William the Silent (1533 – 1584)
Also widely known as William the Silent, was the main leader of the Dutch revolt against Spain that set off the Eighty Years' War and resulted in the formal independence of the United Provinces in 1648.
If they be dead, as I can no longer doubt, we must submit to the will of God and trust in His divine Providence, that He who has given the blood of His only Son to maintain His Church will do nothing but what will redound to the advancement of His glory and the preservation of His Church—however impossible it may appear. And though we all were to die, and all this poor people were massacred and driven out, we still must trust that God will not abandon his own.
We need fear no more when the head is gone.
The Prince is a rare man, of great authoritie, universally beloved, verie wyse in resolution in all things, and voyd of pretences, and that which is worthie of speciall prayse in hym, he is not dismayed with any loss, or adversitie.
You are staking your own head by trusting the King. Never will I so stake mine, for he has deceived me too often. His favourite maxim is, haereticis non est servanda fides. I am now bald and Calvinist and in that faith will I die.
This mercy will be your ruin; you will be at the bridge across which the Spaniards will enter this land.
My legal wife is to me dead; the only ecclesiastical authority I recognise pronounces me free; the attacks and threats of men do not disturb me. I am acting according to a clear conscience, and am doing hurt to no man. For my conduct, I will answer to my maker.
My God, my God, have mercy on me, and on my poor people!
Sire, have pity on the Spanish infantry, which, for lack of pay and out of sheer starvation, is scouring the low country round, plundering the peasantry in mere need of food. These disorders I cannot repress, much less can I punish them, for necessity has no law.
O wondrous fate that joins Moses and Orange. The one fights for the law, the other beats the drum. And with his own arm, frees the Evangelium. The one leads the Hebrews through the Red Sea flood. The other guides his people through a sea...of tears and blood.
I have heard that tomorrow they are to execute the two prisoners, the accomplices of him who shot me. For my part, I most willingly pardon them. If they are thought deserving of a signal and severe penalty, I beg the magistrates not to put them to torture, but to give them a speedy death, if they have merited this. Good-night!
Orange is a dead man, his men desert him, and threaten to cut his throat, and sack his ancestral domain; he will be caught and annihilated as was his brother Jemmingen.
We may regard the Prince now as a dead man, he has neither influence, nor credit. They are broken, famished, cut to pieces.
The Countess of Egmont sits with Madame while the Princess of Orange is kept standing, the Prince is dying of rage.
To my mind, he builded better than he knew and the real worth of his character developed slowly.
People everywhere ceased to trust him, and thought that the Prince must regret that he had ever left Holland at all. He had lost all authority in the Netherlands, after allowing so many thousands to be butchered. He cannot even withdraw with honor; he is not safe even in Antwerp, where his popularity is gone.
The very fear of it, will paralyze or kill him.
They stormed Oudewater, and delivered it over to all imaginable cruelties, sparing neither sex nor age.
I have come to make my grave in this land.
It is the will of God, and we must submit; but I call my God to witness that I have done all that in me lay to save the city, utterly desperate as I knew the attempt to be. When I took in hand the defence of these oppressed Christians, I made an alliance with the mightiest of all Potentates—the God of Hosts, who is able to save us, if He choose.
We may see how miraculously God defends our people, and makes us hope that, in spite of the malice of our enemies, He will bring our cause to a good and happy end, to the advancement of His glory and the deliverance of so many Christians from unjust oppression.