The Dutch by Richard E. Schultz

Author:Richard E. Schultz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: historical, fiction, Action, Romance, War, Richard Schultz, Eternal Press, Dutch, The Netherlands, Holland, The Moist land, golden age, The Dutch, influence, history
Publisher: Damnation Books
Published: 2012-03-07T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

The City 1579 A.D.

The Warlord of Amsterdam

Amsterdam in 1580 A.D. was a city alive with conversation and a volume of chatter that was returning to pre-war levels. It had been two glorious years since the people formally accepted the Protestant Reformation and expelled the Catholic hierarchy and their pro-Spanish magistrates. The citizens were comfortable with the vaulted status they achieved as the newest and most essential member of the independence-oriented providences. The elimination of the repressive Spanish courts and Inquisitors allowed a return to the more traditional atmosphere of freely speaking one’s mind on the streets of Amsterdam. Most residents were no longer felt threatened by religious and political persecution and expressing personal opinions at meeting halls, market places and waterfront taverns. Yet this feeling of security ended at the city’s gates. A greater threat had been growing unchecked in the surrounding countryside and this new enemy had little regard for religious dogma or political debate. Thieves and murderers care little about such things.

The actual conversion of Amsterdam from a Catholic dominated government supportive of the King; to the Protestant controlled municipal body firmly committed to independence, had been all but bloodless. People awoke one day to find the fervent Catholic nobles, magistrates, and royal officials, whose power base evaporated as the city converted to Protestantism, had unexpectedly departed by ship. The Zuider Zee would carry them to a friendlier Spanish-occupied territory of the Netherlands. The Catholic Bishop, with his retainers of priests, nuns, and lay officials, all carrying valuable artifacts of silver and gold, departed on different ships in the same exodus.

The collapse happened as rapidly as the flood of 1287, which broke through the barrier dunes and allowed Amsterdam access to the newly configured Zuider Zee. That access opened the door for Amsterdam’s prominence in the sea trade but sadly more than fifty thousand people were killed when the North Sea burst through the dunes to create that inland lake. Yet, virtually overnight, because of that great deluge, Amsterdam became a port. Many felt the recent change in governments would again flood the city with opportunity almost as quickly.

The new government, heavily influenced by Calvinists, immediately confiscated Catholic churches, vacant monasteries, and empty convents, after mobs of true believers had destroyed every statue and painting of the saints left behind. They also seized land and property from citizens who had collaborated with the prior government and acquired their holdings by questionable means. While some ordinary Catholics fled, others immediately converted to Protestantism while still others kept to their faith. In a surprising consolatory move, the new Protestant city council offered two brave priests who remained the right to purchase a conventicler or less conspicuous common house to hold Catholic services for those who stayed and retained their Catholic faith. The Protestant-dominated council decided that if Catholics citizens remained loyal to the new government, they would be allowed a less conspicuous freedom of worship, but the freedom to worship just the same.

The appointment of the Baron Clifford van

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