"And I beheld, and heard the voice of one eagle flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice: Woe, woe, woe to the inhabitants of the earth.... [Apocalypse (Revelation) 8:13]
It is no exaggeration to say that the reign of King Willem I of the
Kingdom of the United Netherlands was the culmination of centuries of
struggle, climaxed by the most critical conflict since the Dutch won
their independence from Spain and which would remain the most critical
until World War II was thrust upon them with the German blitzkrieg in
May of 1940. From the start of the Dutch fight for freedom, that fight
had been led by the Princes of Orange and, as founded, the independent
Netherlands had been a republic but a republic which reserved a special
place of leadership for the Princes of Orange. However, a more strident
republican faction had emerged that sought to exclude the House of
Orange from any position of influence. In response, a royalist faction
rose up to counter them, often called the Orange party for the Orange
sashes they often wore to show their support for their prince. As the
republican faction strove to make the Netherlands more puritanically
republican, so too did the Orange party move to do away with republican
concessions and make the Prince of Orange their king.
Princes Willem & Frederik
Willem Frederick, Hereditary Prince of Orange-Nassau, was born in The
Hague on August 24, 1772 to Prince Willem V of Orange and Princess
Wilhelmina of Prussia. The internal struggle that had long troubled the
Netherlands was still going strong at the time of his birth, not long
before the forces of revolution began to sweep across the western world.
In America, British colonists rose in revolt and declared the
independence of the United States. Prince Willem V favored the British
but the Dutch government allied with the Americans and declared war on
Britain. That conflict was eventually settled but a more serious problem
arose with the growth of a much more radical revolutionary movement in
France. The Dutch republicans saw the French revolutionaries as their
natural allies and rose up in a rebellion known as the “Patriot revolt”
which was suppressed with help from the Prussians in 1787. Prince Willem
and his brother Frederick were both given an education that stressed
military matters, both eventually attending a military academy in
Brunswick.
While on a visit to Berlin he met Princess Friederike Luise Wilhelmine
of Prussia, his cousin, and the two were married in 1791. After
finishing his education, the Hereditary Prince was made a general in the
Dutch army by his father and given a seat on the Council of State of
the Dutch republic. Not long after, the Dutch republicans were to learn
that the kinship they felt with the French revolutionaries was not
returned when the French National Convention declared war on the Dutch
republic in 1793. Prince Willem was given command of the Dutch ‘mobile
army’ to meet the attacking French and he was soon leading his troops
alongside the armies of other powers in the Flanders campaign. It was
hard fighting and the Prince tasted both victory and defeat such as when
he captured Landrecies and was later smashed along with his allies at
the Battle of Fleurus in 1794. Still, he made enough of a favorable
impression that the Emperor Francis II gave him command of the Austrian
forces in the region, to be grouped with his own though, in the end, the
huge advantage in numbers possessed by the French revolutionaries with
their campaign of mass conscription, proved impossible to overcome.
Willem, Prince of Orange
In 1795 Prince Willem V was forced to leave the Netherlands and go into
exile in Britain, taking his sons with him as the French and their Dutch
republican collaborators proclaimed the birth of the Batavian Republic,
effectively a French puppet state. Prince Willem wanted to strike back
immediately but his Prussian relatives vetoed the idea but he returned
nonetheless in 1799 in an effort to spark a loyalist counter-revolution
in cooperation with a joint Anglo-Russian invasion. The whole affair was
a fiasco, though much of the navy and some Dutch soldiers did defect to
join their prince. These men were formed into the King’s Dutch Brigade
which later saw action in Ireland. When the British made peace with the
French “First Consul”, Napoleon Bonaparte, in 1802 the cause of the
Dutch loyalists seemed lost. Prince Willem felt betrayed by the British,
who also went on to conquer a number of far flung Dutch colonies such
as the Cape colony in South Africa and Ceylon in the Indian Ocean.
Embittered, the Prince left England for Germany.
However, in 1806 Napoleon invaded the German states, the same year that
Willem V died and his son officially became Prince Willem VI of Orange,
and the Prince fought alongside his Prussian relatives against the
French as a divisional commander of the Prussian army at the Battle of
Jena. However, the Prussians were defeated and the Prince was forced to
surrender the next day. He was given his parole, forced to promise not
to fight against the French any more and was granted a pension from
France as his country was a vassal of the government in Paris. However,
he had no intention of keeping his word to the French and when the
Austrian Empire went to war with France, he quickly joined their ranks
and was wounded at the Battle of Wagram while serving on the staff of
the Austrian commander Archduke Charles. Later, he received a great
boost from Czar Alexander I of Russia who promised to help restore Dutch
independence and make the Prince of Orange king. Prussia and Britain
were both expected to agree. After the defeat of Napoleon at Leipzig, an
Orange restoration seemed imminent.
By 1813, republicanism had been hugely reduced in the Netherlands,
mostly thanks to the French. After promoting himself to Emperor,
Napoleon had abolished the Batavian Republic and recreated the country
as a satellite state called the Kingdom of Holland with his brother
Louis as monarch. As it happened, King Louis proved rather popular and
seemed to take his position seriously and clashed with his brother when
French and Dutch interests collided. Napoleon would have none of that
and so he sacked his brother and simply annexed the Netherlands to the
French Empire. This turned the Dutch completely against the French and
Napoleon’s constant wars and increasing demands for more money, more
men, more resources brought about a very anti-French attitude amongst
practically the entire Dutch population. The period of French rule made
everyone long for the return of the Prince of Orange and the idea of a
Dutch monarchy was more popular than it had ever been before.
The return of the Prince of Orange
On November 30, 1813 a British warship landed the Prince of Orange at
Scheveningen, almost exactly the spot where he had left the country
eighteen years before and the local provisional government immediately
offered him the title of king. Humbly, the Prince of Orange refused, at
least for the time being, calling himself “Sovereign Prince of the
Netherlands” and, knowing well enough that the years of French prattle
about the “Rights of Man” had to be taken into account, called for “a
wise constitution”. He knew what he was doing and would end up in a far
stronger position than any of his ancestors could have dreamed of. A new
constitution was drawn up but it was a constitution that made Willem an
all but absolute monarch. With the agreement of the Emperor in Vienna,
he was made Governor-General of the Austrian Netherlands (Belgium) and
in exchange for the Duchy of Nassau, who he gave to Prussia, he was made
Grand Duke of Luxembourg. The allies had all agreed that it was best to
have all the Low Countries united under one reliable monarch as a
bulwark against any future French offensive into central Europe.
King Willem I inspects the army in the 100 Days Campaign
With the allies gathered at the Council of Vienna, and Napoleon escaping
his exile to return to power in France, it was unanimously decided to
regularize the situation in the Low Countries by making the “Sovereign
Prince” King Willem I of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, covering
all of the Dutch and Belgian lands as well as Luxembourg. He was
proclaimed king on March 16, 1815 and with French troops marching into
Belgium, King Willem I’s son and heir, the Prince of Orange, was made a
corps commander in the allies army that definitively defeated Napoleon
at the Battle of Waterloo. It was the hour of triumph for the new King
Willem I who had achieved more for his house and country than any would
have thought possible. He was practically an absolute monarch over all
of the Low Countries with the support of all the major powers, his
greatest enemy was defeated and tributes poured in from abroad. The King
of Spain awarded him the Order of the Golden Fleece, the King of Great
Britain sent him the Order of the Garter, it was as though all of the
wildest dreams of the old Orange party had come true at last.
However, there were problems. The Belgians had hoped to gain their own
independence from the wars with France and many were not happy about
being subject to a Dutch king. Though his son was popular there, King
Willem I was not. The Belgians complained of being underrepresented in
the new Dutch government. They resented the King pushing everyone to
adopt the Dutch language as, in those days, not only did the Walloon
population of Belgium speak only French but the elite, the educated and
the businessmen of Flanders spoke French as well. The Belgians were also
solidly Catholic and they also resented the special favor shown by
their Protestant monarch to the Dutch Reformed Church. This is all, of
course, completely understandable just as it is understandable that King
Willem I wished to have all parts of his kingdom united, wanting one
people, one language, one religion under one monarch. It might not have
been so bad if Belgian expectations had not been raised previously. It
also did not help that the policies which benefited the Dutch population
of traders, bankers and businessmen were often less than helpful to the
farmers and laborers of Belgium.
King Willem I
In the summer of 1830 the Belgians rose up in revolt, soon declaring the
independence of the Kingdom of Belgium and looking around for a monarch
of their own. King Willem I responded by sending his sons with the
Dutch army to put down the rebellion. The Prince of Orange was quite
popular in Belgium, particularly Flanders where the Orange party existed
in a new form but whereas the Prince was open to reconciliation, his
father was not. King Willem I wanted all rebellion suppressed by force,
the ringleaders made example of and that to be an end to it. In a short
campaign the Royal Dutch Army was quite successful at scattering the
rag-tag Belgian civilian-soldiers. However, when the French King Louis
Philippe threatened to intervene, the Dutch were forced to pull back.
Pressure was applied by the French, British and Germans to get King
Willem I to agree and, failing that, they simply recognized the Kingdom
of Belgium anyway. The Dutch army held on for a time in the
fortress-port of Antwerp but they were besieged by the French Royal Army
and in time were forced to concede and recognize Belgian independence.
This was a particularly bitter pill for King Willem I to swallow as he
had been so very proud of his “United Kingdom of the Netherlands” which,
after the separation of Belgium, became instead the Kingdom of the
Netherlands as it is today though still with the personal union with the
Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. Dutch liberals also took advantage of the
opportunity that came with amending the constitution to take into
account the loss of Belgium to diminish the King’s powers. It was not an
immense change but it did mean that the King could no longer do as he
pleased entirely and King Willem I was outraged by this. He was also
facing mounting anger over his private life as, since the death of his
wife in 1837 (after giving him two sons and two daughters) he had taken
up with a countess who, to the outrage of the Dutch public, was a
Catholic and a Belgian. He wished to marry her but it was clear the
Dutch people would not stand for such a thing. So, with King Willem I
refusing to accept the constitutional changes, his people refusing to
accept his choice of wife and lingering resentment over the loss of
Belgium, King Willem I started the tradition of Dutch monarchs
abdicating when he gave up his throne on October 7, 1840.
The former king, to make room for his more popular son, left the country
for the Kingdom of Prussia, using the title Count of Nassau. He married
his beloved Belgian countess and she took good care of him for the rest
of his life, which was not long. He died in Berlin in 1843 at the age
of 71. The care his wife, Countess Henrietta d’Oultremont, showed to him
even softened the hearts of the Dutch government sufficiently for them
to grant her a pension and a castle near Aachen, though not enough to
have her buried along with her husband and other Dutch royals when she
passed away in 1864. So, in the end, King Willem I of the Netherlands
had left his country on a less than happy note. He had fought the French
for years to regain his country and his triumph in becoming the first
King of the Netherlands was the culmination of many, many years of
struggle for the House of Orange and their supporters. Yet, the
subsequent losses he had to face were more than he could accept.
Nonetheless, his reign had still been the most successful of any of his
dynasty and his victory gave us the Kingdom of the Netherlands that
still exists today.
Looking back at King Willem I, everyone would agree that he was a
pivotal figure in Dutch history. Born into the Dutch republic, he
presided over the creation of the Dutch kingdom. Today he tends to be
viewed though, rather unfairly, in a critical light as a rigid man with a
noticeably authoritarian streak. That is not, in itself, that unfair
but it should be seen in context. Had he been a little less rigid the
Kingdom of the Netherlands might not exist today. He was a man of great
tenacity, who was unrelenting in his fight to restore his house and the
independence of his country, making common cause with anyone who would
help make that dream a reality. It is certainly understandable why the
Belgians would have been unhappy with him but subsequent history can
also be seen as something of a vindication of his policy given how
bitterly divided Belgium has become as a bi-lingual country. In his
opposition to the constitutional modifications, it is true that his loss
of power was not a great one (real changes in that regard would come
under his son) but one must remember the background of King Willem I. He
had seen much of and learned even more about all the strife in his
country when, as a republic, power was shared with the princes of Orange
and he did not want to simply go from being a republic with a prince to
a kingdom with a president. He had fought long and hard to finally make
good on his family’s dynastic dream to become king and as king, he
intended to rule. Willem I may be criticized for that today, but for him
to have done otherwise would, for someone like him, seemed a complete
betrayal of everything he had spent his life fighting to achieve and all
the struggles of generations of his ancestors as well. History should
be more kind to him.
