The Story of Mankind [103]
and who had spent a winter on the frozen
shores of the island of Nova Zembla, had captured a Portuguese
ship in the straits of Malacca. You will remember that
the Pope had divided the world into two equal shares, one of
which had been given to the Spaniards and the other to the
Portuguese. The Portuguese quite naturally regarded the
water which surrounded their Indian islands as part of their
own property and since, for the moment, they were not at war
with the United Seven Netherlands, they claimed that the
captain of a private Dutch trading company had no right to
enter their private domain and steal their ships. And they
brought suit. The directors of the Dutch East India Company
hired a bright young lawyer, by the name of De Groot or
Grotius, to defend their case. He made the astonishing plea
that the ocean is free to all comers. Once outside the distance
which a cannon ball fired from the land can reach, the sea is
or (according to Grotius) ought to be, a free and open highway
to all the ships of all nations. It was the first time that this
startling doctrine had been publicly pronounced in a court
of law. It was opposed by all the other seafaring people. To
counteract the effect of Grotius' famous plea for the ``Mare
Liberum,'' or ``Open Sea,'' John Selden, the Englishman,
wrote his famous treatise upon the ``Mare Clausum'' or ``Closed
Sea'' which treated of the natural right of a sovereign to regard
the seas which surrounded his country as belonging to his territory.
I mention this here because the question had not yet
been decided and during the last war caused all sorts of
difficulties and complications.
To return to the warfare between Spaniard and Hollander
and Englishman, before twenty years were over the most
valuable colonies of the Indies and the Cape of Good Hope and
Ceylon and those along the coast of China and even Japan were
in Protestant hands. In 1621 a West Indian Company was
founded which conquered Brazil and in North America built
a fortress called Nieuw Amsterdam at the mouth of the river
which Henry Hudson had discovered in the year 1609
These new colonies enriched both England and the Dutch
Republic to such an extent that they could hire foreign soldiers
to do their fighting on land while they devoted themselves
to commerce and trade. To them the Protestant revolt meant
independence and prosperity. But in many other parts of
Europe it meant a succession of horrors compared to which the
last war was a mild excursion of kindly Sunday-school boys.
The Thirty Years War which broke out in the year 1618
and which ended with the famous treaty of Westphalia in 1648
was the perfectly natural result of a century of ever increasing
religious hatred. It was, as I have said, a terrible war. Everybody
fought everybody else and the struggle ended only when
all parties had been thoroughly exhausted and could fight no
longer.
In less than a generation it turned many parts of central
Europe into a wilderness, where the hungry peasants fought
for the carcass of a dead horse with the even hungrier wolf.
Five-sixths of all the German towns and villages were destroyed.
The Palatinate, in western Germany, was plundered
twenty-eight times. And a population of eighteen million
people was reduced to four million.
The hostilities began almost as soon as Ferdinand II of
the House of Habsburg had been elected Emperor. He was
the product of a most careful Jesuit training and was a most
obedient and devout son of the Church. The vow which he had
made as a young man, that he would eradicate all sects and
all heresies from his domains, Ferdinand kept to the best of
his ability. Two days before his election, his chief opponent,
Frederick, the Protestant Elector of the Palatinate and a
son-in-law of James I of England, had been made King of
Bohemia, in direct violation of Ferdinand's wishes.
At once the Habsburg
shores of the island of Nova Zembla, had captured a Portuguese
ship in the straits of Malacca. You will remember that
the Pope had divided the world into two equal shares, one of
which had been given to the Spaniards and the other to the
Portuguese. The Portuguese quite naturally regarded the
water which surrounded their Indian islands as part of their
own property and since, for the moment, they were not at war
with the United Seven Netherlands, they claimed that the
captain of a private Dutch trading company had no right to
enter their private domain and steal their ships. And they
brought suit. The directors of the Dutch East India Company
hired a bright young lawyer, by the name of De Groot or
Grotius, to defend their case. He made the astonishing plea
that the ocean is free to all comers. Once outside the distance
which a cannon ball fired from the land can reach, the sea is
or (according to Grotius) ought to be, a free and open highway
to all the ships of all nations. It was the first time that this
startling doctrine had been publicly pronounced in a court
of law. It was opposed by all the other seafaring people. To
counteract the effect of Grotius' famous plea for the ``Mare
Liberum,'' or ``Open Sea,'' John Selden, the Englishman,
wrote his famous treatise upon the ``Mare Clausum'' or ``Closed
Sea'' which treated of the natural right of a sovereign to regard
the seas which surrounded his country as belonging to his territory.
I mention this here because the question had not yet
been decided and during the last war caused all sorts of
difficulties and complications.
To return to the warfare between Spaniard and Hollander
and Englishman, before twenty years were over the most
valuable colonies of the Indies and the Cape of Good Hope and
Ceylon and those along the coast of China and even Japan were
in Protestant hands. In 1621 a West Indian Company was
founded which conquered Brazil and in North America built
a fortress called Nieuw Amsterdam at the mouth of the river
which Henry Hudson had discovered in the year 1609
These new colonies enriched both England and the Dutch
Republic to such an extent that they could hire foreign soldiers
to do their fighting on land while they devoted themselves
to commerce and trade. To them the Protestant revolt meant
independence and prosperity. But in many other parts of
Europe it meant a succession of horrors compared to which the
last war was a mild excursion of kindly Sunday-school boys.
The Thirty Years War which broke out in the year 1618
and which ended with the famous treaty of Westphalia in 1648
was the perfectly natural result of a century of ever increasing
religious hatred. It was, as I have said, a terrible war. Everybody
fought everybody else and the struggle ended only when
all parties had been thoroughly exhausted and could fight no
longer.
In less than a generation it turned many parts of central
Europe into a wilderness, where the hungry peasants fought
for the carcass of a dead horse with the even hungrier wolf.
Five-sixths of all the German towns and villages were destroyed.
The Palatinate, in western Germany, was plundered
twenty-eight times. And a population of eighteen million
people was reduced to four million.
The hostilities began almost as soon as Ferdinand II of
the House of Habsburg had been elected Emperor. He was
the product of a most careful Jesuit training and was a most
obedient and devout son of the Church. The vow which he had
made as a young man, that he would eradicate all sects and
all heresies from his domains, Ferdinand kept to the best of
his ability. Two days before his election, his chief opponent,
Frederick, the Protestant Elector of the Palatinate and a
son-in-law of James I of England, had been made King of
Bohemia, in direct violation of Ferdinand's wishes.
At once the Habsburg