King of the Netherlands

“ The authority of governor-general, though not the title, was now fully shared by the count of Fuentes, who was sent to Brussels by the king of Spain; and the ill effects of this double viceroyalty was soon seen, in the brilliant progress of Prince Maurice, and the continual reverses sustained by the royalist armies. The king, still bent on projects of bigotry, sacrificed without scruple men and treasure for the overthrow of Henry IV. and the success of the League. The affairs of the Netherlands seemed now a secondary object ”

“ The fundamental law was altered in 1848 and the Dutch monarchy, from being autocratic, became henceforth constitutional. The king’s attitude secured for him the good will and affection of a people, loyal by tradition to the house of Orange, and the revolutionary disturbances of 1848 found no echo in Holland. ”

“ France, as we have seen, secretly aspired to the sovereignty of all the Netherlands, if it could be had. She was also extremely in favour of excluding the Hollanders from the Indies, East and West. The king, fired with the achievements of the republic at sea, and admiring their great schemes for founding empires at the antipodes by means of commercial corporations, was very desirous of appropriating to his own benefit the experience, the audacity, the perseverance, the skill and the capital of their merchants and mariners. ”

“ It will become extinct with his father, the present king of the Netherlands. The present royal family of Holland are not indeed the direct representatives of the great Princes of Orange of the family of Nassau who did such wonderful things in war and politics for more than a century and a half. ”

“ In fact, if we start from the year 1200 on this interesting inquiry, we shall see the commons attacking, in the first place, the petty feudal lords, and next the counts and the dukes themselves, often as justice was denied them. In 1257, the peasants of Holland and the burghers of Utrecht proclaimed freedom and equality, drove out the bishop and the nobles, and began a memorable struggle which lasted full two hundred years. In 1260, the townspeople of Flanders appealed to the king of France against the decrees of their count, who ended the quarrel by the loss of his county. ”

“ In addition to these imposing means for their execution, he had secured a still more secret and more powerful support: a secret article in the treaty of Câteau-Cambresis obliged the king of France to assist him with the whole armies of France against his Belgian subjects, should they prove refractory. Thus the late war, of which the Netherlands had borne all the weight, and earned all the glory, only brought about the junction of the defeated enemy with their own king for the extinction of their national independence. ”

“ Philip also consulted the states-general on his projects of a double alliance between himself and his sister with the son and daughter of Ferdinand, king of Aragon, and Isabella, queen of Castile; and from this wise precaution the project soon became one of national partiality instead of private or personal interest. In this manner complete harmony was established between the young prince and the inhabitants of the Netherlands. All the ills produced by civil war disappeared with immense rapidity in Flanders and Brabant, as soon as peace was thus consolidated. ”

“ When finally the full reality of the King’s revengeful plan was revealed to him, he not only aroused the people of the Netherlands to a realization of the terrible danger which threatened them, but he also, with his usual energy, went to work to find assistance against the overwhelming odds among the other European powers, and his experienced statesmanship served him well in bringing into play all the different motives, both personal and political, by which he could hope to influence their decisions. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In Roman times the Low Countries were inhabited by various peoples, chiefly of Germanic origin; and in the Middle Ages were divided into several duchies and counties—such as Brabant, Flanders, Gelderland, Holland, Zealand, etc. The present government is a hereditary monarchy, consisting of a king or queen and states-general; the upper chamber of fifty members, the lower of one hundred. It is essentially a country of large towns, of five thousand inhabitants and upward. The Frisians are in North Holland, separated by the river Meuse from the Franks; the Saxons extend to the Utrecht Veldt. ”

“ In the great melting pot of the Bonapartistic empire all Hollanders at last become equal in the real sense of the word. They all have the same chance at promotion, at riches, and the pursuit of happiness. Devotion to the master, and devotion to him alone, will bring recognition from the new divinity who issues orders signed with a single gigantic N. Old Republic of the United Netherlands, enlightened Republic of the Free Batavian Proconsulate, Kingdom of Holland, it's all the same to the man who regards this little land as so much mud, deposited by his own, his French, rivers. ”

“ In the little Netherland territory, humanity, bleeding but not killed, still stood at bay, and defied the hunters. The two great powers had been gathering strength for centuries. They were soon to be matched in a longer and more determined combat than the world had ever seen.
On October 25, 1555, the Estates of the Netherlands were assembled in the great hall of the palace at Brussels to witness amidst pomp and splendour the dramatic abdication of Charles V. as sovereign of the Netherlands in favour of his son Philip. ”

“ Whither has fled the noble spirit of our brave forefathers, that never brooked the tyranny of foreign nations, nor suffered a stranger even to hold office within our borders? If the little province of Holland can thus hold at bay the power of Spain, what could not all the Netherlands—Brabant, Flanders, Friesland, and the rest united accomplish?" In conclusion, the estates-general were earnestly adjured to come forward like brothers in blood, and join hands with Holland, that together they might rescue the fatherland and restore its ancient prosperity and bloom. ”

“ The Dutch republic was the first free nation to put a girdle of empire around the earth. It had courage, enterprise, intelligence, perseverance, faith in itself, the instinct of self-government and self- help, hatred of tyranny, the disposition to domineer, aggressiveness, greediness, inquisitiveness, insolence, the love of science, of liberty, and of money—all this in unlimited extent. ”

“ But, however much they differ in practical measures, their common ground is the recognition of the Holy Scriptures as the only right basis for statesmanship, and their conviction that the present modern State is merely a passing, non-Dutch consequence of the French Revolution and its disastrous teachings. They all agree that the Netherlands should be governed according to the principles that made Holland great and powerful ever since the Reformation of the sixteenth century. ”

“ The death of this prince left the state without a stadtholder, and the army without a chief. The whole of Europe shared more or less in the joy or the regret it caused. The republican party, both in Holland and in England, rejoiced in a circumstance which threw back the sovereign power into the hands of the nation; the partisans of the House of Orange deeply lamented the event. ”

“ It has been seen that when Charles V. resigned his throne and the possession of his vast dominions to his son, arts, commerce, and manufactures had risen to a state of considerable perfection throughout the Netherlands. The revolution, of which we have traced the rise and progress, naturally produced to those provinces which relapsed into slavery a most lamentable change in every branch of industry, and struck a blow at the general prosperity, the effects of which are felt to this very day. Arts, science, and literature were sure to be checked and withered in the blaze of civil war ”

“ When, after Napoleon's downfall, the Netherlands constituted themselves a kingdom, the depleted ranks of the aristocracy were soon amply filled from these old patrician families. Clause 65 of the Netherlands constitution says, 'The Queen grants nobility. No Dutchman may accept foreign nobility.' This is the only occasion upon which the word nobility appears in any code. ”

“ Their national industry was untiring; their prosperity unexampled; their love of liberty indomitable; their pugnacity proverbial. Peaceful in their pursuits, phlegmatic by temperament, the Netherlands were yet the most belligerent and excitable population of Europe. Two centuries of civil war had but thinned the ranks of each generation without quenching the hot spirit of the nation. ”

“ But to feel how a little confederacy of seven provinces loosely tied together by an ill-defined treaty could hold so prominent and often so controlling a place in the European system of the seventeenth century, we must remember that there was then no Germany, no Russia, no Italy, no United States of America, scarcely even a Great Britain in the sense which belongs to that mighty empire now.
France, Spain, England, the Pope, and the Emperor were the leading powers with which the Netherlands were daily called on to solve great problems and try conclusions ”

“ The news of the elevation of William I. to the throne was received in the Dutch provinces with great joy, in as far as it concerned him personally; but a joy considerably tempered by doubt and jealousy, as regarded their junction with a country sufficiently large to counterbalance Holland, oppose interests to interests, and people to people. National pride and oversanguine expectations prevented a calm judgment on the existing state of Europe, and on the impossibility of Holland, in its ancient limits, maintaining the influence which it was hoped it would acquire. ”

“ Living a secluded life in her palace of Malines, and taking no part in the festivities so dear to the heart of the people, she governed the Netherlands without sympathy, but with enough wisdom for her ability to be recognized, on several occasions, both by the people and the nobility. ”

“ The so-called Dutch Republic was only an aristocracy, the privilege of participating in the government being restricted to a privileged class of small nobles and wealthy families. The office of stadtholder was elective, but generally went to the Oranges. Holland by its wise statesmanship and a strong navy was a world-power for a while, and in alliance with England and Sweden generally defeated the French and Spanish, and when there was war with England the Dutchmen held their own. Finally William III. of Orange became king of England, and the Dutch Republic lost its prestige. ”

“ All these princes grew up with no higher hope than to be the heads of a republic, and none of their territories afforded them experience of a higher authority. Besides, these princes possessed nothing but what the Netherlands gave them; no armies but those which the nation sent into the field; no riches but what the estates granted to them. Now all was changed. The Netherlands had fallen to a master who had at his command other instruments and other resources, who could arm against them a foreign power. ”

“ High life there is represented by members of the nobility and by such high officials in the army, navy, and civil service as mix with that nobility. Of course there are sets just as there are everywhere else, sets as delightful to those who are in them as they are distasteful to outsiders; but talent and money frequently succeed in making serious inroads upon the preserves of noble birth. This is, however, unavoidable, for the Netherlands were a republic for two centuries, and the scions of the ancient houses are not over-numerous. ”

“ For Holland, without manufactures, was the natural mart for those of England, while Belgium under an English prince had been the route for constantly inundating France and Germany."
So asked Napoleon, and England may answer and justify her conduct so impugned, on principles consistent with the general wishes and the common good of Europe. The discussion of the question is foreign to our purpose, which is to trace the circumstances, not to argue on the policy, that led to the formation of the Netherlands as they now exist. ”

“ Hence a wide field was open to corruption. Uncertainty embarrassed every operation of the government. The Hague became an arena for the conflicting intrigues of every court in Europe. Holland was dragged into almost every war; and thus, gradually weakened from its rank among independent nations, it at length fell an easy prey to the French invaders.
To prevent the recurrence of such evils as those, and to establish a kingdom on the solid basis of a monarchy, unequivocal in its essence yet restrained in its prerogative, the constitution we are now examining was established. ”

“ The whole history of the world is a perpetually recurring struggle between liberty and the lust of power and possession; as the history of nature is nothing but the contest of the elements and organic bodies for space. The Netherlands soon found to their cost that they had become but a province of a great monarchy. So long as their former masters had no higher aim than to promote their prosperity, their condition resembled the tranquil happiness of a secluded family, whose head is its ruler. ”