Holland, v. 1 (of 2)

by Edmondo De Amicis

But it should be added that it is a continuous conquest.

To explain this fact,—to show how the existence of Holland, notwithstanding the great works of defence built by its inhabitants, still requires an incessant struggle fraught with perils,—it is sufficient to glance rapidly at the greatest changes of its physical history, beginning at the time when its people had reduced it to a habitable country.

Tradition tells of a great inundation of Friesland in the sixth century. From that period catastrophes are recorded in every gulf, in every island, one may say, in almost every town, of Holland. It is reckoned that through thirteen centuries one great inundation, besides smaller ones, has taken place every seven years, and, since the country is an extended plain, these inundations were very deluges. Toward the end of the thirteenth century the sea destroyed part of a very fertile peninsula near the mouth of the Ems and laid waste more than thirty villages. In the same century a series of marine inundations opened an immense gap in Northern Holland and formed the Gulf of the Zuyder Zee, killing about eighty thousand people. In 1421 a storm caused the Meuse to overflow, and in one night buried in its waters seventy-two villages and one hundred thousand inhabitants. In 1532 the sea broke the embankments of Zealand, destroyed a hundred villages, and buried for ever a vast tract of the country. In 1570 a tempest produced another inundation in Zealand and in the province of Utrecht; Amsterdam was inundated, and in Friesland twenty thousand people were drowned. Other great floods occurred in the seventeenth century; two terrible ones at the beginning and at the end of the eighteenth; one in 1825, which laid waste Northern Holland, Friesland, Over-Yssel, and Gelderland; another in 1855, when the Rhine, overflowing, flooded Gelderland and the province of Utrecht and submerged a large part of North Brabant. Besides these great catastrophes, there occurred in the different centuries innumerable others which would have been famous in other countries, but were scarcely noticed in Holland—such as the inundation of the large Lake of Haarlem caused by an invasion of the sea. Flourishing towns of the Zuyder Zee Gulf disappeared under water; the islands of Zealand were repeatedly covered by the sea and then again left dry; the villages on the coast from Helder to the mouths of the Meuse were frequently submerged and ruined; and in each of these inundations there was an immense loss of life of both man and beast. It is clear that miracles of courage, constancy, and industry must have been wrought by the Dutch people, first in creating, and then in preserving, such a country.

The enemy against which the Dutch had to defend their country was threefold—the sea, the rivers, and the lakes. The Dutch drained the lakes, drove back the sea, and imprisoned the rivers.

To drain the lakes they called the air to their aid. The lakes and marshes were surrounded with dykes, the dykes with canals and an army of windmills; these, putting the suction-pumps in motion, poured the waters into the canals, which conducted them into the rivers and to the sea. Thus vast areas of ground which were buried under water saw the light, and were transformed, as if by enchantment, into fertile plains covered with villages and traversed by roads and canals. In the seventeenth century, in less than forty years, twenty-six lakes were emptied. In Northern Holland alone at the beginning of this century more than six thousand hectares of land were delivered from the waters, in Southern Holland, before 1844, twenty-nine thousand hectares, and in the whole of Holland, from 1500 to 1858, three hundred and fifty-five thousand hectares. By the use of steam pumps instead of windmills, the great undertaking of draining the Lake of Haarlem was completed in thirty-nine months. This lake, which threatened the towns of Haarlem, Amsterdam, and Leyden with raging storms, was forty-four kilometers in circumference. At present the Hollanders are contemplating the prodigious enterprise of draining the Gulf of the Zuyder Zee, which covers a space of more than seven hundred square kilometers.

The rivers, another internal enemy of Holland, did not cost less fatigue or fewer sacrifices. Some, like the Rhine, which loses itself in the sand before reaching the ocean, had to be channelled and protected from the tide at their mouths by immense locks; others, like the Meuse, were flanked by large dykes, like those raised to force back the sea; others were turned from their channels. The wandering waters were gathered together, the course of the rivers was regulated, the streams were divided with rigorous precision, and sent in different directions to maintain the equilibrium of the enormous liquid mass,—for the smallest deviation might cause the submersion of whole provinces. In this manner all of the rivers, which originally wandered unrestrained, swamping and devastating the whole country, have been reduced to streams and have become the servants of man.

But the fiercest struggle of all was the battle with the ocean. Holland, as a whole, lies lower than the sea-level; consequently, wherever the coast is not defended by downs it had to be protected by embankments. If these huge bulwarks of earth, wood, and granite were not standing like monuments to witness to the courage and perseverance of the Dutch, it would be impossible to believe that the hand of man, even in the course of many centuries, could have completed such an immense work. In Zealand alone the dykes extend over an area of four hundred kilometers. The western coast of the island of Walcheren is protected by a dyke, the cost of whose construction and preservation put out at interest would, it is calculated, have amounted to a sum great enough to have paid for the building of the dyke of solid copper. Round the town of Helder, at the northern extremity of Northern Holland, there is a dyke made of blocks of Norwegian granite which is ten kilometers long and stretches sixty meters into the sea. The province of Friesland, which is eighty-eight kilometers long, is protected by three rows of enormous palisades sustained by blocks of Norwegian and German granite. Amsterdam, all the towns on the coast of the Zuyder Zee, and all the islands which have been formed by fragments of the land that has disappeared, forming a sort of circle between Friesland and Northern Holland, are protected by dykes. From the mouths of the Ems to the mouths of the Scheldt, Holland is an impenetrable fort, in whose immense bastions the mills are the towers, the locks the gates, the islands the advanced forts; of which, like a real fortress, it shows to its enemy, the sea, only the tips of its steeples and the roofs of its buildings, as though in derision or in challenge.

In truth, Holland is a fortress, and the Dutch live as though they were in a fort—always in arms against the sea. A host of engineers, dependent on the minister of the interior, is scattered throughout the land, disciplined like an army. These men are continually on the alert, watching over the waters of the interior, anticipating the rupture of the dykes, ordering and directing the works of defence. The expenses of this warfare are distributed: one part is paid by the state, the other by the provinces; every proprietor pays, besides the general imposts, a special tax on the dykes in proportion to the extent of his property and to its proximity to the waters. Any accidental breach, any carelessness, may cause a flood: the danger is ever present. The sentinels are at their posts on the ramparts, and at the first attack of the sea, give the war-cry, whereupon Holland sends out arms, materials, and money. And even when great battles are not in progress, a slow, noiseless struggle is ever going on. Innumerable windmills, even in the drained lakes, are continually working to exhaust the rain-water and the water that oozes from the earth, and to pump it into the canals. Every day the locks of the gulfs and rivers shut their gigantic doors in face of the high tide, which attempts to launch its billows into the heart of the country. Work is continually going on to reinforce any weakened dykes, to fortify the downs by cultivation, to throw up fresh embankments where the downs are low—works towering like immense spears brandished in the midst of the sea, ready to break the first onset of the waves. The sea thunders eternally at the doors of the rivers, ceaselessly lashes their banks, roars forth its eternal menace, raises the crests of its billows curious to behold the contested ground, heaps banks of sand before the doors to destroy the commerce of the cities it wishes to possess; wastes, rasps, and undermines the coasts, and, unable to overthrow the ramparts, against which its impotent waves break in angry foam, it casts ships laden with corpses at the feet of the rebellious country to testify to its fury and its strength.

Whilst this great struggle continues Holland is becoming transformed. A map of the country as it was eight centuries ago would not at first sight be recognized. The land is changed, the men are changed. The sea in some parts has driven back the coast; it has taken portions of the land from the continent, has abandoned and again retaken it; has reunited some of the islands to the continent by chains of sand, as in Zealand; has detached the borders of the continent and formed of them new islands, such as Wieringen; has withdrawn from some provinces, and has converted maritime cities into inland towns, as at Leeuwarden; it has changed vast plains into archipelagoes of a hundred isles, such as the Bies-Bosch; it has separated the city from the land, as at Dordrecht. New gulfs two leagues wide have been formed, such as the Gulf of Dollart; two provinces have been separated by a new sea—namely, North Holland and Friesland. Inundations have caused the level of the ground to be raised in some places, lowered in others; unfruitful soil has been fertilized by the sediment of the overflown rivers; fertile ground has been changed into deserts of sand. The transformations of the waters have given rise to a transformation of labor. Islands have been joined to the continent, as was the island of Ameland; whole provinces are being reduced to islands, as is the case with North Holland, which will be separated from South Holland by the new canal of Amsterdam; lakes as large as provinces have been made to disappear, like the Lake of Beemster. By the removal of the thick mud, land has been converted into lakes, and these lakes are again transformed into meadows. So the country changes, ordering and altering its aspect in accordance with the violence of the waters and the needs of man. As one glances over the latest map, he may be sure that in a few years, it will be useless, because at the moment he is studying it, there exist bays which will disappear little by little, tracts of land which are on the point of detaching themselves from the continent, and large canals which will open and carry life into uninhabited regions.

But Hollanders did more than defend themselves from the water; they became its masters. The water was their scourge; it became their defence. If a foreign army invades their territory, they open the dykes and loose the sea and the rivers, as they loosed them on the Romans, the Spanish, and the army of Louis XIV., and then defend the inland towns with their fleets. Water was their poverty; they have made it riches. The whole country is covered with a network of canals, which irrigate the land and are at the same time the highways of the people. The towns communicate with the sea by means of the canals; canals lead from town to town, binding the towns to the villages, and uniting the villages themselves, as they lie with their homesteads scattered over the plain. Smaller canals surround the farms, the meadows, and the kitchen-gardens, taking the place of walls and hedges; every house is a little port. Ships, barges, boats, and rafts sail through the villages, wind round the houses, and thread the country in all directions, just as carts and carriages do in other places.