First Stadtholderless Period - The End of The De-Witt Regime

The End of The De-Witt Regime

The war started in March, 1672. An English fleet attacked the Dutch Smyrna convoy in the Channel, as in the previous two conflicts without a declaration of war. That was to follow only after France had declared war on April 6. The French army was the largest in Europe at the time. Louis assembled 118,000 infantry and 12,500 cavalry against a regular Dutch army that numbered at most 30,000. That Dutch army, long neglected by the De-Witt regime, was also qualitatively inferior. The regents belatedly tried to reinforce it with contingents of the citizen militias, but it was all too little, too late. The Dutch enclaves in present-day Germany, Cleves and Lingen, were quickly overrun by the Elector of Cologne, the Munsterites, and the French, a long list of venerable fortresses being taken almost without a shot fired. Then the French stormed across the Rhine at Lobith on June 12, outflanking the main Dutch eastern line of defense at the IJssel. The Dutch now hastily retreated to the Hollandse Waterlinie, thereby abandoning all but the provinces of Holland, Zeeland, and Utrecht to the enemy. The French followed at their leisure, experiencing little resistance, as the citizens of first Arnhem, and then Utrecht rioted, and forced their city governments to capitulate without a fight.

But there the advance halted. The waterline defense was filling up, despite the summer drought, inundating vast tracts of land across the path of the advancing French, which effectively blocked them. Louis did not mind, as he expected the Dutch to know they were beaten, allowing him to await their peace offers in his headquarters in Utrecht. He did not have long to wait. The Dutch government was in a complete funk. Defeatism among the regents was rife. Against the advice of De Witt, the States of Holland already before the fall of Utrecht on June 23, had sent the Rotterdam Pensionary, Pieter de Groot (the son of Grotius) to parley with the king's envoys Louvois and Pomponne. He returned to the Hague with the bleak message that capitulation was the only option. The States concurred, hoping to save the Republic proper, and the free exercise of the Reformed religion (Louis had already had the Utrecht cathedral reconsecrated to Catholic worship), but being prepared to sign away the Generality Lands.

But now the remarkable popular insurrection began that would save the Republic, and overturn the States-Party regime. Protests began in De Witt's hometown, Dordrecht, and soon spread to Rotterdam, Schiedam, Leiden and Amsterdam. In Rotterdam and Amsterdam the militias forced the vroedschap to vote against the capitulation. Nevertheless, on June 26 the States General voted four to three (Holland, and the three already occupied provinces Utrecht, Gelderland and Overijssel, against the rest) to send De Groot with a mandate to sign away the Generality Lands and offer a large war indemnity to Louis. Louis thought the offer insufficient, and sent De Groot back empty-handed. It was the last offer he would get.

To understand what happened next we have to digress about the position of the Prince of Orange. During the war with England, and the Buat Conspiracy, the Orangists had to lie low, as we have seen. However, under the gathering clouds of the conflict with France, and because the Prince finally got to the age where he could plausibly be proposed for actual public office in his own right (his cousin Willem Frederick died in 1664, taking the cadet branch of the family temporarily out of the running as the Frisian stadtholdership was now taken by an infant). The pressure on De Witt to allow a role for William therefore started to mount inexorably, putting him on the defensive. However, he celebrated one final triumph of the "True Freedom", when in 1667 he managed to engineer the final abolition of the stadtholderate, not only in Holland, but also in Utrecht, Gelderland and Overijssel. These provinces signed the so-called Perpetual Edict (1667) which abolished the office of stadtholder in these provinces "forever" (the Act of Seclusion had only stated that no Prince of Orange could hold that office), separating the captaincy-general of the Union from the stadtholderate of any of the provinces (to close the door to the Frisian stadtholder), and transferring the functions of the stadtholder permanently to the States in Holland.

The triumph was short-lived, and somewhat pyrrhic, however. It actually made the elevation of William to the office of captain-general in February, 1672, more difficult to deflect, as the danger of a combination of the functions of stadtholder and commander-in-chief no longer threatened. The 21-year old Prince was therefore duly given the command of the army (with De Witt's grudging assent), just before the war started, making him share in the responsibility for the military debacle, which he, of course, in the circumstances could not avoid. De Witt hoped to control him with the deputies-in-the-field, an institution that Marlborough would come heartily to detest when he in turn was appointed lieutenant-captain-general of the Union in 1702. But circumstances now allowed him to wrest free from political control.

At first the Prince was swept along in the political turmoil. As head of the federal army he felt a responsibility to maintain public order where it had broken down, often because the city militias had come out against the city governments. An interesting political development started to take shape, in which the Orangist mob (against which normally both the States Party and the Orangist regents would have formed a common front) injected a decidedly "democratic" element into Dutch politics. The mob, incited by the Calvinist preachers as usual, demanded not only a purge of the States Party regents, but also an alteration of detested policies, like toleration of dissenting Protestants. The main demand, of course, was the abolition of the Perpetual Edict, and the appointment of William to the restored stadtholdership. He was therefore, in effect, put in power by the people in July, 1672. The Orangist regents (hoping this would be a one-off aberration) legitimized this "unconstitutional" interference of the common people in what they, too, considered "their" affairs, after the fact as a "patriotic" and necessary check on regent presumption, which was justified by the emergency. It is nevertheless remarkable, and somewhat ironic, that now Orangist ideology also had a "democratic" variant.

William was appointed stadtholder of Zeeland on July 2; the States of Holland followed suit the next day. Of course, the old prerogatives of the stadtholder, like appointing the city governments, even in the voting cities, abolished in December, 1650, were also restored. At first William did not move against the States Party, but the mob unrest continued apace, despite the fact that the Orangist demand had been met. In city after city the States Party regents were now molested. Rotterdam Pensionary De Groot, the would-be signer of the capitulation, had to flee to Antwerp. In Amsterdam the transfer of power had an orderly character, but elsewhere violence was used. In Rotterdam the militia forced the vroedschap to oust the remaining States Party regents, as in Dordrecht.

In the Hague events took a particularly ugly turn. De Witt was severely wounded by a knife-wielding assassin on June 21. He resigned as Grand Pensionary on August 4, but this was not enough for his enemies. His brother Cornelis (De Ruyter's deputy-in-the-field at the Raid on the Medway), particularly hated by the Orangists, was arrested on trumped up charges of treason. He was tortured (as was usual under the Roman-Dutch system of law, that required a confession before a conviction was possible) but refused to confess. Nevertheless he was sentenced to exile. When his brother went over to the jail (which was only a few steps from his house) to help him get started on his journey, both were attacked by members of the Hague civic militia in a clearly orchestrated assassination. The brothers were shot and then left to the mob. Their naked, mutilated bodies were strung up on the nearby public gibbet, while the Orangist mob partook of their roasted livers in a cannibalistic frenzy. Throughout it all, a remarkable discipline was maintained by the mob, according to contemporary observers, making one doubt the spontaneity of the event.

Thus ended the life of Johan de Witt, who had in effect ruled the Republic for almost twenty years. His regime outlasted him only a few more days. Though no more people were killed, the lynching of De Witts lent renewed impetus to the mob attacks, and to help restore public order the States of Holland empowered William on August 27 to purge the city councils in any way he would see fit to restore public order. The following purges in the early days of September were accompanied by large, but peaceful, Orangist demonstrations, that had a remarkable political character. The demonstrations delivered petitions that demanded certain additional reforms with a, in a sense, "reactionary" flavor: the "ancient" privileges of the guilds and civic militias (who were traditionally seen as mouthpieces of the citizenry as a whole) to curb the regent's powers were to be recognized again (as in pre-Burgundian times). The demonstrators also demanded more influence of the Calvinist preachers on the content of government policies and a roll-back of the toleration of Catholics and other dissenting denominations. The purges of the city governments were not everywhere equally thoroughgoing (and, of course, there was little mention of popular influence later on, as the new regents shared the abhorrence of the old ones of real democratic reforms). But as a whole, the new Orangist regime of the Stadtholder was well-entrenched during his following reign.