NETHERLANDS (HISTORY.] 



179 



to !H> to incorporate Holland altogether with the 

 French empire. This measure, long meditated, was 

 accomplished in 1806. The brother of the emperor, 

 Louis Napoleon, received possession of Holland 

 as a sovereign kingdom, and, June 5, 1806, he 

 was proclaimed king of Holland. By the treaty 

 made with France, (May 24,) it was stipulated, 

 that Louis Napoleon should be hereditary, con- 

 stitutional king of Holland, and that the throne 

 should be secured to his lawful male posterity, with 

 a provision that the crowns of France and Holland 

 should never be united. The king remained heredi- 

 tary constable of France, and, with all his children, 

 subject to the French imperial family statute. In 

 Holland, he possessed, without limitation, the execu- 

 tive power, tiie right of appointing to civil and mili- 

 tary offices, the right of pardoning, and the exclusive 

 government of the colonies. A council of state was 

 also constituted, of thirteen members, among whom 

 were four ministers of slate. The legislative body 

 consisted of thirty members, and it was provided that 

 this body should be increased in proportion to the 

 extension of the territory of the state. But Holland 

 was equally unfortunate as a kingdom. It was 

 excluded from the commercial privileges of France, 

 though it had to follow all the wars of Napoleon. 

 The national debt was augmented to 1,200,000,000 

 guilders. The only means by which the merchant 

 could obtain a supj. ort was the smuggling trade with 

 England. Almost all the sources of former pros- 

 perity were obstructed ; and, when Napoleon's 

 decree of November 11, 1807, was promulgated 

 from Milan, and the tariff of Trianon, with all its 

 terrible consequences, went into operation, the trade 

 of Holland was totally ruined. In 1807, East Fries- 

 land and Jever were annexed to it, but it was obliged 

 to cede, in return, the territory situated between the 

 French frontier and the Meuse, together with a part 

 of Zeeland, and the fortresses Bergen-op-Zoom, 

 Breda, Hertogenbosch (Bois-le-Duc), Gertruiden- 

 burg, Middleburg, and Flushing. The war against 

 Austria, in 1809, gave rise to the descent of the 

 English on Zeeland (Walcheren), which only ac- 

 celerated Holland's ruin. The country, at the same 

 time, experienced some great calamities. In January, 



1809, the whole tract from Emmericht to Dortrecht 

 and Rotterdam, upwards of 1000 square miles, was 

 overflowed ; more than 300 men lost their lives in 

 the floods ; and several thousand head of cattle, 

 many houses and mills, even whole villages, were 

 swept away. The exertions of the good but weak 

 king, to alleviate the general distress, were of little 

 avail, particularly after the landing of the English, as 

 he lost the friendship of his brother. The misunder- 

 standing increased, and the treaty of Paris, of March 

 16, 1810, delayed the last blow but for a few weeks. 

 Louis, not to involve the country in his personal diffi- 

 culties, or produce a war with France, the conse- 

 quents of which could easily be foreseen, volun- 

 tarily and unexpectedly abdicated the crown, in 

 favour of his eldest son, a minor, July 1, 1810, and 

 withdrew into the Austrian territory, as a private 

 individual. Napoleon did not, however, sanction his 

 brother's measures. July 4, French troops occupied 

 Amsterdam, and, by the imperial decree of July 10, 



1810, Holland was incorporated with the French 

 empire ; Amsterdam declared the third city of the 

 empire ; and six senators, six deputies in the council 

 of state, two judges in the court of cassation, and 

 twenty-five deputies in the legislative body, were 

 assigned to Holland. The army and navy, both 

 officers and soldiers, were received into the imperial 

 service ; and the arch-treasurer of the empire, the 

 duke of Piacenza (Le Brun), became the emperor's 

 representative in Amsterdam, and governed the 



country till January I, 1811, when the whole con- 

 stitution was to be modelled on the French. The 

 Dutch departments, which had already been formed 

 in the time of the kingdom, now constituted two 

 military divisions ; the conscription was introduced ; 

 and half of the forces levied were destined for the 

 army, half for the navy. III. Till 1815, or till the 

 Union of the Netherlands, under the House of 



Orange Thus all the. seventeen provinces of the 



Netherlands were united under the dominion of 

 France. But this state of things continued only 

 till the end of 1813. Napoleon's defeat at Leipsic 

 produced a change in the fate of Belgium and Hol- 

 land ; the armies of the alii ;s advanced against 

 France; a combined Prussian and Russian force, 

 under general Billow, was sent against the Nether- 

 lands, and was joined by a detachment from England, 

 under general Graham. November 20, 1813, general 

 Biilow issued a proclamation, calling upon the Dutch 

 to join the allies against the French. On the 18lh 

 of this month, Gysbrecht Charles van Hogendorp, 

 a moderate adherent of the old Orange party, had 

 secretly assembled in his house some of the members 

 of the old government, who, in 1788 95, had 

 managed the helm of state, and endeavoured to 

 persuade them to constitute themselves provisionally 

 as the states-general ; but they did not dare engage 

 in the undertaking. Hogendorp next invited those 

 who had held the reins of state in 1786 and 1787, 

 and after 1795, and who, though formerly anti- 

 Orange, would gladly have acceded to the old re- 

 publican Orange system, had they not been rendered 

 distrustful by their exclusion from the first meeting. 

 After two unsuccessful attempts, the seventeen first 

 confederates (among whom the most distinguished 

 were the count Limburg-Styrum ; the lords Van 

 Perponcher, Fagel, and Changuion ; the generals 

 Sweerts, Van Lamias , and De Jonge ; professor 

 Kemper and the advocate Fannius Scliolten) ap- 

 pointed from their body Gysbrecht van Hogendorp 

 and baron Van der Duyn van Maasdam, a man of 

 liberal principles, as a provisory government, to 

 preserve the revived republic, till the prince of 

 Orange should arrive from England, whither Van 

 Perponcher and Fagel were despatched (November 

 19) to invite him over. The duumvirate exerted 

 themselves to the utmost to accomplish this design. 

 They sent messengers to the headquarters of general 

 Biilow, at Minister, and to Frankfort on the Maine, 

 to the allied monarch?, who immediately resolved to 

 aid the attempt of the Dutch. Kemper and Scliolten 

 were sent as commissioners to induce Amsterdam to 

 declare itself publicly ; but, owing to the proximity 

 of the French headquarters, under general Molitor, 

 at Utrecht, this could not be effected ; but they re- 

 ceived, nevertheless, the strongest assurances of at- 

 tachment to the house of Orange. The hereditary 

 stadtholder arrived at the Hague November 30, 

 where, after spending a day, lie proceeded, in 

 December, to Amsterdam. The commissioners 

 of the duumvirate (Kemper and F. Scliolten) had, 

 as it is thought, of their own motion, issued 

 a proclamation, ending with the declaration, 

 "The Netherlands are free, and William I. is 

 the sovereign prince of this free country." The 

 prince, however, accepted the nomination only on 

 condition that his power should be restrained by a 

 constitution, which (these were his words) " should 

 guarantee the privileges and liberties of the people, 

 and secure them from every encroachment." A 

 board of fourteen members, among whom were the 

 former duumvirate, was intrusted with the framing 

 of this constitution, which, however, did not wholly 

 answer the expectations of unprejudiced nnd in- 

 telligent patriots. More than a third of it was 



