LITERARY SPECTATOR.
THE NETHERLANDS.*
THE Netherlands, under which name is now included Holland, is an interesting country, both for the deeds that its inhabitants have achieved and for the numerous political quarrels of which they have been the subject, as well as on account of its geographical peculiarities. The earliest notices that we possess of it, as of most of the European communities that have since risen to reputation, are to be found in the writings of that wonderful people who so long, swayed the destinies of the civilized world. When PLINY the naturalist. who is the first that has put a description of the Netherlands on record, visited the northern shores of that country, it was little else than a succession of salt-water marshes, where the inhabitants picked up a miserable and scanty subsistence during the reflux of the sea, which they retired to the high grounds to enjoy, when the tide again advanced to claim its un- disputed title to the dominion of the plains. The same features prevailed throughout all the parts that bordered the ocean. Tc-■ wards the east, the surface of the ground became gradually more elevated ; and in the south it was covered by an immense succes- sion of forests, known in more modern times by the name cf Ardennes, of which the remains are even yet of formidable extent. From the earliest period of the history of the Netherlands, the tribes that resided near the sea, and those of the eastern and southern parts, were possessed of distinct characters, either from the diversity of their origin, or more probably, of their circum- stances. The distinctions have remained to our times. The vallies of the INIeuse and of the Scheldt, and the high grounds bor- dering on France, are inhabited by a bold and warlike people, who speak the language of their Gallic neighbours ; while the rest of the territory is occupied by a plain plodding race, whose language is a dialect of the German, approaching in many particulars to the Saxon of our ancestors. From the ?vibes of the south of Bel- gia, as the country is termed by the Romans, that people derived many brave and devoted soldiers ; and the conqueror of Gaul was indebted to the martial youth of 1)atavia who swelled his ranks, for no small part of his success in the fields of Thessaly. The period when the first of those immense dykes or moles by which the sea has long been shut out from territories over which it once coursed with uncontrolled freedom, and which have for ages past converted the channels of the deep into fertile pastures for other herds than those of Proteus, began to be built, is hidden in the obscurity of early history. The first erections were pro- bably of a partial kind, and meant to protect some more elevated spots from the hazard of occasional inundations : as experience showed the value of such barriers, and taught the best methods of constructing them, they were gradually pushed forwaia, uutii not a field or a province, but a country, was won from the deep by the persevering industry of a few miserable fishermen. About the middle of the third century, when the Roman em- pire was sinking under its own weight, a band of Germans, who under the name of Franks, or freemen, beeame afterwards so for- midable, invaded the sea-coasts of the Netherlands ; from which they expelled the Batavi, the allies of Rome. The Franks were in their turn driven from the mouths of the Rhine, which they had forcibly occupied, by the Varni, from the shores of the Baltic ; and retreating towards the Ardennes, they laid the foundation of another settlement ; from which, after numberless incur- sions, they sallied out in 490, to give a monarch to France, in the person of the celebrated CLovia. The Varni, and the other tribes of the northern parts of the Netherlands, some time after, in imitation of those that they had vanquished, took the name of Vriesen, and gave to their possession the name of Vriesland,—a name which one of the provinces still retains. The struggle that had been originally maintained between the Varni and the Franks, continued, under their respective descend- ants, the Frisons and the French, until the conversion of WITTE- KIND, and his subjection to CHARLES the Great, introduced Chris- tianity and dependence among his countrymen. This is, however, to be understood of the hisons of the high grounds chiefly : the inhabitants of the lowlands were active and enterprising mer- chants, and industrious manufacturers ; and wherever commerce flourishes freedom must prevail. So early as the tenth century, the towns of Courtray, Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp, and Thiel, carried on a lucrative and increasing trade ; and if we may judge of the population of these towns by the number of their religious edi- fices, it could not be small, for Thiel alone possessed -fifty-five churches.
The means which the merchants of Holland adopted to preserve their independence, was well fitted for the purpose. It was the construction of a commercial federation in the various cities of the Netherlands, under the title of Gilden ; a name which, in one shape or another, has long been familiar, as applied to merchan- dise, dise to coin the medium of merchandise, and to the metal of which that medium is formed. These Gilden, who were bound to lend their aid in the-defence of the common privileges of the body, had by the middle of the tenth century spread all over Flanders. While the mercantile part of the Netherlands were settling the terms of their own freedom, the Frisonsmore strictly so called, who inhabited the Northern parts, had obtained a charter from the French Mo- narch, which conferred on them nearly equal advantages. It is an interesting fact in the history of the Northern emigre" • Cabinet Cyclopzedia. The History of the Netherlands. By Thomas Cone/ Grattan. . London, 1880. tions, that the wrongs perpetrated by the first horde 'which invaded the more Southern states, were almost invariably avenged by the succeeding swarms of their compatriots, which the traditionary success of thefirst adventurers, or a necessity similar to theirs, sent forth. The Franks had driven out or destroyed the Batavi, only to be themselves extruded from the sea-coast by the Varni; while the Vann were destined some centuries after, and when even their original name had expired, to have their progress towards civilization delayed and their territories wasted by the Normans, a tribe issuing from the same quarter that had given birth to them- selves. These warlike rovers were successfully resisted by BALD- WIN of the Iron Arm, the first Count of Flanders ; but their ra- vages were renewed under his more feeble successors ; nor did they wholly cease until the commencement of the eleventh century. The last portion of the Netherlands which was rescued from the ocean, was the Province of Holland Proper. It was sufficiently valuable to be the object of fierce contention among the surround- ing chiefs, both lay and ecclesiastical; but was ultimately con- ferred on THIERY, a descendant of the chiefs of Ghent, and the founder of the famous city of Dordrecht. Brussels owes its great- ness, if not its origin, to CHARLES, created by the Emperor OTHON IL Duke of Lorraine. CHARLES, the son of Louis Outremer, took up his, residence in that city; and thence he continued to re- sist the usurpation of CAPET until his death, which happened in 990. The chief princes of the Netherlands were then the Count of Flanders, whose family subsequently received some im- portant accessions by marriage and otherwise, and the Duke of Lorraine ; the one holding of the King of France, the other of the Emperor. The holding of both was but lax ; for when, in 1070, the King of France attempted to exercise his rights of feudal supe- riority in Flanders, the people of the plains not only protested against the measure, but under the banners of ROBERT the Frison, they attacked the French troops, completely defeated them, and deprived the Countess of Hainault and Namur, whom they came to support, of her possessions. The appeal of PETER the Hermit was nowhere listened to with more zeal and enthusiasm than in the Netherlands. The ex- ploits of GODFREY, the Duke of' Lower Lorraine, are too well known to require more than to be alluded to ; and from the capture of Jerusalem in the end of the eleventh century, to the foundation of the Latin empire of Constantinople, by BALDWIN of Flanders, in the commencement of the thirteenth, the Crusades continued to exhibit the most brilliant feats of arms, in the nobles and gentle- men who followed those great leaders. The political progress was not inferior in its march to the warlike eminence of the country ; and it is worthy of remark, that while in England there lurked some remains of feudal bondage so low as the reign of ELIZABETH, the last serf had died out in Flanders gel early as 1220! Nor was this peculiar to Flanders, for the same freedom prevailed over all the Low Countries. The recent riot (if we may so call it) at Brussels, is but a type of the conduct of the sturdy burghers of the ancient towns of Holland ; who were never slack, when their rulers offended against the laws or customs of the Gild, to take arms in hand and drive them from their walls. The discipline of these citizens was equal to their courage ; and the best troops of their nominal lords were often compelled to yield to their assaults. In the battle of Courtray, in 1301, the men of Bruges, led on by a draper and a butcher, attacked the army of PHILIP the Fair ; and three thousand of the French Monarch's horsemen left dead on the field, gave fatal proof of the weight and the certainty with which the strokes of the Flemish weavers fell on the heads of their enemies. And at a later period, a son of ARTAVELDT, the cele- brated brewer of Ghent, led seven thousand of his townsmen against forty thousand of the vassals of their Count, and, notwith- standing the mighty-disparity, totally defeated them. It was only in consequence of a treaty that confirmed the whole of their privileges, that the people of Ghent submitted to PHILIP of Bur- gundy, who had succeeded to the county of Flanders by the death of his father-in-law ; and the same prudent conduct was found necessary to secure to him the duchy of Brabant, to which he sometime after became also heir. So impartial was the administra- tion of the law at that period to rich and to poor, that the widow of PHILIP, a sovereign prince, was compelled to make a formal re- nunciation of her rights of succession in order to release herself from her liability to pay her husband's debts ! Ghent and Bruges were subsequently shorn of many of their rights by PHILIP the Good, grandson of PHILIP the Bold ; but it was to their mutual jealousy, as much as the cunning and power of the prince, that they owed their degradation.
The Court of CHARLES the Rash, son of PHILIP the Good, and of his wily opponent CHARLES the Eleventh, has been amu- singly described by SCOTT in his Quentin Durward; but the general reader must be careful how he confounds the vivid pictures of the novelist with historical realities. No writer, indeed, is less bound down by dry facts and chronological precision than Sir WALTER. The wild. Boar of Ardennes, whom Sir WAI.
TER cuts down by the sword of Balafii, did not flourish until a century after the conference at Peronne ; and he was the contem- porary not of the last of the house of Burgundy, but of WIL- LIAM of Nassau. The marriage of the daughter of CHARLES to MAXIMILIAN transferred her claims to the dominions of the house of Burgundy to that Prince ; on his accession to the dig- nity of Emperor of Germany, they were conferred on his son PHILIP the Fair ; to whom CHARLES, afterwards King of Spain, and the most celebrated Monarch of his age, succeeded by natural inheritance. The history of the Netherlands under CHARLES, and the bloody persecution that it was exposed to by the bigotry and intolerance of his son PHILIP, iS full of interest ; and few finer pictures have been exhibited, of the struggle of freedom against tyranny—of liberality against fanaticism—of principle against profligacy—than the Netherlands presents in the memorable war of the Independ- ence. We shall not, however, attempt an abridgment of a narrative, the principal facts of which must have been rendered familiar to our readers by the works of ROBERTSON and of HUME. The murder of BARNEVELDT—the exploits of VAN TROMP—the assas- sination of the DE WITTS—the aggressions of Louis the Four- teenth—the bravery and patriotism of our WILLIAM, both be- fore and after his accession to the throne of England, where he exhibited the singular combination in the same person of the monarch of a great nation and the magistrate of a republic— these, and every other particular of importance in the history of Holland, are also too clearly detailed by the latter historian to require repetition. The victories of Marlborough, which commenced in 1702, and by which the insolence of the Grande Monarque was so effectually humbled, terminated, in 1713, in the celebrated treaty of Utrecht; by which, and more particularly by the Barrier Treaty of 1715, the boundaries of the territories of the Sovereign of Holland, or Stadtholders, as they were termed under the republic, were defi- nitively settled. The provinces formerly held by Spain were, by the treaty of Utrecht, transferred to Austria • and are known from that period under the title of the Austrian Netherlands. For the first time from the commencement of the bloody struggle against PHILIP the Second, the Netherlands enjoyed a peace of no less than thirty years' continuance ; a period of prosperous tranquillity which served to repair the frightful waste which civil and foreign war, without almost an interruption for more than a century, had occasioned. The unprincipled and cowardly attack of FREDERICK the Great on MARIA THERESA put an end to this long peace, and led Holland into a war with France, in support of that Princess. The office of Stadtholder of the United Provinces had been fcr several years discontinued, the affairs of the republic being managed by a council of state. The invasion of the Austrian Netherlands by Marshal SAXE, the loss of the battle of Fontenoy, and the capture of Brussels, led to the revival of the office in the person of WILLIAM the Fourth, Prince of Orange ; and it was declared hereditary in his family. The elevation of WILLIAM to this dignity, and that of Captain-General, was soon after followed by the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. In 1766, WILLIAM the Fifth, the last who held the office, was installed Stadtholder. In 1780, WiLiaam en gaged in a brief, but to him highly injurious wax, with England, with a view to restrain the naval superiority which had on nume- rous occasions produced grievous oppressions of the Dutch com- mercial marine. It was during this war, that the obstinate and indecisive battle of the Doggerbank was fought between seven vessels under Sir HYDE PARKER and the same number under the Dutch Admiral Zoirrmara.
The period was now rapidly approaching when the Princes of Orange were to be driven to seek shelter in the country where their' great kinsman had reigned, in consequence of the further development of those very principles of liberty which he and his ancestors were the champions. The first attempts of the people of Holland to limit the authority of the Stadtholder, were met by that prince in what maybe termed a very kingly style—he invited an army of Prussians to invade the country, and was not ashamed to re- possess himself of full power by the assistance of these foreigners. While WILLIAM and the Prussians were putting down the Hollanders, a lawyer of Brussels, named VANDER NOOT' had stirred up an opposition in the Austrian Netherlands, which for some time promised to be successful. When VANDER NOOT was put down by JOSEPH the Second, VONK, also a lawyer of Brus- sels, commenced the work of reform ; and aided by VANDER MERSCH, a soldier of fortune, the claim of JOSEPH to the sove- reignty of Brabant was declared to be forfeited. These demon- strations were however but indifferently seconded by the people; and in a very short time, the Emperor's authority was again esta- blished. Events were, however, in progress without, that soon drove both him and the house of Orange from that part of Europe, the former for ever, the latter for nearly a quarter of a century. The declaration of Austria against the revolutionary movements in France was immediately met by the invasion of the Netherlands. The battle ofJemappes, m which the present King of France held a command, opened to DOUMOURIEZ the gates of Brussels on the 13th of November 1792; and in a very few weeks, the whole of the Austrian provinces yielded to the Republicans. These pro- vinces were immediately admitted to a share in the constitution established in France, and incorporated with that country ; and the union was confirmed by the treaty of Campo Formio in 1797. While the fate of the Netherlands was consummating, Pi CHEGRIT was preparing to carry the war into Holland ; which he soon effected, driving the Duke of YORK from point to point before hini, and at length compelling him to quit the Continent ; where he had been but badly seconded by the Dutch, a large portion of whom still remembered too well the invasion of the Prussians in 1787, and the sacrifice of their liberties which had been the coTh. sequence of that outrage. The Prince of Orange, whose cause was now altogether desperate, resigned the Stadtholdership, and retired with his family to Begland • the office was immediatelyabolished, and the Seven United P;ovinces were once more, con- stituted-into the Batavian Republic. The famous action of Cam- perdown—the elevation of LOUIS BONAPARTE to the dignity of King of Holland—the miserable expedition to Walcheren—the annexation of Holland to France—the downfall of NAPOLEON— and the restoration, among the other restorations of things new and old, of the Prince of Orange—are fresh in the memory of most persons who take an interest in the political changes of Europe. The Prince, it is to be observed, was called back by-the spon- taneous voice of his countrymen, before the fate of France was even known ; and had VAN HOGENDORP and his associates limited their exertions to the reinstalment of WILLIAM in the he- reditary office which his father had resigned nineteen years before, they would have deserved well of their country. The unwarranted elevation to the rank of King, of a family which neither in the per- son of the restored prince nor in that of any of his ancestors had aspired to such a dignity—by a petty faction of unknown men, ignorant of the sentiments of the Provinces at large, and who had no authority real or virtual for such an act—deprives them of all claim to our approbation as statesmen or citizens. WILLIAM being made a King in so summary a fashion, the Allies seem to have thought that it was but fitting he should have a kingdom to rule over. The Netherlands, therefore, were un- ceremoniously taken from Austria ; which was compensated by a transfer which had not even expedience to justify it, and united to Holland under the title of the United Kingdom of the Nether- lands. Of course, Belgium was as little consulted in this arrange- ment as was Genoa. The reign of the Hundred Days can hardly be said to have disturbed the plans of the Allies. Had NAPO- LEON won the battle of Waterloo, the fate of Belgium might have been different. The recent events, which seem to threaten the dissolution of a conjunction which force alone had compelled, and which force will, in future have to maintain have been spoken of in another page. • The volume of the Cabinet Cyclopemlia, the appearance of which at this period, when the Netherlands are the topic of gene- ral conversation, has led us into a somewhat lengthened notice of their past history, is inferior both in interest and in composition to the historical treatises that preceded it. Mr. GRATTAN follows Sir WALTER SCOTT and Sir JAMES MACKINTOSH, but it IS haud passibus equis. He has neither the felicitous pictures of the former, nor the polished diction and comprehensive views of the latter. He buries himself under a mass of minute facts, while in regard to events of importance he is most unsatisfactorily brief The work is very unequal in its style : many passages are wrought up with ambitious effort, while others are flat and commonplace. There is a fondness for figure, which displays itself in a manner that adds little to the elegance or force of the narrative. We have civilization perishing "like a delicate plant in an ungenial clime —after sucking the very sap from the soil." "Switzerland was by moral analogy, as well as physical fact, the rock against which these extravagant projects (of CHARLES the Rash) were shat- tered." "When one tenet was pronounced idolatry, and to doubt another Was damnation—the world either exploded or recoiled." "All the hopes arising from these brilliant events were soon to be blighted by the scorching heats of faction." "He (WILLIAM Prince of Orange), did not, like some other sovereigns, enter by a breach through the constitutional liberties of his country, in imitation of [what thinks the reader ?]—the conquerors from the Olympic games, who returned to the city by a breach in its walls 1" "He (NAroLEoer) might, in a moral view, be said to have breathed badly, in a station which was beyond the atmosphere of his natu- ral world, without being out of its attraction ; and having reached the pinnacle, he soon lost his balance and fell."
These would be no great defects in a work which presented any new views of men or things ; but in one of mere compilation, the writer is imperatively called on to atone by the purity and elegance of his style for the want of novelty in his facts. It is but fair, however, to give a specimen of the better parts of Mr. GRATTAN'S work. The following observations, which close the 6th chapter, are pertinent, and, in general, very well written.
"The whole of the provinces of the Netherlands being now for the first time united under one sovereign, such a junction marks the limits of a se- cond epoch in their history. It would be a presumptuous and vain attempt to trace, in a compass so confined as ours, the various changes in man- ners and customs which arose in these countries during a period of one thousand years. The extended and profound remarks of many celebrated writers on the state of Europe from the decline of the Roman power to the epoch at which we are now arrived must be referred to, to judge of the gradual progress of civilization through the gloom of the dark ages, till the dawn of enlightenment which led to the grand system of European politics commenced during the reign of Charles V. The amazing increase of commerce was, above all other considerations, the cause of the growth of liberty in the Netherlands. The Reformation opened the minds of men to that intellectual freedom, without which political enfranchisement is a worthless privilege. The invention of printing opened a thousand chan- nels to the flow of erudition and talent, and sent them out from the reser- voirs of individual possession to fertilize the whole domain of human na- ture. War, which seems to be an instinct of man, and which particular instances of heroism often raise to the dignity of a passion, was reduced to a science, and made subservient to those great principles of policy in which society began to perceive its only chance of durable good. Manu- factures attained a state of high perfection, and went on progressively with the growth of wealth and luxury. The opulence of the towns of Brabant and Flanders was without any previous example in the state of Europe. A merchant of Bruges took upon himself alone the security for the ransom of John the Fearless, taken atthe battle of Nicopolis, amount- ing to 200,000 ducats. A provost of Valenciennes repaired to Paris at one of the great fairs periodically held there, and purchased on his own account every article that INAS for sale. At a repast given by one of the counts of Flanders to the Flemish magistrates, the seats they occupied were unfur- Dished with cushions. Those proud burghers folded their sumptuous cloak* and sat on them. Afterthe feast, they were retiring without retaining these important and costly articles of dress ; and on a courtier reminding them of their apparent neglect, the burgomaster of Bruges replied, We Flemings are not in the habit of carrying away the cushions after dinner I' The meetings of the different towns for the sports of archery were signalized by the most splendid display of dress and decoration. The archers were habited in silk, damask, and the finest linen, and carried chains of gold of great weight and value. Luxury was at its height among women. The queen of Philip the Fair of France, on a visit to Bruges, exclaimed, with astonishment, not unmixed with envy, I thought myself the only queen here ; but I see six hundred others who appear more so than I.' " The court of Philip the Good seemed to carry magnificence and spier'. dour to their greatest possible height. The dresses of both men and women at this chivalric epoch were of almost incredible expense. Velvet, satin, gold, and precious stones, seemed the ordinary materials for the dress of either sex; while the very housings of the horses sparkled with brilliants, and cost immense sums. This absurd extravagance was carried so far, that Charles V. found himself forced at length to proclaim sumptuary laws for its repression. " The style of the banquets given on grand occasions was regulated on a scale of almost puerile splendour. The banquet of vows given at Lille, in the year 1453, and so called from the obligations entered into by some of the nobles to accompany Philip in a new crusade against the Infidels, showed a succession of costly fooleries, most amusing in the detail given by an eye-witness, the minutest of the chroniclers, but unluckily too long to find a place in our pages. "Such excessive luxury naturally led to great corruption of manners, and the commission of terrible crimes. During the reign of Philip de Mile, there were committed in the city of Ghent and its outskirts, in less than a year, above 1400 murders in gambling-houses and other resorts of debauchery. As early as the tenth century, the petty sovereigns esta- blished on the ruins of the empire of Charlemagne began the independent coining of money; and the various provinces were during the rest of this epoch inundated with a most embarrassing variety of gold, silver, and copper. Even in ages of comparative darkness, literature made feeble efforts to burst through the entangled weeds (I) of superstition, ignorance, and war. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, history was greatly cultivated ; and Froissart, Monstrelet, Oliver de la Marche, and Philip de Comines, gave to their chronicles and memoirs a charm of style since their days almost unrivalled. Poetry began to be followed with success in the Netherlands, in the Dutch, Flemish, and French languages ; and even before the institution of the Floral Games in France, Belgium possessed its chambers of rhetoric (rederykkamers), which laboured to keep alive the sacred flame of poetry with more zeal than success. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, these societies were established in almost every burgh of Flanders and Brabant: the principal towns possessing several at once.
"The arts in their several branches made considerable progress in the Netherlands during this epoch. Architecture was greatly cultivated in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries ; most of the cathedrals and town houses being constructed in that age. Their vastness, solidity, and beauty of design and execution, make them still speaking monuments of the stern magnificence and finished taste of the times. The patronage of Philip the Good, Charles the Rash, and Margaret of Austria, brought music into fashion, arid led to its cultivation in a remarkable degree. The first musicians of France were drawn from Flanders; and other profes- sors from that country acquired great celebrity in Italy for their scientifiC improvements in their delightful art. "Painting, which had languished before the fifteenth century, sprung at once into a new existence from the invention of John Van Eyck, known better by the name of John of Bruges. His accidental discovery of the art of painting in oil quickly spread over Europe, and served to perpetuate to all time the records of the genius which has bequeathed its vivid im- pressions to the world. Painting on glass, polishing diamonds, the Caril- lon, lace, and tapestry, were among the inventions which owed their birth to the Netherlands in these ages, when the faculties of mankind sought so many new channels for mechanical development. The discove. y of a new world by Columbus and other eminent navigators, gave a fresh and powerful impulse to European talent, by affording an immense reservoir for its reward. The town of Antwerp was, during the reign of Charles V., the outlet for the industry of Europe, and the receptacle for the produe: tions of all the nations of the earth. Its port was so often crowded with vessels, that each successive fleet was obliged to wait long in the Scheldt before it could obtain admission for the discharge of its cargoes. The university of Louvain, that great nursery of science, was founded in 1445, and served greatly to the spread of knowledge, although it degene- rated into the hotbed of those fierce disputes which stamped on theology the degradation of bigotry, and drew down odium on a study that, if purely practised, ought only to inspire veneration. "Charles V. was the first to establish a solid plan of government, in- stead of the constant fluctuations in the management of justice, police, and finance. He caused the edicts of the various sovereigns, and the municipal usages, to be embodied into a system of laws; and thus gave stability and method to the enjoyment of the prosperity in which he left his dominions."
Upon the whole, though this work is not without its faults and defects, it contains in a small compass a great deal of information ; and its publication has the accidental merit of being singularly well-timed.
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