Wars of 1562-1609 Religion

Hostilities in France.

The first clash came in France which had been stirred by the preaching of Lefevre (1450-1537). Henry II. (1547-1559) swore to extirpate the Protestants, and burnt them in hundreds. He was succeeded by his son Francis II., a boy of sixteen married to Mary Queen of Scots. As Francis was too young to rule, the duke of Guise put himself at the head of the army, and when Francis died, in 156o, the duke was reluctant to surrender his power so that a conflict soon arose between him and the Huguenots under Coligny, merging, in 1562, into the First Civil War. An indecisive battle was fought at Dreux ; then two other civil wars followed, in which battles were fought at St. Denis in 1567, and Jarnac and Moncontour in 1569. These were concluded by the peace of St. Germain, according to which the Huguenots were to be tolerated, Coligny being received on friendly terms by Charles IX. of France and his mother, Catharine de' Medici.

The Catholic party of the Guises, determining to put an end to this friendship, plotted and carried out the massacre of St. Bar tholomew on August 23, 1572. The result was the Fourth Civil War which was followed by the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth. The last of these known as the war of the three Henrys—Henry III., Henry of Navarre and Henry of Guise—ended with the assassination of the first and third, leaving Henry of Navarre, now Henry IV., the national hero. In 159o, he won the battles of Argues and Ivry, and to put an end to the war, in 1593, re-entered the Catholic Church. In 1598, he issued the Edict of Nantes by which the Calvinists were permitted to worship as they chose, and to be eligible to hold government appointments. Mean while an even more terrible war was being waged in the Nether lands.

Spain and the Netherlands.

In the second half of the i6th century, the chief ally of the pope was Philip II., son of the emperor Charles V. Charles though a firm Catholic was not a fanatic ; Philip's attitude was very different, for he was willing to sacrifice everything so long as the Protestants were extermi nated. In 1555 Charles abdicated, handing over his Habsburg possessions to his brother Ferdinand, and Spain, the American Colonies, the Two Sicilies and the Netherlands to his son Philip. For ten years the Dutch suffered Philip's rule. Then in 1566, five hundred of the nobles protested against his policy. There upon Philip sent the duke of Alva to the Low Countries. William of Orange fled to Germany and thousands of Flemish weavers sought refuge in England. Alva's administration was a veritable

reign of terror. Though not unaccustomed to persecution, for Charles V. had burnt many of them, the people revolted and found their leader in William, Prince of Orange and Count of Nassau (1533-1584), who in 1568 collected together a small army and opened the wars of religion with Spain. Defeated again and again he was never conquered, and in 1572 the northern provinces of Holland chose William as their governor.

After six years of tyranny Alva was recalled, but this did not improve things as his leaderless soldiers committed every possible atrocity. The north, guided by William, now refused to recognise Philip as their king, and the Union of Utrecht followed in 1579, by which the United Provinces were constituted. Two years later these provinces declared themselves independent of Spain. Philip realising that William was the heart and soul of the revolt offered a patent of nobility and a large sum of money to anyone who would assassinate him, with the result that the great patriot was shot at Delft in 1584.

His son, Maurice of Nassau (1567-1625) succeeded him, and was made stadtholder. When Queen Elizabeth of England decided to send troops to his assistance, Philip was so enraged that he determined on the conquest of England, and, in 1588, equipped and despatched the "Armada." Its defeat and destruction as well as the failing resources of Spain were of the greatest assistance to Maurice, who soon showed himself to be a general far in advance of any of his contemporaries. A great campaign was fought in 1597. From then onwards to 1609 battles were waged and sieges undertaken, and though Maurice was by no means always successful, as was notably the case in 1605, the power of Spain was definitely on the decline, and in 1609 a twelve years' truce was concluded and the United Provinces took their place in the European system "as a free and independent State." This truce was but an interlude in the struggle for freedom, for in 1618 the Thirty Years' War (q.v.) broke out, and it was not until it ended with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, that once and for all the semi-religious conflict of nearly ioo years was brought to an end, Europe emerging out of the night into the daylight of modern history.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.-The

bibliography of this period is extensive, and the reader is referred to The Cambridge Modern History, vol. iii., and especially to the full list of books at the end of the volume.