The Rise of the Dutch Republic — Volume 31: 1580-82 — John Shaqi
The Rise of the Dutch Republic — Volume 31: 1580-82Motley, John Lothrop
History
The Rise of the Dutch Republic — Volume 31: 1580-82
Motley, John Lothrop
Netherlands -- Church history; Netherlands -- History -- Eighty Years' War, 1568-1648
and in truth, Philip had long trembled on his throne before the genius of
the man who had foiled Spain's boldest generals and wiliest statesmen.
The King, accepting the priest's advice, resolved to fulminate a ban
against the Prince, and to set a price upon his head. "It will be well,"
wrote Philip to Parma, "to offer thirty thousand crowns or so to any one
who will deliver him dead or alive. Thus the country may be rid of a man
so pernicious; or at any rate he will be held in perpetual fear, and
therefore prevented from executing leisurely his designs."
In accordance with these suggestions and these hopes, the famous ban was
accordingly drawn up, and dated on the 15th of March, 1580. It was,
however, not formally published in the Netherlands until the month of
June of the same year.
This edict will remain the most lasting monument to the memory of
Cardinal Granvelle. It will be read when all his other state-papers
and epistles--able as they incontestably are--shall have passed into
oblivion. No panegyric of friend, no palliating magnanimity of foe,
can roll away this rock of infamy from his tomb. It was by Cardinal
Granvelle and by Philip that a price was set upon the head of the
foremost man of his age, as if he had been a savage beast, and that
admission into the ranks of Spain's haughty nobility was made the
additional bribe to tempt the assassin.
The ban consisted of a preliminary narrative to justify the penalty with
which it was concluded. It referred to the favors conferred by Philip
and his father upon the Prince; to his-signal ingratitude and
dissimulation. It accused him of originating the Request, the image-
breaking, and the public preaching. It censured his marriage with an
abbess--even during the lifetime of his wife; alluded to his campaigns
against Alva, to his rebellion in Holland, and to the horrible massacres
committed by Spaniards in that province--the necessary consequences of
his treason. It accused him of introducing liberty of conscience, of
procuring his own appointment as Ruward, of violating the Ghent treaty,
of foiling the, efforts of Don John, and of frustrating the counsels of
the Cologne commissioners by his perpetual distrust. It charged him with
a newly-organized conspiracy, in the erection of the Utrecht Union; and
for these and similar crimes--set forth, with involutions, slow, spiral,
and cautious as the head and front of the indictment was direct and
deadly--it denounced the chastisement due to the "wretched hypocrite"
who had committed such offences.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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