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WILLIAM I. (OF NETHERLANDS.) 



king of the Catti, so that he retained his former 

 title of elector; and, having received several addi- 

 tions to his territory, he called himself also grand 

 duke of Fulda and prince of Isenburg. He would 

 not acknowledge the validity of the sale of the 

 crown domains, which had been made under Je- 

 rome, and took them away from the buyers. This 

 fact, the crying injustice of which was admitted by 

 Piussia and Austria, is mentioned in the article 

 Domain. The assemblies of the estates, to which 

 he had added the estate of peasants, gave him much 

 trouble, as the ground assumed by them did not 

 agree with his antiquated notions of the rights of 

 the crown. Towards his officers he was avaricious 

 and severe. His soldiers received little pay and 

 much drilling and flogging. He refused to separate 

 the public treasury from his enormous private ac- 

 cumulations. His conduct towards individuals 

 who had been in office under the Westphalian 

 government was unprincipled. On the other hand, 

 he must be admitted to have been careful to pre- 

 vent his officers from abusing their authority. He 

 was accessible to his subjects, and protected justice 

 when it did not clash with his interests, or unless 

 he had formed wrong notions of what was right. 

 He died in 1820, and was succeeded by his only 

 son, the elector William II. 



WILLIAM I. (WILLIAM FREDERICK OF OR- 

 ANGE), king of the Netherlands and grand duke of 

 Luxemburg, was born Aug. 24, 1772. His father, 

 William V., prince of Orange and Nassau, heredi- 

 tary stadtholder, who died in 1806, at Brunswick, 

 was descended from John, the youngest brother of 

 the great William I. of Orange ; his mother was a 

 princess of Prussia. In 1788, he made a tour in 

 Germany, and remained for some time in Berlin, at 

 the court of his uncle, king Frederick William II. 

 In 1790, he entered the university of Leyden. In 

 1791, he married the Prussian princess Frederica 

 Louisa Wilhelmina, sister of the present king of 

 Prussia. He then undertook many improvements 

 in the army, but suffered much opposition from the 

 patriots, who had been put down, in 1787, by 

 Prussian troops. Part of them had fled to France ; 

 and the national convention declared war against 

 the stadtholder, Feb. 1, 1793. Dumouriez con- 

 quered Dutch Brabant ; but the prince, the subject 

 of this article, delivered it, by the aid of the troops 

 of the allies, after the victory at Neenvinden, 

 March 18, gained by prince Coburg, in the Austrian 

 service, over Dumouriez. The crown prince now 

 prevented the French from entering Western Flan- 

 ders. But, September 13, he was attacked in his 

 position between Menin and Werwick, with such 

 superior force that he was obliged to retreat behind 

 the Scheldt, after a long resistance, in which his 

 brother, prince Frederick, was wounded. The 

 next year, he took Landrecies. He then forced 

 the enemy to retire behind the Sambre ; but, in 

 the great battle on June 26, in which he had been 

 successful at the head of the right wing, he was 

 obliged to retreat, after the French had taken 

 Charleroi by assault, and beaten the left wing at 

 Fleurus. The Austrian forces having retreated, 

 before Pichegru and Jourdan, behind the Meuse, 

 the prince, with his enfeebled army, could only 

 protect the frontiers of the republic, in unison with 

 the duke of York. But the fortresses were re- 

 duced, and the ice enabled the enemy to pass the 

 Waal, so that Pichegru entered Utrecht, Jan. 17, 

 1795. The party of the patriots favoured the enemy, 

 and the stadtholder soon found himself incapable of 



saving the republic, forsaken by her allies. His 

 sons, therefore, gave up their commands, Jan. 16, 

 and William V. embarked, on the 18th and 19th, 

 with his family, at Scheveningen, in nineteen poor 

 fishing vessels, for England. Hampton court was 

 assigned as a residence to the exiled family ; but 

 the two sons soon returned to the continent, in or 

 der to arm a body of Dutch emigrants at the ex- 

 pense of England, which body, however, lifter the 

 peace of Basle, was again dissolved. Prince Fre- 

 deric entered the Austrian service, and died at 

 Padua, in 1799. The subject of this article went 

 with his family to Berlin, where he expected a fa- 

 vourable change from the influence of Prussia, then 

 on friendly terms with France. He occupied him- 

 self with the education of his children, the cultiva- 

 tion of science, and the improvement of some es- 

 tates which he had bought in Poland, and on which 

 he immediately abolished bondage. His father had 

 ceded to him the places which the diet had as- 

 signed him in Germany by way of indemnification, 

 namely, Fulda, Corvey, Dortmund, &c., August 

 29, 1802, and he took possession of them in the 

 same year. He lived at Fulda, but spent part oi 

 the winter in Berlin. Living himself in the most 

 economical manner, he established in his new pos- 

 sessions an economical administration, and reformed 

 numerous abuses. His impartial treatment of all 

 his subjects, of whatever religion, gained him the 

 hearts of all. After the death of his father, he 

 took possession of the lands of Nassau belonging 

 to his family. But, having refused to become a 

 member of the confederacy of the Rhine, he lost the 

 sovereignty over the lands of Orange, which were di- 

 vided between his relations of Nassau-Usingen and 

 Nassau- Weilburg, and Murat, grand duke of Berg 

 He was also threatened with the loss of Fulda if he 

 should continue to decline joining the confedera- 

 tion ; but in case he should join, he was to be reward- 

 ed by the grant of Wiirtzburg. But he declared 

 that he would not dishonour the name of Orange 

 by bending his neck to a foreign master. In August, 

 1806, he went to Berlin, where, as commander of a 

 Prussian regiment and lieutenant-general, he sub- 

 sequently received the command of a part of the 

 right wing of the Prussian army between Magde- 

 burg and Erfurt. After the battle of Jena, he was 

 obliged to follow field-marshal Mcillendorf to Er- 

 furt, and became a prisoner when Mollendorf ca- 

 pitulated. He was, however, permitted to live 

 with his wife in Prussia. But Napoleon declared 

 him, the elector of Hessia, and the duke of Bruns- 

 wick, to have forfeited their dominions: and Fulda 

 took the oath of allegiance to the emperor, October 

 27. Corvey, Dortmund and the county of Spiegel- 

 berg, were given, in 1807, to the kingdom of West- 

 phalia and the grand-duchy of Berg. His domains, 

 even those reserved to him by the act of confeder- 

 ation, were taken by Berg and Wiirtemberg ; but 

 Bavaria did not follow their example, and the other 

 princes promised to pay him the surplus revenue of 

 the lands. He had gone in the meantime, to Dant- 

 zic. whence he proceeded to Pillau. In the peace 

 of Tilsit, he was not mentioned. He retained only 

 his possessions in the duchy of Warsaw, and again 

 lived privately in Berlin, where his eldest son was 

 educated in the military academy. When Austria 

 was engaged in war with France, in 1809, the un- 

 fortunate prince joined the army of the archduke 

 Charles, and fought at the battle of Wagram. He 

 then returned to Berlin. In the meantime, parti- 

 cularly, however, after the battle of Leipsic, influ- 



