The new French province was arbitrarily divided into departments. The old provincial names and frontiers were discontinued. Each little department was called after some river or brook which happened to flow through it. At its head came a prefect, invariably a Frenchman. A French governor-general resided in The Hague to exercise the supreme command.
Fortunately the first governor-general, the French General Lebrun, Duke of Plaisance, was a decent old man who did his best to make the sudden change from Hollander into Frenchman as little painful to the subject as possible. And his subjects, if they did not actually love the old gentleman, always treated him with respect and deference. But the same thing cannot be said of a majority of the French prefects. They were insolent adventurers who had fought their way up from among the ranks, but who had neither understanding nor affection for the despised Hollanders over whom they were called to rule.
A large French army came to Holland and French garrisons were placed in all of the more important cities. Churches and hospitals were hastily turned into barracks, and the soldiers made themselves entirely at home. French customs officers were placed in all the villages along the coast. They watched all harbours. A French soldier sailed on every fishing smack to prevent smuggling. The entire village was responsible for his safe return. French police spies made their entry into Dutch society and kept a control over all Dutch families. The French language was officially introduced into all schools, theatres, and newspapers. The universities, except the one in Leiden, were abolished or changed into secondary schools. What gradually made the French rule so unpopular, and what finally made it so universally hated, was not the introduction of an entirely new form of government. The political innovations were hailed by the thinking part of the nation with considerable joy. Foreign influence brought about improvements which the people themselves, with their age-old political prejudices, could not have instituted. It was not the ever-increasing severity of the taxes nor the unpleasant presence of a large French army which made the people regard Napoleon as the incarnation of Antichrist. The opposition to everything French began the moment Napoleon started to interfere with those undefinable parts of daily life which we call the national character, or, still shorter, the "nationality." Napoleon, himself an Italian ruling over Frenchmen, does not seem to have understood this sentiment at all. Under different circumstances he would just as happily have made his career in Russia or in China. His failures in every country date from the moment when he attacked the nationality of his enemies. The Dutch or the Spanish or the German child could be made to speak French in school, but the soldiers of the Emperor could not force the mother of the child to teach it French when first it began to prattle. The Dutch citizen could be forced to read a newspaper printed in French and to attend a church where the sermon was preached in French, but he could not be made to think in that language. Dutch nationality, driven violently from the public places, hid itself in the home, and there entrenched itself behind impregnable barriers. At home the nation suffered, and in the proscribed language talked of the future and the better times which must certainly follow. For when the year 1812 came the nation had reached a depth of misery so very low that things simply could not be worse. The most despondent pessimist by the very hopeless condition of affairs was turned into an optimist. Trade and commerce were gone; smuggling was impossible; factories stood empty and deserted; no dividends were paid. By imperial decree the national debt had been reduced to one third of its actual size. Families whose income had been three thousand guilders now received one thousand. Those who had had one thousand became paupers. One fourth of the people of Amsterdam were kept alive by public charities, until finally the charities themselves had no more to give, and had to go into bankruptcy. Another fourth of the population, while not absolutely dependent, received partial support. The other half of the people were obliged to give up everything that was not absolutely necessary for just simple existence. They dismissed their servants, they sold their horses, they refrained from buying books and articles of luxury.
Departure of Gardes d'Honneur from Amsterdam
Then came the sudden blow of the conscription. First of all, the young men of twenty-one years of age were taken into the army. Then the conscription was extended upward and downward. Finally, those who had celebrated their nineteenth birthday in the year 1788 were forced to take up arms. The few boys who drew a high lot and were free if they belonged to the higher classes were honoured with a patent of a sub-altern in his Majesty's personal bodyguard. If they were poor they were used for some extra duty, as hospital soldiers, or were enlisted under some flimsy pretext. In short, there was no way of escape. After a while there was not a family in the land, be it rich or poor, whose sons or brothers were not serving the Emperor in his armies, and in far-away countries were risking their lives for a cause as vile as any that has ever been fought for.
Came the year 1812 and the preparations for the expedition against Russia. Fifteen thousand Dutch troops were divided among the French armies as hussars, infantry, artillery, or engineers. They were not allowed to form one Dutch contingent for fear of possible mutiny. As a minor part of the enormous army of invasion they marched across the Russian plains. A few of the men managed to desert and to join the English troops or the irregular bands which were beginning to operate in Germany. The others were frozen to death or were killed in battle. The Fourth Dutch Hussars charged a Russian battery and was reduced to forty-six men. This was at the beginning of September. A month later the Third Grenadiers was decimated until only forty men were left. Of the four regiments of infantry of the line only one came back as such. The others, shot to pieces, reduced by cold and starvation, gradually wandered home as part of that endless stream of starving men who early in 1813 began to beg for bread along the roads of eastern Prussia. Of the Second Lancers only two men ever saw their fatherland again. The Thirty-third Light Infantry was practically annihilated, until only twenty-five men survived, and they as prisoners in Russia. Of two hundred Hollanders serving in the One Hundred and Twenty-fourth Infantry not a single one ever returned.
It was a terrible story, but it did not affect the Emperor. His answer to the catastrophe was a demand for more troops. The sailors were taken from the fleet. Young boys and old men were mustered into the army. Here and there Dutch farmers, first robbed of their money, then of their possessions, finally deprived of their sons, resisted, took pitchforks and killed a few gendarmes. Immediate reprisals followed. The culprits were stood against the nearest trees and shot, the sons were marched off to the army, and the farms were confiscated.
One hundred years ago, at the moment we are writing this chapter, on the 18th of November, 1813, old man Bluecher, cursing and swearing at the Corsican blackguard, whirled his cavalry against the left flank of the French army, smashed it to pieces, and changed Napoleon's victory of Leipzig into a defeat. After a week the first news of the Emperor's defeat reached the republic. Officially it was not announced until some months later. Even then it made little impression. The people were too dejected to rejoice. They had heard of such defeats before, and invariably the announcement had been followed by a masterstroke on the part of the terrible Emperor and a rehabilitation of his military prestige. Here and there in the universities and in the schools some teachers began to whisper that the days of slavery might be soon over. But nobody dared to listen. Only a fool or a college professor could believe in the final victory of the allies.