termination of her own rule, Margaret had formed the resolu tion of relinquishing the name also of regent. To see a successor in the actual possession of a dignity, which a nine years' enjoyment had made indispensable to her; to see the authority, the glory, the splendour, the adoration, and all the marks of respect, which are the usual concomitants of supreme power, pass over to another; and to feel that she had lost that, which she could never forget she had once held, was more than a woman's mind could endure; moreover, the Duke of Alva was of all men the least calculated to make her feel her privation the less painful, by a forbearing use of his newly acquired dignity. The tranquillity of the country, too, which was put in jeopardy by this divided rule, seemed to impos upon the duchess the necessity of abdicating. Many governors of provinces refused, without an express order from the court, to receive commands from the duke, and to recognise him as co regent. The rapid change of their point of attraction, could not be met by the courtiers so composedly and imperturbably, but that the duchess observed the alteration, and bitterly felt it. Even the few who, like State Counsellor Viglius, still firmly adhered to her, did so less from attachment to her person, than from vexation at being displaced by novices and foreigners, and from being too proud to serve a fresh apprenticeship under a new viceroy. But far the greater number, with all their endeavours to keep an exact mean, could not help making a difference between the homage they paid to the rising sun, and that which they bestowed on the setting luminary. The royal palace in Brussels became more and more deserted, while the throng at Kuilemberg House daily increased. But what wounded the sensitiveness of the duchess most acutely, was the arrest of Horn and Egmont, which was planned and executed by the duke, without her knowledge or consent, just as if there had been no such person as herself in existence. Alva did, indeed, after the act was done, endeavour to appease her, by declaring that the design had been purposely kept secret from her, in order to spare her name from being mixed up in so odious a transaction; but no such considerations of delicacy could close the wound which had been inflicted on her pride. In order at once, to escape all risk of similar insults, of which the pre sent was probably only a forerunner, she despatched her private secretary Macchiavell to the court of her brother, there to solicit earnestly for permission to resign the regency. The request was granted without difficulty by the king, who accompanied his consent with every mark of his highest esteem. He would put aside (so the king expressed himself) his own advantage and that of the provinces, in order to oblige his sister. He sent her a present of 30,000 dollars, and allotted to her a yearly pension of 20,000 *. At the same time, a diploma was forwarded to the Duke of Alva, constituting him in her stead, viceroy of all the Netherlands, with unlimited powers. Gladly would Margaret have learned that she was permitted to resign the regency before a solemn assembly of the states, a wish, which she had not very obscurely hinted to the king. But she was not gratified. She was particularly fond of solemnity, and the example of the Emperor her father, who had exhibited the extraordinary spectacle of his abdication of the crown in this very city, seemed to have great attractions for her. As she was compelled to part with supreme power, she could scarcely be blamed for wishing to do so with as much splendour as possible. Moreover, she had not failed to observe how much the general hatred of the duke had effected in her own n favour, and she looked, therefore, the more wistfully forward to a scene, which promised to be at once so flattering to her and so affecting. She would have been glad to mingle her own tears with those, which she hoped to see shed by the Netherlanders, for their good regent. Thus the bitterness of her descent from the throne, would have been alleviated by the expression of general sympathy. Little as she had done to merit the general esteem, during the nine years of her administration, while fortune smiled upon * Which, however, does not appear to have been very punctually paid, if a pamphlet may be trusted which was printed during her lifetime. (It bears the title: Discours sur la Blessure de Monseigneur Prince d'Orange, 1582, without notice of the place where it was printed, and is to be found in the Elector's library at Dresden.) She languished, it is there stated, at Namur in poverty, and so ill supported by her son, (the then governor of the Netherlands,) that her own secretary Aldrobandin called her sojourn there an exile. But the writer goes on to ask, what better treatment could she expect from a son, who, when still very young, being on a visit to her at Brussels, snapped his fingers at her, behind her back. her, and the approbation of her sovereign was the limit to all her wishes, yet now the sympathy of the nation had acquired a value in her eyes, as the only thing which could in some degree compensate to her for the disappointment of all her other hopes. Fain would she have persuaded herself that she had become a voluntary sacrifice to her goodness of heart, and her too humane feelings towards the Netherlanders. As, however, the king was very far from being disposed to incur any danger by calling a general assembly of the states, in order to gratify a mere caprice of his sister, she was obliged to content herself with a farewell letter to them. In this document, she went over her whole administration, recounted, not without ostentation, the difficulties with which she had had to struggle, the evils which, by her dexterity, she had prevented, and wound up at last, by saying that she left a finished work, and had to transfer to her successor nothing but the punishment of offenders. The king, too, was repeatedly compelled to hear the same statement, and she left nothing undone to arrogate to herself the glory of any future advantages, which it might be the good fortune of the Duke to realize. Her own merits, as something which did not admit of a doubt, but was at the same time a burden oppressive to her modesty, she laid at the feet of the king. Dispassionate posterity may, nevertheless, hesitate to subscribe unreservedly to this favourable opinion. Even though the united voice of her contemporaries, and the testimony of the Netherlands themselves vouch for it, a third party will not be denied the right to examine her claims with stricter scrutiny. The popular mind, easily affected, is but too ready to count the absence of a vice as an additional virtue, and, under the pressure of existing evil, to give excess of praise for past benefits. The Netherlander seems to have concentrated all his hatred upon the Spanish name. To lay the blame of the national evils on the regent, would tend to remove from the king and his minister the curses, which he would rather shower upon them alone and undividedly; and the Duke of Alva's government of the Netherlands was, perhaps, not the proper point of view from which to test the merits of his predecessor. It was undoubtedly no light task to meet the king's expectations, without infringing the rights of the people, and the duties of humanity; but in struggling to effect these two contradictory objects, Margaret had accomplished neither. She had deeply injured the nation, while comparatively she had done little service to the king. It is true that she at last crushed the Protestant faction, but the accidental outbreak of the Iconoclasts assisted her in this, more than all her dexterity. She certainly succeeded by her intrigues in dissolving the league of the nobles, but not until the first blow had been struck at its roots by internal dissensions. The object, to secure which, she had for many years vainly exhausted her whole policy, was effected at last by a single enlistment of troops, for which, however, the orders were issued from Madrid. She delivered to the duke, no doubt, a tranquillized country; but it cannot be denied that the dread of his approach had the chief share in tranquillizing it. By her reports, she led the Council in Spain astray; because she never informed it of the disease, but only of the occasional symptoms; never of the universal feeling and voice of the na tion, but only of the misconduct of factions. Her faulty ad ministration, moreover, drew the people into the crime, be cause she exasperated, without sufficiently awing them. She it was that brought the murderous Alva into the country, by leading the king to believe that the disturbances in the provinces were to be ascribed, not so much to the severity of the royal ordinances, as to the unworthiness of those who were charged with their execution. Margaret possessed natural capacity and intellect; and an acquired political tact enabled her to meet any ordinary case; but she wanted that creative genius which, for new and extraordinary emergencies, invents new maxims, or wisely oversteps old ones. In a country where honesty was the best policy, she adopted the unfortunate plan of practising her insidious Italian policy, and thereby sowed the seeds of a fatal distrust in the minds of the people. The indulgence which has been so liberally imputed to her as a merit, was, in truth, extorted from her weakness and timidity by the courageous opposition of the nation; she had never departed from the strict letter of the royal commands, by her own spontaneous resolution; never did the gentle feelings of innate humanity lead her to misinterpret the cruel purport of her instructions. Even the few concessions, to which necessity compelled her, were granted with an uncertain and shrinking hand, as if fearing to give too much; and she lost the fruit of her benefactions, because she mutilated them by a sordid closeness. What, in all the other relations of her life, she was too little, she was on the throne too much—a woman! She had it in her power, after Granvella's expulsion, to become the benefactress of the Belgian nation, but she did not. Her supreme good was the approbation of her king, her greatest misfortune his displeasure; with all the eminent qualities of her mind, she remained an ordinary character, because her heart was destitute of native nobility. She used a melancholy power with much moderation, and stained her government with no deed of arbitrary cruelty; nay, if it had depended on her, she would have always acted humanely. Years afterwards, when her idol, Philip II., had long forgotten her, the Netherlanders still honoured her memory; but she was far from deserving the glory which her successor's inhumanity reflected upon her. She left Brussels about the end of December, 1567. The duke escorted her as far as the frontiers of Brabant, and there left her under the protection of Count Mansfeld, in order to hasten back to the metropolis, and show himself to the Netherlanders as sole regent. THE END |