Chapter X: Louis XIV. and the United Provinces

Humiliation of Spain and the Pope--Purchase of Dunkirk--The war of devolution--Alarm of Europe--Opposition of the Dutch--The Triple Alliance--The treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle--Overthrow of the Triple Alliance--Origin of the United Provinces--Their constitution--Supremacy of the burghers--Unique position of Holland--The House of Orange--Prosperity of the Dutch--Rivalry between the republicans and the House of Orange--John Olden Barneveldt--Attempted revolution of William II.--Supremacy of the republican party--Character and policy of John de Witt--War with England--The Act of Navigation--The Act of Exclusion--Second war with England--The treaty of Breda--Danger from France--The perpetual edict--Popular movement in favour of William III.--Murder of de Witt.

[Sidenote: =Humiliation of Spain by Louis, 1661.=]

No sooner had Louis XIV. taken the management of affairs into his own hands, than he began to let foreign countries understand that France was now ruled by a sovereign who intended his will to be law, and was not likely to abate one jot of the dignity which he thought due to his crown. In the autumn of 1661, on the occasion of the solemn entry of a Swedish envoy into London, the ambassadors of France and Spain in their eagerness to gain precedence of each other came to blows in the narrow streets. The carriage of d’Estrades, the French ambassador, was overturned, his horse killed, and his suite forced to take refuge in the adjacent houses wounded and beaten; while the victorious Spaniard proudly took his place in the procession clothed with all the insolent dignity of success. Louis took the matter up fiercely, dismissed d’Estrades for having been beaten, recalled his own ambassador from Madrid, and demanded and actually obtained from Philip IV., under threat of war, the acknowledgment of the right of the crown of France to precede that of Spain.

[Sidenote: =Humiliation of the Pope by Louis, 1662.=]

A few months later a tumult of a less honourable character brought Louis into sharp antagonism to the Pope. The French ambassador at Rome, the duc de Créqui, had made himself very unpopular by his intolerable pride, and some of the Corsican guards of the Vatican, urged on it is said by the brother of the Pope, and smarting under the wrong of a personal insult rendered to their body by some of the French suite, made themselves the organs of the general hatred and of private revenge, by a gross attack upon the ambassador’s wife as she was returning to her palace. A page was killed, many of the servants wounded, and the duc de Créqui, leaving Rome in real or assumed fear for his own life, demanded from Alexander VII. a reparation which the Pope seemed very unwilling to give. Louis immediately seized Avignon, assembled an army, appointed the maréchal du Plessis-Praslin to the command, and ordered him to form the siege of Rome and force the Pope to do justice to the outraged majesty of France. Alexander was astonished at this unexpected display of energy, and sent his nephew the cardinal Chigi in all haste to Paris to offer an humble apology and obtain the best terms he could. He was the first legate say the French historians ever sent by a Pope to ask for pardon. If so, the success of the experiment hardly warranted its repetition. Louis remained for some time obstinately irate, and was only pacified by imposing upon the Pope the public humiliation of banishing his brother, disbanding his Corsican guard, and erecting a pyramid in Rome as a perpetual memorial of his disgrace.

[Sidenote: =Purchase of Dunkirk, 1662.=]

More substantial additions to the power of Louis than the precedence of an ambassador or the disgrace of a Pope soon followed. In 1662 he purchased the port of Dunkirk from England, and made it a harbour for warships. In 1663 he sent the count of Schomberg, supported by French officers and French money, secretly to the assistance of Portugal in her war against Spain, and contributed materially to the gaining of the victory of Villa Viciosa in 1665, which established the independence of the country. [Sidenote: =Assistance given by Louis to Portugal, and against the Turks, 1663–64.=] At the same time he proceeded to read the Grand Vizier a lesson by breaking the ancient league of friendship between France and the Sultan, in consequence of an insult offered to the French ambassador in 1661, sent French troops to assist in the defence of Candia, which was then being besieged by the Turks, and supplied the Emperor with a large sum of money and a contingent of 6000 Frenchmen under La Feuillade and Coligny to resist the incursion of the Ottoman armies into Hungary and Croatia in 1664. Chiefly owing to the irresistible valour of the French troops, the imperial general, Montecuculli, was enabled to inflict a crushing defeat upon the grand vizier himself at the battle of S. Gothard on the Raab, and hurl the invaders back behind their own frontiers.

[Sidenote: =The War of Devolution, 1667.=]

In 1667 broke out the first of the great wars of Louis XIV., the war of devolution. In September 1665 Philip IV. of Spain died, leaving two daughters by his first marriage, of whom the queen of France was the elder, and one son by his second marriage, who succeeded to the crown of Spain under the name of Charles II. Louis immediately laid claim to the Spanish Netherlands in virtue of what was known as the law of devolution. This law was in fact a local custom of the province of Brabant, by which private property in land passed to the female children of the first marriage in preference to the male children of the second marriage. If, therefore, Philip IV. had in his private capacity bought a farm in Brabant, Louis would by the law of devolution have become entitled to it in right of his wife; but to assert that the sovereignty of the Low Countries followed the rule of land tenure in Brabant was one of the most monstrous claims ever put forward by hypocritical ambition. Nevertheless Louis played his part well. The rights of his queen were dwelt upon with much argumentative force by writers and diplomatists, while Turenne at the head of 35,000 men produced more convincing arguments. By August 1667 Charleroi, Tournay and Lille were in his hands, and the whole of the Spanish Netherlands lay open before him. Astonished Europe awoke to see the once formidable power of Spain falling to pieces before its eyes, to find itself threatened by the overweening ambition of a prince, whose will was law from the Rhine to the ocean, and from the Scheldt to the Pyrenees.

[Sidenote: =Alarm of Europe.=]

It was the first time that European statesmen realised the true nature of the danger from France, the first time they understood the real bent of French policy. Hitherto the shade of Philip II. had pressed upon Europe like a nightmare. Hardly ten years had elapsed since Cromwell had declared war against Spain in the spirit of Sir Walter Raleigh, had actually allied himself with France, had called in the aid of the lion to make sure work of the dying elephant. But five years ago Clarendon had made over Dunkirk to Louis, never dreaming that France, and not Spain, was to be the commercial and naval rival of England in the years which were close at hand. The war of devolution shattered these illusions somewhat rudely. It was a war of pure ambition, of undisguised rapacity. It disclosed Louis to the world as absolutely unscrupulous and alarmingly strong. If Spain thus crumbled to dust at his feet, what power in Europe could dare to withstand him? Suddenly, from out the calm which had pervaded all Europe since the treaties of 1660, there loomed in terrific proportions the black shadow of the old world-wide tyranny, which, so far from having been crushed to death in the wars of religion, had merely shifted the centre of its power from Madrid to Paris.

[Sidenote: =Opposition of the Dutch to Louis’s schemes.=]

The burden of organising the opposition to France fell naturally upon the Dutch. If the French once became masters of Antwerp and the Scheldt, the pre-eminence of Amsterdam, and the prosperity, if not the independence, of the United Provinces was gone. The Spanish Netherlands formed a barrier to the advances of France which was absolutely necessary to the existence of the Dutch as a nation. It had always been an important part of their settled policy ever since they had gained their independence to keep the French frontier away from the Scheldt. De Witt, the grand pensionary of Holland, who was at that time the political chief of the republic, was fully alive to the danger. Before Louis had crossed the frontier he was deep in negotiations with the Emperor and the princes of Germany, as well as with Sweden and England, to put limits to the aggression of the French. But Louis’s diplomacy had been too much for him. By the bribe of a partition treaty for dividing the Spanish dominions between France and the Empire on the death of the weakly king of Spain, Leopold was persuaded to remain neutral while Louis was eating up his leaf of the artichoke. The German princes were secured at heavy cost in October 1667 and Sweden was terrified into inaction by threats. [Sidenote: =Negotiations with England.=] England alone remained dangerous. The fall of Clarendon in November 1667 had put the chief direction of foreign affairs into the hands of Arlington who was in favour of a Dutch alliance. Sir William Temple, the ablest of English diplomatists and a sturdy friend to the Dutch, was sent as English envoy to the Hague. Charles himself, though he never intended to break with Louis and lose the French subsidies, was not averse to an occasional display of independence. With an impartiality more creditable to his cleverness than his honesty, he kept on foot negotiations for an alliance with Spain, France and the Dutch at the same time, waiting to see which side would offer him most. By December 1667, however, it became abundantly clear that the English people would not tolerate an alliance with France, or permit Louis to make himself master of the Low Countries. Charles accordingly took the line of the least resistance, authorised Temple to conclude a treaty with the Dutch, and wrote to Louis to explain that he had been obliged to act against his own wishes.

[Sidenote: =Formation of the Triple Alliance, 1668.=]

The treaty was signed at the Hague on the 13th of January 1668, and on May 15th Sweden, angered by the threats of Louis, joined the alliance in order to secure the payment of some old-standing claims upon Spain which were guaranteed by the English and Dutch governments. The Triple Alliance, as the treaty was then called, bound the allies to help each other if attacked, and to endeavour to restore peace between France and Spain, on the terms of the surrender to Louis, either of the districts in the Low Countries which he had conquered, or of Franche-Comté and a few specified frontier towns in the Netherlands. By a secret clause they further bound themselves to compel peace on these terms, and, if France refused, they agreed to make war upon her until she was reduced to the boundaries fixed by the treaty of the Pyrenees.

[Sidenote: =Louis outwitted.=]

This was the first serious rebuff which the diplomacy of Louis had sustained. His minister at the Hague, d’Estrades, had assured him again and again that he need not be under any apprehensions of the formation of a confederation contrary to his interests under the leadership of the Dutch, because by the constitution of the United Provinces every treaty required the sanction of the estates of the different provinces, and it would be quite easy to ensure its publication, and bring about its defeat, when it was proposed for their acceptance. He overlooked the fact that during the war with England the provincial estates, in order to prevent unnecessary delays, had delegated their powers to a small commission of eight members, and had never resumed them. So while d’Estrades was awaiting in confidence the publication of the full text of the proposed treaty before the provincial estates, de Witt quietly procured the consent of the commission of delegates, and the treaty was signed and ratified before the French knew that it had been even discussed. Louis only heard of the secret article from Charles II. himself. He at once saw the gravity of the crisis, and determined to put himself in the best possible position for subsequent action. Though it was the middle of winter Condé received orders to advance into Franche-Comté at the head of 15,000 men. On the 1st of February his soldiers crossed the frontier. In a fortnight the whole country was at his feet, and Louis went in person to Besançon to receive its submission. _Beati possidentes_ is a diplomatic truth which was just as thoroughly understood by Louis XIV. as by Napoleon.

[Sidenote: =The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1668.=]

But unlike Napoleon, Louis knew when he had gone far enough. He was not going to stake everything on the chance of success in a war against a combination of European powers, which was certain to grow larger as time went on. He had already a securer foundation on which ultimately to raise the edifice of French domination over the Spanish Netherlands in his secret partition treaty with the Emperor. The terms of the Triple Alliance guaranteed to him the possession of Lille, Tournai, and Charleroi, the three fortresses which would make France impregnable on her north-eastern frontier and open to her the gate of the Netherlands. The show of moderation at this juncture would do much to disarm the suspicion of Europe, would give him time to mature his plans for the future, and enable him to make very substantial additions to his power in the present. So Louis declared himself willing to negotiate for peace, and on May 29th, 1668, the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle was signed between France and Spain. By it France gave back Franche Comté, having dismantled the fortresses, and received Charleroi, Binch, Ath, Douai, Tournai, Oudenarde, Lille, Armentiéres, Courtrai, Bergues and Furnes, with their districts. Some of these towns, such as Courtrai, Oudenarde and Ath lay within the Netherlands, but in the line of fortresses which stretched, roughly speaking, along the frontier from Dunkirk to Charleroi, and included Lille, France had now an adequate defence for her capital. Paris was safe and the invasions of the years of the _Fronde_ could never again recur.

The war of devolution added to the ambition of Louis XIV. the passion of revenge. It ministered to his pride by showing him the immense superiority of his armies, and the predominance almost unchallenged of his diplomacy. [Sidenote: =Hatred of Louis for the Dutch.=] No soldier had been found to face his troops in the field, no fortress had dared to resist his attack, the success of his diplomacy had even broken the traditional alliance between the Emperor and Spain. Germany had remained unconcerned while Spain was being devoured. There was but one blot on this fair picture. One power had dared to enter the lists with the all-powerful Louis and had given him a fall. The Dutch had been the heart and soul of the Triple Alliance. Without them it would never have been called into existence. The assistance of England and Sweden was merely fortuitous. It was the Dutch who were organising a policy and laying down principles of action. It was galling enough to think that they had ventured to break away from their condition of humble tutelage. To the Huguenots of France and to Henry IV. the Dutch owed their very existence, so every Frenchman believed. That they should be permitted to thwart the cherished schemes of the king of France unpunished, to show to Europe the way by which it could successfully resist French ambition, and yet go scot-free, was impossible. From the day of the signing of the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, Louis set himself to prepare a deadly punishment for the insolent republicans who had dared to thwart his will. Europe should learn by a terrible object-lesson that the vengeance of the king of France was as swift as his spirit was magnanimous.

[Sidenote: =An additional incentive to the claim of European supremacy.=]

This determination to punish the Dutch meant for France and for Louis the deliberate adoption of a policy which had for its object supremacy over Europe. After the success of the Triple Alliance Louis could not conceal from himself the probability that an attack upon the Protestant maritime and republican power of the United Provinces would almost certainly lead to a coalition of European powers against him. Germany would never stand aside to permit the destruction of the Dutch. It was more than doubtful if the careless Charles would have the inclination or the firmness to keep England neutral. Every hour that Charles of Spain lived diminished the value of the partition treaty as a bribe to the Emperor. Louis could only wipe the United Provinces from out the map of Europe by making himself the master of Europe. For four years he hesitated before striking the final blow. But everything led him in that direction. In his own court, besides the fulsome atmosphere of adulation in which he lived, which must have weakened his judgment, many influences were urging him on. Lionne, the cautious and trusted minister of foreign affairs, was dead. Louvois, the indefatigable minister of war, had raised the army to a pitch of perfection hitherto unknown, and was anxious to prove its powers. The very success of Colbert’s finance made Louis too easily forget the real limits of the resources upon which he was drawing so lavishly. The nobles, ousted by design from politics, now found their only sphere of activity in the army, and were eager for war and for glory. Abroad diplomatic success contributed its spur to his ambition. [Sidenote: =The Triple Alliance overthrown, 1670–1672.=] The Triple Alliance was already a thing of the past. In May 1670 the secret treaty of Dover bound Charles II. hand and foot to France. In November 1671 the Emperor agreed not to assist the enemies of France. In April 1672 Sweden returned to her old alliance, and undertook to attack the Empire if the Emperor helped the Dutch. Finally the bishop of Münster and most of the smaller princes of Germany promised either assistance or neutrality. The Great Elector alone remained stubbornly aloof. These astonishing results of his diplomacy, added to the ceaseless importunities of his court, fired Louis’s ambition and overcame his prudence. Forgetting that promises so easily made can be still more easily revoked, he gave the signal for a war of aggression pure and simple, which brought its appropriate and ultimate reward in the wreck of his ambition and the exhaustion of France.

[Sidenote: =The United Provinces.=]

Europe must have been craven-hearted indeed if it had stood tamely by, wrapped in the cloak of its own selfishness, to watch the death-throes of the United Provinces. The history of their war of independence was sufficient to stir the emotions of every generous soul, the use which they had made of the liberty which they had won such as to guarantee its continuance in the mind of every prudent statesman. Trained to a rough and hard life by a constant struggle with nature, consecrated to a sturdy individualism of character by the religion of Calvin in its most uncompromising and fatalistic form, the peasants from the marshes of Holland and the fishermen from the sand-banks of Zealand had found in the breath of liberty the elixir of a national life. Under the leadership of the burghers of Amsterdam and Dordrecht, at the initiative of the nobility of Zealand and Guelderland, with the support of the scholars of Leyden, the union of Utrecht, formed in 1579, gave to Europe a new nationality, and planted in the very midst of the great monarchies a confederation of tiny republics. [Sidenote: =Reasons for the success of the war of independence.=] Nothing could have preserved their independence at first except a strange combination of national virtues, natural advantages, and political fortune. Persecution had fanned the flame of patriotism till it burned at a white heat. Under the pressure of a long struggle with a superior power even vices turned into virtues. Slowness and obstinacy became refined into patience and endurance, dulness into obedience, sloth into fidelity. Never did men fight with greater heroism, with more complete self-forgetfulness, than these rude sailors and fishermen who wrested their liberty and their religion at the edge of the sword from the pride of Spain. The physical characteristics of the country aided them. Campaigns were difficult in a land which at any moment might be restored to the sea by the cutting of a dyke. Sieges of towns open to the sea by a power which had no navy were fore-doomed to failure. Political complications aided them also. The opposition of France and the jealousy of England made the task of Spain far more difficult. But neither the sympathy of the Huguenots, nor the gold of Elizabeth, nor the marshes of Holland, nor the defeat of the Armada, would have availed one jot to save the confederation from ultimate ruin had it not been for the tenacity, the patriotism, and the self-sacrifice of the nation itself. Never since the days of Miltiades and Themistocles did a people better deserve their freedom than did the patient Dutch under their silent prince when the dagger of the assassin laid him low in 1584. They had not long to wait, for although the formal independence of the United Provinces was not acknowledged by Spain until the peace of Westphalia in 1648, they had ceased to be under any fear of subjugation since the death of Philip II. in 1598, and had been able since the beginning of the century to transfer their attention from the preservation of their liberty to the development of their power.

[Sidenote: =Constitution of the United Provinces.=]

The confederation formed by the Union of Utrecht in 1579 was an example of a kind of government seldom found in history to be permanent, namely a loose confederation of sovereign states. The confederated states were seven in number, Holland, Friesland, Zealand, Utrecht, Guelderland, Overyssel, and Gröningen, and a Federal Constitution was gradually developed. Each of these independent provinces had its own government vested in its provincial estates and its stadtholder; but the common affairs of the whole confederation were transacted in the estates general, which was a representative body consisting of delegates from the provincial estates. To them appertained the right of appointing the captain general and the admiral general, who were the heads of the military and naval forces of the confederation. With them was associated a council of state in whom the executive was vested. The stadtholder, for the chief provinces usually elected the same stadtholder, in virtue of his office, was a member of the council of state and of the provincial estates as well as of the estates general. He appointed the burgomasters of the towns, and the principal magistrates, and had the right of acting as arbiter in any matters of difference which arose between the provinces. In theory therefore the constitution of the provinces was that of a confederation of sovereign states, which had intrusted certain functions of government, such as the organisation of defence, to a representative body of delegates and an elective chief magistrate; but had retained to themselves certain others, such as finance and foreign affairs. But in practice the influences which made for unity were very much stronger than the disintegrating forces. The independence of the separate provinces was much more apparent than real, and served rather to increase delay and multiply difficulties than to preserve any real independence of action. This came about from various causes. [Sidenote: =Supremacy of the burgher aristocracy.=] Owing to the spirit of republicanism engendered by the war of independence, and the secularisation of Church property and the overthrow of the Church system brought about by the Reformation, the two orders of the nobles and of the clergy lost all share in the government. Political power fell completely into the hands of the citizens of the towns, and was exercised through the municipal councils, which were in fact in each town the nominees of a small burgher aristocracy. Each province therefore was in reality, as far as politics were concerned, nothing more than a federation of towns, and the provincial estates but the delegates of the municipal councils. This limitation of all political power to one class, that of the burgher aristocracy, did much to secure a unity of interest among the different provinces. [Sidenote: =Unique position of Holland.= This was still further developed by the unique position of the province of Holland in the confederation. It was so far superior to the other provinces in wealth, in population and in dignity, that in common talk it has given its name to the whole republic. It contained within its borders the great trading towns of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Delft and Dordrecht, Leyden the seat of the university, and the Hague the centre of the government. It alone had the right of being represented at the courts of Paris and Vienna. It paid in taxes almost as much as all the other provinces put together. From its ports issued year by year the merchant ships which had acquired for the United Provinces the carrying trade of the world, the navy which at the beginning of the century was the undisputed mistress of the ocean, and the bands of hardy colonists who had planted the Dutch flag in every quarter of the globe. The great city of Amsterdam itself, with its banks, its docks, and its thousands of fishermen and artisans, founded, as it was said, on the carcases of herrings, was the centre of the commerce and the opulence of northern Europe. The Venice of the North, alike in her commercial prosperity and her close oligarchical government, she so far dominated over all her colleagues that in the days of her greatness the United Provinces were little less than Amsterdam writ large. Shorn of the province of Holland, the country certainly could not have maintained its independence for a moment.

[Sidenote: =Leadership of the House of Orange.=]

To the unity of interest thus secured by the ascendency of the burgher aristocracy, and the unquestioned leadership of Holland in all national concerns, the House of Orange added a continuity of government. If the United Provinces owed their prosperity to Holland, they owed their very existence to the House of Orange. Had it not been for the statesmanship of William the Silent they would never have won their independence, had it not been for the generalship of Maurice they would never have maintained it. Had it not been for the patriotism and moderation of both they would have lost their republicanism as soon as they had gained it. But fortunately for the Dutch republic the princes of the House of Orange preferred to exercise most of the powers of limited kingship under the guise of an elective magistracy. The head of the House of Orange combined in his person by elections, which were never questioned for seventy years, the offices of stadtholder of five provinces, of captain general and of admiral general of the republic. For the first and most critical half century in the history of the nation the supreme management of the civil, military and naval affairs of the country were in the hands of one family, not indeed by hereditary right, but by an elective custom which had grown at least strong enough to be described as an hereditary right to election. Under their wise government the prosperity of the United Provinces had grown by leaps and bounds. The destruction of the Armada in 1588 removed from the northern seas all enemies to Dutch trade. France, torn by civil and foreign war, could not man a warship or despatch a merchant fleet. England was a more serious rival, but political friendship kept for a time commercial enmities in check. The world was found large enough for both countries, and while English enterprise tended to flow in the direction of America and the West, the Dutch pursued their conquests in Africa and the East. In the East Indies alone, the famous Spice Islands of romance, the two nations found themselves in acute and deadly rivalry, and for some years a war raged on the other side of the globe between the servants of the two East India companies, which was only taken notice of by the home governments when some serious breach of international rights, such as the massacre of Amboyna, forced them to open their eyes and lazily demand compensation.

[Sidenote: =Prosperity of the Dutch, 1600–1650.=]

With the dawn of the seventeenth century everything seemed to be conspiring to promote the prosperity of the country. England became more and more entangled in complications at home, and under a weak and vain king gave less and less assistance to her traders. In the north, Sweden and Denmark, engaged first in war among themselves and then in the Thirty Years’ War, easily let the Baltic trade imperceptibly glide into the hands of the Dutch. Neither Germany nor France were in a position to enter the lists with the republic, and the decaying power of the Hansa fell completely before the blast of the great war. The United Provinces, it is true, were forced to take their part in the struggle, but under the cautious and talented Frederick Henry, the younger son of William the Silent, who had succeeded his brother Maurice in 1625, the Dutch contingent did little more than garrison the duchy of Cleves, and keep the Low Countries quiet. Meanwhile the whole world was open to their enterprise. There was literally not a country to compete with them, even feebly, as the troubles in England thickened. They took part of Brazil from Spain, and founded on the coast of North America the colonies of New Holland and New Jersey, settled in Africa, in Ceylon, and on the mainland of India, planted themselves on the rich island of Java, and finally in 1630 made themselves masters of the Cape of Good Hope. In the first half of the seventeenth century they enjoyed a colonial empire larger than that of Venice in its palmy days. They were undisputed masters of the seas, they had almost the monopoly of the carrying trade of the world.

[Sidenote: =Rivalry between the republican party and the House of Orange.=]

But in this very prosperity lay the germs of future trouble both abroad and at home. The frog might swell itself even to bursting point but it could not rival the dimensions of the ox. The wonderful maritime success of the Dutch was due largely to the fact that its two great neighbours of England and France, who were better situated geographically for the development of trade, were in the throes of foreign and domestic war. When peace was restored, and men had leisure once more to attend to the affairs of commerce, it was not likely that the hardy sailors of Brittany and Devonshire would long lag behind the fishermen of Zealand or the traders of Amsterdam in the race for wealth. It was not possible that the Dutch however high their courage, however great their skill, however tough their pride, could long compete on equal terms with either monarchy. They could not pretend to do so even if they were united among themselves, but that was not the case. The great increase of wealth and prosperity intensified instead of diminishing their internal jealousies. Ever since the Union of Utrecht there had been two distinct parties in the state, the partisans of the House of Orange and the republicans pure and simple, the former representing the political principles of a limited monarchy, the latter those of a burgher oligarchy. In the civil and military authority enjoyed by the princes of the House of Orange, through their quasi-hereditary tenure of the stadtholderate and of the supreme military and naval command, their adherents saw the only guarantee which their country possessed against the dangers of internal discord. They looked upon this concentration of authority in the hands of one family as essential to the solidarity of the state, and valued it all the more because they believed it to be the only effective counterpoise to the overweening pride and political domination of Amsterdam. Their weakness lay in the fact that their adherents were mainly drawn from the classes of the nobles, the clergy and the peasantry, who had very little political power. Only in the province of Zealand, where the House of Orange had large possessions, were the majority of the town councils in their favour. But the very fact of their political weakness as compared with their numerical strength inspired them with a jealousy all the more intense of their more fortunate republican neighbours of the towns. These latter were imbued with the narrowest spirit of burgher exclusiveness. They feared alike the democratic tendencies of the populace and the monarchical instincts of the House of Orange. Within a small circle of capitalist families the functions of government were divided pretty equally. Any member of these privileged families, if his capacities were equal to the charge, had the opportunity of being trained in the public service from his earliest years. He succeeded as naturally to the diplomatic or administrative business of his father or his uncle in the political family party, as he did to the management of the family business or the ownership of the family ships.

During the first few years of the history of the republic, while the issue of the war with Spain was still doubtful, the military necessities of the country forced the House of Orange into prominence, and kept the republican spirit in check. [Sidenote: =Growth of the Republican Party.=] But as political dangers from outside grew less serious, and the wealth and importance of the citizen traders became by far the most important factors of the national life, the political preponderance of the republican party, who drew their strength from the merchant class, soon threatened to be decisive. The province of Holland, which was republican to a man, assumed an unquestioned lead in the national councils. It alone had the right of appointing a representative at the courts of Paris and Vienna. It alone paid more than half the national taxes. It alone provided nearly the whole of the national fleet. [Sidenote: =Olden Barneveldt.=]Partly owing to these circumstances, partly to his own abilities, as early as the beginning of the century the Advocate of the province of Holland, John Olden Barneveldt, had insensibly become the foremost statesman of the republic. In theory he was only the spokesman or first minister of the provincial estates of Holland, in fact he was the leader of the republican party and for a few years virtual ruler of the republic. He it was who negotiated with foreign states and determined the national policy. Already then it seemed as if the supreme power in the republic had shifted from the stadtholder and the House of Orange to the representative of the republican merchants of Amsterdam. But Maurice, prince of Orange, the second son of William the Silent, was not going to let power slip out of his hands so easily. Taking advantage of a quarrel between Barneveldt and his staunch ally and protector Henry IV., he very skilfully managed to direct upon him, left thus defenceless, the whole weight of the cruelty and fanaticism of the Calvinistic clergy. [Sidenote: =Execution of Barneveldt brought about by Maurice of Nassau, 1610.=] By a crime, more atrocious than that of the assassination of his own father, because of the hypocrisy which accompanied it, he brought Barneveldt to the scaffold in 1610 by a sentence of judicial murder.

The villainy was eminently successful. For forty years the republican party suppressed itself, and the government of the republic remained without question in the hands of the stadtholders of the House of Orange: Maurice, Frederick Henry, and William II. [Sidenote: =Government of Maurice, Frederick Henry, and William II., 1610–1650.=] Indeed, when this halcyon period came to an end, it was the ambition of the stadtholder, not the pride of the republicans, which was at fault. William II. had married a daughter of Charles I. of England, and undeterred by the fate of his father-in-law and the outbreak of the _Fronde_ he determined to effect a _coup d’état_ and turn the stadtholderate into a monarchy. Just before his death Frederick Henry had negotiated with Spain a treaty at Münster, finally ratified in January 1648, by which Spain and the United Provinces agreed to unite together in defence of the Spanish Netherlands against French aggression, on condition that Spain closed the Scheldt to trading vessels and acknowledged the independence of the republic. A more favourable treaty to the United Provinces cannot be imagined, for by it they obtained a barrier between their own territories and those of France, and secured the trade monopoly of Amsterdam. Yet William II. in his insensate ambition actually agreed to throw all these advantages away, and allow France to seize the Spanish Netherlands, in return for the consent of Mazarin to his projected revolution. [Sidenote: =Attempted coup d’état of William II., 1650.=] Having thus secured the neutrality of France he proceeded to put his scheme into execution. He was sure of the support of the army and of Zealand, and need not fear the opposition of any of the other provinces except Holland. His first business accordingly was to get up a quarrel between the states-general and the provincial estates of Holland about the disbandment of some troops, then, posing as the champion of the states-general, obtained from them authority to take measures for the preservation of the union, and to put pressure upon the estates of Holland. This was sufficient for him. After some negotiation, on the 30th of July 1650 he suddenly arrested six of the leading deputies of Holland, and directed his troops to march during the night upon Amsterdam. The city was saved by the merest accident. The night was dark and rainy, the troops lost their way. When day broke they were still outside the town. The alarm was given. Only one magistrate Cornelius Bicker von Swieten happened to be in the city, but it was enough. [Sidenote: =Death of William II., 1650.=] The gates were closed, the drawbridges raised, the militia called out, and Amsterdam was safe, and with Amsterdam the republic. A _coup d’état_ was now impossible. William saw he could only succeed by civil war and he did not dare to give the signal for that. For five months both sides eyed each other suspiciously, but neither dared to move. Suddenly, in November 1650, William was seized with a violent fever, and died in a few days.

[Sidenote: =Supremacy of the republican party.=]

The tragic death of William II. decided the crisis in favour of the republican party. Some weeks after the death of the stadtholder his wife gave birth to a son, the future William III. of England. It was obviously impossible to appoint an infant in his cradle to the supreme command of the civil and military affairs of the country. It was undesirable to ignore the seriousness of the danger from which the republic had accidentally been saved. The republican party at once seized the opportunity and asserted their superiority. A grand assembly was held at the Hague in January 1651 to decide the constitutional points which had arisen, and it was agreed that the stadtholderate should remain vacant, and the functions of the office devolve upon the provincial estates; while the supreme military and naval command was divided between the estates general and the provincial estates. The real gainers by this arrangement were the provincial estates of Holland. Freed from the rights of the stadtholder political power naturally gravitated to the centre of the wealth and intelligence of the nation. In the provincial estates of Holland it found a body of men thoroughly capable of using it, and a chief admirably adapted to the task of working its delicate machinery. In John de Witt, grand pensionary of Dordrecht, elected grand pensionary of Holland in 1653, the republican party found a champion, and the United Provinces a minister, second to none in Europe for skill, honesty and acumen.

[Sidenote: =John de Witt.=]

Called at the age of twenty-eight to the post of first minister of Holland, John de Witt brought to his task qualities of mind and character singularly fitted to the part he had to play. In him the virtues of Dutch republicanism shone pre-eminent. Homely and frugal in life, straightforward in policy, patient in temper, dignified in manner, persevering in action, no reverse could daunt his spirit, no success destroy his self-control. To the somewhat phlegmatic temper of the Dutch character de Witt added also the finer qualities of the Latin races. Shrewd foresight, quick inventiveness, ready adaptation of means to the end marked his management of foreign affairs. He was the only diplomatist of Europe whose fertility of resource completely out-generalled Louis XIV., whose steadfastness of purpose completely baffled the shiftiness of Charles II. Winning persuasiveness of speech adorned with rich eloquence of phrase gave him perfect mastery over the assemblies whom it was his business to lead. But the dominant note in his character and policy was his staunch almost fanatical belief in republican principles. Republicanism to him was the whole of patriotism, and almost half of religion. His own father, Jacob de Witt, had been one of the deputies imprisoned by William II. during his abortive attempt to make himself king. [Sidenote: =His opposition to the House of Orange.=] John de Witt never forgot the dull horror of those anxious days, when each hour as it sped seemed to be tolling the knell at once of his father’s life and of his country’s liberty. From that moment the ambition of the House of Orange seemed to him to be as great a danger to his country as the aggressiveness of France or the rivalry of England. To keep down the national sentiment in favour of the young prince, to resist his hereditary claim to the stadtholderate and the command of the forces, to strengthen the hold of the estates of Holland over the government became the keynotes of his home policy, measures which he considered as essential to the well-being of his country as the maintenance of a barrier between France and the Scheldt.

The infancy of the young prince, and the consequent victory of republican principles in the great assembly of 1651, made the danger from the House of Orange for the time imperceptible. When John de Witt became Grand Pensionary of Holland in 1653, the safety of the republic was threatened not by civil dissension but by foreign conquest. [Sidenote: =Quarrel between the United Provinces and England.=] With the restoration of order in England by the defeat of the king in the civil war had naturally come a considerable increase in commercial enterprise, and the Dutch traders became once more sensible of English rivalry and opposition in every part of the globe. To this natural rivalry gradually became added special causes of disagreement. During the interval between the defeat of the king and the reduction of the English possessions in the West Indies by the Parliament, the loyal colonists had preferred to trade with a foreign power whose chief was closely related to their king, rather than with the rebels of their own country who had imprisoned him. Consequently the Dutch had succeeded in withdrawing from English merchants the bulk of their American trade. To settle this matter and some others the Parliament sent to the Hague in May 1649 an envoy, Dr. Dorislaus, who had been one of the late king’s judges. While he was at the Hague in the character of ambassador, he was murdered by some of Montrose’s men by way of reprisal for the death of Charles I. In extreme anger at this insult St. John was sent in 1651 to demand from the estates general the expulsion of prince Charles and his adherents, and their consent to the union of the two republics under a common government, which should have its seat in England. [Sidenote: =The Act of Navigation, 1651.=] The estates general naturally refused to surrender on demand the independence which they had fought so hard to win, and in August 1651 the English Parliament passed the Act of Navigation which was in reality the signal for war. By this famous act the policy was first enunciated which was to govern the relations of the great maritime powers to their colonies for a century and a half, the policy namely which regarded colonies as the mere feeders of the mother country. It enacted that foreign ships might only import into England the products of the countries to which they belonged. [Sidenote: =War with England, 1651–1654.=] It was directed obviously against the Dutch, who were at that time the great carriers of the world, and was intended not only to destroy the trade of the Dutch with the English colonies, but also to enable the English ships to wrest the bulk of the carrying trade from their hands. War at once broke out, in which the genius of Blake and the superior guns of the English fleets triumphed over the tenacity of Tromp and the valour of Opdam. The Dutch merchant shipping was shut up behind the Texel. The English remained masters of the sea. Even the Portuguese dared to seize Brazil, while at home the people, deprived of their trade, and unable to fish, were beginning to suffer severely. De Witt saw the necessity of making peace. Cromwell, who had now succeeded to the chief power in England, proved an easier taskmaster than the Parliament had been. He was willing to leave the United Provinces their independence, but he exacted their consent to the Act of Navigation, and their acknowledgment of the superiority of the English flag. [Sidenote: =The Act of Exclusion, 1654.=] Sharing with de Witt his dislike to the House of Orange, whom he looked upon as the chief supporters of the Stuart cause in Europe, he insisted on the perpetual exclusion of that house from the stadtholderate by the estates of Holland, as a necessary preliminary to peace. After protracted negotiations a treaty was at last signed on this basis in 1654.

[Sidenote: =Continued rivalry with England, 1654–1665.=]

John de Witt had thus succeeded in saving his country from destruction and in dealing his chief enemy a serious blow at the same time. To do away with the rivalry of the two nations, and to make the Dutch forget that a foreign power had compelled them to do injustice to a family which had served them with singular loyalty was beyond his power. The war ceased but the causes of the war remained. Each country was ready to continue the struggle when a fitting opportunity presented itself, but as long as the Commonwealth existed in England an identity of interest between the two governments served to keep things quiet. The English Restoration in May 1660 altered these relations, and so far strengthened the partisans of the House of Orange as to enable them to demand and gain the revocation of the Act of Exclusion by the estates of Holland in September 1660. The accession of Louis XIV. to power in 1661 further weakened the republican party by placing at the head of the councils of Europe one who regarded all republics with aversion, and looked upon ‘messieurs les marchands’ his neighbours with a contempt which was born of envy. Every month tidings came to the English government of some fresh defeat of the East India Company by its Dutch rival, of some new indignity inflicted on English sailors. Even the slave trade to Barbadoes had passed into Dutch hands. The time seemed to have arrived when it was necessary to make reprisals. In 1664 a piratical fleet was sent with the cognisance of the English government to the Guinea coast, which captured several Dutch ships and drove out the Dutch settlers from Goree and other places. In the same year a similar expedition to America seized New Amsterdam, which Charles unblushingly accepted and made over to his brother James, from whom it took its better known name of New York. [Sidenote: =Second war with England, 1665–1667.=] After this war was inevitable, and in March 1665 it was formally declared. The Dutch had profited by the experience of the late struggle; their ships were now better manned and their guns of heavier calibre. Only in seamanship did the English have the superiority, but that sovereign quality could not fail to make itself felt. Gradually, after heroic struggles, the Dutch were beaten back. On June 3d, 1665, Opdam was defeated and killed off Lowestoft. A year later in the terrible four days’ battle in the Downs Ruyter and Tromp were driven back to the Texel. In August Ruyter was forced by Monk to take refuge in the shallows of Zealand, and the Dutch merchant fleet was burned in the harbours of Flie. The misfortunes of the war renewed civil dissensions. Again was heard in louder accents the cry for the restoration of the House of Orange, and de Witt found himself obliged at least to accept the young prince as the child of the state and educate him in the affairs of government.

[Sidenote: =Energy of de Witt.=]

Neither foreign war nor civil disturbance could damp the energy of de Witt. He ceaselessly endeavoured to repair by diplomacy what he had lost by arms, and he partly succeeded. Louis was bound by treaty to help the Dutch, and, although it was not possible to induce him to give active assistance of any value to a nation whom he hated and intended to ruin, de Witt did succeed for some time in preventing him from making common cause with the English. With other nations he was more fortunate. Denmark and the Great Elector openly allied themselves with the Dutch in 1666, and compelled the warlike bishop of Münster to make peace, who had invaded Overyssel in the interests of England the year before. The Quadruple Alliance signed later in the year 1666 between the United Provinces, Brandenburg, Denmark and Brunswick-Lüneburg, secured to de Witt help in the case of French aggression. But the most effective allies of the Dutch came from the enemies’ camp. The recklessness of Charles’s extravagance made it impossible properly to repair the necessary ravages of even victorious war. The great plague which devastated London and its neighbourhood in 1665, and the great fire which destroyed half the city in 1666, made the raising of supplies more difficult still. At the beginning of 1667 England though victorious was exhausted and almost bankrupt. Charles in his isolation had recourse to Louis. By a secret engagement negotiated through the queen-mother, Henrietta Maria, Charles threw himself into the arms of Louis, and promised him a free hand in the Low Countries in return for Louis’s support to his crown. At the instigation of France negotiations for peace were begun at Breda in May 1667, but Charles, sure of Louis’s secret help, was in no hurry to come to terms. De Witt determined to read him a lesson. Quietly on the 6th of June the Dutch fleet under Ruyter and Cornelius de Witt left the Texel. Next morning they were sailing up the Thames in triumphal procession. They seized Sheerness, sailed up the Medway to Rochester, captured the _Royal Charles_, burned three other ships of war, and were only checked on their route to London by the sinking of boats across the river above Chatham. This unpleasant reminder of his impotence brought Charles quickly to terms. [Sidenote: =Treaty of Breda, 1667.=] The Act of Navigation was relaxed so as to permit the Dutch to carry to England German and Flemish goods. England retained New York and the Dutch the port of Poleroon in the East Indies. Other conquests were restored.

Once more war had proved but a sorry engine for putting an end to national rivalry. The success of the Dutch in 1667 no more gave to the United Provinces the monopoly of the trade of the world, than their defeat in 1654 had deprived them of their share in it. ‘Must we then,’ said the Dutch envoy to Monk before the beginning of the war, ‘sacrifice our commerce to yours?’ ‘Whatever happens,’ bluntly replied the rough soldier, ‘we must have our part.’ And so it happened. The protracted and stubborn duel between the two greatest maritime powers of Europe only enforced the truth that the world was wide enough for both. Upon the two principal combatants it had more serious and wide-reaching results. It taught Charles II. that he could not enjoy life and indulge his political ambition as he liked without the assistance of France. It taught John de Witt the importance of the friendship of England in face of the ambition of Louis XIV. It thus led directly to the Triple Alliance, and helped to blind de Witt’s eyes to the fact, that that alliance had not clipped Louis’s wings, because for the time in deference to it he had consented to fold them.

The whirligig of fortune had in fact made the worthless Charles II. of England the arbiter of Europe, while both Louis XIV. and John de Witt believed that the decisive voice was with them. [Sidenote: =Dangers from France.=] Louis had determined on the ruin of the Dutch, but he did not dare to face the united fleets of England and the United Provinces. John de Witt was under no illusions as to the dangers which were threatening him from France. He knew quite well that the old relations of friendship and dependence had passed away with the treaty of Münster and the development of Dutch trade. Ever since the treaty of Münster it had been the cardinal point in Dutch foreign policy to support the Spanish government in the Netherlands, in order to keep the French away from Antwerp and the Scheldt. Ever since the peace of the Pyrenees it had been the main object of French foreign policy to gain the fortresses of the Spanish Netherlands as an adequate defence to Paris. Ever since the war of devolution it had been the undisguised ambition of Louis XIV. to seize the whole of the Spanish Netherlands as the first instalment of his inheritance in the Spanish empire. French and Dutch interests were sharply antagonistic on this essential point of policy. Commercial differences were no less pressing. Colbert had so arranged his protective system as to injure Dutch trade as much as possible, and the Amsterdam traders were furious at this unneighbourly treatment. Louis himself never affected to conceal his personal dislike to the rich and Protestant republic, which dared to run athwart his designs. [Sidenote: =Blindness of de Witt.=] Yet in spite of all this, in spite of the continued war preparations of Louis, in spite of his ceaseless diplomatic activity, in spite of the withdrawal of Sweden from the Triple Alliance, in spite of the ominous sleepiness of Leopold, and nonchalance of Charles, de Witt could not bring himself to believe that Louis would ever be able to turn his threats into action. The success of the Triple Alliance had been so commanding, its effect so instantaneous. The temper of the English people had been so thoroughly roused against Louis. Europe had shown itself so sensitive of his aggressive policy. As long as the ascendency of the republican party in the United Provinces was secure, as long as no civil dissensions interfered to weaken their action, John de Witt believed himself safe and Europe at his command. He did not know that Charles had sealed his destruction in the secret treaty of Dover. He had no suspicions of the partition treaty between Louis and the Emperor. Deceived by the two powers he most trusted, secure in the results of his own diplomacy as he saw them, he did not even think it necessary to take ordinary precautions. [Sidenote: =The Perpetual Edict, 1668.=] By the Perpetual Edict, as modified by the Project of Harmony accepted by the republic in 1668, he flattered himself he had secured internal peace without sacrificing the republican ascendency. By those acts it was declared that the same person could not be at once stadtholder and captain and admiral general, and it was provided that the young prince should be intrusted with the command of the army at the age of twenty-two. By this division of the civil and military powers de Witt thought he had secured the republic against a renewal of the _coup d’état_, and guaranteed the political ascendency of Holland. Yet, so jealous was he of the prince and his party, that even then he did not dare to strengthen the army. While Louis was forming vast magazines, and massing thousands of men on the frontier, the Dutch fortresses were being allowed to perish and the Dutch army was being deliberately starved in men and munitions lest the republican supremacy should be endangered. The state was being sacrificed to the government.

[Sidenote: =Popular movement in favour of William III.=]

Retribution was not long in coming. Directly the thunder cloud burst, and the French armies were in full march on Amsterdam, the nation awoke to the fact that it had been betrayed. William was at once declared captain general. A reaction set in, wild and unreasoning as such popular movements usually are. A scapegoat was required. The popular vengeance demanded a victim. The faithful and glorious service of twenty years was forgotten, and a blunder magnified into treachery. For the moment the selfish burgher governors of Holland trembled under the terror of a popular outbreak. They were relieved to find the fury of the populace directed against de Witt alone. On June 21st 1673, John de Witt was attacked by ruffians in the streets of the Hague, who fled for refuge to William’s camp leaving their victim half dead. In August his brother Cornelius was arrested and put to the torture. [Sidenote: =Murder of de Witt, 1673.=] On the 20th John de Witt was induced to visit his brother in the prison. They were caught like rats in a trap. An infuriated mob surrounded the prison, broke open the gates, dragged the victims forth, and beat their brains out, while the Calvinistic clergy hounded them on to their butcher’s work. William himself, cruel, callous, and calculating in 1673, as he afterwards showed himself to be in 1692, took care to know nothing and to do nothing which could stop the impending outrage. As in the massacre of Glencoe, he looked the other way at the time and tried to screen the perpetrators from justice afterwards. An accessory before the fact, and an accessory after the fact, all that his apologists can say for him is that his ambition necessitated the sacrifice of his humanity.