Europe must have been craven-hearted indeed if it had stood tamely by, wrapped in the cloak of its own selfishness, to watch the death-throes of the United Provinces. The history of their war of independence was sufficient to stir the emotions of every generous soul, the use which they had made of the liberty which they had won such as to guarantee its continuance in the mind of every prudent statesman. Trained to a rough and hard life by a constant struggle with nature, consecrated to a sturdy individualism of character by the religion of Calvin in its most uncompromising and fatalistic form, the peasants from the marshes of Holland and the fishermen from the sand-banks of Zealand had found in the breath of liberty the elixir of a national life. Under the leadership of the burghers of Amsterdam and Dordrecht, at the initiative of the nobility of Zealand and Guelderland, with the support of the scholars of Leyden, the union of Utrecht, formed in 1579, gave to Europe a new nationality, and planted in the very midst of the great monarchies a confederation of tiny republics. [Sidenote: =Reasons for the success of the war of independence.=] Nothing could have preserved their independence at first except a strange combination of national virtues, natural advantages, and political fortune. Persecution had fanned the flame of patriotism till it burned at a white heat. Under the pressure of a long struggle with a superior power even vices turned into virtues. Slowness and obstinacy became refined into patience and endurance, dulness into obedience, sloth into fidelity. Never did men fight with greater heroism, with more complete self-forgetfulness, than these rude sailors and fishermen who wrested their liberty and their religion at the edge of the sword from the pride of Spain. The physical characteristics of the country aided them. Campaigns were difficult in a land which at any moment might be restored to the sea by the cutting of a dyke. Sieges of towns open to the sea by a power which had no navy were fore-doomed to failure. Political complications aided them also. The opposition of France and the jealousy of England made the task of Spain far more difficult. But neither the sympathy of the Huguenots, nor the gold of Elizabeth, nor the marshes of Holland, nor the defeat of the Armada, would have availed one jot to save the confederation from ultimate ruin had it not been for the tenacity, the patriotism, and the self-sacrifice of the nation itself. Never since the days of Miltiades and Themistocles did a people better deserve their freedom than did the patient Dutch under their silent prince when the dagger of the assassin laid him low in 1584. They had not long to wait, for although the formal independence of the United Provinces was not acknowledged by Spain until the peace of Westphalia in 1648, they had ceased to be under any fear of subjugation since the death of Philip II. in 1598,