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 Maurice. The party and the principles of Oldenbarneveldt, The position in 1650. 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 state of the Union, the army and religion. It met at The Grand Assembly. 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
of Holland had for so many years been “minister of
The office
of Grand Pensionary.
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).
The death of William II. had left the Dutch republic at the
very highest point of commercial prosperity, based upon an
almost universal carrying trade, and the strictest
system of monopoly. Friction and disputes had
frequently arisen between the Dutch and the English
Disputes between English
and Dutch Traders.
traders in different parts of the world, and especially
in the East Indies, culminating in the so-called
“Massacre of Amboyna”; and the strained relations between
the two nations would, but for the civil discords in England,
have probably led to active hostilities during the reign of
Charles I. With the accession of Cromwell to power the breach
