1702 - Anthony Heinsius
When William died in 1702, his will was ignored on the plea that he had no power to dispose of the government of the country, and Holland reverted to the Republican form of rule, which it retained for the space of forty-five years.
There was another consequence of the death of William. Louis XIV declared that the Nassau family was extinct and that the fief of Orange was escheated. He occupied the little principality, which then disappeared from the map. Its nominal independence was more or less of a fiction. The French repeatedly occupied it during the wars and sometimes pillaged it. In 1662 they razed the fortress which Maurice had been allowed, as the ally of France, to construct there against Germany. But although the principality was lost, the House of Nassau in Holland had always clung tenaciously to the title of Prince of Orange, and the color had always been claimed as its distinctive badge.
After William III then, the Stadtholdership being abolished, the government was again carried on by a Grand Pensionary who might be styled a sort of delegate for the States-General. Anthony Heinsius, a great jurist and diplomatist, who hated the French as much as William himself, was elected to the office, and it was with him that Marlborough carried on the business of the allies during the long struggle of the Spanish succession. The great general found negotiations at The Hague extremely slow and difficult, and it has been alleged rightly or wrongly that many of his best laid plans went awry on that account.
But Heinsius was not without some of the gifts of a statesman and when the war ended he secured for his country highly advantageous terms under the Barrier Treaty. By its provisions Namur and Tournai received Dutch garrisons, an army of 15,000 men was paid out of the Belgian provinces, and the Scheldt was closed to external commerce. From Belgium, Holland received an annual subsidy of 1,250,000 florins.
Heinsius died in 1720, but even before his death the old sectarian and political differences, so evident under De Witt, began to reveal themselves. Holland, secured against the external enemy, began to suffer from domestic feuds which sapped her strength. The union among the Provinces grew enfeebled, and only one retained the form of Stadtholder government. Friesland alone among the Provinces had continued to regard Count John William as its legal Stadtholder.
In 1718 when Heinsius was growing old Groningen followed suit and in 1722 Gelderland also proclaimed the House of Orange. The most thickly inhabited parts of the State, including the centers of trade, retained the Republican form of government, and so for another quarter of a century there were two administrative systems existing side by side in the country. They might have continued for a much longer period than they did but for some foreign complications which entailed a serious diminution of national power and the loss of some of the advantages that had been gained during the long wars with Louis XIV.
The Treaty of Utrecht gave Belgium or the South Netherlands to Austria, but the Treaty of the Barrier, which was a kind of codicil to it, installed Dutch garrisons in various places. It was not a very promising arrangement and soon the Emperor chafed at it.
In the war of the Austrian Succession Holland, like England, stood by Austria, and the Treaty of Aix-laChapelle left the position undisturbed, but in the Seven Years’ War the roles were reversed. England sided with Prussia and Holland remained neutral. These international complications had assisted the return to power of the Orange Nassau family. The States-General found themselves ill—equipped to cope with the diplomatic changes going on in Europe, and their losses in the earlier war at the hands of the French Marshal Maurice de Saxe, who captured both Maestricht and Bois le Duc, had rendered them less confident of their own super-excellence.
Under these changed conditions the Count of East Frisia, Stadtholder of the three Northern Provinces, obtained his Treaty of chance. He was a principal party to the negotiations at Arx-la-Chapelle, and closely connected as he was with the House of Brunswick, he had less difliculty in recovering for Holland all she had lost.
The revival of the privileges of the Barrier Treaty secured the revival in his favor of the suspended Stadtholdership, and in 1747 after an interval of forty-five years he was proclaimed at Amsterdam and The Hague as William IV. He did not enjoy the position long for he died in 1751, leaving the succession to his young son, William V, on whose behalf a regency was formed under his mother and the Duke of Brunswick. The reign of William V was not at all fortunate. It was marked by an unfortunate and unsuccessful war with England, and by the repudiation of the Barrier Treaty by the Emperor.
