NASSAU, HOUSE OF. 



WAUOYDBS 





UM oounU Kprucnt and Hoornc, by retiring from tho Low Countries 

 to hU paternal domaiu* of Nassau. 



In the following year, 1568, tha detestable tyinny and inhuman 

 onultiei of Alva against the ProtcetaoU in the Netherlands, liia own 

 wroogi, and the appalling sufferings of a people whom he loved, 

 rouard William from hu retreat, and thenceforward be stood forth 

 tba fearless and sralon* champion of the great cause, whicli he is sup- 

 noted to bare embraced leaafrom religious than from political motives. 

 His effort! in armi were for the moat part unsuccessful ; for the raw 

 and hi-te rogeiii ous levies which he was enabled to make among the 

 German and French ProUstanU for the succour of the unwarlike 

 people of the Netherlands were no match for the veteran Spanish and 

 Italian bends which Alva bad led into the Low Countries. But 

 every disadvantage under which William contended in the field with 

 Alva and his skilful successors, Don John of Austria and Alexandra 

 Karnrse of Parma, was more than counterbalanced by his consummate 

 abilities as a statesman, which enabled him finally to triumph, not 

 only over his Spanish enemies, but over every rival in the councils of 

 the revolted provinces. The archduke Mathiag of Austria and the 

 Duke of Anjou, both of whom had been invited by the party opposed 

 to William to assume the government of the insurgent states, found 

 their authority leas durable than his influence: nud it was by his 

 suggestions and under his auspices that the seven Protestant provinces 

 of Holland, Zealand, Utrecht, Frienland, Groning.-n, Overyasel, and 

 Guelih rlaud, concluded, in 1576, the famous Union of Utrecht, 

 which formed the Luting basis of the Dutch republic. 



1'i'ilip IL no sooner heard of this decisive measure than he showed 

 his sense of its importance and his dread of its author by retting a 

 price upon his head. So atrocious a temptation, combined with 

 fanatical z-al, soon produced two attempts upon the life of William, 

 from th first of which he escaped with a wound. The second was 

 more successful, and he fell at Delft, in the year 15S4, by a pistol- 

 shot from the baud of one Balthazar Gerard, a Burgundian, who had 

 been instigated or encouraged to the deed by Roman Catholic priest". 

 William was four times married, and loft, besides daughters, three 

 sons, of whom Philip William, the eldest, having been seized iu his 

 youth by Alva, sent to Spain, and educated in that country in the 

 Roman Catholic faith, was ultimately restored to the principality ol 

 Orange, and the two others, Maurice and Frederic Henry, successively 

 attained the dignity of stadtholder of the United Provinces. 



II. MAURICE or NASSAU, the second surviving son of William I., 

 was born in 1 567, and named after his maternal grandfather, the 

 celebrated Elector Maurice of Saxony, whose military genius he 

 inherited. Although only seventeen years of age when his father 

 was assassinated, the states of Holland and Zealand showed their grati- 

 tude to the memory of their deliverer by immediately electing young 

 Maurice their governor or stadtholder; and though the Count o! 

 ll'ihcnloe was at first appointed his lieutenant to aid his inexperience, 

 be roou proved himself capable of the unassisted conduct of military 

 affairs. For a time indeed his further rise was impeded by his extreme 

 youth, and by the desire of the States to gratify Queen Elizabeth of 

 England through the elevation of the Earl of Leicester to the supreme 

 command of their forces. The proceedings of that nobleman however 

 soon gave them just grounds of suspicion and disgust, and iu 158' 

 they solemnly elected Maurice to fill, in his absence, the office o 

 eapuuvgeoeral of the whole Seven Unit d Provinces, a dignity whicl 

 accordingly devolved altog< tber upon him, when the misconduct o 

 Leicester had at length compelled th queen of England to recall him 

 from the Netherlands. At this epoch a gieat part of the territory 

 of the Seven United Provinces wss still iu the hands of the Spaniards 

 bat Maurice began vigorously though gradually to make head agains 

 them. In 1591 ho displayed bis skill and activity by the capture o 

 Zutphen, D. renter, Nirneguen, and other important places; and hi 

 snoorsees had now infused such confidence into the States and people 

 that be was received at the Hague with transports of public joy. In 

 1693 he took Gertruydeuberg, after a memorable siege, and Oronin 

 gea in the following campaign. The progress of the republican arm 

 was Dirked during some jean principally by the reduction of those 

 and other fortifi. d places; but in 1597 Maurice, with the aid of th 

 Kogliah auxiliaries under Sir Francis Vere, completely defeated th 

 Spaniards in bis first range) battle at Turnhout in Brabant; an 

 three years later, in 1600, he obtained at Nieuport, with the gam 

 confederate!, a second and more brilliant victory over the Arohduk 

 Albert of Au.tria. 



Thenceforth, until the recognition by Spain of the independence o 

 the Seven 1'uiUd Provisoes in the truce for twelve years, which was 

 concluded in 1609, Maurice continued to extend the successes of th 

 state*, and to raie the glory of their arms. The undoubted talents 

 of the great generals to whom he WAS opposed, and over whom h 

 gained many advantages, signally enhanced bis own reputation : foi 

 after having baffled in bis youth the enterprises of the renowned 

 Duk of Parma, Aleasandro Faroese, he found, in his lat-r career 

 another worthy opponent, iu the equally faiLous Italian, Spinola, wb 

 had succeeded to the com u and of the Spanish forces. Under sue 

 leaden, the operations of the hostile armies in the Netherlands ri vcte 

 the attention of the world ; and the camp of Maurice, as well as that 

 of l*vta and Spinola, being thronged with volunteer* from every 

 quarter of Europe, became the great school of military instruction. 



The cessation of hostilities exhibited the qualities of Maurice iu a 



is favourable light. He had laboured from selfish views to ob 



e conclusion of tho truce with Spain, and was successfully opposed 



n these and other ambitious designs upon the liberties of the republic, 



y the pensionary Bariioveldt, a man of real patriotism, eminent ability, 



id incorruptible integrity. But the religious disputes, which arose 



n the republic at this juncture between the Calvinists and Arminians, 



nabled Maurice to revenge himself upon th- pensionary. Barneveldt 



eiug attached to the Arminian opinions, Maurice placed himself at 



lie head of the opposite faction, the Calvinista, or Gomarists, as they 



wen called after Gomar, the professor of theology at Leyden, who 



iad been the antagonist of Arminius. As the Gomsriste composed 



be great mass of the people, that party at length prevailed ; the 



Vrniiniiin preachers were banished ; and in 1619, at the age of seveuty- 



wo years, the virtuous and venerable Barneveldt, who had for nearly 



wlf a century served the republic as successfully in the cabinet as 



ilaurice had done in the field, was, by the machinations, and to tho 



termil dishonour of that prince, brought to the scaffold after being 



xmvicted on various false charges, of which the principal was, that hu 



iad" troubled the state and religion." [BAUNKVELDT.] The stadt- 



lolder, who by the decease of his elder brother had succeeded iu 161S 



o the principality of Orange, gained little by his persecution uf 



krneveldt After the death of the pensionary the people awoke to 



a sense of their injustice and ingratitude to that patriot, and his 



oppressor Maurice suddenly became as hateful aud suspected iu tlnir 



eves as he had hitherto been popular. His designs of acquiring the 



sovereignty of tho states were perceived and frustrated, aud whenever 



te appeared in public, groans and execrations pursued him as tho 



murderer of Barneveldt 



The resumption of hostilities with Spain, at the expiration of the 

 nice in 1621, turned the tide of public indignation; and Maurice 

 again appeared in arms to measure himself against his old antagonist 

 Spinola, The fortune of the contest however between these two great 

 commanders was now so nicely balanced, that it would be difficult to 

 assign the palm of victory to either. In 1622 Maurice compelled the 

 wily Genoese to raise the siege of Bergen-op-Zoom, after having 

 expended on it the lives of 10,000 of hift veteran troops; but three 

 pears later, Spinola succeeded in reducing Breda, notwithstanding aU 

 ;he efforts of Maurice ; and so much to his mortification, that the 

 circumstance is believed to have produced or hastened his death, which 

 occurred on the 23rd of April 1625, and in the fifty-eighth year of his 

 age. He left no legitimate offspring, and was succeeded, both in the 

 principality of Grange and stadth eldership of the United Provinc .-, 

 i>y his half-brother, Frederic Henry. 



The character of Maurice of Nassau was favourably distinguished 

 only by military genius. As a statesman, he was without the sagacity 

 and prudence of his father; as a man, iu his treatment of Barneveldt 

 aud hi* family, he showed himself devoid of honour and humanity ; 

 and the violence and grossness of bis nature were redeemed by no 

 virtue of private Ufa But as a general he must ever be numbered 

 among tha greatest masters of his art, and may in fact be regarded as 

 the founder of the military science of modern Europe. He was the 

 first to methodise the practice of sieges, encampments, and marches ; 

 and he introduced numberless reforms iu tho armament, training, aud 

 formation of troops. He taught the cavalry of inferior physical weight 

 to engage in close encounter, and to overthrow the ponderous mosses 

 of the old gens-d'arinerie ; he first accustomed the infantry to a syste- 

 matic management of their arms; and to his institutions must bo 

 referred that uniformity of exercise and regularity of movement which 

 have become the simplest elements of martial discipline. To this may 

 be added, that the celerity, as well as good order of his marches, the 

 able arrangements by which be husbanded the lives and health of his 

 troops, and the felicitous skill with which his camps were chosen and 

 secured from assault, are the constant subjects of contemporary eulogy. 

 He excelled particularly in the art of fortifying, besieging, and defending 

 places ; and, as the circumstances and localities of tho contest in which 

 he was engaged rendered such operations less perilous for the States 

 than the hazard of decisive encounters in the field, his successes were 

 gained mure by a war of sieges, marches, and entrenched camps, than 

 of great battles : but the victories of Turnhout and Nieuport were not 

 the less the triumphs of his tactical system. Those actions were the 

 first important defeats inflicted upon the Spanish bauds, who bad so 



long been the terror of Europe ; and it was in the school of Na-nni 

 that the fundamental rules of military science were established which, 

 within Ices than half a century, finally prevailed over the slow and 

 cumbrous array of the Imperial aud Spanish service, in the plains of 

 Lutzen aud Hocroi. 



William 111. of Nassau, prince of Orange, stadtholder of the united 

 provinces, aud ultimately king of England, will be found fully noticed 

 under WILLIAM III. With the death of William III. tho male line 

 of William the Silent became extinct; and the States General were 

 not sorry to leave the stadtholdersbip vacant, and tacitly abolished. 

 But William had named for his personal heir his cousin John William 

 Friso, prince of Nassau-Dietz (grandson of his auut Albertina Agnes 

 by William Frederic of Nassau-Dietz), from whom the present regal 

 line of Grange is descended. 



NAUCY'DES (Noi/KuJTjt), a Greek sculptor, who was born at Argo.<, 

 and was in repute, according to Pliny, about OL 95 he was the son 



