thy. They could
send out fine soldiers, as Charles V had seen, but their chief pursuit
was commerce. Education rendered them far superior to many other
Europeans, who were scarcely delivered from the ignorance and
superstition of the Middle Ages. Having proved themselves strong
enough to be independent, they formed a Confederacy of Republics on the
death of Charles V in 1558.

The Emperor was sincerely mourned because he had possessed Flemish
tastes, yet he had always failed in his attempts to unite the whole of
the Low Countries into one kingdom. There were no less than seventeen
provinces in the Netherlands, with seventeen petty princes over them.
Each province disdained the other as quite alien and foreign. Both
French and a dialect {75} of German were spoken by the natives. It was
a great drawback to Philip II, their new ruler, that he could only
speak Castilian.

Philip had been unpopular from the time of his first visit to the
Netherlands, before the French war was settled by the treaty of Cateau
Cambresis. The credit of the settlement was chiefly due to the subtle
diplomacy of William, Prince of Orange, the trusted councillor of
Charles V, on whose shoulder the Emperor leant during the ceremony of
abdication.

William of Orange yielded to none in pride of birth, being descended
from one of the most illustrious houses of the Low Countries. He was
young, gallant, and fond of splendour when he negotiated on the
Emperor's behalf with Henry II of France. He managed matters so
successfully that the Emperor was able to withdraw without loss of
prestige from a war he was anxious to end at any cost. William
received his nickname of the Silent during his residence as a hostage
at the French court.

One day, at a hunting party, Henry II uncautiously told Orange of a
plan he had made with Philip to stamp out every heretic in their
dominions of France and the Netherlands by a sudden deadly onslaught
that would allow the Protestants no time for resistance. It was
assumed that William, being a powerful Catholic noble, would rejoice in
this scheme. He held his peace very wisely but, in reality, he was
full of indignation. He cared nothing for the reformed religion in
itself, but he was a humane generous man, and from that hour determined
that he would defend the helpless, persecuted Protestants of the Low
Countries.

Philip II was not long in showing himself zealous to observe his
father's instructions to pr