Middle Ages and Renaissance 239
was the foundation of the universities of The Netherlands.
The Seven United Provinces had no universities when they
were under the House of Hapsburg; their students had to
go to Louvain, or to Germany. But in the very midst of
their struggle for independence, while Spanish armies were
still on their soil, these indomitable Dutch Protestants
founded no less than five universities. It was as if the Eng-
lish colonies had been forbidden by the English government
from having colleges; and had founded Harvard, William
and Mary, Yale, Princeton, and Columbia, while the Revo-
lutionary War was going on. The story of the founding of
the University of Leyden, as told in the stirring pages of
Motley, is, I think, the most heroic episode in the whole his-
tory of universities.
On October 3, 1574, William of Orange raised the siege
of Leyden, whose population had been reduced to the utmost
extremity by famine and pestilence. The Protestant prov-
inces had not yet formed their federal union, and thirty-five
years of warfare were ahead of them before even a truce
would be won from Spain. But on December 28, 1574, the
Prince of Orange requested the Estates of Holland to found
a university. On the sixth day after, they formally decreed
its foundation; on January 6, 1575, the charter was issued;
and on February 5, the University of Leyden was inaugu-
rated by a solemn procession and a classical pageant. Since
that day it has never closed its doors. Within thirty years
Leyden had attracted to her four faculties the most distin-
guished group of scholars in northern Europe: Justus Lip-
sius, Scaliger the modern Aristotle, Arminius the theologian,
the Vorstii, professors of Medicine and Botany, Cluver the
geographer, and Grotius the father of International Law.
The Dutch universities did not spend money on colleges.
They allowed students to shift for themselves ; and this grad-