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De Zeventiende Eeuw. Jaargang 11 (1995)

De Zeventiende Eeuw. Jaargang 11

(1995)– [tijdschrift] Zeventiende Eeuw, De–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtelijk beschermd

Vorige Volgende

[Deel 2]

Tyranny abroad: the Dutch Revolt and the invention of America*
Benjamin Schmidt

In early November 1565, there arrived in Brussels the long-awaited response of Philip II to reports of social, political, and religious unrest in the Low Countries. The famous letters from Segovia Wood made clear the king's intention strictly to maintain the unpopular heresy laws he had confirmed some half-dozen years earlier. The king further rebuffed the advice of the leading nobles of the Netherlands that they be granted a broader role in supervising - and moderating - the enforcement of the king's religious ‘placards’. By the following spring, a league of nobles had rallied together and, in response to the stated position of the Crown, gathered in Brussels to present to Margaret of Parma a ‘Request’ for the moderation of the placards and the abolition of the Inquisition. These events, which took place against a backdrop of expanding religious disorder and contracting economic growth, traditionally mark the beginning of the Dutch Revolt.1. On the face of it, they had little to do with events in the New World, where the sway of Hapsburg rule also happened to prevail. Yet within a matter of months, another group of Dutch nobles, this time assembled in Rotterdam, offered the case of Spanish abuses in America - ‘tyranny’ as the rebels termed it - to justify their own opposition to Spanish rule in the Netherlands. Resistance was necessary, the nobles pronounced, for ‘zy [the Spanish] anders niet en soucken dan deese onse Vaderlanden te bringhen conforme die Nyewe Indiën die zy eertytz gewonnen hebben.’ The Revolt had begun, and with it commenced a revolution in the Dutch representation of America.2.

Prologue: revolutionary geography

The political drama that played itself out in Brussels would have far reaching effects on the social, economic, and cultural life of the Low Countries. This essay addresses the changes that occurred yet farther afield in ‘America’ - not in the New World as such, but rather in Dutch representations of the New World and, more generally, in the developing geographic identity of the new Republic. The nobles' declamation against Hapsburg misrule in America signaled an audacious shift in the political and geographic orientation of the Netherlands. For the first two-thirds of the sixteenth century, the Dutch had followed with unmistakable enthusiasm the progress of Spain abroad. Numerous books and pamphlets, broadsides and prints published in the Low Countries told the tale of the Castilian - and later Hapsburg - adventure in America. ‘Van desen insulen ende eylanden [recently discovered] ware wondere scriven,’ wrote an admiring Aurelius already in the first years of the century, noting the many ‘boecxkens’ that described them.3. These included the earliest missives of Columbus and Vespucci, which appeared in Antwerp within

months of their original publication. The accounts of Cortés and the mid-century chronicles of Mexico and Peru flowed just as rapidly off the presses of Antwerp, conveying the latest relacíones of Spanish derring-do. The Castilian role in the conquest, according to these histories, merited more praise than criticism, not the least for spreading the glory of Christianity to the godless ‘savages’ of America. The most popular descriptions of the New World, to judge from the evidence of private Dutch book collections, were in fact the epic, Spanish-authored accounts of the Conquista, which rank among the early Americana most frequently listed in catalogues of contemporary Dutch libraries. Rather than diminishing the Spanish achievement in the New World, these works inclined to celebrate the bravery, piety, and perseverance of the Spanish discoverers and their royal patrons.4.

On the eve of the Revolt, the Dutch corner of the Hapsburg empire gave every indication of esteeming, not disdaining, Spain's record in America. Consider the first Dutch anthology of New World literature, Die nieuwe weerelt der lantschappen ende eylanden, published a brief three years before the crisis broke out in Brussels.5. A potpourri of popular narratives compiled largely from Spanish sources and edited by the Antwerp notary, Cornelis Ablijn, Die nieuwe weerelt carried an elaborate prologue that advertised the American materials for both the pleasure and profit they would afford. To the prince of Orange, to whom the volume is dedicated, Ablijn assured a ‘cheerful’ respite from the burdens of state. Lesser readers, too, would enjoy the simple pathos of the narratives, which abounded in passages of ‘geloove, liefde ende hopen’. On a more practical level, readers could glean from these pages important political and geographical information regarding the governments of distant lands and witness the efficacy of Spanish agents abroad. The ‘common reader’ especially might learn of the ‘obedience’ and civil order in foreign lands - of good government, in other words, in America. Above all, Christians of every station would rejoice in the ‘valorous’ and ‘faithful’ labors of the Spanish explorers who had extended the word of God to the ‘nations’ of the West. The histories of Spain in America served as a ‘mirror,’ maintained Ablijn, falling back on a trope familiar to so many of the moralizing histories of this period. The conquistadors embodied the virtues of loyalty, courage, and piety. The records of their tenure in America would furnish positive exempla for all God-fearing burgers of the Low Countries.6.

Ablijn's enthusiasm could hardly contrast more with the views expressed in the coming years, when ringing endorsements of Spain's New World adventure gave way to the far shriller cries of ‘Spanish tyranny in America’. No comparable anthology followed in the wake of Ablijn's, yet descriptions of America surfaced in the broader, geographic compilations published around this time which later came to be known as atlases. Among the most popular of these was the Spieghel der werelt by the Antwerp poet Peeter Heyns, a ‘pocket’ atlas published originally in 1577 that contained an overview of the discoveries as part of a more general ‘mirror’ of the world's domains.7. In a wittily devised prologue, ‘Totten Wandelaers,’ Heyns invites his fellow readers-cum-travelers to join him on a literary journey around the world, to exchange the chaos of war-ravaged Antwerp for the pleasures of armchair travel. This conceit conveys the reader across the Atlantic where the irony of the plan quickly becomes apparent. For, the first land ‘espied’ turns the whole formula on its head. ‘[Wij] eenen grooten grouwel ghecreghen hebbende,’ reports Heyns of

his hypothetical journey, ‘van d'onmenschelijcke wreetheyt der Spaenscher tyrannijen in den nieu ghevondene werelt ghenoemt America.’ The author beats a hasty retreat to England, yet the specter of ‘Spanish tyranny’ persists in rearing its discomfiting head. In London, Heyns runs into the Antwerp expatriate, Emanuel van Meteren, who tells of similar Spanish tyrannies lately committed in the Netherlands. In France he encounters another Antwerper who reports of the Spanish-sponsored attempts on the life of Orange; and an excursion to Germany brings news much the same. The entire voyage, in fact, consists of such stopovers and glimpses into the progress of Spanish misrule. Spanish tyranny, according to Heyns' geography, begins in America, yet winds its way back to the Netherlands, whence the ‘pleasant journey’ had started.8.

Heyns, like Ablijn, mined the geographic sources for the rich exempla of foreign lands. Both authors, in effect, fashioned cultural geographies: both carefully designed the literature - and the world - they presented their readers so as to derive from their materials an appropriately Dutch image of the world. Within Heyns' ‘spieghel’ however, the reflection of America had fundamentally altered. Whereas the subject of America had led Ablijn to praise Spanish bravery, it indicated for Heyns the range of Spanish ‘tyranny’. While Spain's New World advances seemed promising in the eyes of a 1563 editor, they boded badly for an Antwerper writing only two decades later. America's ‘usefulness’ by this time derived from its ability to forewarn, to ‘mirror’ for Dutch readers a potential future under Hapsburg rule: Spanish government in Brussels threatened to go the way of America.

The anatomy of a topos

Over the course of the 1570s and 1580s, the Dutch vision of the New World evolved from what might loosely be called a hispanophilic attitude to one decidedly hispanophobic. The new geographic sensibilities emerged less from any abrupt change that may have occurred in the distant climes of America, than from shifting political winds in the Netherlands. As enthusiasm for the Hapsburg regime in the Low Countries subsided, criticism for perceived Hapsburg abuses in the Indies picked up. The nobles' case against Spain in America indicated both a reinvigorated interest in the New World as well as a reformulation of its significance. It heralded the rebels' creation of a new geography - of a usable geography - to accompany their new political aspirations. Between the publication of Ablijn's early anthology of travel narratives and Heyn's later compilation of cartographic literature, the Dutch formulated an image of the New World that served the political demands of their struggle against Spain. References to ‘Spanish tyranny in America,’ cited increasingly from the late 1560s, buttressed Dutch opposition to Hapsburg rule in the Netherlands. ‘Jae inde nieuwe ghevonden Landen... hebben sy de Inghebooren byna gheelicken ombrocht,’ wrote a pamphleteer in 1574 of Spain's American adventure. ‘Die een voorbeeldt sien wil van hare tyrannije,’ it was suggested, could observe the fate of the New World.9.

The creation of ‘America’ proceeded gradually in the years following the initial Dutch resistance to Hapsburg rule. It followed approximately the shape of the campaign against the Spanish government and the progress of political events in

Brussels where the governor resided. It followed more closely, however, the contours of the war of words waged against ‘Spanish tyranny’ and the progress of printers in Antwerp where the rebel image-makers reigned. It flowed invariably from the pens of those Alva labeled ‘rabble-rousers [and] distributors of notorious pamphlets,’ that is, from the great rebel propagandists including Jacob van Wesenbeke, Petrus Dathenus, Philip van Marnix, and above all, the prince of pamphleteers, Willem of Orange.10. These and others adopted ‘America’ into their repertoire of anti-Hapsburg invective in conjunction with broader attacks against the Spanish Inquisition and the abuse of local privileges; against the kings' ‘evil-advisors’ and especially the duke of Alva; against the use of religion as a ‘pretext’ for unholy ends; and, ultimately, against the king himself and the inherent wickedness of the ‘Spanish nation’. The pervasiveness of ‘America’ also paralleled the general swell of rebel propaganda. Like much of the rebel literature, it debuted in the years 1566-68 only to subside with the first round of expulsions; it regained momentum in 1572 (the capture of Brill) and 1576 (the Spanish Fury); and it reached its fullest expression around 1580-81, conspicuous in the Apologie of Willem and the Plakkaat van Verlatinge of the States General - the two primary, public expressions of anti-Spanish sentiment of the Revolt. In general, it may be said that the geographic topos of ‘America’ developed in step with the political polemic of revolt.

Opposition to Hapsburg rule in the Netherlands converged originally around the issue of the Inquisition, and it was related to this theme too that ‘America’ first found its way onto the rebels' agenda. As Alastair Duke has well demonstrated, the Reform-minded gentry who led the attack on the Inquisition took care to focus less sharply on the goals of the Holy Office - to root out heresy - than on its methods - to seize, torture, and execute accused heretics without recourse to local systems of justice or privilege.11. The Spanish Inquisition, as Orange bitterly complained, had supplanted the natural leaders of the Netherlands with ‘foreign and tyrannical invaders’ who trampled with utter disregard upon the traditional privileges of the Low Countries. So too in America. In the New World, it was proposed, the Inquisition had similarly violated indigenous rights and abused ‘native privileges’. Willem's chaplain, Adriaen Saravia, accused Alva and the Inquisitors of treating the Netherlands like ‘newly won lands’ that could be conquered and converted. A few years later, the Dutch Reformed community in Emden employed much the same conceit in suggesting that Spain had, ‘under the pretense of orderyng religion... spoyled the poore and simple inhabitantes of [the Indies] of all their goods and possessions, and of their wives, children and lives.’ The Emden petitioners feared that the Holy Office would destroy the Low Countries in much the same way, that Spain would (as Alva himself once put it) ‘create a New World’ in the Netherlands.12.

The myth of the ‘Spanish Inquisition’ provided but one of the cloaks behind which reluctant rebels could hide and but one of the guises in which the topos of America could be displayed. A related strategy involved upbraiding the king's ‘evil-advisors,’ men who, so the rebels reasoned, had orchestrated the unrest in the Netherlands against Philip II's better judgment. No one filled this role better than Alva, whose reputed cruelty excited the rebel's indignation as much as it taxed the pamphleteer's imagination. As the publicists presented it, Alva came not to govern but to conquer. He had enticed his reckless men to join him ‘by dangling before

their eyes the hope of planting colonies in our Fatherland.’13. This theme of conquest and colonization directed the rebel hacks, once again, to the image of America. Those pamphleteers writing in the wake of Alva's conquests, and in particular those originating from the provinces with the most recent and least pleasant memories of Alva's army, bolstered their recriminations of Spain with reference to the New World. There too, Spanish ‘bloodhounds’ had demonstrated their addiction to plunder and their aversion to lawful government. The experience of Alva's fury in Holland and Zeeland induced the States of these provinces to pen a collegial ‘Admonition’ to their counterparts in Brabant and Flanders and alert the latter to ‘de eeterijen, plonderijen ende ander onghemacken door de welcke de arme Ondersaten ten platten lande grondtlick bedorven worden.’ In the ‘new found lands,’ the Northerners warned, Spain had murdered virtually the entire native population - and much the same could be expected in the Netherlands.14. A similar line of argument informed an anti-Spanish polemic of 1579 that implored readers to recall the abuse of privileges, confiscation of goods, and violation of women and children that had taken place over the previous years. Spain had handled the Dutch like ‘enigen wthemsche Vijanden,’ ‘soo menich onnosel bloet gestort ende vergoten, soo menich mensche met water, vier, sweert ende coorde iammerlick omgebracht,’ that they could no longer be trusted. Had not Philip always treated his inherited lands like conquered territories? One need only cite

die exempelen van Naples, Milanen, Granaden, ende insonderheydt van Indyen, daer sy naer haer eygene getuychgenisse over die twintich Millionen menschen sielen moordadelick hebben omme gebracht, ende veele landen die grooter waren als van Castilien tot Constantinopel ofte Jerusalem geheelyck ende wt den gronde verwoestent ende gants eensaem hebben gemaect15.

By the end of the 1570s, the example of the Indies had begun to recur with remarkable regularity. It was in the Apologie of Willem, though, published in early 1581 and at least sixteen more times before the end of the century, that the topos became fully codified and definitively registered in the vocabulary of the patriotic party. In the course of this lengthy and often acerbic work, the prince alludes to America frequently and imaginatively to convey what he calls ‘the natural disposition of the Spaniards’. In the New World, servants of the Spanish Crown ‘commanded absolutely [and] yielded to evident proof, of their perverse, natural disposition, and tyrannous affection and will.’ The Indies also indicated patterns of Spanish government of which the Dutch should take note. Spain's aim of ‘depriving you altogether of your ancient privileges and liberties that they may dispose of you, your wives, and your children,’ Willem believed, was evident from the way ‘his officers have done to the poor Indians.’ The fate of the Indies portended a miserable future for the Netherlands; it served Willem as a sort of (failed) litmus test Spain's ability to govern its colonies. ‘I have seen (my Lords) their doings,’ recalls Willem of his experience as a Stadhouder,

I have heard their words, I have been a witness of their advise, by which they adjudged all you to death, making no more account of you, than of beasts, [as] if they had had power to have murdered you, as they do in the Indies, where they have miserably put to death, more than twenty millions of people, and have made desolate and waste, thirty times as much land in quantity and greatness, as the low country is, with such horri-

ble excesses and riots, that all the barbarousnesses, cruelties, and tyrannies, which have ever been committed, are but in sport, in respect of that, which has fallen out upon the poor Indians.16.

The New World, then, illustrated Spain's proclivity toward absolutism, its instinctive abuse of privileges, its habitual plundering of property, and its miserable record of tyranny. America presented a pattern of history, a code of Spanish behavior, that appeared to parallel closely events in the Netherlands. Partisan readers like Willem further proposed that the history of the New World charted the course that the Netherlands would follow if Spanish troops were not ousted. The case of America convinced the prince that it would be good ‘to cause (if we could) the Spaniards to depart out of the country.’ Months later the States General came to a similar conclusion in their momentous Plakkaat van Verlatinge. More than once, the States refer to Spanish tyranny in America in their effort to legitimate their own course of action against Spain in the Netherlands. The Spanish monarch, they maintained, desired ‘dese voorseyde [Neder]landen van nieuws te conquesteren, om daer over vrijelick ende absolutelick te mogen bevelen.’ Philip II hoped ‘om niet te moghen doen alle des Landts privilegien, dat nae heuren wille by Spaegnaerden tyrannichlick te moghen gouverneren, als de Indien, ende nieuwe gheconquesteerde Landen.’ ‘Alle 't welck,’ concluded the States, ‘ons meer dan ghenoech wettighe oorsake ghegheven heeft om den Coninck van Spaegnien te verlaten, ende een ander machtich ende goedertieren Prince, om de voorseyde Landen te helpen beschermen ende voor te staene te versoecken.’ The case of the Indies, in short, validated that of the Low Countries.17.

The Apologie of Willem and the Plakkaat of the States constitute a climax of sorts of late-sixteenth century opposition to Hapsburg rule in the Netherlands. Together they represent the central public documents of the Revolt. That both contain references to ‘Spanish tyranny in America’ indicates just how quickly and pervasively the topos had developed and how extensively the rebels made use of it. Between its first appearance in the late 1560s and its later prominence in the early 1580s, ‘America’ had become a ubiquitous feature of Dutch propaganda. The ‘example of the Indies’ was singled out to clinch the case against Spain. Its evolution followed generally the patterns of the anti-Hapsburg literature that developed over the two decades that preceded, and finally culminated with, the Apologie of Willem. Throughout this period, it served authors by providing a convenient case of Spanish tyranny with circumstances that appeared remarkably similar to those in the Low Countries. It illustrated the abuses of the Holy Office, the acquisitiveness of the king's ‘evil-advisors,’ the ‘beastliness’ of the Spanish nation, and ultimately the perfidy of Philip II himself. ‘Spanish tyranny in America’ developed into a metaphor of exceptional value for those who would justify the Revolt of the Netherlands.

Causes: revolt, rhetoric, and the origins of an American alliance

The vision of America shared by the likes of Orange and Marnix denotes an abrupt and dramatic shift in the geo-political thinking of the Dutch. The rapid success and the subsequent durability of the rebels' representation of America, however, nei-

ther implies its inevitability nor explains its incipiency. One need only recall the enthusiastic preface to Ablijn's Nieuwe weerelt to realize just how radically images of America had evolved in the space of two decades. It is a shift in opinion less easily explained than might first seem. The impulse to vilify Spain resulted undoubtedly from those political events that consumed the prince's attention between Ablijn's anthology and Willem's own Apologie. Yet while the Revolt would have served as a catalyst for the generally hispanophobic turn of Dutch political literature, it in no way suffices to account for the shift of vision specifically regarding the New World nor for the centrality Dutch authors assigned to this sort of cultural geography. The fact of Orange's political and military opposition to the Hapsburg government in Brussels, in other words, fails to explain how Spain's experience in America became so quickly transformed from a source of pride to a mine of propaganda. It fails to account for the origin of the topos of ‘Spanish tyranny in America’ or for the cause of its overwhelming appeal among otherwise provincial rebels.

A number of possible explanations suggest themselves, some more plausibly than others. Precedents for the topos had existed in the anti-Spanish literature produced in Italy, England, and France over the course of the 16th century - the so-called Black Legend - though no one had ever made use of American similes quite as prominently as did the Dutch.18. Spain's detractors drew on certain incendiary Americana, such as the histories of Peter Martyr and Girolamo Benzoni, and these too would have been available to Dutch readers in the years immediately preceding the Revolt.19. From Bartolomé de Las Casas' catalogue of American cruelties, the Brevíssima relación, the rebels could have amassed more than enough ammunition to assault the reputation of Spain. Las Casas' explosive tract appeared in a Dutch translation already in 1578 - earlier than in any other language - and in an astonishing twenty-five more Dutch editions by the time the war with Spain had ended - more than in any other language.20. Still, it should be noted that the remarkable publication history of Las Casas in the Netherlands got underway in earnest only after rebel publicists had launched their initial attacks on the Spain's American record. Indeed, the phenomenal role that the Brevíssima relación would later play within Dutch letters has caused many to confuse the messenger with the message. By the time the Dutch discovered Las Casas, Spain's New World reputation had already become old news.

The presence of Black Legend materials outside of the Netherlands, and the remarkable publication history of Las Casas' work within, do not by themselves adequately explain the rebels' riveted attention to Spanish deeds abroad. Ultimately, it was reasons of rhetoric more than precedent that drew the Dutch to the example of America. Indeed, wherever they came from, reports of Spanish tyranny in America well fit the rebels' program. The political turn of events of the late 1560s and 1570s had effectively isolated the Dutch opponents of the Spanish regime. Many leading members of the rebel party fled in 1567, others faced execution, and those remaining confronted a vast and resolute Hapsburg empire. Under such circumstances, the rebels rightly perceived themselves threatened by a formidable Spanish monarch with extensive resources and superior forces. To rally support, though, the rebels cleverly portrayed themselves threatened by an omnipotent ‘universal’ monarch with limitless resources and equally infinite ambitions. The theme of universal monarchism, which appeared notably in the works of Marnix, partook

of a broader rebel strategy of soliciting support from abroad. While Orangist agents lobbied princes across Northern Europe, rebel pamphleteers ranged even wider in projecting such alliances with the nations of the world. Guided by the assumption that ‘My enemy's enemy is my friend,’ Dutch publicists drafted brothers-in-arms or, at the very least, cousins-in-suffering, from among those who actively opposed Hapsburg expansion (such as the English queen and the Ottoman sultan) as well as those who had experienced Hapsburg expansion in the past (such as the Italians and the Moors). Fellow travelers from Naples to Granada and Milan to Constantinople would not only bear witness to Hapsburg tyranny; they would also spare sympathy, it was hoped, for the latest of its victims.21.

Of course, not all potential allies made for comfortable bedfellows. The Granadans, like the Turks, were Muslims or, at best, fresh converts to Catholicism. The Italians were devoted to the Church of Rome and, as a popular Protestant proverb put it, ‘The closer to Rome the worse the Christian.’ Equally damning, the Italians served as mercenaries in the army of Flanders and would have committed much the same sort of tyrannies as their Castilian colleagues. One ‘nation,’ however, presented credentials that perfectly matched the rebels' needs. Neither Catholics nor soldiers, Moors nor mercenaries, the American Indians appeared the ultimate ally to the Dutch geo-political imagination. More dramatically than any other ‘nation,’ they had suffered from Spanish tyranny; less problematically than any other nation, they came unencumbered by the usual religio-cultural baggage. The Dutch, accordingly, promoted the American example above all others and reserved a position of prominence for the ‘innocent’ Indian in their gallery of Hapsburgian victims.22. America was exceptionally useful. lts very distance and novelty allowed it to be molded according to the rebels' specifications. And the Dutch were exceptionally resourceful. Their very isolation and the novelty of their situation forced them to create the myths that justified their actions. The Dutch crafted a usable geography, and ‘America’ lent itself to be positioned most prominently within the Dutch world view.

Effects: the rebels' America and the Americanization of the Revolt

America's plasticity permitted it to be readily shaped according to circumstance and audience. The cultural geographers of the rebel party were quick to recognize and take advantage of these qualities. The experience of America, they maintained, closely paralleled that of the Netherlands, as both ‘nations’ had tasted firsthand the bitterness of Hapsburg misgovernment. Both had suffered the abuse of rights, privileges, and liberties by unlawful Hapsburg civil servants; both had endured the destruction of property and cities by mutinous foreign mercenaries; both had sacrificed women and children to rapacious Spanish war-dogs. In both cases, the invading legions had cloaked their greed with the banner of religion and branded their enemies ‘heretics’. In both instances, the lands invaded had chosen heroic resistance rather than slavish servitude to Hapsburg tyrants.

Or so, at least, the Dutch would have it. To a large degree, though, the rebels' argument spun elegantly in circles. Spanish tyranny in the Netherlands, they claimed, mirrored that in the New World. Yet their perception of events in America

in the first place came refracted through the lens of recent developments in the Netherlands. The Dutch, in other words, contemplated the New World through the spectacles of their own political situation. Dutch circumstances could be said to parallel those of America because the representation of American history was patterned after the Dutch Revolt. In the mind's eye of a late-sixteenth century Dutch publicist, the image of America bore a striking resemblance indeed to that of the Low Countries.23.

Yet the rebels' road to America ran both ways. If the political events in the Netherlands colored Dutch perceptions of the New World, it is also the case that descriptions of the New World, and especially those derived from Las Casas and other popular historians of the Conquista, worked their way back into Dutch representations of the Revolt. Rebel publicists borrowed and reborrowed their topoi of tyranny energetically and eclectically, showing themselves to be remarkably adept at the intricacies of intertextuality. America, for its part, proved exceptionally adaptable and amenable to such a process. If the natives of America could appear in Dutch writings as would-be ‘rebels,’ stripped of their rights and denuded of their property, the Spaniards stationed in the Netherlands could feature as would-be colonizers, addicted to conquistadora violence and committed to the wholesale enslavement of the Netherlands. The Dutch created America in their own image, yet in the process, and by dint of their exposure to certain Americana, they came to reinvent that image based on ‘America’. Increasingly, the language of conquest and the polemic of revolt converged to form a single vocabulary of tyranny used to discredit Spanish behavior at home and abroad. In trope, topos, and metaphor, the rebels allied the Indian with the Orangist and Alva with Cortés.

The rebels' immersion in the literature of the New World, then, affected what might be called the Americanization of the Revolt. It provoked Orange and his ghostwriters to envision Philip II brutalizing and uprooting the entire native population of his Dutch ‘colony’; it induced Marnix to assail Spanish plans to create a ‘second colony of Spain’ in the Netherlands; and it suggested to an anonymous, patriotic pamphleteer the Castilian goal of ‘convert[ing] our Fatherland into another Hispaniola’.24. According to Joost Menijn, the pensionary of Dordrecht sent to lobby Elizabeth for aid, the Hapsburgs were more determined than ever, in 1585, ‘utterly to destroy [the Netherlands] and reduce the poor people to a perpetual slavery worse than that of the Indians.’ The expectation that Spain would oppress, ‘utterly... destroy,’ and ‘reduce the poor people’ of the Netherlands ‘to a perpetual slavery’ followed logically from the assumption that Spain had done all that and more in the New World. The fear of further ‘abominations’ in Flanders, as one Antwerper put it, gained urgency from the conviction that similar cruelties had already occurred in Peru. The specter of America's fate, in short, helped the rebels to anticipate their own future.25.

Prophecy quickly metamorphosed into memory. From the rebel doctrine that Spain sought to pursue an ‘American’ strategy in the Low Countries, it was only a small leap of polemical faith to propose that Spain had already executed a conquistadora program of violence in those towns and provinces visited by Alva's army. The image of ‘Spanish tyranny in America,’ so indelibly engraved in the Dutch mind, came to shape some of the earliest historiographic representations of ‘Spanish tyranny in the Netherlands’. In the Low Countries as in the West Indies,

the Spanish were seen to wage a ‘war of fire and blood’ - guerra a fuego y sangre as Zárate immortalized the Conquista, or ‘oorlogen door branden bloedstorting,’ in the words of Marnix - or, alternatively, a crusade ‘by fire and sword’.26. In Antwerp as in the Antilles, they slashed ‘through a mother and her child with a single thrust of their swords,’ or impiously dashed newborn babies against stone walls. In the imagination of patriotic historians, Batavians and Indians alike suffered the indignities of Hapsburg ‘wolves’ and ‘lions’ who pounced on them ‘like so many sheep.’

Of course, neither the rebel publicists nor Las Casas introduced these dramatic flourishes to the annals of war. Like much of the rhetoric employed by the rebels, these topoi had antecedents in the larger body of war literature compiled over the course of the Renaissance and late Middle Ages. Babies, no doubt, suffered woeful abominations in medieval chronicles (renditions of the Massacre of the Innocents come to mind), and maidens, too, may have succumbed to ‘unheard of violences’ in the accounts of the Schmalkaldic wars or the French Wars of Religion (and here the myths surrounding the St. Bartholemew's Day Massacre seem relevant).27. Still, the role of America within the Dutch imagination deserves to be singled out, if only because the rebels did so themselves. Time and again, they compared their situation specifically with that of the Amerindians. Insistently and incessantly they juxtaposed the image of Spanish tyrannies perpetrated in the New World with those committed in the Netherlands. And with good reason: America had been victimized primarily by Spain, and not simply by a Catholic or Imperial enemy; the Americans did not yet possess any incurably damning religious or political beliefs that might have made them inappropriate models of suffering; and, not least important, reports of American atrocities did, in fact, stand out from much of the available literature of conquest. Nothing matched the Brevíssima relación for blood and gore.

Above all, the New World, still novel and forever distant, lent itself to refashioning. The Dutch discovered America in every sense of the word. Shortly after the protests against the Hapsburg government in Brussels commenced, patriotic pamphleteers recognized the role America could play in their campaign against Spain and seized upon the image of conquistadora violence to blacken the Spanish reputation. Once discovered, America and the American predicament quickly took on the shape of the rebels' own situation. Innocent natives, proposed the Dutch, faced an invasive, foreign monarch who had ignored traditional privileges and pillaged private property under the pretense of religion. Yet while the Dutch fashioned their own style of America, the Americana that reached the Low Countries, and especially the Brevíssima relación of Las Casas, worked its way back into the very texture of patriotic histories. Lascasian language and metaphor colored the history of the revolt and led to wonderfully exaggerated notions of the Spanish enemy. The invading army of Flanders, it was said, had sought to conquer and enslave the entire Netherlands, to commit barbaric feats of butchery, and to murder epic numbers of women and children. If the rebels had invented the New World, within time America would help to reinvent the world of the Dutch. By the end of the sixteenth century, ‘America’ not only symbolized the extent of Spanish tyranny abroad; but it also provided the model for Spanish behavior in the Netherlands. It had become a shaping force in Dutch political propaganda, coloring countless readers' vision of Spain and its empire.


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