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Updated: May 14, 2025
The Advocate knew well enough that the religious franchises granted by the House of Habsburg at the very moment in which Spain signed her peace with the Netherlands, and exactly as the mad duke of Cleve was expiring with a dozen princes, Catholic and Protestant, to dispute his inheritance would be valuable just so long as they could be maintained by the united forces of Protestantism and of national independence and no longer.
In this way the Pacification of Ghent was nullified and the Netherlands were split into two parts, each going its own way, each developing its own history. The southern portion was to remain in Habsburg hands for over two centuries, being successively termed "Spanish Netherlands" and "Austrian Netherlands" roughly speaking, it is what to-day we call Belgium.
Philip and Mary were proclaimed "by the grace of God King and Queen of England, France, Naples, Jerusalem, and Ireland, Defenders of the Faith, Princes of Spain and Sicily, Arch-Dukes of Austria, Dukes of Milan, Burgundy and Brabant, Counts of Habsburg, Flanders, and Tyrol."
Whether the Polish-Czech combination would be a Habsburg kingdom at all is another matter. Only if, after all, the Allies are far less successful than they have now every reason to hope would that become possible. The gravitation of that west Slav state to the Central European system or to Russia will, I think, be the only real measure of ultimate success or failure in this war.
So far the Hohenzollerns had been fortunate, but as yet they were no more conspicuous than hundreds of petty potentates throughout the empire. It was not until they were invested by the Habsburg emperor with the electorate of Brandenburg in 1415 that they became prominent. Brandenburg was a district of northern Germany, centering in the town of Berlin and lying along the Oder River.
Alexander was particularly piqued when Napoleon dethroned one of the tsar's relatives in Oldenburg and arbitrarily annexed that duchy to the French Empire, and he was deeply chagrined when the marriage of his ally with a Habsburg archduchess seemed to cement the bonds between France and Austria.
Habsburg and Holstein; Northumberland, Vere, and Westmoreland; Fairfax and Stuart; Bourbon, Chatillon, and Lorraine; Bentivoglio, Farnese, Spinola, Grimaldi, Arragon, Toledo, Avila, Berlaymont, Bucquoy, Nassau, Orange, Solms such were the historic names of a few only of the pupils or professors in that sanguinary high school, mingled with the plainer but well known patronymics of the Baxes, Meetkerkes, Van Loons, Marquettes, Van der Meers, and Barendrechts, whose bearers were fighting, as they long had fought, for all that men most dearly prize on earth, and not to win honour or to take doctors' degrees in blood.
The collapse of the Habsburg Empire in October, 1918, practically put an end to this possibility. Under these circumstances, the only possible policy for the Allies is to support the claims of those peoples who are heart and soul with them. Any policy which would not satisfy the just Slav aspirations would play into the hands of Germany.
Above all, however, he is of necessity a blind tool in the hands of Germany, and he cannot possibly extricate himself from her firm grip. The Habsburgs have had their chance, but they missed it. By systematic and continuous misgovernment they created a gulf between the Slavs and themselves which nothing on earth can remove. Every Habsburg believes he has a "mission" to fulfil.
Otherwise there would be great danger and detriment to Hungary, and other hereditary states of that conglomerate and anonymous monarchy which owned the sway of the great Habsburg family. The unhappy emperor was much piqued.
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