Texts concerning the Revolt of the Netherlands

46 The return of harmony in the Netherlands by the return of Madame, 1580 ¹

This pamphlet published at Mons advocates the reconciliation of the Netherlands with the king according to the example set by the

1 Le retour de la concorde aux Pays Bas par le retour de Madame (Knuttel, no. 543).

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Union of Arras of January 1579. In September 1579 Margaret of Parma was re-appointed as regent, but when she arrived back in the Netherlands in the summer of 1580 to take over government, her son Alexander prevented her from exercising any influence.

If you hope to gain advantage from having a man like the prince of Orange as your chief, and from our having a woman as our regent, you are very much mistaken. For if Madame's sex is an obstacle, so is his lack of courage. Tell me, how many times has he been at the head of your regiments when it was time to fight? Do you remember seeing him assemble and command your army with the diligence and zeal appropriate to a commander-in-chief? Did you see him come to the rescue of the town of Maastricht after a siege lasting four months² or (a little time before) go to meet the prince of Parma? The prince of Parma hastened rashly to the gates of Antwerp and cut your army to pieces before the eyes of the prince of Orange,³ who remained paralysed within the walls of Antwerp and gave neither the assistance nor the orders which one must expect in such a situation from a commander-in-chief.

You, soldiers, who love military glory and who have borne arms on his side, did you not feel ashamed of him for cowardice so great that he even lacked the courage to send off five hundred harquebuses to support you when you had retreated as far as the counterscarp of the moat of Antwerp? Do you not remember that at the critical moment his authority over the horse (who are of his nation) failed and they deserted him? Do you not see that it is always so with him? How long will it be before you see that all his strength lies in his ability to deceive those among us who are carried away by his fine words, but that his actions are to little or no avail?

You must therefore confess that if Madame does not bear arms herself nor takes part in fighting, your prince of Orange does not do this either. His share consists in giving good advice. Well let us see which of the two wins the prize for giving the better advice, for putting into practice his own advice best and for looking after his soldiers better and paying them better. Madame advises us to make war only on foreigners and disturbers of the public peace and cordially receives all the king's subjects who are willing to live in accordance with the Pacification of Ghent, confirmed by the recent treaty of Mons.⁴ The prince of Orange advises us not to keep

2 From March until June 1579.

3 On 23 February 1579 Parma sent his soldiers from his camp at Visé near Liège to positions immediately before the gates of Antwerp.

4 By the treaty of Mons (September 1579) the stipulations of the peace of Arras of May 1579 between the Walloon provinces and Spain, including withdrawal of the Spanish troops and replacement of the governor, Parma, were chiefly confirmed.

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the Pacification and secretly orders the Catholics to be either driven away or to be harassed everywhere. Madame sincerely advises the re-establishment of peace and harmony between the provinces; the prince sows as much discord and dissension as possible in the whole country, so that one of the parties may be his stronghold. Madame has the fear and the glory of God in mind, and she attunes her decrees and counsels to this. The prince has the ambition to usurp power but he conceals this under the mask of Calvinism or the confession of Augsburg.⁵

What this princess swears or promises she really wishes with all her heart and she keeps her word with total sincerity; the prince's aim, however, is to deceive and to hoodwink people with fine words without effecting what he swore and promised. She is sure to get money from the resources of the king of Spain to pay His Majesty's army (though he takes a long time); he will not have the four million guilders necessary to levy and put into the field a new army next summer unless with Aldegonde, Villers and Taffin⁶ he fabricates new lies to lull the people of the towns and countries he occupies, into granting him this large sum in addition to the ordinary loans for his garrisons. She has the power and the will to reward the good services of the captains and soldiers of His Majesty's army with good jobs in the provinces loyal to the king; he has only his own goods at Dillenburg to give away⁷ and should he give away the other men's goods, he will suffer the misfortune of Seius and his horse.⁸ As those among us who have observed her actions will testify, the heart of the princess is so full of the fear of God and a Christian desire to reestablish the old harmony of these countries, that nothing inimical to these aspirations may enter it. He has his heart full of discord and cruelty; all he devises is to take a town by surprise, to sack another, to chase away or molest all the Catholics, in short to introduce everywhere disorder and dissension among the subjects of the king under the veil of religion, to ruin one party with the help of the other, until he is checked in his course

5 In 1566 the prince advised the adherents of the reformed religion in the Netherlands to accept the Augsburg confession in a somewhat modified form. From 1573 he himself was a member of the reformed church which was based on the Calvinistic confession of 1561.

6 Marnix of St Aldegonde, and the court-chaplains Loyseleur de Villiers and Taffin were held to be Orange's chief advisers at the time.

7 Dillenburg, residence of the counts of Nassau.

8 The Latin proverb ‘ille homo habet equum Seianum’ refers to Seius (1st century B.C.) who possessed a horse that led all its owners to disaster.

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by the Catholics united and joined together for the king. And that is how the general peace desired by all virtuous men of this country will return.