THE REGENCY OF ANNE AND OF BRUNSWICK.
1751-1766
On the death of William IV, his widow, Anne of England, was at once
recognised as regent and guardian of her son William V. Bentinck and
other leaders of the Orangist party took prompt measures to secure that
the hereditary rights of the young prince did not suffer by his father's
early death. During the minority Brunswick was deputed to perform the
duties of captain-general. The new regent was a woman of by no means
ordinary parts. In her domestic life she possessed all the virtues of
her mother, Queen Caroline; and in public affairs she had been of much
help to her husband and was deeply interested in them. She was therefore
in many ways well-fitted to undertake the serious responsibilities that
devolved upon her, but her good qualities were marred by a self-willed
and autocratic temperament, which made her resent any interference with
her authority. William Bentinck, who was wont to be insistent with his
advice, presuming on the many services he had rendered, the Duke of
Brunswick, and the council-pensionary Steyn were all alike distrusted
and disliked by her. Her professed policy was not to lean on any party,
but to try and hold the balance between them. Unfortunately William IV,
after the revolution of 1747, had allowed his old Frisian counsellors
(with Otto Zwier van Haren at their head) to have his ear and to
exercise an undue influence upon his decisions. This Frisian court-cabal
continued to exercise the same influence with Princess Anne; and the
Hollanders not unnaturally resented it. For Holland, as usual, in the
late war had borne the brunt of the cost and had a debt of 70,000,000
fl. and an annual deficit of 28,000,000 fl. The council-pensionary Steyn
was a most competent financier, and he with Jan Hop, the
treasurer-general of the Union, and with William Bentinck, head and
spokesman of the nobles in the Estates of Holland, were urgent in
impressing upon the Regent the crying need of retrenchment. Anne
accepted their advice as to the means by which economies might be
effected and a reduction of expenses be brought about. Among these was
the disbanding of some of the military forces, including a part of the
body-guard. To this the regent consented, though characteristically
without consulting Brunswick. The captain-general felt aggrieved, but
allowed the reduction to be made without any formal opposition. No
measure, however, of a bold and comprehensive financial reform, like
that of John de Witt a century earlier, was attempted.
The navy had at the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle been in an even worse
condition than the army; and the stadholder, as admiral-general, had
been urging the Admiralties to bestir themselves and to make the fleet
more worthy of a maritime power. But William's premature death brought
progress to a standstill; and it is noteworthy that such was the
supineness of the States-General in 1752 that, while Brunswick was given
the powers of captain-general, no admiral-general was appointed. The
losses sustained by the merchants and ship-owners through the audacity
of the Algerian pirates roused public opinion, however; and in
successive years squadrons were despatched to the Mediterranean to bring
the sea-robbers to reason. Admiral Boudaen in 1755 contented himself
with the protection of the merchantmen, but Wassenaer in 1756 and 1757
was more aggressive and compelled the Dey of Algiers to make terms.
Meanwhile the rivalry between France and England on the one hand, and
between Austria and Prussia on the other, led to the formation of new
alliances, and placed the Dutch Republic in a difficult position. The
peace of Aix-la-Chapelle was but an armed truce. The French lost no time
in pushing forward ambitious schemes of colonial enterprise in North
America and in India. Their progress was watched with jealous eyes by
the English; and in 1755 war broke out between the two powers. The
Republic was bound to Great Britain by ancient treaties; but the
activities of the French ambassador, D'Affry, had been successful in
winning over a number of influential Hollanders and also the court-cabal
to be inclined to France and to favour strict neutrality. The situation
was immensely complicated by the alliance concluded between Austria and
France on May 1, 1756.
This complete reversal of the policy, which from the early years of
William III had grouped England, Austria and the States in alliance
against French aggression, caused immense perturbation amongst the Dutch
statesmen. By a stroke of the pen the Barrier Treaty had ceased to
exist, for the barrier fortresses were henceforth useless. The English
ambassador, Yorke, urged upon the Dutch government the treaty right of
Great Britain to claim the assistance of 6000 men and twenty ships;
Austria had the able advocacy of D'Affry in seeking to induce the States
to become parties to the Franco-Austrian alliance. The regent, though an
English princess, was scarcely less zealous than were the
council-pensionary Steyn, Brunswick and most of the leading
burgher-regents in desiring to preserve strict neutrality. To England
the answer was made that naval and military help were not due except in
case of invasion. The French had meanwhile been offering the Dutch
considerable commercial privileges in exchange for their neutrality,
with the result that Dutch merchantmen were seized by the English
cruisers and carried into English ports to be searched for contraband.
The princess had a very difficult part to play. Delegations of merchants
waited upon her urging her to exert her influence with the English
government not to use their naval supremacy for the injury of Dutch
trade. Anne did her best, but without avail. England was determined to
stop all commercial intercourse between France and the West Indies.
Dutch merchantmen who attempted to supply the French with goods did so
at their own risk. Four deputations from Amsterdam and the maritime
towns waited upon the princess, urging an increase of the fleet as a
protection against England. Other deputations came from the inland
provinces, asking for an increase of the army against the danger of a
French invasion. The French were already in occupation of Ostend and
Nieuport, and had threatening masses of troops on the Belgian frontier.
The regent, knowing on which side the peril to the security of the
country was greatest, absolutely refused her consent to an increase of
the fleet without an increase of the army. The Estates of Holland
refused to vote money for the army; and, having the power of the purse,
matters were at a deadlock. The Republic lay helpless and without
defence should its enemies determine to attack it. In the midst of all
these difficulties and anxieties, surrounded by intrigues and
counter-intrigues, sincerely patriotic and desirous to do her utmost for
the country, but thwarted and distrusted on every side, the health of
the regent, which had never been strong, gradually gave way. On
December 11, 1758, she went in person to the States-General, "with
tottering steps and death in her face," to endeavour to secure unity of
action in the presence of the national danger, but without achieving her
object. The maritime provinces were obdurate. Seeing death approaching,
with the opening of the new year she made arrangements for the marriage
of her daughter Caroline with Charles Christian, Prince of
Nassau-Weilburg, and after committing her two children to the care of
the Duke of Brunswick (with whom she had effected a reconciliation) and
making him guardian of the young Prince of Orange, Anne expired on
January 12, 1759, at the early age of forty-nine.
The task Brunswick had to fulfil was an anxious one, but by the exercise
of great tact, during the seven years of William's minority, he managed
to gather into his hands a great deal of the powers of a stadholder, and
at the same time to ingratiate himself with the anti-Orange States
party, whose power especially in Holland had been growing in strength
and was in fact predominant. By politic concessions to the regents, and
by the interest he displayed in the commercial and financial prosperity
of the city of Amsterdam, that chief centre of opposition gave its
support to his authority; and he was able to do this while keeping at
the same time on good terms with Bentinck, Steyn, Fagel and the Orange
party.
The political position of the United Provinces during the early part of
the Brunswick guardianship was impotent and ignominious in the extreme.
Despite continued protests and complaints, Dutch merchantmen were
constantly being searched for contraband and brought as prizes into
English ports; and the lucrative trade that had been carried on between
the West Indies and France in Dutch bottoms was completely stopped. Even
the fitting out of twenty-one ships of the line, as a convoy, effected
nothing, for such a force could not face the enormous superiority of the
English fleet, which at that time swept the seas. The French ambassador,
D'Affry, made most skilful use of his opportunities to create a
pro-French party in Holland and especially in Amsterdam, and he was not
unsuccessful in his intrigues. But the Dutch resolve to remain neutral
at any cost remained as strong as ever, for, whatever might be the case
with maritime Holland, the inland provinces shrank from running any
risks of foreign invasion. When at last the Peace of Paris came in 1763,
the representatives of the United Provinces, though they essayed to
play the part of mediators between the warring powers, no longer
occupied a position of any weight in the councils of the European
nations. The proud Republic, which had treated on equal terms with
France and with Great Britain in the days of John de Witt and of William
III, had become in the eyes of the statesmen of 1763 a negligible
quantity.
One of the effects of the falling-off in the overseas trade of Amsterdam
was to transform this great commercial city into the central exchange of
Europe. The insecurity of sea-borne trade caused many of the younger
merchants to deal in money securities and bills of exchange rather than
in goods. Banking houses sprang up apace, and large fortunes were made
by speculative investments in stocks and shares; and loans for foreign
governments, large and small, were readily negotiated. This state of
things reached its height during the Seven Years' War, but with the
settlement which followed the peace of 1763 disaster came. On July 25
the chief financial house in Amsterdam, that of De Neufville, failed to
meet its liabilities and brought down in its crash a very large number
of other firms, not merely in Holland, but also in Hamburg and other
places; for a veritable panic was caused, and it was some time before
stability could be restored.
The remaining three years of the Brunswick _régime_ were uneventful in
the home country. Differences with the English East India Company
however led to the expulsion of the Dutch from their trading settlements
on the Hooghley and Coromandel; and in Berbice there was a serious
revolt of the negro slaves, which, after hard fighting in the bush, was
put down with much cruelty. The young Prince of Orange on the attainment
of his eighteenth year, March 8,1766, succeeded to his hereditary
rights. His grandmother, Maria Louisa, to whose care he had owed much,
had died on April 9, in the previous year. During the interval the
Princess Caroline had taken her place as regent in Friesland.
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