The first great military success of Frederick Henry was in 1629. His capture of Hertogenbosch (Bois-le-duc), hitherto supposed to be impregnable, after a siege of five months was a triumph of engineering skill. Wesel Sieges of Hertogenbosch and Maestricht. also was taken by surprise this same year. In 1631 a large Spanish fleet carrying a picked force of 6000 soldiers, for the invasion of Zeeland, was completely destroyed by the Dutch in the Slaak and the troops made prisoners. The campaign of the following year was made memorable by the siege of Maestricht. This important frontier town lying on both sides of the river Meuse was taken by the prince of Orange in the teeth of two relieving armies, Spanish and Imperialist, whose united forces were far larger than his own. This brilliant feat of arms was the prelude to peace negotiations, Death of the Infanta Isabel. which led to a lengthy exchange of diplomatic notes. No agreement, however, was reached. The death of the Infanta Isabel in November 1633, and the reversion of the Netherlands to the sovereignty of the king of Spain, rendered all efforts to end the war, for the time being, fruitless.
At this juncture a strengthening of the French alliance seemed to the prince not merely expedient, but necessary. He had to contend against a strong peace party in Holland headed by the pensionary Pauw, but with the aid of Alliance with France. the diplomatic skill of Aarssens all opposition was overcome. Pauw was replaced as pensionary by Jacob Cats, and the objections of Richelieu were met and satisfied. A defensive and offensive alliance with France was concluded early in 1635 against the king of Spain, and each party bound itself not to make a peace or truce without the assent of the other. A large French force was sent into the Netherlands and placed under the command of the prince of Orange. The military results of the alliance were during the first two campaigns inconsiderable. The Cardinal Infant Ferdinand had been appointed governor of the Netherlands, and he proved himself an excellent general, and there were dissensions in the councils of the allies. In 1637 the stadholder was able to add to his fame as an invincible besieger of cities. His failure to relieve Breda had hastened the death of Maurice. Capture of Breda. It fell in 1625 into the hands of Spinola after a blockade of eleven months; it was now retaken by Frederick Henry after a siege of eleven weeks, in the face of immense difficulties. The reluctance of the States of Holland, and of Amsterdam in particular, to grant adequate supplies caused the campaigns of 1638 and 1639 to be in the main defensive and dilatory. An attempted attack on Antwerp was foiled by the vigilance of the Cardinal Infant. A body of 6000 men under Count William of Nassau were surprised and utterly cut to pieces. The year 1639, which had begun with abortive negotiations, and in which the activity of the stadholder had been much hampered by ill-health, was not to end, however, without a signal triumph of the Dutch arms, but it was to be on sea and not on land. A magnificent Spanish armada consisting of 77 vessels, manned by 24,000 soldiers and sailors under the command of Admiral Oquendo, were sent to the Channel in September with orders to drive the Dutch from the narrow seas and land a large body of troops at Dunkirk. Attacked by Battle of the Downs. a small Dutch fleet under Admiral Marten Tromp, the Spaniards sheltered themselves under the English Downs by the side of an English squadron. Tromp kept watch over them until he had received large reinforcements, and then (21st of October) boldly attacked them as they lay in English waters. Oquendo himself with seven vessels escaped under cover of a fog; all the rest of the fleet was destroyed. This crushing victory assured to the Dutch the command of the sea during the rest of the war. The naval power of Spain never in fact recovered from the blow.
The triumph of Tromp had, however, a bad effect on public feeling in England. The circumstances under which the battle of the Downs was won were galling to the pride of the English people, and intensified the growing English and Dutch Commercial Rivalry.
Marriage of William and Mary. unfriendliness between two nations, one of whom possessed and the other claimed supremacy upon the seas. The prosperity of the world-wide Dutch commerce was looked upon with eyes of jealousy across the Channel. Disputes had been constantly recurring between Dutch and English traders in the East Indies and elsewhere, and the seeds were already sown of that stern rivalry which was to issue in a series of fiercely contested wars. But in 1639-1640 civil discords in England stood in the way of a strong foreign policy, and the adroit Aarssens was able so “to sweeten the bitterness of the pill” as to bring King Charles not merely to “overlook the scandal of the Downs,” but to consent to the marriage of the princess royal with William, the only son of the stadholder. The wedding of the youthful couple (aged respectively 14 and 10 years) took place on the 12th of May 1641 (see [William II., prince of Orange]). This royal alliance gave added influence and position to the house of Orange-Nassau.
About this time various causes brought about a change in the feelings which had hitherto prevented any possibility of peace between Spain and the United Netherlands. The revolt of Portugal (December 1640) weakened Changed relations of the United Provinces with France and Spain. the Spanish power, and involved the loss to Spain of the Portuguese colonies. But it was in the Portuguese colonies that the conquests of the Dutch East and West India Companies had been made, and the question of the Indies as between Netherlander and Spaniard assumed henceforth quite a different complexion. Aarssens, the strongest advocate of the French alliance, passed away in 1641, and his death was quickly followed by those of Richelieu and Louis XIII. The victory of Condé at Rocroy opened the eyes of Frederick Henry to the danger of a French conquest of the Belgian provinces; and, feeling his health growing enfeebled, the prince became anxious before his death to obtain peace and security for his country by means of an accommodation with Spain. In 1643 negotiations were opened which, after many delays and in the face of countless difficulties, were at length, four years later, to terminate successfully.
The course of the pourparlers would doubtless have run more smoothly but for the infirm health and finally the death of the prince of Orange himself. Frederick Henry expired on the 14th of March 1647, and was buried Death of Frederick Henry—his last campaigns. by the side of his father and brother in Delft. In his last campaigns he had completed with signal success the task which, as a military commander, he had set himself,—of giving to the United Provinces a thoroughly defensible frontier of barrier fortresses. In 1644 he captured Sas de Ghent; in 1645 Hulst. That portion of Flanders which skirts the south bank of the Scheldt thus passed into the possession of the States, and with it the complete control of all the waterways to the sea.
The death of the great stadholder did not, however, long delay the carrying out of the policy on which he had set his heart, of concluding a separate peace with Spain behind the back of France, notwithstanding the compact of 1635 The Peace of Münster. with that power. A provisional draft of a treaty had already been drawn up before the demise of Frederick Henry, and afterwards, despite the strenuous opposition of the new prince of Orange (who, under the Acte de Survivance, had inherited all his father’s offices and dignities) and of two of the provinces, Zeeland and Utrecht, the negotiations were by the powerful support of the States of Holland and of the majority of the States-General, quickly brought to a successful issue. The treaty was signed at Münster on the 30th of January 1648. It was a peace practically dictated by the Dutch, and involved a complete surrender of everything for which Spain had so Complete triumph of the Dutch. long fought. The United Provinces were recognized as free and independent, and Spain dropped all her claims; the uti possidetis basis was adopted in respect to all conquests; the Scheldt was declared entirely closed—a clause which meant the ruin of Antwerp for the profit of Amsterdam; the right to trade in the East and West Indies was granted, and all the conquests made by the Dutch from the Portuguese were ceded to them; the two contracting parties agreed to respect and keep clear of each other’s trading grounds; each was to pay in the ports of the other only such tolls as natives paid. Thus, triumphantly for the revolted provinces, the eighty years’ war came to an end. At this moment the republic of the United Netherlands touched, perhaps, the topmost point of its prosperity and greatness.
No sooner was peace concluded than bitter disputes arose between the provincial States of Holland and the prince of Orange, supported by the other six provinces, upon the question of the disbanding of the military forces. William was a young The form of Government in the United Provinces. man (he was twenty-one at the time of his father’s death) of the highest abilities and of soaring ambition. He was totally opposed to the peace with Spain, and wished to bring about a speedy resumption of the war. With this view he entered into secret negotiations for a French alliance which, as far as can be gathered from extant records, had for its objects the conquest and partition by the allies of the Belgic provinces, and joint action in England on behalf of Charles II. As a preliminary step William aimed at a centralization of the powers of government in the United Provinces in his own person. He saw clearly the inherent defects of the existing federation, and he wished to remedy a system which was so complicated as to be at times almost unworkable. The States-General were but the delegates, the stadholders the servants, of a number of sovereign provinces, each of which had different historical traditions and a different form of government, and one of which—Holland—in wealth and importance outweighed the other six taken together. Between the States of Holland and the States-General there was constant The position of Holland and Amsterdam. jealousy and friction. And yet strangely enough the States of Holland themselves were not really representative of the people of that province, but only of the limited, self-coopting burgher aristocracies of certain towns, each of which with its rights and liberties had a quasi-independence of its own. Foremost among these was the great commercial capital, Amsterdam, whose rich burgher patriciate did not scruple on occasion to defy the authority of the States-General, the stadholder and even of the States of Holland themselves.
The States of Holland had, in the years that followed the truce of 1609, measured their strength with that of the States-General, but the issue had been decided conclusively in favour of the federal authority by the sword of The position in 1650. Maurice. The party and the principles of Oldenbarneveldt, however, though crushed, were not extinguished, and though Frederick Henry by his personal influence and prudent statesmanship had been able to surmount the difficulties placed in his way, he had had to encounter at times strong opposition, and had been much hampered in the conduct both of his campaigns and of his policy. With the conclusion of the peace of Münster and the death of the veteran stadholder the struggle for predominance in the Union between the Orange-federalist and the Hollander States-rights parties was certain to be renewed. The moment seemed to be favourable for the assertion of provincial sovereignty because of the youth and inexperience of the new prince of Orange. But William II., though little more than a boy, was endowed with singular capacity and great strength of will, and he was intent upon ambitious projects, the scope of which has been already indicated. The collision came, which was perhaps inevitable. The States-General The question of disbanding the forces. in the disbanding of the forces wished to retain the cadres of the regiments complete in case of a renewal of the war. The States of Holland objected, and, although the army was a federal force, gave orders for the general disbanding of the troops in the pay of the province. The officers refused to obey any orders but those of the council of State of the Union. The provincial states, on their part, threatened them with loss of pay. At this juncture the States-General, as in 1618, appointed a commission headed by the prince of Orange to visit the towns of Holland, and provide for the maintenance of order and the upholding of the Union. Both parties put themselves in the wrong, the province by refusing its quota to the federal war-sheet, the generality by dealing with individual towns instead of with the states of the province. The visitation was a failure. The town councils, though most of them willing to receive William in his capacity as stadholder, declined to give a hearing to the commission. The Prisoners of Loevenstein. Amsterdam refused absolutely to admit either stadholder or commission. In these circumstances William resolved upon strong measures. Six leading members of the States of Holland were seized (30th of July 1650) and imprisoned in Loevenstein Castle, and troops under the command of William Frederick, stadholder of Friesland, were sent to surprise Amsterdam. But the town council had been warned, and the gates were shut and guarded. The coup d’état nevertheless was completely successful. The anti-Orange party, remembering the fate of Oldenbarneveldt, were stricken with panic at the imprisonment of their leaders. The States of Holland and the town council of Amsterdam gave in their submission. The prisoners were released, and public thanks were rendered to the prince by the various provincial states for “his great trouble, care and prudence.” William appeared to be master of the situation but his plans for future action were Sudden Death of William II. never to be carried into effect. Busily engaged in secret negotiations with France, he had retired to his hunting seat at Dieren, when he fell ill with smallpox on the 27th of October. A few days later he expired at the Hague (6th of November), aged but twenty-four years. A week after his death, his widow, the princess Mary of England, gave birth to a son who, as William III., was to give added lustre to the house of Orange.
The anti-Orange particularist party, which had just suffered decisive defeat, now lifted up its head again. At the instance of Holland a Grand Assembly was summoned, consisting of delegates from all the provinces, to consider the The Grand Assembly. state of the Union, the army and religion. It met at the Hague on the 18th of January 1651. The conclusions arrived at were that all sovereign powers resided in the provinces, and that to them severally, each within its own borders, belonged the control of the military forces and of religion. There was to be no captain-general of the Union. All the provinces, except Friesland and Groningen, which remained true to William Frederick of Nassau-Dietz, agreed to leave the office of stadholder vacant. The practical result was the establishment of the hegemony of Holland in the Union, and the handing over of the control of its policy to the patrician oligarchies who formed the town councils of that province.
Such a system would have been unworkable but for the fact that with the revival of the political principles of Oldenbarneveldt, there was found a statesman of commanding ability to fill the office in which the famous advocate The office of Grand Pensionary. of Holland had for so many years been “minister of all affairs” in the forming state. The title of advocate had indeed been replaced by that of grand pensionary (Raad Pensionaris), but the duties assigned to the office remained the same, the only change of importance being that the advocate was appointed for life, the grand pensionary for a term of five years. The grand pensionary was nominally the paid servant of the States of Holland, but his functions were such as to permit a man of talent and industry in the stadholderless republic to exercise control in all departments of policy and of government. All correspondence passed through his hands, he wrote all despatches, conducted the debates over which he presided, kept the minutes, drafted the resolutions, and was ex officio the leader and spokesman of the delegates who represented the Province of Holland in the States-General. Such was the John de Witt. position to which John de Witt, a young man of twenty-eight years of age, belonging to one of the most influential patrician families of Dordrecht (his father, Jacob de Witt, was one of the prisoners of Loevenstein) was appointed in 1653. From that date until 1672 it was his brain and his will that guided the affairs of the United Netherlands. He was supreme in the States of Holland, and Holland was dominant in the States-General (see [John de Witt]).