An odd collection of circumstances has led to me becoming curious about the Eighty Years' War, so I put a set of random holds in the local library system for books on the topic.
Among those holds was a legitimate printed-in-1908 physical copy of Motley's Dutch Nation.
I remember reading about the rise of nationalism that led to the first World War in school; and now here, in my hands, is an actual physical representation of that nationalism.
AskHistorians, I've only had an hour or so to spend time with it, but this book is filled with caricatures so one-sided that they make Harry Potter's Dolores Umbridge seem balanced and well-rounded by comparison. Take, for example, the description of the Duke of Alva (p. 253):
As a man, his character was simple. He did not combine a great variety of vices, but those which he had were colossal, and he possessed no virtues.
I thought that was outlandish, but it pales in comparison with the description of Council of Troubles (or "Council of Blood," as Motley calls it) member Juan de Vargas, which begins viciously and then starts to really get mean (p. 266):
No better man could have been found in Europe for the post to which he was thus elevated. To shed human blood was, in his opinion, the only important business and the only exhilarating pastime of life. His youth had been stained with other crimes. He had been obliged to retire from Spain because of his violation of an orphan child of whom he was guardian; and in his manhood he found no pleasure but in murder. He executed Alva's bloody work with an energy which was almost superhuman, and with a merriment which would have shamed a demon. His execrable jests ring through the blood and smoke and death-cries of those days of perpetual sacrifice.
On top of all this, such effort was put into this book's printing; each right-hand page header, in lieu of the chapter title, has a short summary of the facing pages' content, and it is filled with engravings made just for the book of the various characters.
What I'm saying here is that this book is an absolute gem, so thoroughly entertaining that I intend to return all of the others and read this one thoroughly and exclusively. I do not expect to learn much of any reasonable accuracy from it, but I do expect to be completely entertained, and that's been the case in the brief time I've spent with it.
So, my question is this:
Edit: Wow, it's actually even more interesting: Apparently Motley's original three sources for this were published ~1855 or so, and this is the half-century later update and abridgment of those writings!
I am not familiar with this particular book, but in general the vilification of the Spanish goes back all the way to the start of the revolt. Jonathan Israel in his book The Dutch Republic mentions how William of Orange employed propagandists to spread elaborate reports of 'Spanish cruelty' and to stir up the revolt. Israel describes what happened when the Spanish conquered Antwerp in november 1576:
For several days Europe's greatest commercial and financial centre was subjected to slaughter, pillage, and rape. Although probably only a few hundred people were actually murdered, Orange and his propagandists exploited to the full the shock and revlsion the terrifying news from Antwerp spread throughout the Netherlands and beyond. According to some reports as many as 18,000 citizens of Antwerp were slaughtered. The 'Spanish Fury' at Antwerp had important political and religious consequences. It served to give further currency to the 'Black Legend' of Spanish cruelty, further blackened the name of the Spanish regime and soldiery, and reinforced the rebel claim that there was no way out of the impase in the Low Countries except by armed revolt. (p. 185)
In his Apology, published in 1581 after he was outlawed by king Philip, William of Orange defended himself and his actions while describing the Spanish rule as a tyranny, further blackening Alva, and "attributing unspeakable depravity to the king of Spain and his advisers" (Israel p. 210)
As for Motley's book, it is impossible for me to tell without reading it if he is biased or if he's just not been very critical of his sources. Since this is the early 20th century, it may very well have been the latter. The study of the 'Black Legend' of the Spanish - which involved not just their actions in the Netherlands but also those in the New World - only got started a bit later in the century. It was only then that the sources received some real critical examination.