5: Chapter V
<< 4: Chapter IV || TOC
Obscure but important movements in the regions of eternal twilight,
revolutions, of which history has been silent, in the mysterious depths
of Asia, outpourings of human rivets along the sides of the Altai
mountains, convulsions up-heaving r mote realms and unknown dynasties,
shock after shock throb bing throughout the barbarian world and dying
upon the edge of civilization, vast throes which shake the earth as
precursory pangs to the birth of a new empire--as dying symptoms of the
proud but effete realm which called itself the world; scattered hordes of
sanguinary, grotesque savages pushed from their own homes, and hovering
with vague purposes upon the Roman frontier, constantly repelled and
perpetually reappearing in ever-increasing swarms, guided thither by a
fierce instinct, or by mysterious laws--such are the well known phenomena
which preceded the fall of western Rome. Stately, externally powerful,
although undermined and putrescent at the core, the death-stricken empire
still dashed back the assaults of its barbarous enemies.
During the long struggle intervening between the age of Vespasian and
that of Odoacer, during all the preliminary ethnographical revolutions
which preceded the great people's wandering, the Netherlands remained
subject provinces. Their country was upon the high road which led the
Goths to Rome. Those low and barren tracts were the outlying marches of
the empire. Upon that desolate beach broke the first surf from the
rising ocean of German freedom which was soon to overwhelm Rome. Yet,
although the ancient landmarks were soon well nigh obliterated, the
Netherlands still remained faithful to the Empire, Batavian blood was
still poured out for its defence.
By the middle of the fourth century, the Franks and Allemanians, alle-
mannez, all-men, a mass of united Germans are defeated by the Emperor
Julian at Strasburg, the Batavian cavalry, as upon many other great
occasions, saving the day for despotism. This achievement, one of the
last in which the name appears upon historic record, was therefore as
triumphant for the valor as it was humiliating to the true fame of the
nation. Their individuality soon afterwards disappears, the race having
been partly exhausted in the Roman service, partly merged in the Frank
and Frisian tribes who occupy the domains of their forefathers.
For a century longer, Rome still retains its outward form, but the
swarming nations are now in full career. The Netherlands are
successively or simultaneously trampled by Franks, Vandals, Alani, Suevi,
Saxons, Frisians, and even Sclavonians, as the great march of Germany to
universal empire, which her prophets and bards had foretold, went
majestically forward. The fountains of the frozen North were opened,
the waters prevailed, but the ark of Christianity floated upon the flood.
As the deluge assuaged, the earth had returned to chaos, the last pagan
empire had been washed out of existence, but the dimly, groping,
faltering, ignorant infancy of Christian Europe had begun.
After the wanderings had subsided, the Netherlands are found with much
the same ethnological character as before. The Frank dominion has
succeeded the Roman, the German stock preponderates over the Celtic, but
the national ingredients, although in somewhat altered proportions,
remain essentially the same. The old Belgae, having become Romanized in
tongue and customs, accept the new Empire of the Franks. That people,
however, pushed from their hold of the Rhine by thickly thronging hordes
of Gepidi, Quadi, Sarmati, Heruli, Saxons, Burgundians, move towards the
South and West. As the Empire falls before Odoacer, they occupy Celtic
Gaul with the Belgian portion of the Netherlands; while the Frisians,
into which ancient German tribe the old Batavian element has melted, not
to be extinguished, but to live a renovated existence, the "free
Frisians;" whose name is synonymous with liberty, nearest blood relations
of the Anglo-Saxon race, now occupy the northern portion, including the
whole future European territory of the Dutch republic.
The history of the Franks becomes, therefore, the history of the
Netherlands. The Frisians struggle, for several centuries, against their
dominion, until eventually subjugated by Charlemagne. They even encroach
upon the Franks in Belgic Gaul, who are determined not to yield their
possessions. Moreover, the pious Merovingian faineans desire to plant
Christianity among the still pagan Frisians. Dagobert, son of the second
Clotaire, advances against them as far as the Weser, takes possession of
Utrecht, founds there the first Christian church in Friesland, and
establishes a nominal dominion over the whole country.
Yet the feeble Merovingians would have been powerless against rugged
Friesland, had not their dynasty already merged in that puissant family
of Brabant, which long wielded their power before it assumed their crown.
It was Pepin of Heristal, grandson of the Netherlander, Pepin of Landen,
who conquered the Frisian Radbod (A.D. 692), and forced him to exchange
his royal for the ducal title.
It was Pepin's bastard, Charles the Hammer, whose tremendous blows
completed his father's work. The new mayor of the palace soon drove the
Frisian chief into submission, and even into Christianity. A bishop's
indiscretion, however, neutralized the apostolic blows of the mayor. The
pagan Radbod had already immersed one of his royal legs in the baptismal
font, when a thought struck him. "Where are my dead forefathers at
present?" he said, turning suddenly upon Bishop Wolfran. "In Hell, with
all other unbelievers," was the imprudent answer. "Mighty well," replied
Radbod, removing his leg, "then will I rather feast with my ancestors in
the halls of Woden, than dwell with your little starveling hand of
Christians in Heaven." Entreaties and threats were unavailing. The
Frisian declined positively a rite which was to cause an eternal
separation from his buried kindred, and he died as he had lived, a
heathen. His son, Poppa, succeeding to the nominal sovereignty, did not
actively oppose the introduction of Christianity among his people, but
himself refused to be converted. Rebelling against the Frank dominion,
he was totally routed by Charles Martell in a great battle (A.D.750) and
perished with a vast number of Frisians. The Christian dispensation,
thus enforced, was now accepted by these northern pagans. The
commencement of their conversion had been mainly the work of their
brethren from Britain. The monk Wilfred was followed in a few years by
the Anglo-Saxon Willibrod. It was he who destroyed the images of Woden
in Walcheren, abolished his worship, and founded churches in North
Holland. Charles Martell rewarded him. with extensive domains about
Utrecht, together with many slaves and other chattels. Soon afterwards
he was consecrated Bishop of all the Frisians. Thus rose the famous
episcopate of Utrecht. Another Anglo-Saxon, Winfred, or Bonifacius, had
been equally active among his Frisian cousins. His crozier had gone hand
in hand with the battle-axe. Bonifacius followed close upon the track of
his orthodox coadjutor Charles. By the middle of the eighth century,
some hundred thousand Frisians had been slaughtered, and as many more
converted. The hammer which smote the Saracens at Tours was at last
successful in beating the Netherlanders into Christianity. The labors of
Bonifacius through Upper and Lower Germany were immense; but he, too,
received great material rewards. He was created Archbishop of Mayence,
and, upon the death of Willibrod, Bishop of Utrecht. Faithful to his
mission, however, he met, heroically, a martyr's death at the hands of
the refractory pagans at Dokkum. Thus was Christianity established in
the Netherlands.
Under Charlemagne, the Frisians often rebelled, making common cause with
the Saxons. In 785, A.D., they were, however, completely subjugated, and
never rose again until the epoch of their entire separation from the
Frank empire. Charlemagne left them their name of free Frisians, and the
property in their own land. The feudal system never took root in their
soil. "The Frisians," says their statute book; "shall be free, as long
as the wind blows out of the clouds and the world stands." They agreed,
however, to obey the chiefs whom the Frank monarch should appoint to
govern them, according to their own laws. Those laws were collected, and
are still extant. The vernacular version of their Asega book contains
their ancient customs, together with the Frank additions. The general
statutes of Charlemagne were, of course, in vigor also; but that great
legislator knew too well the importance attached by all mankind to local
customs, to allow his imperial capitulara to interfere, unnecessarily,
with the Frisian laws.
Thus again the Netherlands, for the first time since the fall of Rome,
were united under one crown imperial. They had already been once united,
in their slavery to Rome. Eight centuries pass away, and they are again
united, in subjection to Charlemagne. Their union was but in forming a
single link in the chain of a new realm. The reign of Charlemagne had at
last accomplished the promise of the sorceress Velleda and other
soothsayers. A German race had re-established the empire of the world.
The Netherlands, like-the other provinces of the great monarch's
dominion, were governed by crown-appointed functionaries, military and
judicial. In the northeastern, or Frisian portion, however; the grants
of land were never in the form of revocable benefices or feuds. With
this important exception, the whole country shared the fate, and enjoyed
the general organization of the Empire.
But Charlemagne came an age too soon. The chaos which had brooded over
Europe since the dissolution of the Roman world, was still too absolute.
It was not to be fashioned into permanent forms, even by his bold and
constructive genius. A soil, exhausted by the long culture of Pagan
empires, was to lie fallow for a still longer period. The discordant
elements out of which the Emperor had compounded his realm, did not
coalesce during his life-time. They were only held together by the
vigorous grasp of the hand which had combined them. When the great
statesman died, his Empire necessarily fell to pieces. Society had need
of farther disintegration before it could begin to reconstruct itself
locally. A new civilization was not to be improvised by a single mind.
When did one man ever civilize a people? In the eighth and ninth
centuries there was not even a people to be civilized. The construction
of Charles was, of necessity, temporary. His Empire was supported by
artificial columns, resting upon the earth, which fell prostrate almost
as soon as the hand of their architect was cold. His institutions had
not struck down into the soil. There were no extensive and vigorous
roots to nourish, from below, a flourishing Empire through time and
tempest.
Moreover, the Carlovingian race had been exhausted by producing a race
of heroes like the Pepins and the Charleses. The family became, soon,
as contemptible as the ox-drawn, long-haired "do-nothings" whom it had
expelled; but it is not our task to describe the fortunes of the
Emperor's ignoble descendants. The realm was divided, sub-divided, at
times partially reunited, like a family farm, among monarchs incompetent
alike to hold, to delegate, or--to resign the inheritance of the great
warrior and lawgiver. The meek, bald, fat, stammering, simple Charles,
or Louis, who successively sat upon his throne--princes, whose only
historic individuality consists in these insipid appellations--had not
the sense to comprehend, far less to develop, the plans of their
ancestor.
Charles the Simple was the last Carlovingian who governed Lotharingia,
in which were comprised most of the Netherlands and Friesland. The
German monarch, Henry the Fowler, at that period called King of the East
Franks, as Charles of the West Franks, acquired Lotharingia by the treaty
of Bonn, Charles reserving the sovereignty over the kingdom during his
lifetime. In 925, A.D., however, the Simpleton having been imprisoned
and deposed by his own subjects, the Fowler was recognized King, of
Lotharingia. Thus the Netherlands passed out of France into Germany,
remaining, still, provinces of a loose, disjointed Empire.
This is the epoch in which the various dukedoms, earldoms, and other
petty sovereignties of the Netherlands became hereditary. It was in the
year 922 that Charles the Simple presented to Count Dirk the territory of
Holland, by letters patent. This narrow hook of land, destined, in
future ages, to be the cradle of a considerable empire, stretching
through both hemispheres, was, thenceforth, the inheritance of Dirk's
descendants. Historically, therefore, he is Dirk I., Count of Holland.
Of this small sovereign and his successors, the most powerful foe for
centuries was ever the Bishop of Utrecht, the origin of whose greatness
has been already indicated. Of the other Netherland provinces, now or
before become hereditary, the first in rank was Lotharingia, once the
kingdom of Lothaire, now the dukedom of Lorraine. In 965 it was divided
into Upper and Lower Lorraine, of which the lower duchy alone belonged to
the Netherlands. Two centuries later, the Counts of Louvain, then
occupying most of Brabant, obtained a permanent hold of Lower Lorraine,
and began to call themselves Dukes of Brabant. The same principle of
local independence and isolation which created these dukes, established
the hereditary power of the counts and barons who formerly exercised
jurisdiction under them and others. Thus arose sovereign Counts of
Namur, Hainault, Limburg, Zutphen, Dukes of Luxemburg and Gueldres,
Barons of Mechlin, Marquesses of Antwerp, and others; all petty
autocrats. The most important of all, after the house of Lorraine,
were the Earls of Flanders; for the bold foresters of Charles the Great
had soon wrested the sovereignty of their little territory from his
feeble descendants as easily as Baldwin, with the iron arm, had deprived
the bald Charles of his daughter. Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Overyssel,
Groningen, Drenthe and Friesland (all seven being portions of Friesland
in a general sense), were crowded together upon a little desolate corner
of Europe; an obscure fragment of Charlemagne's broken empire. They were
afterwards to constitute the United States of the Netherlands, one of the
most powerful republics of history. Meantime, for century after century,
the Counts of Holland and the Bishops of Utrecht were to exercise divided
sway over the territory.
Thus the whole country was broken into many shreds and patches of
sovereignty. The separate history of such half-organized morsels is
tedious and petty. Trifling dynasties, where a family or two were every
thing, the people nothing, leave little worth recording. Even the most
devout of genealogists might shudder to chronicle the long succession of
so many illustrious obscure.
A glance, however, at the general features of the governmental system now
established in the Netherlands, at this important epoch in the world's
history, will show the transformations which the country, in common with
other portions of the western world, had undergone.
In the tenth century the old Batavian and later Roman forms have faded
away. An entirely new polity has succeeded. No great popular assembly
asserts its sovereignty, as in the ancient German epoch; no generals and
temporary kings are chosen by the nation. The elective power had been
lost under the Romans, who, after conquest, had conferred the
administrative authority over their subject provinces upon officials
appointed by the metropolis. The Franks pursued the same course.
In Charlemagne's time, the revolution is complete. Popular assemblies
and popular election entirely vanish. Military, civil, and judicial
officers-dukes, earls, margraves, and others--are all king's creatures,
'knegton des konings, pueri regis', and so remain, till they abjure the
creative power, and set up their own. The principle of Charlemagne,
that his officers should govern according to local custom, helps them
to achieve their own independence, while it preserves all that is left
of national liberty and law.
The counts, assisted by inferior judges, hold diets from time to time--
thrice, perhaps, annually. They also summon assemblies in case of war.
Thither are called the great vassals, who, in turn, call their lesser
vassals; each armed with "a shield, a spear, a bow, twelve arrows, and a
cuirass." Such assemblies, convoked in the name of a distant sovereign,
whose face his subjects had never seen, whose language they could hardly
understand, were very different from those tumultuous mass-meetings,
where boisterous freemen, armed with the weapons they loved the best,
and arriving sooner or later, according to their pleasure, had been
accustomed to elect their generals and magistrates and to raise them upon
their shields. The people are now governed, their rulers appointed by an
invisible hand. Edicts, issued by a power, as it were, supernatural,
demand implicit obedience. The people, acquiescing in their own
annihilation, abdicate not only their political but their personal
rights. On the other hand, the great source of power diffuses less and
less of light and warmth. Losing its attractive and controlling
influence, it becomes gradually eclipsed, while its satellites fly from
their prescribed bounds and chaos and darkness return. The sceptre,
stretched over realms so wide, requires stronger hands than those of
degenerate Carlovingians. It breaks asunder. Functionaries become
sovereigns, with hereditary, not delegated, right to own the people, to
tax their roads and rivers, to take tithings of their blood and sweat, to
harass them in all the relations of life. There is no longer a
metropolis to protect them from official oppression. Power, the more
sub-divided, becomes the more tyrannical. The sword is the only symbol
of law, the cross is a weapon of offence, the bishop is a consecrated
pirate, every petty baron a burglar, while the people, alternately the
prey of duke, prelate, and seignor, shorn and butchered like sheep,
esteem it happiness to sell themselves into slavery, or to huddle beneath
the castle walls of some little potentate, for the sake of his wolfish
protection. Here they build hovels, which they surround from time to
time with palisades and muddy entrenchments; and here, in these squalid
abodes of ignorance and misery, the genius of Liberty, conducted by the
spirit of Commerce, descends at last to awaken mankind from its sloth and
cowardly stupor. A longer night was to intervene; however, before the
dawn of day.
The crown-appointed functionaries had been, of course, financial
officers. They collected the revenue of the sovereign, one third of
which slipped through their fingers into their own coffers. Becoming
sovereigns themselves, they retain these funds for their private
emolument. Four principal sources yielded this revenue: royal domains,
tolls and imposts, direct levies and a pleasantry called voluntary
contributions or benevolences. In addition to these supplies were also
the proceeds of fines. Taxation upon sin was, in those rude ages, a
considerable branch of the revenue. The old Frisian laws consisted
almost entirely of a discriminating tariff upon crimes. Nearly all the
misdeeds which man is prone to commit, were punished by a money-bote
only. Murder, larceny, arson, rape--all offences against the person
were commuted for a definite price. There were a few exceptions,
such as parricide, which was followed by loss of inheritance; sacrilege
and the murder of a master by a slave, which were punished with death.
It is a natural inference that, as the royal treasury was enriched by
these imposts, the sovereign would hardly attempt to check the annual
harvest of iniquity by which his revenue was increased. Still, although
the moral sense is shocked by a system which makes the ruler's interest
identical with the wickedness of his people, and holds out a comparative
immunity in evil-doing for the rich, it was better that crime should be
punished by money rather than not be punished at all. A severe tax,
which the noble reluctantly paid and which the penniless culprit commuted
by personal slavery, was sufficiently unjust as well as absurd, yet it
served to mitigate the horrors with which tumult, rapine, and murder
enveloped those early days. Gradually, as the light of reason broke upon
the dark ages, the most noxious features of the system were removed,
while the general sentiment of reverence for law remained.
<< 4: Chapter IV || TOC
