially true when there is a larger northern population than can find food at home. Again and again the Hun, Tartar, Turk, Mongol has rushed down to ravage and possess the warmer and richer countries, China and India. In Europe the Teutonic barbarians rolled southward in waves that destroyed the Roman empire. So, likewise, upon the fat lands of Europe, after the death of Karel, fell the sea-rovers and mur¬ derous robbers called the Normans, Northmen, or Norsemen. From Constantinople to Iceland and Massachusetts, and into all the rivers and bays of western Europe, these hardy Scandinavians were seen or heard of. In Nederland, these ad THE INCURSIONS OF THE NORTHMEN. 59 venturous pirates rowed their ^rar craft far up into the rivers to fire and kill. Even towns far inland, like Tiel, Vianen, Deventer, Utrecht, and Nymegen, were attacked. In the morning, happy people would look with delight upon their gardens and farms, houses and barns. They would meet for business in villages and markets, or gather in churches to sing and pray. In the evening, the scene might change. The moon often shone upon level and smoking wastes of ashes and corpses. No red Iroquois or Apaches of our colonial or boyhood’s days were more savage and brutal than these very Norse¬ men, whose blood and names so many of the Americans inherit. Some of the best of us, the Herricks, Farraguts, etc., are descended from these pirates. For two centuries the common prayer in the litanies of the Christian churches was, “ From the fury of the Normans, good Lord deliver us.” These “vikings,” or sons of the creeks and coves, were men of powerful build, and capable of long endurance of hunger and fatigue. Mounting their long galleys made of toughest wood, they set their single sail to the one mast, or rowed steadily to the south. Their rudders were long blades of wood set in a pole handle, not in the centre of the stern, but on the right side of the vessel, which was therefore called the steer-board, or, as we now say, the starboard. When the sail 60 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. was taken down it was stowed away on the “ port ” side, making a load. Gradually, it is believed, this “ load-board ” was pronounced larboard. The rowers sat along the sides, their heavy shields being hung on the outside. At the right moment they gathered on the fore-deck for battle, or leaped ashore, sword in hand. With slight provision for food and fresh water, with no com. pass or chart, they drove their prows out into fog or storm. Like Noah, who sent out the raven to find land, their pilot was a bird of the same spe¬ cies. In the loneliness of the watery world, they carried one of these path-finders. The raven, sacred to their god Woden, perched upon the top of the dragon prow. When tossing on the waves, at a loss to know where they were, or when the “ shipmen deemed that they drew nigh to some country,” they set the raven free. If the bird flying off returned soon again, they knew that no land was near. If the raven did not come back, they drove forward in the direction of its flight. Then they landed or coasted along until their prey was in sight. Chanting a loud song to Woden, they plied the sword until resistance was over. After gathering their booty, loading what they wanted on their ships, they began with the torch and left all in ashes. The Norsemen did not dread death in battle, for they believed that each warrior as he fell went at once to Walhalla, the heaven in which Woden and the gods welcomed THE INCURSIONS OF THE NORTHMEN. 61 him. Whenever we shout “ huzza,” or “ hurrah,” we are but echoing the warcry of our Norse an¬ cestors, which on their lips meant “ To Para¬ dise ! ” From single ships or small parties, these raids of the Scandinavians grew to great expeditions, sometimes numbering twenty or thirty thousand men. The Danes were the most active in plunder¬ ing Frisia and southern Netherland. In England a Norse pirate who was caught robbing or defiling a Christian church was flayed alive and his hide nailed to the church door. Several pieces of human skin now in the British Museum have been obtained from under big-headed nails, when mediaeval doors were replaced by modern oak. In Frisia, the pagan Northman when found at the same work was taken to the damp sea-sand and beheaded. The old Nederlander had a hor¬ ror of wetting dry earth with blood shed other¬ wise than in the heat of battle. For three centuries the Northmen were the terror of Europe, but finally the raids ceased. For this there were many causes. Christianity entered and taught the Scandinavians a better ideal of life than the pagan. Agriculture and fisheries took away the need of seeking food farther south. The sea-kings and chiefs became tyrannical as they grew rich and powerful, and thousands of their followers and serfs emigrated and settled down peaceably to till the soil in 62 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. Great Britain, France, and Nederland. There are many telltale names on the British islands, and in the Netherlands and other parts of the mainland of Europe. Where lived the Nor¬ mans under William the Conqueror and their descendants, the Pilgrims and the Puritans of later day, the Dutch, Scotch, and Irish of famous family, there are place and family names which reveal the gratifying fact that the children of Scandinavian pirates have become Christians, gentlemen, nobles. For the defense of Nederland, the spread of Christianity among the Danes was the best of all forces. Many a time, indeed, the armed vigi¬ lance of the government and people gave the pirates a warm reception and drove them off. When, however, the Norsemen came as settlers in Dorestad, Kennemerland, and Walcheren, they were still savage and very turbulent. In A. D. 826 three brothers out of the land of the Danes, Heriold, Poruk, and Hemming were baptized. Their powerful influence helped the Christian rulers of Nederland to rule the immigrant people from the north. Although a few more plunder¬ ings and firing of towns, like that of Tiel and Utrecht in the year 1002, took place, yet the incursions had practically ceased when Christian¬ ity’s millennial year dawned. It was no longer necessary for Christians by the Maas and Yssel to take off human hides or heads by way of THE INCURSIONS OF THE NORTHMEN. 63 warning to northern marauders. Educated in the gentler truths of Jesus, tamed, washed, pol¬ ished by centuries of Christian civilization, the children of these once brutal warriors are now the nobles and citizens of Europe and the free¬ men of America. The episode of the Norman invasions is very important to one who studies history, for it helped to bring about the feudal system, at which we shall now glance. CHAPTER X. THE FEUDAL SYSTEM. What is feudalism ? Feudalism is a state of society in which the land is not free to be claimed by settlers, or to be bought and sold, but is divided up into feuds or fiefs. One who holds a fief can¬ not sell, transfer, or mortgage it, because he holds it of a superior or lord. When he dies, he can¬ not will it to his children, for the land then re¬ verts to the superior lord, or, if continued to the dead man’s son, it must be by the grace or will of the superior. In the United States, and in most European countries at present, land is held in “ fee simple,” it is “ allodial.” An allodium, as “ Blackstone’s Commentaries ” say, is “ every man’s own land which he possesses merely in his own right with¬ out owing any rent or service to a superior.” Among the early Germanic tribes, land was held in common. A certain number of families gathered together in a tuin or town, formed what in Frisian was called a “ mark,” or in Dutch “ gemeente,” that is, a community or congrega¬ tion. The land belonged to the people, and was divided up according to need and numbers. THE FEUDAL SYSTEM. 65 There was the mark of arable or ploughed land, the mark of pasture, and the home-mark or vil¬ lage. The acres or fields and pastures were usu¬ ally outside of the tuin, but sometimes each farmer dwelt in his own farmhouse on his own farm or landhold. When, however, a country was conquered and brought under the dominion of one ruler, as for example the Netherlands, by Karel de Groote, all the land in theory (except Frisia) belonged to the conqueror. The emperor had power to divide up the country and vest the ownership of the soil, not in the mark or democracy, but in many lords or masters of whom the emperor was the over-lord. He gave the parcels of land to his various nobles, dukes, counts, barons, etc., on condition that they should render him service. This service in time of peace consisted of money or produce of the soil, but in war-time of so many soldiers, both horse and foot men. In this, the way of feudalism, the land is taken ?vway from the people who till it and becomes the property of men who are called lords. Even our familiar term “ landlord,” as well as the custom of raising or taking off the hat in polite saluta¬ tion, are, like a hundred other things whose ori¬ gin is unnoticed, survivals of feudalism. What were once the privileges or rights of lords or noblemen have now become the common property of all, at least in the United States of America. 66 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. The greater part of the civilized or semi-civil¬ ized earth has been at some time or other feudal¬ ized. In China and the Malayan part of Asia, in Africa and early America, and even among the Iroquois Indians, either perfect or rudimen¬ tary feudal systems have existed. This sort of political organization seems almost a necessary stage in the history of every nation living a settled life. Nomads never have a feudal sys¬ tem. The writer lived under the feudalism of Japan, where every foot of occupied land was part of a fief, and saw its workings, during its last year of existence, 1870. The duke or count, or in Dutch hertog or graaf , divides up his fief of land and sub-lets it to smaller nobles or gentlemen. These may again sub-let parcels to smaller tenants or farmers to work it with their slaves or serfs. The land is thus rented on condition of personal service instead of a pay¬ ment in money. The tie is loyalty. In the feudal system, patriotism, or love of country, is scarcely known. Loyalty or personal attachment is the chief sentiment. The noble or gentleman must follow his master. Each knight must furnish horse, sword, mace, battle-axe, and armor. Each man-at-arms supplies spear, shield, twelve arrows, and a cuirass. For the use of the land, each holder of a fief joins the standard of his over-lord with horses, equipment, provisions, servants. The serfs or slaves are left at home to till the soil. THE FEUDAL SYSTEM. 67 In such a state of society, there will he many grades of landlords, and many varieties of tenants. Besides the serfs or slaves who wear their mas¬ ter’s collar or badge, the great mass of the people are tied or bound to the soil. They usually live and die on the same acre, and are not very much better than the regular slaves. The individual constantly decreases in importance, while the land¬ lord increases both in influence and power. Those who hold land are persons of importance. Others are as nothing. Yet, as we have said, feudalism seems almost a necessary stage in the history of nations which have a settled life based on agriculture. Only the nations that are fishers, hunters, and nomad shepherds escape feudalism, and not even these always and wholly. There is ever a rivalry, usually ending in strife, between the hunter and the farmer, the rover and the man of settled busi¬ ness, and it is as old as human society. It is seen in the quarrels between Cain and Abel, and Jacob and Esau. China’s feudal system came to an end when the able emperor built that wall which, for two thousand years, has dratvn a line of brick between the nomads of Mongolia and the settled farmers of China. Under the Frankish rule, by using various pre¬ texts, such as guarding against the Norsemen, the empire was divided up into many sections called gouw , over which was a graaf or count. Over 68 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. several of these gouws and graafs was placed a hertog or duke, the word “ hertog ” meaning an army leader. In Nederland there were eighteen or more of these gouws or districts. Some of the old names are still in use, such as Kennemerland, Betuwe, Yeluwe, Drenthe, etc. After these beginnings of feudalism, the process proceeded first rapidly, then fast and furiously, after the Carlovingian dynasty had come to an end in 925. Then Nederland became a part of the kingdom of Lotharingia, passing out of Frank¬ ish into Germanic rule, but still connected with the great empire. The last king of the line of Karel de Groote was a simpleton, and actually made a present of Holland to Dirck I., Count of Friesland, and afterwards called Count of Hol¬ land. He issued letters patent, that is letters public, to confirm the gift. Henceforth Neder¬ land belonged in theory to this count and his suc¬ cessors. Dirck, the same name as in the last syllables of Frederick and Theoderick, was the name of a popular saint as well as of many counts. It is still one of the most common names in Dutch families. Gradually also the other counts, by possessing local power and making themselves practically in¬ dependent of the distant emperor, became heredi¬ tary possessors of their fiefs. Thus, in course of time, the whole country became a patchwork of feudalism. A mediaeval map of Nederland, ex* THE FEUDAL SYSTEM. 69 cept Friesland resembles nothing more than a “ crazy quilt.” Nearly the same, as to time and method, the courses of history ran parallel in Japan and Nederland. The little feudal states that arose were Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Overyssel, Gro¬ ningen, Drenthe, and Friesland, but there were hundreds of minor feuds or holdings under these. The counts of Holland and the bishops of Utrecht were the chief rulers, but beneath these were underlings holding bits of land differing in size and value and clothed with shreds of au¬ thority. Feudalism meant that all the land, air, and water, with the beasts, birds, fishes, and minerals, belonged, not to the people, but to the lords of the soil. If a man wished to fish, hunt, shoot a bird in the air, gather sticks, pluck twig, leaf, or fruit from trees, or pick up anything from the ground, he must first get permission from the lord of the country or some one of his underlings. This meant that the weak were to get weaker, and the strong stronger, and the cunning more cunning. Noble and priest usually helped each other; for both liked power, and were in league against the untitled and the unprivileged folks. Cleric and soldier alike grew rich at the expense of the common people, who sunk by thousands into slavery. Castle and monastery grew to be fortresses of brick and stone, while townsmen and 70 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. country folk lived under wood and straw. The chief relations of life were lord and vassal, master and slave. Every laborer, mechanic, and farmer must, for safety’s sake, put himself under the protection of some castle lord. The village could find defense only under shelter of the fortified house of a noble. Under such a political system, there must be, almost as a matter of necessity, many wars between rival castle lords. Between bishops who were pirates and barons who were burglars, the people became the prey of both. Yet feudalism had its bright side, even as war has its splendor. The brilliant procession of knights and men-at-arms, in bright uniforms and with waving banners, filing out of the castle gates and over the drawbridges, delighted the eyes of the common folk. Hawking and falconry made lively sport for gay lords and lovely ladies outdoors. In the field of public amusements, thousands went out on holiday to see the wrestlers, boxers, and fencers, to laugh at the jests of buf¬ foons, or to shout in applause of the archers. In the tournaments the knights, clothed in shining steel, gave the spectators in their mock combats all the excitement of war with only a little of its danger. The monastery became the seat of learn¬ ing and the school for those who were to be priests, clerks, or scholars. Often the monastic corporations paid for the building or repair of the dykes, and fed the people during famine. THE FEUDAL SYSTEM. 71 Holy and good men often defended the honest poor and the pure women from the cruelty and lust of the nobles. The nunneries sheltered the maiden and widow. The learned monks compiled annals and wrote the materials for history. In the castle and campaign, heraldry grew up* Crests, banners, coats-of-arms, were unusually brilliant and varied in Nederland. Perhaps no other country is so rich in what may be called the graphic symbols of church, city, and family. The lily among thorns typified the pure body of Christ amid worldly temptations ; crossed keys form the town arms of Leyden under patronage of St. Peter; the printer’s type-case of later days tells of ancestral occupation. In medallic history and all that belongs to the decorative side of human life, as expressed in symbols, no people excel the Dutch. Their taste and skill are here nobly manifest. CHAPTER XI. HOLLAND AND THE COUNTS. It was during the feudal system that the name Holland came into vogue. Whether the word be contracted from hoi (hollow) land, or from hout (wood) land is uncertain. Look on the map and note where the two riv¬ ers, the Maas and the Waal, the former rising in France, come together at Gorcum. They flow as one stream to Dordrecht, where the Maas, now double-branched, resumes its name. This stretch of water, called the Merwede, is one of the deepest and widest, and therefore the most important in all Nederland. It commands the Rhine and the commerce into Germany. It is no wonder, then, that at Gorcum and other points the river banks are well fortified. It is here that the great “ new river,” cut from Amsterdam and finished in 1892, taps the Rhine. The Merwede is Nederland’s most important inland water. To the region of land along the Merwede the name of Holland was given in 1015 by the Count of Friesland, Dirck III. Of these counts, ruling from 922 to 1299, seven were named Dirck, and five were named Floris. HOLLAND AND THE COUNTS. 73 Like the typical robber baron of the Middle Ages, and, as happens in feudalism all over the world, when strong armed men claim the possession of God’s gifts of air, land, and water, Dirck III. took advantage of his position to fill his purse. He levied a heavy toll on all ships passing through the Merwede, as all the ships must pass to go to or from Germany. This he had no right to do, since the Rhine was one of the water¬ ways of the Germanic empire. In 1064, or ear¬ lier, the Count of Holland built a tower, or thure , at the trecht , or crossing, at the east end of the Merwede, The name thurtrecht or the tower- ferry, was in time shortened to what it is now, Dordrecht. Many Dutchmen condense the name still further and call it Dort. As the count’s power increased, the name Hol¬ land was given to the region and seacoast north and east, until it covered the whole of the area included in the two modern provinces of North Holland and South Holland. This is the richest part of Nederland, having the most fertile soil, largest cities, greatest seaports, widest fame in art, literature, and all that goes to make up civ¬ ilization. Later, in the Dutch Republic, Holland paid nearly one half of the national taxes, the other six states together paying but a little over one half. Hence Holland has been so important that most English-speaking people, when they say “ Holland,” mean the whole country of N& derland with its eleven provinces. 74 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. The Counts of Holland had their favorite resi¬ dence first at Haarlem; later, at a delightful place in the midst of the great forests, and only three miles from the sea, they built a castle, and surrounded their estate with a heg, or hedge. The place became known as the Count’s Hedge, or ’s Graven Hage, as the Dutchmen still call it. Foreigners also still say the Hague. Very prop¬ erly the chief city of the rulers, and later the capital of the home-land of the tuin or town- hedge, was called the Hedge. Another Dutch name for tower, fort, castle, or fortification is burg. There were hundreds of these burgs in Nederland during the feudal sys¬ tem. They are now mostly leveled, and the few remaining ones are kept as curious relics of a by¬ gone age. The memory of them is preserved in titles, and in the names of places and persons. In Leyden, the burg on the hill in the centre of the town goes back to possibly Roman, certainly to Saxon days. Middelburg in Zeeland, Den Burg on Texel Island, Yoorburg, Yeenenburg are a few of many examples of villages which once con¬ sisted of people who gathered for shelter and burg-vried or castlepeace around the walls and tower of the baron. The burgomaster, once lord of the castle, is now a mayor. Family names, such as Yosburg, Van de Burg, or in a dozen other forms with burg are common. The burgher from being a castle-tenant, soldier, servant, or freed serf has become a citizen. HOLLAND AND THE COUNTS . 75 Dordrecht has been for many centuries the seat of the mint of Holland. Count Floris III., who in 1162 married Ada, the granddaughter of David, King of Scotland, was probably the first to receive the privilege of coining from the em¬ peror. He was the Crusader who died and was buried at Antioch. He stamped his coins with the wopen , weapons or arms of Holland, a shield with three vertical bands, on the central one of which were three crosses of the Saint Andrews sort. The Dutch money was in pounds, shillings, and pence, one pound being equal to twenty shil¬ lings, and one shilling being worth twelve pence. Later on, the florin, first coined at Florence in Italy, and stamped with a flower, was made one of the Dutch coins, and as a gold-piece circu¬ lated freely in Nederland. This gave way to the guilder or gulden, silver coins worth forty cents each, though both names, florin and guilder, are still used. The Dutch and German coins were so good, and so honestly up to weight, that in England their money was at first called 44 Easter¬ ling,” after the merchants, who were men from the East, and then shortened into 44 sterling.” About 1518, in Bohemia, a coin struck from the silver mined at Joachim’s thal, or dale, was called the Joachimthaler, and later thaler. This coin the Dutch adopted, calling it daalder, and making it worth one hundred cents. It was from the Dutch direct that the coinage of the United 76 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. States of America was modeled. Just as pounds, shillings, and pence were Easterling or sterling, that is Dutch, before they were English, so with dollars, dimes, cents, and mills: they were of Ne¬ derland before they were of America. Besides our word “ mint,” several other terms used in coin¬ age, such as “ ingot,” are of Dutch origin. For centuries the ancient method of stamping out the coins with hammer and chisel was practiced. The Dutch call their national paper money munt - billets or mint-notes. Despite the vexatious restrictions on trade in the Middle Ages, many Dutch merchants grew rich, even during the feudal ages, in the trade with Germany, Italy, France, England, and Scot¬ land. Dordrecht and Utrecht were especially the centres of trade. The men who had charge of great business ventures, whether independent, or, as was usually the case, as agents for the busi¬ ness, were called patroons or patrons. Centuries afterwards, when New Netherland was founded in America, the men to whom were granted large areas of ground were called by the same name. These manors or estates they gov¬ erned, or tried to govern, on the principles of feudalism. As we all know, most of the Dutch settlers who came to America revolted against the idea of their living under feudalism, or of its being introduced into America. They therefore settled beyond the patroon’s estates, at Esopus, Schenec- HOLLAND AND THE COUNTS. 77 tady, on Long Island, and other places. Feudal¬ ism in the Middle Ages was a necessity. In the seventeenth century it was an absurdity and an outrage, and none felt it more than the free Dutch farmers in New Netherland. As a rule, only those who were too poor to do otherwise set¬ tled under the patroons. Nevertheless, some of the founders of the best families in the State of New York, relatives of the patroons, came from Dordrecht, the centre of Dutch feudalism. In jealous protest against the ship’s tolls, or to gain possession of the Merwede, in order to fol¬ low the same enriching policy, other lords, both spiritual and temporal, made war on the Counts of Holland. For a long time the fighting bish¬ ops of Utrecht, as well as the counts and even the Emperor of Germany battled by land and water. The religious leaders having rich reve¬ nues, armies of workmen, retainers, servants, and slaves, could not keep out, and would not keep out of the fray. Often they joined in the many petty wars that raged with intermissions during five centuries. As in Japan and India, so in Europe. Christian abbot and bishop, just like the Buddhists in Asia, put on the helmet and led their motley hosts to battle. It would be tedious to tell of the strifes between Holland and Utrecht, Brabant and Flanders, and all the other squabbles of the little feudal states. The general result was that the men who handled the sword 78 BRA VE LITTLE HOLLAND. and the crucifix as their tools grew rich. The mass of the population through poverty, timidity, debt, capture in war, crime, shipwreck, or other causes became slaves. The social wreckage of humanity was enormous. Some new movement in society was necessary to break up the old frame¬ work and make way for a newer life and larger development. CHAPTER XII. THE DUTCH CRUSADERS. The Crusades are called in Dutch the Kruis- tochten, or the Campaigns of the Cross. These more or less religious wars lasted from about 1096 to 1292. Stirred by the complaints of pil¬ grims, the preaching of Peter the Hermit, and the command of the Pope, but probably even more by their longing to break the stagnation of life under feudalism, the peoples of Europe were set moving eastward. Their professed object was to wrest the holy sepulchre in Palestine from the Saracens. The exact purpose first in view was to secure the rights of Christian pilgrims to travel peace¬ fully in and through Mohammedan countries. Later on, this purpose enlarged according to the necessities of papal politics. All Palestine was to be conquered and a Christian empire set up in the Holy Land. Society in Europe was stirred to its depths. Irish, Scottish, English, Norwegian, French, Ger¬ man, Dutch, Spanish, and Italian men, women, and children hurried towards the rising sun. Proba- bly six millions of persons left their homes duu 80 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. ing the first Crusade. In the later expeditions, instead of unruly mobs, splendid armies of. knights and footmen led by kings and emperors moved by land and sea into Syria. Jerusalem was taken and retaken in the wars between the warriors of the Cross and the Crescent. By the time of the fourth great Crusade, in 1203, the crusading business had become the fixed policy of the Popes. The spiritual idea had then become obscured, and conquest was the main point in view. Instead of going as far as Palestine, those crusaders who followed Baldwin, Count of Flanders, seized the Byzantine empire and held the throne of Constantinople for fifty-six years. In 1244 the Seljuk Turks, ancestors of those now misruling the Ottoman empire, burst into Syria, and once more with hammer and fire re¬ duced Jerusalem to rubbish and ashes. Nothing further of importance was accomplished by the Christians, and after the fall of Acre in 1291 the warriors of the Cross returned home. The Turk still holds the petty little walled town of Jeru¬ salem and all its rubbish, and camps out in Eu¬ rope. So great a place in history has Jerusalem held, that many tourists, on first seeing the actual place, utter the exclamation, “ How contemptibly small! ” Thousands of books have been written about the Crusades which cost millions of lives, did much mischief, and caused great waste. On the THE DUTCH CRUSADERS. 81 whole, however, the good they wrought exceeded the evil. The movement was needed to save European society from stagnation. Let us see how it did this. The Dutch were not so deeply stirred by the pilgrims, preaching friars, and Popes, as were some other peoples, nor did they leave their home¬ land so easily to go on what seemed a chase after wild geese. In other words, they had their own thoughts as to the merits and demerits of orders from Rome. Nevertheless we find some famous families in the Crusades, among whom were the Arkells, the Brederodes, Floris III., and Wil¬ lem I. Baudewijn, or Baldwin IX. of Flanders was made emperor of Constantinople. In the Crusade of the year 1187, Floris III., Count of Holland, followed the German emperor Frederick Barbarossa into Greece and Asia Mi¬ nor. The long marches and sieges in hot coun¬ tries, with alternate famine and plenty, thinned the ranks of these men from more bracing cli¬ mates and accustomed to more regular living. Many thousands more perished by disease than by the blows of the enemy. Floris III. died at Antioch, and was buried with the emperor. Floris’s son Willem I. (Willem is the Dutch form of William) remained five years in the Holy Land. He then came home to find his father’s dominions in disorder, to fight a battle at Alk- maar, to lose and to regain this authority, and 82 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. to have various adventures in France and Eng¬ land. To the latter country he went first as an ally of King John, the worthless king from whom the English nobles extorted Magna Charta. Dur¬ ing the truce between France and England, Wil¬ lem, Count of Holland, broke away from King John, joined the side of the King of France, and crossed over to England with a following of thirty nobles and their vassals. The war in Eng¬ land was soon over, and once more Willem em¬ barked in the Crusades. It was a brilliant sight when his little army in twelve ships, gay with streamers and banners, sailed down the Maas, past Rotterdam, and out into the North Sea. There they were joined by a squadron of Frisian vessels, and together the combined fleet sailed for Lisbon. At this time the Moors and the Christians were fighting in Portu¬ gal. A message to Count Willem from the Por¬ tuguese praying for help was gladly heard. The Hollanders plunged into the thick of the fray, while the Frisians sailed away to the Holy Land. After taking Alcazar, the Dutchmen, so far be¬ low the beer and butter latitude of Europe, and so well within the wine and oil line, enjoyed richly their leisure in the land of grapes and oranges. They were so leisurely in their move¬ ments that the Pope had to stir them up to join their fellow crusaders at Acre. Egypt was now the point of attack previous to THE DUTCH CRUSADERS. 83 the subjugation of Syria. Hollanders and Fri¬ sians joined forces and took the principal part in the siege and capture of Damietta. This walled town was further strengthened by a fort built on a rock in the middle of the river Nile, and the water passage cut off by a powerful iron chain. To break this chain and capture the fort was to put the city at the mercy of the crusaders. The Dutchmen built a floating fortress of wood, on which was a tower, with a huge saw hung from a projecting frame and worked as in a saw-pit. Or, it may be that the great tower-like sterns of the mediaeval ships were meant by the historian who tells us of the feat. By rowing and pushing their ships and war-machines close up to the chain, they succeeded in sawing it through. Then throw¬ ing a boarding-scuttle, they captured first the fort and then the city. The crusaders held the place three years. The fame of this Dutch exploit soon became known all over Christendom. For many years afterwards, Haarlemmers celebrated the exploit at Damietta. Nothing permanent, however, came of this last of the Crusades. Willem left Egypt and came home. He died in 1224. Far better than this work done in the East was his granting of the famous charter of privileges which one still sees under its glass case in the fine old city of Middel- burg. This established the authority of peaceful law over the power of brute force and the sword. 84 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. Being one of the oldest specimens of the Dutch language, this ancient document, the Middelburg charter, of about the same age of the Magna Cliarta (which, however, is in Latin), is of great inter¬ est apart from its political importance. It shows that Dutch was as early as the twelfth century a fixed language. It was then, what it is now, a strong and pure “ Low ” Dutch (Deutsch) idiom, not a mixture of Teutonic and Latin elements, like the English, nor a compound of Low and High Dutch (Deutsch) like modern German. The Dutch language to-day is neither a mixture, nor a compound, nor a dialect, but a strong lan¬ guage securely fixed in grammatical foundation and structure. The use of the common people’s speech in writing, instead of monkish Latin, also proves that the Nederlanders held their native tongue in honor, were less under the control of the priests, and were more democratic in tendency than in lands where Rome had more power. Mementos of the Dutch crusaders and their exploit at Damietta are still to be seen in the great cathedral at Haarlem. Suspended by wires from the lofty brick arches are three models of Count Willem’s ships, which, to the number of the apostles, sailed down the Maas in May, 1217. These mementos, first made and hung up about the time of Columbus, fell to pieces from age and dry rot in 1668, when the present models were made and took their place. An American visiting THE DUTCH CRUSADERS. 85 Haarlem in 1784 noticed also two silver bells cap¬ tured from the Saracens. Fixed in the sterns of the ships is a model of the saw which severed the iron chain at Damietta in the Nile. Uncertain and many-tongued tradition avers that the Dutchman who invented the chain-saw took his idea from the saw-like emblem on the wapen or arms of Holland, which may be de¬ scribed as either three Saint Andrew’s crosses standing on one another in a row, or as a double^ edged saw with four teeth on a side. Others say that the arms of Holland were borrowed from the saw and commemorate it. The wapen of the city of Haarlem consist of a sword under a cross and between four stars, two on either side, with the Latin motto, Vicit vim virtus , meaning “ courage conquered force.” Stars, shields, eagles, lions, ships, castles, and herring are the favorite emblems in Dutch her¬ aldry. Variations are seen in Schiedam, which has three hour-glasses ; Hoorn, out of which came the discoverer of Cape Horn, a hunter’s wind¬ pipe : Monnikendam, which has a monk holding a club between two griffins and under two angels ; the Hague, a stork: Goes, a goose ; Flushing, a two-handled flask; Zwolle, a cross; Steenwyck, an anchor; Oldenzaal, a figure of the Pope with mitre and crozier. Most of these heraldic em¬ blems go back to the time of the Crusades. Feudalism was the fertile soil of variety in 86 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. device and symbol, for in those days there was little or no union of states. The church and the empire were the bonds holding European society together. There was no real nation in the modern sense of the word. The average person was “ a man without a country.” There were kings and subjects, but no citizens. In feudalism everything is divided and fractional. No such thing as an army, in the modern sense of the word, exists. Each band of warriors fights under the blazon of his personal leader. The Cross, as opposed to the Crescent, was the symbol under which the motley companies rallied. Anything like a uniform dress, except for small detachments, was unknown. Hence the variety and picturesqueness of medi¬ aeval life, in war and peace, whether in Japan or Holland, France or England. When feudal gives way to national life, and loyalty to patriotism, then only can there be a true nation with political unity, an army, uniform, and national flag. We shall see how in time Neder¬ land had had one flag, first the orange, white, and blue, and then, since 1650, the red, white, and blue, while Belgium took the old colors of Brabant for her standard of red, yellow, and black. In both countries the lion first, and the lion always, has been the favorite emblem. CHAPTER XIII. WHAT FOLLOWED THE CRUSADES. It is probable that the Crusades did more for- Nederland than the Dutch did for the Crusades. Thousands of ignorant and half-civilized Chris¬ tians left their cold and wet homes in Holland and Friesland to have their eyes opened in the sunny Levant and the luxurious East. From their huts and rude life, they came in contact with great cities, marble houses, elegant pavements, superb dresses, and refined manners. The first crusaders went out to kill, horned devils, the last came home to imitate gentlemen. Both the clodhopper and the knight, who at home knew little or nothing of underclothing, napkins, table or bed linen, carpet, wall paper, bath tubs, soap, perfume, or spices, were surprised at the wealth and refinement of southeastern Europe and of Asia Minor. They went to school in Greek and Saracen civilization. They who had considered books and writing as proper only for monks began to suspect that these must be good also for soldiers and farmers, travelers and mer¬ chants. The chains of bigotry and prejudice were broken. Often it was discovered that the morals 88 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. of the Saracen were superior to those who sewed red or white crosses on their shoulders. The Dutch and other laymen, by often visiting Rome and living close to the church rulers, began to see more clearly into motives and policy. The facts which came to light destroyed their respect for the authority of the prelates. The Crusades pre¬ pared the way for Wicliff, Erasmus, and Luther. In Nederland, one of the most far-reaching results was the freedom gained by the slaves. The church-slaves had a much easier life than those held as chattels by laymen, but when the Crusades were preached, even the slaves were in¬ vited to go to war, and were promised their free¬ dom should they return alive. In Nederland, tens of thousands of these bondmen bravely vol¬ unteered under the banner of the Cross, and thou¬ sands more of the slaves of knights were sold or mortgaged to the monasteries, and their condition was thus greatly improved. While so many slaves were absent, the work of farming had to be done by free men, which dignified toil and elevated mechanical trades and occupation. Thus both serfs and free workmen and laborers were bene¬ fited. The great number of freedmen returning home from oriental lands swelled the number of the cit¬ izen population. Still more important was the fact that, being full of new ideas, the returned crusaders were apt to stay in the towns and en- WHAT FOLLOWED THE CRUSADES. 89 gage in mechanical trades or in business instead of going back in the country as farm laborers. This movement of population from the farms to the streets increased the size of the towns and gave them importance. With new wants, en¬ larged minds, and practical knowledge of the East, an active commerce sprang up. People wanted the spices, wines, oils, dress-stuffs, fruit, perfume, and luxuries of the Mediterranean coun¬ tries and Asia. In our days, when we have such a variety of food and flavors in our gardens and orchards, and swift steamers bring tropical fruits to our table in season, we can hardly understand how greedily our ancestors, craved spices, and what high prices they were willing to pay for them. From the first the Dutch merchants aimed to win a large trade in spices, ^.fter several cen¬ turies Nederland finally gained possession of the richest spice-lands in all the earth. This Mediterranean and oriental commerce stimulated ship-building, attracted thousands of hardy young men to the sea, and sent whole fleets to Venice, Constantinople, and Smyrna. The Dutch towns became seats of power. Having plenty of work, the mechanics were able to form guilds. With abundance of money, the towns bought of the land-masters and castle-lords char¬ ters giving rights and privileges. Once having given them to the people, neither counts nor no¬ bles nor bishops could take back what they had 90 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. given. Step by step the towns won more free¬ dom fixed on law, and became centres of liberty as municipal republics. The guilds of skilled workmen had much to do with gaining the liber¬ ties enjoyed by the cities. Having begun to tame and lead to obedience to public welfare the lords temporal, the Nederland- ers proceeded to put hooks in the noses of the lords spiritual. They found that religion and the church, government and the king, industry and the slave-owner, were not necessarily synonymous. One could easily exist without the other. In Dutch history, clerical power never became petrified and made a menace to liberty as in the English House of Lords. The Dutch have always been saved this expense and incubus. “ We, the people of the United States,” who believe that under God the people are the source of authority, do not read history as the old monks and hirelings of kings wrote it. In the mediaeval chronicles, men whom we honor are called “ here¬ tics,” “blasphemers,” and other vile names. Of¬ ten these so-called heretics were true patriots and friends of God and man. They were struggling after the same liberty which we enjoy and value in a state without a king and in churches without political intermeddling. The Constitution of the United States is, from the point of view even of many Europeans still living, the most awful and dangerous heresy ever dreamed of. WHAT FOLLOWED THE CRUSADES. 91 One of these “blasphemous heretics,” named Tauchelyn, believed in the rights of the people; or, of the congregation as against the despotism of the bishops and priests. He denied the dogma of the real presence, and refused to pay tithes to the clergy. Of course, the most odious crimes, of which he was probably innocent, were charged against him by the clergy. The people honored and loved him, seeing in him their champion. After they had succeeded for a long time in pro¬ tecting him from the fury of the churchmen, he was knocked on the head by a priest while going on board a ship unattended. The heresies, however, were kept alive by Wal- densians from Italy, Albigensians from southern France, and others. These challenged the power of the clericals, rebuked the low morals of the priests, and preached that freedom in Christ which to-day is the corner-stone of true religion. The heretics were far from perfect in character them¬ selves. “ Sweet reasonableness ” was not their notable trait. It may be that they were person¬ ally very disagreeable people, yet they were al¬ most always reformers. They were the true spir¬ itual ancestors of those Christians who are most numerous in the United States of America in the nineteenth century. Great changes came over the landscape of Ne¬ derland after the Crusades. In air, earth, and water, novelties struck the eye. Windmills came 92 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. from the East, and were built by the hundreds, and, in time, by the thousands, until to-day they stand singly like sentinels, or in files and battal¬ ions, as in a great army. Counting large and small, there are probably a hundred thousand windmills in Nederland. They pump water in and out, saw wood, grind grain, load and unload boats and wagons, and hoist and lower burdens. An immense addition to the civilizing force and working power of the Dutch world was made when winds were compelled to do duty in turn¬ ing mills. As usual with a Dutchman, who improves upon what he borrows, he began at once to perfect the new machine. He enlarged the size of the arms and sails outside, and of the wheels and grinding stones within. He invented the saw-mill. He made the interior a house for storage or for hu¬ man residence. He added the device of the roll¬ ing top, or roof, which enables the miller to catch the wind from whatever quarter it blows, or to meet it when it changes suddenly. One thing, however, even a Dutchman has not learned, and that is to make the wind blow when it is calm and his grist lies waiting. Other things high up in the air which came from the South and the Orient were the open bulb-like spires and cupolas, so noticeable in Dutch land¬ scapes, and which recall the Saracenic domes and minarets. In these, chimes of bells were hung; the WHAT FOLLOWED THE CRUSADES. 93 old hand-bell made of riveted iron giving place to sonorous bronze. The fame of the belfries of the Netherlands has been sung by our own Longfel¬ low. For centuries their chimes have sounded out the hours with sweetly solemn or merry music. Their purpose has been not only to scare away demons, but to summon freemen. In the superb civic architecture for which the Dutch cities are renowned, especially in the town halls, were hung up liberty bells. These were true forerunners of that which, on July 4, 1776, named “Liberty bell ” by the Pennsylvania Dutchmen, proclaimed freedom “ throughout all the land and to all the inhabitants thereof.” Down in the water, many an idea brought home by a crusader who had seen the public works of Italy and the East took root, and, like a pond- lily, blossomed richly because well anchored. Heretofore the dykes had been small, rude, and unscientific. Hydraulic engineering was studied, and the reclamation of land became a fine art. Canals were improved and equipped with locks. These canal-locks, or water-ladders, were invented either in Italy or Holland, but not perfected until the seventeenth century. After the Crusades, the dykes were improved, made of more durable ma¬ terials, and built by the mile along the rivers and sea-front. The pile-drivers came into use for the sinking of whole forests of trees with their heads downwards. With the aid of the windmill, the 94 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. drained and dried acres multiplied. The “ pol¬ der,” as such a piece of land rescued from the watery world is called, was no longer a curiosity. Thus early in the Middle Ages we can trace the beginnings of that other state, which, besides the States-General, governs Nederland, — the Water State. Another object which rose up numerously after the Crusades was the brick-kiln. The brick, in its modern form and in northern Europe, may be called a Dutch invention. The Romans were great brickmakers and bricklayers. Even when they borrowed the Greek styles of architecture, they built a brick core inside the marble envelope. In Britain and the Rhine region they used much small tile-like brick, samples of which may still be seen in ruins or excavations; but after the Romans left and barbarians triumphed, brick¬ making became one of the lost arts. The people of northern Europe lived in huts of bark or wood. Even when castles or fine houses were later built in England, they were of stone, not of brick. In the Rhine delta, the Dutch revived the art of moulding clay into oblong forms and baking them into stone. Their material lay at hand in rich beds deposited during centuries in the slug¬ gish river bottoms. They made brick houses, walls, pavements, roadbeds. Of this and terra¬ cotta they erected palaces and monasteries. They WHAT FOLLOWED THE CRUSADES. 95 piled it in mid-air and raised lofty towers and soaring arches in cathedral churches. A stone house in Nederland is a rarity. There is no land on earth where one is more vividly reminded of the early industry on the plains of Shinar, where the tower-builders said: 64 Go to, let us make brick and burn them thoroughly.” So hard are the Dutch bricks burned that the common name is “ klinker.” Many of them have defied the teeth of time for ages. The church towers which dominate the land¬ scapes of Holland rose up in the great air-ocean as the coral reefs rise in the salt seas. One by one were laid those millions of bricks which make the cathedral tower of Utrecht. Upreared in the fourteenth century, and musical with its chime of forty-two bells, this tower forms a landmark visi¬ ble in nearly all of Holland. After five centuries the superb structure has swerved not a hair’s breadth from its perfect perpendicular. The Nederlanders became expert makers, not only of bricks but of tiles, drain-pipes, and terra¬ cotta ornamentation. They early learned to glaze tiles and to roof their houses with this shining faience. Their experience in handling clay in manifold forms, and tempering with water and fire, prepared them for the later industries in which table crockery, fireplace picture-tiles, and tobacco pipes made the names of Delft and Gouda common words in many languages and 96 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. countries. The bricklayers became skillful in all the ways of laying brick, of making union, -and of breaking joints. From Nederland the Dutchmen carried their art to Germany and England. Brick-making in Great Britain after Roman days was unknown until the Flemings and Hollanders reintroduced the art, set up brick-kilns, and made _ t brick houses. The “ Flemish bond,” as still used by our men of the trowel, testifies to its origin. Very curious are the patterns which one notices in the fancifully laid courses of brick in a Dutch house, especially near the eaves, gables, and cor¬ ners. In the old Dutch towns in New York State, and in Massachusetts villages, we can at once pick out the dwelling erected in early colonial days by builders from Haarlem or Dordrecht, who used klinkers fresh from the kilns of the Vader- land. These as ballast, or ordered for cash, were brought over in the ample holds of the galliots to Plymouth or to New Netherland. In another way the revival of brick-making was very helpful to the health and comfort of the peo¬ ple. Owing to the spongy soil, Dutch houses must be built on piles driven deep into the ground. Often the cost of the work done below the stone foundation equals that of the buildings raised above it. In the walled towns space was very valuable, and the streets had to be very narrow. The old wooden houses, huddled together, had very little sunshine and not much ventilation. WHAT FOLLOWED THE CBUSADES. 97 The use of brick enabled builders to make very high houses, which might be narrow, but with plenty of windows the rooms were sunny and wholesome. One city on the Zuyder Zee is named 44 Narrow Houses,” or Enkhuysen. It was a novelty and delight when glass win¬ dows were introduced from Italy. Even in winter the folks at home could look out upon the land¬ scape. In summer they could see, as they walked the streets, all the bright colors and moving life on the canals reflected in the panes. Peaked roofs and dormer windows grew into general fash¬ ion. Walls were often richly carved, painted, or decorated with terra-cotta, but the “staff,” stucco, or plaster, so common in Italy, was never very popular, owing to the ravages of Jack Frost. Whatever, on a house, was exposed to the weather must be of burned brick or solid stone. Besides making the mortar of excellent quality, the tall houses were often girded and clamped with iron bands, and thus held together like a bird-cage, or the new 44 sky-scrapers ” of Chicago. The 44 anchors,” or iron clamps which, at the end of the rods, came out in front on the walls, were quaintly cut or hammered into shapes of figures, by which the date of erection could be easily read. The especial feature, however, was the gable, where the roof joined the house front, with its many corbie-steps or crow-stairs, the idea being that these were for the ravens or crows to prac- 98 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. tice stepping upon. Indeed, while the raven was a solitary croaker, the crows were common in¬ mates of mediaeval towns, in which they proved themselves good scavengers. In modern times, more soap, sunshine, dexter¬ ity and industry in using mop, broom, and shovel, the increase of hygienic knowledge, and of medi¬ cal science, has driven “ the plague,” the “ black death,” and other forms of pestilence away. In the Middle Ages these raged in the towns, and slew more human beings than were killed in war. For over two centuries these have been absent, while other epidemics, like cholera and yellow fever, can be fought and subdued. In the science and art of health and cleanliness the Dutch were pioneers. A national passion for the application of soap and water possesses them, and in their eyes “ laziness and dirt are the worst forms of original sin.” CHAPTER XIV. THE CODFISHES AND THE FISH-HOOKS. It seems curious, in our day, to hear of politi¬ cal parties calling themselves by such names as Cods and Hooks. Yet the civil wars in Neder¬ land between these two factions lasted from about the year 1351 until 1497, during which time these names were in every mouth. These long wars had much to do with the de¬ velopment of Dutch freedom. Next to the Cru¬ sades, they were the means of breaking up the feudal system. As the prolonged French and Indian wars, and the struggles between the Brit¬ ish king’s favorites and the composite American people, prepared our own fathers for success in the Revolutionary War, so the wars of the Cods and Hooks trained the Dutchmen to win their liberty in the eighty years’ war of 1568-1648. When Nederland, instead of being as it is now, one country, was divided up into many petty states, the counts were sovereign. Under them, holding larger or smaller tracts of land, were the barons or feudal landlords. Under these, again, were tenants who did the actual work of farmers in peace and of soldiers in war. Many of these 100 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. tenants were influential, often wealthy, and with some education. They were friendly with the townspeople and worked with them to secure charters from the counts. The substance of these charters was, that instead of violence there should be law. The oldest known document of this sort, dated A. d. 1217, is still to be seen in the fine old hall in Middelburg. It was granted by Willem I., Count of Holland, and Joanna, Countess of Flanders. The gist of it all is in one sentence : “ To all Middelburgers one kind of law is guar¬ anteed.” On this model most of the city charters are based. The towns had to pay handsomely for a charter. The count was usually glad to get the money, and also in this way to make himself popular with the people. Yet, as the barons lost local power and influence as fast as the towns gained, there was continual jealousy between baron and count, and baron and town, and their followers. Quar¬ rels broke out, and the lines for political parties were laid, as they are in almost every age and country, in love for the inherited state of things — the good old days of yore, when the world went very well — and desire for change and improve¬ ment when life promises to be vastly better. One party wants to keep things as they are, and used to be ; the other wants to alter through new metli-. ods or go back to the very ancient way. Willem I., Count of Holland, dying without THE CODFISHES AND THE FISH-HOOKS. 101 immediate heirs, his sister Margaret became Duchess of Hainault, Countess of Holland, and Lady of Friesland. She married Lewis V., Duke of Bavaria, in 1346, and in order to he acknow¬ ledged by the people, she granted them several special favors. Recalled to Bavaria by her hus¬ band, she left her young second son Willem to govern Nederland. A quarrel soon broke out between mother and son, because the latter had promised to pay his mother a certain sum of money, but now refused. The next year Mar¬ garet returned to Holland, and Willem retired into Hainault, where he kept up opposition and irritation. Around the mother gathered the popu¬ lar nobility, most of the towns, and the humbler agricultural classes. About the son rallied the richer nobles and the aristocratic cities. Finding themselves so strong, and expectant of easy vic¬ tory, the men forming the party of Willem called themselves the Cods. Now in Dutch the cod is named Jcobel-jauw , or cable-jaw, because he is one of the most voracious fishes known, with jaws which in strength are like the ship’s cable or strong rope that holds the anchor. Living in sea-water on banks, like those of the Dogger in the North Sea, or the Grand Banks, or “ The Graveyard” off Newfoundland, the codfish feeds near the bottom. In its power¬ ful jaws, shell-fish, crustaceans, worms, small fish, mollusks, are ground up like grain between mill 102 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. stones. Occasionally the cod does not mind swallowing the hook and running away with it. Already, in the fourteenth century, the Dutch were famous cod-fishers, and understood the habits of the cable-jaw as well as our Cape Cod skippers do now. Having the power, they expected to de*. vour their opponents. They also wore an azure or gray headdress and were called Blue Caps. Yet the cods, because of their very voracity, leap eagerly at the bait offered by fishermen and are caught with a hook. So the people’s party at once took the name of the Hooks, and donned red caps. Ambition, rage, jealousy, now broke loose, and fights and murder were common. In many towns the people were divided against them¬ selves. Battles by land and sea were common. Rotterdam and its region were especially afflicted. Margaret died and her son went insane, but the fight continued. Kings and queens inter¬ meddled, all classes were concerned, and none could be neutral. Down at the bottom, it was a struggle of the people for greater freedom. Among the prominent figures in the troubles was Jacqueline of Bavaria, whose story is the theme of so many Dutch poems, songs, and dramas. The scanty ruins of her castle we still see in the pretty town of Goes in Zeeland. Besieged in Gouda, she had to surrender to her cousin, Philip of Bur¬ gundy, a bad man who was called “ the good,” and who became possessor of all Nederland. Once THE CODFISHES AND THE FISH-HOOKS. 108 more, as under the Komans and Karel de Groote, all the provinces of the Netherlands were united under one rule. Philip of Burgundy founded the Order of the Golden Fleece on the occasion of his marriage with Isabella of Portugal. His court was a scene of brilliancy, and knights in splendid array flocked from all quarters of Christendom to his jousts and tourneys. Under his rule, Burgundy was one of the most wealthy, prosperous, and tranquil states in Europe. He patronized literature and art, and founded the University of Louvain. The rule of the house of Burgundy lasted for over a century. The weaving industry of the Netherlands had greatly enriched the country, and was now the basis of Philip’s power. Piety and business were combined in founding this knightly Order of the Golden Fleece, to which only twenty-five persons, great nobles, kings, or emperors could belong. The badge of membership was a coilarlike chain of gold to which was suspended a golden lamb. Flemish wealth, Burgundian power, and the gen¬ tleness of Jesus, were symbolized by the lamb and its fleece of gold. Just as the golden codfish hung up beneath the gilded dome of the Massachusetts State House, that flashes on Beacon Hill, is an emblem of the wealth which came to the State out of the sea, so the sheep and its wool are true tokens of the wealth of the Low Countries. For many cen- 104 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. turies the English raised rams and ewes, but did not know how to weave cloth. Exported across the Channel, wool enriched the country and paid for English wars in France, Scotland, and Ireland. A hag of wool is the ancient emblem of English wealth, and the Lord Chancellor of England still sits on the woolsack in the House of Peers. In the time of Elizabeth, this bag of wool or stuffed red cloth chair, was set up as a memento of the act forbidding the export of the annual crop raised on sheep’s backs, — the main source of the na¬ tional wealth. The introduction of weaving and cloth-making into England was the work of the Dutch, who with the Huguenots laid the founda¬ tions of most of England’s mighty industries. Under Philip of Burgundy business thrived and the country as a whole grew richer, but this “ good ” prince was a mighty perjurer, and busied himself in breaking promises and stamping out Dutch liberty by violating charters. Philip died in 1467, but the little finger of his son Charles the Bold proved to be thicker than the loins of his father. He laid fresh taxes on the people, and kept a standing army to secure their payment. He removed the supreme court of Holland from the Hague to Mechlin. The earth was well rid of a bad ruler when on the 5th of January, 1477, he was slain at Nancy. He had been terribly defeated by the Swiss at Morat, on June 22d, the year before. The American in THE CODFISHES AND THE FISH-HOOKS. 105 Berne looks with warm interest upon the old swords, pikes, flags, and other relics of that deci¬ sive day which makes one of the links of history, in which also are Brill and Lexington. The death of this conceited bully, Charles the Bold, gave the Netherlands an opportunity which was well improved. The King of France seized Burgundy, which belonged to Mary, the daughter and heir of Charles. This made her ready to seek the aid of the people. A general assembly or parliament of all the Netherlanders was sum¬ moned. This may be called the first congress or national legislature of the Low Countries. All parties were united in the hope of regaining their lost liberties. They met at Ghent, stated their grievances, devised means to resist the King of France, and provided means to carry on war if necessary, but they refused to vote any money until their complaints were heard and justice granted. Thus they laid down the doctrine which in a later century was preached in America against the Stamp Act, — no taxation without consent. The answers to these popular demands were embodied in a Magna Charta entitled “ het Groot Privilegie.” This document is one of the foun¬ dation stones in the edifice of Dutch freedom. Its provisions may be thus summed up: the Great Council and supreme court of Holland were re¬ established, the Netherlands congress was to levy 106 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. taxes, coin money, regulate manufacture and com¬ merce, declare war, raise armies and navies. The ancient liberties of the city republics were fully restored. None but natives could hold office. Only the Dutch language was to be used in pub¬ lic documents. The right of trial in one’s own province was confirmed. No command of the king was to prevail against the town charters. There was to be no alteration of coinage without consent of the states, and no taxation without representation. It was for violation of the provisions of this Great Charter by Philip II., that the Dutch, in 1581, deposed their king and issued their Decla¬ ration of Independence, giving Americans their precedent and example of July 4, 1776. In this year, 1477, so illustrious in Dutch his¬ tory, the Bible was translated from the Latin into the language of the people, and the first Dutch Bible began its work upon the popular mind. In August of the same year, Mary married the Archduke Maximilian of Austria, and the Nether¬ lands, for the fifth time, under a new family, be¬ came Austrian property. When her son Philip was but four years old, Mary died by falling from a horse. In 1489, as absolute guardian of his son, Maximilian ruled the Netherlands. By this time the war of the Cods and Hooks had broken out with redoubled violence. The partisans put each other out of office, fired each THE CODFISHES AND THE FISH-HOOKS. 107 others’ houses, and even besieged and captured cities. A score of castles were destroyed. The Cods were exiled from the Hook towns of Rotter¬ dam, Gouda, and the Hague. No Hooks were allowed in the Cod towns of Haarlem, Delft, Am¬ sterdam, and Dordrecht. Duels and street fights were of daily occurrence, families were divided, and relatives murdered each other. Holland, where most of the fighting took place, was reduced to waste and misery. Maximilian first found out that the Cods were the strongest, and then sided with them. After heavy fighting at Utrecht, Delft, and Rotterdam, the Hooks were subdued or driven out of the country by foreign troops. Maximilian now took the steps necessary to trample on the liberties of Nederland, and make himself an autocrat. Let us see how he did this. The Codfish party was composed largely of no¬ bles and wealthy citizens who had received their privileges from sovereigns, while the more popu¬ lar Hooks were led mainly by the local lords, who did not like to yield their old local and feudal im¬ portance. Between these two sets of nobles were the freemen and burghers. When Maximilian had, by the help of large bodies of foreign mer¬ cenaries, put down the Hooks, he began to crush the power of the burghers or citizens. He had many of them put to death for appealing to the Great Privilege, which he steadily ignored. 108 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. One of the immediate effects of his heavy taxa¬ tion and his attempts to debase the coin of the country, was the “ Bread and Cheese Play,” and bloody play it was. The waste of provisions and ships following the long wars, the rapacity of the foreigners, and the loss in value of the coin, brought on famine and poverty to the mass of the people. When the shield-tax, or knight- money, was pressed on them at the point of the spear, they rose by thousands in rebellion. They painted loaves of bread and rounds of cheese upon their banners, and sewed bits of crust or rind upon their clothes, to show that they were after food. They preferred to lose blood and life quickly in battle than to die slowly by starvation. In Hoorn and Alkmaar, Haarlem and Leyden, they were especially numerous, and much intes¬ tine war was the result. At this time the Duke of Saxony governed Friesland as the lieutenant of Maximilian. Marching his German troops into Nederland, the brave but undisciplined peasants were scattered like chaff. The “Casembrot Spel” was over, and the last remnants of the Hooks were expelled. An echo of these days is seen in the name of the famous Dutch Admiral Casembroot, who in 1868 and 1864, in alliance with the British, French, and Americans, commanded the Dutch squadron at the bombardment of Shimonoseki, in Japan. Devoured by the Germans, crushed under heavy THE CODFISHES AND THE FISH-HOOKS. 109 taxes, their charters trampled upon by the em¬ peror, the condition of the poor Dutchmen was pitiable indeed. With their liberties in eclipse, they had reached the lowest point of misery known for centuries. Nevertheless, their sturdy perseverance and elastic spirits were soon to compel prosperity once more. In the year that Columbus discovered America, peace reigned in Nederland. In 1496 two events took place, one of which had an imme¬ diately beneficial, and the other a remote influ¬ ence in bringing riches to Holland. The Grand Treaty of Commerce made with England was joy¬ fully welcomed by the Dutch. It at once gave a healthful stimulus to fisheries and to trade. Joanna, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, was in 1496 married to Philip the Fair, son of Maximilian of Austria. Four years later a son was born to them. His name was Charles, afterwards known as Charles V., Emperor of Ger¬ many. It was during the reign of Charles Y. that the intellect of the Germanic nations broke the spir¬ itual fetters of Rome, even as the liberator Her¬ mann had freed them from the political yoke fif¬ teen centuries before. Under Charles began that Reformation whose end is not yet. CHAPTER XV. HOW A MUD-HOLE BECAME A GARDEN. In both the Burgundian and the Spanish eras, the Netherlands formed the richest part of the domains of their rulers. Yet there were no mines, gems, or pearls in the Low Countries. Whence, then, came the wealth, beauty r , comforts, and rich revenues ? Let us see. Among the crusaders were men of taste, who loved beauty and were charmed with the lovely things they saw in the East. These lovers of the beautiful brought back seeds either in their brains, in wallets, or in ships’ holds. Especially was this true as to flowers and fruits. A taste for gardening was stimulated among the Neder- landers, and their part of the earth received a new embroidery of rich, natural colors. Brilliant blooms, foliage, and perfumes, never before seen or enjoyed in Europe, became common. After the fall of Constantinople, in 1453, Holland grew to be one of the gayest garden-lands of Europe. The ranunculus, or “ little frog ” family of plants, the anemones, tulips, hyacinths, narcissus, and others, were acclimated, domesticated, and became the Dutchman’s darlings. Especially did HOW A MUD-HOLE BECAME A GARDEN. Ill the bulbous flowers of the East, like the tulips, find a congenial soil in Holland. Indeed, the tulip not only drove the serious Dutchman mad, but in the sixteenth century all the world went wild over the bulbs of the Haarlem. Even to-day, the polders, or drained lands, left by the pumped-out lake of Haarlem, is the best for bulbs of any land in the world. Whereas in other parts of Neder¬ land farms do not usually pay over four per cent, on the money invested, the Haarlem bulb-lands yield a revenue of twelve per cent, per annum. New varieties of these brilliant exotics are contin¬ ually developed. One of the latest, named the Abraham Lincoln, is the direct descendant of an Asiatic ancestor brought westward three centuries ago. In the sixteenth century, Obel, the botanist of King James I. of England, published a book on the history of plants. In it he declared that Holland contained more rare plants than any other country in Europe. Thirty-eight varieties of the anemone or wind-flower, Dutch Paasch- blcemen or Easter-bloom, were known. Dutch captains making voyages to tropical countries were ordered to bring home seeds, bulbs, roots, and cuttings. From their settle¬ ments in Brazil, the Hudson River region, South Africa, the Spice Islands, Formosa, Japan, and Asiatic lands, many new plants were introduced first into Holland, and then into all the gardens 112 BBAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. of the Western world. Hundreds of our common flowers, trees, or vegetables were once oriental exotics which the Dutch chaperoned and brought out into occidental garden-society. Leyden was one of the first cities in Europe to establish botanical gardens, and Haarlem early led in the floriculture and horticulture. Leyden, for over a century, under the renowned Boerhaave, was the floral capital of Europe. Here first were domesticated varied children of the gera¬ nium family, and the Eicoideae with their fleshy leaves and showy flowers, and other exotics from near the Cape of Good Hope. Amsterdam’s was the first garden in Europe to have the coffee- tree. Groningen and Utrecht had great hot¬ houses. Noordwyk was famous for its roses. This taste for flowers, introduced at the time of the Crusades, made the Dutch a nation of flower-lovers, skilled gardeners, and inventive farmers. Window-gardening was especially cul¬ tivated, until to-day it is a national passion and habit. On the canal-boat, in the floating homes on the inland rivers, the farmhouse, the humble village, and the great city, flowers are every¬ where. The Dutch have always been famous for quick brains and active mental initiative. When their own climate did not agree with an exotic, they made a new climate that did. They invented or greatly improved the green or hot house. They HOW A MUD-HOLE BECAME A GARDEN. 113 first made use of forcing pits or beds sided or covered with boards or roofed with glass, by which young plants were early raised from seed and kept from frost and cold until ready for transplanting. No fewer than six thousand ex¬ otic plants were catalogued at Leyden during the time of Dr. Boerhaave, who by his books or lec¬ tures trained most of the famous doctors of Old and New England and of colonial New York. This renowned physician taught the hot-house men of Europe to adjust the slope of the glass according to the latitude so as to get the maxi¬ mum power of the sun’s rays. One great florist in Haarlem had four green-houses, in which he kept the climates of the Levant, Africa, India, and America. From Holland the science of bot¬ any was carried to Sweden. It was at the Dutch University of Harderwyck that Linnaeus obtained his degree, and in Holland he wrote the books on which his fame rests. The plough in its modern form, consisting of several distinct parts, is a Dutch invention. At the government agricultural school at Wagenin- gen, one may see the models of several eras, showing its steady evolution into the wonderful tool of our day. Englishman and Yankee have made many improvements, but for some genera¬ tions the Dutch plough led the world. Not a few of the more important modern agricultural implements were invented by Dutchmen, as their 114 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. names in old English works on husbandry clearly prove. About the time of the truce with Spain, from 1609 to 1620, the Hollanders began to drive a good trade in seeds, bulbs, and flowers. Later they supplied most of the courts of Europe with early fruits. They added greatly to the daily diet of civilized people. They introduced garden vegetables and the artificial grasses into Eng¬ land. They taught the eastern county folks how to drain their fens and raise two crops a year on the same field. By the Dutchman’s aid the marshy land which raised sedge and malaria, and compelled two rabbits to fight for one blade of grass, became rich in turnips, mutton, and human beings, quickly doubling in population and value. Most of the early English books on agriculture are by authors with Dutch names, or with the names more or less Anglicized. The Dutchman’s country being far north of the wine and oil line of Europe, and within the beer and butter line, he gave early attention to dairy and hop-field. In all the products of the cow — milk, cream, butter, cheese, meat, hides, and horns — the Dutchman led Europe. He did this because he studied soils and foods most carefully and treated his dumb cattle as if they were his friends. To-day, the traveler entering Holland in chilly May notices cows and sheep blanketed while in the pastures. In Friesland he sees that HOW A MUD-HOLE BECAME A GARDEN. 115 the fine breeds of cattle are housed under the same roof, though not in the same room, with their masters. The dwelling and the stable are near to each other, entertainment for man and beast being scrupulously clean, and the latter within easy help of the former. So much atten¬ tion was paid to the “hens ” (which in old English, as in Dutch, meant both sexes), and to eggs and to butter making, that the Duke of Alva im¬ agined that the Dutch would not fight, for, as he thought, they were only “ men of butter.” Beer or milk was the every-day drink. In those early days, when modern hot drinks, tea and coffee, were not known, the beer mug stood on the table by the plate of every child as well as adult. The Dutchmen first made use of hops to improve the quality of beer. It was a great day when hops were introduced into England from the Netherlands, and the event was celebrated in street songs. The Pilgrims in the Mayflower were teetotallers, of necessity, during their fa¬ mous voyage, for all their beer as well as most of fcheir butter had been sold off to pay their debts to their harsh English creditors. In America, until after the Revolution, the New Englanders could never raise crops or stock like their neigh¬ bors west of the Hudson. The best farmers and gardeners, as well as stock raisers, were the New Netherlanders or their descendants in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. 116 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. In a word, that great movement of European humanity called the Crusades, and in which the Dutch took a share, was a powerful factor in their development. Being bright in mind, quick in observation, and active in brain, the Dutchman learned much, and improved upon what he im* ported. The festivals in honor of the foundation of the Christian church in a village, celebrated yearly, were called Kirk-mass or Kermis. On these gay and joyful occasions the Dutch cooks exercised all their ingenuity, and many were the novelties to tempt the palate. Buckwheat, for example, had been used for ages in Asia, where in the form of mush, por¬ ridge, or steamed dough, it was eaten by the peoples from India to Japan. The Dutch named it boelcweit , from which our English word “buck¬ wheat” has been corrupted, because it looks like the beech-mast. After many an experiment in Dutch kitchens, the luscious winter breakfast luxury, which with butter and maple syrup de¬ lights so many Americans, was evolved. One of the direct results of commerce stimu¬ lated by the Crusades was the gingerbread. Thick, spicy, and aromatic cake was sold in the Nederland as early as the twelfth century. Gilded, painted, whitened with egg, and cut into all sorts of comical shapes, it was sold by tons at the fair and kermiss. Our words “ cooky ” and “ crul¬ ler,” like the honey-cakes of Deventer, muffins, HOW A MTJB-HOLE BECAME A GABDEN . 117 and waffles are of Dutch origin. The poffertjes, and other products of the hatter-dish and oven or toasting-irons, which were first made popular at the Dutch kermis, were imported into other coun¬ tries with new names. Oriental fruits and nuts, now called by the word wal or foreign, as in walnut, Walloon, Wales, Wallabout Bay, etc., were, like hops, borrowed by English-speaking folks from their more advanced and more highly civilized Dutch neighbors, who vastly improved table resources. The “ Dutch oven ” made life for the early New Englanders very agreeable. Next to good food is good clothing. More im¬ portant in its influence on industry was the intro¬ duction of flax. This native of Egypt found a most congenial home in Nederland. It was p&- tiently studied by men of science, and cultivated with infinite care by the farmers, with their eyes to its improvement in the quality of the fibre. They were so far successful that Flemish and Dutch flax soon had a name all over Europe. In India, as in America, the plant had been cul¬ tivated for its seed, in order to get oil, rather than for its fibre, out of which is made linen. The Dutch from the first paid attention to the development of the stalk, and aimed to secure abundant and delicate floss. Linen manufacto¬ ries were established, and around these a score of trades sprang up. Spinners and spinsters, web- bers and websters, dyers and bleachers, burrelers* 118 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND . hatchelers, and lace-makers are some of the Eng¬ lish names for these. In this new group of industries, like a white rose in a bouquet, which lights up the whole com¬ position, appeared one that deserves the name of a fine art. Rich and delicate as are the fabrics of the East, lace is European. The nuns in¬ vented needle-sculpture or lace. The stimulus to produce fine yarn for the lace- makers became so great that the flax produce of the southern Netherlands was developed until it was without a rival. In some instances the crop was so precious that in one year it exceeded the value of the ground on which it grew. The cul¬ tivation of the new Oriental flowers afforded novel patterns for the lace-makers. While the cathedral builders and abbey masons made the stone blossom under the chisel, and reared spires and tracery that were like the gossamer of spiders, the nuns wrought with the needle and produced the loveliest works of art in lace. These women of taste and skill did not merely copy flowers and spider webs, but wrought out new forms and most tasteful combinations. The art, which prob¬ ably arose in Italy, was quickly transferred to the Netherlands. The oldest form of this art industry is seen in point lace, in which fairy-like webs are woven by the needle over foundation pieces of linen. Ex¬ actly how this old point lace was made is not cer< HOW A MUD-HOLE BECAME A GARDEN. 119 tainly known, for the special art was lost in the sixteenth century. Yet the durability of the work is seen in the fact that many pieces of true point lace yet remain in Europe. The later kinds, though still very expensive, are less artis¬ tic. In the first or inventive period, the designer and the worker were one, but later the worker was usually a copyist. After the needle-wrought lace came the pillow-worked or bobbin lace, and, last of all, in our day, the machine-made lace, when all classes can wear it, because all purses can afford to buy it. In Italy and the Netherlands, the two coun¬ tries in which painting and flowers were most cultivated, lace-making reached its acme of pro¬ ficiency. Where the canvas first bloomed with colors laid on in oil, there the parterres and the flax fields were richest and lace most lovely. The Dutch invented the thimble, thus reinforcing the application of the needle and of linen to a thou¬ sand needs of life. The names we still use for the various fabrics and patterns, cambric from Cambrai, diaper from d’Apres, and various places in the Netherlands, show their geographical origin. The inventions of the shirt, nightdress, bed- tick, pocket handkerchief, tablecloth, napkin, most of them in the thirteenth century and of Netherlandish origin, are landmarks in the his¬ tory of European civilization. The use and ap¬ plication of starch, also a Dutch invention, was 120 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. introduced in England in the time of Queen Elizabeth, but Dutch weavers had been brought over as early as 1253. Most of the old names of woolen, hempen, flaxen, and cotton goods come from the Low Countries. Even our word “ tick ” in bedtick is only a mispronunciation of the Dutch dehhen , to cover. It was a decided advance in household economy, in cleanliness, and in hygiene when the bed was lifted up from the floor and made snowy with linen and glorious with a can¬ opy. In the evolution of the modern bed, no people have contributed more than the sedentary and home-loving Dutch. In the land where art first glorified domestic life, they studied health, cleanliness, and comfort, until a love for these became a passion. At first, linen sheets, pillow and bolster cases, pocket handkerchiefs, and shirts were luxuries, and only for kings and nobles. Even then, the inventory or washing list of a queen or emperor in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries would make a Chinese laundryman laugh because of its scantiness. Instead of being fine and snow-white, the first shirt was probably rough and dark- colored. The problem was to make linen white. The Dutch raised bleaching to the dignity of a fine art. They persevered until the name “ Hol¬ lands ” all over Europe meant “ finest linen, white as snow.” Eight months were required to secure the purest white. The tedious process consisted HOW A MUD-HOLE BECAME A GARDEN. 121 in spreading out the web or sheets of linen on the grass or bleaching ground, and wetting it several times a day. The grounds around Haar¬ lem were especially fitted for this process. They often looked as if a snow-storm had whitened the earth. The old paintings show how much land was thus occupied. Some virtue in the water, probably its power, in connection with the sea air, of liberating ozone, in addition to the energy of the sun’s rays, was supposed to hold the secret of success. Much linen woven in Great Britain was sent to Nederland to be blanched. When sold at home it was marked “ finest Hollands.” It was not until 1785, when a French chemist discovered chlorine and the virtues of bleaching powder, that the time and space required in the old process were saved, and the Dutch fields be¬ came green again. The old Dutch family names of Bleeker, Mangeier, and all the varieties of De Witt, de Witte, de Witt, etc., like the Eng¬ lish Dwight, Walker, Webster, etc., are monuments of the long bygone days when the trades of the bleacher, the smoother, and the whiten er flour¬ ished. The latter tell of those occupations from which our English fathers so generally received their names, while the Dutch, on the contrary, took theirs largely from places, landmarks, and natural objects in the scenery. It was not until the fifteenth century that family names were in use in northern Europe. CHAPTER XYI. INTELLECTUAL MOVEMENTS IN NEDERLAND. The sixteenth century, on which Charles Y. opened his eyes, seemed to those who lived in it the most wonderful of all in Christian time. Yet the fifteenth century, which had also been prolific of events, brought in a new world of thought. Among these events were printing, the general use of gunpowder, the dispersion of the Greek scholars throughout Europe, and the revelation of a western continent by Columbus and the Cabots. These events enlarged the horizon of man’s know¬ ledge to an extent dangerous to those who mis¬ ruled by pretended divine right. Especially was the discovery of America a gift to the imagination. It doubled men’s ideas of the size and importance of the earth. The practical knowledge which came in with the Crusades had destroyed much of the former mystery and igno¬ rance, and had also greatly widened men’s thoughts. Yet to the minds of devout scholars, the Greek New Testament, rising as by a resurrection, was an equally important gift. The marvelous liter¬ ature of the classic world also touched and fed the imagination. It was like the refilling of a INTELLECTUAL MOVEMENTS. 123 lamp with fresh oil wherever the Greek refugees settled. In every country learned men, who had hitherto possessed only the Latin or Vulgate Bi¬ ble, were now able to discover how imperfect and how often in the interest of the church it had been corrupted. In almost every instance, the impor¬ tant corrections necessary to be made in the text, on account of the Greek New Testament, were to the detriment of the papal and priestly claims. Even more potent for the making of a new world of ideas was the application of the art of printing. This art, like all the religions, and most of the arts and inventions that have bene¬ fited Europe, was the gift of Asia, but in this in¬ stance of far eastern Asia. Printing is usually called a European “ invention.” The Germans and most writers say it was Guttenberg, at May- ence, in 1434, who first used movable types and about 1450 printed books. The Dutch claim that Laurens Janszoon, of Haarlem, whose father was the coster or sexton of the church in Haarlem, first discovered “ the art preservative of all arts.” In the market-place fronting the great house of worship stands a statue of Coster erected in 1856. He stands holding a little leaden type in his hand. Between the Dutch and Germans a violent con¬ troversy, with many others joining in, has been going on for generations as to who was the real inventor of printing. Yet the question is still open, and as far from settlement as ever. Men 124 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND . who have spent their lives in searching cannot name the first European printer. Yet this we know, printing with blocks is in China as old as the eighth century. Movable types had been known and used in the kingdom of Korea more than a century before they were heard of in Europe. There are thousands of books in the libraries of the far East — and some have been collected and deposited in the British Museum — which were certainly printed with movable types before either Coster or Gutenberg was born. It was shortly after the Mongol Tartars, with their great army of Mongols, Chinese, and Kore¬ ans, burst into Europe, sacking Moscow in 1382, that we find block printing employed in Germany and Nederland. In the Dutch monasteries, print¬ ing of both text and illustration with these blocks was common at the end of the fourteenth century. The business of wood engraving and of printing was originally one and the same. Print was at first made to look as much like writing as pos¬ sible. It is very probable that we owe the invention of printing, both by blocks and movable types, to the Far-Easterns. What the Europeans did was simply to improve on the Korean system by using lead and antimony in place of wood, and casting the types in matrices. Almost as necessary as printing to the spread INTELLECTUAL MOVEMENTS. 125 of knowledge was the invention of paper, made from linen rags, which soon became vastly cheaper than skins. Books written by a pen on parchment were so very costly that poor men could not think of owning them. They had to be chained to the reading-desks to prevent their being stolen. Not only Bibles, but all important books, were thus secured. In the church of Zutphen, one of these scriptoriums, or writing and reading rooms, still holds its chained treasures of leather and paper. Linen or rag paper was probably first made in Germany in 1319, and the first paper was made, and the first paper-mill in England was set up, by a Dutchman at Dartford in 1590. The first pa¬ per-mill in America, on the Wissahickon Creek near Philadelphia, in 1690, was also the work of Dutchmen. Whatever may be said about the Dutchmen’s part in the first use or invention of printing, one thing is certain, the Netherlands soon became the chief printing-office of Europe. While playing- cards, romances, the story of “ Beynard the Eox,” and the “ Mirror of Human Salvation ” were turned off the presses for the common people, the Latin and Greek classics were edited and printed for the scholars. The Bible was translated into Dutch and published in 1477, later becoming so cheap that even poor men could buy a copy. To show how far the Dutch were in advance of the English in this respect, it is probable that as 126 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. many as twenty-four editions of the New Testa¬ ment and fifteen editions of the Bible had been printed and published in the Netherlands before one copy of either the New Testament or the Bible was printed in England. It was a dangerous thing for the sort of kings and emperors who-ruled by divine right in the six¬ teenth century, when the common people got hold of the Bible in their own tongue. No wonder that kings and priests opposed its being put in the vulgar tongue. Men who could read the books of Kings and Chronicles, and thus find out what worthless men and women so many of the royal personages of Israel were, were not inclined to an increase of reverence for the kings to whom they had to pay heavy taxes. With such a touch¬ stone of religion in their hands, the claims of the ecclesiastics showed as brass, while true and unde¬ filed holiness and salvation were seen to be within the reach of all. The Bible in their own tongue made new morning in mind and heart. With the revival of learning came further light through education. Already in Nederland famous schools, established under Karel de Groote, had been kept alive, and their light shone steadily during five centuries. Others had sprung up, and among them were those of Dordrecht in 1290; Gravesende, 1322; Leyden, 1324; Rotterdam, 1328; Schiedam, 1336; Delft, 1342; Hoorn, 1358; Haarlem, 1389; and Alkmaar, 1390. INTELLECTUAL MOVEMENTS. 127 Next to Italy, the Nederland in the fourteenth century led in the number of her schools for the people. In 1340, at Deventer, there was born a man, Gerhard Groote, who was to found the famous Brotherhood of the Common Life, with its won¬ derful schools, out of which were to issue Thomas a Kempis, Zerbolt, Gansevoort, and Erasmus. The first wrote a little book, “ The Imitation of Christ,” which, after the Bible, has been more widely read and translated than any other work. Its chief effect was to show how useless in true religion are the devices outside of the soul. Zer¬ bolt argued for the Bible in the people’s tongue. Gansevoort, by his philosophy, knowledge of Greek and scriptural ideas of the nature of the church, 3 vas a true forerunner of the Reformation. Eras¬ mus, the father of Biblical criticism, was first in time before, and next in power to Luther, the promoter of the Protestant movement. Gerhard Groote preached so plainly the religion that is independent of priests and church despot¬ ism that his license was revoked by his superiors. He then * opened a private school and began the copying and multiplication of books. The great lawyer Florentius protected him from persecution. Encouraged by his success, Groote revived many of the schools founded by the Emperor Karel and his son Lewis, which the monks and priests had suffered to fall into decay. To the schools at 128 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. Deventer, Zwolle, Groningen, Alkmaar, Oude- water, Stavoren, Utrecht, and other places in Ne¬ derland, young men flocked, eager for knowledge. From the first these schools were very popular with the citizens, who vied with each other in help¬ ing to support teachers and scholars. Families gladly boarded the poor students without cost, even laborers and mechanics yielding up a room to needy youth. The anecdotes and incidents preserved in the histories of the schools of the Brethren of the Common Life show how deeply this educational movement was rooted in the hearts of the common people. They saw in the life of Groote and his companions a spirit quite the contrary of those who in God’s name lorded it over his herit¬ age. These brethren, instead of begging like other friars, worked with their hands, earned their own living, and dignified labor. Hence the honor in which they were held by the common people. Worn out with his noble labors, Gerhard Groote died at the age of forty-five, but his he¬ roic spirit lived on in his successors, who raised up a generation of Christian patriots in Neder¬ land. These men, full of hope for the future, fond of books, and with minds well trained, hungry for that food for the soul which miracle plays and lives of the saints could not supply, furnished the intellectual stamina for the great struggle of the sixteenth century. In that struggle, giant Spain, representing feudalism, chivalry, romance, and INTELLECTUAL MOVEMENTS. 129 Rome, was to be humbled by brave little Holland, that stood for the rights of the people. The pupils and followers of Groote became the best teachers of Europe. They multiplied the Greek and Latin classics, making these the basis of their culture. They were among the first to introduce the teaching of Greek in the schools. The reading of the old struggles for freedom in the ancient republics was not favorable to the continuance of political despotism. The exhilara¬ tion of mind induced by familiarity with the free thoughts and perfect models of form in the classics did not make obedience to priests and cardinals very easy. The Deventer school became re¬ nowned for its excellent text-books, some of which were adopted in England. From time to time their leading schoolmasters traveled into Italy, bringing back fresh ideas and the fire that was kindling there. They were from the first friendly to printing, and made good use of it. The best work done by the Brethren of the Common Life was done on lines for which they received little credit. They created in the various city-republics in which they dwelt a taste for knowledge among the burghers. These citizens began to demand that there should be not only schools sustained by the fraternities, monastery schools and private schools, but also public schools sustained by taxation. Such public schools, sup¬ ported by taxes paid into the public treasury, were 130 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. free to the children of the poor, but to those of the well-to-do burghers a small sum was charged. Holland led Europe in a system of free public schools, and those in Leyden were already centu¬ ries old when the founders of Massachusetts dwelt in that fair and goodly city. CHAPTER XVII. ERASMUS AND THE HERETICS. A great event in the world’s history was the birth in Rotterdam, October 28,1467, of a Dutch baby boy, Gerrit Gerritz. The name means the son of Gerrit, s or z at the end of a Dutch name, as in Maarten Maartens, means son, one letter being the short form for the several letters in sen or zoon , for son. When the boy grew up, he followed the fashion of so many scholars, and turned his name into more or less correct Latin and Greek, and wrote it Desiderius Erasmus. The word means desired or loved. It was under the shadow of the great cathedral in Rotterdam, in Wide Church Street, at No. 3, and now marked with a little statue and inscrip¬ tion, that Erasmus was born. When ten years old, the little Rotterdamer was sent to Deventer and entered one of the schools of the Brethren of the Common Life. After two years he went to Hertogenbosch. Here an attempt was made to get him to take monkish vows. Fortunately for civilization and Christianity, he refused, and went first to Arnhem, and then, in 1492, to Paris, as a free student. In that great city he worked 132 BBAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. hard in the mastery of Greek. He was then invited to Cambridge, lived in England a while, made a literary journey to Rome, declined the Pope’s offers, and came back to England, where he wrote a book called the “ Praise of Folly.” In this he exposed all kinds of fools, especially those in the church, not even sparing the Pope. In his “ Colloquia ” he attacks violently monks, cloister life, festivals, pilgrimages, and other things which pass for true religion, but have nothing to do with it. In 1514 he returned to the Continent and died at Basle in 1536. A giant in learning, and the literary king of Chris¬ tendom, petted by sovereigns, honored in many countries, and reading many tongues, he spoke only Latin and his mother’s tongue, his native Dutch, which he loved so dearly. Erasmus was neither a Roman Catholic nor a Protestant, but he believed in reforming the church. He forged the weapons used by the Anabaptists, Luther, Calvin, and the common people, but he was himself averse to enthusiasm. He opened ancient literature and stimulated Europeans to love the beautiful, the true, and the good. He wrote many books, but his greatest work was in making a correct text of the Greek Testament. This he translated into elegant Latin, which was not only superior to, but widely different from the Vulgate. Scholars everywhere enjoyed it, and used it as a basis for transla- ERASMUS AND THE HERETICS. 133 tion. Soon in many countries they were busy at putting the Bible into the common languages of Europe. The printers kept at the elbows of the scholars. The printing-presses turned off thousands and tens of thousands of vernacular Bibles. The results of putting the Bible into the hands and minds of the peoples was first a new Europe and then the United States of America. No one rejoiced more in the wide diffusion of the Scriptures than Erasmus. He loved the Bible as literature, and wanted every plough-boy and sailor to own a copy. A few years after the great scholar had died, the people of his native city, Rotterdam, erected a wooden statue of him in the market-place. When the Spanish soldiers, in whose country the books of Erasmus had been publicly burned, saw this image of the heretic, they riddled it with bullets as if it were a stuffed Judas. In 1572 the Rotterdammers again set up the statue, this time in blue stone. In 1622 a nobler effigy in bronze was reared. The town which gave him birth gave him second life, and poems written in ink were graven in stone. To¬ day, Erasmus, book in hand, still seems to be tran¬ quilly reading, paying no heed to the twittering of the birds that play around his head, and seem¬ ingly enjoying life amid the roar of the great city. With men’s mind thus fermenting, schools dot¬ ting Nederland, thousands of houses containing Bibles, a people made serious, patient, and brave 134 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. by a thousand years of struggle with the sea, ready to bear many wrongs patiently, but not everything, a conflict with Spain and all she represented was certain. Charles V. was to find Nederland a different country from what his Spanish nurses and kinsmen would have him believe. Charles was made king of Spain one year before, and elected emperor of Germany two years after Luther nailed his theses to the church door at Wittenberg. When, in 1529, those who believed and felt with Luther “protested” against the act of the Diet of Spires, at which Charles presided, they were called “ Protestants.” The name soon came to be a general term for all those Christians who believed in freedom of con¬ science and the right of private judgment in studying the Holy Scriptures. Yet it was neither Lutherans nor Calvinists who began the Reformation in Nederland. Those reformers first recognized as respectable were called Erasmians, yet it was not the followers of Erasmus who first of all led the revolt against priestcraft, political churches, and the whole ar¬ ray of dogmas that lie at the foundations of both the Greek and the Roman Catholic systems. The dogmas especially hated by Americans are the mixing of politics with religion, or the union of church and state, the employment of the sword and public treasury to maintain the tenets of one sect, and the right to tax men to support priests ERASMUS AND THE HERETICS. 135 or parsons. What we Americans hate were ex* actly what the heretics, particularly the Anabap¬ tists, hated long ago. The Nederlanders who first claimed the right of free reading and interpretation of the Bible demanded the separation of the church and state, and filled their country full of ideas hostile to all state churches, were called the Anabaptists, or re- baptizers, because they believed in the baptism of adults only, and usually by immersion. The Anabaptists were not without predecessors. The Waldensians and Albigenses from Italy and France had come into Nederland, the former in considerable numbers as traders, weavers, and mechanics. They and every one else who re¬ nounced the authority of the Pope were called 44 heretics.” Often they were severe in morals, stern in manner, and at some points were as fa¬ natical as churchmen. Taking the name Kathari, or Puritans, a name which the Dutch, corrupted into 44 Ketters,” they overran the Netherlands. Thence they made their way into England, espe¬ cially in those eastern counties out of which later came four fifths of the settlers of New England. As the Lollards, they were followers of Wiclif, the Englishman who translated the Bible before the days of the printing-press, and who taught that 44 dominion is founded on grace.” In the Nederland the Ketters were hunted down by the bloodhounds of the church, and in the name of 136 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. Christ service was done to the great religious cor* poration called the church, which killed the bod¬ ies and claimed to deliver over to eternal ruin the souls of men. In spite of all the tortures and murders, the Ketters lived on. As the Ketters were the spiritual ancestors of the Anabaptists, so are the latter true fathers of the English Independents and American Congre- gationalists, of the English-speaking Baptists and the Friends or Quakers. The Anabaptists leav¬ ened Nederland with their doctrines, and taught the common people, before either Lutherans or Calvinists were numerous or influential or re¬ spectable. Drowned like blind kittens in Austria, burned in England until firewood became dear, slaughtered like sheep before dogs in Germany, hunted down like runaway slaves in the morasses of Friesland by Spanish minions, outlawed by every state church in Europe, Protestant as well as Catholic, the Anabaptists first found toleration in Holland under William the Silent. State churchmen have exaggerated their heresy, their faults, and vices. The episode of Munster has been made a household tale, but they have failed to tell us of the beautiful Christian lives, of their noble devotion, of their Christian-like spirit, of those humble people of God. The Dutch Ana¬ baptists helped mightily to prepare the soil out of which the Constitution of the United States and the more charitable religion of to-day grew. ERASMUS AND THE HERETICS. 137 Though some of the Dutch Anabaptists com¬ mitted offensive actions and joined the uprising at Munster, the overwhelming majority of them were peaceable, quiet, non-resistant folk. They were organized, educated, and elevated by Menno Simons, who was born in 1492, and in 1531 was a priest in his native village of Witmarsum. Here, in 1535, about three hundred men, women, and children, fleeing from Munster, intrenched themselves in an old cloister. On the 7th of April they were overpowered by the military and most of them drowned. Impressed by the bru¬ tality of churchmen who could thus slaughter mothers and children, Menno Simons renounced the Roman form of the Christian faith, and be¬ came an “ Anabaptist.” Until his death in 1559, he spent his time in .teaching and preaching the doctrines which seemed to him more in accord with the teachings of Christ than those which had been taught him in his youth. He made many converts all over Europe, and escaped all the plots of his would-be murderers. The burden of his teaching was a holy life in opposition to world¬ liness. To this day the “ Mennonites ” in the various countries of Europe are peaceable, quiet, moral, devout, industrious. In Nederland most of them are cultured, wealthy, and the best of citizens. William Penn found in the Dutch Mennonites congenial souls, and invited them to settle largely 138 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. in Pennsylvania. They did so, and to-day are among the best citizens of the Keystone State. There are tens of thousands more in the United States. On the 18th of February, 1688, in their meeting-house at Germantown, near Philadelphia, these Dutch Mennonites raised the first ecclesias¬ tical protest against slavery ever spoken or written within the limits of the United States. They thus set the ball rolling which, in the Emancipa¬ tion Proclamation of President Lincoln, became the avalanche which forever destroyed slavery in our free republic. CHAPTER XVIII. THE TROUBLES IN THE LOW COUNTRIES. Following the Anabaptists, in the order of time, were the men who adopted the views of Erasmus, then those who followed Luther, and finally those who accepted the logical formulas of Calvin. The sale of indulgences was a fruitful occasion for the outburst of wrath against the agents of Rome, while the immoral lives of the priests furnished good targets for the scorn of the satirists. The Emperor Charles Y. foolishly imagined that the Dutch heretics could be stamped out by proclamations. He had the Pope’s bull against Luther published in Nederland. Without asking the consent of the states, as he was bound to do, he forbade the printing of lampoons on the Pope or priests, or any discussion of matters of faith. Heretics were to be punished with death. The next year he forbade the study of the Bible, well knowing that a translation of Luther’s version had appeared at Amsterdam. Legend has it that the printing-office in which this Bible was made was on the site of the present Bible Hotel. On September 15, 1525, Pistorius, a learned priest 140 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. who had studied the Bible and married a wife, was burned to ashes at the Hague. He was the first Protestant martyr in Nederland. Dressed in a yellow tunic, and with a fool’s cap on his head, he was bound to the u stump cross ” or stake, and “ for the greater glory of God ” was cremated by his own former fellow churchmen. He was the leader of a great host who went to the flames for conscience’ sake. Not content with dictating the religion of the Nederlanders, the emperor repeatedly violated their liberties. When Margaret of Savoy, who had been made governess of the Netherlands by Maximilian, was confirmed in her office by Charles, her power was increased at the expense of the states. Yet she governed so wisely and well, trying hard to reform the crying evils in the state, that the Dutch sincerely mourned her death in 1530. Heavily taxed to support the foreign wars of the emperor, while fresh oppressions were continued, and the Great Privilege violated again and again, the Dutch remained patient and quiet. The emperor therefore imagined them to be “ men of butter ” who would submit to anything. In this he was fearfully mistaken. One evil act of Charles was turned to the good of the Dutch nation. In spite of his being a foreigner, Rene of Chalons, the Prince of Or¬ ange, in opposition to the Great Privilege, was appointed stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland, and TROUBLES IN THE LOW COUNTRIES. 141 Utrecht. Rene’s father was Henry of Nassau, a German, his mother was Claude de Chalons, a native of France. At the siege of St. Dizier, in 1544, Rene was knocked down by a stone bullet and died the next day. As he left no children, his heir and successor was his first cousin, Wil¬ liam, Count of Nassau-Dillenburg. This lad was then but eleven years old. He was afterwards called the Silent, and by the Dutch, Father Wil¬ liam. The Council of Trent was held the same year, and was soon followed by severe imperial edicts against preaching, printing, and books. New martyr fires were kindled, and the Inquisition be¬ came more active in its hellish tasks of “ church discipline.” Not satisfied with his activity in matters deemed religious, Charles began the work of collecting, in order to confiscate, the charters of the cities and states of the Netherlands. His object was to consolidate the seventeen provinces with Spain into one compact kingdom. Broken in health, enfeebled in mind, a glutton and a bigot, this prematurely old man of fifty-five de¬ cided to vacate the throne and retire to private life. To his son Philip he would hand over the sceptre and the tasks of government. On the 25th of October, 1555, in the city of Brussels, the impressive ceremonies of abdication were carried out. Charles was dressed simply in black velvet and leaned on the arm of William, 142 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. Prince of Orange, then only twenty-two years of age. Arrayed in armor inlaid with gold, with his steel helmet under his left arm, he looked the picture of noble manhood. He was stadtholder or imperial lieutenant-governor of three rich prov¬ inces of Nederland, and commander of the im¬ perial army on the French frontier. He had been educated by his mother, Juliana of Stolberg, a woman of rare abilities and deeply religious char¬ acter, and had also gained much experience of life at the court of Charles V. Besides highly appre¬ ciating him, the emperor had trusted the young man with the gravest secrets of the state. On the other side of Charles stood Philip II. of Spain, and the husband of Bloody Mary of Eng¬ land, who was to succeed his father. He was dressed in velvet and gold, but was ill-shapen and was more or less of an invalid. He was then twenty-eight years old. Here, then, were two typical young men. One had a genius for government and had a charac¬ ter noteworthy even among ages of great and good men. The other possessed a talent for misgovern- ment. Philip II. had a passion for crushing out liberty and suppressing the kind of religion he called heresy. These two men were to be pitted against each other like gladiators, the one the champion of Germanic, the other of Homan ideas. After the abdication, the war between France and Spain, fomented by the Pope, broke out TROUBLES IN THE LOW COUNTRIES. 143 afresh. An army of 35,000 infantry and 12,000 cavalry was raised in the Netherlands, which, led by Counts Egmont and Hoorn, and assisted by 3,000 “ help-troops ” from England, laid siege to St. Quentin, in 1557. In a great battle outside the walls, Egmont by a terrific charge of the Dutch cavalry, decided the fate of the day. The French army was routed. This victory saved the Netherlands from invasion, increased their territory, and raised Egmont’s fame to the highest pitch. Later, this proud descendant of the old Frisian King Radbod added to his laurels by another victory at Gravelingen. To commemo¬ rate these triumphs, Philip II. built the magnifi¬ cent palace of the Escurial at Madrid. Modeled on the lines of a gridiron, this wonderful pile of buildings recalls the martyrdom of St. Lawrence, after whom also is named the great “ ocean river” between New York and Canada. By the skillful diplomacy of William of Orange peace was concluded at the treaty of Cateau-Cam- bresis. In celebration of this treaty, the cities of the Netherlands bloomed with flowery processions by day and blossomed with the fire of illumination by night. The Nederlanders were amazingly proud of their part in the victories, and to this day the splendors of “ Egmont and St. Quentin ” ar^ celebrated in the gorgeous costume-festivals which the Dutch so delight in. At the two hundred and fifty-fifth anniversary 144 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. celebration of tbe foundation of Utrecht Univer¬ sity, in the summer of 1891, the writer enjoyed seeing the fifty-fifth costume procession. Utrecht, was robed in the Dutch colors, red, white, and blue, and the picture of mediaeval history was wonderfully vivid. The only modern things about the procession, which was made up of students, were their numerous eye-glasses. As hostages for the execution of all the prom¬ ises in the treaty, the King of France selected four noble subjects of King Philip. These were the Duke of Aerschot, Count Egmont, William of Orange, and the Duke of Alva. While in France, an incident took place which gave William of Orange his title in history. As matter of fact, the peace between Henry II. of France and Philip II. of Spain had been con¬ cluded with one purpose in view, as advised by cardinals and priests. Both sovereigns were to massacre the Protestants in their dominions, and in the Netherlands the Spanish troops were to be employed for this special purpose. The Duke of Alva was in the secret, and King Henry supposed that William of Orange was also. When out hunting one day Henry unfolded the horrible scheme. William listened in perfect silence, as if he knew all about it. He betrayed no abhor¬ rence at the work coolly proposed by their Most Christian Majesties who reigned by the grace of God. TROUBLES IN THE LOW COUNTRIES. 145 In Nederland the popular joy was soon turned into mourning when the truth was known. Philip left Nederland, taking ship at Flushing for Spain. Fourteen new bishoprics were erected in the Low countries and the Inquisition. reinforced. The murders in the name of God, the barbarous burn¬ ings, flayings, and bone-smashings in the interest of the church, went on. One has but to visit the rusty old tools of torture kept in the museums at the Hague and Amsterdam, to see what engines of hellish cruelty “religious ” men can invent in order, as they say, to glorify God. One must be a doctor in order to appreciate fully the fiendish horrors of the torturing tools used for each sex. Goaded and at bay, the Dutchmen paid back their tormentors in their own coin. The excesses were not all on one side. Bands of desperate men seized priests and monks and mutilated them. Later on, Protestant fanatics at Ghent and Bruges burned alive Roman Catholic priests at the stake. Thousands of skilled workmen and business men, knowing that neither life nor prop¬ erty was now safe under the Inquisition, fled to Germany, England, and the other Protestant countries. As a knowledge of the Bible spread, tens of thousands of people deserted the churches. In the open air, beyond the city walls, they sang psalms and listened to the preaching of the Re¬ formed ministers. While on the one side the 146 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. people were becoming desperate, the nobles held aloof from the government. When, however, the troubles became so great that the land was threat¬ ened with ruin, the Netherlands noblemen formed a league to protest against the Inquisition and the presence of Spanish troops. They rode into Brus¬ sels plainly dressed and unarmed, and marching four abreast into the council chamber, petitioned the Duchess Margaret to suspend the Inquisition and send an envoy to the king. While Margaret, with a woman’s heart, and deeply touched, shed tears over the piteous appeal, one of her counsel¬ ors named Berlaymont spoke of the petitioners as “a troop of beggars.” The dropping of that word gueux (beggars) was as the touching of an electric button that fires a mine. A banquet was held on the same evening at which three hundred nobles were present. All agreed that it was no shame to be beggars for their country’s good. “ Long live the Beggars ! ” rose the cry from every side. Count Brederode went out, and soon reappeared with a wooden platter, such as the begging pilgrims and mendi¬ cant monks carried and in which they received food and alms. He pledged the whole company to the health of “ the Beggars,” and the cup went merrily around. Attracted by the sounds of rev¬ elry, William of Orange and Counts Egmont and Hoorn joined the company and united in the pledge. TROUBLES IN THE LOW COUNTRIES. 147 Born in a jest, the cry of “ the Beggars ” be¬ came the watchword of liberty which was to ring out on many a bloody field. Seriously, these noblemen clothed themselves and their wives and children in the beggar’s dress of coarse gray. On their caps they hung small wooden cups such as beggars used, and from chains on their breasts, gold or silver medals. On the one side of these was engraved the image of Philip, on the other a beggar’s wallet, with two hands joined, and the motto “ Faithful to the King, even to bearing the beggar’s bag.” The badge was now seen and the cry heard all over the country. The medals made of copper or lead were bought by the people and hung on their hats. Sailors on the sea and workers on the street gloried in being Beggars. Though warned of the penalty of death, they attended the outdoor meetings beyond the walls of the city, and there¬ fore out of the jurisdiction of the magistrates. They sang psalms and listened to the sermons and harangues, as before, but now they went armed for resistance. William of Orange, recognized by all parties as the man to keep the peace, went to Antwerp to prevent, if possible, the impending outbreak be¬ tween the Roman Catholics and the Protestants. The confederated nobles also gathered at St. Trond. At the request of the Duchess Margaret, they were met by William of Orange and Count 148 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. Egmont. Bolder than ever in their demands, they advised her to follow the counsel of Eg¬ mont, Hoorn, and William, and to call a meeting of the States-General. After conferring with her council, Margaret wrote Philip, advising him not to yield to their terms. By this time Protestantism in a threefold form possessed Nederland. The Anabaptists, who were very numerous in Friesland, were largely of the lower classes. The Lutherans had wealth and in¬ fluence, but were moderate. The Calvinists were democratic in tendency, stern, zealous, and uncom¬ promising, and were now probably in a majority among the Protestants. Yet, up to this point, many of the best patriots and reformers were Catholics, and worked hand in hand for the relief of their country from injustice, and for Neder¬ land against the cruelties of Philip and his ad¬ visers. When a long-gathering storm breaks, it cannot be expected that the ground will simply be wet, and the harvests refreshed. The lightning will rend, wind destroy, and rain floods wash out. W is- dom on the part of Philip might have averted the storm, or drawn the lightning from the surcharged clouds harmlessly to the earth. As it was, the tempest burst, and henceforth the Roman Cath¬ olics took sides with the Spanish government, while the Protestants were compelled to fight to the bitter end. With a rapidity which, in the TROUBLES IN THE LOW COUNTRIES. 149 days before telegraphs, seems more miraculous than electric, an impulse to destroy all images seized the people. The popular fury spread like prairie fire, and in three days the churches were made bare, or filled with the rubbish of broken statues. Altars, screens, carvings, pictures, im¬ ages, and libraries were smashed with hammers, torn with shears and pincers, tumbled into the street, or burned in bonfires. Nothing was spared that was to the angry people a symbol of super¬ stition or cruelty. Sacred oil and wafers, and all priestly implements and equipments roused especial hatred. Little or no robbery or per¬ sonal violence was committed. Monasteries and nunneries were cleaned out with axe, hammer, broom, rake, and fire. Their wine cellars were emptied, and their books torn, burnt, and scat¬ tered. From this time forth the purged cathedrals and church edifices in Nederland, shorn of their chap¬ els, cleansed of candles, incense, pictures, images, and all that suggested the Inquisition, Rome, or anything parasitic to simple Christianity, became plain meeting-houses or places of worship. Re¬ ligion was to be enjoyed through the intellect and not through imagination, feeling, and the senses. The church walls were whitewashed, and the family pew introduced. The pulpit alone took the place of the altar, and simplicity ruled where art had reveled. The Reformed Churches of the 150 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. Netherlands, though still “ sitting under the cross,” and not yet in peace, began thus their life amid stormy scenes. Their emblem was the lily among thorns. In the eyes of the Dutch Pro¬ testants, from amid encompassing perils, up and apart from Roman heresies and worldly entangle¬ ments, the pure white flower, fragrant and un¬ stained and beautiful in the eyes of God and man, rose to be the joy and delight of Nederland. Suggestive of no artificial colors or garish artifi¬ ciality, but simple, natural, pleasing to the Master who loved her, the lily of Holland became the emblem of the Dutchman’s faith. We shall see how and why, in a few months later, the coat of arms of William the Silent, who was even at this time obediently Roman Catholic, became the ac¬ cepted symbol and banner of the Reformed Churches in Nederland. CHAPTER XIX. THE FIRST BATTLE — HEILIGER LEE. The acts of the iconoclasts were severely de¬ nounced by William of Orange, as well as by others of the popular party. William was a man who believed that Christians of every name and form of worship should live peaceably together. Though a Roman Catholic, he believed in the right of every man to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience. He hated both the fanaticism of the Calvinists and the cru¬ elties of the Papists. His was a noble soul, far ahead of the age in which he lived. On the brink of a great revolt, Margaret vac¬ illated, but at the dictate of Philip she began to sow dissensions among the nobles, so as to break up their union. She flattered the Roman Cath¬ olics, telling them that the king would pardon and richly reward them when he returned to pun¬ ish the heretics. She was only too successful. About one third of the Netherlandish nobles were won over to the royal side, and the confed¬ eracy was dissolved. Margaret scarcely waited to throw off the mask. In addition to the foreign troops on the 152 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. soil, she raised seven regiments, and distributed them in garrisons throughout the country. Her pretext was the punishment of the image-breakers and those fomenting sedition. The services of the Reformed Churches were prohibited in manj places, and the ministers thrown in prison. William of Orange was more than a match for Philip. He could not be deceived by kings’ favors and professions, even when Philip wrote to him with his own hand. William knew that the weakness of kings was lying, even to perjury. Besides, Philip had been absolved of the Pope from the oath he had taken at his accession to the throne. “To fight fire with fire,” William hired a spy in Madrid to furnish him with copies of Philip’s letters. At a salary of three hundred crowns a year, a clerk employed by the king’s secretary kept William well informed. He thus learned the decision of the king to send the Duke of Alva with a great Spanish army to the Neth¬ erlands. When Egmont was warned by William of the impending dangers, he refused to believe that his life was in jeopardy. The two friends parted with tears, and William retired to Nassau in Germany. Brederode fortified himself in Yianen, a Dutch town on the Rhine. When the council was held in the Spanish capital, three members urged mercy, wisdom, and patience. The others, led by the infamous Car¬ dinal Granvelle and the Duke of Alva, pressed THE FIB ST BATTLE — IIE1L1GER LEE. 153 the policy of torture, fire, and the headsman’s axe. As this also accorded with the views of Philip and the Pope, it was adopted. Alva was a soldier and a bigot, a fighter who took his con¬ science from the priests. The Spanish clergy and the nobles approved of the expedition, and besides rich gifts and tokens of favor, many of them accompanied the army in person. They expected to break the neck of heresy, and share in the rich spoils. The king, mixing finance and religion, also hoped to fill his empty treasury. The finest army in Europe, the larger part of it equipped with muskets, entered the Nether¬ lands in August, 1567, over twenty thousand strong. It was composed of veteran Spaniards, Italians, and Germans, and under superb disci¬ pline. The work of vengeance began immedi¬ ately, and in a few weeks the bodies of hundreds of fresh victims, dead but unburied, poisoned the air. Not content with torture, hanging, burning, and beheading, the duke ordered the corpses to remain on the gibbets, stump-crosses, or wayside trees, as a warning to heretics. These bloody acts quickened a great movement that had begun with energy even before Alva’s army arrived. Tens of thousands of the best peo¬ ple in the southern, or Belgic Netherlands, fled to England. In small boats, fishing smacks, on rafts, or trading vessels; merchants, shop-keepers, mechanics, farmers, left their homes. Crossing 154 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. the Channel, they settled in London and the coast towns of southern and eastern England. Most of these refugees were intelligent, industrious, Bible- reading people. They introduced many new in¬ dustries and inventions, and profoundly affected the religious, social, and manufacturing interests of England. The number of Netherlander who, during “ the troubles in the Low Countries,” en¬ tered Great Britain, was not far from one hun¬ dred thousand. Probably a majority of these Protestant refu¬ gees became subjects of Queen Elizabeth. Many also changed their names or gave them an Eng¬ lish form by pronunciation, translation, or spell¬ ing : the Kuypers becoming Coopers ; the de Witts, Dwights; the Timmermans, Carpenters; the Groens, Greens; the Pickhardts, Packards, etc. Their descendants were mostly sturdy Pro¬ testants, usually Independents, and were numer¬ ous in the Parliamentary army under Fairfax and Cromwell. Not a few of the grandsons of these Dutch refugees emigrated to the American colo¬ nies. Some of the bluest blood of New England was Dutch before it was English. Many Ameri¬ cans who to-day boast of their “ unmixed English stock ” are descendants of Dutch ancestors who lived in the Netherlands until Alva’s time. Counts Egmont and Hoorn were arrested early in September, 1567, and in June of the next year were beheaded. The death of these nobles, of THE FIRST BATTLE-HEILIGER LEE. 155 such high rank and eminent services, filled the Netherlanders with anguish, horror, and detesta¬ tion. Blood shed on the scaffold is remembered long after the blood of the battle-field has been forgotten. Not a few brave men vowed never to shave their beards until they had avenged the death of Egmont and Hoorn. William of Orange was summoned to trial, and on refusing to appear was outlawed. Even the envoy sent to King Philip was beheaded in Ma¬ drid. Margaret the duchess, finding her author¬ ity reduced to a shadow by the establishment of the Council of Troubles, insisted upon and re¬ ceived her dismissal from office. Alva was made governor - general, and pro¬ ceeded to trample into the mire the last shreds of Dutch liberty. The people called the Council of Troubles the Council of Blood. Alva feared attack from the Protestant princes of Germany. He fortified the frontier towns, and hastened the completion of the citadel at Antwerp. Let us now see what the patriots were doing. William of Orange, finding no hope but in the sword, had commissioned his brother Louis to enter Nederland with an army, for the purpose of “ restoring freedom and liberty of conscience to the inhabitants, and of preserving the prov¬ inces for the king in their former prosperous con¬ dition.” This was the golden age of fictions in law* 156 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. What to-day we should consider as a joke was then solemnly and religiously proclaimed. We shall see that until 1581 the Dutch, in fighting for their liberties against the king, professed to fight “ for their king.” In the same way the com¬ missions of the English Parliament to its officers were issued in the name of Charles I., that is, to the very men who fought against him and after¬ wards put him to death. In like manner, the bat¬ tle of Lexington was fought in the king’s name, on the technical right to “ proceed unmolested along the king’s highway,” — a right with which the king’s troops had interfered. Wonderful are the ways of law and the fictions of loyalty, but both William and the Dutchmen were lawyers. His brother Louis was the Sam Adams of the Dutch revolution, a determined partisan, but also a bold soldier. Moving from Embden in Ger¬ many with such troops as he could raise, he en¬ tered Nederland April 24, and took up a position near Heiliger Lee. A battle, almost as long as the eighty years’ war, has raged among Dutch antiquaries as to the meaning of this name, whether holy lea or holy lion. In Teutonic days Hermann, the liberator of Germany, had here battled victoriously against three legions. Here, also, out of the swamps, the spectre of Yarus had risen, to warn Germanicus of the danger of trying to repress Teutonic free¬ dom. Three centuries before, the sea, rushing in, THE FIRST BATTLE — HEILIGER LEE. 157 formed the Zuyder Zee and the Dollart, hut most of the swamp land had since been reclaimed for tillage. In Christian ages an abbey had been built here, and the name “holy lea” had been given to the land around it. The battle that ensued on the 23d of May, 1568, between the “ Beggars,” intrenched, and the Spaniards attacking, was the true Lexington of the Dutch War of Independence, and opened a conflict of eighty years. The Beggars were ranged in two squadrons, the pikemen being flanked by musketeers; with the cavalry in front. The only roads were dykes, and on all sides were abysses of mud and ooze. The commander of the Spaniards knew the nature of the battle-field, but the braggart soldiers did not. When the Dutch cavalry purposely broke under the fire of the Spanish field-pieces, the Spaniards rushed for¬ ward, as they supposed, to easy victory. They were soon stuck fast, or floundering helplessly in the deep mud. While in this plight, the shot-men of the smaller square took easy aim and slaugh¬ tered them by the score. At the same time the pikemen, with their shafts sixteen feet long, and tipped with iron points, charged and impaled or forced into the mud those trying to escape. The rear guard of the Spaniards was broken up by a sudden charge of the smaller squadron, which had moved around the hill. The patriots fought under their banners, inscribed with “ Freedom for father* 158 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. land and conscience,” and 44 Now or never, to re¬ trieve or to die.” With dry feet, the army of Louis had sent six hundred Spaniards to a bloody death and muddy grave; had taken all the enemy’s baggage and money, besides the six field-guns named after the notes of the musical scale, ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la. Only a few of the Beggars lost their lives, though one of them was Count Adolph, the first of the four brothers in the family of Orange who were to die for Dutch liberty. When the Duke of Alva heard the news he re¬ solved to march in person against these bold Beg¬ gars. He first issued a decree of banishment against William of Orange and his brother Louis, razed to the ground the Culemburg palace in Brussels, where the Beggars first met and formed their confederacy, executed eighteen Netherland¬ er s of distinction on the morning of June 1, and, on the 4th, at Brussels, as we have already stated, had Counts Egmont and Hoorn decapitated. He then marched to the frontier, and at Jemmigen won a bloody victory. He butchered seven thou¬ sand of the troops of Louis and ravaged the country. Heiliger Lee was forgotten in the awful defeat and slaughter of Jemmigen. In this respect it is like our own battle of Alamance in North Caro¬ lina, May 15, 1771, which is practically unknown to popular American history. Because of the de« THE FIRST BATTLE— HEILIGER LEE. 159 feat of Louis, Heiliger Lee was still further over¬ shadowed by Brill five years later, which, like our own Lexington, led up to final success. Never¬ theless, at the three hundredth anniversary of Dutch independence in 1868, a superb monument was unveiled in a flowery enclosure at Heiliger Lee, near Winschoten. It represents Batavia with the shield of liberty, and beside her an en¬ raged lion, while beneath her lies the young hero, Adolph of Nassau, “ dead in his harness.” CHAPTER XX. BRA YE LITTLE HOLLAND DEFIES SPAIN. Now that the war had actually begun, we need only glance at it in outline and not burden our¬ selves with the details. Striking as were the movements in camp and cabinet, in battle and in politics, a movement equally important to the world’s welfare went on in the mind of the father of his country, William of Orange. Hitherto he had been a Roman Cath¬ olic, not especially devout or zealous, nor often thinking deeply of religious truth, yet always counseling toleration and charity. The Calvin¬ ists and Lutherans thought they could not live with each other; William believed they could, and advised them to do so. He believed that truth was able to take care of itself. When this prince saw into the designs of kings to slaughter their subjects for changing the form of their faith, he was led to reflection. When outlawed, exiled, with a price set upon his head, and the cause of freedom desperate, then William was led by de¬ grees to be a deeply religious and sincere Chris¬ tian man. Step by step he advanced until, in 1573, he publicly worshiped with a Reformed church. BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND DEFIES SPAIN. 161 William himself chose that form of the Re¬ formed faith known as Calvinism, hut in doing so he became far more than a Calvinist or a secta¬ rian. His faith had deepened; religion became more of a reality. It was no longer a mere mat¬ ter of politics or tradition, but in his own soul he believed that the Anabaptists and the Roman Catholics, Lutherans and Calvinists, were equally Christians. They were seeking God, each after the way which, in answer to prayer, seemed to be good to him. He believed that they all, being children of one Father, should live lovingly to¬ gether as his children. He hated persecution and cruelty done in the name of religion. He had faith, hope, and the greatest of the Christian virtues, charity. He placed upon the centre of his coat of arms the seal of the city of Geneva, a shield with a white cross upon it, in token of his Protestant faith and his adherence to the princi¬ ples of the great reformer. After the army of his brother Louis had been cut to pieces in the extreme northeast of Neder¬ land, William summoned the Dutch people under his flag for another attempt to regain their lib¬ erties. Selling his plate and jewels, and mort¬ gaging his estates, he raised an army of twelve thousand men, — Germans, French, and Nether- landers. His banners were inscribed with mottoes and emblems like these : “ By the Divine Favor,” “ For the King, for the Law, for the People.” 162 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. On others was painted the mother pelican feeding her nestlings with blood from her own bosom. William’s own motto was, “ Tranquil amid raging waves.” His first campaign proved a failure. Alva was a consummate soldier, and knew that without pro¬ visions, money, and further recruits his foe, with his unseasoned militia, could not keep the field. He therefore avoided battle, but devastated the country, starved his enemy, and waited. Unsup¬ ported by nobles, burghers, or people, without money to pay his mutinous troops, who would not serve in France with the Huguenots, William marched to Strasburg and disbanded his forces. The cause of liberty was now, to all appearance, utterly hopeless. Alva set up a statue of himself at Antwerp, proceeded to enforce all the king’s decrees, set the bloody machinery of the Inquisi¬ tion in more rapid motion, laid fresh taxes on the people, and persevered in wresting away the char¬ ters of the cities. Now it was that brave little Holland rallied to the front as leader of holy revolt. Leyden re¬ fused point-blank to deliver up her charter of privileges, and resolved to defend her rights. Further: Paul Buys, pensionary of this city re¬ public, made a journey to Nassau-Dillenburg, where William was waiting patiently, alert and vigilant, for a turn in events. Leyden’s attitude cheered his soul. BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND DEFIES SPAIN. 163 By the advice of Admiral Coligny of France, William now resolved to win by the sea and the sailors. The fight would henceforth be on water. He at once issued commissions to privateers, and the terrible “ Water Beggars ” began their work. Driven away from the ports of England, a band of these desperate patriots set sail for the Texel to capture a Spanish man-of-war lying there. Their twenty-four ships were commanded by Van der Mark, who had seen Egmont’s head fall. Then and there he vowed never to clip his hair nor shave his beard till he had avenged the count’s death. With straps across their breasts marked “ Better Turk than Papist,” these long-haired and bearded men, at once saints and desperadoes, started on their errand. They had enlisted for life. Wind and storm drove them into the Maas and before the town of Brill, April 1, 1572. Captur¬ ing the place, they touched not a hair of the head nor a stiver of the property of the citizens, but they hanged thirteen monks and priests, and cleaned out and whitewashed the churches. One still sees to-day the broken stonework in the an¬ cient house of worship, while hard by remains the time-eaten gateway of the monastery grounds, now given up to the cultivation of cabbages and pota¬ toes. Brave little Holland now advanced farther as standard-bearer, with the orange, white, and blue 164 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. flag. Within three months the Beggars had taken many places, and every town in Holland of any importance, except Amsterdam, had raised the Orange colors. William now came into Neder¬ land, and at once began to issue orders in his own name and that of Holland. He restrained the excesses of the Beggars, who were apt to be too Spanish in their behavior after victory. It had come to pass that nobles and burghers having been timid, hesitant, and cold, the people first rose up to follow him. The revolt first of Holland and then of all Nederland was a move¬ ment of the people. Henceforth the battle-cry of “ Oranje boven ! ” (“ Up with Orange! ”) was from the people’s heart. It meant national unity, power, victory. The long friendship of the Dutch people with the House of Orange here begins in earnest, — a friendship still as strong as death, as unyielding as Sheol. Alva met brave little Holland with all his ener¬ gies. He sent his fierce tercios to seize Naarden and butcher the men, women, and children in it. This they did. The corpses were left unburied in the streets, and the place was made a desert. By this time the conscience of British Protest¬ ants was beginning to awaken. Englishmen saw that if the Netherlands went down before mighty Spain, their little country must follow. Volun¬ teers, singly and in companies, now came over to help the Dutchmen. Henceforth we shall hear of BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND DEFIES SPAIN. 165 Scotsmen and English lads and men, with pike and musket, standing shoulder to shoulder with the men of the dykes against the Spaniard. In republican Nederland began the training of the men who afterwards made military records in America. For fifty years the chief history of the British army was wrought out in the Neth¬ erlands. Haarlem was next marked for destruction. Poor and weak as they were, the citizens began the defense against Don Frederic and his veterans with their heavy artillery. The garrison of Ger¬ mans, Scots, English, and Nederlanders, number¬ ing less than two thousand men, was reinforced by Catherine van Hasselaar and her corps of three hundred women, who handled spade and pick, hot water, and blazing hoops of tar during the as¬ saults. Over the ice of the frozen Haarlem lake, the Leydeners, directed by William, sent food, powder, cannon, and men. Alva had the dykes cut, and a fleet of sixty vessels got into the lake when the ice had melted. Then Haarlem had no communication with the world outside, except by carrier pigeons. All avenues of escape being cut off, the provision trains and reinforcements destroyed by the Span¬ iards, and the Haarlemers being at the point of starvation, the heroic siege of seven months, with its savage brutalities on both sides, ended. Prob¬ ably ten thousand Spaniards lay buried in the 166 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. sand and ooze. The Scottish and English sol¬ diers of the garrison were hanged or drowned, and the Reformed ministers beheaded. Alkmaar was the next town singled out for destruction. Sixteen thousand Spaniards under Don Frederic, son of Alva, began the siege, ex¬ pecting it soon to fall like Haarlem, its garrison being no larger. The hated foreigners were met in the breaches by men and boys, women and girls, who fought with pike, sword, stones, fire, and hot water for a month. Then, with the wolf of famine baring his teeth in their faces, the people of Alkmaar, which means “All sea,” re¬ solved to give the Spaniards an object lesson in Dutch geography. Most of this part of Holland lies from twelve to fifteen feet below the level of the sea. The Alkmaar people cut the dykes and again made the country all sea. The flood nearly drowned the Spaniards, who broke camp and re¬ turned to Amsterdam, where the don rejoined the duke, October 8, 1578. As the stars in their courses fought against Sisera, so the sea and its waves baffled the skill of Alva. A few days later, the Dutch sailors won a naval victory in the Zuyder Zee. Having little ammu¬ nition, they butted the big ship with their smacks and fougbt at close quarters. Among the Span¬ ish prisoners taken was Bossu, who led the mas¬ sacre at Rotterdam. This battle and its results made Amsterdam an unsafe place for the Duke BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND DEFIES SPAIN. 167 of Alva, and lie left the city at night secretly, and without even paying his debts. During all this time William of Orange was unceasingly active, and the news of the capture of Geertruy- denberg by one of his officers raised fresh hopes among the patriots. After all the blood shed, Alva had practically failed. Unable to get money from either Spain or Nederland, he was obliged to summon the States-General at Brussels. Brave little Holland sent an address advising the other provinces to resist Alva. She declared her purpose to defy injustice until every town and man were de¬ stroyed. Alva now asked and received his recall. In November he left the Netherlands forever. His successor was Don Louis de Requesens, Gov¬ ernor of Castile. In the campaigns which marked the year 1574, William of Orange lost two brothers, Louis the hero of Heiliger Lee, and Henry of Nassau. Leyden was besieged and heroically defended. The Spaniards were especially determined to win this defiant city, the very heart of Holland, in which the first systematic resistance to Alva had been made. Valdez the commander built sixty- six forts around the place, and so severe was the blockade that no succor by land was possible. William of Orange and the States met at Rot¬ terdam and resolved once more to call in the aid of the sea. “ Better ruin the land than lose it,” 168 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. was their vote. After five months, when famine had begun and the plague raged in Leyden, the dykes were cut at Schiedam and Delfshaven, and the rich farming country was flooded for twenty miles. A fleet of two hundred flat-bottomed boats loaded with herring and bread for the be¬ sieged, powder and ball for the Spaniards, moved upon the artificial ocean. On the 3d of October, after desperate fighting between the Water Beg¬ gars, led by Admiral Boisot, and the Spaniards, Leyden was saved. Like true Dutchmen who love the good things of life for the mind as well as the body, the Ley¬ den people chose, as guerdon of their valor and constancy, from the hand of William, a Univer¬ sity. On the 8th of February, 1575, the charter, in the name of King Philip, of course, was given. The Dutch, knowing that intellectual and spirit¬ ual freedom was even more important than politi¬ cal liberty, had, beside their free public schools and academies, five national universities. These were at Leyden, Franeker, Groningen, Utrecht, and Harderwyk. CHAPTER XXI. THE DUTCH UNITED STATES. War and diplomacy continued, but the details need not detain us. Don Louis di Requescens died in 1576. The famous compromise called the Pacification of Ghent gave quiet for a while, but the proceedings of Don John of Austria, the next Governor-General of the Netherlands appointed by Philip, were in violation of it. The popular¬ ity of William the Silent continually increased. To his high office as stadtholder was added that of Ruwaard or Governor of Brabant, an election which came about through a popular uprising. William now hoped to bring about a union of the seventeen provinces of the Netherlands. To such an end he had been working for years. He at once enlisted the services of his brother John, Stadtholder of Gelderland. The result was the formation of the Union of Utrecht, January 23, 1579. Describing this pivotal event as interpreted by later events, and in modern language familiar to Americans, this was what took place. The seven states of Holland, Utrecht, Zeeland, Overyssel, Gelderland, Friesland, and Groningen formed a 170 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. federal republic, with a written constitution, under the orange, white, and blue flag. Under this constitution the Dutch republic was to have a career of two centuries. Their motto was, “ By concord, little things become great,” or in free translation, “ In union there is strength.” The Union of Utrecht made Nederland. There were negotiations for peace, and media¬ tion between other sovereigns and the King of Spain, but these came to naught, and the war went on. The Dutch statesmen, good lawyers as they were, had hitherto done everything in the name of the king, just as our fathers fought at Lexington and Bunker Hill in the name of George III. They even offered the sovereignty of Nederland to the Duke of Anjou, but in 1581 they deposed King Philip, renouncing his author¬ ity, and on the 26th of July published to the world their Declaration of Independence. In this the Dutch gave the English their great prece¬ dent and example for the deposition of James II. in 1688, and the Americans for their act of July 4, 1776. Philip now prosecuted the war with renewed vigor. Failing of success in either the cabinet or the field, he hired assassins to kill the one man who was more than his match. After repeated attempts, a villain named Balthazar Gerard suc¬ ceeded. While at Delft, with his wife and sister near him, and wearing the badge of the Beggars THE DUTCH UNITED STATES. Ill on his breast, William was shot by the fanatic, who died, under the tortures usual in those days, glorying in his atrocious deed. For a while the Dutch, still imagining that a king was needed, did not act very much like mod¬ ern republicans. They offered the sovereignty first to the King of France and then to Queen Elizabeth of England. Fortunately for Neder¬ land, neither of these would take it, so the Dutch fought out the battle by themselves, becoming more democratic in religion and more republican in state. They turned to Protestant England for help, but at first found it slow in coming. Finally, when Elizabeth thought that the loan of money was safe enough to be a profitable invest¬ ment, she permitted the London merchants to lend the States-General one hundred thousand pounds sterling. As security for the repayment of the loan, she required that three towns, Flush¬ ing, Rammekens, and Brill, should be put, as it were, in the English pawnbroker’s shop, that is, should be garrisoned by English soldiers under an English governor. One of the lads who accompanied the queen’s commissioner to Holland, and who slept with the big iron keys of the gates of these three towns under his pillow, was William Brewster, who after¬ wards advised the Scrooby Independents to seek freedom in Holland. He lived eleven years in Leyden, and helped, with the Pilgrims, to settle Massachusetts. 172 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. Evidently Queen Elizabeth dallied with the Dutch proposals as she did with those from her lovers, like the coquette she was in affairs of state as well as matters of love. She would be sov¬ ereign of Nederland if it suited her. She did not approve of subjects revolting from their sover¬ eign, yet she knew the Dutch cause was England’s also; for, as soon as Philip had put his foot on the neck of the Dutch Republic, he would crush her kingdom. Brave little Holland, that had thrown off the yoke of Philip several years be¬ fore the United States of Nederland had done so, was really fighting England’s battle. Elizabeth therefore dispatched a force of five thousand in¬ fantry and one thousand cavalry to fight under the Dutch flag and to be in Dutch pay. The Earl of Leicester was appointed governor-general of her forces in Nederland. Either the Dutchmen lost their heads in joy over the English alliance and the solid aid given, or else they meant by their act to secure Eliza¬ beth as a principal in their struggle with Spain, for the States-Greneral made Leicester their gov¬ ernor. They conferred more power upon him than they had given to William of Orange, though not more than they would have done had William lived. They .soon repented of their folly, and, fortunately, Elizabeth recalled Leicester before he had done much mischief. Not a little harm, however, was done by “ the THE DUTCH UNITED STATES . 173 English party ” in Nederland to the cause of free¬ dom. Among the officers was a shamefully large number of thieves and traitors, who drained the Dutch treasury and sold out their posts to the Spaniards. Most of the English officers and men, however, were fine specimens of manhood. Maurice, the son of William, who now conducted the war, declared that he liked to get hold of the fairfaced lads “ while they had English beef still in their ” stomachs. Among their leaders were the brothers Sir Francis and Sir Horace Yere, and the chivalrous Sir Philip Sidney, from whose writings the Latin legend on the seal of the State of Massachusetts has been taken: “ By the sword she seeks calm quiet under liberty.” Beginning with 1585, it may be said that for fifty years the scene of the history of the British army was in the Low Countries. In the English ranks, or serving as officers, were the men who afterwards were explorers, military advisers, or commanders in America: Sir Walter Baleigh, Ferdinando Gorges, John Smith, Miles Standish, Lyon Gar¬ diner, Samuel Argali, Edward Wingfield of Vir¬ ginia, Jacob Leisler, and many others. The military terms “forlorn hope,” “life guards,” and others, now in use in English, date from this period, and are only mispronounced Dutch, while most of the Spanish words turned into English and employed in the army were introduced into England in the sixteenth century. 174 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND , In Holland these Englishmen imbibed republi¬ can ideas and caught the spirit of liberty which, a generation or two later, resulted in the over¬ throw of the tyrant Charles Stuart and the for¬ mation of the English commonwealth. Many of the officers and soldiers married Dutch wives, for the modesty and grace of the maidens at¬ tracted the Englishmen in the garrison towns, and they found social life in Nederland very agreeable. Probably the most famous of these allies was Sir Philip Sidney, who was mortally wounded in a convoy-skirmish near Zutphen, and died at Arn¬ hem. In the agonies of thirst, instead of drink¬ ing the cool water brought him, he ordered it to be given to a common soldier saying, u Thy neces¬ sity is greater than mine.” The incident illus¬ trates not merely the chivalry of Sidney, but even more the low estate of the average English soldier, and the social gulf between a nobleman and a commoner. It was quite different when, after serving among the Dutch republicans for a gen¬ eration or two, the chasm was narrowed. Then, officers and men were more on a social level, and while England had a republic, the “ common ” soldiers were “ privates.” CHAPTER XXII. SPAIN RECOGNIZES THE REPUBLIC. Maurice, the son of William of Orange and Anne of Saxony, was born in 1567, the year of the coming of Alva. He became the ablest sol¬ dier in Europe. On one of the Dutch medals we see the picture of a boy who has dipped a leather disk in water; with this he is able to lift a brick after he has pressed the “ sucker ” flat and tight with his foot. This shows how science conquers difficulties. On a medal struck at Utrecht in 1602 is the same device, in which a farmer is represented lifting easily a great mill¬ stone. The motto is Ars grave toilet onus (By art a heavy burden is lifted). So Maurice, who had studied the campaigns of Caesar and the ancient masters of strategy, tactics, and war engineering, became first the dangerous rival, and then the superior of the ablest Spanish generals. The army and navy of the United States were greatly improved, and the best relations established between the troops and the farmers. The Dutchmen, now thoroughly aroused and cool-headed, prepared to fight for a •century, if necessary, until their freedom was 176 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. gained. Money must be had, and this they pur¬ posed to earn by farming and honest trade, as well as by the occasional capture of a Spanish silver fleet on its way home to Europe. The war from this time on became more like a skillfully played game, and consisted largely of engineering operations. Hence, its detailed story is not interesting. The sieges of Antwerp and Ostend and the battle of Nieuwport were leading events. Maurice went steadily on, capturing city after city, reducing the Spanish army, making prisoners, and winning more strength for the Union. Trade with the East Indies was soon opened, for the Dutch had obtained copies of the charts of the Portuguese, to whom, with the Spaniards, the Pope had once divided the unexplored world opened by Columbus and Da Gama. The far East and the Spice islands become sources of immense wealth to the Hollanders. In 1598 Dutch ships entered the seas of China, and in 1600 one of them reached Japan. The Dutch¬ men found that their butter and cheese were not wanted by the rice-eaters of Asia, but they quickly learned the demands of the markets, and profited by their knowledge. Later on, the famous Dutch East India Company was established, followed by the West India Company. It was their excellent business qualities, backed by their sound finan¬ cial policy, that enabled the Nederlanders to bear the strain of the long war. SPAIN RECOGNIZES THE REPUBLIC. 177 Furthermore, since the southern Netherlands had weakened, and, weary of the burdens, sur¬ rendered to Spain, thousands of the best business men and skilled artisans had emigrated to Neder¬ land, settling mostly in Holland. This accession of a large body of devout, able, and intelligent Protestants greatly enriched and strengthened the republic. One of the most eminent of these men from Belgic Netherland was Usselinx, who was the moving spirit in the formation of the West India Company, which sent forth the explorer, Henry Hudson, after whom the great river of New York State and North America’s largest bay are named. Colonies were also formed in different parts of the world. The Dutch proved their ability in a line of enterprise in which so many nations fail, — colonization. With almost every colony went, bed¬ sides traders, mechanics, and farmers, the domine, or minister, and the schoolmaster. The church and the school were among the first buildings erected and put in use, not only on Manhattan Island, and along the Hudson, Mohawk, and Rar¬ itan rivers, but in the East and West Indies. Despite the war on their own soil, the works of engineering, dyke-making, and pumping out wet lands went on. Even before peace came through truce, the fishes in the Beemster Lake, a few miles north of Amsterdam, had to vacate their feeding-grounds, and make way for cattle. Begun 178 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. in 1608, with forty mills in constant operation, the work of draining a lake twenty-four miles in circumference was finished in 1612. The polder yielded eighteen thousand acres of fertile land, and richly repaid the stockholders. To-day there are still rich farms and large herds of milk kine on the Beemster polder where once was salt sea. At last Spain, with the silver mines of America at her hack, and the finest army in the world, had failed, after a war of forty-one years, to break the neck of Nederland. The conflict at its be¬ ginning seemed like that of armed Goliath against a shepherd boy. Some Power arranges it that neither Goliath nor the heaviest battalions win. Glad to have rest to recruit his empty treasury, and to gain strength for a final effort, Philip yielded. A truce of twelve years was proposed, *and, after much discussion of minutiae, signed April 12,1609. It was to take effect in Asia, Africa, and America. Spain virtually recognized the Republic of the United States of the Nether¬ lands as a union of free, independent, and sover eign states. CHAPTER XXIII. STATE RIGHTS, SECESSION, AND UNION® The chief danger of Protestantism is its ten¬ dency to split up into sects. The principal peril of a republic is in secession. Philip III., unsleep¬ ing enemy of Nederland, knew this, and one reason for his making a truce was the hope that the Dutch heretics would tear each other to pieces. Between preachers and politicians, he thought the heretical republic would fall an easy prey. We Americans know by experience something both of secession and of the difficulty of hold¬ ing all parts of a republic in union. Before our Constitution was framed, our fathers had great trouble in keeping the States in union during the war of the Revolution from 1776 to 1783. From 1783 to 1787, the critical period of our national history, the troubles multiplied until they be¬ came intolerable. Even after the Constitution had been framed, the friction between the States which were agricultural and southern, and those which were commercial, northern, and seafaring was great. Driven from the sea by embargoes, the Eastern States became manufacturers. When the war 180 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. of 1812 was at its height, the Hartford Conven¬ tion was called in the interest of State Rights. Later, John C. Calhoun represented the extreme doctrine of State Sovereignty. Webster and Lincoln stood for union. After the civil war of 1861-1865, new questions between East and West arose, and fresh problems of finance and govern¬ ment still demand the highest wisdom of our statesmen. The records of Nederland shed light on our national history at many points. The Dutch Republic had all these problems, in one form or another, two centuries before they vexed our fathers. Almost all our words and phrases about union, state rights, secession, coer¬ cion, “ the Union must and shall be preserved,” etc., were heard in Dutch before we uttered them. These terms, nearly unknown in a monarchy, but common in a republic, have come to us from Nederland. The Dutch did not have our modern newspapers, but their books, pamphlets, broad¬ sides, and printers’ bills, quickly stuck on walls, pumps, curb-stones, and bridges, though now two or three hundred years old, read and sound won¬ derfully American. Page after page of the Dutch books read to an American like a family diary. The truce of 1609-1621 brought peace in the camp, but not in the town or the church. The forces of union and secession at once became rampant. Maurice, the stadtholder and soldier, was as our Lincoln, and stood for union. Bar* STATE'RIGHTS, SECESSION, AND UNION. 181 neveldt incarnated state rights and Calhounism* Maurice was the first soldier of Europe, hut not very much of a statesman. He relied for advice upon Lodewyk, the stadtholder of Friesland. Like our own Calhoun, Barneveldt was a pro- found statesman, of pure and incorruptible life. Barneveldt wanted continued peace in order to restore the waste of war. Maurice wished the war to go on, in order to make sure of absolute independence. Barneveldt feared that the suc¬ cess of Maurice would be fatal to republican government. He thought the Dutch might be ruined by their newly-aroused passion for mil¬ itary glory. Next to secession and disunion, the greatest danger to a republic is too much power in the central government at the expense of the states composing the republic. When president or stadtholder becomes a dictator, the republic exists only in name. Barneveldt wished to preserve the right of the states. Possibly Maurice wanted the stadtholder to be a veiled monarch. With these two men as leaders of the war or union party, and the peace or state-rights party, respectively, it was easy for partisans to charge Barneveldt with being bribed by Spanish gold, and Maurice with aspiring to be a king. Peace was opposed to Maurice’s ambition, war was against Barneveldt’s plans as a statesman. The country people and the commercial and seafaring 182 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. people sided mostly with Barneveldt. The offi¬ cers of the army and navy, the town and city folk, the domines or Calvinistic ministers and the officeholders and employees of the government were with Maurice. Nederland had a legislative body in two divi¬ sions, the one representing the separate states, the other the whole nation, somewhat as does the Senate and House of Representatives at Wash¬ ington. The States - General or Senate, after which the American Senate is so closely modeled, represented the sovereign states of the republic; the delegates of each state, no matter how small or large, had one vote. The nation at large was represented by a committee of thirty members of the States-General. This body, which stood for the people and not for the separate states, had charge of the conduct of the war. Barneveldt was a member of both these houses or assemblies. He represented the populous and rich province of Holland, which paid nearly one half of the national expenses. During the war he was, and had been since the death of William of Orange, the most active statesman, the virtual ruler of the country. The archives in the Hague to-day, with their thousands of auto¬ graph papers of Barneveldt, show him to have been a man of amazing industry as well as pro¬ digious ability and influence. While the life of Nederland was in danger f STATE RIGHTS , SECESSION , ^liVD UNION. 183 from Spain, this great man stood by the Union, holding that the people of Nederland made the Dutch republic and were a nation. When peace came, he taught and maintained what seemed to the people the very opposite, that there was only a league of states, and, if necessary, Holland could withdraw and become an absolutely inde¬ pendent state. Many times had Barneveldt dis¬ agreed with Maurice in regard to military policy, but the soldier, obedient to the civil power as supreme, had obeyed, though often acting against his own judgment. In time of peace a quarrel between these two able men was sure to follow. Outwardly, and in the eyes of most writers on Dutch history, the quarrel was between two am¬ bitious men, the one a lawyer, the other a soldier. In the same manner, most writers have clouded the subject by their descriptions of the theological quarrels between the Calvinists and Arminians. Besides the aristocratic classes in the cities, the lawyers were mostly on the side of Barneveldt. They were men of precedent, and tallied much of kings and subjects. Even when making war against Philip, they kept to the letter of the law by defying his commands and killing his subjects in the king’s name. The Arminians were also , with Barneveldt because they, like Grotius the lawyer and layman, believed that the state should be supreme in religious matters, regulate all doc' trines, and appoint ministers. 184 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. On the side of Maurice stood the matter-of-fact people who no longer cared for what the books said about kings and subjects, but considered that God in his providence had made them a nation. With one language, one blood, and common inter¬ ests against a deadly foe, they were no longer Brabanters, Zeelanders, Frisians, or Hollanders, but Dutchmen, — “een volk,” “eene natie,” and their country was Nederland. They could not understand secession or the assertion of ultra state-sovereignty as any part of patriotism. The ultra - democratic Anabaptists, demanding the separation of church and state, opposed the aristocratic Arminians. The Calvinists were, as a matter of logic and of course, on the side of Maurice, and altogether in favor of national unity. CHAPTER XXIV. THE UNION MUST AND SHALL BE PRESERVED. Calvinism never breeds poverty or arbitrary government, but makes for freedom, democracy, republicanism, popular education, and the rights of men. The scholastic Calvinism, or that elabo¬ rated in later days, is, in spirit, something quite different from what Calvin himself taught in the Genevan republic. Then it meant, first of all, that before God all men were equal, the king was no more than any other vile sinner. The elect of God, even the poor and unlearned, were higher in his sight than those who sat on thrones, whether temporal or spiritual. Chosen from all eternity to be kings and priests before Him, their stand¬ ing before royal upstarts and mushroom popes gave them no concern. Fearing God, they feared nothing else. The Dutch Calvinists were demo¬ cratic, calling and electing their own pastors, and ordering their church affairs by popular vote. The only states in Nederland which had strongly opposed these democratic measures of the Calvin¬ ists were Holland and Utrecht. The Reformed Churches in Nederland, comprising a majority of the Dutch people, were united in their Calvinism, 186 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. their nationalism, and their devotion to the house of Orange. Again they raised the cry, “ Oranje boven! ” They cried out, “ The Union must and shall be preserved.” The quarrel broke out, not on the pretexts of slavery, its extension or abolition, not on protec¬ tion or free trade, but on theology. Politics were veiled under theology. In the University of Ley¬ den, in 1603, two professors, Gomarus and Ar- minius, differed on the doctrines of grace and free will. The controversy soon spread on land from Leyden throughout Nederland, on the sea among sailors and fishermen, and on tongues out of Latin into low Dutch. After years of wordy war, and many local disturbances, a national synod to settle the matter was called to meet at Dordrecht in 1618. It was the demand of the people, who were bound to have their way and preserve the union, saving the state by means of the church. Democracy was on top. It was officially ordered by Maurice, who was advised by his cousin Lode- wyk and urged to action by his friend Count Louis of France. The latter assured him that his oath to defend the Deformed religion required him to call a national synod. Barneveldt by his influence in the state legis¬ lature of Holland repudiated the national synod, and began to stir up the state and city govern¬ ments against Maurice and the States-General. Local troops called “ waard-gelders ” were raised UNION MUST AND SHALL BE PRESERVED. 187 in Holland and Utrecht. Of the eighteen hun¬ dred men enlisted, one thousand were in Utrecht. Civil war was imminent. The States-General had had one experience of secession when, in 1600, the state of Groningen, in which the people were mostly Roman Catho¬ lics, withdrew from the Union and refused to pay its quota to support the war. The other states resolved that “ the Union must and shall be pre¬ served.” A commission of the States-General and one thousand of the national troops were at once sent into this state. The burghers were dis¬ armed, the national taxes collected, and the most obstinate of the secession leaders sent to the States-General at the Hague to explain their conduct. This firmness in upholding the Union proved sufficient. A delegation of citizens came down to the capital to signify their loyalty and obedience. The States-General made them pay roundly for the trouble they had given. Four hundred thousand guilders was the price of audi¬ ence, after which everything in Groningen went on quietly. What Groningen had attempted in 1600, Hol¬ land and Utrecht, under the influence of Barne- veldt and the powerful aristocratic party in the cities, seemed about to try in 1618. They were foiled by the decisive action of Maurice, who moved skillfully, and, as his hostile critics say, under the advice not only of his religious friend, 188 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. Count Louis of France, but also of his political adviser, Willem Lodewyk, the stadtholder of Friesland. Undoubtedly Maurice overstepped the limits of his authority and erred towards the side of despotism. Without an order of the States- General, he had Barneveldt, with Grotius and Hoogerbeets, the pensionaries of Rotterdam and Leyden, arrested and imprisoned. The great synod, or Oecumenical Protestant Council, consisting of seventy-four members from Nederland and twenty-eight from England, Ger¬ many, and Switzerland, met at Dordrecht. Eight¬ een of the Dutch members were political com¬ missioners sent by the States-General. In reality this was a political gathering, meeting under the cover of theology. In Dutch cities one sees hotels, streets, and open squares named Doelen. Doel means a tar¬ get, and doelen places where men shoot. In the hall of the Doelen the synod met. Their work was to kill secession as much as to uproot heresy. They meant to smite state right. Barneveldt’s head was their bull’s eye. The Arminians were denied seats, and their condemnation was a foregone conclusion. After one hundred and forty-five sessions, from Novem¬ ber 13th to May 6th, the Arminians were con¬ demned. The two hundred ejected ministers had their salaries paid, and eighty of them who re¬ belled were, at government expense, transported out of the country. UNION MUST AND SHALL BE PRESERVED. 189 On the evening of the 9th of May, the synod sat down to a gorgeous banquet in honor of the foreign delegates, paid for by the city of Dor¬ drecht. Musicians with lively instruments and a female choir lent sweet strains, which mingled with the merry clink of glasses, from which Rhine wine was drained in joy. Next day each foreigner received around his neck, the gift of the States- General, a gold chain holding a gold medal. The great political - theological convention was over. It cost the United States a million guilders, or money now worth two millions of dollars. Four days later, at the Hague, the date in mod¬ ern style being May 24th, the foreign guests were treated to another sensation. In the Binnenhof, or inner court, fronting the halls of the States- General, stood a scaffold. A surging crowd of people looked up where stood a venerable man over seventy years of age. It was John of Barne- veldt. Under the executioner’s sword his head rolled on the boards. Deodatus of Geneva re¬ marked, “ The canons of Dordrecht have shot it off.” Grotius, the great lawyer, had been imprisoned at the castle of Loevenstein. His clever wife, who shared his captivity, had him conveyed inside a box, used for books and linen, outside the walls. Escaping to France, he afterwards wrote a book which is to-day the basis of the world’s interna¬ tional law. Hoogerbeets died in prison. 190 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. Thus, though excesses and injustice were com¬ mitted in the name of liberty and union, the na¬ tional cause triumphed. Nederland kept not only her union of states, but also her place among the nations. Thus, also, once, and only once in all Dutch history, democracy in the church asserted its sway and compelled the state to do its behest. The Reformed Churches in Nederland have inter¬ fered in politics only once. Calvinism is still nominally the official religion of the kingdom. It is rather the form of religion of the overwhelm¬ ing majority of the people. Never again, in all its history, did it become as political as in 1619. Then, for the sake of maintaining the Union and stamping out secession, it upheld Maurice and condemned Barneveldt. In theology Nemesis and reaction soon came. Within fifty years the Arminians were all back and peaceably active. Descartes taught the new philosophy of doubt. Liberalism in religious opinion became general. The bloodless but trou¬ blesome controversies of Yoetius and Coccejus broke out. The former represented what was conservative and scholastic, the latter what was progressive and independent. Coccejus is usually regarded as the father of the Biblical theology which is so popular in our day. After Descartes came Spinoza, and after Coccejus, Kuenen. It is remarkable that at the first ordination of UNION MUST AND SHALL BE PRESERVED. 191 a Reformed clergyman in America, in 1679, the differences between the Yoetians and Coccejans were manifest. The four Dutch clergymen then in New Nederland were all Coccejans, while the Rev. Petrus Thesschenmacker was a Voetian. Nevertheless he was ordained. In 1690 he per¬ ished in the Indian massacre at Schenectady, during King William’s war, when Holland and Great Britain fought for the principles of the Reformation against Louis XIV., who represented Roman ideas. On the spot where the domine’s ashes were mingled with those of his log parsonage, now stands a magnificent church edifice. On the stained glass wheel window are emblazoned the coat of arms of William the Silent, with this scripture in Latin, Nisi Dominus frustra (With¬ out God all is vain), and the motto of the Dutch republic, Eendracht maakt macht (Unity makes strength). CHAPTER XXV. THE PILGRIM FATHERS IN LEYDEN. The relations between Nederland and England were in every way closer and more friendly dur¬ ing the war for independence than they have ever been since. Soldiers by the tens of thousands, merchants, traders, sailors, clergymen, exiles, and refugees by the thousands, visited or lived in Hol¬ land or in the other Dutch states. Many of these had their wives and children with them. Among the most touching inscriptions on the tombs in the Dutch churches and cemeteries are those in mem¬ ory of English wives, sweethearts, and children. Probably an average of twelve thousand Eng¬ lish-speaking people lived in the Low Countries from 1580 to 1640, the great majority being in the republic. The English military commanders sometimes complained of the frequent marriages between their officers and men and. the Dutch maidens, as tending to weaken discipline. The great number of people from Scotland visiting or settling in Holland is recalled to-day by the Scot¬ tish dyke in Rotterdam, Scottish names of Dutch families, and “ Scottish apothecaries,” to whom English is unknown or a strange tongue. The THE PILGRIM FATHERS IN LEYDEN. 19B Scottish Presbyterian Church in Rotterdam cele¬ brated its quarter-millennial anniversary Septem¬ ber 14, 1898. One magnetic reason why so many Protestant people from the southern or Spanish Netherlands and from Great Britain, Jews from Spain, Portu¬ gal, and Germany, and Anabaptists from all over Europe, came to live under the Dutch flag, was toleration. Nederland stood nearly alone in all Europe in offering religious freedom to all men. It is true that only the Reformed or Protestant Christian religion was publicly tolerated. All processions, street and open air meetings and fes¬ tivals were forbidden to all not of the Reformed faith. The Jews, Catholics, and all who refused, like the Pilgrim Fathers, any connection with or patronage of the State, were allowed full liberty of worship in private houses; or, if they built a church edifice, it must on the outside look like a dwelling-house. This is the reason why the old Roman Catholic churches in Nederland, even when very rich, are usually in back streets or out of the way places. From the street they look just like ordinary house fronts. However, except that no public parades were allowed, and plain fronts were the rule, the inside might be as large, as rich, and as full of altars and emblems as a cathe¬ dral. At the World’s Fair in Chicago, 1893, there was an imposing peristyle, in which each column 194 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. represented a State in the American Union. On the fa$ade was an inscription setting forth what is the greatest achievement of the race during the past four hundred years. What is it ? It is toleration in religion. This is the cor¬ ner-stone on which our Constitution rests. The United States of America is a permanent Parlia¬ ment of Religions. In the sixteenth century, tol¬ eration in religion was looked upon as a sin. It was not only an oddity, but a crime. The Dutch led the way in being odd, and also in being prac¬ tically Christian. Amsterdam was called the hot¬ bed of sects and heresies. Brave little Holland led the world in religious liberty. The tourist who to-day goes into the Jewish quarter in Amsterdam, beyond the diamond-pol¬ ishing factories, will see many houses with bas- reliefs of scenes from the Old Testament on their fronts. Here is sleeping Jacob dreaming angel dreams at the foot of the ladder, Moses smiting the rock, the ravens feeding Elijah. Most touch¬ ing to the heart is one which tells its own story. A ravenous hawk is pursuing a dove. With fiery cruel eyes, and talons just ready to tear and beak to devour, the hawk is balked of its prey, because the little bird reaches the dovecote safely. Un¬ derneath this is the magic word “Amsterdam.” Hunted, driven, robbed, murdered, burnt in every land in Europe, the sons of Israel found the prom¬ ised land of peace and freedom within the dykes. THE PILGRIM FATHERS IN LEYDEN. 195 To the English, French, Italian, and other Pro¬ testant refugees, the Dutch government granted houses of worship free of rent or taxes, and usually paid the salary of the ministers. In at least twenty-three towns or cities there were churches of English-speaking people. Those of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Flushing still remain. While other British folk took advantage of the generosity of the government and occupied the houses of worship offered them, why would not the men who founded Massachusetts do the same ? Let us see what sort of people the Pilgrims — the men first of three counties and then of three coun¬ tries — were. The little town of Scrooby is situated in the north corner of Nottinghamshire where the three counties of Notts, York, and Lincoln come to¬ gether. Here William Brewster, who had as a youth visited Holland with Davison, Queen Eliz¬ abeth’s Secretary of State, was post agent. No letters for common people were carried by the post in those days, but the post agent furnished horses for the king’s messengers and kept an inn for man and beast. Brewster’s office was in the manor house of the Archbishop of York, who had a castle or summer house here. The American who visits Scrooby to-day finds in a meadow the foundation lines of the old palace, and the hollows of the fish-ponds where Friday meat was kept alive and swimming. He traces the old ditch, or 196 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND . moat, now more tlian half filled up, looks at the crooked little Idle River, which he would call a creek, glances at or goes inside the old palace kitchen or servants’ house, now a post-office, and then moves out into the cow-house and stables. Why ? Because cow-houses are not usually raftered with carved oak, yet here under the red tiles and over the heads of the horses and lowing oxen are superbly carved beams of old oak, dark with the centuries of time-staining. These were once the ceiling-timbers of the refectory, or chapel, of the archiepiscopal palace which stood hard by. It was under these oaken beams that the cradle of Massachusetts history began to rock. Here the Pilgrim church was born. In 1604 John Robin¬ son, a graduate of Cambridge University, was their pastor. These people were Independents. They held very much the same ideas in church government as did the Anabaptists. It was in and around Norwich, in the English counties of England where the Dutch Anabaptists were most numer¬ ous, that the Independents, first- under Robert Browne, took their rise. They were called Brown- ists. The members of the first church of these Independents, formed in London in 1593, were promptly clapped into prison. Their three lead¬ ers, Barrowe, Greenwood, and Penry, were put to death. England, with her political church, was THE PILGRIM FATHERS IN LEYDEN. 197 determined not to tolerate “ heresy.” Scores of other heretics of the same sort were beheaded, hanged, or died in the filthy prisons. With like treatment theatening them, their houses watched and their footsteps dogged by spies, those Scrooby Christians resolved to follow Brewster’s advice and go where “ they knew that religion was free to all men,” — to the Dutch re¬ public. These poor people, mostly farmers and mechan¬ ics, but led by high-souled men, had a hard time of it in getting away. They were betrayed by an English captain at Boston, and thrown into jail. Near Grimsby the women were left on shore and deserted, by a Dutch skipper, after the men had got on board, because the soldiers sent to arrest the party were appearing over the hill. After storms and troubles on ocean and the Zuyder Zee, they arrived in Amsterdam, living there a year. One can still see their old meeting-house in what the Dutch housewife will tell you is called “ Brownisten gang ” (Brownists’ Alley). Robinson soon found there was danger of his people losing a great idea in trivial questions about old clothes. He therefore applied to the burgomaster and law-holders of Leyden for per¬ mission to live in that city. This was granted, and their boat journey out of Amsterdam and over the Haarlem Lake, among the flowery and cow-dotted meadows, was made in the spring of 198 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND.' 1609, to the city of the heroic siege. All was now peace, for the twelve years truce had begun. In Leyden, these exiles for conscience’ sake, mostly farmers, had to work hard at mechanical trades to get a living. The boys became servants and helped in the breweries, brickyards, hat fac¬ tories, and woolen mills. The men were carpen¬ ters, coopers, bricklayers, weavers, dyers. Some made gloves, pipes, pumps, stockings, or the va¬ rious sorts of serge, baize, felt, fustian, blankets, etc. They were honest people, not ashamed to work. They and the Dutch were great friends. Brewster taught Latin, and later kept a printing- office. Probably most of the adults, and every one of the children, learned to speak Dutch, while the smaller boys and girls went to the pub¬ lic schools. Several of the leading men paid extra taxes and became citizens of Leyden. This gave them a great experience in politics. They learned the ways of a republic and how to build one in America. They prospered so well that in two years they were able to save considerable money and to buy a big house for their pastor, and a lot on which to erect twenty-one small houses for their fami¬ lies. They paid eight thousand guilders, or three thousand two hundred dollars, for the estate; or what would be worth now about twelve or fifteen thousand dollars in gold. The situation was in Bell Alley, a neat little brick-paved street THE PILGRIM FATHERS IN LEYDEN. 199 which runs along the great Saint Peter’s Church, first built in A. D. 1112. They were only three lots away from the University building, library and garden, and the canal on the ancient Rapen- burg, where now stands the famous Japanese Mu¬ seum. Directly in front of them was the main entrance to the great cathedral. The Pilgrim folk were not alone in Leyden, for besides the British soldiers like Miles Stan- dish and his company, there were hundreds of merchants, contractors, weavers, mechanics, and students. Furthermore, they lived right next door to the English and Scottish church of which Rev. Robert Durie was pastor, in which were one hundred and thirty - five English - speaking families. From the first, English - speaking students flocked to Leyden because it was so famous. After the English universities had been closed to Dissenters, most of the non-conformist Eng¬ lish ministers, lawyers, and doctors, as likewise many from the American colonies, including the sons of John Adams, were educated at Leyden. Between 1573 and 1873 no fewer than four thou¬ sand seven hundred students from Great Britain and the United States were educated in Leyden University. In the Senate room was early be¬ gun, with the picture of William the Silent, a collection of oil paintings of the great teachers and patrons of the University. From William 200 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. to Kuenen, these faces form this great school’s best proof of worth and title to fame. Few uni¬ versities can show such a galaxy of intellect. This best of collections is the original after which those in other European and American universities have been formed. Besides these British folk from England, Scot¬ land, Ireland, and Wales, there were many Wal¬ loons and Huguenots, or French Protestants, liv¬ ing in Leyden, enjoying the freedom of the city. One of them was named Jesse de Forest, who had ideas about America and colonization, and who began to broach them about 1615. He made application to the States - General, but received no encouragement. Barneveldt was opposed to colonization. He thought all the energies of Ne¬ derland should be concentrated at home. Maurice and the Calvinists, however, favored settlements abroad. It turned out that only Dutch Calvinists settled in America. To-day a visitor in the Klok Steeg of Leyden may read on the memorial stone which, in 1865, was set in the front of the present Jean Pesyn Hof, the words, “ On this spot lived, taught, and died John Bobinson, 1611-1625.” On the op¬ posite side, on the wall of Saint Peter’s Church is a large bronze tablet, erected by the National Council of the Congregational churches in Amer¬ ica, to the memory of the Pilgrim Fathers and their pastor. It was unveiled July 24, 1891. CHAPTER XXVI. THE PILGRIMS EMIGRATE TO AMERICA. The Pilgrims in Leyden could have had a house of worship, rent free, had they joined with their other countrymen or used the old chapel of the Veiled Nun’s Cloister, as did the other Brit¬ ish folk. This they did not do for two reasons. They were not Puritans in their ideas of church government. They would not worship in edifices once used by Roman Catholics. Yet besides these two reasons they had a better and a no¬ bler motive. They believed in the separation of church and state, of politics from religion. In this they were far ahead of the Puritans. They therefore made no application to the Dutch mag¬ istrates for a church edifice. Instead, they made use of the parlor or chief room of Robinson’s house for preaching and worship. This they could easily do, for in all they numbered only about three hundred. In their conduct they were good Americans before they thought of America. Eleven happy years these English and exiles lived in freedom. The records in the Town Hall in Leyden and the University, and their own 202 BBAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. writings, tell their story. They bought and sold land and houses, they mixed in city politics. They learned Dutch thrift, patience, neatness, cleanliness, faith, courage, toleration, to reinforce their own sturdy English virtues. They saw before them public schools, orphan asylums, homes for the aged and poor, centuries old, a free press, with courts, prisons, and other things in the republic far excelling what existed in Eng¬ land. Robinson and Brewster became members of the University, which gave them especial privi¬ leges, so that they could buy enough wine or brew sufficient beer without tax to supply most of the congregation, a good thing when, there being no tea or coffee, beer was their daily beverage and a necessity. There were many pretty and curious things for the Pilgrim boys and girls to see, for Leyden was a great city of one hundred thousand people with markets, parades, museums, sports, games, and much to amuse one on the canals and streets. In the centre was the great round Burg or castle of brick whence they could look out over the country where the Spanish forts had stood dur¬ ing the heroic siege, the story of which they so often heard. Some of these English lads mar¬ ried Dutch girls, and Dutchmen wooed away the English maidens, but most of them married among their own company. It is very amusing to read the intentions of marriage in the Leyden THE PILGRIMS EMIGRATE TO AMERICA. 20B archives, and note how the English names of blushing maidens and bashful youth sounded in Dutch ears. The English spelling of Dutch names shows how easily one is changed into the other. The young men and boys in Robinson’s con¬ gregation learned all about Union and secession, state-right and central power, and much about government, during their stay in Leyden. The trumpets and drums of war were quiet, but the placards and political advertisements pasted upon pumps, walls, bridges, and curbstones told how excited the adherents of Maurice and of Barne- veldt were. On one occasion they saw Broad Street in front of the City Hall barricaded, and the Arminians intrenched in a kind of fort against the Calvinists. For a time it looked as if there would be fighting in the streets of Ley¬ den between the Waard-gelders, or city guards, and the national troops. The sympathies of pastor Robinson and his flock were on the side of the Union. They were in favor of Calvinism and democratic principles, and against the Arminians and state-rights men of Holland, who threatened secession. Robinson publicly debated with Episcopius, the champion who succeeded to leadership after the death of Arminius. Robinson also probably attended the national and international synod at Dordrecht, and rejoiced in its verdict. The Pilgrims were 204 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. all strongly Calvinistic in theology and democratic in government, like the Dutch churchmen. It is probable, however, that Robinson, besides his the¬ ological interests, was even more delighted with the after legislation, or post-acta , of the synod. These provided for the right relations between ministers and magistrates, for schools and edu¬ cation, for a new translation of the Bible, and foreign missions, and for work of colonization, in¬ cluding schools and schoolmasters in Asia, Africa, and America. The translation of “ the States Bible,” the version still in use, was done in Ley¬ den. By the time the national synod was over, civil war averted, the union of states maintained, and peace at home assured, the country began to re¬ sound with the drums and trumpets of drill mas¬ ters and recruiting officers. The truce over, war with Spain was to begin in 1621. This to the older men and women among the Pilgrims was distressing, but to the big boys and young men it was delightful. They were enthusiastic at the idea of fighting for freedom under the orange, white, and blue flag of the Union. They enlisted in such numbers in the Dutch armies as to alarm their parents. Robinson, Brewster, and some others now saw that if they were to remain in Holland they would all become Dutch, and their distinct existence as Separatists be lost. To hold their church and company together they must THE PILGRIMS EMIGRATE TO AMERICA. 205 emigrate. They wanted to propagate their doc¬ trines and keep strictly the Sabbath. The Dutch were no Puritans in dress, speech, or in Jewish ideas of keeping Sunday, or the Lord’s Day. One never reads of a peculiar dress or fashion of speech among the Dutch, like those in vogue among the English Puritans. The Ne- derlanders, though strong Calvinists, loved music and art, kept organs in their churches, and the violin and flute in their homes, loved fun and amusements, enjoyed the Kermiss, and made Sun¬ day a day of rest, prayer, worship, but also of innocent enjoyment. Yet in any large city like Leyden there were many things objectionable, besides temptations to the serious-minded. Where should the Pilgrims go to avoid the Spanish invasion, and perpetuate their church ? To England ? That meant imprisonment and death. To any other European country ? That meant more loneliness, harder work, and poverty, and learning another language. To America? But oh, the wide ocean and its dangers, and the red Indian with his warwhoop and scalping knife ! Yet between the Spaniards who tortured men in the name of God, and murdered heretics by the thousands, and the savages who cut collops out of the living flesh, there was little to choose. They therefore resolved to go to America. Kob- inson’s first idea was to settle among the Dutch in New Netherland, in the Hudson River region. 206 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. In the first year of the great truce, 1609, the Dutch East India Company, which had been formed in 1602, sent out a ship manned by Dutch sailors, but commanded by an Englishman, Henry Hudson. He entered “ the river of the Moun¬ tains,” or the Shatemuc, long afterwards named the Hudson, and sailed up as far as Troy. The Dutch called this noble river after Prince Mau¬ rice. Maurice was in favor of colonization, Bar- neveldt opposed it. They named the new-found country, not after the Low Countries, New Neth¬ erlands, but after their own republic, New Neder¬ land. Five years later, in 1614, a few huts were built on Manhattan Island, trade was opened with the Indians, and Dutch ships began to come up the bay and stop for water and fresh provisions. In Leyden, a Walloon named Jesse de Forest began, in 1615, to talk about starting a colony in New Nederland. He hoped to settle fifty or sixty Walloon families on Manhattan Island. Possibly with him Bobinson may have conferred. At any rate, early in the year 1620, the pastor of the Pilgrims, having in view a much larger enterprise than the later Mayflower expedition, made a com¬ munication to the Dutch West India Company, proposing to settle with four hundred families, including the Independents from England as well as from Leyden. The Amsterdam merchants, in their letter to the States-General, dated February 12, generously offered to furnish free passage THE PILGRIMS EMIGRATE TO AMERICA. 207 across the ocean to the Leyden Englishmen, with the gift of cows and land. They also asked the States-General to furnish two ships of war and military protection against the Spaniards, who would be only too glad to break up a nest of her¬ etics in America, which they called New Spain. This the government was unable to do, as the war was to begin in a few months, and every man and ship was needed at home. Robinson, Brad¬ ford, and others then turned to England for aid. They had hard work to move the Englishmen, but after months of entreaty, many letters, and journeyings to and fro between Holland and Eng¬ land, they succeeded in borrowing some money on very hard terms. They then chartered the ship Speedwell, of less tonnage than an Erie canal-boat. The younger and stronger members of the congregation packed their goods on boats drawn by horses, and bade farewell to beautiful Leyden July 21. Traveling down the canal, past the Hague and through Delft, they took the Speedwell at Delfshaven. Sailing down the Maas and crossing over to England, they were joined at Southampton by others of like mind, among whom was John Alden. These were ready in the ship Mayflower to sail with them to Vir¬ ginia. The two ships, leaving Southampton Au¬ gust 20, stopped for a week at Dartmouth, and later at Plymouth; but when they had together reached Land’s End, the Speedwell was declared 208 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. unseawortliy, and both vessels put back' to Plyrn* outh. Only the strongest and healthiest, still undaunted, insisted on going to America, and these were crowded together in the larger ship. In the Mayflower, which finally left Old Eng¬ land behind on the 16th of September, for a risky voyage in a dangerous time of year, were one hundred and two men, women, boys, and girls, as passengers, beside captain and crew. These were of English, Dutch, French, and Irish ancestry, and thus typical of our national stock. At least one third of the company were boys and girls, most of whom had been born in Holland. In the midst of the voyage the ship nearly went to pieces in a storm, but fortunately a Dutch sailor providing a good piece of Delft hardware, the ship’s timbers were held together. They sighted Cape Cod November 19, and December 21 landed, and on Christmas Day began to build their houses. Later, other emigrants, mostly from Leyden, came on. The older people left behind in Leyden were mostly dead or gone by 1655, when all traces of them disappear from the Dutch records. Plymouth, in its first years, looked far more like a Dutch than an English town, and not a few Dutch customs were practiced by the Pilgrims. In the name of the colony, Bradford expressed to the Dutch envoy, de Razieres, in 1627, their grat¬ itude for the kind treatment received in Holland. THE PILGRIMS EMIGRATE TO AMERICA. 209 In 1643, after the example of the United States of Nederland, and most probably suggested by the Plymouth men, the New Englanders formed a confederation, of which Massachusetts was the Holland, or preponderating member. In 1690 the Plymouth, or Old Colony, was swallowed up in the Bay, or Massachusetts Colony. After that, in common American idea and history, the Pil¬ grims, although they had imbibed the Dutch spirit of toleration in religion, and had practiced them by having fellowship with Miles Standish the Roman Catholic, Roger Williams the Radical, and John Alden the Irishman, were confounded with the Puritans. Only of late has the distinc¬ tion been popularly made between these Separa¬ tists and the men who united church and state. It was not until 1849 that English, helping American, scholars discovered the Pilgrims’ birth¬ place and origin at Scrooby and Austerfield. Later, Dutch first, and then American, research unfolded the story of their life in Holland. The Dutch influence in the making of New England, as well as of the United States, has not yet been justly or impartially shown in our popular books of history, but it is great. In our government and ideas, the American people are more Dutch than English. We are every year outgrowing the narrower of the Puritan ideals, and entering into those of the tolerant, sweetly reasonable Pil¬ grims, the men of three homes and civilizations. CHAPTER XXYII. THE DUTCH IN AMERICA. Besides planting colonies in Brazil, Guiana, and the West Indies, and in parts of Asia and Africa, the Dutch began settlements in North America, in New Netherland. Colonization was part of the Union and war policy of Maurice and the Calvinists, so that almost all of the first Dutch settlers of New Netherland were hearty upholders of the national church. Their Heidel¬ berg Catechism and their Bibles, with their semi¬ clerical Comforters of the Sick, were brought to America on the very first ships sailing into New York bay. The skippers also made explorations along the coast. Block Island, after Captain Blok, Rhode Island after the Dutch Rood Eilandt (Red Island), Cape May after Captain May, Staten Island after the Staaten or States-General, Hou- satonic for Woestenhoek, or Desert Corner, and numerous other names in the middle and ad¬ joining States, are but a few proofs of the Dutch explorers’ activity. The trading station and fort on Manhattan Island was built in 1618, destroyed by the Eng- THE DUTCH IN AMERICA. 211 lish and rebuilt next year. Near the head of river navigation on the site of Albany, Fort Orange (in Dutch O-ran'-je) was erected. Here, under the commander Oelkens, was begun the league of friendship with the confederacy of the Five Nations or Iroquois Indians. Under Arendt van Curler, this league of peace became a per¬ manent institution, which mightily helped to de¬ cide the possession of the North American conti¬ nent by men of Teutonic ideas. The old conflict between Latin and Germanic civilization, as rep¬ resented by Spain and Holland, was to be trans¬ ferred to America, and many wars were to be fought; but until the Revolution, which divided British and Americans, the Iroquois remained faithful to “ the covenant of Corlaer.” It was very near the traditional birthplace of their great culture-hero or founder of Iroquois civilization, Hiawatha, and to their famous Tawasentha or ancestral burying “ place of many dead,” that the Dutch established Fort Orange. The Dutch pronounced this name so that to English ears it sounded like the name of the Cunard steamer Aurania, which has been named in compliment to the people of New York. In 1623, eighteen Dutch families settled at Fort Orange, forming a wyck or manor, named after the proprietor Van Rensselaer, a pearl mer¬ chant in Amsterdam, Rensselaerwyck. Thirty Dutch families at the same time made Manhattan 212 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. Island their home. A number of Walloons set* tied near Brooklyn, in a boght or bend in the East River, called the Walloon’s Boght, now cor¬ rupted into Wallabout. Gradually other hamlets and villages sprang up, and this, although the men of the little republic were fighting Spaniards at home, and sending exploring expeditions to the pole and to all parts of the world. There came to America from Nederland about fifteen thousand permanent settlers, all Calvinists and strong lovers of liberty and of the republic. A thin line of settlements on Long Island and in the Hudson and Mohawk valleys in New York, and a few scattered farms in New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania, chiefly along the Delaware River, comprised New Nederland. In 1664, in time of profound peace, English ships treacherously made a descent upon Manhattan Island, and the country was seized and brought under British rule. Then about one half of the Dutch people left America and returned to the Fatherland. This left seven or eight thousand Netherlanders to become Amer¬ icans and fight with others, for one hundred and thirteen years, the arbitrary rule of British kings and their favorites, with republican ideas. Short as was the Dutch occupation, being only fifty years, from 1614 to 1664, the foundations of the Empire State were laid by them. The re¬ publican Dutchmen gave New York its tolerant and cosmopolitan character, insured its commer- THE DUTCH IN AMERICA. 213 sial supremacy, introduced the common schools, founded the oldest day school and the first Pro¬ testant church in the United States, and were pioneers in most of the ideas and institutions we boast of as distinctly American. Almost from the very first, ministers and schoolmasters were active in the settlements, and morality and reli¬ gion were carefully looked after. Every acre of land occupied was bought from the Indians, ac¬ cording to Dutch law and the West India Com¬ pany’s express order. The Indians were, as a rule, kindly treated, and before John Eliot began his preaching, a Dutch domine, Megapolensis, had converted Iroquois Indians. After him, Ereer- man and others preached the gospel to them and baptized their children. The records of the Re¬ formed churches still witness to this good work. As between the sailors and rough characters always found in a great seaport, like New Amster¬ dam, and the Dutch people in their settled homes, there was a great difference, so between semi- feudal manors and the democratic towns and vil¬ lages of New Nederland there was equal unlike¬ ness. In order to encourage settlement, the West India Company gave to certain rich men called Patroons the right to buy and occupy large tracts of land, and over their estates and the settlers on them to exercise a sort of feudalism. Several large manors, of which the most celebrated was that at Rensselaerwyck, thus grew up. 214 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. All this was opposed to Dutch ideas of freedom, and the farmers and emigrants from Friesland, Brabant, and other states revolted against it. These men had held their land at home in fee simple, or had breathed the free air of the Father- land too long to stand feudalism in America. Although for the sake of the tempting advantages offered, the Patroons’ relations and many poor men settled on the Patroons’ manors, the great majority of the Dutch immigrants preferred free soil and people’s rights. They therefore bought land of the Indians and made settlements on Long and Staten Islands, in New Jersey, Dela¬ ware, and at Esopus. Arendt van Curler, once as a young man the Patroon’s commissary, who had outgrown Patroon- ism, bought the Great Flat in the Mohawk Val¬ ley, and opened the superb region to civilization by founding Schenectady on the principles of freedom. Here the plucky Dutchmen kept up a constant fight against Dutch and English mo¬ nopolists. So justly did Van Curler treat the Indians, that they always called the governors of ' New York, even as those in Canada still call Queen Victoria, “ Corlear.” The Dutch people kept on making steady ad¬ vances in the assertion of their political rights as against the Patroons and their monopolies, until the British conquest of 1664. Then their free schools were abolished, many of the free customs THE BUTCH IN AMERICA. 215 of the republic were done away with, and the vicious fashions of monarchy were introduced. When the English governors attempted forcibly to establish the political church of England, they met with tough and continued resistance. For one hundred and thirteen years the Dutch, Ger¬ man, Huguenot, Irish, and Scottish people in the legislature resisted the encroachments of the Brit¬ ish kings and their agents, and maintained their rights. They asserted the freedom of the press, and the German editor Zenger was defended and acquitted. Having no royal charter, the composite people of New York, gathered from many nations, hut instinct with the principle of the free repub¬ lic, studied carefully the foundation principles of government, until in the Revolution they formed a State which of all those in the Union is the most typically American. The historical precedents of New York are not found in a monarchy, hut in a republic. The Empire State is less the fruit of English than of Dutch civilization, Pennsylvania was founded by William Penn, the son of a Dutch mother, — Margaret Jasper of Rotterdam. He wrote the constitution for his people, of whom Dutch and German were in the majority, while in Friesland. This constitution of Pennsylvania was one of the most liberal of any in the thirteen colonies. Against Penn’s will, British ideas of intolerance against Roman Cath¬ olics, introduced in 1703, were kept until 1776. 216 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. Among these Nederlanders who came over with Penn were some of the most learned men in Amer¬ ica. From the composite of Nether land and Ger¬ man people called “ Pennsylvania Dutchcame forth the first protest against American slav¬ ery, and the first hook in the colonies written against it, the first volume on the philosophy of education, the first Bible in America printed in any European language, the finest piece of colo¬ nial printing, and other first things of which Americans are proud. In many of the churches reared by the descendants of the heroes of the eighty years’ war, the memory of William the Silent is still cherished. “Father William” is one of the few European characters whom Americans like to compare with Washington. On the stained glass windows of not a few churches in the United States his “ coat of arms ” is emblazoned. With the mottoes added — the first by the church and the second by the republic — it constitutes the accepted emblem of the Reformed Church in America. This we shall now explain in detail. The princes of Orange were also counts and lords of other principalities. The largest and most important of them was Nassau, in the capi¬ tal of which (Dillenburg) William was born. The first quarter, on the upper left hand of the largest shield, represents Nassau. A lion stands rampant, uncrowned, on a blue field, surrounded THE DUTCH IN AMERICA. 217 with dottings seventeen in number. Each of these dots — a brick turf, or part of the soil — stands for one of the seventeen provinces, — ten of the Netherlands and seven of Nederland, all of which William once hoped to bind into one Union. In the second, or upper right quarter, stands a crowned lion, red on a golden field, the arms of the principality of Katzenellenbogen. The third, or lower right hand quarter, contains two running lions, gold on a red field. The fourth quarter, a shield of red banded with silver, is that of Dietz. The smaller shield, laid in the centre of the large one, is also quartered, and has a diagonal band of gold across it and through the first and third quarters, which are those of Chalons. The second and fourth quarters represent the princi¬ pality of Orange. Their color is golden, and on them is hung a war-horn, symbolical of the cour¬ age of William’s ancestor, William the Short- Nose, vassal of Louis the Debonair, son of Charle¬ magne, against the Spanish Moors. This hero is the subject of a Dutch mediaeval poem. In the centre, overlying all, is the Greek cross, shield of the city of Geneva, in token of William’s adoption of the Calvinistic form of the Christian faith. Church and state being one in defense of the Union, against secession and in mutual trust in 218 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. God, the Reformed Church in Nederland, in honoring this symbol, added the opening words in Latin of Psalm cxxvii., Nisi Dominus Frus - tra. Beneath is the motto, in Dutch, of the States-General, Eendracht maaJct macJit (In Union there is Strength). Planking the main shield are star-crowned pillars, symbols of solidity of character and of aspiration. On the top of the shield is a helmet on which rests the imperial crown, significant of the loyalty of the princes of Orange to the emperor. The principalities represented on the large shield are in Germany. Those on the smaller are in Prance. The title of the Prince of Orange came into the Nassau family in 1530 by the mar¬ riage of Claude de Chalons with the Count of Nassau. Centring all, the empire, and the principalities in two kingdoms of France and Germany, is the shield of the republic presided over by Calvin, the great nursing father of democratic liberty and promoter of free education. No wonder the Amer¬ icans love the name and the arms of William. To the Dutchman, orange is a symbolical as well as historical color. Compounded of red and yellow, it tells of blood and gold, life and prop¬ erty, — all that is dear to man on earth. When, on the thirty-first day of August, the birthday of Queen Wilhelmina is celebrated, the cities of Ne¬ derland are brilliant with orange bunting, as in THE DUTCH IN AMERICA. 219 church and in festal array the people meet to ex¬ press their love and joy. The descendants of the Dutch immigrants who settled in the Middle States, the western part of Massachusetts, and in Kentucky during our colo¬ nial period are now scattered in many States and are allied to many churches. Those who main¬ tained the Reformed (Dutch) Church in America organized the first Protestant church in America in 1628, founded Rutgers College at New Bruns¬ wick, N. J., in 1766, and Union College in Sche¬ nectady in 1784. Rutgers shortened the motto of Utrecht University, /Sol justifies, illustra nos (Sun of justice, shine on us), while adding et occidentem (Sun of justice, illumine also the West). Union’s motto is the ancient formula of concord, “ In things necessary, unity; in things doubtful, liberty; in all things, charity.” The western Nederlanders, who have become American since 1847, have founded Hope College in Michi¬ gan. Our country is not a new England, but a new Europe. In its making, the steady, patient, in¬ telligent, and conservative Dutchmen have been a powerful force too often ignored by those who write our national history. CHAPTER XXVIII. A CENTURY OF PROSPERITY. The truce of twelve years peased in 1621, and the war with Spain was promptly renewed. Mau¬ rice conducted the operations at Bergen-op-Zoom and Breda, and was head of the army until his death in 1625. Frederick Henry, Prince of Or¬ ange, a wise and liberal-minded prince, succeeded as stadtholder, proving himself also an able gen¬ eral. The war continued until 1648, when at last Spain was exhausted. On the 5th cf June, exactly eighty years to the day after the execution of Egmont and Hoorn, peace was solemnly con¬ cluded. Spain had buried three hundred and fifty thousand of her sons and allies in the oozy Netherlands, and had spent untold millions of money. She had nearly ruined herself financially in trying to uproot liberty. In seeking to wring the neck of heresy, she had broken her own back. Henceforth, from the rank of the first power in Europe, she sank to the level of a fourth-rate country, stagnant in ideas, and “the China of Christendom.” Two years after the treaty of peace, the na« A CENTURY OF PROSPERITY. 221 tional flag of the United States of Nederland was changed from orange, white, and blue to the red, white, and blue, as still seen in our time. Henceforth the political factors in the history of the republic are two. The tendency to make the central government strong, to lay the empha¬ sis on the nation, to err in the direction of mon¬ archy, is represented by the stadtholder, or presi¬ dent, usually one of the princes of the House of Orange. The tendency to assert the rights of the separate states, to strengthen the local freedom and interest, to err in the direction of obstruction or secession, is represented by the anti-Orange party. The House of Orange produced ten able princes, a record not easily paralleled in Europe. The Or¬ ange party was usually composed of the popular and Calvinistic elements. The anti-Orangeists were mostly commercial and aristocratic. The one was democratic, the other republican; but, as in our own republic, there were many fluctuations, and even paradoxes. In Nederland, as in Amer¬ ica, “ Politics makes strange bedfellows.” Often the struggle, strain, or “ deadlock ” was between one state, the rich and powerful Holland, and the others in the union. England and Nederland kept their ancient friendship until Great Britain grew jealous of the power of the Dutch on the ocean and in the East. The British coveted the wealth and influence of the republic and hungered to share 222 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. it. Between the bull-dog courage of the British and the dogged tenacity of the Dutch, heavy fighting was sure to be the rule. In the naval battles which ensued, Blake, Ascough, Dean, Monk, and Penn are famous English names. Tromp, de Ruyter, de With, Evertsen, Elorisz, and other names adorn the annals of Dutch valor and naval science. Although Great Britain finally won the day, and became, until 1812, mistress of the seas, English sneers at “ Dutch courage ” are not creditable to those who utter them. Both contestants were equally courageous. During most of the time of the English Com¬ monwealth, the Dutch United States had no stadtholders. The able statesman, John de Witt, as Grand Pensionary, directed the affairs of state. He represented the powerful burghers and the aristocracy. He carried to the extreme not only the idea of state rights, but the formula that each town was sovereign. As pure in his own life and motive as Barneveldt or Calhoun, he was fettered in action by the very party and princi¬ ples that had raised him to power. The people felt outraged by his policy, and, led on by their clergy, charged him with selling his country to the British. In a wild outburst of fury, at the Hague, August 20, 1672, he and his brother Cor¬ nelius, deputy of the States-General, were torn to pieces by the mob. In England, the principles of the English Com- A CENTURY OF PROSPERITY. 223 monwealth seemed lost in the death of Cromwell, and the accession to the throne of Charles II. They were reasserted and widened when the Brit¬ ish people, in 1688, following the example of the Dutch in 1581, in deposing Philip, put out their king, James II., and invited William III. of Nederland to he their sovereign. This stadt- holder, who was at once President of the Dutch Republic and King of Great Britain and Ireland, was, like his ancestor the Silent, a lover of char¬ ity in religion, and toleration in the state. Like his father, William II., whose wife was daughter of Charles I., he had married into the Stuart family of England, his wife being his own cousin and the daughter of James II. Under his reign, from 1688 to 1702, the principles for which the people of England contended in their Common¬ wealth, under Fairfax and Cromwell, became part of the British Constitution. In both states¬ manship and war, William III. was a practical genius of the highest order. He was all his life a determined opponent of Louis XIY. of France. During the eighteenth century the Dutch people and their government deteriorated. Their his¬ tory during this period is a chapter of decay. The political machinery became clogged, and at times almost suffered paralysis. The office of stadtholder, which had been abolished, was re¬ stored, and made hereditary in the House of Or¬ ange. It thus became more and more like that 224 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. of a king. The stadtholders or princes of Orange lived like kings, and aped the vices of the sover¬ eigns around them. The people followed the example set them. Luxury, extravagance, and manners prevalent in monarchies were imitated by the Dutch nobles and burghers. They weakened in the old ear¬ nestness, integrity, devotion to high principles, sound ideas of honor, reverence for women, fru¬ gality and temperance, for which their fathers had been noted. The money-loving spirit in¬ creased. Religion became more formal. Manners declined. The love of strong liquors increased. Commerce, credit, the navy, army, and the col¬ onies declined. One who studies the strong, seri¬ ous faces on the canvases of Frans Hals and Rembrandt, and then compares with them the portraits of the eighteenth century, is painfully impressed with the fact of a change not for the better. In a word, the reaction after a century of lof¬ tiest heroism had come. The virtues of repub¬ lican faith in God, high motives, grand actions, and simplicity in dress, food, and life, had fallen to the common level of Europe in the unheroic and prosaic eighteenth century. Nevertheless, after exposing fully the faults of the people of Nederland, the simple facts show that in love of learning and of liberty, in works of benevolence and public charity, in freedom of A CENTURY OF PROSPERITY. 225 the press, in tolerance of religion, the little repub¬ lic was far ahead of any nation in Europe. Hav¬ ing no coal or iron in their alluvial country, the Dutch, who, with the Huguenots, had furnished Great Britain with so much skill and industry, were unable to compete in manufactures or ship¬ ping with their English rivals. Nevertheless, and as if to make amends for their ill-fortune in ma¬ terial things, the Dutchmen gave themselves with renewed vigor to things intellectual. In the eighteenth century were founded most of those societies for the cultivation of the arts, science, and literature which are to-day the glory of Nederland. The Asian and other Oriental languages were first studied and made the heri¬ tage of Europe by the Dutch scholars, and the first Oriental society was founded in Java by them. The light of Leyden’s learning shone brightly all over Europe in the eighteenth cen<= tury. CHAPTER XXIX. NEDERLAND AND THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. From the first beginning of the American Revolution, the sympathies of the Dutch were with the colonies and their republic, and against the monarchy of Great Britain. They saw that just as the Spanish king had tried to fill his empty treasury by extra taxes on the Nether¬ lands, so the British attempted to repair their dilapidated finances by a direct attack on the liberties of the colonies. The Dutch knew, also, that the founders of New England had been edu¬ cated in Leyden, and that four States out of the thirteen had been first settled by Dutchmen; they knew, also, that the American revolt followed, in a hundred interesting details, that of their fathers in 1579 and 1581. On the American ships they saw the same red, white, and blue colors, and the same red and white stripes that floated from the mastheads of Tromp and de Ruyter. When, therefore, the Declaration of Independ¬ ence was signed in 1776, there was great joy in Nederland. Dutch officers crossed the ocean and enlisted in the Continental army. The THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 227 “Pennsylvania Dutchmen” first named Wash¬ ington, as their fathers had named William, “the Father of his Country.” In New York and New Jersey they were, in overwhelming ma¬ jority, loyal to the American cause. New York, largely Dutch in population, was the one State of the thirteen which paid up, fully and promptly, her quotas of men, of money, and of supplies. A native Dutch engineer in the United States army named Romayne, whom Washington greatly appreciated and honored, built the forts on the Hudson River. He also wrote a book in which he drew out in detail the parallel between the Dutch and the American union, declaration and war of independence, difficulties, and prospects. He prophesied the success of the side for which he fought and for which he died. The Dutch acted from principle as well as sen¬ timent. Their acts showed more than a love of trade and enterprise, in the business of supplying American privateers, and breaking the British blockade of American ports. They were the first foreigners to salute the American flag. One of the first ships of the United States navy was the Andrea Doria. She was named after the celebrated Genoese who in 1528 drove the French out of his native city, but instead of becoming dictator, he left the form of govern¬ ment to the citizens and supported the republic which they voted to have. The people named 228 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. him “ Father of his Country and Restorer of its Liberties.” The ship thus happily named sailed from Philadelphia into the harbor of St. Eusta- chius in the West Indies. She had a copy of the Declaration of Independence on board. The governor of the Dutch port was Johannes de Graeff. He was delighted to see that the old striped colors of the Fatherland had been adopted by the American States - General or Congress. He at once ordered the artillery of the fort to boom out a salute. Eleven “ honor shots ” were fired. There ought to have been thirteen, but de Graeff was a lawyer, and knew the value of fictions of law which were still in fashion. Though boasting of his deed, what he wanted to do, what he succeeded in doing, was to postpone responsibility until Nederland had espoused the cause and made public and official recognition of the United States of America. This was the first foreign salute to our flag. His portrait, hanging in the state house at Concord, N. H., represents him reading the American Declaration of Independence. At home the stadtholder and Prince of Orange, allied in marriage'with the royal family of Eng¬ land, sided with the British against the Ameri¬ cans. On the contrary, the Dutch people, well instructed in their own ancestral history and kept well informed of American politics, were hearty and open in their sympathy with the THE AMEBIC AN B EVOLUTION. 229 cause of freedom. They showed their feelings of friendship to the Americans on every occasion, as we shall see. One remnant of the British forces which had fought in Dutch pay in the war for independence from 1584 to 1648 still remained in Nederland. This was the Scotch Brigade. A treaty had been made in 1716—17, with a view to maintain¬ ing the Protestant succession on the throne of Great Britain. It stipulated that, as allies, the Dutch should furnish soldiers and money when called on. This, in several European wars, they had already done. In answer to the demand of George III. for immediate compliance, the Dutch refused to allow one man or a single guilder to be used against the Americans. They argued that this war was waged by the king against his own subjects, and had nothing to do with the question of the Protestant succession. The foolish king and his corrupt Parliament had therefore to seek for mercenaries elsewhere. Russia refused, but some petty German princes sent over that miscellaneous body of worthy but unfortunate men called “ the Hessians.” The two parties, for and against the stadtholder in Nederland, became for years “ pro-British ” and “ anti-British,” and were very bitter against each other. The man who from the first championed the American cause in Nederland was Baron Joan 280 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND . Derek van der Capellen. He was a nobleman with estates in Overyssel, and a member of the state legislature, but thoroughly democratic in his sentiments. He had relieved the farmers in his native state from certain oppressive burdens, the relics of feudalism. He believed that the Germanic race by crossing the Atlantic were tc make vast progress, and the New World instruct the Old in many things. His affection for Amer¬ ica was warm and unselfish. He translated pam¬ phlets giving information about the United States and kept the Dutch people informed of the pro¬ gress of the war. He corresponded with Dr. Franklin, Governor Jonathan Trumbull, John Adams, and other eminent Americans. He was joined in his good work by other Dutch writers like Dr. Calkoens, who soon filled Nederland with their books, pamphlets, satires, poems, show¬ ing the injustice of the British and the justness of the American cause. To encourage our fathers, Yan der Capellen wanted short sketches of the Dutch war of in¬ dependence, and accounts of the siege of Haar¬ lem and Leyden scattered throughout the thir¬ teen States. Professor Jean Luzac, editor of a very influential newspaper published in Leyden, and which circulated all over Europe, was also notably helpful in the American cause. Being issued in a republic where the press was free, it was printed and accepted in countries where the THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 231 freedom of the press was unknown. It soon became an authority, and powerfully influenced public opinion in favor of the United States. Washington sent Luzac a letter of thanks, and made him a present of the camp stool on which he sat during his campaigns of the Revolutionary War. There was no mistake about the warmth of the Dutch heart towards the Americans. Popular feeling showed itself quickly. When Jones cap¬ tured the Serapis, he brought his prizes to the Texel. The streets of the Dutch cities at once resounded with popular songs in which the valor of the Yankee man-of-war was celebrated. Claas Taan, a Dutchman with a fleet of grain ships, broke the British blockade and relieved Balti¬ more of pressing need. For this act Mr. Taan was afterwards presented with an oil portrait of Washington and a letter of thanks from the Father of his Country. The students of the Uni¬ versity of Franeker held a grand festival with torchlight processions, bonfires, Latin poems, and orations, in which they celebrated the auspi¬ cious future of the young American republic. It was these “ free Frisians,” always lovers of liberty, who led the way in recognizing the United States of America. Medals were struck to celebrate the event when Friesland first, and the other states of the Dutch republic, and finally, on the 19th of April, 1782, the States- 232 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. General, passed the formal act of recognition. Three days later, Mr. John Adams had audience of the stadtholder and Prince of Orange. By this time the British had already declared war against Nederland for several reasons. The first was for saluting the American flag, and for furnishing and equipping the American priva¬ teers. These vessels, loaded at St. Eustachius, supplied probably one half of the munitions of war to the Continental army. The second reason was that van Berckel, pensionary of Amsterdam, had purposed to make a treaty and open trade with the Americans. The papers of van der Capellen, van Berckel, Governor Trumbull of Connecticut, and Erkelens, a Dutchman in Phila¬ delphia, had been found when Henry Laurens, ex-president of the Continental Congress, was captured on the ocean by the British frigate Vestal. When the States - General refused to punish either de Graeff or van Berckel, the Brit¬ ish government instantly declared war. Since the British insisted on stopping Dutch trade with France and Spain, and violated treaties by searching and capturing Dutch ships and im¬ pressing Dutch sailors, the Nederlanders, poor as they were at this time, determined to assert their rights. They built a fleet of ships to convoy their trading vessels and defend them against British aggression. To enter the battle against Great Britain at this time was at fearful odds. THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 233 The disparity in forces was not unlike that of the conflict of two centuries before with Spain. No sooner was war declared against Nederland than the British admiral Rodney started for St. Eustachius. He left Cornwallis in Virginia to care for himself as best he could against the com¬ bined American and French armies. With a great fleet he captured the place. He seized the fifty American merchant vessels in port, whether privateers or merchant ships loaded with cotton and tobacco. His spoils were worth in all about two millions of dollars. Two thousand American prisoners were also taken. Rodney imagined he had put down the rebel¬ lion of the colonies. As a matter of fact, Corn¬ wallis had surrendered, and the Dutch bankers of Amsterdam, by lending us fourteen millions of dollars when most wanted, prepared our fathers to renew the struggle. Proposals for peace were soon after made, and the United States of America were recognized as a sovereign power, free and independent among the nations of the earth. The flag first saluted by the Dutch now floated to the breezes of every clime. In helping the Americans in their struggle against Great Britain, the French acted selfishly and in accordance with the programme of Euro¬ pean politics. The Dutch acted out of their sym¬ pathy with a republic and a people who were following their own example. With little or no 234 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. desire to take part in European machinations, they lent us money and helped us with powder, cannon, and clothing. The policy of the French was to weaken their ancient foe, and to recover Canada and their North American possessions. They wanted to begin operations along the St. Lawrence. Washington, Franklin, and Adams saw through their designs and insisted on a com¬ bined attack upon Cornwallis at Yorktown. Our fathers preferred the English to the French as neighbors on this continent. CHAPTER XXX. THE DUTCH AND AMERICAN CONSTITUTIONS. In Nederland, the movement of the people in favor of America was against the Orange party and the stadtholders, who favored England. Since 1747 the office of stadtholder had been made hereditary, and more and more had the head of the republic assumed the airs of a king. The strain was now fearful, and fears for the safety of the union and of republican government were anxiously felt all over Nederland. The States-General deprived the stadtholder of his command of the army, but refused to the people that share in the public affairs which van der Capellen and others demanded. By the year 1787, so many Dutch patriots had found life in¬ tolerable under the arbitrary rule of the Prince of Orange, that they fled in large numbers to France. There they aroused the French senti¬ ment in favor of the anti-Orangeists. Many others came to the United States. Bands of citizens be¬ gan to drill, with the idea of resisting the appar¬ ent attempt of the stadtholder to make himself kmg- In this condition the Prince of Orange, who had 236 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. married the sister of Frederick II. of Prussia, fled to Germany and stirred up his brother-in-law to support him and invade Nederland. The cry of “ Oranje boven ! ” and the wearing of the orange colors by excited people showed that the country was on the brink of civil war. In this crisis England prepared to assist the stadtholder, prom¬ ising to let loose the Hessians in Nederland as she had done in America, should the French aid the anti-Orange party with an army and a navy. The monarchies of Europe were only too glad of an opportunity to crush the republic. The ex¬ cuse waited for was found when the Princess of Orange was arrested by the legislature of Holland while on her way to Nymegen. An army of twenty thousand Prussians marched into Neder¬ land and occupied several cities. Van Berckel, van der Capellen, and other popular leaders were made prisoners. Van der Kemp came to America. In fact, the United States of Nederland were suffering from the defects of their constitution, their imperfect federal government, and the de¬ cline of the national spirit. It so happened that at the same time the United States of America were in their greatest trouble on practically the same causes, under their Articles of Confederation. In the year 1787, when our fathers met in Phila¬ delphia, they had before their eyes the living example of the Dutch republic, with its two hun¬ dred years of experience, and the excellences and DUTCH AND AMERICAN CONSTITUTIONS. 237 the defects of its constitution. The framers of the Constitution of the United States profited by both. They looked well into the mirror of Dutch history. Let us see how they did it. Originality in methods of government is hardly possible. Searching all antiquity and looking at modern examples, our fathers tried to copy with improvements the good and avoid the evil. From the Dutch system they borrowed the idea of a written Constitution, a Senate or States-General, the Hague or District of Columbia, the Supreme Court (with vast improvements), the land laws, registration of deeds and mortgages, local self- government from the town and county to the government of governments at Washington, the common school system, freedom of religion and of the press, and many of the details of the Dutch state and national systems. The principle for which the Anabaptists contended, and for which thousands of them were put to death, separation of the church and state, was made fundamental in the American system. James Madison in 1822 wrote, “ The example of Holland proved that a toleration of sects dissenting from the established sect was safe and even useful. We are teaching the world that governments do better without kings and nobles than with them. The merit will be doubled by the other lesson: that religion flourishes in greater purity without than with the aid of government.” 238 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. The mirror of Nederlandish history reflected a powerful light upon our country’s future, and enabled our fathers to foresee dangers and to make provision for them. Alexander Hamilton, who had married his wife, Miss Schuyler, from one of the Dutch families in New York, and was the best read man in Nederlandish history, points out these dangers in “ The Federalist.” In some respects, especially in the department of the executive, and the relations of great and powerful states to the smaller ones, in a word, in the relations of centralization and state rights, the Dutch republic was an awful example. Mr. Pierce Butler of South Carolina, John Randolph, James Madison, and Dr. Franklin, laid emphasis on the patent evils. Mr. Madison, speaking of the lax system of the Dutch confederacy, said, “ Holland contains about half the people, sup¬ plies about half the money, and by her influence silently and indirectly governs the whole repub¬ lic.” Gouverneur Morris said, “ The United Ne- derlands are at this time torn in factions. With these examples before our eyes, shall we form an establishment which shall necessarily produce the same effects ? ’ ’ The result, in our system, shows how Nederland’s old danger was avoided. The one great defect in the Dutch constitution was in allowing the stadtholder too much unregu¬ lated power, and thus enabling him to become almost independent of the people. He could not DUTCH AND AMERICAN CONSTITUTIONS. 239 be impeached. Dr. Franklin showed how, in the late War of the Revolution, the States-General had ordered the Dutch fleet to unite with the French to assist the Americans. The Dutch ships failed to appear, and suspicion arose that the stadt- holder was at the bottom of it. So it proved. Yet the stadtholder continued in office, strength¬ ening his power. No examination was made. Had he been called to account and punished, or if unjustly accused, tried and restored to public confidence, all would have been well, and the Dutch republic might not have fallen. Our fa¬ thers provided for the impeachment of the presi¬ dent, who is the stadtholder, elective and impeach¬ able, of the American republic. During the troubles between Barneveldt and Maurice, as well as in 1787, as Mr. Pierce Butler had noticed, Nederland was distracted by having more than one military head. Our fathers deter¬ mined to have one only. They made the presi¬ dent the commander-in-chief of the army and the navy of the United States. In a word, the American Constitution borrows more points from that of the Dutch than from any other. The United States of America is po¬ litically more like the United States of Nederland than like any other country. CHAPTER XXXI. “ THE DUTCH HAVE TAKEN HOLLAND.” Affairs in Nederland went on from bad to worse, and a flood more destructive than that of the stormy ocean engulfed the country. The Trench Revolution broke out in 1792, and the passion for conquest seizing the citizen French¬ men, they overran Belgium. The ice being frozen on the Scheldt, Nederland offered tempting prey. The French armies, urged on by Dutch refugees in France, and invited by revolutionary or anti- stadtholder committees at the Hague and Amster¬ dam, moved into Nederland, and the Dutch lost Holland. The French protectorate was called the Bata¬ vian Republic. Under Napoleon, Louis Bona¬ parte, his brother, was made king of Holland. In 1810, Nederland was incorporated with the French empire. The old landmarks of social order were swept away. New systems of laws, courts, and taxes, utterly distasteful to the people were introduced. Orators in French and Dutch raved over the rights of man, and French art, pictures, statuary, and emblems decorated the cib ies. The young men, as conscripts for Napoleon, “THE BUTCH HAVE TAKEN HOLLAND .” 241 perished by the tens of thousands on distant bat¬ tle-fields, the victims of French ambition. Ground down by taxes and odious laws, the Nederlanders, humiliated and captive, eagerly waited for an op¬ portunity to regain their country. French officers in Nederland were not without tokens of the pop¬ ular temper. Sometimes they woke up in the morning to find their eagles, cockades, and monu¬ ments painted orange color. The expected deliverance soon came. At the battle of Waterloo, a body of Dutch troops led by the Prince of Orange fought on the side of the allies, with valor like that of the old times. Napoleon was defeated. At once the Prince of Orange, William II., backed by Russian and Prussian troops, rode into the Hague. The peo¬ ple everywhere welcomed him. On the 1st of December, 1815, in the ancient capital of Neder¬ land, he took the title of Sovereign Prince. All over Europe was heard the news, “ The Dutch have taken Holland.” By the congress and treaty of the victorious allies, Belgium and Nederland were made one country, and William I. was crowned king cf the Netherlands September 27, 1815. Thus again, as in ancient and mediaeval days, two peoples dif¬ ferent in language, interests, religion, and char¬ acter, were joined in an artificial union, which could not last. The Dutch found out once more the difference 242 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. between a republic and a monarchy. Except Louis Bonaparte, they had called no ruler a king. They soon learned again the true nature of such governors. William I. was a bigoted Protestant, and began to interfere outrageously with Roman Catholic religion and education in Belgium. In Nederland the Calvinists had always been demo¬ cratic in church affairs. William remodeled both church and state on the principles of a mon¬ archy like Prussia or England. The freedom of the press was restricted, and the ancient liberties of the people in the congregations and in the municipalities curtailed in many ways. The re¬ sults were the revolt and secession of Belgium, and a great schism in the Dutch Reformed Church which has sent a hundred thousand Nederland- ers to America. These hardy emigrants helped largely to people the States of Michigan, Wiscon¬ sin, Iowa, Nebraska, Dakota, and other parts of the northwest. The Belgium insurrection began August 25, 1830, but peace did not end all strife until April 19, 1839. The free navigation of the Scheldt River was secured to the Belgians. The Dutch have immortalized, in painting and sculpture, Lieutenant Van Speyk, who blew up himself and his ship at Antwerp, to prevent its capture by the Belgians. The ship named after him was sent by the Dutch government to take part in the Columu bian naval display in New York in 1893. The “ THE DUTCH HAVE TAKEN HOLLAND.” 243 marines, neat, clean-limbed, active Dutch young men, marched down Broadway. They gave Amer¬ icans, who had been reared on the stories of Washington Irving, the opportunity to compare fiction with fact, and fanciful caricature with sim¬ ple truth. William I., of the kingdom of Nederland, re¬ signed the crown in 1840, and was succeeded by William II. William III., lover of rich dinners, music, and art, reigned from 1849 to 1890. He profited by the experiences of his predecessors and did little harm. Our Mr. Motley was his personal friend. The Dutch people have ever been grateful to the House of Orange for their great services to Nederland. The illustrious line came to an end, on the male side, with William III. His widow, Emma, became queen regent, and his daughter, Wilhelmina, born August 31, 1880, the nominal ruler and queen. In our civil war, the sympathies of the Dutch were wholly in favor of the cause of Union. The bonds of the United States of America sold in liberal quantities in Nederland. Thousands of Dutchmen, many of them crossing the ocean for the purpose, enlisted under the red, white, and blue, — the same colors under which their ances¬ tors fought first for Independence and then for Union. The national arms of Nederland consist of a shield on which is a crowned lion rampant. He 244 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. holds a naked sword in the right paw and a sheaf of eleven arrows, symbolical of the provinces into which the kingdom is divided, in the left. Vari¬ ous dottings or markings of oblong shape are meant to represent either drops of blood, as some say, or perhaps more exactly, bricks of turf. The national motto is that of William the Silent, Je maintiendrai I will maintain The Dutch are still taking Holland; they are maintaining their old-time principles, their love of industry, freedom, art, literature, science, and religion. Without the coal and iron of England, the military strength of Germany, the fertile soil and resources of France, the little country holds, her own place amid her powerful neighbors. The Dutch are not like the Germans. Thej are not fond of abstractions, or impracticable so¬ cial theories. There is little or no military tone among the people. They have a high sense of independence. They are averse to blind obedi¬ ence. A Dutchman does not willingly give up his individual opinion. He submits to the ma¬ jority, but clings to his own notions. You can win a Dutchman’s heart and lead him, but he cannot be pushed. It may be that some strong neighbor, perhaps “ the giant under the spiked helmet,” may attempt to swallow up little Nederland. A few years ago a Berlin newspaper hinted that the great empire wanted the mouths of the Rhine. In its pictorial illustration, a company of Uhlans “ THE DUTCH HAVE TAKEN HOLLAND 245 were already riding into the Hague, the advance guard of the host with the spiked helmets. The next week a Dutch newspaper made answer by a picture without one word of explanation or com¬ ment. The dykes had been cut and the water reached four inches above the tip of the tallest Uhlan’s helmet spike. In the art of the republic, the Dutch, realists in everything, first glorified the home. Instead of painting winged angels, mysteries, dogmas, monks, nuns, popes, they transfigured on the can¬ vas the joys of pure wedded life, the mother, the baby in the cradle, the merry-making at the Ker¬ mis, their lovely meadows, their glorious sunsets, and splendors of light and shade. Rembrandt, Franz Hals, Gerard Dow, Jan Steen, Teniers, Ruisdael, Hobbema, Cuyp, Potter, are among Dutch artist names of world renown. In our century Ary Scheffer, Israels, Bosboom, Alma Tadema, Mesdag, Blommers, Artz, Mauve, and others keep alive the glorious traditions and win world-wide fame for the Netherlands school of art. In science and engineering, invention and the appliances of art and industry to human life, in learning and research, we could not, in our space, mention the long list of names which show that the Dutch intellect is even yet second to none in Europe. In literature there is a galaxy of stars. While gome of the Dutch authors write in German, 246 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND. French, or English, in order to reach quickly the world outside and the learned within Nederland, most of them employ their own native tongue. In poetry, Bilderdijk, Tollens, Ten Kate ; in fiction, van Lennep, Douwes Dekker, Bosboom - Tous- saint, Melati van Java, Vosmaer; in belles-let¬ tres, Busken Huet; in history, van Prinsterer, Fruin, Jorissen, Pierson, and Blok; in criticism and oriental scholarship, Kuenen, Tiele, Kern, and de Goeje, are among names that were nof born to die. We conclude with the words of William the Silent, written to the Dutch magistrates in 1577; and made the corner-stone first of the Dutch and then of the American Republic:— “We declare to you that you have no right TO INTERFERE WITH THE CONSCIENCE OF ANY one, so long as he has done nothing that works injury to another person, or a public scandal.” CHAPTER XXXII. THE REIGN OF QUEEN WILHELMINA. Wilhelmina Helena Pauline Maria, daugh¬ ter of King William III. and Emma, his second wife, born August 31,1880, was inaugurated Queen of the Netherlands in the New Church in Amster¬ dam, September 6, 1898. The keynote of her in¬ augural address still makes sweet music in all the hearts of her subjects — “ The House of Orange can never, no never, do enough for the Nether¬ lands.” At the enthronement, beside the elite of the kingdom, two rajahs from Java, and many other vassals from Insulinde, or Island India, were present. On the 16th of October, 1900, in a touching let¬ ter to her people, the Queen announced her engage¬ ment to Hendrik Vladimir Albrecht Ernst, born April 19, 1876, Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, son of the Grand Duke Frederick Francis II., who held a high command during the Franco-Prus- sian War. On February 7,1901, at the Hague, the bridal couple rode to the church in a golden coach, the gift of the Queen’s subjects, drawn, according to immemorial custom, by eight black horses with snow-white bridles. The marriage was according 248 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND . to the ritual of the Reformed Church, the words being omitted that require the wife to live where her husband does. Duke Hendrik received the title of Prince of the Netherlands, rank as Admiral in the navy, and a seat in the Raad van State, or Council of State, of fourteen members, over which the sovereign presides. This council, by virtue of its having direction of all legislative and of many executive measures, is the chief regulative feature of the Netherlands government. The four vital subjects in Dutch politics are education, the colonies, the army, and the franchise. The Prince-Consort, a man of fine qualities, besides mastering the Dutch language, showed himself a hero. By his heroic rescue of passengers from the wreck of the British steamer Berlin, at the Hook of Holland, February, 1907, he quickly won the popular heart. The hopes of direct succession in the line of the House of Orange came to fruition in the birth, on April 80,1909, of a princess, Juliana Louise Emma Marie Wilhelmina. The first in this rosary of his¬ toric names recalls Juliana of Stolberg, mother of William the Silent; the second, Louise de Coligny, his fourth wife. Emma and Marie and Wilhelmina are the names of both the grandmothers and of the mother of the new Princess of Orange-Nassau and Duchess of Mecklenburg. A salute of fifty-one guns and a national celebration greeted the advent of “ The Princess Juliana,” christened June 5,1909. THE REIGN OF QUEEN WILHELMINA. 249 In the foreign relations of Holland, the chief events in QueenWilhelmina’s reign have been the Boer War, the Russo-Japanese War, the Algeci- ras Conference, and the dispute with Venezuela, through each of which the Netherlands acted inde¬ pendently and emerged with honor. At home, a striking increase of population, with movement toward the cities, must be noted, giving the Netherlands a proportionately larger urban population than any other country in Europe, the city of Rotterdam having since 1869 increased four¬ fold. Now, with nearly half a million people, and a vast increase of docking facilities, the city on the Maas boasts of being the seventh port for shipping in the world. By the census of 1905, the nation consists of 5,591,701 souls, of whom 4,895,845 live in the provinces in which they were born. In the revival of the national spirit, largely through re-study of their own history (in which the Dutch historians were led by Motley), and through wise advantage taken of economic possibilities, several anniversaries of the birth of great men, such as Rembrandt, De Ruyter, and Bilderdijk, were held on a national scale. On July 16,1906, in the Rijks Museum at Amsterdam, in the Golden Hall dedicated to Rembrandt and Saskia, the leading people of the kingdom with their foreign guests as¬ sembled, not only to do honor by words of praise to the greatest of the northern painters, but also to enshrine his immortal picture, “ The Night 250 BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND . Watch,” in a room specially built in seventeenth century style to accommodate the canvas. In laboring for the coming 44 parliament of man, the federation of the world,” the Dutch have been ever in the van. Erasmus condemned war, Grotius wrote a book that awakened the world’s conscience, and William Penn pointed to the Dutch Republic, or League of Seven States, as an ex¬ ample of peaceful federation, whose methods of cooperation and arbitration ought to become inter¬ national. The chief Powers of the world having sent their delegates to the Hague in May, 1899, these convened in the House in the Wood built by Amalia van Solms in memory of Prince Frederick Henry. The sessions were rich in results, visible especially in the Russo-Japanese War. The second International Peace Conference met at the Hague in the newly renovated Hall of the Knights, or old castle of the Counts of Holland, built in 1248 and enlarged in 1285, and situated at the east end of the Binnenhof. Here, within, had been seen not a few of the most brilliant medieval pageants, while in front of it some events decisive for the world’s weal had taken place. The con¬ ference was opened by Queen Wilhelmina in June, 1907, and sat until October 18, having settled some vital principles. On the same day wireless messages were flashed across the Atlantic. INDEX Adams, John, 199, 230, 232, 236. Adolph of Nassau, 158, 159. Africa, 5, 111. Albany, 211. Albigenses, 91. Alden, John, 207, 209. Alkmaar, 48, 81, 108, 166. Alva, 14, 23, 115,126, 144, 153, 158, 162, 164-167, 173. America, 47, 109. American origins, 2-4, 17, 28, 40, 33, 36, 65, 76, 77, 90, 91, 93, 96, 99, 103, 105, 113, 115, 117, 125, 130, 133, 134, 136, 138, 154, 158, 169, 170, 177,179-219, 226-239, 242. Amsterdam, 72, 107, 139, 145, 194, 197, 232, 233, 249. Anabaptists, 136-138, 148, 161, 184, 193, 196. 237. Andrea Doria, 227, 228. Anglo-Saxon, 29, 42. Anti-Orange party, 221,235,236, 240. Antwerp, 147, 62, 176. Arminians, 183, 186, 188, 190, 203. Arminius. See Hermann. Arms of cities, 15, 18, 85,161, 217. Art, 205, 244, 245. Asega book, 55. Aurania, 211. Austerfield, 56,209. Bameveldt, 180-190, 200, 222. Batavians, 26, 30, 31, 42, 54, 159. Beemster, 178. Beggars, 15, 22, 146, 147, 157-159. 163, 164, 168, 170. Belgium, 15, 43, 86, 240-242. Bells, 85, 93, 95. Bible, 106,121,125,126,134,135,139, 145, 204, 210, 216. Bishops, 43, 44, 69, 70. Bleeching, 120, 121. Block Island, 210. Blok, P. J., 246. Boerhaave, 112, 113. Boers, 5, 20. Boniface, 44, 48. Bossu, 22, 166. Boston, 13, 103. Brabant, 57, 77. Bradford, William, 56, 207, 208. Bread and Cheese War, 108. Brederode, 81, 146, 152. Brethren of the Common Life, 12? 129. Brewster, William, 195,197, 204. Bricks, 94-96. Brill, 15, 22,159, 163, 170. Broad Street, 21, 35. Brownists, 196, 197, 198. Brussels, 141, 146,158, 167. Buckwheat, 116. Burg, 74, 202. Burgundy, 103, 105, 110. Burns, Robert, 46. Butler, Pierce, 238, 239. Caesars, 25, 26, 29-31, 43,52. Caland, P., 13. California, 5. Calhoun, 181,222. Calkoens, Dr., 230. Calvin, 132, 218. Calvinism, 185, 190. Calvinists, 148,151,161,182-184, 20ty 203, 205, 210, 212, 221. Carlovingian dynasty, 52-56. Casembroot, Admiral, 108. Catherine van Hasselar, 165. Celts, 27-30, 41. Charlemagne, 52-56, 126, 212. Charles V., 23,109,122,134, 139-142. Charles the Bold, 104, 105. Charters, 24, 83, 84, 100, 104, 106, 141, 215. Chicago, 17, 97, 194. China, 12, 66, 67, 220. Christianity, 42-44, 49, 50, 61, 62. Christmas, 50,51, 53, 208. Civilis, 35. INDEX . 252 I Cleanliness, 93, 98. Clocks, 17, 84, 198. Coccejus, 190, 191. Codfishes, 101, 99-108. Columbus, 109. Common, 46-48, 64. Congress, 105. Constantinople, 41, 52, 58, 80, 89. Constitutions, 4, 90, 215, 235-239. Cornwallis, 233, 234. Costume-festivals, 143, 144. Courage, 75, 76, 106. Crusaders, 79-88,110, 112, 116, 122. Curfew, 54. Dakota, 242. Damietta, 83-85. Dams, 19. Danes, 39, 61, 62. Days of the Week, 50. Declaration of Independence, 3, 106, 226, 228. DeForest, Jesse, 200. De Graeff, Gov. J., 4, 228, 232. Delaware, 2, 212. Delfshaven, 16-18, 168, 207. Delft, 34, 95, 126, 170 , 207, 208. DeRuyter, 222, 226. Deventer, 57, 59, 116, 127, 129, 131. DeWitt, John, 222. Dirck, 68, 81. District of Columbia, 3. Dogger Bank, 107. Dokkum, 44. Dollart, 157. Domine, 77, 182,191, 213. Dordrecht, 73, 75, 77-107, 126, 188, 189. Drenthe, 68, 69. Dunes, 6. Dutch faces, 23, 224. Dutch language, 2, 45, 46, 84. Dykes, 20, 24, 34, 93,157, 165,177. Easter, 50, 111. East Indies, 5, 205. Edam, 19. Egmont, 143, 144, 146, 154,158, 163, 220 . Elizabeth, Queen, 104, 171, 172, 195. Emperor of Germany, 134. Empire State, 36, 212, 215. England, 82,109. English origins, 2, 32, 33, 38-51, 76, 96, 113, 114, 125,129, 135,142,154, 171-174,221-225. Enkhuysen, 97. Erasmus, 22, 88,127, 131-138, 250. Farragut, 59. Federalism, 169,170, 238, 239. Feudal system, 55, 64-71, 76, 77, 85, 86, 99. Fictions in law, 155, 156, 228. Fisheries, 9, 109. Flag, 1, 2, 4, 86, 221, 226-228, 233. Flanders, 77,80, 100. Flax, 117. Flemings, 96. Floris, Count, 14, 81. Flowers, 110-112, 118. Flushing, 7, 85, 145, 171. Fort Orange, 211. Franeker, 231. Franklin, Benjamin, 4, 230, 234,239. French Revolution, 240. Friesland, 3,45,49, 56, 61, 65, 69, 101, 108, 214, 231. Frisians, 30, 34, 38,40, 42, 45-51, 53, 55, 61, 82, 231. Gardens, 110-114. Gerhard, Groote, 127, 128. Germanic Empire, 73, 109. Germanic tribes, 27, 28, 32-34, 38, 53, 64. Germanicus, 33, 34, 156. Germans, 10, 29, 108, 109, 123, 161, 165, 215, 229, 244. Germany, 6, 10, 13, 24, 44, 56. Ghent, 105. Goes, 85, 102. Golden fleece, 103. Gomarus, Prof., 186. Gouda, 14, 20, 95, 106. Great Privilege, 105,107, 140. Groningen, 112, 187. Grotius, 188, 189, 250. Haarlem, 74, 83-85, 107, 108, 110, 111, 113, 121, 123, 126, 165, 230. Hague, 58, 78, 85, 104, 140, 145, 182, 189, 207, 237, 241, 247, 250. Hals, Franz, 224, 226. Hamilton, Alexander, 238. Heiliger Lee, 156-159. Hendrik, Prince Consort, 247, 248. Heretics, 90, 91. Hermann, 32, 33. Herring, 14, 18. Hessians, 229, 236. Holland, 72, 73. Holmes, Dr. O. W., 30. Homes, 46. Hooks, 99-108. Hoorn, 85, 108. Hoorn, Count, 143,146,148,154,158, 220 . Hope College, 219. House of a Thousand Fears, 22, 23. Hudson River, 48, 111, 205, 206, 227. Huguenots, 104, 200, 215, 225. INDEX 253 Iconoclasts, 149, 151. Impeachment, 239. Independents, 19G. Inquisition, 145, 149. International Peace Conferences, 250. Ireland, 41, 42, 104, 200. Irish, 41, 208, 209, 215. Iroquois Indians, 59, G6, 211. Italy, 21, 35, 75, 93, 97, 118, 119. Jacqueline, 102. Japan, 66, G9, 77, 86, 108, 111, 116, 176, 199. Jerusalem, 80. Jews, 28, 193, 194. Jones, Paul, 231. Juliana, Princess, 248. Kaatwyck, 7. Kabel-jauw, 101. Kentucky, 219. Kermiss, 116, 205. Kingdom of Nederland, 241-244. Korea, 124. Kuenen, 200, 246. Lace, 118. Leeuwarden, 44. Leicester, 171, 172. Lexington, 14, 105. Leyden, 14, 71, 108, 112, 113, 126, 130, 162, 168, 171, 186, 197-206, 230. Lincoln, Abraham, 111, 138, 180. Linen, 117, 120, 121. Lions, 9, 85, 216-217. Literature, 48, 245, 246. Lohengrin, 54. London, 193. Louis of Nassau, 156-158,161. Low Countries, 1, 103, 105, 206. Luther, 88. Luzac, Jean, 230, 231. Maas River, 7, 8, 12-18, 82, 84. Madison, James, 237, 238. Magna Charta, 82, 84, 105. Margaret of Savoy, 140, 146, 147,151, 155, 163. Mark, 64, 65. Martyrs, 160, 161. Maryland, 5. Massachusetts, 16,41,58,96,103,195, MauricefmfnS, 180-184, 186-188, 200, 206. Maximilian, 106, 107, 109. Medals, 71,147,170, 175. Medemblick, 49. Menno Simons, 137. Mennonites, 137,138. Merwede, 72,73, 77. Michigan, 219, 242. Middelburg, 74, 83, 84, 100. Mints, 75, 76. Mohawk River, 36, 48, 212. Monasteries, 69, 70, 124, 149. Money, 75, 105, 233. Morris, Gouverneur, 238. Mottoes, 9, 85,161,164,170, 175,191, 216-219. Music, 205. Naarden, 164. Names, 21, 68, 119, 121,154. Napoleon, 240. Nassau, 216. Nebraska, 242. Nederland, 1, 9, 68, 217. Netherlands, 1, 27, 103, 106, 206,217. New England origins, 46, 48, 56, 58, 154, 226. New Hampshire, 228. New Jersey, 2, 212. New Netherland, 76, 77, 96, 205,206, 210-219 New York, 2, 21, 77, 96, 210, 238. Normans, 46, 58, 63. Norseman, 57-63. Nymegen, 25, 36, 53, 54, 236. Ohio, 4. Olden-Barneveldt. See Barveveldt. Orange, House of, 10, 140, 164, 221, 223, 241. Orange party, 221, 235-237. Orange, Princes of, 2, 140, 141, 216- 220. See also William the Silent. Orange, white, and blue, 2, 163, 204, 221 . Oranje boven, 164, 236. Oriental Society, 225. Ostend, 176. Overyssel, 69, 230. Palestine. See Crusades. Patroon?, 75, 77, 213, 214. Penn, William, 137, 215. Pennsylvania, 2, 93, 212, 215, 216. Philadelphia, 21, 93, 236. Philip II., 106, 141-145, 148, 169. Pilgrim Fathers, 10, 17, 18, 47, 56, 62, 115, 117, 192. Plough, 113. Plymouth, 96, 207-209. Polders, 8, 94, 111. Popes, 32, 54, 79, 80, 82. Prince Consort, the, 247, 248. Printing, 123-125, 129, 133, 139, 180, 216. Prussians, 236, 242, 244. Puritans, 62, 201, 205, 209. 254 INDEX. Rabbits, 6. Radbod, 49. Randolph, John, 238. Ravens, 50, 00, 98. Red, white, and blue, 1, 226, 243. Reformed Church in America, 219. Revolutionary war, 3, 226-234. Rhine River, 7, 25, 29, 36, 37, 56. Robinson, John, 196, 200, 204-207. Rodney, Admiral, 233. Roman Catholics, 44. Romans, 24, 32. Romayne, 227. Rotterdam, 19-31, 45, 82, 106, 131, 133, 166,167, 193, 215, 249. Rutgers College, 219. Rembrandt, 224, 249. Russia, 229. Saint Eustachius, 228, 232, 233. Saint Nicholas, 51. Saracens, 53, 79, 85, 86, 88, 92. Saxons, 38-40, 50, 53. Scandinavians. See Norsemen. Scheldt River, 2, 7, 56, 240, 242. Schenectady, 214, 217-220. Schiedam, 16, 85, 126, 168. Schools, 3, 53, 26-130, 168, 177. Scots, 42, 45, 46, 75, 104, 165, 192, 199, 215, 229. Scott, Sir W., 46. Schuyler, Miss, 238. Scrooby, 13, 17, 195, 209. Secession, 3. Skating, 28. Slaves, 38, 66, 70, 88, 138, 216, 217. South Carolina, 4, 238. Spaarndam, 19. Spain, 22, 109, 128,134,141,220, 232. Spaniards, 22, 23, 152, 153, 157, 158, 165, 166, 205, 207, 220. Speedwell, 14, 207. Spices, 87, 89. Standish, Miles, 11, 109, 209. State rights, 3, 222. States General, 105, 148, 167, 182, 187-189, 207, 210, 231, 237. Stavoren, 49, 57. Sterling, 75. Street names, 21. Sydney, Sir Philip, 173,174. Taan, Claas, 231. Tacitus, 25. Tauchelyn, 91. Tenth Legion, 37. Texas, 5. Texel, 6, 74, 163, 231. Towns, 47, 64, 74, 90, 100. Trechts, 36, 73. Tromp, 222, 226. Trumbull, J., 230. Tulips, 110, 112. Turks, 58, 80. Uhlans, 244, 245. Union of Utrecht, 169,170. Union College, 219. Universities, 168, 199, 219. Usselincx, 177. Utrecht, 42, 57, 79,107,112,144,163, 219. Van Berckel, 232-236. Van Curler, 211, 214. Van der Capellen, 230, 232, 235, 23& Van der Kemp, 236. Van Rensselaer, 211. Van Speyk, 242. Varus, 32, 33, 156. Venice, 13, 89. Vianen, 59, 152. Vikings, 13, 58. Vlaardingen, 14,15. Voetians, 191. Von Moltke, 57. Waal River, 7, 53. Waldensians, 91. Wales, 199. Walloons, 200, 206, 212. Washington, 16, 216, 227, 231, 234, 237. Waterloo, 241. Water State, 13, 36, 94. West India Company, 17, 176, 177^ 206. West Indies, 4,5, 228. Wiclif, 88. Wilbrord, 42, 43, 48. Wilhelmina, Queen, 10, 218, 243,247, 248. William the Silent, 136,141,142,144, 147, 155, 160, 165, 167, 169, 170, 199, 216-219, 244, 246. William III., 223. William V., 241, 242. Williams, Roger, 209. Windmills, 92. Winfried, 43, 44. Wisconsin, 24, 242. Woden, 50, 51, 62. Wood engraving, 124. Wool, 103, 104. Xanten, 35. Yssel River, 14. Zeeland, 8, 9, 69. Zutphen,174. Zuyder Zee, 8, 97, 157,166,197. DATE DUE iTSioiail^D (JU Of i20?5 Demco, Inc. 38-293