Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma, lived for a little more than four years after the wreck of the Armada. During these four years many things happened, and the course of events out of Holland materially assisted the political development and union of Holland itself. Similarly too, the extirpation of Protestantism in the obedient Netherlands, and the atrophy of Romanism in the Dutch Republic, led to the limitation of the political system of Holland. The ten provinces were alienated from the Dutch as much by the religion which they professed, as by the government to which they submitted, and by the poverty which they had to endure. Had William the Silent lived, it is probable that the whole seaboard would have been one state, and every part of the Netherlands, except perhaps the Walloon Provinces, would have been united in one great commercial and manufacturing republic. When less than two centuries and a half after the murder of William, the whole country was formed into a single kingdom, the elements of union were utterly absent, and it became necessary for Europe to recognize the separate nationality of Belgium.
Late in the year 1588 Leicester died. He had resigned his position in Holland, but his partizans did great injury to the Dutch by surrendering Geertruydenberg to Parma. This great general had suffered his first check at the hands of Maurice, by being repulsed in the winter of 1588 from Bergen-op-Zoom. On the other hand, another expedition went from England to Spain, landed at Corunna, and wasted part of the Spanish king's dominions.
Meanwhile much of Philip's energies and nearly all his money were expended on his intrigues with the family of Guise, and the malcontents in that country. The Duke of Guise had humiliated the king on the famous day of the Barricades (May 12, 1588), and Henry had fled from his capital never to return. On December 23rd in the same year, the Duke and his brother were murdered at Blois, by the king's command. On the 1st of August following, after Henry III. had reconciled himself to his kinsman and successor, Henry IV., who was besieging Paris, he was murdered by Jacques Clément.
Now Philip claimed the succession of France for his daughter, and it was necessary for him to vindicate whatever claims he possessed against Henry, and to devote all his energies to this end. So the Dutch had some breathing time. He even twice detached Parma from his campaign in the Netherlands, whence he could be ill spared - once in August, 1590, when he compelled Henry to raise the siege of Paris; and again in April, 1592, when he similarly constrained him to raise the siege of Rouen. Both these exploits showed the greatest military skill, though the last was practically the close of Parma's career.
During this time a greater master of the art of war than even Parma was growing up. Maurice, second son of William the Silent, had been studying his calling with unremitting industry. And now that Parma and Philip were so occupied with the affairs of France, it seemed that Holland could carry on her warfare with greater hope. But the first thing was to create and drill an army. The next was to see that it was regularly paid. The third was to familiarize it with victory, and to make it confident. This was the work, and the successful work, of Maurice. There was a great deal to be done. Three English men - Yorke, Stanley, and Wingfield-had betrayed or surrendered the important towns of Zutphen, Deventer, and Geertruydenberg, while a Netherlander had similarly betrayed the capital of Friesland, Groningen.
On February 26, 1590, the Dutch surprised the important fortress of Breda, without the loss of a single man, and shortly afterwards Maurice reduced a number of other towns and strongholds. Meanwhile, as the towns in the obedient provinces were wasting, those of Holland were rapidly growing in population and opulence. The administration of affairs, though it was already liable to that risk of disunion which was in the end to be fatal to Holland, was, in the face of the common enemy, patriotic and vigorous. Already the Dutch were forming that splendid navy which was to create an Indian empire, to annihilate the reputation of Spain, and even to measure itself against growing power of England. The government of the country was in the hands of the States-General.
While Parma was gone to the relief of Paris, Maurice was able to give proof of his military abilities. On May 23, 1591, he surprised the fort of Zutphen, and on the 30th he captured the city. On June 10th, after a severe struggle, he got possession of Deventer. On Sept. 24th he reduced Hulst, near Antwerp. On Oct. 21st Nimeguen surrendered. In May, 1592, Maurice laid siege to Steenwick, and in July stormed it. In July Coevorden was besieged and gained, and the young Stadtholder was rapidly recovering the strong places of Holland from the enemy. His victories were triumphs of military engineering, but it may be doubted whether his successes would have been so rapid had it not been that his great enemy was constrained by Philip's policy to be absent from the country which he was governing, and from the plans which he had formed.
For Philip had set his heart on dethroning the heretic Henry, and Henry was a very difficult person to deal with. No one could cope with him, though nearly his whole kingdom was against him, but Parma and his Spaniards, and the Spaniards were nothing without Parma. Already under other commanders they had yielded to the Dutch, and their general himself had been discomfited by young Maurice. But Maurice was a scientific engineer. He was not yet the equal of his rival in strategy, though he already surpassed the captains who had been trained under Parma.
During the campaign before Rouen, and after Parma had forced Henry, on May 20, 1592, to raise the siege, the Prince determined to capture a small town which commanded the Seine. Here he was wounded in the arm, and was disabled from active operations. Still, he needed all his powers in order to effect his retirement into the Netherlands, and, he achieved this by a masterly manœuvre. He now returned to Paris, and after recruiting himself with a few days rest there, he went away to Spa. But beyond the temporary success of his expedition he had achieved nothing, for the person whom he was associated with was engaged in baffling him.
Mayenne, the brother of the murdered Duke of Guise, was engaged in a treble intrigue. As the paid, and well-paid, agent of Philip he was, to outward appearance, engaged in procuring the throne for that monarch. He probably knew all the while that the French would never accept Philip, or his daughter, or his daughter's husband. But at the present moment he had to show as clearly as possible that objects were his. Then again he had his pretensions to the throne himself. He caused it to be rumoured that he represented the family of Charles the Great who had been deposed some seven centuries before by the family of Hugh Capet. It is true that his elder brother's son was in the way, but in times of revolution obstacles are greatly diminished, and are easy to be overcome by sanguine and determined men. Then, in the third place, he was pretty well convinced, when he weighed all the circumstances, that Henry of Navarre would win in the end, and that he had better accommodate matters with him. The fact is, Philip had been engaged all his life in overreaching others, and was regularly overreached himself. The only persons who served him faithfully were those whom he mistrusted, as Don John of Austria and Alexander, Prince of Parma.
For while Alexander was astonishing all men by his genius and his fidelity to Philip, while he was resenting in the angriest manner the suspicions which were circulated about his real objects, and using every means in his power, legitimate or infamous, on Philip's behalf, his character was studiously blackened to the King of Spain, and apparently to the King of Spain's entire satisfaction. Without resources, either in the country which he held and governed, or from the King of Spain either, with soldiers mutinous and starving, he still kept an undaunted front and a loyal purpose, and scared them, who might have dealt with him if they had known the facts of the case, by his calm and unflinching courage.
The men whom Philip had sent him as counsellors were spies on him. It is perhaps not wonderful that they distorted his acts and maligned his purpose. The age was so pre-eminently treacherous; lying and chicanery had been so persistently identified with statesmanship, that it was all but impossible to trust any one. It was part of the bitterness of Parma's lot, that having been false to every one but his master, his master believed his servant to be false to him also.
Farnese found out that he had been traduced, and complained of it bitterly. It is not a little strange that in that atmosphere of deceit and secrecy, where every pains was taken to prevent the leakage of facts, the most dangerous and therefore the most hidden particulars were regularly betrayed. Parma's enemies wrote to the king in cypher, and Parma got to know the contents of the letters. The correspondence of all the parties is now before us, and we find that the Governor of the Netherlands contrived to learn that which was intended for the eyes of Philip only. He tells the king plainly how indignant he is at these unfounded calumnies, and the king tells him that he has never received the despatches, or, if he received them, has forgotten the contents. But there they are, the correspondence of the spies, scrawled over by Philip, the letters of his ill-used general, and the copies of Philip's own letters to his viceroy.
At the very time when Philip was assuring his nephew of his entire trust and confidence in him, at the time in which he was urging him to undertake further expeditions into France, and declining to send him the necessary funds for the purpose, and at the time when Parma was, with characteristic sagacity, informing Philip of the state of affairs in that kingdom and in the Netherlands, the King of Spain was secretly planning to supersede his nephew, and to take him prisoner if necessary. He had sent an emissary, during the time in which Parma was relieving Rouen, with instructions to remove Parma from his office, by fraud, if possible, by force if necessary. Even at the last, he bade him lead his army into France, and the general was on the eve of obeying the commands of his treacherous master when the hand of death was laid on him. An old man, though still, for his years, in his prime, be died on Dec. 3, 1592. He was forty-eight years old at his death.