1870 - Franco-Prussian War
Queen Sophie belonged to the most unflinching and ablest opponents of Bismarck's policy. She corresponded much with Napoleon III, and wrote articles in the Revue des Deux Mondes against it. In 1871, after the sacking of the Tuileries, among many documents discovered were a large number of the queen's letters to Napoleon. Some were subsequently published, and demonstrate that she repeatedly warned him against the designs and armaments of Prussia. Lord Malmesbury noted: "The queen was a very clever woman, and knew all the affairs of Europe better than most ministers."
In Holland the monarch was considered more as a stadholder than as a king; he represents, as has said the duke of Aosta, the smallest possible quantity of kingship: the sentiment of the Dutch is less that of devotion to the royal family than affection for that house of Orange which partook equally of their triumphs and their reverses, and lived during three centuries their peculiar life. The country at bottom is republican, and its monarchy is a sort of crown-presidency: the king discourses at banquets and public festivals; he rejoices in a certain reputation as orator because he improvises his speeches and because he speaks with a clear voice and a soldierly eloquence which incites the people to enthusiasm.
The hereditary prince, William of Orange, a student at the University of Leyden, passed the public examination and obtained the degree of doctor of law. Prince Alexander, the younger son, studied at the same university; he is a member of a student's club and invites his professors and fellow-students to dine with him. At the Hague Prince William frequented the cafes, entertained his neighbours, and promenaded the streets with the young men of his acquaintance; in the Bois the queen seated herself on a bench beside a poor woman. In this people, republican by nature and tradition, there was not to be discovered the slightest trace of an element desiring a republic. On the contrary, they loved and venerate their king, and at festivals given in his honor they took the horses from his carriage and obliged everyone to wear an orange cockade in homage to the name of Orange; at ordinary times they occupied themselves only with their affairs and their families.
The dangers foreshadowed or undergone in 1866-67 were accentuated four years later, during the Franco-Prussian War, ending in the downfall of the French empire. The Fock cabinet succeeded in keeping the Netherlands outside the war arena. The king sent for Thorbecke again in January, 1871, in this instance for the third and last time. He succeeded in forming another ministry, but he was no longer the Thorbecke of yore. At any rate, before Thorbecke died, in June, 1872, he must have been conscious that his death might mean the partial disruption of the party he had created, as well as the shattering of the edifice he had been instrumental in building up.
His cabinet did not survive for long under the leadership of his successor, Dr. Geertsema, and finally disappeared in August, 1874, after having had its Income Tax Bill rejected. Its most important measures had been the further extension of state railways in Holland (1873) and her colonies, the abolition of differential import duties in the Dutch East Indies, and the transference of the remaining Dutch portion of the Gold Coast to the British government for a sum of money and certain British "concessions " in the Eastern Archipelago. This transaction, which shortly afterwards resulted, on the one hand, in the Ashanti expedition, and on the other in the disastrous war of the Dutch against the Achinese, had been one of the many weapons used by the opposition against Thorbecke.
Holland had assumed a protectorate over the whole of Sumatra, and taken over England's claims as well. War was declared against the sultan of the Malayan state of Achin, situated at the northwest extremity of the island of Sumatra, under the pretext of putting an end to piracy and the slave trade. General van Swieten took command of an expedition of about twelve thousand men, landed in Achin in December, 1873, defeating the enemy in several encounters, surrounded the fortified palace of the sultan, called the Kraton, and opened a bombardment. The sultan fled from the palace and withdrew into the interior of the country; Van Swieten took possession of the palace on January 24th, 1874. He forced the tributary states of Achin to submit to Dutch supremacy. The state of Achin was incorporated with the Dutch colonial possessions, and a strong garrison left behind when the expedition returned home.
Queen Sophie died at the Hague in June, 1877. As far as the Dutch royal family were concerned, the effect of Queen Sophie's decease was absolutely disastrous. The quarrels between the king and the prince of Orange, who had inherited the wit and the mind of his royal mother, and who if he had lived might have proved one of the most distinguished of his race, became aggravated when the wife and the mother was no longer there to conciliate and pacify. Father and son parted, never to see each other again.
It is at least probable that the departure of the prince of Orange for Paris, and the unlikelihood of his return to Holland during the lifetime of his father, may have had as much bearing on the king's decision to remarry as the circumstance that his second son Alexander, who succeeded to the title and presumptive rights of the prince of Orange after the decease of his elder brother, but who died in 1884, was then in very bad health. The direct Nassau line was threatened unless King William were to marry again and had further issue. His bride was Princess Emma of Waldeck-Pyrmont, and by the marriage King William consolidated his popularity. Popular rejoicings greeted the birth, on the last day of August, 1880, of a princess who received the name of Wilhelmina Sophia Frederika and the title "princess of Orange."
