Canadian Transport Sourcebook

Sottegem: Statue to Count Van Egmond, and the church where he was buried

Napoleon by Delaroche

I

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

AFTER THE abdication of the Emperor Charles V (Charles I, King of Spain) in the year 1556, his son Philip II inherited the Netherlands as part of the kingdom of Spain. From then on, until they finally achieved their independence in 1648, the Netherlands were engaged in the struggle to free themselves from a tyranny of exceptional brutality; the northern provinces had taken on the new religion of the Protestant Reformation, and heresy must be eradicated.

Prominent among the nobility of the time in the Netherlands was Count Van Egmond (in the more familiar German spelling, Von Egmont). In the service of Spain against France Van Egmond was a distinguished cavalry officer who won signal victories at St Quentin and Gravelines. A Knight of the Golden Hence, he headed the Spanish Embassy to England to seek Queen Mary for wife of King Philip II, and was present at their marriage in Winchester Cathedral in 1554. Even when the religious persecution of the people of the Netherlands became more and more brutal to the point of mass murder, Van Egmond did not swerve from his loyalty to King Philip. But this was not enough for the inquisitor; not just passive loyalty, but active co-operation in the annihilation of the heretics was demanded. When the ruthless Duke of Alva was sent to the Netherlands to carry out the merciless extinction of heresy, Count Van Egmond was included in the secret list given him by Philip of those marked for artist and death. In spite of repeated warnings from his friend Prince William of Orange and others, he (and with him Count Van Horn) refused to flee. Prince William had seen through the mask of the king, who, while still professing friendship, was plotting to destroy him along with the others, and moved over to safety in Germany. After a trial ludicrous in the hollowness of the accusations against them, and in spite of the intercession of Emperor Maximilian and Knights of the Golden Fleece on their behalf, Count Van Egmond and Count Van Horn were beheaded in the city square of Brussels on June 5th, 1568. Here was no death for treason, but murder in the name of religion.

The martyred noblemen became the idol of their country and a symbol of liberty. This tragedy of the year 1568 marks the beginning of the revolt of the Netherlands. Religious strife in time engulfed all Europe and ended only in 1648 with the general prostration of the Thirty Years' War. The English phase of the long struggle was marked by the beheadal of a king a year later.

The fate of Count Van Egmond found its literary commemoration in a drama by Goethe, and this in turn its emotional expression in the great music of Beethoven.

From this distinguished nobleman of the 16th century, Count Van Egmond, who married in 1544 Princess Sabina, sister of Frederick III, Elector Palatine of the Rhine, is descended the Colonel Anthony Van Egmond whose career we are now to follow from his birth in the troubled Holland of 1771 to his death in a Toronto jail in the Mackenzie Rebellion of 1837.

Anthony Van Egmond was a young man of eighteen when the French Revolution caused the upheaval in Europe that was to subside only after twenty-five years, and his life throughout this period was directly conditioned by the whirling events into which he was tossed.

For a short time his native Holland managed to remain neutral; but in 1794 it was overrun by the French republican Army. A considerable portion of the Dutch people apparently rejoiced to see their United Netherlands reconstituted as the Batavian Republic in close alliance with France. But in the end they had to pay dearly for the loss of independence. In 1806 Napoleon appointed his brother Louis King of Holland, though the people did not want him nor did he want the job. After four years he abdicated, and Napoleon incorporated the northern provinces definitely into the French Empire. But the disastrous invasion of Russia in 1812, and defeat in the great battle of Leipzig in the following year, meant the downfall of Napoleon. The Dutch, who like the other nations he subjugated, had been compelled to supply contingents to the French army, now broke away, and the Belgians joined them, in 1815, in making Prince William of Orange King of the Netherlands. In the final campaign against Napoleon the Belgian and Dutch contingent under Prince William of Orange (son of the King) distinguished themselves at Quatre Bras and Waterloo.