1581 - William I, Banned
On 25 March 1581 a ban was promulgated by the king of Spain, a paper full of invective, abuse, and falsehoods against the Prince of Orange, who was therein proscribed, and all persons invited “to assail him in his fortune, person, and life, as an enemy to human nature;" and for the recompense of virtue and the punishment of vice, he promised, to any one who should deliver up William of Nassau, dead or alive, the sum of 25,000 golden ducats, in lands or money, at his choice ; to grant a free pardon to such person for all former offences, of whatever kind; and to invest him with letters-patent of nobility.
To this infamous paper, William replied by that Apology which Voltaire has described as “one of the noblest monuments of history," in which he delivered a most splendid refutation of every charge against him, and a more terrible recrimination against the guilty tyrant. He thus stood before the whole public of Europe, not as a rebellious subject, but as the accuser of a king, who had disgraced his ancestors and his throne.
The Prince of Orange had been regularly installed in the dignity of chief of the seven united provinces, in which he was confirmed by a treaty entered into by the states of Flanders and Brabant, who, in an assembly at Brussels, had agreed to confer on the then Duke of Alencon, afterwards Duke of Anjou, the brother of the king of France, the dignity of Duke of Brabant, Lothier, Limbourg, and Guelders. At this period the Duke of Parma collected an army in order to take the city of Cambray; but the siege, which he carried on in person, was raised by the opportune arrival of the Duke of Anjou at the head of a large army of French troops.
After the retreat of the Spaniards from before Cambray, the Duke of Parma marched to Tournay, a large city, though at that time feebly garrisoned. The inhabitants, mostly Protestants, made a powerful defense, excited by the example of the Princess of Epinol, wife of the absent governor. This heroic lady, though wounded in the attack, fought in the breach, sword in hand ; and, when it was impossible to continue the resistance, she obtained an honorable capitulation, and marched out at the head of the garrison, with the appearance of a triumph rather than that of a defeat.
The Duke of Anjou, after the delivery of Cambray, leaving his army on the frontiers of Flanders, repaired to England, in the hope of completing a treaty which had before been commenced for his marriage with Queen Elizabeth. That sovereign allowed him for some time to indulge hopes of succeeding in his suit; and, from political motives, when the offer was finally rejected, showed him every mark of feeling and regret, accompanied with such tokens of high respect as she supposed would lessen the mortification which he felt. His plan evidently was to unite on his own head the crowns of England and of Belgium.
The duke, escorted by a powerful English fleet, repaired to Antwerp in February 1582, where he was received by the Prince of Orange with the greatest splendor, and invested with the insignia of the dignities to which he had been invited, but of which he proved himself utterly unworthy. It is related of him, that when the Prince of Orange placed the ducal mantle on his shoulder, Anjou said to him, “Fasten it so well, prince, that they may not be able to take it off again."
The inauguration of the Duke of Anjou at Antwerp gave occasion to continued festivities, and the opportunity was seized in order to put in practice that which the declaration of King Philip had intimated, and promised to reward. After a dinner on the Duke of Anjou’s birth-day, being the 18th of March 1582, and as William was quitting the dining-room on the way to his private apartment, a young man stepped forward to offer what purported to be a petition. While he read the paper, the treacherous suppliant discharged a pistol at his head; the ball struck him under the left ear, and passed out at the right check [some say the ball passed in at the right ear, and passed out by the left jaw]. As he tottered and fell, the assassin drew forth a poniard to complete his crime by suicide, but he was instantly put to death by the attendant guards.
Papers found upon the assassin proved him to be a Spaniard, a native of Bilboa, and clerk to a Spanish merchant of Antwerp. They showed that he had received the sacrament and confessed previous to the attempt, and that he was encouraged to the deed by prayers found among his papers in the Spanish language, one of them addressed to the angel Gabriel, imploring his intercession with God and the Virgin to aid him in the completion of his object. This young fanatic was shown afterwards to have been instigated to the crime by his master and a Dominican monk, who were tried, and, before their execution, made a full confession of their criminality.
Severe as was the wound inflicted on the prince, it did not prove fatal; but within three months he had so far recovered as to be able to accompany the Duke of Anjou to Ghent, Bruges, and the other great towns of Flanders, in each of which the same ceremony of inauguration was performed. On each occasion he had taken the prescribed oaths to maintain and preserve to the states-general the several rights and privileges they had inherited from the succession of princes who had for a long period governed the country. The duke soon began to compare the power he possessed with that held by the unlimited monarchs of the rest of EurOpe. He was found to be intemperate, inconstant, and utterly unprincipled; and the French officers who surrounded him, and alone enjoyed his confidence, had no great difficulty, whilst nourishing his discontent at his limited power, in exciting him to take the most treacherous steps to extend his own authority, and to extinguish the liberties of the people which he had been invited to defend, and had sworn to maintain.
Among these privileges, that of refusing to admit foreign troops to garrison the fortified towns was the one which those towns most zealously exercised. Though the smaller towns had overlooked slight infractions of this privilege, yet the larger ones, especially Antwerp, most sedulously preserved it. While a few of Anjou's troops were admitted into some places, the main body was either encamped or cantoned in quarters in the villages.
He had secretly resolved on seizing on the towns, and sent orders to his officers to take possession in his name of Dunkirk, Bruges, Termonde, and some other places, reserving to himself the attempt to be made upon Antwerp. To prepare for the execution of his project, he had ordered his numerous army, composed chiefly of French and Swiss, to approach the city, and form a camp very near to it. On the 17th of January 1583, having risen earlier than usual, under the pretext of going out afterwards to review his army in the camp, he set out at noon, accompanied by his guard of 200 horse ; and when he had reached the second drawbridge, one of his officers gave the pre-concerted signal for an attack on the Flemish guard, by pretending that he had fallen and. broken his leg. The duke called out to his followers, “ Courage, courage; the town is ours." The guard of Flemings at the gate was soon dispatched; and the French troops, which waited without to the number of 3,000, rushed in furiously, shouting the war-cry, “Town taken, town taken; kill, kill".
The astonished but intrepid citizens, recovering from their confusion, instantly flew to arms. All differences in religion and politics were forgotten in the common danger to their freedom. Catholics and Protestants, men and women, rushed alike to the conflict. The ancient spirit of Flanders seemed to animate all. Workmen, armed only with the instruments of their various trades, started from their shops, and flung themselves on the enemy. Those who had fire-arms, after expending their bullets, took from their pockets and pouches pieces of money, which they bent between their teeth, and used for charging their arquebuses. The French were driven successively from the streets and ramparts; and the cannons planted on the latter were immediately turned against the reinforcements which attempted to enter the town. The French were beaten everywhere; the Duke of Anjou saved himself by flight, and reached Termonde after the perilous exploit of passing through a large tract of inundated country. His loss in this atrocious enterprise amounted to 1,500, while that of the citizens did not exceed eighty men. The attempts of the same kind simultaneously made at Dunkirk and at Termonde succeeded, but they failed in all the other places.
The Prince of Orange alone was cool and collected, and on the Duke of Anjou making abundance of professions of his repentance, of his submission, and of future fidelity and obedience to the states, he was disposed to some kind of reconciliation, especially as his brother the king of France dispatched a special envoy to intercede for him. A treaty was then commenced, the tendency of which was to restore to Anjou the command of the troops, with some new security against treachery on his part. He had in the mean time withdrawn to France to escape the general burst of indignation, and there his worthless existence was suddenly terminated, as some thought by poison, which in that day was commonly supposed to be the cause of unexpected death. He had then scarcely attained his twenty-ninth year.
The conduct of the Prince of Orange in trying to reconcile the states to the re-assumption of command by Anjou, although it could not arise from any selfish views, since he might himself have easily obtained the supreme power, was misunderstood by many of the Belgians, but more especially by the people of Antwerp. Unable to comprehend the greatness of his mind, they openly accused him of having joined with the French for their subjugation, and concealed a body of that detested nation in the citadel. The populace rushed to the place, and having minutely examined it, were convinced of their own folly and the prince’s innocence. He scorned to demand their punishment for such an outrageous calumny, but he was not the less afflicted at it. He took the resolution of quitting Flanders; and he retired into Zealand, where he was better known, and consequently more trusted.
