The Story of Nations - Holland/Chapter 27

The rivalry of the English and Dutch East India Companies, and the consequent collision of trade interests in the two countries, was early apparent. In order to obviate them, a treaty was drawn up between the two countries, by which the commerce of the companies was to be regulated. But at so great a distance, and with so slight a control over these powerful associations which the respective governments of England and Holland had created, conventions on paper were not likely to be of much validity. In 1624 came the news of what is called the massacre of Amboyna, an event of which the most discordant accounts were given by the rival companies. At this time it is impossible to extricate the truth from the mists of passion in which the transaction is involved. It is sufficient to say that the affair was appealed to as a reason for stimulating hatred between the two nations, a hatred was not only provoked by real or fancied injuries, but constantly renewed by the unfortunate position in which Holland was placed by its relations to the Stewarts.

The commercial theory of the Dutch, which rested on the principle of a rigid monopoly, which should not only secure a sole market to Dutch traders, but should extinguish the possibility of procuring produce from any place which was not under their control, was certain to excite hostility. It was as monstrous as the grant of Borgia. It pretended to a right that the demands of all civilized nations should be interpreted in the light of Dutch profits, that supply should be curtailed in order that these profits should be enhanced, the only limit to this restraint being the maximum price which their customers could afford to pay. Now the principal produce of the East, for which there was a constant demand, was spice; pepper, cinnamon, mace, nutmegs, cloves. These, in the almost total absence of vegetables and modern condiments were the choicest flavours which men desired some centuries ago, and the Dutch tried to appropriate the whole supply. The English, who were at this time almost the only rivals of the Dutch in the East, for the Portuguese trade was well-nigh ruined, determined that they should not have this monopoly, and during the first half of the seventeenth century, the East India Company in England had been making considerable progress. The treaty of 1619 was a well-meant endeavour to control these tendencies.

The attitude of the Dutch towards the Parliament, Cromwell and the army, was in the last degree irritating. The king's two sons, Charles and James, had escaped to Holland, where, indeed, at the commencement of the war, Henrietta, on pretence of bringing her daughter over, had been attempting to obtain supplies. At the Hague, Charles, openly countenanced by his brother-in-law, strove to induce the States to declare on the royal side, and to aid the Stewarts in those designs which the War of Independence was entered upon for the purpose of defeating. It was only when the army proceeded to try and to sentence the king that the States yielded, and then only to the extent of mediation. But all their efforts were in vain. The Dutch envoys urged the resentment of Europe, and Cromwell, who knew very well what the resentment of Europe meant, refused to yield. In a few years, the monarchs of Europe vied in flattering the usurper, who had slain one of their order. The Dutch States, however, did not venture on addressing the younger Charles as king of Great Britain, as indeed no crowned head did except the degenerate and licentious queen of Sweden, Christina.

The annoyance felt in the English Parliament at this interference and this sympathy with the exiled family was intensified by the murder of Isaac Dorislaus. Dorislaus was the son of a Dutch clergyman, and in consideration of his learning had been attached to the teaching staff of Cambridge University or Gresharn College. He had been parliamentary counsel at the king's trial, and most imprudently had been sent as envoy extraordinary to the States, with the object of bringing about a close alliance between the two Republics. The day after his arrival he was murdered at the Hague by some of the Royalist exiles, who were there in considerable numbers, under the protection of the Stadtholder and the Orange party. The murderers escaped with the connivance of the same faction. This outrage on the law of nations was a greater offence even at that time than the trial and execution of Charles.

The Stadtholder now determined, like his uncle Maurice, to make himself absolute. His plan was to foment dissension between the State of Holland and the other six States, and his occasion, the determination of the former state, which bore the heaviest share of the public expenditure, to reduce the army and curtail official salaries. As this was the diminution of William's income, he was discontented, and the mischievous woman he had married, true to the instincts of her race, urged him to strike for more power. He imprisoned members of the States-General without form of law, because they were, or he thought they were, unfriendly to his schemes, and then attempted to effect by surprise the military occupation of Amsterdam, in which he was foiled, for the Amsterdam burghers, on discovering his plot, threatened to cut the dykes. Fortunately he died at the age of twenty-four, 1650, to the infinite satisfaction of all but the Orange faction. Men gave thank-offerings in gratitude for his opportune death. His widow, a few days after his death, gave birth to a son, afterwards William III. of England.

In this crisis, when there was no representative of William the Silent who could under any pretence take the lead, the fortunes of the Dutch Republic were managed by the State of Holland. For a time there was to be no Stadtholder, but the supreme authority over the civil and military administration was to reside in the States-General. In the conference which arranged for a time the form of Government, the illegal acts of the late Stadtholder were formally condemned, and the persons whom he had deposed or imprisoned re-admitted to their offices.

After the constitution was settled came the war with the English Parliament, the most mischievous and wanton war ever waged. The causes of it are to be discovered in the insults or affronts put on the English envoys by the partisans of the house of Orange and the Royalist exiles, with the connivance it appears of the Government itself. The action of the mob at the Hague was avenged by the Navigation Act, which inflicted a severe blow on Dutch shipping, the Dutch at this time being the carriers of Europe. But it seems that war might have been averted, and an alliance between the two Republics might have been effected, could the Dutch have been able, perhaps had they been willing, to enforce the banishment of the English exiles, and particularly the royal exiles, from Holland. As it was, the mere proposal to ally themselves in any way with the English Parliament was wholly distasteful to the Orange party. Their partisans insulted the English ambassadors, and made them, with the party which they influenced, entirely hostile to the Dutch.

Still the Dutch war, into which it was said that Cromwell, despite his better judgment, was drawn by Vane and St. John, remains a scandal to the English Parliament. But it is difficult to say, how the war was begun, though it would seem that the English were the aggressors. The contest was entirely on the sea. The Dutch admirals were Tromp, an ardent partisan of the Orange faction, and De Ruyter, while those of the English fleet were Blake and Monk. The struggle was continued with varying success, though the advantage had been on the side of the English. But with a larger trade, and a smaller territory, the Dutch losses were more serious than those of their rivals. It is said that the two years' war with England involved greater losses to the Dutch merchants than the whole of the war with Spain had. But if the Dutch were anxious for peace, the English were riot unwilling. After long negotiations, peace was effected in 1654, and on terms which gave lasting offence to the Orange party, for Cromwell bound De Witt to prevent the succession of the young prince to the office of Stadtholder.

The Dutch, in sheltering the English exiles with Charles Stewart at their head, had protected men at their own serious risk, in whom there was neither gratitude nor honour. It seems that there was hardly ever an English sovereign more callous, more selfish and more immoral than the restored Charles was. His restoration was welcomed in the most genuine and lively manner, on his return from Brussels to Breda, and he was honoured and entertained magnificently. De Witt, who had been, as he alleged, the unwilling instrument of his exile to Brussels, assured him of the attachment of Holland to him, and of their joy at his being replaced on the throne of his ancestors; and Charles, on the other hand, avowed that for many and enduring reasons, he valued the friendship of the States-General at a higher rate than that of any European Power, or all together. He assured them that he would maintain peace between them and his kingdom inviolate, and that none of his predecessors should equal him in the services he would render to the Republic.

He then recommended to them the interests of his sister and nephew. They met his suggestion by agreeing to take charge of his education, and by voting an allowance for the expenses of his household. They abrogated the Act by which he was excluded from the office of Stadtholder, and determined, it would seem, to gratify Charles in everything, alleged that this conclusion was carried by the importunity of the usurpers, and that now that the English republic was no more, they declared it void, as having ceased with that which gave effect to it. These concessions, perhaps expedient, and certainly warranted by the great services which William afterwards did his country, must have suggested to Charles that the Dutch would hereafter be very submissive to whatever he might please to enjoin on them. The Dutch, I imagine, were still smarting with the memories of what they had lost during the days of the Protector, and were willing to believe that better times were coming for them in the restoration of a prince, whom they had befriended and sheltered to their own serious loss.

But all the while Charles was dissembling with them. He was absolutely selfish, and entirely indifferent to those of his own countrymen who had ruined themselves on his behalf. He was less likely to care for the interests of those who, not being of his own race, had suffered on his account. And he had a keen memory for any slight or affront. Now in the days of his exile the Dutch had commented freely on his licentious and profligate habits, and even offended him by the contrast which their homely and decorous life was to his own. In the same way, Charles never forgave the Scotch for the discipline under which they put him while he was in Scotland, and when he came to the throne, persecuted and harried the sons of those who had laid down their lives for him at Dunbar and Worcester fights. There were men in the States-General who distrusted him for all his protestations, and one of them, when the Hollanders were voting the funds for defraying his expenses, said in a true spirit of prophecy that the money had better be laid out in cannon and powder, and other munitions of war.

In the year after the Restoration, Mary, the widow of William and mother of the young prince, died, when the boy was ten years old, making, by will, her brother Charles his guardian. The States were greatly alarmed at the risk that Charles might insist on the right thus conferred on him, and bring the boy up at the English court. But Charles had no mind for such liabilities, and though he pressed his nephew's claims in language which was very different from that which he had used at the Hague a year before, he spared the young Prince of Orange the irreparable injury of superintending his education, and of thereby making him totally unfit for all public or private duties whatsoever. In one particular, however, he followed the policy of the Protector whose memory he insulted. He raked up every charge he could discover or the Commonwealth could discover against the Republic from the affair of Amboyna down to the latest grievance, and insisted that the English merchants should enter upon the monopoly which the Dutch enjoyed.

When he married Catherine of Braganza, he demanded that the Dutch should abstain from maintaining their transatlantic settlements in the dominions or reputed dominions of the King of Portugal, and assured them that he would make his kinsman's cause his own. The Dutch who had maintained, and who thought they could still maintain the possessions of their West India Company, appear to have been so far influenced by these threats as to make a peace with the King of Portugal, under which they resigned Brazil for a large present payment, and for a licence to trade freely at all the Portuguese possessions in the two Indies.

They did everything to conciliate him. They handed over three of the late king's judges who had taken refuge at Amsterdam; though they knew that they were foredoomed, and showed an alacrity in the gratification of his wishes which must have made him feel no little contempt for them. Ultimately a peace and even an alliance was negotiated, which seemed to promise fairly for permanent friendship between the two peoples. The Dutch were indeed not a little alarmed at the French king insisting that they should ratify and guarantee the sale of Dunkirk, one of Cromwell's conquests, which Charles, to the infinite disgust of his people, had parted with to Louis, in consideration of a considerable sum of money, which was immediately squandered, as the Prodigal devoured his living, for any acquisition of France in the Netherlands was a matter of anxiety to the Republic. Still they yielded on this point too, and Charles graciously relinquished to them the guardianship and education of the young Prince of Orange, a duty which, fortunately, it was never his intention to undertake. Could he indeed have seen into the future, he would have insisted on this as the most important right which he could substantiate, and the English, who envied and hated Holland, would have gladly acquiesced in educating young William in the interest of themselves and the Stewarts.