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

Chapter 5. Times of trouble. Taking a stand
Charles V (1500-1558). Philip’s reign only saw the ‘completion’ of this tyranny,
executed by the cruel duke of Alva (1507-1582). 79 Third, the goal of this ‘truly
cruel and pernicious command’ was ‘that the Spaniards and those of Austria’
were planning to erect a ‘monarchical form of command’ in the Netherlands
and to subdue these lands so to gain a beachhead from where they could conquer
the rest of Europe. 80 In this way Boxhorn situates the Dutch Revolt in the
struggle against the attempts of the House of Habsburg to obtain a universal
monarchy. 81
To help the united provinces in their fight and to regulate their efforts, the
Union of Utrecht provided them with a set of rules. According to the Commentariolus,
these agreements were the Republic’s main corpus of laws. 82 They
resulted from hard bickering and heated debates about ancient quarrels. 83 The
79 Boxhorn, Commentariolus, I.3, pp. 4-5. In seventeenth-century Dutch historiography the reigns of
Charles V and Philip II were interpreted differently. Although Charles V’s policy could be described as
‘opportunistic and machiavellistic’, it was Philip II’s reign that saw the birth of real tyranny. Only in the
eighteenth century do we see that Charles’s and Philip’s policy are seen as one and the same. See L.H.M.
Wessels, “Vader en zoon als probleem: Karel V en Filips II in de Nederlandse historiografie”, in Streven:
cultureel maatschappelijk maandblad, Vol. 6, No. 11 (2000), pp. 976-83. We will see in the next chapter that
Boxhorn pushed the beginning of this tyrannical rule even further back in time. However, it must be
noticed that already at the meeting between the duke of Anjou and the States General at Anjou’s château
of Plessis-les-Tours in September 1580 the delegation of the States General held Charles V responsible
‘for all the ills that had befallen the country, because in Worms he had issued edicts against heresy
without consulting the Estates of the Netherlands’. Helmut G. Koenigsberger, Monarchies, States Generals
and Parliaments: The Netherlands in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (Cambridge University Press;
Cambridge, 2001), p. 301.
80 Ibidem, I.4, p. 5. ‘Contra Philippi absolutissima erat dominatio, contra leges usurpata, et contra
fas omne iniquissima. Qui abdita principalium consiliorum propius inspiciunt, causâ atrocis adeo et
perniciosi Belgis Imperii non aliam statuunt, quam quod hic sedem Monarchici illius Imperii promovendi,
et bellorum proinde ponere, Hispani Austriacique constituissent, ob locorum inde in Galliam et
Britanniam, hinc in Germaniam et Septentriorum, denique in omnem celebriorem Europae oram excurrentium
opportunitatem.’
81 See for this theme Van Gelderen, “The Low Countries”, pp. 376-81. The fact that Charles depicted
himself as Alexander the Great, for whom ‘the world was not enough’ (non sufficit orbis), did much to
foster the idea that the Habsburgs were striving for a universal monarchy. See Lisa M. van Hijum, Grenzen
aan macht: aspecten van politieke ideologie aan de hoven van Bourgondische en Bourgondisch-Habsburgse
machthebbers tussen 1450 en 1555 (Ph.D.-dissertation, PrintPartners Ipskamp; Enschede, 1999), pp. 180-
82.
82 Boxhorn, Commentariolus, I.5, p. 6. That the Union of Utrecht would be the foundation of the
United Provinces was once again affirmed during the Great Council that was held after the death of
William II. At his opening speech, Jacob Cats (1577-1660), the grand-pensionary of Holland, declared
that the States of Holland judged ‘that the concord and good agreement of the provinces is the firm
foundation upon which the structure of this state can be built with certainty and kept in good union’.
Three issues formed the core of the unity between the seven united Dutch provinces: the Union of Utrecht
of 1579, the protestant religion as stipulated in the Synod of Dort, and the militia. As contemporaries
understood it, the peace of Münster had altered things, because for the first time since the Union of
Utrecht the Dutch Republic was not in a state of war. See Jacob Cats, Anvanck vande Groote Vergaderinge
der Vereenichde Nederlanden (Matthys Sebastiaenszen; Leiden, 1651), pp. 4-5, with quote on p. 4. Knuttel
7029. The Union was basically erected to obtain a common goal, namely peace and independence
by mutual defence. With the peace of Münster, both goals were obtained; there was therefore another
reason to rethink the nature of the Union. Van Deursen, De last van veel geluk, p. 270.
83 The Commentariolus gives a short overview of 21 of the original 26 articles of the Union of Utrecht.
The articles that are left out are articles number 14, 15, 23, 24, and 25. Article 14 deals with the
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