This etext was produced by David Widger
[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of thefile for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making anentire meal of them. D.W.]
1855
Abdication of Charles resolved upon—Brussels in the sixteenth century—Hall of the palace described—Portraits of prominent individuals present at the ceremony—Formalities of the abdication— Universal emotion—Remarks upon the character and career of Charles —His retirement at Juste.
On the twenty-fifth day of October, 1555, the estates of the Netherlandswere assembled in the great hall of the palace at Brussels. They hadbeen summoned to be the witnesses and the guarantees of the abdicationwhich Charles V. had long before resolved upon, and which he was that dayto execute. The emperor, like many potentates before and since, was fondof great political spectacles. He knew their influence upon the massesof mankind. Although plain, even to shabbiness, in his own costume, andusually attired in black, no one ever understood better than he how toarrange such exhibitions in a striking and artistic style. We have seenthe theatrical and imposing manner in which he quelled the insurrectionat Ghent, and nearly crushed the life forever out of that vigorous andturbulent little commonwealth. The closing scene of his long andenergetic reign he had now arranged with profound study, and with anaccurate knowledge of the manner in which the requisite effects were tobe produced. The termination of his own career, the opening of hisbeloved Philip's, were to be dramatized in a manner worthy the augustcharacter of the actors, and the importance of the great stage where theyplayed their parts. The eyes of the whole world were directed upon thatday towards Brussels; for an imperial abdication was an event which hadnot, in the sixteenth century, been staled by custom.
The gay capital of Brabant—of that province which rejoiced in theliberal constitution known by the cheerful title of the "joyfulentrance," was worthy to be the scene of the imposing show. Brussels hadbeen a city for more than five centuries, and, at that day, numberedabout one hundred thousand inhabitants. Its walls, six miles incircumference, were already two hundred years old. Unlike mostNetherland cities, lying usually upon extensive plains, it was builtalong the sides of an abrupt promontory. A wide expanse of livingverdure, cultivated gardens, shady groves, fertile cornfields, flowedround it like a sea. The foot of the town was washed by the little riverSenne, while the irregular but picturesque streets rose up the steepsides of the hill like the semicircles and stairways of an amphitheatre.Nearly in the heart of the place rose the audacious and exquisitelyembroidered tower of the townhouse, three hundred and sixty-six feet inheight, a miracle of needlework in stone, rivalling in its intricatecarving the cobweb tracery of that lace which has for centuries beensynonymous with the city, and rearing itself above a facade of profuselydecorated and brocaded architecture. The crest of the elevation wascrowned by the towers of the old ducal palace of Brabant, with itsextensive and thickly-wooded park on the left, and by the statelymansions of Orange, Egmont, Aremberg, Culemburg, and other Flemishgrandees, on the ri