Texts concerning the Revolt of the Netherlands

17 A missive in the form of a supplication to His Royal Majesty of Spain, on behalf of the prince of Orange, the States of Holland and Zeeland, etc., 1573 ¹

This missive was drafted at about the same time as the previous document (September 1573). Alva was still in office; he was dismissed by the king in October and left in December.

Therefore we can hardly imagine that if he knew the truth Your Majesty would permit such gross injustice, great outrages and wilful wantonness. For has there ever been a king or potentate who treated his subjects so improperly? Your Majesty's forefathers, very blessed be their memory, displayed such gentleness, clemency and regal moderation towards their subjects that they set a laudable example of these virtues not only to their descendants but to all the kings and potentates of Christendom. When any misunderstanding arose between His Majesty and his subjects, and even if the subjects openly took up arms because of some misdemeanour on the part of officers or for a similar reason and were again reduced to obedience by their lords and princes, your predecessors were so far from wishing to commit such examples of cruelty and wilfulness that they assiduously took care in all capitulations to specify expressly in every article that all the privileges and freedoms of the subjects should be kept and observed inviolate. So that we should indeed do too gross an injustice and outrage to Your Royal Majesty if we allowed ourselves to be persuaded that Your Majesty had deviated so far from the laudable example of your forefathers and from the bounden duty of all pious kings and princes that,

1 Sendbrief in forme van supplicatie aen die Conincklicke Maiesteyt van Spaengien, van wegen des Princen van Orangien, der Staten van Hollandt ende Zeelandt (Knuttel, no. 213).

[p. 107]

instead of doing justice to his faithful subjects and giving audience to them, listening graciously to their pitiful complaints, he should send a tyrant to them who would cruelly slaughter and ruin them all, and reduce them to perpetual distress, slavery and servitude.

If we accepted the pardons² the duke so often proposes to us now, as if, on behalf of Your Majesty the king, he graciously wishes to forgive us our former misdemeanour or rebellion (as he calls it), we would therefore injure Your Majesty's high authority too much. For we know for certain that Your Majesty will not accuse or condemn us of any misdemeanour or rebellion before he has heard us and has learned the truth about our cause. Now who has ever given Your Majesty any information about this? Or when has Your Majesty listened to any one who was not our avowed adversary and enemy? It is indeed well-known that both sides should be heard before sentence is passed. The chronicles highly praise Alexander the Great who, when examining one party, always shut and stopped one ear by resting his head on his arm and being asked why he did this, answered: to give the other side as good a hearing as the first. This has been known to all nations and peoples as right and just and quite in accordance with natural law. So that no criminal will be condemned, even if he had committed the worst imaginable offences, without his defence being heard.

Now, most gracious king, we go down on our knees to you and pray you in all humility to lend an ear to us and to weigh our cause on the scales of justice. So far Your Majesty has received by post letters and notes from the duke of Alva and his adherents and has been informed only by them of the state of affairs in this country. So far our mouths have been gagged, our tongues pierced by glowing iron, our lips shut by burning tongs so that we should not make our distress known, so far the roads have been blocked, that neither our letters nor our moans might reach Your Majesty's ears.

How could Your Majesty in such circumstances accuse and condemn us of any misdeed, let alone of rebellion and refractoriness (things we have abhorred as long as we live)? If the duke again produces his letters of pardon and tries to subdue us by such means because he sees that he cannot have his way by force (thanks to God's miraculous mercy and clemency), why should we be in the least impressed or recognise that they are addressed to us, who have never let ourselves be tempted to swerve from the obedience we owe Your Majesty? Unless, that is, we wished to

2 See Document 16, note 8.

[p. 108]

accept and recognise the duke of Alva instead of our king. For it is him we have opposed and not Your Majesty, whom we shall faithfully serve with our lives and possessions under God unto death. We therefore have no interest at all in his pardon, which is only addressed to the towns which have allowed themselves to abandon the obedience due to the king. However we understand his intention well enough. He would like to set himself up as our king and hopes that by accepting his cunning pardons we will confess to having sinned and will thus condemn ourselves. For if we accept his pardon, then do we indeed declare ourselves guilty of rebellion and resistance against our king, of revolt and sedition, of heresy and apostasy of the Christian faith, of derogating from God's and the king's majesty. By accepting his feigned and false pardons he wants us to seal and sign this with our own signature so that afterwards he can justify his policies before Your Majesty and other kings and potentates and conceal his horrible tyranny, saying that if we had not committed misdeeds deserving such cruel punishments and torments, we would never have accepted pardons and forgiveness.

We call God, who knows all hearts, and Your Royal Majesty to witness that if we committed the misdeeds of which we are accused in these letters of pardon, we do not desire any pardon but would like to pay for them with our lives as the most wicked and evil creatures on earth. None of us, most gracious king, will refuse to have his limbs racked with the most diabolical torments, if he is found to have committed such atrocious misdeeds. Nay we pray the duke of Alva (if he allows himself to be affected by any prayer) to specify a proper, just and merciless punishment for all who come to him for pardon and confess that they have committed the afore-mentioned crimes. We also give him leave to break his word or faith, for why should he keep faith with people so unfaithful to God and their king that they did not scruple to treat secular and divine authority so scandalously and disdainfully?

However, never, to all eternity shall it be shown that this idea occurred to us, far less that we ever carried it into effect. From the beginning we have always shown our king all due obedience and regard and we have also tried to serve God Almighty, Father of Jesus Christ, in spirit and in truth in accordance with His commandment and His Word, as far as our frail powers have permitted and we wish to go on doing so to the last drop of our blood. But we saw that instead of administering right and justice and listening to our complaints and objections and fulfilling Your Royal Majesty's promises the duke of Alva wanted to oppress us in a horrible and unprecedented tyrannical way against all right and reason,

[p. 109]

against all our privileges and freedoms, and to ruin the whole country and to treat us more cruelly than the Turks or Jews have ever treated their vanquished enemies; and that before Your Majesty and all Christian potentates and nations he falsely accused us of apostasy, rebellion and heresy and that we were unable to obtain audience or receive any comfort and consolation in the whole world. Then we were compelled to take up arms and to try in every possible way to free our poor oppressed fatherland from such atrocious tyranny. We would rather die one after the other than surrender to such a tyrant. This is still our intention, if Your Majesty is unwilling to graciously listen to our complaints, to administer right and justice to us against such violence. For we are not so ill-informed of God's Word, thank God, but that we know quite well that our lives and deaths are in God's care and that the death which no one in the world escapes, is only a passage to eternal life.

If therefore our death would please and help some people, we would rather die an honest death for the freedom and prosperity of our fatherland than be reduced to slavery and be trampled on by wanton foreigners, who have always displayed hatred and displeasure towards us. We should then indeed hand on to our descendants the honestly reaped glory that their forefathers refused to be slaves of the Spanish inquisitors and did not hesitate to redeem a shameful life by an honest death.

We fight for freedom of conscience,³ for the freedom of our wives and children, of our lives and possessions; the point is whether the duke of Alva and his adherents will be our tyrannical lord and the arbitrary master of all we cherish or whether we shall unto death preserve and protect our liberties with our sword in the service of God our Lord and Your Majesty our most gracious king.

3 The religious problem and the freedom of conscience are speciffically mentioned here, in contrast to Document 16, pp. 102ff.