For the next three years the Hollanders went to the French school. The
teachers were severe masters, but the pupils learned a lot. The Batavian
Republic, and even the kingdom of Louis Napoleon, had been but
continuations of the old partisan struggles of the former republics. The
new state of affairs wiped the slate clean. The government came into the
hands of French superiors who trained the lower Dutch officials in the
new methods of governmental administration, who insisted upon running
the state as they would a business firm, and to whom the petty
considerations of former partisanship meant absolutely nothing. Uniform
laws for the entire country, which the different assemblies had not been
able to institute, were drawn up and were enforced upon all Hollanders
with equal severity. The old system of jurisprudence, different for
every little province, town, or village, was replaced by one single
system. The Code Napoleon became the law for all.
The old trouble with the armed forces which had put the republic under
the obligation of hiring mercenaries was now done away with. The new
conscription took in all able-bodied citizens, put them all in the
same uniform, and gave them all the same chance to serve their country
and be killed for its glory.
[Illustration: 1811. HOLLAND ANNEXED BY FRANCE.]
[Illustration: Reproduced from Author's Sketch.]
But, best of all, that old atmosphere in which a man from one village
had looked upon his nearest neighbour from another village as his worst
enemy was at last cleared away. A man might have been an Orangeist or a
federalist or a Jacobin, he might have believed in the supreme right of
the state or the divine right of his own family--before the new ruler
this made no difference. Napoleon asked no questions about the past. He
insisted upon duties toward the future. Before that capital N all men
became equal, because they all were inferiors. Promotion could be won
only by ability and through faithful service. Family influence no longer
counted. Humble names were suddenly elevated if their possessors showed
themselves worthy of the Emperor's confidence. The whole country was
thrown into one gigantic melting-pot of foreign make and stirred by a
foreign master without any respect for the separate ingredients out of
which he was trying to brew his one and indivisible French Empire.
The new French province was arbitrarily divided into departments. The
old provincial names and frontiers were discontinued. Each little
department was called after some river or brook which happened to flow
through it. At its head came a prefect, invariably a Frenchman. A French
governor-general resided in The Hague to exercise the supreme command.
Fortunately the first governor-general, the French General Lebrun, Duke
of Plaisance, was a decent old man who did his best to make the sudden
change from Hollander into Frenchman as little painful to the subject as
possible. And his subjects, if they did not actually love the old
gentleman, always treated him with respect and deference. But the same
thing cannot be said of a majority of the French prefects. They were
insolent adventurers who had fought their way up from among the ranks,
but who had neither understanding nor affection for the despised
Hollanders over whom they were called to rule.
A large French army came to Holland and French garrisons were placed in
all of the more important cities. Churches and hospitals were hastily
turned into barracks, and the soldiers made themselves entirely at home.
French customs officers were placed in all the villages along the coast.
They watched all harbours. A French soldier sailed on every fishing
smack to prevent smuggling. The entire village was responsible for his
safe return. French police spies made their entry into Dutch society and
kept a control over all Dutch families. The French language was
officially introduced into all schools, theatres, and newspapers. The
universities, except the one in Leiden, were abolished or changed into
secondary schools. What gradually made the French rule so unpopular, and
what finally made it so universally hated, was not the introduction of
an entirely new form of government. The political innovations were
hailed by the thinking part of the nation with considerable joy. Foreign
influence brought about improvements which the people themselves, with
their age-old political prejudices, could not have instituted. It was
not the ever-increasing severity of the taxes nor the unpleasant
presence of a large French army which made the people regard Napoleon as
the incarnation of Antichrist. The opposition to everything French began
the moment Napoleon started to interfere with those undefinable parts of
daily life which we call the national character, or, still shorter, the
"nationality." Napoleon, himself an Italian ruling over Frenchmen, does
not seem to have understood this sentiment at all. Under different
circumstances he would just as happily have made his career in Russia or
in China. His failures in every country date from the moment when he
attacked the nationality of his enemies. The Dutch or the Spanish or the
German child could be made to speak French in school, but the soldiers
of the Emperor could not force the mother of the child to teach it
French when first it began to prattle. The Dutch citizen could be forced
to read a newspaper printed in French and to attend a church where the
sermon was preached in French, but he could not be made to think in that
language. Dutch nationality, driven violently from the public places,
hid itself in the home, and there entrenched itself behind impregnable
barriers. At home the nation suffered, and in the proscribed language
talked of the future and the better times which must certainly
follow. For when the year 1812 came the nation had reached a depth of
misery so very low that things simply could not be worse. The most
despondent pessimist by the very hopeless condition of affairs was
turned into an optimist. Trade and commerce were gone; smuggling was
impossible; factories stood empty and deserted; no dividends were paid.
By imperial decree the national debt had been reduced to one third of
its actual size. Families whose income had been three thousand guilders
now received one thousand. Those who had had one thousand became
paupers. One fourth of the people of Amsterdam were kept alive by public
charities, until finally the charities themselves had no more to give,
and had to go into bankruptcy. Another fourth of the population, while
not absolutely dependent, received partial support. The other half of
the people were obliged to give up everything that was not absolutely
necessary for just simple existence. They dismissed their servants, they
sold their horses, they refrained from buying books and articles of
luxury.
[Illustration: DEPARTURE OF GARDES D'HONNEUR FROM AMSTERDAM]
Then came the sudden blow of the conscription. First of all, the young
men of twenty-one years of age were taken into the army. Then the
conscription was extended upward and downward. Finally, those who had
celebrated their nineteenth birthday in the year 1788 were forced to
take up arms. The few boys who drew a high lot and were free if they
belonged to the higher classes were honoured with a patent of a
sub-altern in his Majesty's personal bodyguard. If they were poor they
were used for some extra duty, as hospital soldiers, or were enlisted
under some flimsy pretext. In short, there was no way of escape. After a
while there was not a family in the land, be it rich or poor, whose sons
or brothers were not serving the Emperor in his armies, and in far-away
countries were risking their lives for a cause as vile as any that has
ever been fought for.
Came the year 1812 and the preparations for the expedition against
Russia. Fifteen thousand Dutch troops were divided among the French
armies as hussars, infantry, artillery, or engineers. They were not
allowed to form one Dutch contingent for fear of possible mutiny. As a
minor part of the enormous army of invasion they marched across the
Russian plains. A few of the men managed to desert and to join the
English troops or the irregular bands which were beginning to operate in
Germany. The others were frozen to death or were killed in battle. The
Fourth Dutch Hussars charged a Russian battery and was reduced to
forty-six men. This was at the beginning of September. A month later the
Third Grenadiers was decimated until only forty men were left. Of the
four regiments of infantry of the line only one came back as such. The
others, shot to pieces, reduced by cold and starvation, gradually
wandered home as part of that endless stream of starving men who early
in 1813 began to beg for bread along the roads of eastern Prussia. Of
the Second Lancers only two men ever saw their fatherland again. The
Thirty-third Light Infantry was practically annihilated, until only
twenty-five men survived, and they as prisoners in Russia. Of two
hundred Hollanders serving in the One Hundred and Twenty-fourth Infantry
not a single one ever returned.
It was a terrible story, but it did not affect the Emperor. His answer
to the catastrophe was a demand for more troops. The sailors were taken
from the fleet. Young boys and old men were mustered into the army. Here
and there Dutch farmers, first robbed of their money, then of their
possessions, finally deprived of their sons, resisted, took pitchforks
and killed a few gendarmes. Immediate reprisals followed. The culprits
were stood against the nearest trees and shot, the sons were marched off
to the army, and the farms were confiscated.
One hundred years ago, at the moment we are writing this chapter, on the
18th of November, 1813, old man Bluecher, cursing and swearing at the
Corsican blackguard, whirled his cavalry against the left flank of the
French army, smashed it to pieces, and changed Napoleon's victory of
Leipzig into a defeat. After a week the first news of the Emperor's
defeat reached the republic. Officially it was not announced until some
months later. Even then it made little impression. The people were too
dejected to rejoice. They had heard of such defeats before, and
invariably the announcement had been followed by a masterstroke on the
part of the terrible Emperor and a rehabilitation of his military
prestige. Here and there in the universities and in the schools some
teachers began to whisper that the days of slavery might be soon over.
But nobody dared to listen. Only a fool or a college professor could
believe in the final victory of the allies.
It was now near the middle of November. Most of the French troops had
been called to the frontiers. A few regiments of custom-house men had
been left behind, and a few companies of either very old or very young
men. It was a dangerous moment. In the east the allies were rapidly
approaching the Dutch frontiers. The possession of the Dutch harbours
would mean direct communication with England and an open road to the
British goods and the British money of which the allies were in such
desperate need. That Holland on this occasion was not conquered by the
allies as French territory was entirely due to the energy of one man,
bravely supported by a small number of able friends.
[Illustration: GYSBERT KAREL VAN HOGENDORP]