With intelligence and enterprise came the development of trade, and in the fifteenth century the Hollanders became the carriers of the world's commerce. Their ships and their sailors made their way around into the Baltic, to the ports of all northern Europe, to the ports of France and Spain, of Genoa and Naples and Venice, to Constantinople and Alexandria, and from thence south into all countries and continents. As bees flitting from orchard to orchard fertilize the fruit, so these ships passing from port to port and continent to continent fertilized the minds of men. Returning home they brought bulbs, roots and seeds that soon made Holland the gayest flower-garden in Europe and the home of modern floriculture and horticulture. From the Far East they brought the suggestion of movable types. The bleached linens, the tapestries and woollen goods of Holland won fame throughout the world. The homes of her burghers were models of comfort and even luxury. Small merchants of Amsterdam and Leyden and Rotterdam became merchant princes. Weavers and spinners of linen and silk, workers in iron, as well as silver and gold, left the other lands of Europe and settled in the Dutch seaports.
In that little strip of land were inclosed 208 walled cities and 6,300 villages guarded by a belt of sixty fortresses. Little wonder that Spain looked longingly toward this people and meditated plans for breaking down its fortresses, subjugating its peoples and transferring its accumulated treasure from the chests of the burghers to the vaults of the Spanish dons and cavaliers. And when at length it began to look as if the scepter of the sea might pass from Spain to Holland, King Philip and his soldiers, under Bloody Alva, resolved to draw a circle of fire around little Holland and rob her of the treasure she had so slowly earned.
Fully to understand the heroic struggle of the Hollanders under William of Orange, we must know the immediate cause of the controversy and the source of the tyranny they opposed. That cause was the Inquisition and the tyranny was that of Spain's ambitious rulers. At the moment of the outbreak, Spain was the richest and the most powerful nation in Europe. Victorious in Africa and Italy, her emperor had carried war into France and now reigned over Germany as well as those provinces now known as Belgium and Holland. If we ask from whence Spain derived the money for these wars of conquest the answer is found in the vast treasure she acquired in the New World. Prescott tells us that when the Spanish soldiers captured the capital of Peru, the soldiers spent days in melting down the golden vessels which they found in the vaults of temples and palaces. In that era, when the yellow metal was worth so much, a single ship carried to Spain $15,500,000 in gold, besides vast treasures of silver and jewels. When Cortez approached the palace of Montezuma the king's messengers met the general bearing gifts from their lord. These gifts included 200 pounds (avoirdupois) of gold for the leader and two pounds of gold for each soldier. The full value of the treasure that Spain carried from the cities and states of the New World will, doubtless, never be known.