History of the United Netherlands from the death of William the Silent to the Synod of Dort.: With a full view of the struggle against Spain...and destruction of the Spanish Armada.

MOTLEY, John Lathorp. History of the United Netherlands: from the death of William the Silent to the Synod of Dort. With a full view of the English-Dutch struggle against Spain, and the origin and destruction of the Spanish Armada...From the death of William the Silent to the Twelve Years' Truce---1609. 4 vols., Large 8vo, original black cloth, spines stamped in gold, pp. xii, 532; [viii], 563, 4 ads; x, 599; [viii], 632, 4 ads + 4 inserted frontispieces, 1 inserted folding plate. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1861-68.

First American Edition. Nearly fine, free of foxing, and rarely found in such condition. Motley's outstanding history of the Dutch struggle for independence from Spain, from the death of William the Silent (1584) to the truce of 1609. Touches on America only incidentally. Motley later wrote, "My subject had taken me up, drawn me on, and absorbed me into itself." "Leaving for Europe in 1851 he plunged into the archives of Belgium, Holland and Germany. He spoke of his digging in subterranean depths of black-letter folios in half a dozen languages, dark, grimy and cheerless as coalpits."-G. P. Gooch, History and Historian in the Nineteenth Century (1913), p. 416. BAL 14578 & 14585.