A History of New York (28 page)

On receiving accounts of this puissant combination, the fiery Wilhelmus was struck with vast consternation, and for the first time in his whole life, forgot to bounce, at hearing an unwelcome piece of intelligence—which a venerable historian of the times observes, was especially noticed among the sage politicians of New Amsterdam. The truth was, on turning over in his mind all that he had read at the Hague, about leagues and combinations, he found that this was an exact imitation of the famous Amphyctionic council, by which the states of Greece were enabled to attain to such power and supremacy, and the very idea made his heart to quake for the safety of his empire at the Manhattoes.

He strenuously insisted, that the whole object of this confederation, was to drive the Nederlanders out of their fair domains; and always flew into a great rage if any one presumed to doubt the probability of his conjecture. Nor, to speak my mind freely, do I think he was wholly unwarranted in such a suspicion; for at the very first annual meeting of the grand council, held at Boston (which governor Kieft denominated the Delphos of this truly classic league) strong representations were made against the Nederlanders, for as much as that in their dealings with the Indians they carried on a traffic in “guns, powther and shott—a trade damnable and injurious to the colonists.” Not but what certain of the Connecticut traders did likewise dabble a little in this “damnable traffic”—but then they always sold the Indians such scurvy guns, that they burst at the first discharge—and consequently hurt no one but these pagan savages.

The rise of this potent confederacy was a death blow to the glory of William the Testy, for from that day forward, it was remarked by many, he never held up his head, but appeared quite crest fallen. His subsequent reign therefore, affords but scanty food for the historic pen—we find the grand council continually augmenting in power, and threatening to overwhelm the mighty but defenceless province of Nieuw Nederlandts; while Wilhelmus Kieft kept constantly firing off his proclamations and protests, like a sturdy little sea captain, firing off so many carronades and swivels, in order to break and disperse a water spout—but alas! they had no more effect than if they had been so many blank cartridges.

The last document on record of this learned, philosophic, but unfortunate little man is a long letter to the council of the Amphyctions, wherein in the bitterness of his heart he rails at the people of New Haven, or red hills, for their uncourteous contempt of his protest levelled at them for squatting within the province of their high mightinesses. From this letter, which is a model of epistolary writing, abounding with pithy apophthegms and classic figures, my limits will barely allow me to extract the following recondite passage:—“Certainly when we heare the Inhabitants of New Hartford complayninge of us, we seem to heare Esop's wolfe complayninge of the lamb, or the admonition of the younge man, who cryed out to his mother, chideing with her neighboures, ‘Oh Mother revile her, lest she first take up that practice against you.' But being taught by precedent passages we received such an answer to our protest from the inhabitants of New Haven as we expected:
the Eagle always despiseth the Beetle fly;
yet notwithstanding we doe undauntedly continue on our purpose of pursuing our own right, by just arms and righteous means, and doe hope without scruple to execute the express commands of our superiours.” To shew that this last sentence was not a mere empty menace he concluded his letter, by intrepidly protesting against the whole council, as a horde of
squatters
and interlopers, inasmuch as they held their meeting at New Haven, or the Red Hills, which he claimed as being within the province of the New Netherlands.

Thus end the authenticated chronicles of the reign of William the Testy—for henceforth, in the trouble, the perplexities and the confusion of the times he seems to have been totally overlooked, and to have slipped forever through the fingers of scrupulous history. Indeed from some cause or another, which I cannot divine, there appears to have been a combination among historians to sink his very name into oblivion, in consequence of which they have one and all forborne even to speak of his exploits; and though I have disappointed the caitiffs in this their nefarious conspiracy, yet I much question whether some one or other of their adherents may not even yet have the hardihood to rise up, and question the authenticity of certain of the well established and incontrovertible facts, I have herein recorded—but let them do it at their peril; for may I perish, if ever I catch any slanderous incendiaries contradicting a word of this immaculate history, or robbing my heroes of any particle of that renown they have gloriously acquired, if I do not empty my whole ink-horn upon them—even though it should equal in magnitude that of the sage Gargantua; which according to the faithful chronicle of his miraculous atchievements, weighed seven thousand quintals.

It has been a matter of deep concern to me, that such darkness and obscurity should hang over the latter days of the illustrious Kieft—for he was a mighty and great little man worthy of being utterly renowned, seeing that he was the first potentate that introduced into this land, the art of fighting by proclamation; and defending a country by trumpeters, and windmills—an economic and humane mode of warfare, since revived with great applause, and which promises, if it can ever be carried into full effect, to save great trouble and treasure, and spare infinitely more bloodshed than either the discovery of gunpowder, or the invention of torpedoes.

It is true that certain of the early provincial poets, of whom there were great numbers in the Nieuw Nederlandts, taking advantage of the mysterious exit of William the Testy, have fabled, that like Romulus he was translated to the skies, and forms a very fiery little star, some where on the left claw of the crab; while others equally fanciful, declare that he had experienced a fate similar to that of the good king Arthur; who, we are assured by ancient bards, was carried away to the delicious abodes of fairy land, where he still exists, in pristine worth and vigour, and will one day or another return to rescue poor old England from the hands of paltry, flippant, pettifogging cabinets, and restore the gallantry, the honour and the immaculate probity, which prevailed in the glorious days of the Round Table.
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All these however are but pleasing fantasies, the cobweb visions of those dreaming varlets the poets, to which I would not have my judicious reader attach any credibility. Neither am I disposed to yield any credit to the assertion of an ancient and rather apocryphal historian, who alledges that the ingenious Wilhelmus was annihilated by the blowing down of one of his windmills—nor to that of a writer of later times, who affirms that he fell a victim to a philosophical experiment, which he had for many years been vainly striving to accomplish; having the misfortune to break his neck from the garret window of the Stadt house, in an ineffectual attempt to catch swallows, by sprinkling fresh salt upon their tails.

The most probable account, and to which I am inclined to give my implicit faith, is contained in a very obscure tradition, which declares, that what with the constant troubles on his frontiers, the incessant schemings, and projects going on in his own pericranium—the memorials, petitions, remonstrances and sage pieces of advice from divers respectable meetings of the sovereign people, together with the refractory disposition of his council, who were sure to differ from him on every point and uniformly to be in the wrong—all these I say, did eternally operate to keep his mind in a kind of furnace heat, until he at length became as completly burnt out, as a dutch family pipe which has passed through three generations of hard smokers. In this manner did the choleric but magnanimous William the Testy undergo a kind of animal combustion, consuming away like a farthing rush light—so that when grim death finally snuffed him out, there was scarce left enough of him to bury!

 

END OF BOOK IV

Containing the first part of the reign of Peter Stuyvesant
and his troubles with the Amphyctionic Council.

 

 

 

To a profound philosopher, like myself, who am apt to see clear through a subject, where the penetration of ordinary people extends but half way, there is no fact more simple and manifest, than that the death of a great man, is a matter of very little importance. Much as we think of ourselves, and much as we may excite the empty plaudits of the million, it is certain that the greatest among us do actually fill but an exceeding small space in the world; and it is equally certain, that even that small space is quickly supplied, when we leave it vacant. “Of what consequence is it,” said the elegant Pliny, “that individuals appear, or make their exit? the world is a theatre whose scenes and actors are continually changing.” Never did philosopher speak more correctly, and I only wonder, that so wise a remark could have existed so many ages, and mankind not have laid it more to heart. Sage follows on in the footsteps of sage; one hero just steps out of his triumphant car, to make way for the hero who comes after him; and of the proudest monarch it is merely said, that—“he slept with his fathers, and his successor reigned in his stead.”

The world, to tell the private truth, cares but little for their loss, and if left to itself would soon forget to grieve; and though a nation has often been figuratively drowned in tears on the death of a great man, yet it is ten chances to one if an individual tear has been shed on the melancholy occasion, excepting from the forlorn pen of some hungry author. It is the historian, the biographer, and the poet, who have the whole burden of grief to sustain; who—unhappy varlets!—like undertakers in England, act the part of chief mourners—who inflate a nation with sighs it never heaved, and deluge it with tears, it never dreamed of shedding. Thus while the patriotic author is weeping and howling, in prose, in blank verse, and in rhyme, and collecting the drops of public sorrow into his volume, as into a lachrymal vase, it is more than probable his fellow citizens are eating and drinking, fiddling and dancing; as utterly ignorant of the bitter lamentations made in their name, as are those men of straw, John Doe, and Richard Roe, of the plaintiffs for whom they are generously pleased on divers occasions to become sureties.

The most glorious and praise-worthy hero that ever desolated nations, might have mouldered into oblivion among the rubbish of his own monument, did not some kind historian take him into favour, and benevolently transmit his name to posterity—and much as the valiant William Kieft worried, and bustled, and turmoiled, while he had the destinies of a whole colony in his hand, I question seriously, whether he will not be obliged to this authentic history, for all his future celebrity.

His exit occasioned no convulsion in the city of New Amsterdam, or its vicinity: the earth trembled not, neither did any stars shoot from their spheres—the heavens were not shrowded in black, as poets would fain persuade us they have been, on the unfortunate death of a hero—the rocks (hard hearted vagabonds) melted not into tears; nor did the trees hang their heads in silent sorrow; and as to the sun, he laid abed the next night, just as long, and shewed as jolly a face when he arose, as he ever did on the same day of the month in any year, either before or since. The good people of New Amsterdam, one and all, declared that he had been a very busy, active, bustling little governor; that he was “the father of his country”—that he was “the noblest work of God”—that “he was a man, take him for all in all, they never should look upon his like again”—together with sundry other civil and affectionate speeches that are regularly said on the death of all great men; after which they smoked their pipes, thought no more about him, and Peter Stuyvesant succeeded to his station.

Peter Stuyvesant was the last, and like the renowned Wouter Van Twiller, he was also the best, of our ancient dutch governors. Wouter having surpassed all who preceded him; and Pieter, or Piet, as he was sociably called by the old dutch burghers, who were ever prone to familiarize names, having never been equalled by any successor. He was in fact the very man fitted by nature to retrieve the desperate fortunes of her beloved province, had not the fates or parcæ, Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos, those most potent, immaculate and unrelenting of all ancient and immortal spinsters, destined them to inextricable confusion.

To say merely that he was a hero would be doing him unparalleled injustice—he was in truth a combination of heroes—for he was of a sturdy, raw boned make like Ajax Telamon, so famous for his prowess in belabouring the little Trojans—with a pair of round shoulders, that Hercules would have given his hide for, (meaning his lion's hide) when he undertook to ease old Atlas of his load. He was moreover as Plutarch describes Coriolanus, not only terrible for the force of his arm, but likewise of his voice, which sounded as though it came out of a barrel; and like the self same warrior, he possessed a sovereign contempt for the sovereign people, and an iron aspect, which was enough of itself to make the very bowels of his adversaries quake with terror and dismay. All this martial excellency of appearance was inexpressibly heightened by an accidental advantage, with which I am surprised that neither Homer nor Virgil have graced any of their heroes, for it is worth all the paltry scars and wounds in the Iliad and Eneid, or Lucan's Pharsalia into the bargain. This was nothing less than a redoubtable wooden leg, which was the only prize he had gained, in bravely fighting the battles of his country; but of which he was so proud, that he was often heard to declare he valued it more than all his other limbs put together; indeed so highly did he esteem it, that he caused it to be gallantly enchased and relieved with silver devices, which caused it to be related in divers histories and legends that he wore a silver leg.
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