Holland: The History of the Netherlands

by Thomas Colley Grattan

Charles II. died most unexpectedly in the year 1685; and his obstinately bigoted and unconstitutional successor, James II., seemed, during a reign of not four years' continuance, to rush wilfully headlong to ruin. During this period, the Prince of Orange had maintained a most circumspect and unexceptionable line of conduct; steering clear of all interference with English affairs; giving offence to none of the political factions; and observing in every instance the duty and regard which he owed to his father-in-law. During Monmouth's invasion he had despatched to James's assistance six regiments of British troops which were in the Dutch service, and he offered to take the command of the king's forces against the rebels. It was from the application of James himself that William took any part in English affairs; for he was more widely and much more congenially employed in the establishment of a fresh league against France. Louis had aroused a new feeling throughout Protestant Europe by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The refugees whom he had driven from their native country inspired in those in which they settled hatred of his persecution as well as alarm of his power. Holland now entered into all the views of the Prince of Orange. By his immense influence he succeeded in forming the great confederacy called the League of Augsburg, to which the emperor, Spain, and almost every European power but England became parties.

James gave the prince reason to believe that he too would join in this great project, if William would in return concur in his views of domestic tyranny; but William wisely refused. James, much disappointed, and irritated by the moderation which showed his own violence in such striking contrast, expressed his displeasure against the prince, and against the Dutch generally, by various vexatious acts. William resolved to maintain a high attitude; and many applications were made to him by the most considerable persons in England for relief against James's violent measures, and which there was but one method of making effectual. That method was force. But as long as the Princess of Orange was certain of succeeding to the crown on her father's death, William hesitated to join in an attempt that might possibly have failed and lost her her inheritance. But the birth of a son, which, in giving James a male heir, destroyed all hope of redress for the kingdom, decided the wavering, and rendered the determined desperate. The prince chose the time for his enterprise with the sagacity, arranged its plan with the prudence, and put it into execution with the vigor, which were habitual qualities of his mind.

Louis XIV., menaced by the League of Augsburg, had resolved to strike the first blow against the allies. He invaded Germany; so that the Dutch preparations seemed in the first instance intended as measures of defence against the progress of the French. But Louis's envoy at The Hague could not be long deceived. He gave notice to his master, who in his turn warned James. But that infatuated monarch not only doubted the intelligence, but refused the French king's offers of assistance and co-operation. On the 21st of October, the Prince of Orange, with an army of fourteen thousand men, and a fleet of five hundred vessels of all kinds, set sail from Helvoetsluys; and after some delays from bad weather, he safely landed his army in Torbay, on the 5th of November, 1688. The desertion of James's best friends; his own consternation, flight, seizure, and second escape; and the solemn act by which he was deposed; were the rapid occurrences of a few weeks: and thus the grandest revolution that England had ever seen was happily consummated. Without entering here on legislative reasonings or party sophisms, it is enough to record the act itself; and to say, in reference to our more immediate subject, that without the assistance of Holland and her glorious chief, England might have still remained enslaved, or have had to purchase liberty by oceans of blood. By the bill of settlement, the crown was conveyed jointly to the Prince and Princess of Orange, the sole administration of government to remain in the prince; and the new sovereigns were proclaimed on the 23d of February, 1689. The convention, which had arranged this important point, annexed to the settlement a declaration of rights, by which the powers of royal prerogative and the extent of popular privilege were defined and guaranteed.

William, now become king of England, still preserved his title of stadtholder of Holland; and presented the singular instance of a monarchy and a republic being at the same time governed by the same individual. But whether as a king or a citizen, William was actuated by one grand and powerful principle, to which every act of private administration was made subservient, although it certainly called for no sacrifice that was not required for the political existence of the two nations of which he was the head. Inveterate opposition to the power of Louis XIV. was this all-absorbing motive. A sentiment so mighty left William but little time for inferior points of government, and everything but that seems to have irritated and disgusted him. He was soon again on the Continent, the chief theatre of his efforts. He put himself in front of the confederacy which resulted from the congress of Utrecht in 1690. He took the command of the allied army; and till the hour of his death, he never ceased his indefatigable course of hostility, whether in the camp or the cabinet, at the head of the allied armies, or as the guiding spirit of the councils which gave them force and motion.

Several campaigns were expended, and bloody combats fought, almost all to the disadvantage of William, whose genius for war was never seconded by that good fortune which so often decides the fate of battles in defiance of all the calculations of talent. But no reverse had power to shake the constancy and courage of William. He always appeared as formidable after defeat as he was before action. His conquerors gained little but the honor of the day. Fleurus, Steinkerk, Herwinde, were successively the scenes of his evil fortune, and the sources of his fame. His retreats were master-strokes of vigilant activity and profound combinations. Many eminent sieges took place during this war. Among other towns, Mons and Namur were taken by the French, and Huy by the allies; and the army of Marshal Villeroi bombarded Brussels during three days, in August, 1695, with such fury that the town-house, fourteen churches, and four thousand houses, were reduced to ashes. The year following this event saw another undecisive campaign. During the continuance of this war, the naval transactions present no grand results. Du Bart, a celebrated adventurer of Dunkirk, occupies the leading place in those affairs, in which he carried on a desultory but active warfare against the Dutch and English fleets, and generally with great success.

All the nations which had taken part in so many wars were now becoming exhausted by the contest, but none so much so as France. The great despot who had so long wielded the energies of that country with such wonderful splendor and success found that his unbounded love of dominion was gradually sapping all the real good of his people, in chimerical schemes of universal conquest. England, though with much resolution voting new supplies, and in every way upholding William in his plans for the continuance of war, was rejoiced when Louis accepted the mediation of Charles XI., king of Sweden, and agreed to concessions which made peace feasible. The emperor and Charles II. of Spain, were less satisfied with those concessions; but everything was finally arranged to meet the general views of the parties, and negotiations were opened at Ryswyk. The death of the king of Sweden, and the minority of his son and successor, the celebrated Charles XII., retarded them on points of form for some time. At length, on the 20th of September, 1697, the articles of the treaty were subscribed by the Dutch, English, Spanish, and French ambassadors. The treaty consisted of seventeen articles. The French king declared he would not disturb or disquiet the king of Great Britain, whose title he now for the first time acknowledged. Between France and Holland were declared a general armistice, perpetual amity, a mutual restitution of towns, a reciprocal renunciation of all pretensions upon each other, and a treaty of commerce which was immediately put into execution. Thus, after this long, expensive, and sanguinary war, things were established just on the footing they had been by the peace of Nimeguen; and a great, though unavailable lesson, read to the world on the futility and wickedness of those quarrels in which the personal ambition of kings leads to the misery of the people. Had the allies been true to each other throughout, Louis would certainly have been reduced much lower than he now was. His pride was humbled, and his encroachments stopped. But the sufferings of the various countries engaged in the war were too generally reciprocal to make its result of any material benefit to either. The emperor held out for a while, encouraged by the great victory gained by his general, Prince Eugene of Savoy, over the Turks at Zenta in Hungary; but he finally acceded to the terms offered by France; the peace, therefore, became general, but, unfortunately for Europe, of very short duration.

France, as if looking forward to the speedy renewal of hostilities, still kept her armies undisbanded. Let the foresight of her politicians have been what it might, this negative proof of it was justified by events. The king of Spain, a weak prince, without any direct heir for his possessions, considered himself authorized to dispose of their succession by will. The leading powers of Europe thought otherwise, and took this right upon themselves. Charles died on the 1st of November, 1700, and thus put the important question to the test. By a solemn testament he declared Philip, duke of Anjou, second son of the dauphin, and grandson of Louis XIV., his successor to the whole of the Spanish monarchy. Louis immediately renounced his adherence to the treaties of partition, executed at The Hague and in London, in 1698 and 1700, and to which he had been a contracting party; and prepared to maintain the act by which the last of the descendants of Charles V. bequeathed the possessions of Spain and the Indies to the family which had so long been the inveterate enemy and rival of his own.

The emperor Leopold, on his part, prepared to defend his claims; and thus commenced the new war between him and France, which took its name from the succession which formed the object of dispute. Hostilities were commenced in Italy, where Prince Eugene, the conqueror of the Turks, commanded for Leopold, and every day made for himself a still more brilliant reputation. Louis sent his grandson to Spain to take possession of the inheritance, for which so hard a fight was yet to be maintained, with the striking expression at parting—"My child, there are no longer any Pyrenees!" an expression most happily unprophetic for the future independence of Europe; for the moral force of the barrier has long existed after the expiration of the family compact which was meant to deprive it of its force.

Louis prepared to act vigorously. Among other measures, he caused part of the Dutch army that was quartered in Luxemburg and Brabant to be suddenly made prisoners of war, because they would not own Philip V. as king of Spain. The states-general were dreadfully alarmed, immediately made the required acknowledgment, and in consequence had their soldiers released. They quickly reinforced their garrisons, purchased supplies, solicited foreign aid, and prepared for the worst that might happen. They wrote to King William, professing the most inviolable attachment to England; and he met their application by warm assurances of support and an immediate reinforcement of three regiments.

William followed up these measures by the formation of the celebrated treaty called the Grand Alliance, by which England, the States, and the emperor covenanted for the support of the pretensions of the latter to the Spanish monarchy. William was preparing, in spite of his declining health, to take his usual lead in the military operations now decided on, and almost all Europe was again looking forward to his guidance, when he died on the 8th of March, 1701, leaving his great plans to receive their execution from still more able adepts in the art of war.