William

the Silent (1533-1584), Prince of Orange and Count of Nassau. He was born at the Castle of Dillenburg, in Nassau, forty-one miles northeast of Coblenz, and died at Delft. He was the founder of the Republic of the United Provinces, the Dutch Republic of history. William was educated as a Catholic and served as a page in the court of Charles V. Here he had opportunity to observe the politics of the greatest court in Christendom and to estimate the qualities of his future sovereign, young Philip, a lad six years older than himself. In 1544, when eleven years old, William inherited the principality of Orange and large estates in the Netherlands. In 1855 Charles V, judging the young man aright, appointed him governor of Holland, Zealand, and Utrecht. William rose rapidly in influence. He served Philip, now Philip II, the successor of Charles V, in a war with Henry of France, and was one of the commissioners to negotiate a peace. In 1559 he succeeded his father as Count of Nassau. About this time, or soon after, William began to resent the arbitrary rule of Philip and to sympathize with the Dutch Protestants. He resigned his offices and retired to the ancestral castle where he was born.

Charles V had ruled the Netherlands with an iron hand. He had set up the inquisition and had suffered unknown thousands, Motley claims 50,000 to 100,000, men, women, and children to be burned, strangled, or buried alive. Philip ruled from a distance. He was as exacting as his father and, withal, had no knack of attaching the Dutch to himself. In 1566 the Dutch nobles formed a league of Protestants and Catholics alike to demand certain reforms. Protestant mobs rose in the cities, and, with hatred bred of persecution, proceeded to sack and desecrate the churches and cathedrals. Philip sent the Duke of Parma with an army of 20,000 Spaniards to set the cities in order. Parma held a court known as the Council of Blood. The guilt of those who had property worth seizing was apparent to the hungry followers of Parma. Wholesale executions and confiscations followed. William, still in Nassau, refused to appear at the council and announced his adhesion to the Protestant cause. In 1568 he placed himself at the head of the Dutch and entered upon the long struggle for Dutch independence. The Spaniards waged unrelenting warfare. The atrocities told of North American Indians are no worse than the butchery of women and children by the Christian soldiers of Spain. Province after province was devastated; city after city was given over to massacre and plunder.

The central figure through it all, far-seeing, of superb courage, fertile in expedient, prompt in action, keeping his own council, determined to free his adopted people from Spanish cruelty, was the former page, now William the Silent, commander of the forces of the Netherlands. Professor West calls him, not inaptly, "the Dutch Washington." In 1574 he tested the stuff the Dutch were made of. Leyden was besieged by a Spanish force. The inhabitants were starving. Ships laden with food lay at anchor on the North Sea fifteen miles away. The Spaniards guarded the approach. William cut the dikes. The sea flowed in over field and village, destroying in an hour the fruit of centuries of toil; but the ships on the devastating sea rode boldly through the city's gates. Leyden was saved and the war for Dutch independence took a favorable turn. In 1581 the seven northern provinces, including Holland, Zealand, Utrecht, and Friesland, formally declared their independence and made William hereditary stadtholder. July 10, 1584, he was stabbed by a fanatic wretch not worth naming save that he acted at the instigation of Philip II.

William I (1797-1888), king of Prussia and emperor of Germany. He was born at Berlin, March 22, 1797, and died there March 9, 1888. He is the Kaiser Wilhelm of the Franco-Prussian War. He inherited the kingdom of Prussia in 1861. His father was Frederick William III. His mother was the celebrated Queen Louise who withstood Napoleon in so spirited a fashion. William surrounded himself with able advisers, no less than Bismarck as prime minister, Von Roon as minister of war, and Moltke as field marshal. They stood together for a lifetime. They drove Austria out of the German confederation, defeated France in the war of 1870-1, and created the German Empire. King William was crowned emperor at Versailles January 18, 1871. At his death he was laid at rest with his father and mother in the royal mausoleum at Charlottenberg. He was succeeded by his son Frederick who reigned but a few months. The present emperor, William II, is a grandson.