William the Silent: William of Nassau, Prince of Orange 1533-1584

by C.V. Wedgwood

This famous book by a celebrated historian recounts the life of the unlikely revolutionary hero and favourite of Emperor Charles V, William Prince of Orange, who mobilised the legendary group of rebels known as the Beggars to fight the imperial forces of Spain. William's life and exploits reveal him as an inspiring symbol of moral and political force in an age when ideology and intolerance were the rule.

Genres: History, Biography, Nonfiction, European History, Historical

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1944

About the author

Dame (Cicely) Veronica Wedgwood OM DBE was an English historian who published under the name C. V. Wedgwood. Specializing in the history of 17th-century England and Continental Europe, her biographies and narrative histories "provided a clear, entertaining middle ground between popular and scholarly works."

Reviews

[Jan-Maat]

My mother, recently introduced to the word loquacious, tried it out in a sentence and observed ' you are not loquacious', the truth of this amused me so much that when I ceased laughing I was forced to talk and explain:'well my favourite historical figure is William the Silent' this isn't strictly speaking true, in the light of Britain's Brexit vote I'm probably keener on his descendant Good King Billy who with a small army dragged England back into the European mainstream . Ironically I suppose I'll get no reputation for being taciturn by gabbing here in reviews so much. As it happens William of Orange as we learn from this book was not a success general, great strategist, nor a masterful financier, but what he was good at, for all his reputation for taciturnity, was talking to people.

Years earlier I badgered my poor Mother in to buying this book for me for the princely sum of six pounds and ninety-five pence in 1989 when I was about to start studying towards my A-Levels, on the 16th century European history paper we studied the Dutch revolt, even though we were at school in southern England because it covered us for two questions in the exam paper and schooling, then as now, is an exam factory. I am pretty sure that I didn't read the book then - it is not a student friendly book, instead it repays reading properly from beginning to end.

CV Wedgwood, scion of the mighty Wedgwood-Benn dynasty, related to the Darwins and Galtons, wrote this book in her early thirties in 1944, unsurprisingly the notion of a free people struggling for freedom against Imperial domination and trying to get out from under that Dominion's ideology is particularly resonant and coloured by the time of writing. A reference to the inquisition as a Gestapo is therefore meant particularly sharply. Oddly to me her vision of William of Orange's motivation is very domestic - shaped by his earliest childhood in a tiny Rhineland statelet, particularly by the robust and stout Lutheranism of his stout and robust parents, I'm not sure how valid or useful an interpretation this is, given his apparently complete adaptation to the improvident manners and spendthrift mores of a renaissance Prince after inheriting his uncle's titles at age eleven. Wedgwood refers to his race at one point (perhaps due to her Galton relatives), but I wonder what race she had in mind Dutch? German? or something like gens his clan and ancestry as though we might presume to know CV Wedgwood from Josiah Wedgwood. Again in domesticity Wedgwood is interested in his marriages, particularly his stormy relationship with wife #2 Anna of Saxony, their marriage was ended after she had an affair with the father to be of Peter Paul Rubens, wife #3, a renegade French Nun however does meet with Wedgwood's approval. Perhaps on the principle behind every great man there is a great woman she lays this out for us, I'm not sure how helpful or enlightening considering their deviation from an ideal companionate marriage is to our understanding of William and his politics when we can't get close enough to him to be able to draw any particular lines from sleepless quarrel filled nights to political misjudgements. Like I say domestic, Wedgwood tells us that though intelligent he was no intellectual, while he was no Hugo Grotius, he did found the university of Leiden, a whiff of 1940s prejudice there against intellectuals, his auburn hair gets frequent notice no doubt his, like Samson's, was the source of his success and political survival.

The main focus of this biography first published in 1944 is the period from 1572 to William's assassination in 1584, this takes up over half the book. It takes a narrative approach with some of the broader background sketched in during the earlier chapters. Draws largely on 19th century scholarship. However despite its age it is no simple piece of protestant triumphalism, preaching the Black legend and channelling Motley's the rise of the Dutch republic into a new century. And for a life dominated by military affairs it is pleasantly light on military detail, troop deployments, strength or tactics go virtually unmentioned (which may be good or bad, depending on your fancy), this edition had only one map which I felt mean and ungenerous.

Dated now, particularly by the work of Geoffrey Parker on Phillip II and the logistics of his (Castilian) war effort in short the United Provinces could not have survived but for his difficulty in financing his army, in particular Spanish state bankruptcies saved the Dutch on several occasions.

It struck me that despite its age this may remain a standard biography in English for some time yet if only because for many historians today it is the perspective of Spain and Philip II which will be the natural one - the big imperial state attempting to enforce its dominion and ideology on diverse peoples round the globe in the face of its own epic difficulties in communication and finance, rather than the plucky religiously inspired radicals who destroy their own country's infrastructure simply to deny their enemies victory led by some renegade from the royal court who can chatter in a handful of languages.

I wondered it the quote below about cheese might have some earnest relevance since that disruption of the market economy meant the disruption of normalcy for the south - for as long as Edam and Alkmar were in rebellion, indeed later the blockade on the Scheldt and the war in genera,l fed migration to Amsterdam and other northern towns which in turn drove the united Provinces into their Golden Age prosperity.

Despite this book's easy readability it is light on the religious and international context, a reader foreign to the sixteenth century, may well feel the want of a bit of context. I didn't feel that Wedgwood's gushing praise of William on the last couple of pages was a reasonable conclusion of her account of his life, he was from what she said good with people and he matched his manner to the occasion, plainly tenacious and determined as well as relentlessly moderate when one might at the time have found it more natural to be a murderous persecutor of peoples of different faiths - certainly many of his contemporary rulers were happy to burn alive those of tender consciences . Further I was impressed by her careful stress on the medieval nature of his constitutional attitudes - easy to mistake it as a sign of modernity, equally he comes across as no military or political genius. I'm glad to have read it - worth keeping.

[Czarny Pies · Rating 5 out of 5]

C.V. Wedgwood's "William the Silent" is an outstanding book that manages to make Dutch struggle for Independence from the Spanish Habsburgs comprehensible to the Anglo-Saxon reader which is no mean feat. The customs and institutions of both the Dutch nobility and middle classes during the period were different from those of their English counterparts. The Calvinism which came to dominate Holland had no equivalent in England. Finally, the linguistic divisions that prevailed in the Low Countries during the time period was highly unique. Most accounts, leave the Anglo-Saxon hopelessly confused with a deluge of strange names and unfamiliar practices.
As Wedgwood's protagonist dies in 1584, it covers only the beginning part of the 80 year war for Dutch Independence. She succeeds brilliantly however in explaining the cultural and political forces on both sides of the conflict. At the end of her book, she has identified the positions and strategies that all the major parties will pursue until the end of the conflict.
Wedgwood sees William I as a profoundly decent man whose first goal was to created a Dutch nation in which Catholics and Calvinists would live in harmony. In his personal life, William I practiced whatever religion his position required. He was baptized as a Lutheran and then raised as a Roman Catholic. As the political situation in the Low Countries evolved he found himself marrying a former nun and becoming a Calvinist.
At the time became Stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland and Utrecht in 1559, he wanted to be a loyal servant of the Spanish Habsburgs while simultaneously defending the historical privileges of the primarily Catholic nobility of the Low Countries. Philip II the Spanish monarch made one mistake after another driving William into the camp of the overwhelmingly Calvinist burghers who wanted independence from Spain. Philip was both arrogant and incompetent. He had the largest and richest empire in Europe. The French and English disliked him but feared to provoke his wrath by supporting the Dutch rebels. Philip who possessed armies and navies that were much larger than those of the Dutch. He rejected all compromises and attempted to eradicate the rebels. Unfortunately for him, the Dutch navy out fought the Spanish navy. On land, the Spanish army often won on the battlefield. However, Philip II of Spain would fail to pay his soldiers which would all the Dutch forces to recover whatever territory they had lost.
In 1579, the Union of Utrecht was declared in which the northern provinces of the Netherlands (Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Guelders and Groningen) formally asserted their independence from Spain. Two years later, William I would be shot and killed by a Spanish assassin. His descendants, however, would succeed in preserving the new state that he had created which would be formally recognized by the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648.

[Pamela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Scanning shelves of my favorite N.Cal used book store, one name reached out to me: C.V. Wedgwood. I’d spent decades thinking about but not quite getting around to reading her histories. Now was the time to seize the moment and pick up this perfectly preserved hardback from the Book of the Month Club and put an end to a life of procrastination. What a treat! Was it made sweeter by a long period of anticipation? Maybe, but one thing is certain, Wedgwood deserved her reputation: she synthesized the craft of storytelling with the rigor of scholarship.

William of Nassau, Prince of Orange, 1533-1584, was born in the Rhineland in a era when the “unsolved Protestant problem was tearing the political framework to shreds.” His parents abandoned the Catholic faith for Lutheranism within months of his birth, a switch in religious allegiance that was responsible for William’s unlikely inheritance at the age eleven to the Principality of Orange in the Netherlands, an elevation that made him one of the richest noblemen in Europe. An older cousin had made the child William his heir at the behest of the Emperor Charles V who did not want the principality falling into the hands of a Protestant, namely, William’s father. The religion of a child could be readily changed. And was. The now Catholic child heir became a favored ward of Charles V and his sister Mary, Regent of the Netherlands, who schooled him to be “a loyal servant of the dynasty.” What a blow he dealt that dynasty when he emerged as the leader of a rebellion against their family, their politics, their religious intolerance, and their rule.

In 1555, Charles V abdicated and retired to Spain. His son and heir, Phillip II of Spain, attempted to centralize and control by autocratic rule an unruly collection of seventeen provinces each with its own privileges, economies, constitutional charters, law courts, noblemen, rival cities, and proudly held local patriotism. By the time he removed his court to Spain, leaving his half-sister Margaret as Regent, Phillip took with him a fateful enmity towards the Prince of Orange, the one man in the Netherlands who’d had the savvy to thwart the King’s plan for military, political and religious control over the most “advanced trading and manufacturing centre of Europe.” Even though William spent the next five years trying to mediate the King’s demands, which now included a revival of the Counter-Reformation, with the constitutional rights of the Netherlanders, it was at this point that William’s biography as the leader of a rebellion dovetails with the history of what was to be known as the War of Liberation of the Netherlands.

I highly recommend this as a biography of a truly inspiring individual and as a history of a rebellion that would foreshadow the English Civil War in the 17th C as well as the American and French Revolutions of the 18th century.

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

C.V. Wedgwood's best biography. It covers a difficult subject and does it very well. Wedgwood is fonder of William as a person than I am, but that's a good thing. It's a bad idea to do a biography of someone you don't happen to like. So many historians approach religious wars with bigoted, anti-Catholic sentiments, and so many historians approach the 16th century with multitudes of stereotypes and slurs. But with Wedgwood you get the real 16th century. Its coarseness, its refinement, its bigotry, its enlightenment, its villains and its good guys---Wedgwood understands that this century was like any other century. It was a mixed bag, a complicated world, a world very like our own.
The most interesting aspects to the book are William's numerous marriages. His wives were a mixed bag, like the century he lived in! :P

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 1568 William, a prominent local noble, led an army into the Netherlands to liberate his people from the Spanish king Phillip II. Two centuries later, George Washington would later be praised for simply keeping an army together during his revolution, but William would fail to do even that. His Spanish opponent simply avoided battle and, denied any success, William's money ran out and his army evaporated before the year was up.

At this point William could have ended as a minor footnote in history. Bankrupt and cut off from his allies, he worked mostly in vain to garner support for another attempt. A few years later, though, Spanish excesses would rekindle the revolt in the northern provinces and it was William's flag that they raised. The war for independence would ultimately last 80 years, and while William wouldn't live to see most of it he was the one who kept them alive by the slenderest of threads in the first few years--both by military means and by a decency in politics & administration that made the revolting areas far more orderly and just than the Spanish administrated provinces.

In Wedgwood's book, William himself comes across as a mix of the medieval and the modern. Raised to rule in a feudal state, he felt it natural that he would lead other men and also that he should serve a monarch--to such an extent that after he broke with the Spanish king, he went looking for another one. But he had an egalitarian streak that seems entirely anachronistic, a beacon of tolerance in the middle of the reformation, and humanitarian attitudes even in war during an unapologetic era.

For those unfamiliar with her work, Wedgwood herself is a great writer, a historian doing "popular" (e.g., not academic) history in the '50s; she reminds me a bit of Barbara Tuchman. The book spends a lot of time on personality and narrative, the social issues that get more emphasis in contemporary history are only illustrated through attitudes of the players. And while I think diligently researched it's also sparsely footnoted, which you may count as a feature or bug--I count it as a bug, but probably my only complaint with the entire book.

[Al · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent biography of William the Silent which is also a story of the founding of the Dutch republic. Wedgwood’s style of writing makes this an effortless and very enjoyable book to read. Moreover, she makes the reader truly care for and invest in the figure of William of Nassau. In describing the founding of the Dutch republic, it is important to remember that our own founders looked at Dutch history as one of the models in the founding of our own republic. A key factor in this was the legalities involved in overthrowing the authority of the king of Spain. William had to show that this was not a revolt against a legitimate sovereign, “…but a resolution taken by the whole state of the Netherlands for the preservation of their lives and privileges.” Wedgwood points out that the Act of Abjuration shows that a true king is a shepherd to his people who preserves their rights and actively protects their well-being. But when the king, “…does not behave thus but oppresses them, seeking to infringe their ancient customs, exacting from them slavish compliance, then he is no longer a prince but a tyrant, and they may not only disallow his authority, but legally proceed to the choice of another prince for their defense.” In a world where law makes a king, only law can unmake him. Wedgwood’s narrative, while a biography of a remarkable man, is also a lesson in political theory and an insight into the minds of our own founders. I look forward to reading about William's son, Maurice of Nassau, the military genius.

[Marino · Rating 2 out of 5]

Simultaneously with this book I read Stefan Zweig's Chess Story. These books might seem incredibly different from each other, but I think that there is something of a commonality as well.
In Chess Story the two opponents feel like representations of different worlds and mentalities. The aristocratic intellectual, a lawyer with a strong sense of responsibility, versus the peasant boy, who is rather rough and uneducated but almost machine-like in his ability to play the game, a force of nature. It is easy to see this as a reflection of the battle between intellectuals and fascists.

Particularly the first half of this biography, which was written in 1944, centres around a similar conflict between William of Orange and Philip II. William is presented as a defender of freedom, a man with respect for human beings and their right to have their own opinion. He is a man of action, who thinks in practical solutions and attempts to better the lives of his people. His shadow is Philip, cold, rigid, deeply-religious and overly intellectual. He has clear ideas, possibly even theoretically sound, but attempts to impose them on the people of the Netherlands through force. His policies tend toward autocracy and are actively against religious pluralism. Much like with Chess Story the parallels between this conflict and the fight between England/the USA and the Nazi's/Soviets seem striking. The author even describes the Spanish inquisition as a type of 'spiritual Gestapo'.

My feelings about this book are somewhat complicated however. While it is a rather interesting book in its historical context, a fair bit of the information and perspectives in it are quite outdated. You cannot really fault the author for this of course and the book is actually very well written. Nonetheless her picture of William of Orange still feels almost hagiographic, like a bedtime-story for Dutch nationalists.

She almost always describes William's actions in the most positive terms. There is always a good, and generally a noble, reason for his actions. It is, however, not uncommon in other works about this period to view William's political involvement in the early to mid-1560's as being quite self-serving. In the early-1560's he was losing influence to Granvelle in Brussels. He started acting to protect his own interests. In 1567 he lost all of his property because of Alva's invasion. He therefore personally had a lot to fight for during the invasion of 1568.

Her portrayal of William's opponents (and some of his more unfortunate allies) is, on the other hand, generally very negative. She highlights all of their worst qualities, tending to describe them as self-serving, arrogant, petty and so on. The one exception to this is the Duke of Parma, about whom she is generally positive.
As per usual she, for example, serves only criticism about Anna of Saxony, William's sexually and emotionally unsatisfied second wife. Femke Deen has recently written a biography about her, which I have not yet read, which promises to nuance our understanding of Anna. Traditional historiography has tended to vilify her in order to make William look better. Wedgwood does not even mention that William married her mostly for her money, as that would probably make him look bad.

Her portrayal of Philip's actions in 1567 is also rather problematic. I rather enjoyed Geoffrey Parker's "The Dutch Revolt" because he put the emphasis on the Spanish perspective. Based on Parker's book it is safe to say that Wedgwood's understanding of Spanish policymaking and its various constraints is limited at best. She views the Beeldenstorm of 1566 as an excuse for Philip to execute his ambitions to increase his power in the Netherlands. According to Parker Philip had to deal with all types of different conflicts, especially with the Ottomans. This meant that the troubles in the Netherlands were incredibly unfortunate for him. The main reason that he was able to intervene was the temporary ending of his struggles with the Ottomans.
For similar reasons her arguments about Alva not understanding the voice of the people and not realizing the dangers of raising the tax rate are problematic. By 1572 Philip could not afford to wage a costly war in the Netherlands anymore because of his other military commitments. This meant that raising money in the Netherlands was Alva's only option, not a badly-considered whim.

The Beeldenstorm also genuinely troubled him. Philip's actions were not merely an excuse for extending his secular power. His motivations were significantly more layered. Religion and state power were strongly intertwined in this era and an attack on the church and its imagery was considered to be an attack on the king as well. Simultaneously, Philip also wanted to stop the spread of protestantism and saw this massive attack on religious imagery as incredibly problematic. Wedgwood's discussion of the Beeldenstorm is rather incomplete anyway, she barely even discusses how it started (not mentioning the initial events in the Flemish countryside for example).

There is also a lot of anachronistic analysis. Especially its nationalist reading of many of the events. This does not seem like a fitting framework to understand the political and cultural identities of the various areas and cities in the country. When she writes of the 'Free and ancient Netherlands', calls the conflict the 'war of liberation' for the Netherlands or constantly emphasizes the conflict between the Flemish and the Walloons it becomes clear that the nationalist mindset of the twentieth century distorts her understanding of identity in the 16th century. The fact that the southern, 'Walloon', provinces banded together can just as easily be explained by pointing to the stronger position of the nobility in these areas and the relative absence of large cities (and therefore radical protestants).

Historiographically I find the book somewhat difficult to place. As far as I know our understanding of the Revolt has traditionally been constested between liberals and protestants. According to the liberal view it was a war of national liberation. The protestants view it as a conflict fuelled by religious fervour and mostly fought by and for Calvinists. Wedgwood leans towards the first interpretation, presenting William as a person who fought for national liberation and religious tolerance. The protestant narrative is also quite present however. She generally seems to consider the religious radicalism of the Calvinists to be a hindrance for the success of the Revolt in the South however.

[Nicholas Whyte]

http://nhw.livejournal.com/955162.html[return][return]A very interesting and passionate biography of the leader of the successful Dutch revolt against Spanish rule in the mid-16th century. I had not appreciated how central present-day Belgium was to the Netherlands as a whole up until then: the capital at Brussels, the main trading port being Antwerp. And although there was always a gradient from Francophone to Dutch-speaking, and increasingly from Catholic to Protestant, as you go from south to north, it's easy to imagine how a slightly different set of historical circumstances could have led to a very different border between today's Netherlands and Belgium, or even no border at all; the military balance was always fragile, and local allegiances in the extensive boundary zone volatile.[return][return]Wedgwood's book was published in 1944, and there's clearly an implicit parallel between the Dutch fight against Spanish oppression and the second world war, with William the Silent being portrayed as an almost Churchillian figure; also, of course, his descendant Queen Wilhelmina, exiled in England and Canada during the war, would have been a well-known personality to the British reader of the time. I have to say that I felt a bit suspicious of Wedgwood's nuances on a couple of occasions, given the likely didactic intent of the book.

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wedgwood's mode of historical analysis - history is shaped by great men (and women), character is destiny - has been out of fashion for years. If that stops you, dear reader, you are missing one hell of a show. She moves her narrative at a crisp pace, always conveying the urgency her principals feel of the events as they were occurring then. The prose is lively and erudite, efficiently cutting to the heart of the matter but often with a sense of humor. How can the most dry subject matter fail to come alive? Most enjoyable of all it is her penetrating analysis of the characters of the major players, laying bare their essential natures, gifts, and limitations, offered confidently and assuredly.

So it is with William the Silent, which offers a story of how this particular nobleman, in this particular time and place, is the only one who could have unified the disparate elements of the Netherlands into a single political entity and effected independence from the Spanish empire in the 16th century. It is a wonderful introduction to this topic for those who (like me) know nothing about it. I found it tremendously entertaining.

[Alistair Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a superb biography of one of the central figures of early modern history, William the Silent who effectively lead the revolt of the Netherlands against Spain. The author is on her usual sparkling form and while this book was published in 1944 it remains fresh and relevant. The author effectively navigates the religious divide of the period, Williams efforts to keep the north and south united, which ultimately failed leading to the establishment eventually of two separate countries, Holland and Belgium.
The various family dynamics within the vatious ruling houses of Europe are also covered without becoming bogged down in unneccessary detail. In terms of giving an interesting description of William and the wider context of the challenges he faced this is an excellent biography.
Recommended

[Skallagrimsen]

An engaging portrait of the George Washington of the Netherlands, William of Nassau, by my favorite lesbian Tory historian. C.V. Wedgwood was both a serious scholar and a splendid writer; that uncommon historian to be read for pleasure as well as edification. Her specialty was early modern Europe, a period of which few, before her time or since, could ever hope to rival her knowledge; and virtually none her skill at describing and explaining it to a literate audience. The best of Wedgwood's books that I've read is her epic Thirty Years War but she was also great at short biographies like this one. I wish she'd written dozens more. I'd never tire of them.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dame C.V. Wedgwood's histories are consistently beautifully written, passionate, and partisan. Also an abiding pleasure to read. I like to think that they give a clear impression of what it must have been like to hear her lecture on a subject.

This biography of William was particularly potent, carrying with it the looming specter of his doom, under which Wedgwood celebrates the man for his quality.

[Robert Hepple · Rating 4 out of 5]

First published in 1944, 'William the Silent: William of Nassau, Prince of Orange 1533-1584' is a history of a key player in the cause of Dutch independence, a subject often only obliquely referred to in English language histories of Europe, as they tend to focus more on France. This is a great pity, as this shows just how the rich, complex and white-knuckle ride of Dutch politics was, and no doubt has continued to be. Absolutely fascinating.

[Carlo Flores · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good, not great. I found some portions of the book boring and insignificant since to me it seems such a small part of the greater dutch revolt. nonetheless the e importance is of no doubt since William is the "father of the fatherland" for the dutch but still it's somewhat difficult for me personally to be completely engaged.

[John Ward · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read since I loved her book on the 30 years war the NYRB republished. This was an excellent narrative and political discussion on the creation of the United Provinces as seen through their "Father", William the Silent.

[Luca Mazzotti · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating historical figure, unfairly under-taught and researched.

[Armand R.R. · Rating 5 out of 5]

William the Silent (1533 - 1584) Humane, Wise Statesman

C. V. Wedgwood, William of Nassau — Prince of Orange, 1533-1584 (1944, ebook Reprint (2017) under imprint of Papamoa Press, „Borodino Books“)

Ms. Wedgwood shares a grand strategic vision of a rare statesman, William the Silent, who attempted to unite Benelux into The Netherlands, against the cruel dictatorship of Philip II — who had overwhelming naval and military forces. William persevered with unity of purpose — to unite very diverse classes and religions and economic strands into one fabric of a single Nation.

Ms. Wedgwood pits the cruel Inquisition — practicing refined torture upon suspected heretics or the ambitious, but supported by the militarily strong monarchy of Philip II — against the valiant William who united the most improbable and stubborn of loose allies to fight exhausting wars at enormous human sacrifice.

Ms. Wedgwood paints a compelling picture of the rescue of Leiden from Spanish oppressors who invaded with crushing force. William worked democratically with a hopelessly tangled web of bureaucratic local powers to form unity of purpose for a historically heroic sacrifice. The merchants and tradesmen of Leiden desperately agreed, under William‘s leadership, to do the unthinkable. For Freedom, these heroic peoples, under this historic Statesman, committed themselves to ultimate sacrifice. Burst the dykes; flood the plains (with untold losses); enable William to achieve decisive naval advantage over the oppressive foe.

Indeed, William, in Ms. Wedgwood‘s narrative, is the Father of the great Navy of The Netherlands, having converted an improbable gaggle of pirates into a naval fleet.

Ms. Wedgwood makes the reader see clearly the great odds stacked against William at every stage of his hard fought career as a statesman.

William sought allies from indifferent German provincials, self-seeking Princes of Anjou, the noncommittal English, and ultimately even constructing an improbable Navy from undisciplined pirates.

The foe was united under a religious and cruel zealot in Philip II, whose considerable naval and military might, thankfully, was weakened by long supply lines (for the distance to the Spanish throne was immense) and military officers who were distracted by their zeal.

The peoples that William sought to unite were valiant, industrious and highly skilled. The Protestant North (Utrecht, Zeeland, Holland, Friesland ...) and the Catholic South (Brabant, Flanders, Wallonia ...) were initially moderate in religion and joyful in life, but increasingly each of the two came under religious and political influences that worked hopelessly as countervailing forces to William‘s valiant attempts to unite these peoples into one Nation.

William was an extremely insightful statesman who earned long-term love and loyalty of the most improbably diverse and opposing peoples, and who against all odds patched together alliances that could have united into one United Netherlands, maybe, oh maybe, after thirty years of struggle, but for a second assassination attempt on his life that cut his life short in 1584 at the age of 52, when against all odds our Statesman was still vigorous and youthful.

William had a humane and generous heart, and always tempered justice with mercy.

William was that unusual and great Statesman who tried to effect the good of his own people, even if he had to take it out of his own hide.

William worked with the most stubborn of local bureaucrats to obtain consent of his subjects for all decisions.

William urged the cause of his peoples beforehand courts of natural allies among the Protestants in Germany, France and the great Elizabeth, but the just cause of his diverse Lowlands peoples were remote to these indifferent sympathizers.

So, William ended up improbably holding off an overwhelming and crushing foe for decades by dint of local resources and exhaustive leadership.

Our author is C.V. Wedgwood (Cicely Veronica — she went by „Veronica“), who used her initials to gain currency for her great historical works among a patriarchal guild of English historians of the 1930s and beyond.

Ms. Wedgwood earned her doctorate at Oxford under distinguished scholars, specializing in Wars of the Reformation of the 16th and 17th Centuries. No less a scholar than A.L. Rowse promoted Ms. Wedgwood’s works.

Historical scholars quibble that Ms. Wedgwood’s work is, well, too readable, I guess. But in the 1970s and later, there emerged English professional historians whose passion for their field had been awakened at the tender age of, say, 16, by reading Wedgwood’s works on the British Civil Wars (pitting King Charles I and Parliament against each other), a three volume work, for which Ms. Wedgwood not only consulted the trove of primary sources, but who personally went to each battlefield site in the United Kingdom to reconstruct point by point on the site how the battle had unfolded.

Ms Wedgwood is a compelling historian.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

"There have been politicians more successful, or more subtle; there have been none more tenacious or more tolerant. 'The wisest, gentlest and bravest man who ever led a nation', he is one of that small band of statesmen whose service to humanity is greater than their service to their time or to their people. In spite of the difference of speech or political theory, the conventions and complexities which make one age incomprehensible to another, some men have a quality of greatness which gives their lives universal significance. Such men, in whatever walk of like, in whatever chapter of fame, mystic or saint, scientist or doctor, poet or philosopher, and even - but how rarely - soldier or statesman, exist to shame the cynic, and to renew the faith of humanity in itself.

"Of this number was William of Nassau, Prince of Orange, called the Silent."

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of my personal heroes. The author is not a 21st-C searcher for feet of clay, but I'll take her portrait. She believed that there are people to be admired in history, "who exist to shame the cynic, to renew the faith of humanity in itself."

As we look at regions of the world sundered by ethnic nationalism, it's hard to absorb that the Dutch had to fight their way out from under the Spaniard, to lay the foundations of one of the first "modern" nations, the Netherlands. William, Prince of Orange, 1533-1584 has among other distinctions that of having been the first statesman to be assassinated with a firearm.

[Julaine]

NETHERLANDS - HISTORY
WILHELM 1ST, PRINCE OF ORANGE, 1533-1584