Texts concerning the Revolt of the Netherlands

12 Faithful exhortation to the inhabitants of the Netherlands against the vain and false hopes their oppressors hold out to them, 1568 ¹

This is the prince of Orange's reaction to the duke of Alva's edict of 11 November 1568 against the many pamphlets appearing at the time. The prince had already been forced to withdraw his troops from the Netherlands after the failure of the year's campaign.

Awake therefore and do not allow yourselves to be further deceived by those totally false and vain promises which your oppressors and the common enemies put about in order to win a richer booty later. Do not allow your minds to be bewildered any longer by the beautiful titles to which they refer in that edict² and generally in relation to all their activities, trying to justify their iniquities, acts of violence, massacres and rapines by the authority of the king, the charge of the governor, the name of justice, the respect of sovereignty, the title of edicts, the pretext of religion, the hope of pardon, the feigning of clemency, the assurance of

1 Fidelle exhortation aux inhabitans du pais bas, contre les vains et faux espoirs dont leurs oppresseurs les font amuser (Knuttel, no. 171).

2 The edict of 11 November 1568.

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gentleness, the promise of grace, and so many other sweet and beautiful attributes with which the prologue of that edict has been embellished. Do not be blinded henceforth by the unjust strictures which our common enemies pass on the virtuous acts of our liberators³ in order to hoodwink your trustful minds, calling them in that edict rebellious, guilty of the crime of lèse-majesté (divine and human), seditious, mutinous, wretched forgers, enemies and disturbers of the public welfare, rabble-rousers, distributors of notorious pamphlets, publishers of booklets, seditious, malicious, turbulent, impudent people, accusing them of so many other vices and trying most unjustly to defame them. Open your eyes and consider the present situation more closely. If you sift out all the deeds and acts of one party and the other, you shall undoubtedly find the truth to be that all the vices with which those tyrants attempt to slander and traverse the holy, reasonable and necessary enterprises of those who for the true service of God, the king and the fatherland and the deliverance of you all, courageously endanger their lives, property and wealth, are in fact their own vices. It is they who must be blamed for deeds by which they openly disgrace themselves. You well know that by the king's own proper consent you are free and released from the oath and obedience you owe him, if he or others in his name infringe the promises and conditions on which you have accepted and received him, until finally every right has been restored.⁴ I also remind you that according to your privileges you are permitted to close the gates of your towns and to resist by force not only the servants of your prince but also the prince himself, in person, whenever he attempts to proceed by force of arms.

You may also be assured that when later the king knows the truth, His Majesty will rightly be most angry that you did not resist those tyrants more vigorously in order to preserve his highly prosperous countries from extreme ruin, poverty and depopulation, or from the tyrant's efforts to establish their domination and satisfy their avarice. So nobody, neither you nor your liberators, may properly be accused of rebellion, disloyalty or other crimes if in fulfilling the duties, obligations and oaths which you all must observe, you do all you can to obviate and resist such manifest violent infringements of your privileges, such suppression of your liberties, such massacre of yourselves and ravishing of your possessions,

3 The prince of Orange and his supporters.

4 At his inauguration in 1549 Philip II had sworn to the Joyeuse Entrée, a Brabant privilege of 1356, to which this passage refers. Cf. Ria van Bragt, De Blijde Inkomst van de hertogen van Brabant Johanna en Wenceslas (3 Januari 1356) (Louvain, 1956), p. 106.

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and exert yourselves to the utmost to chase away those foreign and tyrannical invaders, true rebels and common enemies of God, the king, the fatherland and all the inhabitants living here at present as well as those who have gone away. Look at the argumentation and conclusion of that edict and you will see that if they should be in a position to rule the Netherlands, you who have stayed in this country, have no hope of being better treated than the refugees who might fall into their power. Do they not declare in that edict that there are among you a great multitude of people guilty of lèse-majesté and that they have only proceeded against those who are most culpable? Do they not call you the accomplices of the others, though you have dissimulated up till now? Do they not suggest you are daily piling up new crimes one upon another? Do they not suspect you of mutiny, rebellion and revolt, as they wrongly call the duty which they know you are entitled to perform? Do they not command such a pitiless inquisition against you all that there will hardly be one whom they may not in some way or another judge guilty if they so wish? Do they not force you either to become accusers and betrayers of all the good virtuous men who love the fatherland and your liberty or to suffer death or other heavy punishment according to the rules of their blood-thirsty cruelty? Do they not want to force you, by putting a rope round your neck, for ever to stop speaking not only about your salvation but also about your liberty, rights and customs? Do you not see how they put you at the mercy of officers, provosts and fiscals by confounding all order and justice? Do you still expect any grace, pardon or impunity, when it is so widely known that they have had so many good inhabitants apprehended and killed in divers places simply for having attended sermons, which they say are new, although they were tolerated and permitted by the regent and the magistrates?⁵ Therefore, my seigniors, brethren and companions, put aside these vain expectations, cease breaking your oaths, recognise the truth, take a firm stand for the maintenance of your own welfare, resist your oppressors with all your might, help by all means those who exert themselves to pull you out of this miserable servitude.

5 By the accord of 23 August 1566 Margaret of Parma had allowed Protestant services in those places where they had been held so far.