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APPLETONS' JOURNAL.

A MAGAZINE OF GENERAL LITERATURE.

NEW SERIES.]

NOVEMBER, 1879.

[No. 41.

A

THE CITY OF ANTWERP.

NTWERP, the chief seaport of Belgium, has much that is interesting for the curious visitor, and still more for the student of history.

Its unique situation and surroundings; its magnificent wall and fortifications; its extensive zoological gardens, unsurpassed by any in Europe; its Royal Academy of Fine Arts, the resort of pupils from all parts of Europe and America; its museum of paintings, containing the masterpieces of Matsys, Rubens, Vandyck, and others of the Flemish school; its old public buildings, remarkable alike as relics of antiquity and for the thrilling events that have occurred in and around them; the grim old Steen, that horrid prison-house of the Inquisition, whose dark, damp, dismal walls have echoed the groans and witnessed the dying struggles of so many victims; the Van Liere house, the palace of the ancient burgomaster whose name it bears, which Albert Dürer describes as the most splendid private house he had ever seen, and where Charles V. had his residence in 1521-now used as a military hospital; the old Hanseatic house, an immense rectangular edifice, built by the Hanse towns of Germany in 1568 as a factory for their once extensive commerce with this port, now used for storing goods, for public offices, and three of its best rooms by the American Seamen's Friend Society, and British and Foreign Sailors' Society, conjointly, for a chapel and reading-room for sailors;* its many famous churches, St. Jacques's, where the remains of Rubens and his family are interred, St. Andrew's, St. Charles's,

* Since writing the above, we learn that this building -now more than three hundred years old-is soon to be demolished to make way for modern improvements, and that the American and English seamen who have, by the liberality of the Belgian Government, had their quarters

here for the last ten years free of charge, have recently removed to a new building provided expressly for them by their friends.

VOL. VII.-25

St. Peter's, and St. Paul's, and others, with their paintings, sculptures, and elaborate ornamentation, and especially the world-renowned cathedral, with its sweet carillon of bells, its lofty spire

the highest but one in Europe, and equaled by none in grandeur, grace, and beauty, nor in the enchanting view afforded from its pinnacle; the quaint old Dutch and Spanish houses, with their gable fronts and iron-grated windows; its narrow, crooked streets, with an image of the Virgin at all the principal corners, and on all the public pumps in the open spaces at their crossing, with the pendent lantern burning perpetually in silent homage to the patron goddess of the city; the bi-weekly street markets in the middle of the thoroughfare, taking full possession of it for half of the day, at which all sorts of merchandise are exposed for sale, principally by women dressed in the unique costume of the olden time, with their rude wooden shoes, their funny old straw bonnets, and white lace caps with broad, flowing lappels dropping down to their shoulders, underneath which are faintly seen immense masses of gold and silver jewelry; the numerous dog-carts of the butcher, the baker, the milk-woman, each drawn by one large dog, or in case of heavier loads by half a dozen or more; the superb, elephantine horses of the draymen, and the simple, awkward gear by which they are attached to their ponderous trucks; the capacious docks and entrepots for the accommodation of the shipping; the quays along the cityfront, shaded by trees; the high embankments along the river, throughout its whole course of sixty miles to its mouth, by which the meadows or polders, far below the surface-level of the tide, are protected from the overflow of its waters; and the Scheldt itself, a river deep enough for the largest vessels, and broad enough for a whole fleet at once, where float the flags of all nations -all these, and many other objects, will be in

teresting to the curious visitor.

But this old city is chiefly interesting for its checkered history and vicissitudes of fortune.

Perhaps there is no city in Christendom that has seen more changes, that has had more masters, and has been the theatre of more stirring scenes, than the city of Antwerp.

From its position at the principal northern doorway to the continent, and midway between the contending forces of Eastern and Western Europe, it has been more or less involved in all their conflicts, and has been the scene of frequent carnage, and the very object of strife in many a bloody battle. Kings and emperors have led their advancing or retreating armies through its streets, and fought desperate battles within its gates, and encamped around its walls.

Edward III., of England, spent a whole year here in mustering his forces, and in waging war with France. Here the peerless Prince of Orange, William of Nassau, the indomitable leader of the rebellion against Papal and Spanish tyranny— which finally gave liberty to seven of the Netherland provinces, and should have given it to the whole seventeen-had his headquarters. It was here, with a price set on his head, and the blessing of the Pope guaranteed to the murderer, that the first attempt on his life was made, which proved so nearly fatal, and which, after being four times repeated within two years, at last succeeded in depriving the cause of civil and religious liberty of one of its noblest heroes and defenders.

Here the Reformation, under Luther, numbered its first martyrs, Henry Voes and John Esch; and after them comes a long catalogue of others, who were butchered in the streets, burned in the public squares, smothered in the slimy caves of the Steen, buried alive, drowned in the Scheldt inclosed in sacks or tied back to back, two or four or half a dozen in a bunch, whose names, though not found in the pages of history, are recorded on high among the heroes of whom the world was not worthy. Here John Rogers, the famous English martyr, preached to his countrymen, though the honor of crowning him belongs to his countrymen at home. It was here also that William Tyndale defied the power of Henry VIII., and foiled the espionage of Wolsey, by printing his English Bible and smuggling it into England, and here he was treacherously arrested and led to prison, from which he was brought out only to be burned at the stake, in the neighboring town of Vilvorde.

The city has been frequently besieged, several times bombarded, and more than once has it been sacked and burned, and its inhabitants given over to outrage and slaughter.

in the sixteenth century, besides many lesser furies that can not be mentioned, viz., the Iconoclastic fury at the hands of a fanatical mob goaded to madness by persecution, in which the great cathedral and other churches were despoiled of their pictures and images; the Spanish fury, at the hands of the unpaid soldiery of Philip II.; and the French fury by the followers of the treacherous Duke of Anjou. And, more than all, it suffered all the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition, which was here in operation through a long series of years. In short, it has passed through the whole gamut of changes, from an insignificant bourg to the highest pinnacle of commercial splendor, and down again to the position of a poor provincial town, lying like a captive with hands and feet bound for nearly two centuries; and now again, released, it is seen coming forward to the front rank and claiming to be one of the leading commercial cities of the continent.

The early history of Antwerp is veiled in obscurity and lost in fable. Tradition, ambitious of antiquity, carries us back to a remote age, long before the Christian era, and tells us of a giant called Antigon, who had his castle on the banks of the Scheldt, where the city now stands, and levied tribute upon all who sailed up the river, and cut off the right hands of all who refused payment. Hence the name of the city Handwerpen, and by contraction, Antwerp. There was another giant called Brabo, who conquered him, and threw him into the river; from him the national appellation Brabant is derived. These fabulous traditions have their origin, no doubt, in the early conflicts of the rude people inhabiting this region; and they are kept alive by the occasional exhibition of monstrous images of these giants, and other mythical monsters, drawn through the streets of the city on fête-days, to the amazement of the superstitious and half-credulous crowd of beholders.

Coming down to the historic times of Julius Cæsar, we find the Menapians, a warlike tribe, whom he calls "the rudest and bravest of the Gauls," occupying this particular locality. They long resisted his efforts to conquer them. But after many bloody battles, in which he suffered severely, they finally fell before the superior power of his disciplined troops, and were incorporated into his universal empire, and followed its fortunes for a few generations.

At length this heterogeneous empire is overwhelmed and broken up. Wild hordes of Goths and Huns and Vandals come rushing down from their northern reservoirs, like waters that have burst their barriers, carrying desolation in their path. The whole continent is thrown into disFragmentary masses of men are seen

It was swept by three great furies, so called, order.

moving to and fro in every direction; the Frisians, the Saxons, the Sarmatians, the Slavonians, the Allemanians, the Franks, the Suevi, Quadi, Heruli, and other clans, led on by their warrior chiefs, crossing each other's track, invading each other's territory, eager for blood and booty; now engaging in fierce conflicts with each other, now uniting their forces against a common enemy, and now mingling in inexplicable confusion, till at last Charlemagne, in the beginning of the ninth century, rises out of the chaos to restore order, and reform the Empire of the West. Born in the immediate vicinity of this city, and crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle, a few leagues distant, where he had his northern capital, the influence of his master mind was here especially felt.

At this period the bourg of Antwerp is seen boldly rising from the lagoons and marshes of the Scheldt, and fortifying itself by embankments and high walls against the incursions of the desolating flood of waters on the one side and of human foes on the other, while the inhabitants peaceably and securely pursue their own affairs within.

Charlemagne dies, and again the empire is broken into fragments, and is divided among his contending successors, none of whom are wise enough or strong enough, in that rude age, to organize a stable government.

Now comes the Norman invasion. The Scandinavians overflow this whole region, and hold the inhabitants in terror for half a century. They sail up the river and take forcible possession of this fortified bourg. It is pillaged and burned. At length, after a most bloody conflict, they are driven off, and Antwerp is again built on a more extensive scale, and is more strongly fortified. The process of disintegration goes on throughout all Central and Western Europe. There is no commanding mind that is able to seize upon these fragmentary forces and unite and control them.

The feudal system springs up. The territory over which Charlemagne had held sway, and which had been divided among his successors, is again divided and subdivided, like an immense farm among the many heirs of its deceased proprietor, and falls under the government of numerous chiefs, called dukes, earls, marquises, counts, etc. Each one of them is a liege lord in his own petty realm, while he in turn owes allegiance, more or less explicit, to some superior sovereign. These estates become hereditary in the families of the nobles who hold them, while the people under them are but serfs or slaves, possessing only such immunities as they can extort from their rulers. Under this arrangement Antwerp becomes a marquisate. Among its early

titulary rulers was the famous Godfrey de Bouillon, a leader in the first Crusade, and afterward the King of Jerusalem.

We have come now to the midnight of the dark ages. The Papacy is in the zenith of its power. The Pope sits on his throne in the Eternal City, as God's vicegerent on earth. He holds both the temporal and spiritual destiny of kings and people in his hands. His favor is life; his frown is death. Ignorance, superstition, and blind devotion pervade all minds. The dark pall of spiritual death rests upon the whole of Christendom-so called. There is only here and there a glimmering light, which but serves to make the darkness visible. Some mighty convulsion is needed to rouse the people from their lethargy, and move them to thought and action. This was found in that movement or series of movements, running through nearly two centuries, which swept like a whirlwind over all Europe, taking possession of every mind, and stirring society to its lowest depths-called the Crusades.

The Mohammedan Turks had taken possession of the holy city of Jerusalem. The sepulchre of our Lord was in their infidel hands. Christian pilgrims were exposed to insult and outrage. This is a shame that can not be endured. The sacred city and the tomb of our Lord must be rescued from their power at all hazards. Peter the Hermit, commissioned by the Pope, like a messenger from the other world, gaunt and pale with austerity and fasting, his body covered with sackcloth, his head and feet bare, with an earnest heart and an eloquent tongue, and with fire in his eyes, holding aloft the cross, goes from kingdom to kingdom, from city to city, from hamlet to hamlet, entering palaces and hovels alike, accosting every one he meets, rallying the people, young and old, men, women, and children everywhere to the rescue.

The Pope promises full absolution and plenary indulgence to all who will engage in the enterprise. A wild frenzy seizes upon all minds; multitudes of both sexes and of all ages flock to the standard of the cross, as it is carried through the land, and in swelling crowds advance toward the far-off Holy Land. But here is no place to describe these mad expeditions, and the deluded multitudes that engaged in them, nor to tell of their wanderings, their sufferings, their conflicts, and of the few who lived to return.

Among the chief leaders of the first Crusade was the Marquis of Antwerp, Godfrey de Bouillon. His feudal city contributed, no doubt, her full quota of victims for this sacrifice; but how many, and how they fared, history gives us no particular record.

These fanatical movements, that so wonder

fully stirred the popular mind, these wild expeditions made without order or foresight; these sufferings and sacrifices, were not altogether in vain. The Crusades did much to change the whole face of society, to infuse new ideas into the minds of men, and to give a new direction to their thoughts and efforts. A new era dawns. It begins to be light. The people begin to open their eyes and ask to be fed with knowledge and truth. They are no longer satisfied with fables. Their fetters gall them as never before. They come to see that they have individual rights as well as their lords, and they demand them. Conflicts ensue. Concessions are made. Old customs and prerogatives are abolished. New privileges are granted. The voice of the people begins to be heard in the government that is over them. Free charters are demanded by many of the commercial citiesthe chief centers of intelligence and free thought. Among them Antwerp is one of the first to recognize her rights and to claim them. She gets what she claims; and is soon seen coming to the front as one of the most free, flourishing commercial cities in Europe, or indeed in the world at that time.

Movable types and the printing-press are now invented. Learning begins to revive. Books are multiplied, and the people learn to read them. The new passage to the Indies, by the way of the Cape of Good Hope, is found out. A new continent is discovered. The whole current of trade is changed. The old cities of Venice, Verona, Genoa, Nuremberg, and other commercial centers, have reached the height of their prosperity. They now begin to decline. But Antwerp rises on the full tide of prosperity. The sister cities of Ghent and Bruges go down before the superior advantages of her position. As they decline, "Antwerp, with her deep, convenient river, stretches her arms to the ocean and catches the golden prize as it falls from her sister cities' grasp," and comes to be the acknowledged leading commercial city of the world; the mart for the exchange of the products of all nations. "No city except Paris surpasses it in population, none approaches it in commercial splendor" (Motley). Twenty-five hundred vessels from all parts of the world, laden with merchandise, receiving or discharging their cargoes, or waiting for their turn, are often seen in the river at the same time. Four or five hundred come in and go out at every tide. Two thousand wagons loaded with goods, and all sorts of wares, besides many peasant-carts and pleasure-carriages, pass through her gates every day.

At her stately Exchange, said to have been the most magnificent in the world, and the model of the noblest that have since been built in other countries, five thousand merchants daily congre

gated. Manufacturers and traders from all the countries in Europe had their factories here. "A great traffic was carried on in bills of exchange. Antwerp, in short, became the banking-house of Europe. The capitalists, the Rothschilds of their day, whose dealings were with sovereign princes, fixed their abode at Antwerp, which was to the rest of Europe in the sixteenth century what London is in the nineteenth century-the great heart of commercial circulation" (Prescott).

"It was difficult to find a child of sufficient age who could not read, write, and speak at least two languages. The sons of the wealthier citizens completed their education at Louvain, Douay, Paris, or Padua" (Motley). Returning from abroad, they brought with them the new religious ideas that were beginning to prevail at these centers of learning. Among the merchants from abroad, the disciples of Huss of Bohemia, Wyclif of England, and of the Waldenses and Huguenots of France and Southern Europe, were here to be found in considerable numbers.

The preaching of Luther and of Zwingli was beginning to excite attention. The same corruptions against which they were protesting had here already awakened opposition. The people had become too much enlightened and too intelligent to endure them. They demanded a purer priesthood and a more spiritual religion. The teachings of the Bible could no longer be withheld entirely from the knowledge of the people. They were eager for further instruction. Evangelical truth had already taken possession of many hearts, and the Reformation had fairly begun.

Seven centuries had now elapsed since Charlemagne held the scepter of the Western Empire. The scattered fragments of his vast empire are now to be united, in great part, under the relentless despotism of Charles V., sometimes called Charlemagne II.

During this long interval, Antwerp, with the adjacent provinces lying midway between the eastern and western Franks, passes from one party to the other, and from one royal house to another, till it falls, in 1384, to the Dukes of Burgundy. Another century, and Mary, who is the sole heir of this rich inheritance, marries Maximilian, of the house of Austria, and Philip, their son, uniting the two houses of Burgundy and Austria in himself, marries Jeannie, the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, and Charles V. is born of this union in 1500, and by inheritance comes to be King of Spain, Sicily, and Jerusalem, Duke of Milan and Burgundy, including the seventeen Netherland provinces, dominator in Asia, Africa, and the newly discovered territories in America; and, at the age of nineteen

years, is elected Emperor of Germany and King of Rome; so while yet in his minority he becomes the autocrat of nearly half the world.

Born, reared, and crowned in the immediate vicinity of Antwerp, it might have been supposed that Charles would have been proud of the glory of this queen city of his mighty realm, and have cherished its prosperity. But its free spirit was intolerable to his bigoted soul, and he set himself, with all the resources he could command, to the work of crushing out the liberties of the people, and extinguishing the light of evangelical truth that had already begun to shine; and he did his work so thoroughly that, when he and his son Philip, his successor-both the most servile and willing vassals of the Pope-had finished their long and cruel reigns, the glory of Antwerp had departed: her trade had been ruined; her merchants despoiled of their wealth; their storehouses were closed and vacant; their magnificent bourse, so recently alive with the commercial business of all nations, was almost a solitude; her manufacturers and artisans had fled to England* and other lands, where they were encouraged to resume the labors they could no longer pursue at home: these were among her most worthy and enterprising citizens. Others were put to death, under every form of cruel torture.

After nearly a century of holy discipline, imposed upon two or three successive generations of sufferers, with the aid of the Inquisition, the moiety, disheartened, weakened, demoralized by suffering, and the loss of their leaders, gave up the contest, and became the submissive and silent subjects of their "Most Catholic oppressors. As sometimes a victim of torture, weary of useless resistance, and weakened by pain and loss of blood, when all hope is gone, recants his alleged errors, and professes submission and conformity to the behests of the persecuting power that holds him fast in her clutches, so Antwerp, despoiled of her wealth, her liberties destroyed, her trade gone, exhausted by long-continued persecution, betrayed by her sworn protectors, and deluded by false promises, submitted at last to the chains that were riveted upon her limbs, yielded the principle of religious freedom, which she had so long and so nobly striven to maintain, and humbly promised to return to the bosom of the mother Church, and to receive, entertain, tolerate, and practice no other religion but that of the Holy Catholic Church. No one can say that her promise has not been well kept; for to this day it remains one of the most devoted Catholic cities in all Christendom.

According to Prescott, the number who fled to London, Sandwich, Norfolk, and other English towns, was thirty thousand.

Nothing remained but to close her harbor, which was soon done, and she fell to the condition of a poor provincial town; and for two centuries she continued to exist only to serve as a bone of contention or as a football between the contending nations of Europe.

A French writer says of Antwerp during this period: "Ten thousand houses are vacant; the grass grows in her streets; the country is infested by wolves; the fields are uncultivated. Only monks, mendicants, and robbers traverse her highways that were once so full of life. Memorial crosses, planted along the public roads, everywhere bear silent testimony to the numerous assassinations that are committed. In a word, the dark ages have returned. Ignorance, brutality, and desolation reign on every side."

Meanwhile the seven provinces at the north, now included under the general name of Holland, having shared in all the earlier persecutions of their sister provinces, under the wise leadership of the indomitable William of Nassau, Prince of Orange, and his successors, partly from the greater security of their position, and partly, perhaps, because of their greater pluck and power of endurance, had succeeded in shaking off the Spanish yoke, and securing to themselves civil and religious freedom. They became at once an asylum for exiles from Antwerp and other parts of this poor afflicted country—and, indeed, from other lands, as our Pilgrim Fathers could testify. The industrious citizens of Antwerp, fleeing thither in large numbers, took their business with them, and, as the trade of this city fell off, Amsterdam and Rotterdam profited by her misfortunes, and soon in their turn became great centers of a world-wide commerce. The Dutch Republic rose rapidly into prosperity, and soon came to be known and recognized as the most flourishing maritime nation in the world.

The remaining ten Netherland provinces, hereafter known as Belgium, now shorn of their strength and beauty and greatly depopulated, were given by Philip II., at his decease in 1698, to his daughter and her cardinal husband, to whom a dispensation to marry had been granted, and they jointly reign as Albert and Isabella over Antwerp and the poor remnants of this once prosperous country till their death, when, in default of heirs, the inheritance reverts once more to the crown of Spain.

During the century that followed, the French, who had always coveted this domain, made several attempts to gain possession, which were successful only in part.

In the very beginning of the next century-in 1700-Louis XIV. of France claimed it as the rightful heritage of his grandson, the Duke of Anjou, and occupied and ruled it in his name,

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