When the Emperor Napoleon proposed that his younger brother Louis Napoleon Bonaparte should become the king of a new kingdom, a state that would replace and succeed the age-old Dutch republic, at that time called the "Batavian Republic", he chose the name "Holland", the name of the most important province, as "Hollande" was much used in France as a name for the Netherlands or "Pays-Bas".
The statute described the royal arms and mentioned a royal crown. On the 20th of May 1807 a precise drawing of the royal coat of arms was approved by the king. The crown was topped with an orb with a cross.
In practice crowns without a cross became part of the crosses of Louis' Order of Knighthood, the Order of the Union, and the new coins. The second coat of arms, approved on the 6th of February 1806, showed no cross.
As the country was ruined by the Napoleonic wars and the resulting lack of trade there was no opportunity for a coronation. The crown existed on paper alone until the French annexed the country in 1810. In 1813 the Dutch "chose" a new sovereign ruler, later king, William I who had a new crown, the crown of the Netherlands designed and wrought in gilded silver.
Famous quotes containing the words coat of, coat, arms, kingdom and/or holland:
“Want is a growing giant whom the coat of Have was never large enough to cover.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“While yet it is cold January, and snow and ice are thick and solid, the prudent landlord comes from the village to get ice to cool his summer drink; impressively, even pathetically, wise, to foresee the heat and thirst of July now in January,—wearing a thick coat and mittens! when so many things are not provided for. It may be that he lays up no treasures in this world which will cool his summer drink in the next.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I can understand that if you have sold arms to the ayatollah why you might not be quite as sensitive to the need to get assault weapons off our streets.”
—Charles S. Robb (b. 1939)
“Then Jesus called the twelve together and gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal.”
—Bible: New Testament, Luke 9:1,2.
“The tragedy of Northern Ireland is that it is now a society in which the dead console the living.”
—Jack Holland (b. 1947)