historical and political thought in the seventeenth - RePub - Erasmus ...

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Chapter 4. Times of success. Defending the fatherland
so against our will. [And] you will once again be our brothers and friends, if,
what the blood relationship we share with you prescribes to us, and necessity
prescribes to you, our very noble and for the entire area where the Dutch command
surely beneficial prayers are answered.’ 86
The goal of the Dutch from the north is ‘that we not only show you, who have
been hit by many and great disasters, and who by now surely stand on the verge
of total ruin, the example of our good fortune, but that we also invite you to make
use of it. Nor do we only offer you hope of safety, but we also give you very
great certainty about it, and we invite you to our peace and alliance, by driving
away the yoke from your necks’. 87 The Dutch from the south, however, were not
convinced. The atrocities committed by the combined Franco-Dutch armies in
the late 1630s and the early 1640s and the oppression of Catholicism in the areas
conquered by their Dutch brethren from the north made it clear to them that nothing
better was to be expected from their self-proclaimed ‘liberators’ than from
their so-called Spanish oppressor. Why rejoice over the liberation from Spanish
tyranny if it only meant getting caught in the stranglehold of the Beggar? 88
The peace of Münster, therefore, was greeted in the south with the same
enthusiasm as in the north. It meant the end to years of continuous siege warfare
that had ruined towns and had laid waste to the countryside, especially
in Brabant. For Boxhorn the peace was a moment of both joy and sorrow. In
his Oratio panegyrica de Belgarum pace (Celebratory Oration on the Peace of the
Dutch), which he held at Leiden somewhere in the summer of 1648, both sentiments
can be detected. The peace was to be celebrated for finally, after years
of bloodshed, the Dutch had secured their freedom with an everlasting and
unbreakable peace, ‘the greatest happiness in human affairs’. 89 The war was
ended ‘by peace, and the recognition of our freedom’. 90 That freedom and its
86 Ibidem, pp. 62-63 [68-69]. ‘Consanguineos nostros & Cognatos, ut iisdem majoribus ortos; Fratres
olim & Amicos, cum aut diversos singuli principes, aut eundem omnes, iisdem pro libertate studiis
conjunctis, agnovimus; nunc contra hostes, dum septuaginta fere annorum intestino pariter ac externo
bello, inaudita inter eos contumacia, quos & natura, & caussa, & mutua commoda esse jubebant conjunctissimos,
maxime autem vestra, collidimur: & communem patriam quaqua, sed nos inviti, cruentamus:
Fratres iterum nostros & Amicos, si, quod nobis idem vobiscum sanguis, necessitas vobis praescribunt,
pulcherrima & toti Belgarum imperio haud dubie profutura vota nostra audiuntur.’
87 Ibidem, pp. 70-71. ‘… sed, quod innocentiam hujus imperii nostri imprimis decet ac sanctitatem,
& jam totius prope saeculi nobis votum est, diuturnique hujus belli finis semper fuit, ut multis
magnisque tempestatibus afflictos vos, & in ultimam perniciem haud dubie jam vergentes, ad felicitatis
nostrae exemplum non modo, sed etiam usum, neque ac spem, sed certissimam salutis fiduciam, pacem
societatemque nostram, tristissima servitute à cervicibus vestris depulsa, vocaremus.’
88 Schulten, Met vliegende vaandels en slaande trom, pp. 207-8, 218-19, 228.
89 Boxhorn, “Oratio panegyrica de Belgarum pace”, p. 105. ‘Nunc potissimum magnis laetisque
animis nos esse necesse est, & expressa tandem potentissimo hosti, qua nulla major est gentium gloria,
libertatis nostrae confessione, &, quae in hominum rebus felicitas summa est, pace simul data.’
90 Ibidem, p. 106. ‘Totius ergo prope saeculi, dubium Belgarumne illud Hispanorumque, an Europae
propemodum omnis bellum appellandum … majore pro libertate animo, quam potentia instructum, varia