1751 - William V 3rd Nassau Restoration
William IV died in 1751. The son who succeeded him under the title of William V, was then only three years of age. His mother was first invested with the office of guardian, and at her death, the duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbutel. An English princess, and a German prince, were thus successively entrusted with the administration of the republic; and the young prince learned in their school to consider his government as essentially subject to a foreign influence.
Nevertheless, the patriotic party gained ground, and increased in energy, as the pretensions of the stadtholder became more open and unreserved. It collected sufficient strength to expel the duke of Brunswick, who had endeavored to maintain himself at the head of affairs even after the prince’s majority, by causing him to sign the not called of consultation. A strong opposition was formed against the young stadtholder himself, who appeared inclined to overleap all the bounds which his predecessors had hitherto respected.
The schemes of encroachment on the part of the stadtholder had always found auxiliaries in the English. This disposition on the part of Great Britain was more clearly exhibited at this period, when more intimate bonds of union existed between the two cabinets. It was at London that the political conduct of William V was traced; and from London emanated the policy which left the marine to decay and concerned itself only with the land army. England, in fact, by rendering absolute a stadtholder who was devoted to her, could hope to govern the United Provinces through him ; and she well knew that to ruin their marine was, ultimately, to ruin their commerce.
France, on the contrary, necessarily wished that the marine and commerce of Holland should prosper, that she might find in her a counterpoise to the power of Great Britain. The patriotic party, therefore, naturally directed their views towards France, where, more over, the dawn of a political regeneration, was now beginning to appear. Such was the state of affairs. All the wishes of the Dutch people were turned towards France, and all the interests of the stadtholder leaned for support on the British crown.
The charge here endeavored to be fastened upon the stadtholders of having concurred with the designs of the English court in a systematic neglect of the marine, is groundless and unjust. The navy of Holland continued to be most respectable till the era of the French revolution. It never reckoned less than a hundred ships of war, besides galleys and smaller vessels, and if it was not, as formerly, powerful enough to cope with that of Great Britain, it was not that the number of the ships of Holland had diminished, but that those of the latter power had increased beyond all calculation. Her relative and not her actual strength had declined.
As to the union of the house of Orange with the English throne, it is notorious that the growing power and ambition of France first rendered it necessary, and that it was cultivated by the stadtholders as the only means of securing the independence of their country against the designs of that power. Finally, if the house of Orange can be at all charged with encroaching on the public liberties, it must he at least acknowledged that the circumstances of the state afforded them but too much reason for it.
Threatened by a powerful enemy without, and disturbed by factions within, the government of the stadtholders was one continued struggle to give effect to their measures of defense by uniting the scattered and discordant elements of the constitution—not to mention that the opposite party, when in power, were not at all more scrupulous as to the means of maintaining themselves there, and that the people always returned with enthusiasm to the government of the stadtholders.
The peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1748, though it nominally returned things to their old estate, could not efface the mischief and humiliation which the war had caused to Holland. Nor were affairs mended by the death of the Stadtholder William IV in 1751, who, though dull and quiet, did his best to develop the commercial, and manufacturing prosperity of the States. His widow, Anne of England, daughter of George II, carried on the government for her son William V. She showed but little aptitude for the post of regent, and the Provinces had great difficulty in standing clear of the European complications of the Seven Years' War.
They did so, however, and after her death in 1759 were on better terms with England, which had urged them to take up the cause of Frederick the Great. In 1766 William V was declared to be of age; irresolute and weak, he was entirely under the command of his old preceptor Louis of Brunswick, and his wife Frederica Wilhelmina, niece of Frederick the Great.
In 1764 the States were in trouble with a new antagonist; the emperor Joseph II sought to compel them to acquiesce in the reopening of the mouths of the Scheldt, so as to restore some of its ancient prosperity to Antwerp. But as neither party was able to fight, a peace was patched up in 1785, though its terms, as usual, were very humiliating to the States. The resistance against the princess of Orange continued to increase in violence, until in 1787 the Prussians again interfered, occupying Amsterdam, reinstating the stadtholder, who had been driven out, and compelling the states to ally themselves, much against their will, with England and Prussia.
His rule was only distinguished for the springing up of several learned societies, and for the stimulus, derived partly from England and partly from France, given to scientific inquiries. In other respects the influences of England and France were not propitious to the Provinces.
In the American War of Independence William sympathized with the English court against the French and the revolted colonies, while the Dutch people warmly embraced the other side. Hence arose again old maritime disputes. The Provinces quarreled at home over the relative importance of army and navy, and strengthened neither, and so things went on from 1776 to 1780, when the famous "Armed Neutrality," with which the Continental fleets replied to the demands of England on the seas, drew the Provinces once more into the arena of European politic.
After, a division of the States, in which four were on one aide and three on the other, the United Provinces decided to adopt the Neutrality, and threw in their lot with France and Russia against England. But though war broke out at once, nothing could cure the violence of party spirit — the stadtholder and the court party going with the English, and neutralizing all the warlike efforts of the "patriot" party."
In 1781 Dutch commerce was utterly paralyzed; the other powers bet on the Provinces, and took each its part. Their West India Islands were seized, and it seemed as if they could do nothing in their own defense. At last, however, an indecisive but not inglorious action with Admiral Parker at the Dogger Bank roused the national spirit, and the Orange party lost ground everywhere.
In 1782 the Provinces recognized the independence of the United States of America; with generous sympathy the aged commonwealth saluted the rising republic of the West, which was destined to take its share also in the ruin of Dutch trade. In 1783 the States made an inglorious peace with England, in which the English got right of free traffic with the Dutch East India colonies. The patriot party was so much excited by this long series of blunders and humiliations that the fall of the house of Orange seemed imminent, and the king of Prussia had to interfere on behalf of his kinsfolk.
History cannot wholly exculpate William from the charge of a criminal connivance with the English government during the war which terminated in 1783. He prevented, ostensibly, the sailing of the Dutch fleet from the Texel, and from effecting its junction with the French squadron at Brest. Two years after he endeavored to throw impediments in the way of a negotiation betWeen France and H01land, by which the states-general, following the principles of an enlightened policy, sought to establish a durable alliance with France. The treaty of Versailles was concluded in spite of his intrigues, and served to give additional strength to the public discontent.
Preparations for a civil war now commenced on both sides: Holland with that part of the army of the republic which she was charged with maintaining :, William with the regiments of Guelderland only, for Friesland, Groning'en, Over-Yessel, and Zealand, had forbidden the stadtholder employing their forces in these internal disputes; and a division had existed in the states of Utrecht ever since the last disturbances. The clergy and nobility sat at Amersford, and the town of Utrecht refused to pay the troops of the province. The republic was now divided into four parties.
- That of the stadtholder; in which were ranked the states of Guelderland, and the states-general ; the province of Holland, relying too much on itself, not having taken the precaution to secure a majority in‘that assembly;
- The aristocratical faction, whose wishes inclined them to unite their strength to that of the other enemies of the stadtholder, provided their order Were respected, and enriched, moreover, with the spoils of his office;
- The patriots of the old stamp, whose design was to reform the abuses of. the stadtholdership without abolishing the office itself;
- and lastly, the popular faction, intent on subverting every thing, and whose inconsiderate violence had proved already but too favorable to the cause of the enemies of public liberty.
All Europe resounded with this pretended violence. Holland was invaded and conquered in 1795. The stadtholder was obliged to fly. His office was abolished; and the Batavian republic established. William, by a treaty with France, AD 1802, renounced his title of hereditary stadtholder for an indemnity in Germany, which was taken from his son William Frederic at the time the confederation of the Rhine was formed. He died in 1806. When Napoleon assumed the crown of Charlemagne, he wished also to give the Batavians a sovereign. The prince of his family who became king of Holland endeavored to do good, and descended from his throne when he found that he was only permitted to be the blind instrument of an arm of iron. Holland was then united to the French empire.
This empire fell from its own weight. The allied sovereigns had scarcely crossed the Rhine in 1813, when symptoms of disaffection were manifested both in the provinces of the old republic, and those which had formerly acknowledged the Austrian government. The party of the stadtholder revived; and William Frederic, supported by the foreign monarchs in whose ranks he had fought, appeared at Amsterdam, and was there on the 3d of December, proclaimed sovereign prince of the United Netherlands. The same prince, the year following, signed a convention, by which the allied powers made a cession to him of the Austrian Netherlands, to be united to his former dominions, and to compose together with them, the kingdom of the Netherlands.
The seventeen provinces of which the fanaticism of Philip II had caused the division, were thus again united: thus was an ancient republic ultimately destroyed; and a new power introduced among the states of Europe.
