arms, negotiations were entered into, and by the celebrated treaty of 1609, comparative peace was secured to Christendom.

The treaty of 1609 was in reality an acknowledgment by Spain of the independence of the United Provinces of the Netherlands, although the Spanish king was so unwilling to admit the fact of his being unable to reduce the rebel states to submission, that the treaty was termed simply "a truce for twelve years." Spain did not formally acknowledge their independence until forty years afterwards, in the Peace of Westphalia, at the end of the Thirty Years' War (1648).

Thus ended, after a continuance of about forty-one years, one of the most memorable contests of which history has to tell, one of the most heroic struggles that men ever maintained against ecclesiastical and civil despotism.

Development of the Provinces during the War.- One of the most remarkable features of the war for Dutch independence was the vast expansion of the trade and commerce of the revolted provinces, and their astonishing growth in population, wealth, and resources, while carrying on the bitter and protracted struggle. The contrast in this respect between the United Provinces of the North and the "obedient provinces," as they were called, of the South, is a most striking and instructive commentary on the advantages of freedom over despotism. The Southern provinces at the end of the war presented a scene of almost utter ruin: grass grew in the streets of the once crowded commercial cities, the most enterprising of the traders and artizans having sought homes in the free cities of the North, or migrated to other countries. The "rebel provinces," on the other hand, had increased so rapidly in population, notwithstanding the waste of war, that at the end of the struggle the number of inhabitants crowded on that little patch of seabottom and morass constituting the Dutch Republic, was equal to the entire population of England; that is to say, to three or four millions.

But the home-land was only a small part of the dominions of the commonwealth. Through the enterprise and audacity of its bold

DEVELOPMEnt of the PROVINCES, ETC.

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sailors, it had made extensive acquisitions in the East Indies and other parts of the world, largely at the expense of the Spanish and Portuguese colonial possessions.

And in a larger sense than was ever true before this period, the Dutch cities had become the workshops and warehouses of the world. Products for distribution and manufacture from every land beneath the sun- from all parts of Europe, from Africa, Asia, and the Americas—were heaped upon their wharves. Their commerce had so expanded that more than one hundred thousand of their citizens found a home upon the sea. And these Dutch sailors were by far the boldest and the most skilful that navigated the seas. A Netherland ship would sail to the Indies and back while a Spanish vessel was making the voyage one way. Nearly one thousand ships were engaged in the sole industry of the herring fishery, which, we are assured, was made to yield more gold to the little Republic than all the mines of the New World poured into the coffers of the king of Spain.

It was during this period that the noted Dutch East India and West India companies were formed. These were associations of merchants chartered by the States-General, and given a monopoly of trade in the East and the West respectively, with the right to levy and maintain armies in order to secure and advance their trade. The East India Company, like the celebrated English association of the same name, was destined to build up in the East, dominions truly imperial in extent and power.

No idlers or beggars were allowed a place in the industrious little Commonwealth. Monasteries, convents, and abbeys were converted into charitable institutions for the unfortunate, for invalid soldiers, and for the children of those that fell in their country's service.

The intellectual progress of the people kept pace with their material advance. Throughout the United Provinces it was rare to meet a person who could not both read and write. Colleges and universities were established in all the leading cities, while common schools were set up everywhere in town and country.

In the natural and mechanical sciences, particularly in the departments of hydrostatics and hydraulics, sciences which were urged upon the attention of the Netherlanders by the necessities of their situation, just as Geometry was forced upon that of the ancient Egyptians, the United Provinces, during the latter part of the sixteenth and the first portion of the seventeenth century, gave birth to some of the most distinguished scholars of Europe.

The Renaissance in France. -The forerunner of the Reformation in France, as almost everywhere else, was the Renaissance. The Italian Wars, begun by Charles VIII.,1 and kept up by his immediate successors, Louis XII., Francis I., and Henry II., by bringing the French in contact with the new intellectual life of the South, had the effect of spreading beyond the Alps the contagious enthusiasm for classical learning and art that had seized upon the Italians. Francis was so zealous a promoter of the intellectual revival that he earned the title of "Father of Letters and Arts." "France became an Italy more Italian than Italy itself." Under the influence of the movement, architecture was transformed. On every side the gloomy feudal strongholds gave place to splendid chateaux, while the old royal residences were replaced by, palaces magnificent and sumptuous beyond anything Europe had ever seen before.

But it is the changed tone of French literature that we would especially note. As the representative of its freer and more skeptical spirit, stands the famous Rabelais (1483-1553), a writer of such power and originality that his works are among the few prose

1 Charles VIII. was the last of the direct line of the Valois kings (see p. 309). The Valois-Orleans sovereigns, whose reigns cover the first part of the period treated in the present chapter, were Louis XII. (1498-1515), Francis I. (1515-1547), Henry II. (1547-1559), Francis II. (1559-1560), Charles IX. (1560–1574), Henry III. (1574-1589). The successor of Henry III. Henry IV.— was the first of the Bourbons.

productions of the sixteenth century that command the attention of the reader of the present day. A spirit of skepticism pervades all his writings. His most noted work is a sort of political romance, in which he attacks particularly the ecclesiastics with the keenest satire and raillery. Thus the tendency of the intellectual revival was altogether antagonistic to the medieval Church. Baird, in his "Rise of the Huguenots," makes the progress of letters, quickening intelligence and widening information, one of the chief causes of the rapid spread in France of the doctrines of the reformers.1

The Reformation in France. As the intellectual revival in Italy brought forth a Savonarola, in England a Colet, in Germany a Luther and a Melanchthon, so in France did it bring forth for the religious reform movement a chief and champion. Intellectual enfranchisement- we cannot too often repeat it is sure to lead to religious freedom.

The name of the leader of the French Protestants we have mentioned in a preceding chapter; before repeating it, we wish to say a word regarding the beginnings of the Reformation in France. The movement here, in its inception, was a national, spontaneous one. Before Luther posted his ninety-five theses at Wittenberg, there appeared in the University of Paris and else where in France men who, from their study of the Scriptures, had come to entertain opinions very like those of the German reformer. The land which had been the home of the Albigenses is again filled with heretics. The movement thus begun received a fresh impulse from the uprising in Germany under Luther. But Luther could not become the acknowledged leader of the Reformation in France. He was too intensely German. The movement in France, as we have said, gave birth to its own chief. This was John Calvin (1509-1564), who, forced by persecution, es has been told already, to flee from France, found a refuge in neva, and made that city the cradle of French Protestantism.

1 Vol. I. p. 400. See also Stephen's Lectures on the History of France chaps. XV. and XVI.