History of the Revolt of the Netherlands — Volume 02Schiller, Friedrich
History
History of the Revolt of the Netherlands — Volume 02
Schiller, Friedrich
Huguenots; Netherlands -- History -- Eighty Years' War, 1568-1648
History has repeated this memorable example only once, in Cardinal
Mazarin; but the instance differed according to the spirit of the two
periods and nations. The highest power could not protect either from
derision; but if France found vent for its indignation in laughing at
its pantaloon, the Netherlands hurried from scorn to rebellion. The
former, after a long bondage under the vigorous administration of
Richelieu, saw itself placed suddenly in unwonted liberty; the latter
had passed from ancient hereditary freedom into strange and unusual
servitude; it was as natural that the Fronde should end again in
subjection as that the Belgian troubles should issue in republican
independence. The revolt of the Parisians was the offspring of poverty;
unbridled, but not bold, arrogant, but without energy, base and
plebeian, like the source from which it sprang. The murmur of the
Netherlands was the proud and powerful voice of wealth. Licentiousness
and hunger inspired the former; revenge, life, property, and religion
were the animating motives of the latter. Rapacity was Mazarin's spring
of action; Granvella's lust of power. The former was humane and mild;
the latter harsh, imperious, cruel. The French minister sought in the
favor of his queen an asylum from the hatred of the magnates and the
fury of the people; the Netherlandish minister provoked the hatred of a
whole nation in order to please one man. Against Mazarin were only a
few factions and the mob they could arm; an entire and united nation
against Granvella. Under the former parliament attempted to obtain,
by stealth, a power which did not belong to them; under the latter it
struggled for a lawful authority which he insidiously had endeavored to
wrest from them. The former had to contend with the princes of the
blood and the peers of the realm, as the latter had with the native
nobility and the states, but instead of endeavoring, like the former, to
overthrow the common enemy, in the hope of stepping themselves into his
place, the latter wished to destroy the place itself, and to divide a
power which no single man ought to possess entire.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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