The hypothesis that Innocent financed William's undertaking, Danckelmann argues, naturally depends upon one premise: that the Pope knew of the Prince of Orange's imminent landing in England, as Roloff claimed to have proved. Once he had taken the English throne, William would have found it easy to honour his debts to the Pope, to whom he would sooner or later have repaid them all, with interest, as to any other moneylender.
Instead, Danckelmann swears, the Pope did not know. He was owed nothing by William, nor did he expect the forthcoming invasion of England. This is proved, according to Danckelmann, by the letters exchanged shortly before William's landing, between the Secretary of State, Cardinal Alderano Cybo, the Nuncio to Vienna, Cardinal Francesco Bonvisi, and the Nuncio to London, Ferdinando D'Adda. According to these missives, the Pope was most alarmed by the Prince of Orange's military manoeuvres, nor was there any hint of a secret understanding between William and the Holy See. The Pope, therefore, did not know.
Even if it were to be admitted that Innocent had channelled money to William, Danckelmann continued, the money would certainly have had to pass through the Papal Nunciature in London. But payments from Rome to the London Nunciature, scrupulously checked by the German scholar, showed no trace of financing for William. The documents examined, Danckelmann complacently concludes, "completely clarify the question". Roloff's thesis is demolished and, with it, any claim that dares affirm that the Pope lent money to the House of Orange: Q.E.D.
Danckelmann's rashness is quite astonishing. With a little research, however, a number of interesting facts come to light: the Barons von
Danckelmann had been closely linked with the House of Orange since the time of William III. They had been raised to the nobility by the Prince Elector Frederick of Brandenburg, the uncle of William III. They came, moreover, from the county of Lingen, which was part of the estates of the House of Orange. Danckelmann, however, omits to inform his readers of these personal connections (cf.
Kürschners deutscher Gelehrter Kalender,
Berlin 1926, II, p. 374; C.J.M. Denina,
La Prusse litterairesous Frederic
II,
Berlin 1791, I,
ad vocem\
A. Rossler,
Biografisches Worterbuch zur deutschen Geschichte,
Munich 1973-1975,
advocem).
In 1956, the beatification of Pope Innocent XI at long last took place, aided and abetted—in the view of some—by the Cold War: the Turks had become a metaphor for the Soviet empire, while the Pope of the day cast himself as carrying the flame of his heroic predecessor three centuries previously. Pope Innocent XI had saved the West from the Turkish tide; Pope Pius XII would protect it from the horrors of communism.
For too long, the truth was made to wait out in the cold. Once the official version had crystallised, historians went to unprecedented lengths to stick only to what had already been said. Perhaps perturbed by too many questions both too old and too new, they cast only an indifferent glance over the mystery that forever links William III of Orange, the Prince who re-established the Anglican religion in England, and the greatest Pope of the seventeenth century.
Meanwhile, papers, essays and theses abounded on depilation in the Middle Ages, the daily life of deaf mutes under the
Ancien Regime
and the world-view of millers in Lower Galicia. No one, however, took the trouble to tackle that great historical question mark and, sharing the dust of the archives in which they lay, honestly to peruse the papers of the Odescalchi and Beaucastel.
The
mercenary Pope
The fact remains: no one has ever attempted to tell the truth about Innocent XI. In the Biblioteca Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele in Rome, there is a curious opuscule written in 1742 and entitled
De suppositions militaribus stipendis Benedicti Odescalchi,
by Count Giuseppe Delia Torre Rezzonico. Rezzonico's purpose is to dispel a widespread rumour following the death of Innocent XI, namely that the Blessed had, in the years of his youth, fought as a mercenary in Holland under the Spanish flag, suffering, among other things, a serious wound to his right arm. Rezzonico claims that Benedetto Odescalchi had been a soldier as a very young man, but only in the communal militia of Como, not as a mercenary.
It is perhaps unfortunate that the author was a relative of that Rezzonico who, from Venice, acted as a proxy for the Odescalchi; it is also a pity that the Rezzonico family should have had ties of kinship with the family of Innocent XI. It would doubtless have been preferable if a historian more detached from the events of which he speaks had set out to disprove the military past of the Blessed. However, a number of facts make one regret the absence of a closer examination. According to Pierre Bayle, the young Benedetto Odescalchi was wounded in the right arm when fighting as a mercenary in Spain. Curiously, as confirmed by official medical sources, the Pope suffered from great pain in that very member until his death.
Quite apart from the merits or demerits of the above, it is surprising that this obscure aspect of the life of Pope Innocent should have been neglected for decades. From within Rezzonico's volume, there fell out a card from the library, showing the name of the last person to consult it: the card was signed "Baron v. Danckelmann, 16 April 1925". Since then, no one had turned those pages.
True and false
Atto Melani says wisely, when instructing the young apprentice: what false papers proclaim is not always false. Even the forged letters of d'Estrees published by Dalrymple fall into that bizarre class of document. It is no accident that another letter, this time authentic, published by Gerin, from the Cardinal d'Estrees to Louis XIV dated 16th November, 1688, confirms the contacts between Count Casoni and William of Orange:
Cardinal Cybo [...] has learned that, through the good offices of a cleric who came last year from Holland bearing letters from certain missionaries in that country, who had been given to hope that the States-General would accord freedom of conscience to the Catholics, he [Casoni] had come to a kind of understanding with a man depending upon the Prince of Orange and who held out hope for that freedom: that the said man upheld the missionary in the conviction that the Prince of Orange had great respect for the Pope and would do many things for him; that in recent times these relations had grown firmer and that the Prince of Orange had certainly given it to be understood that he had only good intentions.
The circumstance referred to by d'Estrees is credible, if only because the source of the information, Cardinal Cybo, was a spy in the pay of Louis XIV (Orcibal,
op. at.,
p. 73, note 337). On 9th December, the French sovereign sent this irate reply to d'Estrees:
If he wanted to restore good relations with me, the Pope would remove Casoni for good, together with the criminal correspondence which he has carried on with the Prince of Orange.
The memoirs of Madame de Maintenon, which speak of loans by Innocent XI to William of Orange, are apocryphal, yet may they too not tell the truth?
The revolution of 1688
All this is not limited to a mere academic discussion. In order to appreciate the scope of the Glorious Revolution, and therefore of Innocent XI's action, we shall again give the floor to Roloff:
The revolution in which William of Orange overthrew the Catholic James in 1688 marked the transition from one period to another no less than the other great European revolution, the French one of 1789. For England, the accession of the Prince of Orange meant not only the definitive establishment of the evangelical faith, but also the stabilisation of the rule of Parliament and the opening of the way which was to lead to the reign of the House of Hanover, which has continued to this day. The victory of Parliament over James II made possible the creation of both the parties which have divided government between themselves throughout English history [i.e. Tories and Whigs]. Power passed durably into the hands of the aristocracy of birth and of money, who represented mercantile interests in general.
Moreover (and this is what should have mattered most to the Pope), after the Orange victory, the laws which excluded Catholics from public life became notably harsher; during the reign of James II, 300,000 Englishmen had professed themselves to be Catholic. In 1780, the number had decreased to only 70,000.
William's debts
The money in the Prince of Orange's pocket: these accounts should have been checked at the outset. In the biographies of William of Orange, however, this one fundamental chapter always remains somewhat nebulous: who financed the armies which he commanded in defence of Holland? No answer has been given to this question, but only because the question has never been put firmly enough. Yet, some scholar might have been expected to show a little curiosity.
According to the Anglican Bishop Gilbert Burnet, William's contemporary and friend, the Prince of Orange "came into the world under great disadvantages [...] His private affairs were also in a very bad condition: two great jointures went out of his estate, to his mother, and grandmother, besides a vast debt that his father had contracted to assist the King [of England]." (cf.
Bishop Burnet's History of His Own Time,
London 1857, p. 212.)
Burnet had played an active part in preparing the revolution of 1688. He had been one of the few people to be informed of the planned landing in England and he was by William's side at the most delicate moments of the coup, including the final march on London from the coast. It would not, therefore, be surprising if he should have concealed other facts, which would have been more embarrassing for the Crown and the Anglican faith.
The German historian Wolfgang Windelband cites a letter from William to his friend Waldeck, written shortly before he ascended to the English throne: "If you knew the existence I am leading, you would certainly feel pity for me. The only consolation that remains to me is that God knows it is not ambition that drives me" (cit. in Windelband, Wolfgang "Wilhem von Oranien und das europaische Staatensystem", in
Von Staatlichem Werden und Wesen. Festschrift Erich Marks zurn 60. Geburtstag
, Aalen 1981).
Are these, asks Windelband in astonishment, the words of one who has just fulfilled the dream of a lifetime? And I would add: are these not the words of someone who has pressing and unavowable money problems?
His English subjects did not regard the new King as a champion of frugality. As von Ranke points out (
Englische Geschichte
, cit.), in 1689 William asked Parliament for a permanent personal income, like that enjoyed by the Stuart kings who had preceded him: "It is necessary for our security to have money at our disposal." Parliament was mistrustful: the King was granted only an annual income, with the express proviso that it should be voted for "no longer" than one year at a time. William seemed profoundly upset and regarded the refusal as a personal insult; but he had no means of opposing it. It was precisely at that period—note the coincidence—that the secret negotiations between Beaucastel, Cenci and the Vatican Secretariat of State took place.
If one observes carefully, the whole history of the House of Orange is full of revealing episodes, in which the Protestant princes' relationship with money seems to have been painful, to say the least. According to the English historian Mary Caroline Trevelyan, "William II's ambitions* would have troubled them [the States-General] very little if, in his capacity as Captain- General of the Republic, he had not tried to maintain a larger army than they were prepared to pay for." In order to find the money necessary for defence, William II even stooped to violence, imprisoning no fewer than five of the leading deputies of the States of Holland in 1650 and marching on Amsterdam (Renier G.J.,
William of Orange,
London 1932, pp. 16-17).
In 1657, again according to Mary Trevelyan, the mother of William III had pawned her jewels in order to meet the desires of her brothers. In January 1661 she died in England. In May of the following year, William's grandmother, Princess Amalia of Solms, had an inquiry opened with a view to reclaiming the jewels. Her secretary, Rivet, wrote to Huygens, William's secretary, that, "our
* William II was the father of William III. (Translator's note.)
little master is constantly talking about them" (Trevelyan, M.C.,
William
III
and the Defence of Holland 1612-1614,
London 1930, p. 22).
The princes of Orange needed considerable financial resources in order to finance their warlike undertakings. In the months leading up to the landing in England, even the papal agents in Holland were aware of William's pressing needs: in mid-October, they reported (and Danckelmann noted the occurrence) that, because of strong winds, ten to twelve vessels from William's fleet had not returned from manoeuvres on the high seas, and the Prince of Orange was in great distress because the delay in preparations was costing him 50,000
livres
a day.
Need, when acute, can cause a prince to stoop to unworthy actions, including fraud and treason. According to the historian of numismatics, Nicolo Papadopoli (
Imitazione dello zecchino veneziano fatta da Guglielmo Enrico d'Orange (1650-1102),
in
Rivista italiana di numismatica e scienze affini,
XXIII [Vol. Ill], 1910), in the seventeenth century the mint of the Principality of Orange shamelessly forged Venetian coin (zecchini), easily escaping all sanctions. When, in 1646, the fraud was discovered, the
Serenissima Repubblica
of Venice was engaged in the war of Candia against the Turks and was, in fact, taking arms and troops from Holland; so the Venetians were compelled to suffer the insult in silence. It is probable that the princes of Orange also forged the
ungar
(or Hungarian ducat), which was the normal currency in Holland.