Early in the course of their antagonism-while yet that antagonism was covert and unavowed-the Prince of Orange succeeded in organising a system of espionage upon Philip, the adroit management of which enabled him to foil the King strangely at times, and from disregard to which the fate of Count Egmont and others would seem to have been sealed. The King, we are told,* left letters carefully locked in his desk at night, and unseen hands had forwarded copies of them to William of Orange before the morning. He left memoranda in his pockets on retiring to bed, and exact transcripts of those papers found their way likewise, ere he rose, to the same watcher in the Netherlands. No doubt that, as William's latest apologist allows, an inclination for political intrigue was a prominent characteristic of the Prince, and a blemish upon the purity of his moral nature; but then, urges this admiring advocate, he had mastered the dissimulating policy of his age only that he might accomplish the noblest purposes to which a great and good man can devote his life-the protection of the liberty and the religion of a whole people against foreign tyranny. "His intrigue served his country, not a narrow personal ambition, and it was only by such arts that he became Philip's master, instead of falling at once, like so many great personages, a blind and infatuated victim. No doubt his purveyors of secret information were often destined fearfully to atone for their contraband commerce, but they who trade in treason must expect to pay the penalty of their traffic."+ Elsewhere, again, recurring to the Silent one's spy-system, the same historian urges, that if William used dissimulation, it was because Philip's deception permitted no man to be frank. If the sovereign constantly disavowed all hostile purposes against his people, and manifested extreme affection for the men-Orange, Egmont, and Horn, for instance-whom he had already doomed to the scaffold, how, it is asked, could the Prince openly denounce him? "It was his duty to save his country and his friends from impending ruin. He preserved, therefore, an attitude of watchfulness. Philip, in the depth of his cabinet, was under a constant inspection by the sleepless Prince. The sovereign assured his sister‡ that her apprehensions about their correspondence were groundless. He always locked up his papers and took the key with him. Nevertheless, the key was taken out of his pocket and the papers read. Orange was accustomed to observe, that men of leisure might occupy themselves with philosophical pursuits and with the secrets of nature, but it was his business to study the hearts of kings. He knew the man and the woman with whom he had to deal. Had his friends taken his warnings, they might have lived to render service against tyranny. Had he imitated their example of false loyalty, there would have been one more victim, more illustrious than all the rest, and a whole country hopelessly enslaved."§ On the same principle does Mr. Motley justify, or at least account for, other passages of statecraft and stratagem in the tactics of the Prince. William's relations, for example, in 1578, with the Duke of Anjou (Alençon), have been subjected to strictures not without weight or * See Motley's Dutch Republic, part ii. ch. vi. worth; and the historian owns it to be, perhaps, an impeachment on the perspicacity of Orange that he could tolerate this mischievous and worthless son of France," even for the grave reasons which influenced him.* But we are reminded that he only intended to keep Anjou in reserve, for the purpose of irritating the jealousy and quickening the friendship of Elizabeth of England, whose suitor the Valois cadet essayed to be. And those who see anything tortuous in such politics are cautioned against judging the intriguing age of Philip and Catherine de Medici by the higher standard of later and, possibly, more candid times. No heedless scholar had William been in the closet of Charles V.-his residence with whom reminds Dr. Millert of that of Egbert with Charlemagne, previously compared by him with that of Philip (not of Spain) with Epaminondas. The history of the rise of the Netherland Republic is identified by its writer with the biography of William the Silent-whose life the historian characterises as a noble Christian epic, inspired with one great purpose from its commencement to its close; the stream flowing ever from one fountain with expanding fulness, but retaining all its original purity. The life and labours of Orange are shown to have established the emancipated commonwealth upon a secure foundation, and his death to have rendered the union of all the Netherlands into one republic hopeless. "The pistol of the insignificant Gérard destroyed the possibility of a united Netherland state, while during the life of William there was union in the policy, unity in the history of the country." His life gave existence to an independent country-his death defined its limits. Had he lived twenty years longer, it is probable that the seven provinces would have been seventeen. Twenty years longer he might have lived, for anything to the contrary his physical frame could show-the physicians who examined his body after death declaring it to "present an aspect of perfect health." Robust his constitution must have been, considering the toil and trouble, the stir and fret, the wear and tear, it had to undergo. It was not by choice or predilection that William became the Silent statecraftsman, rather than the social free-liver he once was. Not from natural indifference to home comforts and family endearments was it, that he tutored himself to Scorn delights and live laborious days. So complete was his conviction, personally, that 'tis not good for man to be alone, that he took wife after wife, to the number of four (successively, of course, not simultaneously). No. I. was Anne of Egmont,§ the greatest heiress in the Netherlands, to whom he was married in 1558, when they were both of the same age, eighteen; and with whom he lived happily for seven years. The antepenultimate lady was Anna of Saxony, the famous Elector Maurice's daughter-who was not quite straight in the back, and who limped as she walked, and who was a Lutheran while Orange was still a Romanist, but whose heart was "carried by storm" as soon as the manly bridegroom showed himself. The penulti * Motley, vol. iii. part v. ch. v. † Philosophy of History, bk. iii. ch. ii. See Motley, vol. iii. part vi. ch. vii. passìm. Daughter of the celebrated general, Count de Buren. || Or, in Juvenal's phrase, Volverit à prima quæ proxima. (Sat. x.) mate bride was the devoted Charlotte de Bourbon, whose death is attributed to the shock she felt at Jaureguy's attempt on her husband's life, in 1582. The fourth and last of the series was Louisa, widow of the Seigneur de Teligny, and daughter of the renowned French Admiral, Coligny. At the close of his life, à l'apogée de sa gloire, as Michelet puts it, "Guillaume d'Orange, instead of taking as his wife some German princess, as so easily he might have done, demanded the hand, and obtained it, of la plus pauvre Madame de Teligny, who had been left without any fortune save a small property in la Beauce, where she lived. This great man, on the eve of his violent death, and compassed about by assassins, seemed to be summoning to himself, in the person of Coligny's daughter, the image of a better world. Scarcely had a year passed over, when he perished almost beneath her eyes."t This connexion gives the Orange family an additional interest in the eyes of French writers. M. Michelet's hero-worship of the Admiral would ensure an emphasis of interest, in his particular case, apart from his hero-worship of William the Silent as well. But other testimonies might be adduced from less partial lookers-on: suffice it to quote a reference by M. Chasles to the Orange race, cette famille silencieuse et active, race sombre et ferme, qui ne s'était pas alliée sans motif à l'amiral de Coligny, symbole complet des vertus et des talents de la secte." By the Admiral's daughter William the Silent had one son, Frederick William, who became stadtholder of the republic in her "most palmy days." Eleven other children were the fruit of the three previous alliances-the most celebrated being Maurice of Nassau, whose mother was crooked, limping, shrewd and shrewish Anna of Saxony. The last named lady was, as we have seen, enamoured at first sight of the shapely Prince of Orange. Of his Highness's person we are informed, that he was above the middle height, perfectly well made and sinewy, but rather spare than stout. "His eyes, hair, beard, and complexion were brown. His head was small, symmetrically shaped, combining the alertness and compactness of the soldier, with the capacious brow furrowed prematurely with the horizontal lines of thought, denoting the statesman and the sage. His physical appearance was, therefore, in harmony with his organisation, which was of antique model." Of his moral qualities, according to the same authority, the most prominent was his piety. "He was more than anything else a religious man. his trust in God he ever derived support and consolation in the darkest hours." Then again his constancy in bearing the whole weight of as unequal a struggle as men have ever undertaken, was the theme of admiration even to his enemies. The rock in the ocean, tranquil amid 66 From * This was the Admiral's favourite child, on account of her precocious sagesse, as well as her winsome douceur and modesty. He married her to one in whom he recognised the like qualities. When she asked her father which of her suitors he would counsel her to accept, he answered, "The poorest." Le plus pauvre. It was Teligny he selected for her, a young man so much and generally beloved that not a Catholic could find it in his heart to kill him, we are assured, in the St. Bartholomew massacre, and who met with his death by mere accident, not design. † Michelet, Hist. de France, t. xi. p. 28. Philarète Chasles, Le dix-huitième Siècle en Angleterre: Guillaume III. et la Révolution de 1688. § iv. raging billows," was the favourite emblem by which his friends expressed their sense of his firmness.* Of his intellectual faculties, Mr. Motley's judgment is, that they were "various and of the highest order;" that he had the exact, practical, and combining qualities which make the great commander. Out-and-out Orangemen shrunk not from asserting that in military genius he was second to no captain in Europe. If so, he was extremely unfortunate in default of opportunities to prove it. If success in the field be a test of military genius, he came a long way behind the Duke of Alva and Don John of Austria-to name no other and inferior names. Charles V., however, is said to have thought highly of William's capacity as a campaigner; and his eulogists point with reasonable pride to his fortification of Philippeville and Charlemont, in the face of the enemy-his passage of the Meuse with Alva looking grimly on-his "unfortunate but wellordered campaign against that general"-and especially his "sublime plan of relief" for the besieged city of Leyden,† which he directed from his sick-bed, as historical monumenta, ære perennia, of his practical military skill. Timidity has been charged upon him. The charge is not an uncommon one against men of even proverbial audacity. Alva did not escape it. Cardinal Granvelle was twitted with it. William of Orange may, his staunchest supporters are free to grant, have been originally of a timid temperament. But, however that may be, they will hear no denial of his perfect courage at last-manifested by his bearing amid the countless conspiracies of assassins, as well as in the trenches and on the ramparts, and while breathing, exhausted in body and mind, the "deadly air of pestilential cities," where Father William had to see a thousand falling at his right hand, without assurance that the slayer should not come nigh him. Of what his biographer calls the soldier's great virtues-constancy in disaster, devotion to duty, hopefulness in defeat-no man, it is contended, ever possessed a larger share. "He arrived, through a series of reverses, at a perfect victory. He planted a free commonwealth under the very battery of the Inquisition, in defiance of the most powerful empire existing. He was, therefore, a conqueror in the loftiest sense, for he conquered liberty and a national existence for a whole people. The contest was long, and he fell in the struggle, but the victory was to the dead hero, not to the living monarch. "The supremacy of his political genius was entirely beyond question. He was the first statesman of the age. The quickness of his perception was only equalled by the caution which enabled him to mature the results of his observation. His knowledge of human nature was profound. He governed the passions and sentiments of a great nation as if they had been but the keys and chords of one vast instrument; and his hand rarely failed to evoke harmony even out of the wildest storms."+ hand once cold in death, * Rise of the Dutch Republic: concluding summary, passim. That A graphic account of this stirring episode in the war will be found in part iv. ch. ii. of Mr. Lothrop Motley's history. Motley, vol. iii. part vi. ch. vii. Oct.-VOL. CXVII. NO. CCCCLXVI. N How discord on the music fell, No other hand could master those complicated chords and take up the thread where it was broken off. And all the people knew that a prince and a great man had fallen that day; a ruler not merely in name but in power. This morning, lusty and strong; this evening, dead as those who died beneath the walls of Troy. See! where in dust the great Sarpedon lies, THE LUCKIEST DOG ALIVE. BY AN OLD TRAVELLER. I AM not about to chronicle the bonnes fortunes of some jeune homme charmant, or the delights of inheriting an unexpected five thousand a year. I am not going to describe the feelings of the poet who "wakes and finds himself famous;" nor to be the historian of Napoleon III. The memoirs I offer are literally those of a DOG, and all that followsincredible as it may appear-was communicated to me by himself. I will not advert (so ran his narrative) to our accidental discovery of the electro-biological affinity which enabled us to communicate our thoughts. Should your own intellectual nature be united, for a new probation, to the body of a monkey or a cat, as mine has been to that of a dog, you will better understand the language both of Plato and of your own poets; and will feel as they did, that * E. B. Browning, "Cowper's Grave."-Mr. Motley's saying, that William "went through life bearing the load of a people's sorrows upon his shoulders with a smiling face," may remind us of two seemingly opposed stanzas in the same poem: O men! this man in brotherhood, Your weary paths beguiling, Groaned inly while he taught you peace, the next verse telling how -when, one by one, sweet sounds † Iliad (Mr. Pope's again), book xvi. |