In the seventeenth century Dutch commerce, especially at sea, Dutch science, Dutch classical scholarship, Dutch literature and Dutch art attained an eminence hardly afterwards equalled. The rivalry of Holland and England at sea led to the [558] unfortunate wars of 1652-1654 and 1664-1667. The accession of William III. of Orange to the Stadtholdership of the United Provinces (1672) proved the salvation of the republic from France; in 1678 Louis XIV. signed the peace of Nymegen.
Ten years later William was hailed as the savior of English liberties, and became king of Great Britain and Ireland. On William’s death, the United Provinces became a pure republic once more, the stadtholdership was re-established in 1747 but it made no difference in the downward course.
The National Convention of France having declared war against Great Britain and the stadtholder of Holland in 1793, French armies overran Belgium (1794); they were welcomed by the so-called patriots of the United Provinces and William V. and his family (January 1795) were obliged to escape from Scheveningen to England in a fishing-smack and the French rule began. After several changes Louis Bonaparte, June 5, 1806, was appointed king of Holland, but, four years later, was obliged to resign because he refused to be a mere tool in the hands of the French emperor. Holland was then added to the empire.
The fall of Napoleon I. and the dismemberment of the French empire led to the recall of the Orange family and the formation of the southern and northern provinces into the ill-managed kingdom of the Netherlands, which in 1830 was broken up by the secession of Belgium. In 1839 peace was finally concluded with Belgium; but almost immediately after national discontent with the government showed itself, and William I. in 1840 abdicated in favor of his son.
Holland, being moved by the revolutionary fever of 1848, King William II. granted a new constitution, according to which new chambers were chosen, but they had scarcely met when he died, March, 1849, and William III. (born 1817) ascended the throne.
William III. having no living male issue, the succession to the crown was vested in the princess of Orange, Wilhelmina, the only child of the king’s second marriage, born in 1880. For many years the great question of internal politics was the new constitution, which, promulgated November 30, 1887, increased the electorate of Holland by no less than two hundred thousand voters. On the death of the king (November 23, 1890), when Luxemburg ceased to be connected with the crown of Holland, the Princess Wilhelmina became queen.
Queen Wilhelmina married Prince Henry of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, in 1901, and in 1909 a daughter (the Princess Juliana) was born to them.
NORWAY
NORWAY (Norweg. Norge), the western division of the Scandinavian peninsula, is one thousand one hundred and sixty miles in length (coast-line three thousand miles) and varies in width from twenty to one hundred miles north of 63° N. lat.; below that line it swells out to two hundred and sixty miles. The coast-line is extensive, deeply indented with numerous fiords, and fringed with an immense number of rocky islands. The surface is mountainous, consisting of elevated and barren tablelands, separated by deep and narrow valleys. The finest of the valleys stretching inland from the fiords is Romsdal, where the rounded pure gneiss mountains tower up to six thousand feet with almost perpendicular walls. The cultivated area is about one-thirtieth part of the country; forests cover nearly one-fourth; the rest consists of highland pastures or mountains.
Norway is separated from Sweden by the Kjolen Mountains (three thousand to six thousand feet), the backbone of the peninsula, which divide south of 63°; the western branch widens out into a broad plateau, undulating between two thousand and four thousand feet and embossed with mountain-knots—Dovre, Jotun, Lang, Fille, Hardanger Fjelde (fells)—the separate peaks of which shoot up to six thousand feet and higher.