The ascendancy of France, 1598-1715

by Henry Offley Wakeman

John de Witt.

Called at the age of twenty-eight to the post of first minister of Holland, John de Witt brought to his task qualities of mind and character singularly fitted to the part he had to play. In him the virtues of Dutch republicanism shone pre-eminent. Homely and frugal in life, straightforward in policy, patient in temper, dignified in manner, persevering in action, no reverse could daunt his spirit, no success destroy his self-control. To the somewhat phlegmatic temper of the Dutch character de Witt added also the finer qualities of the Latin races. Shrewd foresight, quick inventiveness, ready adaptation of means to the end marked his management of foreign affairs. He was the only diplomatist of Europe whose fertility of resource completely out-generalled Louis XIV., whose steadfastness of purpose completely baffled the shiftiness of Charles II. Winning persuasiveness of speech adorned with rich eloquence of phrase gave him perfect mastery over the assemblies whom it was his business to lead. But the dominant note in his character and policy was his staunch almost fanatical belief in republican principles. Republicanism to him was the whole of patriotism, and almost half of religion. His own father, Jacob de Witt, had been one of the deputies imprisoned by William II. during his abortive attempt to make himself king. His opposition to the House of Orange. John de Witt never forgot the dull horror of those anxious days, when each hour as it sped seemed to be tolling the knell at once of his father’s life and of his country’s liberty. From that moment the ambition of the House of Orange seemed to him to be as great a danger to his country as the aggressiveness of France or the rivalry of England. To keep down the national sentiment in favour of the young prince, to resist his hereditary claim to the stadtholderate and the command of the forces, to strengthen the hold of the estates of Holland over the government became the keynotes of his home policy, measures which he considered as essential to the well-being of his country as the maintenance of a barrier between France and the Scheldt.

The infancy of the young prince, and the consequent victory of republican principles in the great assembly of 1651, made the danger from the House of Orange for the time imperceptible. When John de Witt became Grand Pensionary of Holland in 1653, the safety of the republic was threatened not by civil dissension but by foreign conquest. Quarrel between the United Provinces and England. With the restoration of order in England by the defeat of the king in the civil war had naturally come a considerable increase in commercial enterprise, and the Dutch traders became once more sensible of English rivalry and opposition in every part of the globe. To this natural rivalry gradually became added special causes of disagreement. During the interval between the defeat of the king and the reduction of the English possessions in the West Indies by the Parliament, the loyal colonists had preferred to trade with a foreign power whose chief was closely related to their king, rather than with the rebels of their own country who had imprisoned him. Consequently the Dutch had succeeded in withdrawing from English merchants the bulk of their American trade. To settle this matter and some others the Parliament sent to the Hague in May 1649 an envoy, Dr. Dorislaus, who had been one of the late king’s judges. While he was at the Hague in the character of ambassador, he was murdered by some of Montrose’s men by way of reprisal for the death of Charles I. In extreme anger at this insult St. John was sent in 1651 to demand from the estates general the expulsion of prince Charles and his adherents, and their consent to the union of the two republics under a common government, which should have its seat in England. The Act of Navigation, 1651. The estates general naturally refused to surrender on demand the independence which they had fought so hard to win, and in August 1651 the English Parliament passed the Act of Navigation which was in reality the signal for war. By this famous act the policy was first enunciated which was to govern the relations of the great maritime powers to their colonies for a century and a half, the policy namely which regarded colonies as the mere feeders of the mother country. It enacted that foreign ships might only import into England the products of the countries to which they belonged. War with England, 1651–1654. It was directed obviously against the Dutch, who were at that time the great carriers of the world, and was intended not only to destroy the trade of the Dutch with the English colonies, but also to enable the English ships to wrest the bulk of the carrying trade from their hands. War at once broke out, in which the genius of Blake and the superior guns of the English fleets triumphed over the tenacity of Tromp and the valour of Opdam. The Dutch merchant shipping was shut up behind the Texel. The English remained masters of the sea. Even the Portuguese dared to seize Brazil, while at home the people, deprived of their trade, and unable to fish, were beginning to suffer severely. De Witt saw the necessity of making peace. Cromwell, who had now succeeded to the chief power in England, proved an easier taskmaster than the Parliament had been. He was willing to leave the United Provinces their independence, but he exacted their consent to the Act of Navigation, and their acknowledgment of the superiority of the English flag. The Act of Exclusion, 1654. Sharing with de Witt his dislike to the House of Orange, whom he looked upon as the chief supporters of the Stuart cause in Europe, he insisted on the perpetual exclusion of that house from the stadtholderate by the estates of Holland, as a necessary preliminary to peace. After protracted negotiations a treaty was at last signed on this basis in 1654.

Continued rivalry with England, 1654–1665.

John de Witt had thus succeeded in saving his country from destruction and in dealing his chief enemy a serious blow at the same time. To do away with the rivalry of the two nations, and to make the Dutch forget that a foreign power had compelled them to do injustice to a family which had served them with singular loyalty was beyond his power. The war ceased but the causes of the war remained. Each country was ready to continue the struggle when a fitting opportunity presented itself, but as long as the Commonwealth existed in England an identity of interest between the two governments served to keep things quiet. The English Restoration in May 1660 altered these relations, and so far strengthened the partisans of the House of Orange as to enable them to demand and gain the revocation of the Act of Exclusion by the estates of Holland in September 1660. The accession of Louis XIV. to power in 1661 further weakened the republican party by placing at the head of the councils of Europe one who regarded all republics with aversion, and looked upon ‘messieurs les marchands’ his neighbours with a contempt which was born of envy. Every month tidings came to the English government of some fresh defeat of the East India Company by its Dutch rival, of some new indignity inflicted on English sailors. Even the slave trade to Barbadoes had passed into Dutch hands. The time seemed to have arrived when it was necessary to make reprisals. In 1664 a piratical fleet was sent with the cognisance of the English government to the Guinea coast, which captured several Dutch ships and drove out the Dutch settlers from Goree and other places. In the same year a similar expedition to America seized New Amsterdam, which Charles unblushingly accepted and made over to his brother James, from whom it took its better known name of New York. Second war with England, 1665–1667. After this war was inevitable, and in March 1665 it was formally declared. The Dutch had profited by the experience of the late struggle; their ships were now better manned and their guns of heavier calibre. Only in seamanship did the English have the superiority, but that sovereign quality could not fail to make itself felt. Gradually, after heroic struggles, the Dutch were beaten back. On June 3d, 1665, Opdam was defeated and killed off Lowestoft. A year later in the terrible four days’ battle in the Downs Ruyter and Tromp were driven back to the Texel. In August Ruyter was forced by Monk to take refuge in the shallows of Zealand, and the Dutch merchant fleet was burned in the harbours of Flie. The misfortunes of the war renewed civil dissensions. Again was heard in louder accents the cry for the restoration of the House of Orange, and de Witt found himself obliged at least to accept the young prince as the child of the state and educate him in the affairs of government.

Energy of de Witt.

Neither foreign war nor civil disturbance could damp the energy of de Witt. He ceaselessly endeavoured to repair by diplomacy what he had lost by arms, and he partly succeeded. Louis was bound by treaty to help the Dutch, and, although it was not possible to induce him to give active assistance of any value to a nation whom he hated and intended to ruin, de Witt did succeed for some time in preventing him from making common cause with the English. With other nations he was more fortunate. Denmark and the Great Elector openly allied themselves with the Dutch in 1666, and compelled the warlike bishop of Münster to make peace, who had invaded Overyssel in the interests of England the year before. The Quadruple Alliance signed later in the year 1666 between the United Provinces, Brandenburg, Denmark and Brunswick-Lüneburg, secured to de Witt help in the case of French aggression. But the most effective allies of the Dutch came from the enemies’ camp. The recklessness of Charles’s extravagance made it impossible properly to repair the necessary ravages of even victorious war. The great plague which devastated London and its neighbourhood in 1665, and the great fire which destroyed half the city in 1666, made the raising of supplies more difficult still. At the beginning of 1667 England though victorious was exhausted and almost bankrupt. Charles in his isolation had recourse to Louis. By a secret engagement negotiated through the queen-mother, Henrietta Maria, Charles threw himself into the arms of Louis, and promised him a free hand in the Low Countries in return for Louis’s support to his crown. At the instigation of France negotiations for peace were begun at Breda in May 1667, but Charles, sure of Louis’s secret help, was in no hurry to come to terms. De Witt determined to read him a lesson. Quietly on the 6th of June the Dutch fleet under Ruyter and Cornelius de Witt left the Texel. Next morning they were sailing up the Thames in triumphal procession. They seized Sheerness, sailed up the Medway to Rochester, captured the Royal Charles, burned three other ships of war, and were only checked on their route to London by the sinking of boats across the river above Chatham. This unpleasant reminder of his impotence brought Charles quickly to terms. Treaty of Breda, 1667. The Act of Navigation was relaxed so as to permit the Dutch to carry to England German and Flemish goods. England retained New York and the Dutch the port of Poleroon in the East Indies. Other conquests were restored.

Once more war had proved but a sorry engine for putting an end to national rivalry. The success of the Dutch in 1667 no more gave to the United Provinces the monopoly of the trade of the world, than their defeat in 1654 had deprived them of their share in it. ‘Must we then,’ said the Dutch envoy to Monk before the beginning of the war, ‘sacrifice our commerce to yours?’ ‘Whatever happens,’ bluntly replied the rough soldier, ‘we must have our part.’ And so it happened. The protracted and stubborn duel between the two greatest maritime powers of Europe only enforced the truth that the world was wide enough for both. Upon the two principal combatants it had more serious and wide-reaching results. It taught Charles II. that he could not enjoy life and indulge his political ambition as he liked without the assistance of France. It taught John de Witt the importance of the friendship of England in face of the ambition of Louis XIV. It thus led directly to the Triple Alliance, and helped to blind de Witt’s eyes to the fact, that that alliance had not clipped Louis’s wings, because for the time in deference to it he had consented to fold them.

The whirligig of fortune had in fact made the worthless Charles II. of England the arbiter of Europe, while both Louis XIV. and John de Witt believed that the decisive voice was with them. Dangers from France. Louis had determined on the ruin of the Dutch, but he did not dare to face the united fleets of England and the United Provinces. John de Witt was under no illusions as to the dangers which were threatening him from France. He knew quite well that the old relations of friendship and dependence had passed away with the treaty of Münster and the development of Dutch trade. Ever since the treaty of Münster it had been the cardinal point in Dutch foreign policy to support the Spanish government in the Netherlands, in order to keep the French away from Antwerp and the Scheldt. Ever since the peace of the Pyrenees it had been the main object of French foreign policy to gain the fortresses of the Spanish Netherlands as an adequate defence to Paris. Ever since the war of devolution it had been the undisguised ambition of Louis XIV. to seize the whole of the Spanish Netherlands as the first instalment of his inheritance in the Spanish empire. French and Dutch interests were sharply antagonistic on this essential point of policy. Commercial differences were no less pressing. Colbert had so arranged his protective system as to injure Dutch trade as much as possible, and the Amsterdam traders were furious at this unneighbourly treatment. Louis himself never affected to conceal his personal dislike to the rich and Protestant republic, which dared to run athwart his designs. Blindness of de Witt. Yet in spite of all this, in spite of the continued war preparations of Louis, in spite of his ceaseless diplomatic activity, in spite of the withdrawal of Sweden from the Triple Alliance, in spite of the ominous sleepiness of Leopold, and nonchalance of Charles, de Witt could not bring himself to believe that Louis would ever be able to turn his threats into action. The success of the Triple Alliance had been so commanding, its effect so instantaneous. The temper of the English people had been so thoroughly roused against Louis. Europe had shown itself so sensitive of his aggressive policy. As long as the ascendency of the republican party in the United Provinces was secure, as long as no civil dissensions interfered to weaken their action, John de Witt believed himself safe and Europe at his command. He did not know that Charles had sealed his destruction in the secret treaty of Dover. He had no suspicions of the partition treaty between Louis and the Emperor. Deceived by the two powers he most trusted, secure in the results of his own diplomacy as he saw them, he did not even think it necessary to take ordinary precautions. The Perpetual Edict, 1668. By the Perpetual Edict, as modified by the Project of Harmony accepted by the republic in 1668, he flattered himself he had secured internal peace without sacrificing the republican ascendency. By those acts it was declared that the same person could not be at once stadtholder and captain and admiral general, and it was provided that the young prince should be intrusted with the command of the army at the age of twenty-two. By this division of the civil and military powers de Witt thought he had secured the republic against a renewal of the coup d’état, and guaranteed the political ascendency of Holland. Yet, so jealous was he of the prince and his party, that even then he did not dare to strengthen the army. While Louis was forming vast magazines, and massing thousands of men on the frontier, the Dutch fortresses were being allowed to perish and the Dutch army was being deliberately starved in men and munitions lest the republican supremacy should be endangered. The state was being sacrificed to the government.

Popular movement in favour of William III.