The Story of Nations - Holland/Chapter 35

The Dutch, as my reader remembers, had won their freedom from Spain. At one time there was good reason to believe that they would have won with their own, the freedom of the whole of those Netherlands, which had been, less than three centuries before, the collective inheritance of the house of Burgundy. Had the life of William the Silent been prolonged, it might have been the case that this great result would have happened, and that the first industrial Power in Europe would have been a series of federated republics and cities, in which true principles of government and a just regard for all national interests would have been maintained. Now I think there are few less profitable speculations than a discussion as to what would have happened had the life of this or that public man been prolonged. William was murdered by a hired assassin; but even before this crime was committed, the inveterate vice of the Netherlands - mutual jealousy and the want of political cohesion - left them an easy prey to the great and wicked men whom Philip sent against them. The Council of Blood destroyed all aspirants after national liberty, and all who were suspected of any leaning towards the Reformed faith. It is a mistake to say that persecution will not destroy a creed. If it be quite systematic and entirely unscrupulous it can utterly extinguish a creed. It did so with Protestantism in Flanders, France, Spain, Austria, and Bohemia. It did so with the Roman religion in Sweden, in Denmark, in much of North Germany. The Dutch and the Flemish nations were severed by the Inquisition, and the arts of diplomacy have been unable to unite them.

Now there are three European nations which have always been at variance, at least as long as one of them was in fighting trim, and since that time the remaining two have been perpetually quarrelling. The three were France, Spain, and the German Empire, the last for a time identified with the house of Austria, and within our own experience with that of Prussia. For a long time the struggle was principally between France and Spain, till, in the end, Spain was entirely exhausted, and became of little account in the councils of Europe. Then all the efforts of France, and all the military purposes of her kings and rulers, were devoted towards crippling the house of Austria. Later on, and quite recently, France tried conclusions with a new German power, and was considerably surprised at the result. It is not easy to say whether, in these later days, her old passion for an enlarged frontier has passed away, and she is prepared to accept the present situation.

Now it will be remembered that at the Treaty of Utrecht, which purported to go on the same lines with the famous Peace of Munster or Westphalia, the boundaries of the several European states were generally settled. Some changes, to be sure, were made, one of which was of great significance to Holland. The Spanish Netherlands were transferred to Austria, and a country which France always eagerly coveted was given to a sovereign who had enough to do to hold his own in Germany, and would find it difficult to defend his new acquisition. France had already, as the Dutch too well knew, got a foothold in the Netherlands by the acquisition of Dunkirk, and had winked at or encouraged its becoming a nest of pirates. The demolition of the fortifications of Dunkirk was a capital point in the negotiations for a peace. The Dutch were supposed to be defended by a series of forts in Flemish territory, called barrier towns, which they garrisoned. But on the west, for all this, they had the French nation, always eager to extend its frontier on the east, at the expense of Austria, and on the cast they had the Prussian kingdom, which at a time, when the opinion was current that kings succeeded by inheritance to nations, just as though they were cows or sheep, claimed in a vague way the succession to the stadtholder's office, though for a time the Prussian ruler had been put off with a compensation.

Now the Emperor of Germany, of the house of Austria, Charles VI., was the person on whose behalf the English and Dutch had waged the war of the Spanish succession from the year 1702 till the year 1713. In 1711 he became Emperor of Germany on the unexpected death of his brother Joseph, who left behind him daughters, his only son having died. Charles had a son who died young, and a daughter, Maria Theresa, who married Francis of Lorraine and afterwards of Tuscany. Every effort was made by the emperor to get the various European Powers to acknowledge what goes in history by the name of the Pragmatic Sanction, a decree of the emperor under which the Austrian inheritance was declared to descend to the females of his line. One by one, and for this or that reason, the several Powers agreed to abide by this new line of succession, the commonest plea, one by the way which the French Government put prominently forward, being that such a line of policy would preserve that balance of power in Europe, which it was the object of the great treaties to affirm and maintain.

Among the nations which agreed to accept and support the Pragmatic Sanction was the Dutch. Charles, as I have already said, approached them on their weak side, the Ostend Company, and agreed to suppress it, as the price of their acquiescence in his favourite project. Here then were the Hollanders, who had been successfully resisting the dynastic claims of the house of Orange against themselves, agreeing to a new departure in Germany, and willing to risk their lives, their trade, and their wealth in a family arrangement from which they could get no possible benefit whatever. It is not, I think, too much to say, that had the Dutch stood entirely aloof in the war of the Austrian succession, and not suffered themselves to be embroiled in it, the Republic would have been saved, and though it might not have been possible to have resisted revolutionary France, it would not have collapsed so ignominiously as it did. During the disputes about the slave trade with the Spanish colonies, Holland had contrived to preserve her neutrality, though Dutch interests were so universal that no two nations could quarrel without Amsterdam suffering some heavy pecuniary loss.

One of the German princes, the Elector of Bavaria, had persistently refused to accept the Pragmatic Sanction. He had some reason on his side, for he had married a daughter of the Emperor Joseph, elder brother of Charles VI., and if female claims were to be admitted, had, from a modern point of view, a better claim than his wife's cousin possessed. He became emperor under the title of Charles VII., but only reigned three years. Charles VI. died in October 1740, and his successor was elected two years afterwards.

Now every one who has read German history, and in particular that of the house of Prussia, knows that just about the time that Charles VI. died there succeeded to the Prussian throne a king who is called Frederic the Great, perhaps because he broke his word about the succession of Maria Theresa, and took advantage of her defenceless condition to lay waste and annex part of her dominions. The story of how gallantly the Queen of Hungary defended herself, and how Frederic had to suffer a good many reverses before he could actually get secure possession of what he coveted, is told in the histories, and does not concern us. Holland, which had a good deal to lose and nothing to gain, kept its word, however unwisely it was given; and agreed to find the queen a force of 20,000 men, though some of the States remonstrated, because the Austrian Government had not extinguished the Ostend Company. But Holland was dragged into the struggle, and in the end suffered more than any of the combatants, for she lost her liberty, surrendering it to an hereditary stadtholder, and came out of the war simply crippled by debt.

The King of England eagerly took the part of the Austrian queen. The French Government took the side of the King of Prussia. But the war was one of cross purposes. England engaged with France, but did not attack Prussia, and Maria Theresa fought against Bavaria and Prussia. The 'English won the battle of Dettingen, and the French supplied Charles Edward, known as the young Pretender, with means for invading England. Then when Charles VII. died at the beginning of the year 1745, and the husband of Maria Theresa was elected emperor, a peace was patched up with Prussia, and England and Holland were left to carry on the war with France. The war was transferred to the Netherlands, and one after the other the French army captured the Flemish towns. In May, 1745, occurred the battle of Fontenoy, in which the French gained a victory, and the Dutch suffered severely. Loss soon followed upon loss, and the Dutch became eager for peace, the more so as the original reason for which war was undertaken had ceased to operate, since the Queen of Hungary had become Empress of Germany. But though the Dutch desired peace the English desired war, and George of England wished to thrust his son-in-law into an hereditary position. In 1747 Holland was invaded, and scenes like those of 1672 was threatened. The Orange party, always most active in the midst of national disaster, insisted on William IV. being made Stadtholder. Zeland proclaimed him, and soon the whole seven provinces elected him. Advantage was taken of the situation to propose that his office should be made hereditary, and this proposal was accepted.

Holland now ceased to be a republic in anything but name. The States were still High Mightinesses, and, as far as phrases went, were still the powers which had carried the little State through all her perils, and made her friendship of account at every European Court. But all the magistrates wielded was taken away, and transferred to the Stadtholder, who with the functions of royalty, took upon him no little of its state and emblems. The debt and taxation of Holland were enormous and crushing. The Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle was signed in October, 1748, and Holland was left exhausted. The Dutch Republic was at an end.

To my mind the struggle of the Hollanders for their liberties is as instructive, as heroic, and as important as that of Athens against Persia, and vastly more prolonged. The issue of the strife was of the most profound significance to Europe. It successfully contravened the divine right of kings, and as successfully vindicated the principle that the creed of a nation, and next of individuals, is a matter of their own choice and their own conscience. To me, whenever I visit it, the Square of the Binnenhof at the Hague is the holiest spot in modern Europe, for here the great deliverance was wrought out. But there still remains the sequel of the story, which must be briefly told.