The House of Orange in Revolution and War: A European History, 1772–1890

441 Pages·2022·18.521 MB·English

by  Jeroen Koch, Dik van der Meulen, Jeroen van Zanten

the house of orange
in revolution and war

THE
HOUSE OF OR A NGE
IN REVOLUTION AND WAR

A European History, 1772–1890
JEROEN KOCH, DIK VAN DER MEULEN
and JEROEN VAN ZANTEN
Translated by Andy Brown
reaktion books
Published by
Reaktion Books Ltd
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44–48 Wharf Road
London n1 7ux, uk
www.reaktionbooks.co.uk
First published 2022
Copyright © Jeroen Koch, Dik van der Meulen
and Jeroen van Zanten 2022
English language translation © Reaktion Books 2022
First published in Dutch as Oranje in Revolutie en oorlog
© 2018 by Jeroen Koch
Originally published by Boom Uitgevers Amsterdam
This publication has been made possible with financial
support from the Dutch Foundation for Literature
This publication is also partly funded
by the Prince Bernhard Culture Fund
All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers
Printed and bound in India by Replika Press Pvt. Ltd
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
isbn 978 1 78914 542 7
Contents
Introduction 7
1 The Minor Civil War and the Great Revolution,
1772–99 15
2 In Napoleon’s Europe, 1799–1812 47
3 A New Royal House, 1813–15 81
4 Bulwark of Europe, 1815–30 116
5 Crisis Years, 1828–40 149
6 Palace Secrets and Family Intrigues, 1795–1849 185
7 Constitutional Monarchy, 1840–53 215
8 A King without Responsibility, 1849–73 249
9 A Family on the Throne, 1849–90 283
Epilogue: Orange and Europe, 1789–1918 317
RefeRences 329
bibliogRaphy 393
aRchive souRces 427
acknowledgements 429
photo acknowledgements 431
index of names 433

Introduction
Three kings from the House of Orange-Nassau ruled over the Kingdom
of the Netherlands between 1813 and 1890: William i from 1813 to 1840,
William ii from 1840 to 1849 and William iii from 1849 to 1890. None
of their reigns was to unfold as might have been expected. William i
(1772–1843) was destined from birth to succeed his father William v as
hereditary stadholder of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands.
But that was not be. The Orange family was driven from the Republic
and, for almost two decades, roamed around a Europe thrown into chaos
by the French Revolution and Napoleon. In 1813 a Dutch elite unexpect-
edly recalled the 41-year-old prince William to the Netherlands and, under
the watchful eye of the United Kingdom, proclaimed him their sovereign
prince. Two years later, the Congress of Vienna added the Southern
Netherlands to the territory that would go down in history as the United
Kingdom of the Netherlands. In the years that followed, William i tried
to bring peace and prosperity to his subjects. He did so with such vigour
that a description of the reign of this ‘king-merchant’ reads like a text-
book of Dutch history. In 1830 revolution resulted in the division of this
United Kingdom, not least through the actions of William i himself, into
the Netherlands and Belgium. Ten years later, disappointed and battle-
weary, William i abdicated to make way for his eldest son.
The reign of William ii (1792–1849) was, if possible, even more
surprising than that of his father. It is a miracle in itself that this Prince of
Orange survived the wars against Napoleon. As aide-de-camp to the Duke
of Wellington, he could easily have been killed fighting in the front lines
on the Iberian Peninsula and at Quatre-Bras and Waterloo. William ii
was an adventurer on the battlefield, in politics and in love, three areas
in which he put the Orange dynasty at great risk. He was permanently at
loggerheads with his authoritarian father, who was jealous of his son’s
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the house of oRange in Revolution and waR
status as the ‘Hero of Waterloo’. In 1830, during the revolt in the Southern
Netherlands, the heir to the throne seemed willing to accept the position
of king of an independent Belgium, but a year later he led a punitive
expedition from the Northern Netherlands against the new kingdom.
In 1848, as a wave of revolutions swept across Europe, William ii approved
a radical change to the constitution, heralding the beginning of modern
democracy in the Netherlands. He died less than a year later.
His eldest son was the first member of the Orange family destined
to be king from birth. Yet, during the life of William iii (1817–1890) too,
far-reaching political changes frustrated these expectations. The Belgian
revolution against his grandfather cut the territories he was due to inherit
by half, while the constitution that his father signed in 1848 imposed
restrictions on royal power. The architect of the revised constitution, Johan
Rudolf Thorbecke, encapsulated the move to a new form of monarchy
in the following article: ‘The King is inviolate; the ministers are respon-
sible.’ While William i had drawn as much power as possible to himself
and William ii had shown understanding for his subjects’ desire for con-
stitutional liberalization, the reign of William iii was marked by royal
impotence, a term that applied equally to his personal life. The king was
temperamental, impulsive and had little success. Shortly before his death,
radical socialists would immortalize him as ‘King Gorilla’.
The reigns of each of the three kings were marked in different ways
by war and revolution. In the first phase in particular, during the French
Revolution and the Napoleonic wars, it was not inconceivable that the
House of Orange-Nassau could have been destroyed by the chaos of
the times, a fate that could equally have befallen the independent state
of the Netherlands. The revolutions of 1830 and 1848 and the many
European wars in which the small Netherlands was more than once
in danger of becoming embroiled also had a deep impact. At the same
time, it was these same radical changes across Europe that made the
Orange monarchy possible, and perhaps even saved it in the long term.
This book examines the history of the Orange monarchs from the final
days of the Republic to the birth of the modern Netherlands. It is based
on the biographies of the three kings published in 2013 to mark the mon-
archy’s second centenary.1 Each of the three books examines the life of
one king on the basis of five themes: the king’s personal life, the inter-
national context, the development of the Orange monarchy within the
Dutch constitutional state, the king’s public image and his activities as
8
Introduction
head of state. These themes recur here, too, but with a different emphasis.
Unlike in the three biographies, attention focuses primarily on the for-
tunes of the Orange dynasty. In addition, the European context acquires
greater weight, with structural attention to the importance of develop-
ments across the continent for the Netherlands and for the Orange family
and with the introduction, where appropriate, of a comparative element:
the three kings are compared both with their contemporaries elsewhere
and with each other.
New in this book are a section on Belgian Orangism after the
secession of the Southern Netherlands and an examination of the colo-
nial reputations of the Dutch kings. The latter is expanded further with
a short analysis of the first decades in which the Netherlands was ruled
by Queen Wilhelmina, William iii’s daughter and successor. The epilogue
follows her reign until 1918, when war and revolution had once again
ravaged Europe, with consequences for the European monarchies.
Between 1795 and 1848 the fate of the Orange family was more
European in nature than during any other period, with the possible
exception of the late seventeenth century, when Stadholder William iii
was also king of England, Scotland and Ireland. They operated within a
network of royal families that spanned the entire continent. During the
revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, they depended on this network and
especially on the British and Prussian royal houses, to which the Orange
stadholders had been allied through marriage since the mid-seventeenth
century. In the decades around 1800 ties with the Prussian royal house
were strengthened and relations were established with the Russian tsarist
family, while those with the British royal house weakened – all at a time
when the Netherlands was becoming increasingly dependent on Britain,
both in Europe and the colonies.
When, in the second half of the nineteenth century, political power
shifted from the royal court to government and parliament and the royal
house was increasingly nationalized, the international network of mon-
archies – sometimes called the White International – continued to be of
significance. This was most sharply defined in the area of diplomacy,
where direct contact between the monarchs could help ease international
political tensions.2 Though it was the third largest colonial power, in
Europe the Netherlands was small and neutral and wedged between the
great powers of France, the United Kingdom and Prussia (from 1871
the German Empire). It could therefore not afford to make too many
errors in navigating its way through international diplomatic waters. King
9