This history is a
living story, faithful to facts, but it is written to convince the reader
that "freedom of thought, of speech, and of life" are "blessings without
which everything that this earth can afford is worthless."
In choosing to write of the struggle of Holland for her freedom, Motley was
actuated by the same reason that prompted his forefathers to fight on
Bunker Hill. He wanted to play at least a historian's part in presenting
"the great spectacle which was to prove to Europe that principles and
peoples still existed, and that a phlegmatic nation of merchants and
manufacturers could defy the powers of the universe, and risk all their
blood and treasure, generation after generation, in a sacred cause."
_The History of the United Netherlands_ continues this story after Holland,
free and united, proved herself a power that could no longer remain
unheeded in Europe. _The Life and Death of John of Barneveld_, which brings
the history of Holland down to about 1623, was planned as an introduction
to a final history of that great religious and political conflict, called
the Thirty Years' War,--a history which Motley did not live to finish.
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