vailable to my use, as being
written in Dutch, which I do not understand. An otherwise ordinary
writer, Richard Dinoth, has also been of service to me by the many
extracts he gives from the pamphlets of the day, which have been long
lost. I have in vain endeavored to procure the correspondence of
Cardinal Granvella, which also would no doubt have thrown much light
upon the history of these times. The lately published work on the
Spanish Inquisition by my excellent countryman, Professor Spittler of
Gottingen, reached me too late for its sagacious and important contents
to be available for my purpose.

The more I am convinced of the importance of the French history, the
more I lament that it was not in my power to study, as I could have
wished, its copious annals in the original sources and contemporary
documents, and to reproduce it abstracted of the form in which it was
transmitted to me by the more intelligent of my predecessors, and
thereby emancipate myself from the influence which every talented author
exercises more or less upon his readers. But to effect this the work of
a few years must have become the labor of a life. My aim in making this
attempt will be more than attained if it should convince a portion of
the reading public of the possibility of writing a history with historic
truth without making a trial of patience to the reader; and if it should
extort from another portion the confession that history can borrow from
a cognate art without thereby, of necessity, becoming a romance.

WEIMAR, Michaelmas Fair, 1788.

INTRODUCTION.

Of those important political events which make the sixteenth century to
take rank among the brightest of the world's epochs, the foundation of
the freedom of the Netherlands appears to me one of the most remarkable.
If the glittering exploits of ambition and the pernicious lust of power
claim our admiration, how much more so should an event in which
oppressed humanity struggled for its noblest rights, where with the good
cause unwonted powers were united, and the resources of resolute despair
triumphed in unequal contest over the terrible arts of tyranny.

Great and encouraging is the reflection that there is a resource left us
against the arrogant usurpations of despotic power; that its
best-contrived plans against the liberty of mankind may be frustrated;
that resolute opposition can weaken even the outstretched arm of tyranny;
and that heroic perseverance can eventually