



Produced by Andrea Ball & Marc D'Hooghe at http://www.freeliterature.org




The Rise of the Dutch Kingdom

1795-1813


A SHORT ACCOUNT OF THE EARLY DEVELOPMENT

OF THE MODERN KINGDOM OF THE NETHERLANDS

BY

Hendrik Willem van Loon,


ILLUSTRATED


GARDEN CITY  NEW YORK

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

1915

[Illustration: WILLIAM I]




DEDICATION


This little book, telling the story of our national usurpation by a
foreign enemy during the beginning of the nineteenth century, appears at
a moment when our nearest neighbours are suffering the same fate which
befell us more than a hundred years ago.

I dedicate my work to the five soldiers of the Belgian army who saved my
life near Waerloos.

I hope that their grandchildren may read a story of national revival
which will be as complete and happy as that of our own land.

Brussels, Belgium,

Christmas night, 1914.




APOLOGIA


And for those other faults of barbarism, Doric dialect, extemporanean
style, tautologies, apish imitation, a rhapsody of rags gathered
together from several dung-hills, excrements of authors, toys and
fopperies confusedly tumbled out, without art, invention, judgment, wit,
learning, harsh, raw, rude, fantastical, absurd, insolent, indiscreet,
ill-composed, indigested, vain, scurrile, idle, dull, and dry, I confess
all ('tis partly affected); thou canst not think worse of me than I do
of myself.

       *       *       *       *       *

So that as a river runs, sometimes precipitate and swift, then dull and
slow; now direct, then _per ambages_; now deep, then shallow; now muddy,
then clear; now broad, then narrow; doth my style flow: now serious,
then light; now comical, then satirical; now more elaborate, then
remiss, as the present subject required or as at that time I was
affected. And if thou vouchsafe to read this treatise, it shall seem no
otherwise to thee than the way to an ordinary traveller, sometimes fair,
sometimes foul, here champaign, there enclosed; barren in one place,
better soil in another.

                --_Anatomy of Melancholy_.--Burton.




FOREWORD


This foreword is an afterthought. It was written when the first proofs
of the book had gone back to the printer. And this is how it took its
origin:

A few days ago I received a copy of a Dutch historical magazine
containing a violent attack upon one of my former books. The reviewer,
who evidently neither had taken the time to read my book nor had taken
the trouble to understand what I was trying to say, accused me among
other things of a haughty contempt for my forefathers during their time
of decline. Haughty contempt, indeed! Nay, Brother of the Acrid Pen, was
it not the truth which hurt thee so unexpectedly rather than my scornful
irony?

There are those who claim that reviews do not matter. There are those
who, when their work is talked about with supercilious ignorance, claim
that an author ought to forget what has been said about his work. Pious
wish! The writer who really cares for his work can no more forget an
undeserved insult to the product of his brain than he can forgive a
harsh word given unmerited to one of his children. The thing rankles.
And in my desire to see a pleasant face, to talk this hurt away, as soon
as I arrived this morning in New York I went to see a friend. He has an
office downtown. It overlooks the harbour. From its window one beholds
the Old World entering the new one by way of the Ellis Island ferryboat.

It was early and I had to wait. Over the water there hung a low, thin
mist. Sea-gulls, very white against the gray sky, were circling about.
And then suddenly, in the distance, there appeared a dark form coming
sliding slowly through the fog. And through a window, opened to get over
the suffocating effect of the steam-heat, there sounded the vibrating
tones of a hoarse steam-whistle--a sound which brought back to me my
earliest years spent among ships and craft of all sorts, and queer
noises of water and wind and steam. And then, after a minute, I
recognized by its green and white funnel that it was one of our own
ships which was coming up the harbour.

And at that instant everything upon which I had been brooding became so
clear to me that I took to the nearest typewriter, and there, in front
of that same open window, I sit and write what I have understood but a
moment ago.

Once, we have been a very great people. We have had a slow decline and
we have had a fall which we caused by our own mistakes and during which
we showed the worst sides of our character. But now all this has
changed. And at the present moment we have a better claim to a place on
the honour-list of nations than the mere fact that once upon a time,
some three centuries ago, our ancestors did valiant deeds.

For, more important, because more difficult of accomplishment, there
stands this one supreme fact: we have come back.

What I shall have to tell you in the following pages, if you are
inclined to regard it as such, will read like a mockery of one's own
people.

But who is there that has studied the events of those years between
1795-1815 who did not feel the utter indignation, the terrible shame, of
so much cowardice, of such hopeless vacillation in the hour of need, of
such indifference to civic duties? Who has ever tried to understand the
events of the year of Restoration who does not know that there was very
little glory connected with an event which the self-contented
contemporary delighted to compare to the great days of the struggle
against Spanish tyranny? And who that has studied the history of the
early nineteenth century does not know how for two whole generations
after the Napoleonic wars our country was no better than a negative
power, tolerated because so inoffensive? And who, when he compares what
was one hundred years ago with what is to-day, can fail to see what a
miracle of human energy here has happened? I have no statistics at hand
to tell you about our shipping, our imports and exports, or to show you
the very favourable place which the next to the smallest among the
nations occupies. Nor can I, without looking it up, write down for your
benefit what we have invented, have written, have painted. Nor is it my
desire to show you in detail how the old neglected inheritance of the
East India Company has been transformed into a colonial empire where not
only the intruding Hollander but where the native, too, has a free
chance to develop and to prosper.

But what I can say and will say with all emphasis is this: Look where
you will, in whatever quarter of the globe you desire, and you will find
Holland again upholding her old traditions for efficiency, energy, and
tenacity of purpose.

Pay a visit to the Hollander at home and you will find that he is trying
to solve with the same ancient industry of research the eternal problems
of nature, while with the utmost spirit of modern times he attempts to
reconstruct the relationship between those who have and those who have
not, until a basis mutually more beneficial shall have been established.
Then you will see how upon all sides there has been a return to a
renewed interest in life and to a desire to do cheerfully those tasks
which the country has been set to do.

And then you will understand how the year 1913, proud of what has been
achieved, though not content that the goal has been reached, can well
afford to tell the truth about the year 1813. For after a century and a
half of decline Holland once more has aspired to be great in everything
in which a small nation can be great.

_New York, N.Y., October 31, 1913._



CONTENTS


   APOLOGIA
   FOREWORD
   DRAMATIS PERSONAE
   PROLOGUE
   THE LAST DAYS OF THE OLD ORDER
   THE REVOLUTION
   THE COST OF REVOLUTION
   THE PROVISIONAL
   THE OPENING CEREMONIES
   PIETER PAULUS
   NATIONAL ASSEMBLY NO. I AT WORK
   NATIONAL ASSEMBLY NO. II AT WORK
   GLORY ABROAD
   COUP D'ETAT NO. I
   THE CONSTITUTIONAL
   COUP D'ETAT NO. II
   CONSTITUTION NO. II AT WORK
   MORE GLORY ABROAD
   CONSTITUTION NO. III
   THE THIRD CONSTITUTION AT WORK
   ECONOMIC CONDITION
   SOCIAL LIFE
   PEACE


   SCHIMMELPENNINCK
   KING LOUIS OF HOLLAND
   THE DEPARTMENT FORMERLY CALLED HOLLAND
   LIBERATION
   THE RESTORATION
   WILLIAM I
   A COMPARISON OF THE FOUR CONSTITUTIONS OF HOLLAND

   BIBLIOGRAPHY


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

HALF-TONES


   William I _Frontispiece_
   The Estates of Holland
   Flight of William V
   Krayenhoff
   Warship entering the Port of Amsterdam
   Daendels
   French troops entering Amsterdam
   Capetown captured by the English
   Pieter Paulus
   The National Assembly
   The speaker of the Assembly welcoming the French minister
   Invasion of the British
   Dutch troops rushing to the defence of the coast
   Armed bark of the year 1801
   The executive council of the East India Company
   Dutch