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With the abdication of Charles in 1556 the new period may be said to begin, and it is here that Mr. Motley’s history commences. Events crowded thick and fast. In 1556 Philip II., a prince bred and educated for the distinct purpose of suppressing heresy, succeeded to the rule of the most powerful empire which had been seen since the days of the Antonines. In the previous year a new era had begun at the court of Rome. The old race of pagan pontiffs, the Borgias, the Farneses, and the Medicis, had come to an end, and the papal throne was occupied by the puritanical Caraffa, as violent a fanatic as Robespierre, and a foe of freedom as uncompromising as Philip II. himself. Under his auspices took place the great reform in the Church signalized by the rise of the Jesuits, as the reform in the thirteenth century had been attended by the rise of the Cordeliers and Dominicans. His name should not be forgotten, for it is mainly owing to the policy inaugurated by him that Catholicism was enabled to hold its ground as well as it did. In 1557 the next year, the strength of France was broken at St. Quentin, and Spain was left with her hands free to deal with the Protestant powers. In 1558, by the accession of Elizabeth, England became committed to the cause of Reform. In 1559 the stormy administration of Margaret began in the Netherlands. In 1560 the Scotch nobles achieved the destruction of Catholicism in North Britain. By this time every nation except France, had taken sides in the conflict which was to last, with hardly any cessation, during two generations.

Mr. Motley, therefore, in describing the rise and progress of the united republic of the Netherlands, is writing not Dutch but European history. On his pages France, Spain, and England make almost as large a figure as Holland itself. He is writing the history of the Reformation during its concluding epoch, and he chooses the Netherlands as his main subject, because during that period the Netherlands were the centre of the movement. They constituted the great bulwark of freedom, and upon the success or failure of their cause the future prospect of Europe and of mankind depended. Spain and the Netherlands, Philip II. and William the Silent, were the two leading antagonists and were felt to be such by the other nations and rulers that came to mingle in the strife. It is therefore a stupid criticism which we have seen made upon Mr. Motley, that, having brought his narrative down to the truce of 1609, he ought, instead of describing the Thirty Years’ War, to keep on with Dutch history, and pourtray the wars against Cromwell and Charles II., and the struggle of the second William of Orange against Louis XIV. By so doing he would only violate the unity of his narrative. The wars of the Dutch against England and France belong to an entirely different epoch in European history,–a modern epoch, in which political and commercial interests were of prime importance, and theological interests distinctly subsidiary. The natural terminus of Mr. Motley’s work is the Peace of Westphalia. After bringing down his history to the time when the independence of the Netherlands was virtually acknowledged, after describing the principal stages of the struggle against Catholicism and universal monarchy, as carried on in the first generation by Elizabeth and William, and in the second by Maurice and Henry, he will naturally go on to treat of the epilogue as conducted by Richelieu and Gustavus, ending in the final cessation of religious wars throughout Europe.

The conflict in the Netherlands was indeed far more than a mere religious struggle. In its course was distinctly brought into prominence the fact which we have above signalized, that since the Roman Church had abandoned the liberties of the people they had found a new defender in the reformed religion. The Dutch rebellion is peculiarly interesting, because it was a revolt not merely against the Inquisition, but also against the temporal sovereignty of Philip. Besides changing their religion, the sturdy Netherlanders saw fit to throw off the sway of their legitimate ruler, and to proclaim the thrice heretical doctrine of the sovereignty of the people. In this one respect their views were decidedly more modern than those of Elizabeth and Henry IV. These great monarchs apparently neither understood nor relished the republican theories of the Hollanders; though it is hardly necessary for Mr. Motley to sneer at them quite so often because they were not to an impossible degree in advance of their age. The proclamation of a republic in the Netherlands marked of itself the beginning of a new era,–an era when flourishing communities of men were no longer to be bought and sold, transferred and bequeathed like real estate and chattels, but were to have and maintain the right of choosing with whom and under whom they should transact their affairs. The interminable negotiations for a truce, which fill nearly one third of Mr. Motley’s concluding volume, exhibit with striking distinctness the difference between the old and new points of view. Here again we think Mr. Motley errs slightly, in calling too much attention to the prevaricating diplomacy of the Spanish court, and too little to its manifest inability to comprehend the demands of the Netherlanders. How should statesmen brought up under Philip II. and kept under the eye of the Inquisition be expected to understand a claim for liberty originating in the rights of the common people and not in the gracious benevolence or intelligent policy of the King? The very idea must have been practically inconceivable by them. Accordingly, they strove by every available device of chicanery to wheedle the Netherlanders into accepting their independence as a gift from the King of Spain. But to such a piece of self-stultification the clear-sighted Dutchmen could by no persuasion be brought to consent. Their independence, they argued, was not the King’s to give. They had won it from him and his father, in a war of forty years, during which they had suffered atrocious miseries, and all that the King of Spain could do was to acknowledge it as their right, and cease to molest them in future. Over this point, so simple to us but knotty enough in those days, the commissioners wrangled for nearly two years. And when the Spanish government, unable to carry on the war any longer without risk of utter bankruptcy, and daily crippled in its resources by the attacks of the Dutch navy, grudgingly a reed to a truce upon the Netherlanders’ terms, it virtually acknowledged its own defeat and the downfall of the principles for which it had so obstinately fought. By the truce of 1609 the republican principle was admitted by the most despotic of governments.