James Edwin Thorold Rogers

“ This ocean burst over the land in the thirteenth century, and buried towns and villages permanently beneath its waters. These Batavians and Frisians came under the control of the great Charles, who left them their native customs, they obeying those chiefs whom the Emperor of the West put over them. The laws of the Frisians declare that the race shall be free, as long as the wind blows out of the clouds and the world stands. More than seven centuries after the reign of Charles the Great had come to an end, this charter of freedom was the rallying cry of the Dutch patriots. ”

“ Now there was no king in the Netherlands, not even a lord paramount, but a host of small autocrats, quarrelling for ever among themselves, and therefore at their wits’ end for the means of maintaining their own existence and their feuds. ”

“ Holland is the creation of the Rhine.
The rest of the Netherlands, now known politically as the Belgium kingdom, is not so obviously the product of great rivers. But the greater part of it is an unbroken flat, suggesting that its area was once a shallow sea from which the waters have retreated. The inhabitants of Holland were, for the most part, of Teutonic origin, as were also those of the western seaboard of the Netherlands. The south-western district was inhabited mainly by a people of Celtic origin. ”