Second Stadtholderless Period - The Peace of Utrecht and The Second Great Assembly

The Peace of Utrecht and The Second Great Assembly

Louis eventually tired of his fruitless attempts to pry the Dutch loose from the Grand Alliance, and turned his attentions to Great Britain. It had not escaped his attention that great political changes had taken place there. Though Queen Anne was less partial than William III to the Whigs, she had soon discovered that she could as yet not govern with sole support of the Tories and had since the early experiments with a Tory government had a moderate Tory government with Whig support under Sidney Godolphin, 1st Earl of Godolphin and the Whig-leaning Marlborough. However, Marlborough's wife Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, who had been Queen Anne's favorite for a long time, thereby giving her husband an informal powerbase, had had a falling-out with the Queen over Abigail Masham, Baroness Masham, Sarah's poor relative, who had replaced her in the Queen's favor. After that, Sarah's star declined and with it her husband's. Instead the star of Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer (Abigail's cousin) went into the ascendant, especially after the Tories won the parliamentary elections in 1710.

Harley formed a new government with Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke as Secretary of State and this new government entered into secret negotiations with Louis XIV to conclude a separate peace between Great Britain and France. These negotiations soon achieved success as Louis was prepared to make great concessions (he basically offered the same concessions he had offered to the Dutch, and some more, like the port of Dunkirk as surety for his good intentions) and the new British government did not feel constrained to respect the interests of its Allies in any sense.

If this breach of trust with the Allies was not bad enough, the British government started to actively sabotage the Allied war effort while the war was still progressing full tilt. In May, 1712 Bolingbroke ordered the Duke of Ormonde who had succeeded Marlborough as captain-general of the British forces (though not of the Dutch forces, as the Dutch government had transferred command to Prince Eugene) to refrain from taking further part in the hostilities. Bolingbroke informed the French of this instruction, but not the Allies. However, it became evident during the siege of Quesnoy when the French commander, Villars who noticed British forces under the besieging forces, understandably demanded a clarification of Ormonde. The British general then withdrew his forces from the Allied camp and marched away with just the British soldiers (the mercenaries in British pay refused to take part in the blatant defection). Ironically, the French felt also hard done by, because they had expected all forces in British pay to disappear, thereby fatally weakening the forces of Prince Eugene. This had been an essential element of the Franco-British agreement. Would France still feel constrained to give up Dunkirk under these circumstances, as promised.

Winston Churchill describes the feelings of the British soldiers thus:

The rest of the Allies felt likewise, especially after the Battle of Denain which Prince Eugene lost as a consequence of the weakening of the Allied force, due to the withdrawal of the British troops, with great loss of life to the Dutch and Austrian troops. Bolingbroke congratulated the victor Villars with his victory, adding insult to injury. When it transpired during the formal peace negotiations at Utrecht that the British and French had already struck a secret deal disillusionment and despair swept the Dutch and Austrians. In the Hague there were anti-British riots and there was even talk of a Fourth Anglo-Dutch War, sixty-eight years before such a war actually would break out. Austria and the Republic briefly tried to continue the war on their own, but the Dutch and Prussians soon came to the conclusion that it was a hopeless quest. Only the Austrians fought on.

Consequently, on April 11, 1713 the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) was signed by France and most of the Allies. France made most of the concessions, but not as many as would have been the case if the Harley-Bolingbroke government had not betrayed its allies. Great Britain came off best, with territorial concessions in Spain (Gibraltar and Minorca), and North America, while the lucrative Asiento now went to a British consortium, which was set to profit from almost a century of slave trading. The big loser was Charles III who did not get the Spanish Crown about which the whole war had started. However, Charles had become Holy Roman Emperor himself in the meantime, which decidedly dampened the enthusiasm of the Allies to support his claims. Doing so would have tilted the balance of power in Europe in a pro-Habsburg way. However, as compensation Austria received the former Spanish Netherlands, more or less intact, besides the former Spanish possessions in Italy (except Sicily which went to Savoy but was later exchanged with Austria for Sardinia).

Though much has been made of the fact that the Republic decidedly came off second best (the taunt by the French negotiator, Melchior de Polignac, "De vous, chez vous, sans vous", meaning that the Peace Congress had decided over the Dutch interests in their own country, but without them, still rankles), they actually attained most of their war aims: the desired codominion over the Austrian Netherlands, and the Barrier of fortresses in that country, were attained under the Austro-Dutch Treaty of November, 1715 (France already having acquiesced at Utrecht), though the Dutch, due to British obstruction, did not gain all they had hoped for.

The Treaty of Ryswick was reconfirmed (as a matter of fact, the Franco-Dutch part of the Treaty of Utrecht is almost synonymous with that treaty; only the preambles differ) and this implied important economic concessions by the French, particularly the return to the French tariff list of 1664. Important in the economic field was also that the closing of the Scheldt to trade with Antwerp was once again confirmed.

Still, disillusionment in government circles of the Republic was great. Heinsius policy of alliance with Great Britain was in ruins, which he personally took very hard. It has been said that he was a broken man afterwards and never regained his prestige and influence, even though he remained in office as Grand Pensionary until his death in 1720. Relations with Great Britain were very strained as long as the Harley-Bolingbroke ministry remained in office. This was only for a short time, however, as they fell in disfavor after the death of Queen Anne and the accession to the British throne of the Elector of Hanover, George I of Great Britain in August, 1714. Both were impeached and Bolingbroke would spent the remainder of his life in exile in France. The new king greatly preferred the Whigs and in the new Ministry Marlborough returned to power. The Republic and Great Britain now entered on a long-lasting period of amity, which would last as long as the Whigs were in power.

The policy of working in tandem between the Republic and Great Britain was definitively a thing of the past, however. The Dutch had lost their trust in the British. The Republic now embarked on a policy of Neutralism, which would last until the end of the stadtholderless period. To put it differently: the Republic resigned voluntarily as a Great Power. As soon as the peace was signed the States General started disbanding the Dutch army. Troop strength was reduced from 130,000 in 1713 to 40,000 (about the pre-1672 strength) in 1715. The reductions in the navy were comparable. This was a decisive change, because other European powers kept their armies and navies up to strength.

The main reason for this voluntary resignation, so to speak, was the dire situation of the finances of the Republic. The Dutch had financed the wars of William III primarily with borrowing. Consequently, the public debt had risen from 38 million guilders after the end of the Franco-Dutch war in 1678 to the staggering sum of 128 million guilders in 1713. In itself this need not be debilitating, but the debt-service of this tremendous debt consumed almost all of the normal tax revenue. Something evidently had to give. The tax burden was already appreciable and the government felt that could not be increased. The only feasible alternative seemed to be reductions in expenditures, and as most government expenditures were in the military sphere, that is where they had to be made.

However, there was another possibility, at least in theory, to get out from under the debt burden and retain the Republic's military stature: fiscal reform. The quota system which determined the contributions of the seven provinces to the communal budget had not been revised since 1616 and had arguably grown skewed. But this was just one symptom of the debilitating particularism of the government of the Republic. The secretary of the Raad van State (Council of State) Simon van Slingelandt privately enumerated a number of necessary constitutional reforms in his Political Discourses(which would only be published posthumously in 1785) and he set to work in an effort to implement them.

On the initiative of the States of Overijssel the States-General were convened in a number of extraordinary sessions, collectively known as the Tweede Grote Vergadering (Second Great Assembly, a kind of Constitutional Convention) of the years 1716-7 to discuss his proposals. The term was chosen as a reminder of the Great Assembly of 1651 which inaugurated the first stadtholderless period. But that first Great Assembly had been a special congress of the provincial States, whereas in this case only the States General were involved. Nevertheless, the term is appropriate, because no less than a revision of the Union of Utrecht-treaty was intended.

As secretary of the Raad van State (a federal institution) Van Slingelandt was able to take a federal perspective, as opposed to a purely provincial perspective, as most other politicians (even the Grand Pensionary) were wont to do. One of the criticisms Van Slingelandt made, was that unlike in the early years of the Republic (which he held up as a positive example) majority-voting was far less common, leading to debilitating deadlock in the decisionmaking. As a matter of fact, one of the arguments of the defenders of the stadtholderate was that article 7 of the Union of Utrecht had charged the stadtholders of the several provinces (there was still supposed to be more than one at that time) with breaking such deadlocks in the States-General through arbitration. Van Slingelandt, however (not surprisingly in view of his position in the Raad van State), proposed a different solution to the problem of particularism: he wished to revert to a stronger position of the Raad as an executive organ for the Republic, as had arguably existed before the inclusion of two English members in that council under the governorate-general of the Earl of Leicester in 1586 (which membership lasted until 1625) necessitated the emasculation of that council by Johan van Oldenbarnevelt. A strong executive (but not an "eminent head", the alternative the Orangists always preferred) would in his view bring about the other reforms necessary to reform the public finances, that in turn would bring about the restoration of the Republic as a leading military and diplomatic power. (And this in turn would enable the Republic to reverse the trend among its neighbors to put protectionist measures in the path of Dutch trade and industry, which already were beginning to cause the steep decline of the Dutch economy in these years. The Republic had previously been able to counter such measures by diplomatic, even military, means.) Unfortunately, vested interests were too strong, and despite much debate the Great Assembly came to nothing.