744 



HOLLAND 



were welcomed by the so-called patriots of the 

 United Provinces, and William V. and his family 

 (January 1795) were obliged to escape from Sche- 

 veningen to England in a fishing-smack, and the 

 French rule began. The United Provinces now be- 

 came the Batavian Republic, paying eight and a 

 half millions sterling for a French army of 25,000 

 men, besides giving up important parts of the 

 country along the Belgian frontier. After several 

 changes Louis Bonaparte, 5th June 1806, was 

 appointed king of Holland, but, four years later, 

 was obliged to resign because he refused to be a 

 mere tool in the hands of the French emperor. 

 Holland was then added to the empire, and formed 

 into seven departments. The fall of Napoleon I. 

 and the dismemberment of the French empire led 

 to the recall of the Orange family and the forma- 

 tion of the southern and northern provinces into 

 the ill-managed kingdom of the Netherlands, 

 which in 1830 was broken up by the secession of 

 Belgium (q.v.). In 1839 peace was finally concluded 

 with Belgium ; but almost immediately after 

 national discontent with the government showed 

 itself, and William I. in 1840 abdicated in favour 

 of his son. Holland being moved by the revolu- 

 tionary fever of 1848, King William II. granted a 

 new constitution, according to which new chambers 

 were chosen, but they had scarcely met when he 

 died, March 1849, and William III. (born 1817) 

 ascended the throne. 



The bill for the emancipation of the slaves in the 

 Dutch West Indian possessions, passed in 1862, 

 decreed a compensation for each slave, and came 

 into force in 1863. The expenses of this emancipa- 

 tion came to 1,065,366, and the number of slaves 

 set free was about 42,000, of whom 35,000 Avere in 

 Dutch Guiana. 



In 1863 the naval powers bought up the right 

 of the king of Holland to levy toll on vessels 

 navigating the river Scheldt (q.v.), the king of 

 Belgium binding himself also to reduce the liar- 

 hour, pilot, and other charges on shipping within 

 that kingdom. In 1868 the Luxemburg (q.v.) 

 question was settled in a manner satisfactory to 

 Holland. Next year capital punishment was 

 abolished. In 1872 a new treaty with England, 

 defining and limiting the sphere of influence and 

 action of Britain and Holland in the Indian 

 Archipelago, and removing the restrictions of the 

 treaty of 1824 as to Sumatra, was followed by a 

 war with Atcheen, until then an independent 

 Malay state in North Sumatra (see ATCHEEN), a 

 war that severely taxed the military and financial 

 resources of the Dutch-Indian government, and is 

 still carried on, in a modified form, the so-called 

 conquest of 1873-75 notwithstanding. William III. 

 having no living male issue, the succession to the 

 crown was vested in the Princess of Orange, Wil- 

 helmina, the only child of the king's second mar- 

 riage, born in 1880. For many years the great 

 question of internal politics was the new consti- 

 tution, which, promulgated November 30, 1887, 

 increased the electorate of Holland by no less than 

 200,000 voters. A revision of the school-laws in a 

 sectarian sense was carried in 1889. In 1888 the 

 queen, Emma of Waldeck, had been appointed 

 regent in the event of the king's demise; and on 

 the death of the king (23d November 1890), when 

 Luxemburg ceased to be connected with the crown 

 of Holland, the Princess Wilhelmina became queen. 



Language and Literature. Dutch is an essential 

 link in the chain of Teutonic languages, a wonder- 

 ful storehouse of old and expressive Germanic words 

 and phrases. It has been said that Old English is 

 Dutch, and to no other nation is the study of the 

 Netherlandish more interesting than to the Eng- 

 lish. Without a knowledge of Dutch it is almost 

 impossible to properly understand the historical 



development of English. It is a common mistake 

 to suppose that Dutch is merely a German dialect. 

 As a language it has existed as long as German, 

 and passed through the same series of evolutions. 

 It possesses many affinities with German, because, 

 like Frisian, Danish, &c. , it sprang from the common 

 Teutonic stock ( see DUTCH ; and for the relation 

 of Dutch and Low German to High German, see 

 GERMANY, Vol. V. p. 186) ; but between modern 

 High German and modern Dutch there is less simi- 

 larity in vocabulary than between modern English 

 and modern Netherlandish, although the pronuncia- 

 tion differs much more in the latter case. Three 

 great periods of development must be distin- 

 guished in the Netherlandish language, as in 

 the German ; the first was the period of inception, 

 or of Old Netherlandish, when doubtless various 

 Teutonic dialects existed among the tribes and 

 peoples that had penetrated westward from the 

 Elbe and the Oder. A curious relic of this ancient 

 Netherlandish exists in a fragmentary translation 

 of the Psalrns, dating from the 9th century. It 

 does not seem to belong to any one language,' but 

 looks like an attempt at combining the dialects 

 then existing. The second period comprises the 

 Middle Netherlandish, which developed soon after 

 the llth century, and became the popular tongue 

 of a very considerable area, spreading far beyond 

 the Rhine in the east, and covering not only the 

 greater part of Belgium, as it now exists, but also 

 the northern portions of France, where Old Dutch 

 persists to this very day in the villages, with the 

 wondrous tenacity of popular tongues. The second 

 period is rich in fabliaux and romances of chivalrv, 

 but these were nearly all of foreign origin, mostly 

 French and some English. Among them we name 

 Ferguut, Roman van Lancelot, Walewein, Floris 

 en Blancefloer, all republished of late, but not 

 easily understood without a dictionary of Middle 

 Netherlandish. Reinaert ( see REYNAKD THE Fox ) 

 is a truly national epic of considerable importance. 

 But the most prominent representatives of Middle 

 Netherlandish literature are Jakob van Maerlant 

 (13th century) and Jan Boendale (14th century). 

 The former was the author of the famous Spieghel 

 Historiael ; the latter wrote didactic poems, the 

 best known of which is Der Leken Spieghel. To 

 this period also belong Jan van Heelu's descrip- 

 tion of the battle of Woeringen and Melis Stoke's 

 chronicles of Holland. 



The origin of new Netherlandish or Dutch is to 

 be found with the Rederijkers, whose rise can be 

 traced to the commencement of the 15th century. 

 They were mainly lovers of letters and the theatri- 

 cal art, banded together in Kamers, ' chambers,' or 

 clubs, for the purpose of study and mental recrea- 

 tion. In the course of time, when the troubles 

 with Spain arose, these clubs no doubt also became 

 centres of political agitation, and this led to their 

 suppression in the southern provinces ; but in the 

 north, as soon as political freedom had been at- 

 tained, they developed into literary associations of 

 considerable importance. The most famous was 

 the ' chamber ' called In Liefde Bloeijende ( ' thriv- 

 ing in love') at Amsterdam, to which Coornhert 

 (1522-90), Spiegel (1549-1612), and Roemer Vis- 

 scher (1547-1620) belonged, the latter a literary 

 merchant, and the father of two ladies who be- 

 came celebrated for their learning amongst the men 

 of letters of that period. Coornhert, Spiegel, and 

 Visscher in 1584 caused a Dutch grammar to be 

 published, and this may be called the foundation- 

 stone of modern Netherlandish. Hooft ( 1581-1647 ) 

 was the first to recognise the worth of his mother- 

 tongue and to write a classical Dutch in which 

 he strove to eliminate as much as possible all 

 foreign elements, although a great admirer of 

 classical lore and foreign literature, especially 



