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Life and Death of John of Barneveld By: John Lothrop Motley (1814-1877) |
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WITH A VIEW OF THE PRIMARY CAUSES AND MOVEMENTS OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR By John Lothrop Motley, D.C.L., LL.D.
1880
MOTLEY'S HISTORY OF THE NETHERLANDS THE LIFE AND DEATH OF JOHN OF BARNEVELD, 1609 1623, Complete
PREFACE: These volumes make a separate work in themselves. They form also the
natural sequel to the other histories already published by the Author, as
well as the necessary introduction to that concluding portion of his
labours which he has always desired to lay before the public; a History
of the Thirty Years' War. For the two great wars which successively established the independence of
Holland and the disintegration of Germany are in reality but one; a
prolonged Tragedy of Eighty Years. The brief pause, which in the
Netherlands was known as the Twelve Years' Truce with Spain, was
precisely the epoch in which the elements were slowly and certainly
gathering for the renewal over nearly the whole surface of civilized
Europe of that immense conflict which for more than forty years had been
raging within the narrow precincts of the Netherlands. The causes and character of the two wars were essentially the same. There
were many changes of persons and of scenery during a struggle which
lasted for nearly three generations of mankind; yet a natural succession
both of actors, motives, and events will be observed from the beginning
to the close. The designs of Charles V. to establish universal monarchy, which he had
passionately followed for a lifetime through a series of colossal crimes
against humanity and of private misdeeds against individuals, such as it
has rarely been permitted to a single despot to perpetrate, had been
baffled at last. Disappointed, broken, but even to our own generation
never completely unveiled, the tyrant had withdrawn from the stage of
human affairs, leaving his son to carry on the great conspiracy against
Human Right, independence of nations, liberty of thought, and equality of
religions, with the additional vigour which sprang from intensity of
conviction. For Philip possessed at least that superiority over his father that he
was a sincere bigot. In the narrow and gloomy depths of his soul he had
doubtless persuaded himself that it was necessary for the redemption of
the human species that the empire of the world should be vested in his
hands, that Protestantism in all its forms should be extirpated as a
malignant disease, and that to behead, torture, burn alive, and bury
alive all heretics who opposed the decree of himself and the Holy Church
was the highest virtue by which he could merit Heaven. The father would have permitted Protestantism if Protestantism would have
submitted to universal monarchy. There would have been small difficulty
in the early part of his reign in effecting a compromise between Rome and
Augsburg, had the gigantic secular ambition of Charles not preferred to
weaken the Church and to convert conscientious religious reform into
political mutiny; a crime against him who claimed the sovereignty of
Christendom. The materials for the true history of that reign lie in the Archives of
Spain, Austria, Rome, Venice, and the Netherlands, and in many other
places. When out of them one day a complete and authentic narrative shall
have been constructed, it will be seen how completely the policy of
Charles foreshadowed and necessitated that of Philip, how logically,
under the successors of Philip, the Austrian dream of universal empire
ended in the shattering, in the minute subdivision, and the reduction to
a long impotence of that Germanic Empire which had really belonged to
Charles. Unfortunately the great Republic which, notwithstanding the aid of
England on the one side and of France on the other, had withstood almost
single handed the onslaughts of Spain, now allowed the demon of religious
hatred to enter into its body at the first epoch of peace, although it
had successfully exorcised the evil spirit during the long and terrible
war... Continue reading book >>
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