Holland - Thomas Colley Grattan
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CHAPTER XXIII
FROM THE INSTALLATION OF WILLIAM I. AS PRINCE-SOVEREIGN OF THE
NETHERLANDS TO THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO
A.D. 1813--1815
Rapid Organization of Holland--The Constitution formed--Accepted by
the People--Objections made to it by some Individuals--Inauguration
of the Prince-Sovereign--Belgium is occupied by the Allies--Treaty
of Paris--Treaty of London--Formation of the Kingdom of the
Netherlands--Basis of the Government--Relative Character and
Situation of Holland and Belgium--The Prince-Sovereign of Holland
arrives in Belgium as Governor-General--The fundamental Law--Report
of the Commissioners by whom it was framed--Public Feeling in
Holland, and in Belgium--The Emperor Napoleon invades France,
and Belgium--The Prince of Orange takes the Field--The Duke of
Wellington--Prince Blucher--Battle of Ligny--Battle of Quatre
Bras--Battle of Waterloo--Anecdote of the Prince of Orange, who
is wounded--Inauguration of the King.
SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTER (A.D. 1810--1899).
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
HOLLAND
The Duke of Alva Deposes Margaret of Parma.
Storming the Barricades at Brussels During the Revolution of 1848.
William the Silent of Orange.
A Holland Beauty.
CHAPTER I
FROM THE INVASION OF THE NETHERLANDS BY THE ROMANS TO THE INVASION
BY THE SALIAN FRANKS
B.C. 50--A.D. 200
The Netherlands form a kingdom of moderate extent, situated on
the borders of the ocean, opposite to the southeast coast of
England, and stretching from the frontiers of France to those
of Hanover. The country is principally composed of low and humid
grounds, presenting a vast plain, irrigated by the waters from
all those neighboring states which are traversed by the Rhine,
the Meuse, and the Scheldt. This plain, gradually rising toward
its eastern and southern extremities, blends on the one hand
with Prussia, and on the other with France. Having, therefore,
no natural or strongly marked limits on those sides, the extent
of the kingdom could only be determined by convention; and it must
be at all times subject to the arbitrary and varying influence
of European policy. Its greatest length, from north to south, is
about two hundred and twenty English miles; and its breadth,
from east to west, is nearly one hundred and forty.
Two distinct kinds of men inhabit this kingdom. The one occupying
the valleys of the Meuse and the Scheldt, and the high grounds
bordering on France, speak a dialect of the language of that
country, and evidently belong to the Gallic race. They are called
Walloons, and are distinguished from the others by many peculiar
qualities. Their most prominent characteristic is a propensity
for war, and their principal source of subsistence the working
of their mines. They form nearly one-fourth of the population of
the whole kingdom, or about one million three hundred thousand
persons. All the rest of the nation speak Low German, in its
modifications of Dutch and Flemish; and they offer the distinctive
characteristics of the Saxon race--talents for agriculture,
navigation, and commerce; perseverance rather than vivacity;
and more courage than taste for the profession of arms. They
are subdivided into Flemings--those who were the last to submit
to the House of Austria; and Dutch--those who formed the republic
of the United Provinces. But there is no difference between these
two subdivisions, except such as has been produced by political
and religious institutions. The physical aspect of the people
is the same; and the soil, equally law and moist, is at once
fertilized and menaced by the waters.
The history of this last-mentioned portion of the nation is
completely linked to that of the soil which they occupy. In remote
times, when the inhabitants of this plain were few and uncivilized,
the country formed but one immense morass, of which the chief
part was incessantly inundated and made sterile by the waters of
the sea. Pliny the naturalist, who visited the northern coasts,
has left us a picture of their state in his days. "There," says
he, "the ocean pours in its flood twice every day, and produces
a perpetual uncertainty whether the country may be considered as
a part of the continent or of the sea. The wretched inhabitants
take refuge on the sand-hills, or in little huts, which they
construct on the summits of lofty stakes, whose elevation is
conformable to that of the highest tides. When the sea rises,
they appear like navigators; when it retires, they seem as though
they had been shipwrecked. They subsist on the fish left by the
refluent waters, and which they catch in nets formed of rushes
or seaweed. Neither tree nor shrub is visible on these shores.
The drink of the people is rain-water, which they preserve with
great care; their fuel, a sort of turf, which they gather and
form with the hand. And yet these unfortunate beings dare to
complain against their fate, when they fall under the power and
are incorporated with the empire of Rome!"
The picture of poverty and suffering which this passage presents
is heightened when joined to a description of the country. The
coasts consisted only of sand-banks or slime, alternately overflowed
or left imperfectly dry. A little further inland, trees were
to be found, but on a soil so marshy that an inundation or a
tempest threw down whole forests, such as are still at times
discovered at either eight or ten feet depth below the surface.
The sea had no limits; the rivers no beds nor banks; the earth
no solidity; for according to an author of the third century
of our era, there was not, in the whole of too immense plain,
a spot of ground that did not yield under the footsteps of
man.--Eumenius.
It was not the same in the southern parts, which form at present
the Walloon country. These high grounds suffered much less from
the ravages of the waters. The ancient forest of the Ardennes,
extending from the Rhine to the Scheldt, sheltered a numerous though
savage population, which in all things resembled the Germans, from
whom they derived their descent. The chase and the occupations of
rude agriculture sufficed for the wants of a race less poor and
less patient, but more unsteady and ambitious, than the fishermen
of the low lands. Thus it is that history presents us with a
tribe of warriors and conquerors on the southern frontier of
the country; while the scattered inhabitants of the remaining
parts seemed to have fixed there without a contest, and to have
traced out for themselves, by necessity and habit, an existence
which any other people must have considered insupportable.
This difference in the nature of the soil and in the fate of the
inhabitants appears more striking when we consider the present
situation of the country. The high grounds, formerly so preferable,
are now the least valuable part of the kingdom, even as regards
their agriculture; while the ancient marshes have been changed
by human industry into rich and fertile tracts, the best parts
of which are precisely those conquered from the grasp of the
ocean. In order to form an idea of the solitude and desolation
which once reigned where we now see the most richly cultivated
fields, the most thriving villages, and the wealthiest towns
of the continent, the imagination must go back to times which
have not left one monument of antiquity and scarcely a vestige
of fact.
The history of the Netherlands is, then, essentially that of
a patient and industrious population struggling against every
obstacle which nature could oppose to its well-being; and, in
this contest, man triumphed most completely over the elements
in those places where they offered the greatest resistance. This
extraordinary result was due to the hardy stamp of character
imprinted by suffering and danger on those who had the ocean for
their foe; to the nature of their country, which presented no
lure for conquest; and, finally, to the toleration, the justice,
and the liberty nourished among men left to themselves, and who
found resources in their social state which rendered change neither
an object of their wants nor wishes.
About half a century before the Christian era, the obscurity
which enveloped the north of Europe began to disperse; and the
expedition of Julius Caesar gave to the civilized world the first
notions of the Netherlands, Germany, and England. Caesar, after
having subjugated the chief part of Gaul, turned his arms against
the warlike tribes of the Ardennes, who refused to accept his
alliance or implore his protection. They were called Belgae by
the Romans; and at once pronounced the least civilized and the
bravest of the Gauls. Caesar there found several ignorant and poor
but intrepid clans of warriors, who marched fiercely to encounter
him; and, notwithstanding their inferiority in numbers, in weapons,
and in tactics, they nearly destroyed the disciplined armies of
Rome. They were, however, defeated, and their country ravaged
by the invaders, who found less success when they attacked the
natives of the low grounds. The Menapians, a people who occupied
the present provinces of Flanders and Antwerp, though less numerous
than those whom the Romans had last vanquished, arrested their
progress both by open fight and by that petty and harassing
contest--that warfare of the people rather than of the soldiery--so
well adapted to the nature of the country. The Roman legions
retreated for the first time, and were contented to occupy the
higher parts, which now form the Walloon provinces.
But the policy of Caesar made greater progress than his arms. He
had rather defeated than subdued those who had dared the contest.
He consolidated his victories without new battles; he offered peace
to his enemies, in proposing to them alliance; and he required
their aid, as friends, to carry on new wars in other lands. He
thus attracted toward him, and ranged under his banners, not only
those people situated to the west of the Rhine and the Meuse,
but several other nations more to the north, whose territory he
had never seen; and particularly the Batavians--a valiant tribe,
stated by various ancient authors, and particularly by Tacitus,
as a fraction of the Catti, who occupied the space comprised
between these rivers. The young men of these warlike people, dazzled
by the splendor of the Roman armies, felt proud and happy in
being allowed to identify themselves with them. Caesar encouraged
this disposition, and even went so far on some occasions as to
deprive the Roman cavalry of their horses, on which he mounted
those new allies, who managed them better than their Italian
riders. He had no reason to repent these measures; almost all
his subsequent victories, and particularly that of Pharsalia,
being decided by the valor of the auxiliaries he obtained from
the Low Countries.
These auxiliaries were chiefly drawn from Hainault, Luxemburg,
and the country of the Batavians, and they formed the best cavalry
of the Roman armies, as well as their choicest light infantry
force. The Batavians also signalized themselves on many occasions,
by the skill with which they swam across several great rivers
without breaking their squadrons ranks. They were amply rewarded
for their military services and hazardous exploits, and were treated
like stanch and valuable allies. But this unequal connection of
a mighty empire with a few petty states must have been fatal to
the liberty of the weaker party. Its first effect was to destroy
all feeling of nationality in a great portion of the population.
The young adventurer of this part of the Low Countries, after
twenty years of service under the imperial eagles, returned to
his native wilds a Roman. The generals of the empire pierced
the forests of the Ardennes with causeways, and founded towns
in the heart of the country. The result of such innovations was
a total amalgamation of the Romans and their new allies; and
little by little the national character of the latter became
entirely obliterated. But to trace now the precise history of
this gradual change would be as impossible as it will be one
day to follow the progress of civilization in the woods of North
America.
But it must be remarked that this metamorphosis affected only
the inhabitants of the high grounds, and the Batavians (who were
in their origin Germans) properly so called. The scanty population
of the rest of the country, endowed with that fidelity to their
ancient customs which characterizes the Saxon race, showed no
tendency to mix with foreigner, rarely figured in their ranks,
and seemed to revolt from the southern refinement which was so
little in harmony with their manners and ways of life. It is
astonishing, at the first view, that those beings, whose whole
existence was a contest against famine or the waves, should show
less inclination than their happier neighbors to receive from
Rome an abundant recompense for their services. But the greater
their difficulty to find subsistence in their native land, the
stronger seemed their attachment; like that of the Switzer to
his barren rocks, or of the mariner to the frail and hazardous
home that bears him afloat on the ocean. This race of patriots
was divided into two separate peoples. Those to the north of
the Rhine were the Frisons; those to the west of the Meuse, the
Menapians, already mentioned.
The Frisons differed little from those early inhabitants of the
coast, who, perched on their high-built huts, fed on fish and
drank the water of the clouds. Slow and successive improvements
taught them to cultivate the beans which grew wild among the
marshes, and to tend and feed a small and degenerate breed of
horned cattle. But if these first steps toward civilization were
slow, they were also sure; and they were made by a race of men
who could never retrograde in a career once begun.
The Menapians, equally repugnant to foreign impressions, made, on
their part, a more rapid progress. They were already a maritime
people, and carried on a considerable commerce with England. It
appears that they exported thither salt, the art of manufacturing
which was well known to them; and they brought back in return
marl, a most important commodity for the improvement of their
land. They also understood the preparation of salting meat, with
a perfection that made it in high repute even in Italy; and,
finally, we are told by Ptolemy that they had established a colony
on the eastern coast of Ireland, not far from Dublin.
The two classes of what forms at present the population of the
Netherlands thus followed careers widely different, during the
long period of the Roman power in these parts of Europe. While
those of the high lands and the Batavians distinguished themselves
by a long-continued course of military service or servitude, those
of the plains improved by degrees their social condition, and fitted
themselves for a place in civilized Europe. The former received
from Rome great marks of favor in exchange for their freedom.
The latter, rejecting the honors and distinctions lavished on
their neighbors, secured their national independence, by trusting
to their industry alone for all the advantages they gradually
acquired.
Were the means of protecting themselves and their country from
the inundations of the sea known and practiced by these ancient
inhabitants of the coast? or did they occupy only those elevated
points of land which stood out like islands in the middle of the
floods? These questions are among the most important presented
by their history; since it was the victorious struggle of man
against the ocean that fixed the extent and form of the country.
It appears almost certain that in the time of Caesar they did not
labor at the construction of dikes, but that they began to be
raised during the obscurity of the following century; for the
remains of ancient towns are even now discovered in places at
present overflowed by the sea. These ruins often bring to light
traces of Roman construction, and Latin inscriptions in honor
of the Menapian divinities. It is, then, certain that they had
learned to imitate those who ruled in the neighboring countries: a
result by no means surprising; for even England, the mart of their
commerce, and the nation with which they had the most constant
intercourse, was at that period occupied by the Romans. But the
nature of their country repulsed so effectually every attempt at
foreign domination that the conquerors of the world left them
unmolested, and established arsenals and formed communications
with Great Britain only at Boulogne and in the island of the
Batavians near Leyden.
This isolation formed in itself a powerful and perfect barrier
between the inhabitants of the plain and those of the high grounds.
The first held firm to their primitive customs and their ancient
language; the second finished by speaking Latin, and borrowing
all the manners and usages of Italy. The moral effect of this
contrast was that the people, once so famous for their bravery,
lost, with their liberty, their energy and their courage. One of
the Batavian chieftains, named Civilis, formed an exception to
this degeneracy, and, about the year 70 of our era, bravely took
up arms for the expulsion of the Romans. He effected prodigies of
valor and perseverance, and boldly met and defeated the enemy
both by land and sea. Reverses followed his first success, and he
finally concluded an honorable treaty, by which his countrymen
once more became the allies of Rome. But after this expiring effort
of valor, the Batavians, even though chosen from all nations for
the bodyguards of the Roman emperors, became rapidly degenerate;
and when Tacitus wrote, ninety years after Christ, they were
already looked on as less brave than the Frisons and the other
peoples beyond the Rhine. A century and a half later saw them
confounded with the Gauls; and the barbarian conquerors said
that "they were not a nation, but merely a _prey_."
Reduced into a Roman province, the southern portion of the
Netherlands was at this period called Belgic Gaul; and the name
of Belgium, preserved to our days, has until lately been applied
to distinguish that part of the country situated to the south of
the Rhine and the Meuse, or nearly that which formed the Austrian
Netherlands.
During the establishment of the Roman power in the north of Europe,
observation was not much excited toward the rapid effects of this
degeneracy, compared with the fast-growing vigor of the people of
the low lands. The fact of the Frisons having, on one occasion,
near the year 47 of our era, beaten a whole army of Romans, had
confirmed their character for intrepidity. But the long stagnation
produced in these remote countries by the colossal weight of
the empire was broken, about the year 250, by an irruption of
Germans or Salian Franks, who, passing the Rhine and the Meuse,
established themselves in the vicinity of the Menapians, near
Antwerp, Breda and Bois-le-duc. All the nations that had been
subjugated by the Roman power appear to have taken arms on this
occasion and opposed the intruders. But the Menapians united
themselves with these newcomers, and aided them to meet the shock
of the imperial armies. Carausius, originally a Menapian pilot,
but promoted to the command of a Roman fleet, made common cause
with his fellow-citizens, and proclaimed himself emperor of Great
Britain, where the naval superiority of the Menapians left him
no fear of a competitor. In recompense of the assistance given
him by the Franks, he crossed the sea again from his new empire,
to aid them in their war with the Batavians, the allies of Rome;
and having seized on their islands, and massacred nearly the whole
of its inhabitants, he there established his faithful friends the
Salians. Constantius and his son Constantine the Great vainly
strove, even after the death of the brave Carausius, to regain
possession of the country; but they were forced to leave the
new inhabitants in quiet possession of their conquest.
CHAPTER II
FROM THE SETTLEMENT OF THE FRANKS TO THE SUBJUGATION OF FRIESLAND
A.D. 250--800
From this epoch we must trace the progress of a totally new and
distinct population in the Netherlands. The Batavians being
annihilated, almost without resistance, the low countries contained
only the free people of the German race. But these people did not
completely sympathize together so as to form one consolidated
nation. The Salians, and the other petty tribes of Franks, their
allies, were essentially warlike, and appeared precisely the same
as the original inhabitants of the high grounds. The Menapians
and the Frisons, on the contrary, lost nothing of their spirit
of commerce and industry. The result of this diversity was a
separation between the Franks and the Menapians. While the latter,
under the name of Armoricans, joined themselves more closely
with the people who bordered the Channel, the Frisons associated
themselves with the tribes settled on the limits of the German
Ocean, and formed with them a connection celebrated under the
title of the Saxon League. Thus was formed on all points a union
between the maritime races against the inland inhabitants; and
their mutual antipathy became more and more developed as the
decline of the Roman empire ended the former struggle between
liberty and conquest.
The Netherlands now became the earliest theatre of an entirely
new movement, the consequences of which were destined to affect
the whole world. This country was occupied toward the sea by
a people wholly maritime, excepting the narrow space between
the Rhine and the Vahal, of which the Salian Franks had become
possessed. The nature of this marshy soil, in comparison with the
sands of Westphalia, Guelders, and North Brabant, was not more
strikingly contrasted than was the character of their population.
The Franks, who had been for a while under the Roman sway, showed
a compound of the violence of savage life and the corruption
of civilized society. They were covetous and treacherous, but
made excellent soldiers; and at this epoch, which intervened
between the power of imperial Rome and that of Germany, the Frank
might be morally considered as a borderer on the frontiers of the
Middle Ages. The Saxon (and this name comprehends all the tribes
of the coast from the Rhine as far north as Denmark), uniting in
himself the distinctive qualities of German and navigator, was
moderate and sincere, but implacable in his rage. Neither of
these two races of men was excelled in point of courage; but
the number of Franks who still entered into the service of the
empire diminished the real force of this nation, and naturally
tended to disunite it. Therefore, in the subsequent shock of
people against people, the Saxons invariably gained the final
advantage.
They had no doubt often measured their strength in the most remote
times, since the Franks were but the descendants of the ancient
tribes of Sicambers and others, against whom the Batavians had
offered their assistance to Caesar. Under Augustus, the inhabitants
of the coast had in the same way joined themselves with Drusus,
to oppose these their old enemies. It was also after having been
expelled by the Frisons from Guelders that the Salians had passed
the Rhine and the Meuse; but, in the fourth century, the two
peoples, recovering their strength, the struggle recommenced,
never to terminate--at least between the direct descendants of
each. It is believed that it was the Varni, a race of Saxons
nearly connected with those of England (and coming, like them,
from the coast of Denmark), who on this occasion struck the decisive
blow on the side of the Saxons. Embarking on board a numerous
fleet, they made a descent in the ancient isle of the Batavians,
at that time inhabited by the Salians, whom they completely
destroyed. Julian the Apostate, who was then with a numerous
army pursuing his career of early glory in these countries,
interfered for the purpose of preventing the expulsion, or at
least the utter destruction, of the vanquished; but his efforts
were unavailing. The Salians appear to have figured no more in
this part of the Low Countries.
The defeat of the Salians by a Saxon tribe is a fact on which no
doubt rests. The name of the victors is, however, questionable.
The Varni having remained settled near the mouths of the Rhine
till near the year 500, there is strong, probability that they
were the people alluded to. But names and histories, which may on
this point appear of such little importance, acquire considerable
interest when we reflect that these Salians, driven from their
settlement, became the conquerors of France; that those Saxons
who forced them on their career of conquest were destined to
become the masters of England; and that these two petty tribes,
who battled so long for a corner of marshy earth, carried with
them their reciprocal antipathy while involuntarily deciding
the destiny of Europe.
The defeat of the Franks was fatal to those peoples who had become
incorporated with the Romans; for it was from them that the exiled
wanderers, still fierce in their ruin, and with arms in their hands,
demanded lands and herds; all, in short, which they themselves had
lost. From the middle of the fourth century to the end of the
fifth, there was a succession of invasions in this spirit, which
always ended by the subjugation of a part of the country; and which
was completed about the year 490, by Clovis making himself master
of almost the whole of Gaul. Under this new empire not a vestige
of the ancient nations of the Ardennes was left. The civilized
population either perished or was reduced to slavery, and all
the high grounds were added to the previous conquests of the
Salians.