But an ominous rift threatened that unity. The Pacification, while suspending the edicts against heresy, had safeguarded the supremacy of Catholicism in all the provinces save Holland and Zeeland. Calvinist refugees were now flocking back to the towns of Flanders and Brabant, and they were not content with tolera tion, they wanted the same position of supremacy which their co religionists in the two rebel provinces, in the stress of revolution and under the immediate menace of foreign attack, had managed to secure. This irritated the nobility, who in the south had greater power and were everywhere slow to embrace Calvinism, while the French-speaking provinces, like Hainaut, or Lille, Orchies and Douai, were now almost solidly Catholic. Orange was fully alive to the danger of these elements gravitating back to the king.
But in many respects his position was a thoroughly false one. Circumstances had ever since 1567 conspired to drive him into closer association with Calvinism. The Calvinists who had ob tained control in the provinces of Holland and Zeeland did not dream of sacrificing any of their local supremacy to the national compromises elaborated at Brussels. Yet those two provinces con tinued to afford to the prince his firmest point d'appui in the shifting conditions of Netherlands polities. Early in 1579, the Walloon provinces, incensed at the aggressiveness of the Flemish Calvinists, had deserted the national cause and at Arras had made their peace with the king's new governor, the duke of Parma, who could now from that foothold in the south set about re-conquering the rest of the Netherlands. Did not the event, which was fol lowed by the loss of the north-eastern province of Groningen, go to prove that the Calvinists were the only party who could be counted on to hold out against all the blandishments of Parma? When Orange tried once more to enlist the help of France, and the Catholic duke of Anjou was clothed with the sovereignty of the Netherlands from which in 1581 the States-General solemnly deposed Philip II., the prince's particular connection with the two maritime provinces was expressly safeguarded. And however earnestly he deplored and tried to restrain the intolerant fanati cism of the Calvinists in Flanders and Brabant, all the time he saw himself forced underhand to work with them, thereby adding to the grievances of the Catholics, although at the same time Cal vinist ministers denounced him as a godless timeserver.
The last years of William the Silent's life were a tragic struggle against overpowering circumstances. The unity of the Nether lands was broken beyond repair, and the area supporting the na tional cause kept crumbling away. The States-General had to leave Brussels in 1578, they stayed at Antwerp for a short while, then moved behind the waters to Middelburg, and finally to Delft, where William the Silent resided from 1583 onwards. His main
efforts throughout those years were directed towards preserving the southern provinces, until then the principal provinces of the Netherlands, and of which Brabant had such close associations with him personally, and towards obtaining foreign help. The con clusion of the Union of Utrecht in 1579 met with his disapproval, as it seemed to be, on the part of the more easily defensible regions north of the rivers, an abandonment of the wider union of the Pacification. He had soon, nevertheless, to fall back upon it, and then did his best to make it comprehensive, nor were his efforts without success, for in the course of that year and the next all the towns of Flanders and several of those of Brabant entered it.
In 1581 Philip II. had promulgated a ban against William of Orange, by which a high reward was promised to anyone who would deliver the world of this traitor. A year later a serious attempt was made on his life, but it was only in 1584 that the ban achieved its purpose. On July 9, Balthazar Gerard, a Burgundian, shot the prince at Delft. William was 51 years of age.
Some years after the prince's death, owing to the assistance given by England and to Philip's injudicious interference in the French civil war, the turn came in the tide of Netherlands affairs, and although of the country south of the rivers little was recov ered, at least the country north of them was secured and blossomed out into the republic of the Seven United Provinces. Of that state William the Silent is truly called the father. Yet it should not be forgotten that this was not the object which he had in view and that the split of the Netherlands means that his life's work was not accomplished. Apart from his success and failure in Nether lands politics, William the Silent will always be honoured as a man who nobly struggled and suffered for the cause of liberty of conscience. His personality, genial and humane, was fully worthy of the great part he played. There is something exceptionally attractive in his evolution from a frivolous courtier into the frugal and hard-working leader of a seemingly hopeless revolt, harassed but patient, courageous in the face of accumulating disas ter, while the steadfastness with which at a time of furious re ligious fanaticism he preached moderation and forbearance has a heroic quality that is not disposed of by observing that his out look was secular. His correspondence proves that in his later years religion was a real thing to him, and his attachment to the Reformed Church was sincere.