1674 - William III - 1st Nassau Restoration
The intrigues of the court of England, and the victories of Louis XIV changed the face of affairs. It was the policy of Charles II to see the stadtholdership restored, as it had been that of Cromwell to overthrow it. The party of the house of Orange, therefore, was revived through the instigation of that prince, and fresh troubles were prognosticated. In another quarter, Louis XIV longed to chastise the insolence of those haughty merchants who had checked the progress of his arms by the triple alliance. He succeeded in severing the bonds which united the feeble Stuart with the republic, and passing the Rhine in 1672, entered Holland. His conquests were rapid. The provinces of Guelderland, Utrecht, and Over-Yssel, were subdued in a few weeks. The French penetrated as far as Muyden, within four leagues of Amsterdam. The republic seemed lost: and some persons even went so far as to propose transporting the seat of government to the East Indies.
It was under these discouraging circumstances that the advocates of the stadtholdership acquired additional strength and energy. Every one exclaimed that a stadtholder, as in the time of William I, could alone save the country. The people, who never heard the name of the liberator of the United Provinces without a sentiment of enthusiasm, replied to this appeal by massacring the two brothers De Witt, and by proclaiming the heir of the house of Orange. It was thus that twenty years of glorious services were repaid, and the stadtholdership restored.
Historians generally agree in attributing the fall of the De Witts to their inveterate opposition to the advancement of the prince of Orange, and to the zeal with which they pursued the interests of their own party to the detriment and even extreme danger of their country. Ever since the death of William II they had been actively engaged in remodeling the army. The old officers, both native and foreign, who had served under that prince, and were thought to be attached to his family, were carefully removed, and superseded by the sons or kinsmen of burgomasters and other magistrates devoted to their cause.
Besides, the treaty of Munster had relieved Holland from the hostilities of Spain, and there did not appear any immediate danger on the land frontiers of the country; while on the sea-side, on the contrary, two wars with England had called forth all the maritime resources of the state. From the policy of the De Witts therefore, and from the foreign relations of the republic, the army, at the invasion of Louis XIV, was found in a totally inefficient state, and the whole country, generally, incapable of resistance. “Their towns,“ says Sir W. Temple, “ were without order; their burghers without obedience; their soldiers without discipline, and all without heart." No wonder then that the people, seeing their country, which had resisted all the efforts of Spain for upwards of half a century, overrun and conquered in a few weeks by France, should consider themselves betrayed, and turn for relief to that family which had before so nobly protected them.
The repeal of the perpetual edict, and the project for declaring the stadtholdership hereditary, seemed to forebode a great change in the constitution of the republic. It appeared on the point of degenerating into a sort of representative monarchy. William knew how to avail himself of the public gratitude for establishing, on a sure foundation, the power with which he had just been invested. Under the pretext of punishing the provinces which had shown a disposition to detach themselves from the confederacy, by the reception they had given the French, he contrived, either by address or violence, to deprive them of the right of electing their magistrates, and to make it a prerogative of the stadtholdership.
These provinces were Guelderland, Utrecht, and Over-Yssel. It will be at once seen, that the stadtholder gained by this measure a real sovereignty over three sevenths of the republic, that is, over a considerable portion of the states-general, which was necessarily devoted to him, because it sat there chiefly by his influence. The act which invested the prince with these important prerogatives is called the Regulation of 1674.
