The Netherlands in the Napoleonic Wars

At the time of the outbreak of the French Revolution, The Netherlands was still a republic, albeit a very business-minded republic with a prince, usually, holding the place of honor in government. This was the United Provinces, as they were often called, though some still referred to the area as the Spanish Netherlands to differentiate the lands from Belgium which was known as the Austrian Netherlands. Both areas were to see rebellions and upheavals and their destinies would prove to be intertwined. In the Austrian Netherlands, Catholics and leftist republicans joined forced in opposition to Emperor Joseph II to proclaim the independence of the “United States of Belgium” which was eventually suppressed by Emperor Leopold II. The trouble brewing in Belgium, where Catholic opposition to the Emperor brought about a common cause with the dissident, revolutionary sect, was the primary reason why Joseph II was probably the most anti-American and pro-British monarch on the continent during the American War for Independence as he feared the precedent this would set for his Belgian subjects.

Prince Willem V of Oranje

In the United Provinces, there had long been a tension, periodically breaking out into violence, between the republican faction and the royalist faction (or ‘Orange party’) of Dutch politics with the republicans wanting to keep the country a republic and, indeed, make it even more republican while the Orange party wanted to empower the Prince of Orange and make him king. The American War for Independence also highlighted this division as the Prince of Orange, Willem V, favored the British while the republican government favored the American patriots and ultimately succeeded in bringing the Dutch republic into the war against Britain alongside the American rebels (though the Dutch did not benefit by it). As in Belgium, the Dutch republicans seem to have been inspired by the American example as illustrated by how they began calling themselves the Patriot party in opposition to the Orange party. They became even bolder until finally clashes broke out between the Patriots and the Dutch army which tended to be loyal to the Prince of Orange. The situation became so serious that it took an armed intervention by King Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia to see the Dutch patriots cleared out.

Prince Willem V was thus in control but only by the grace of Prussian bayonets when the French Revolution began to come to a boil and, given recent events, he was well aware of the danger of such ideology spreading. In 1792 the French declared war on Austria and prepared to invade Belgium where they expected popular support. The Prince of Orange, not being in the strongest position, held back. However, 1793 saw the regicide of King Louis XVI of France and every royal in Europe was instantly made aware of how serious this situation was. On February 1, the United Provinces, led by Prince Willem V, declared war on the French Republic, joining the “War of the First Coalition”. There was, originally, some success when an Austrian-Dutch army led by the Prince of Coburg defeated the French under General Charles Dummouriez at the Battle of Neerwinden on March 18 in Belgium, however the Prince of Orange and his Dutch troops were defeated at Menin on September 3 and another Austro-Dutch army was defeated by the French at the Battle of Wattignies in October. The Austrians on their own, as well as the British and their German comrades did no better in the face of the mass conscript armies of France.

Willem VI, later Willem I

1794 saw the last of the coalition forces driven from Belgium and the country was annexed to the French Republic and would remain so for quite some time. That same year, French forces under General Charles Pichegru invaded the Netherlands along with a contingent of anti-Orange Dutch patriots led by General Herman Willem Daendels in a surprise attack during the harsh winter. Local republican revolutionaries rose up in support of the invaders, making things even more difficult. Whereas, in the past, the French had been traditional enemies of the Dutch, the French had made themselves the most acceptable allies for Dutch, Protestant, republicans by embracing republicanism and tearing down the Catholic Church as well the monarchy. The French republicans declared that they had come to “liberate” the Netherlands and in 1795 declared the country the Batavian Republic. Defeated from without and betrayed from within, Prince Willem V was forced to go into exile in England. The new French-backed Batavian Republic was declared a “sister republic” of France, one of many such puppet-republics the French established in the wake of their armies.

However, not everyone felt “liberated” by this turn of events. The behavior of the French republicans won them few friends outside the already ideologically committed and the French also annexed Flanders, Maastricht, Venlo and part of Walcheren with Flushing to France. The British, however, still had a good intelligence service operating in the area and took notice of the growing Dutch discontent with their so-called liberators and in 1799, as part of the War of the Second Coalition, launched a joint invasion of the Batavian Republic along with an Imperial Russian Army force. The British were led by the “Grand Old” Duke of York and the Russians by General Johann H. von Fersen. They were met by a Franco-Batavian (Dutch) force of about equal size but, after initial success, in battles lasting from August to November, the Anglo-Russian army was ultimately forced to retreat, leaving the Netherlands once again to the First French Republic and their local collaborators. The House of Orange had not been mere spectators to these events as the Hereditary Prince of Orange, later Willem VI, participated in the campaign alongside the British and Russians. In fact, he was instrumental in the seizure of a naval squadron known as the “Vlieter Incident” with the ships ultimately being sold to the Royal Navy.

Gen. Janssens at the Battle of Cape Town

The Prince of Orange also wrote a series of letters in 1795 known as the “Kew Letters” while in exile, instructing the governors of the Dutch colonies overseas to resist the French and cooperate with the British, in his capacity as Captain-General of the Dutch armed forces, in the hope of keeping these territories from being controlled by the Batavian Republic. Malacca, Amboina and West Sumatra (in the Dutch East Indies) did so and surrendered to the British without opposition. Cochin, or Dutch Malabar in India, on the other hand, required some “persuasion” from the Royal Artillery but, in the end, the Dutch holdings in India and Ceylon were captured by the British. Also in 1795 the British sent an expedition to seize control of the Dutch Cape Colony at the bottom of Africa. The local Dutch forces offered determined resistance but were finally compelled to surrender on September 15. Later, the British would hand the cape over to the Batavian Republic as part of a peace agreement and so another expedition would have to take it back again. When the Napoleonic Wars finally ended, the British would give back the Dutch colonies they seized, but not all of them, keeping some, such as the Cape colony, for themselves as it was a highly prized strategic chokepoint, controlling access to and from the Indian Ocean and south Atlantic.

Meanwhile, in 1803, Jan Rudiger Schimmelpenninck was elected President of the Batavian Republic but things began to change thanks to the grander aspirations of one Napoleon Bonaparte. After succeeding in making himself “Emperor of the French”, the client republics that France had set in neighboring countries suddenly received an upgrade to become client monarchies. In 1806 the Batavian Republic, at the behest of its French masters, became the Kingdom of Holland and the Emperor Napoleon awarded the new Dutch kingdom to his brother Louis (originally Luigi) who became King Ludwig I of Holland (or to be more precise, Lodewijk I). This led to a rather unusual situation as the new King Ludwig proved to be quite popular with his new Dutch subjects. Unlike, for instance, Napoleon’s older brother who became King of Spain, many Dutch people embraced their new monarch or, at least, did not dislike or oppose him. To his credit, Ludwig I took his new position seriously and tried to be a good king. That, however, ultimately led to trouble with his brother. King Ludwig I was supposed to be little more than a puppet but he was a puppet who tried to pull his own strings and when Dutch and French interests conflicted, Napoleon expected French interests to prevail. However, his brother actually stood up for Dutch interests which caused Napoleon no small amount of frustration (and at a time when he had much to be frustrated about).

King Ludwig I of Holland

This tension between the two Bonaparte brothers was exacerbated by the effort of the Emperor Napoleon to defeat Britain by means of economic strangulation. He instituted the Continental System which forbid France and all countries controlled by or allied with France from trading with the British which, as it turned out, proved more ruinous for the continent than it did for Britain and particularly for The Netherlands which had a heavily trade-based economy. Needless to say, smuggling soon reached epidemic proportions because of this and Napoleon was so desperate to stamp it out that in 1810 he simply annexed the Kingdom of Holland and it was absorbed into the French Empire. The former King Ludwig I, by then none too popular with his brother, fled into exile in the Austrian Empire and remained there for the rest of his life. So it was that, until 1813, the Dutch, willingly or not, mostly fought alongside the French under Napoleon. For some, this did not seem all that unnatural given the long history of Anglo-Dutch rivalry and warfare.

Because of this situation, there were prominent Dutch military men on both sides of the conflict. General Jan Willem Janssens had fought against the British at the Cape Colony and Java, was made Secretary-General for War for the Kingdom of Holland by Louis Bonaparte and then, after annexation, fought for Napoleon under Ney in the War of the Sixth Coalition. He would later serve as War Minister for the Kingdom of the United Netherlands in the last campaign against Napoleon. General David Hendrik Chasse, regarded by many as the best Dutch soldier of the period, was from the Patriot party and commanded the Dutch brigade that fought for Napoleon in Spain for which exploits he was elevated to baron. He carried on in French service after the annexation but remained bitter about it though he won decorations and promotions for outstanding service, even being credited with saving the French army at the Battle of Maya. For his offensive spirit and fierce attacks, Napoleon nicknamed him, “General Bayonet”. He too though would later fight against Napoleon as commander of the Third Netherlands Division during the Waterloo campaign. Later still, he would defend Antwerp during the Belgian Revolution.

Constant Rebecque

One soldier of the Dutch army who fought against the French revolutionaries as well as Napoleon the whole way was not actually Dutch but a Swiss professional soldier; Jean Victor de Constant Rebecque. He first came to France as part of the Swiss Guard protecting the King. He survived the massacre of his regiment during the Revolution and from there was employed by the Dutch, serving in the regiment of Prince Frederick. When the French conquered the United Provinces, he served with the British and later the Prussians before returning to the British along with the Prince of Orange during the Peninsular War under the Duke of Wellington. After the downfall of Napoleon, according to a previous agreement by the major allied powers, the former United Provinces as well as Belgium were to be united into one country with the Prince of Orange as its monarch. This would be the Kingdom of the United Netherlands which would officially come into being in 1815, combining the Seven Provinces, Belgium and Nassau, though Nassau would later be traded for Luxembourg. This was because the allies wanted a strong monarchy as a buffer between the French and the Germans. Rebecque was instrumental in organizing the Dutch-Belgian army and would serve as Quartermaster-General and chief aid to the Prince of Orange (commander of the Allied I Corps) in the Waterloo campaign.

Prince Willem V of Orange was long since gone by then, having died in exile in Germany in 1806 (in fact, his body was only reburied in The Netherlands in the 1950’s). He was succeeded by his son Prince Willem VI of Orange, however, in 1813 he had, with the downturn of fortune for Napoleon, returned to the Netherlands and received quite a warm welcome, almost everyone by that time having turned against the French. In 1815, with the support of the allies, he proclaimed himself King Willem I of the United Netherlands, also becoming, in due course, Grand Duke of Luxembourg. His son and heir was the Prince of Orange who would fight on more than one battlefield as chief deputy to the Duke of Wellington with his old military tutor Rebecque as his ‘right hand man’. Unfortunately, the military reputation of the Dutch, particularly as it concerns the Waterloo campaign, has suffered considerably and quite unjustly at the hands of their British allies, both in accounts from participants, post-war historians and even television filmmakers.

The Prince of Orange at Quatre Bras

Probably because so many had fought with the French, the British may not have been inclined to trust the Dutch too much and, in addition, there was the already mentioned long history of Anglo-Dutch rivalry in trade, colonial expansion and naval supremacy. Whatever the cause, the British quite unfairly ridiculed and derided the Dutch participation in the Waterloo campaign. More recently, historians have done serious research, not simply repeating what others wrote before them and have found that the standard British version of events was not true, indeed, in some cases was shown to be impossible. The truth is that the Dutch-Belgian army played a critical part in the final campaign against Napoleon. Indeed, if Rebecque had not countermanded an order from Wellington so that the Dutch-Belgian troops stayed and fought at the crossroads of Quatre Bras, the British would not have been able to occupy the choice position that Wellington had picked out to do battle at Waterloo. The Prince of Orange himself, has often been portrayed in a grossly exaggerated way as being totally incompetent. This is also not true. Though the Prince of Orange certainly made some mistakes, they were not due to incompetence but simply to his lack of experience.

King Willem I of the Netherlands

As it happened, the troops with the orange cockades acquitted themselves well and, again, if the Dutch forces had not held off the French for as long as they did at Quatre Bras, the subsequent defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo might never have happened. However, it did and so King Willem I was secure on his throne, achieving what almost all the Princes of Orange before him had dreamed of since the winning of Dutch independence. As things were established, he was also pretty much an absolute monarch, though that situation would not survive him. The French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars could be seen as the fire in which the modern Kingdom of the Netherlands was forged. At the beginning of the era, they were a republic, the Seven Provinces which was often called the United Provinces but which were far from united. Crippled by the feuds between the orange and patriot parties, the country was an easy victim of the revolutionary French. However, they endured and finally fought their way back, emerging as a strong and, mostly, united kingdom. Belgium and Luxembourg was part from them in time but for the Netherlands itself, the Napoleonic Wars were a pivotal moment in history. The Dutch had gone in as a republic but emerged as a monarchy.

Monarch Profile: King Willem I of the Netherlands

It is no exaggeration to say that the reign of King Willem I of the Kingdom of the United Netherlands was the culmination of centuries of struggle, climaxed by the most critical conflict since the Dutch won their independence from Spain and which would remain the most critical until World War II was thrust upon them with the German blitzkrieg in May of 1940. From the start of the Dutch fight for freedom, that fight had been led by the Princes of Orange and, as founded, the independent Netherlands had been a republic but a republic which reserved a special place of leadership for the Princes of Orange. However, a more strident republican faction had emerged that sought to exclude the House of Orange from any position of influence. In response, a royalist faction rose up to counter them, often called the Orange party for the Orange sashes they often wore to show their support for their prince. As the republican faction strove to make the Netherlands more puritanically republican, so too did the Orange party move to do away with republican concessions and make the Prince of Orange their king.

Princes Willem & Frederik

Willem Frederick, Hereditary Prince of Orange-Nassau, was born in The Hague on August 24, 1772 to Prince Willem V of Orange and Princess Wilhelmina of Prussia. The internal struggle that had long troubled the Netherlands was still going strong at the time of his birth, not long before the forces of revolution began to sweep across the western world. In America, British colonists rose in revolt and declared the independence of the United States. Prince Willem V favored the British but the Dutch government allied with the Americans and declared war on Britain. That conflict was eventually settled but a more serious problem arose with the growth of a much more radical revolutionary movement in France. The Dutch republicans saw the French revolutionaries as their natural allies and rose up in a rebellion known as the “Patriot revolt” which was suppressed with help from the Prussians in 1787. Prince Willem and his brother Frederick were both given an education that stressed military matters, both eventually attending a military academy in Brunswick.

While on a visit to Berlin he met Princess Friederike Luise Wilhelmine of Prussia, his cousin, and the two were married in 1791. After finishing his education, the Hereditary Prince was made a general in the Dutch army by his father and given a seat on the Council of State of the Dutch republic. Not long after, the Dutch republicans were to learn that the kinship they felt with the French revolutionaries was not returned when the French National Convention declared war on the Dutch republic in 1793. Prince Willem was given command of the Dutch ‘mobile army’ to meet the attacking French and he was soon leading his troops alongside the armies of other powers in the Flanders campaign. It was hard fighting and the Prince tasted both victory and defeat such as when he captured Landrecies and was later smashed along with his allies at the Battle of Fleurus in 1794. Still, he made enough of a favorable impression that the Emperor Francis II gave him command of the Austrian forces in the region, to be grouped with his own though, in the end, the huge advantage in numbers possessed by the French revolutionaries with their campaign of mass conscription, proved impossible to overcome.

Willem, Prince of Orange

In 1795 Prince Willem V was forced to leave the Netherlands and go into exile in Britain, taking his sons with him as the French and their Dutch republican collaborators proclaimed the birth of the Batavian Republic, effectively a French puppet state. Prince Willem wanted to strike back immediately but his Prussian relatives vetoed the idea but he returned nonetheless in 1799 in an effort to spark a loyalist counter-revolution in cooperation with a joint Anglo-Russian invasion. The whole affair was a fiasco, though much of the navy and some Dutch soldiers did defect to join their prince. These men were formed into the King’s Dutch Brigade which later saw action in Ireland. When the British made peace with the French “First Consul”, Napoleon Bonaparte, in 1802 the cause of the Dutch loyalists seemed lost. Prince Willem felt betrayed by the British, who also went on to conquer a number of far flung Dutch colonies such as the Cape colony in South Africa and Ceylon in the Indian Ocean. Embittered, the Prince left England for Germany.

However, in 1806 Napoleon invaded the German states, the same year that Willem V died and his son officially became Prince Willem VI of Orange, and the Prince fought alongside his Prussian relatives against the French as a divisional commander of the Prussian army at the Battle of Jena. However, the Prussians were defeated and the Prince was forced to surrender the next day. He was given his parole, forced to promise not to fight against the French any more and was granted a pension from France as his country was a vassal of the government in Paris. However, he had no intention of keeping his word to the French and when the Austrian Empire went to war with France, he quickly joined their ranks and was wounded at the Battle of Wagram while serving on the staff of the Austrian commander Archduke Charles. Later, he received a great boost from Czar Alexander I of Russia who promised to help restore Dutch independence and make the Prince of Orange king. Prussia and Britain were both expected to agree. After the defeat of Napoleon at Leipzig, an Orange restoration seemed imminent.

By 1813, republicanism had been hugely reduced in the Netherlands, mostly thanks to the French. After promoting himself to Emperor, Napoleon had abolished the Batavian Republic and recreated the country as a satellite state called the Kingdom of Holland with his brother Louis as monarch. As it happened, King Louis proved rather popular and seemed to take his position seriously and clashed with his brother when French and Dutch interests collided. Napoleon would have none of that and so he sacked his brother and simply annexed the Netherlands to the French Empire. This turned the Dutch completely against the French and Napoleon’s constant wars and increasing demands for more money, more men, more resources brought about a very anti-French attitude amongst practically the entire Dutch population. The period of French rule made everyone long for the return of the Prince of Orange and the idea of a Dutch monarchy was more popular than it had ever been before.

The return of the Prince of Orange

On November 30, 1813 a British warship landed the Prince of Orange at Scheveningen, almost exactly the spot where he had left the country eighteen years before and the local provisional government immediately offered him the title of king. Humbly, the Prince of Orange refused, at least for the time being, calling himself “Sovereign Prince of the Netherlands” and, knowing well enough that the years of French prattle about the “Rights of Man” had to be taken into account, called for “a wise constitution”. He knew what he was doing and would end up in a far stronger position than any of his ancestors could have dreamed of. A new constitution was drawn up but it was a constitution that made Willem an all but absolute monarch. With the agreement of the Emperor in Vienna, he was made Governor-General of the Austrian Netherlands (Belgium) and in exchange for the Duchy of Nassau, who he gave to Prussia, he was made Grand Duke of Luxembourg. The allies had all agreed that it was best to have all the Low Countries united under one reliable monarch as a bulwark against any future French offensive into central Europe.

King Willem I inspects the army in the 100 Days Campaign

With the allies gathered at the Council of Vienna, and Napoleon escaping his exile to return to power in France, it was unanimously decided to regularize the situation in the Low Countries by making the “Sovereign Prince” King Willem I of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, covering all of the Dutch and Belgian lands as well as Luxembourg. He was proclaimed king on March 16, 1815 and with French troops marching into Belgium, King Willem I’s son and heir, the Prince of Orange, was made a corps commander in the allies army that definitively defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo. It was the hour of triumph for the new King Willem I who had achieved more for his house and country than any would have thought possible. He was practically an absolute monarch over all of the Low Countries with the support of all the major powers, his greatest enemy was defeated and tributes poured in from abroad. The King of Spain awarded him the Order of the Golden Fleece, the King of Great Britain sent him the Order of the Garter, it was as though all of the wildest dreams of the old Orange party had come true at last.

However, there were problems. The Belgians had hoped to gain their own independence from the wars with France and many were not happy about being subject to a Dutch king. Though his son was popular there, King Willem I was not. The Belgians complained of being underrepresented in the new Dutch government. They resented the King pushing everyone to adopt the Dutch language as, in those days, not only did the Walloon population of Belgium speak only French but the elite, the educated and the businessmen of Flanders spoke French as well. The Belgians were also solidly Catholic and they also resented the special favor shown by their Protestant monarch to the Dutch Reformed Church. This is all, of course, completely understandable just as it is understandable that King Willem I wished to have all parts of his kingdom united, wanting one people, one language, one religion under one monarch. It might not have been so bad if Belgian expectations had not been raised previously. It also did not help that the policies which benefited the Dutch population of traders, bankers and businessmen were often less than helpful to the farmers and laborers of Belgium.

King Willem I

In the summer of 1830 the Belgians rose up in revolt, soon declaring the independence of the Kingdom of Belgium and looking around for a monarch of their own. King Willem I responded by sending his sons with the Dutch army to put down the rebellion. The Prince of Orange was quite popular in Belgium, particularly Flanders where the Orange party existed in a new form but whereas the Prince was open to reconciliation, his father was not. King Willem I wanted all rebellion suppressed by force, the ringleaders made example of and that to be an end to it. In a short campaign the Royal Dutch Army was quite successful at scattering the rag-tag Belgian civilian-soldiers. However, when the French King Louis Philippe threatened to intervene, the Dutch were forced to pull back. Pressure was applied by the French, British and Germans to get King Willem I to agree and, failing that, they simply recognized the Kingdom of Belgium anyway. The Dutch army held on for a time in the fortress-port of Antwerp but they were besieged by the French Royal Army and in time were forced to concede and recognize Belgian independence.

This was a particularly bitter pill for King Willem I to swallow as he had been so very proud of his “United Kingdom of the Netherlands” which, after the separation of Belgium, became instead the Kingdom of the Netherlands as it is today though still with the personal union with the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. Dutch liberals also took advantage of the opportunity that came with amending the constitution to take into account the loss of Belgium to diminish the King’s powers. It was not an immense change but it did mean that the King could no longer do as he pleased entirely and King Willem I was outraged by this. He was also facing mounting anger over his private life as, since the death of his wife in 1837 (after giving him two sons and two daughters) he had taken up with a countess who, to the outrage of the Dutch public, was a Catholic and a Belgian. He wished to marry her but it was clear the Dutch people would not stand for such a thing. So, with King Willem I refusing to accept the constitutional changes, his people refusing to accept his choice of wife and lingering resentment over the loss of Belgium, King Willem I started the tradition of Dutch monarchs abdicating when he gave up his throne on October 7, 1840.

The former king, to make room for his more popular son, left the country for the Kingdom of Prussia, using the title Count of Nassau. He married his beloved Belgian countess and she took good care of him for the rest of his life, which was not long. He died in Berlin in 1843 at the age of 71. The care his wife, Countess Henrietta d’Oultremont, showed to him even softened the hearts of the Dutch government sufficiently for them to grant her a pension and a castle near Aachen, though not enough to have her buried along with her husband and other Dutch royals when she passed away in 1864. So, in the end, King Willem I of the Netherlands had left his country on a less than happy note. He had fought the French for years to regain his country and his triumph in becoming the first King of the Netherlands was the culmination of many, many years of struggle for the House of Orange and their supporters. Yet, the subsequent losses he had to face were more than he could accept. Nonetheless, his reign had still been the most successful of any of his dynasty and his victory gave us the Kingdom of the Netherlands that still exists today.

Looking back at King Willem I, everyone would agree that he was a pivotal figure in Dutch history. Born into the Dutch republic, he presided over the creation of the Dutch kingdom. Today he tends to be viewed though, rather unfairly, in a critical light as a rigid man with a noticeably authoritarian streak. That is not, in itself, that unfair but it should be seen in context. Had he been a little less rigid the Kingdom of the Netherlands might not exist today. He was a man of great tenacity, who was unrelenting in his fight to restore his house and the independence of his country, making common cause with anyone who would help make that dream a reality. It is certainly understandable why the Belgians would have been unhappy with him but subsequent history can also be seen as something of a vindication of his policy given how bitterly divided Belgium has become as a bi-lingual country. In his opposition to the constitutional modifications, it is true that his loss of power was not a great one (real changes in that regard would come under his son) but one must remember the background of King Willem I. He had seen much of and learned even more about all the strife in his country when, as a republic, power was shared with the princes of Orange and he did not want to simply go from being a republic with a prince to a kingdom with a president. He had fought long and hard to finally make good on his family’s dynastic dream to become king and as king, he intended to rule. Willem I may be criticized for that today, but for him to have done otherwise would, for someone like him, seemed a complete betrayal of everything he had spent his life fighting to achieve and all the struggles of generations of his ancestors as well. History should be more kind to him.

The Netherlands in World War II

To say that the Dutch were unprepared for the Second World War would be something of an understatement. The military was extremely small and woefully outdated. The government had basically accepted the position that the Netherlands would be protected by her policy of neutrality and that, if war came, they would have no chance of winning on their own and so any military spending would be a waste as they would, in any event, have to depend on other powers (Britain and France) for protection. The rise of Nazi Germany also did not seem such a menace to some segments of society. There was a very vocal Dutch fascist party, the NSB, which attained some notoriety but never came close to having real power. The military did what it could, under the circumstances, to be prepared by establishing fortified positions and the “New Dutch Waterline” to flood portions of the countryside to aid in defense; a very traditional feature of Dutch military thinking. Still, most hoped that they could avoid war and were encouraged by the fact that the Germans had respected Dutch neutrality in the First World War. However, the Dutch people would learn that Hitler was a much different sort of leader than the Kaiser had been. When war broke out in 1939 the Dutch military began mobilization but Germany issued a promise to respect Dutch neutrality so that most expected that this new war would be the Great War all over again.

General Henri Winkelman

It came then as all the greater shock when, after invading Poland, Denmark and Norway, the Germans attacked the Netherlands on May 10, 1940. For the men of the Netherlands armed forces, they had little to fight back with other than patriotism. Weaponry was obsolete, with only a few armored cars and tankettes there was practically no armored corps to speak of and the tiny air force consisted of less than 150 outdated biplanes and most of these were destroyed on the ground in the initial surprise attack. With only 280,000 poorly trained troops with very few heavy guns, General Henri Winkelman did the best he could to resist the crushing onslaught. Given how hopeless his situation was, Winkelman did better than anyone could have expected. The German plan for an airborne invasion of the Hague to seize the Dutch government failed and when the German forces hit against the main Dutch defensive positions of the Grebbe Line and Afsluitdijk the determined Dutch held their ground and halted the German advance. Determination was also certainly not lacking at the very top where Her Majesty Queen Wilhelmina, a grand and formidable lady, was determined to fight to the last. She was ready to pass out rifles to her household staff to defend the palace when she was finally convinced to relocate to a safer area by sea. To her frustration, once aboard ship the Queen was taken instead to London where the Dutch government-in-exile would operate for the rest of the war.

Meanwhile, the Germans were making steady progress in the south and cutting off the Netherlands from Belgium and France. Dutch counter-attacks on May 11 were repelled by the German invaders and the situation grew increasingly critical. At the main defensive position, the Grebbe Line, the Dutch fought a fierce battle for three days, desperately trying to hold off the German tidal wave as long as possible. Yet, with every passing hour it became clear that they would be receiving no help from the Allies. On May 13 the Grebbe Line finally fell and the Germans pushed up to Rotterdam. There the Netherlands Marine Corps gave heroic service, stopping the Germans temporarily at the Meuse and fighting from street to street. Hitler was becoming furious that the conquest of the Netherlands was taking so long as he had expected the job to be done within 24 hours. On May 14 the order was given for the Luftwaffe to bomb Rotterdam, killing hundreds of civilians and destroying virtually all of the old city. Utrecht was threatened with similar treatment if the Dutch did not surrender immediately. Of course, General Winkelman knew his situation was hopeless and was already trying to negotiate a cease-fire when the bombing of Rotterdam occurred. By the end of the day, Winkelman surrendered and so the Kingdom of the Netherlands was conquered after four days of resistance.

Queen Wilhelmina on Radio Oranje

The Dutch had made a gallant effort against impossible odds and General Henri Winkelman behaved like a true Dutch patriot. Taken prisoner, he was offered parole if he would give his word of honor not to oppose the German occupation. He refused to make any such promise and so remained a prisoner for the rest of the war. The Netherlands was down, but not out and the government-in-exile organized the few Dutch forces which had escaped, along with most of the navy, into cooperation with the British to carry on the war. Queen Wilhelmina oversaw these efforts and quickly sent a message of encouragement to her people living under German occupation. She showed great leadership and courage such as when she managed to have the prime minister dismissed for his wish to make a separate peace with the Germans. Using “Radio Oranje” she sent messages of support and encouragement to her people throughout the war, coordinated Dutch military efforts and made several visits to the United States to encourage support for the Allied war effort. In the Netherlands itself, an underground resistance soon grew up which passed important information to the Allied high command in Britain and which tried to shelter those who faced persecution at the hands of the Nazis.

General Hendrik Seyffardt

However, not everyone in the Netherlands was loyal to their monarch and their national struggle. As the Dutch were deemed a racially superior people, not very different from the Germans, they were permitted to join volunteer legions in the military and even the Nazi SS. Anton Mussert, leader of the Dutch Nazis of the NSB, had the only political party which was allowed to operate during the occupation but, to his dismay, the Germans never took him seriously or allowed him any position of importance. Nonetheless, he dutifully did their bidding and urged his countrymen to cooperate with and support the German war effort. Many listened, particularly after the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union and the Netherlands would contribute more volunteers to the German cause than any other occupied country. The most prominent collaborator was the former army chief of staff General Hendrik Seyffardt who was made nominal commander of a Dutch division of the Germanic-SS that fought on the Eastern front. The Germans, however, ignored his advice and he was finally assassinated by a communist resistance member in 1943. Although they would subsequently be hated by their countrymen, and not surprisingly so, in fairness it must be said that the Dutch troops fighting with the Germans fought extremely well, taking heavy casualties and proving themselves extremely capable, mostly in the Leningrad area.

Meanwhile, by the end of the next year of the war, the Netherlands gained another enemy which, by the way, undermined the NSB Nazi collaborators at home. They had been arguing that cooperation with Germany was the key to achieving their goal of a “Greater Netherlands” that would include Flanders and a strengthening of the Dutch empire. However, they were undercut in their arguments when the crown jewel of the Netherlands empire was lost at the hands of the Nazis Asian ally of Japan. In December of 1941 the Japanese launched their three-phase plan for the conquest of southeast Asia. After the attack on Pearl Harbor and subsequent attacks on the Philippines, Hong Kong, Malaysia it was no secret that the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia today) was next on the Japanese menu. On December 8, 1941 the Dutch government-in-exile declared war on Japan. The Japanese invasion was organized by Field Marshal Count Hisaichi Terauchi as commander of the Southern Expeditionary Army Group and began on December 17 with the landing of troops on Sarawak at the oil production center of Miri. In command of Dutch forces in the area was Lt. General Hein ter Poorten on the land and Lt. Admiral Conrad Helfrich on the sea. Helfrich was also the overall commander of Dutch forces in the East Indies.

Dutch submarine K-XVI

Even though some Allied leaders thought any defense of the East Indies to be a lost cause, the Dutch forces were determined to put up a fight and their first success was won by the small submarine flotilla operating in the East Indies and later out of Australia. The Dutch submarine K-XVI was the first Allied vessel to sink a Japanese warship when she torpedoed a Japanese destroyer. Over 100,000 tons of Japanese shipping was sunk and over 200,000 tons damaged by the Dutch O-Boats, more than the combined forces of Britain or the United States in the early days of the war in Asia. They were so successful that the naval commander was given the nickname “Ship-a-day Helfrich”. The most successful in terms of tonnage was Lt. A.J. Bussemaker of the O-16 who sank 27,100 tons of Japanese shipping before being killed in action. Lt. Henri van Oostrom Soede sank or damaged 17 Japanese ships and Lt. Johannes Frans van Dulm sank 10 and damaged 2. This impressive record, right out of the gate, encouraged the Dutch naval commanders that they could make a fight for the East Indies but the odds were clearly stacked against them. Additionally, the nature of the Dutch East Indies meant that everything depended on the naval confrontation as without control of the seas the Dutch colonial army on the archipelago would be isolated and doomed.

Dutch East Indies colonial troops

A unified command, known as ABDACOM (America-British-Dutch-Australia Command) was formed but it was hardly a cohesive organization. General Archibald Wavell, who was in supreme command, had no confidence in their victory and preferred to focus on other areas, language differences were a hindrance between the Dutch and their English-speaking allies and even among them there were problems as the Americans used a different signal system than the British and Australians. The issue was ultimately decided by the Battle of Java Sea on February 27, 1942 when the ABDACOM fleet under Dutch Rear Admiral Karel Doorman faced the larger and better-equipped Japanese fleet under Rear Admiral Takeo Takagi. Aside from being poorly coordinated, having mostly outdated ships and being outnumbered, the Allies were also losing their network of support before the battle even began. Japanese planes bombed Darwin, Australia, ruining it as a support base and the oil refineries and airfield at Palembang on Sumatra were lost when Japanese forces defeated the greatly outnumbered colonial forces and local militia under Lt. Colonel L.N.W. Vogelsang. Eastern Borneo and the northern Celebes were already under Japanese control. Nonetheless, Admiral Doorman was determined to fight.

Admiral Karel Doorman

The Battle of Java Sea raged from noon to midnight and was the first major clash of surface warships since the World War I Battle of Jutland. On his flagship De Ruyter, Admiral Doorman signaled the Allied ships to follow him as he led the way into the fight. Admiral Takagi employed classic Nelsonian tactics that were still just as effective as they had always been. Outnumbered and outgunned, the Allied fleet was decimated. Two cruisers and three destroyers were sunk while the victorious Japanese suffered damage to only one destroyer and lost 36 men compared to Allied losses of 2,300. The heroic Admiral Doorman was killed in action himself when his flagship was sunk by the Japanese cruiser Haguro. ABDACOM began to break down as the Allies regarded the Dutch East Indies as a lost cause. Much of this was due to a woeful underestimation of the abilities of the Japanese. Most assumed that the Japanese would not be able to carry out multiple operations at the same time on a variety of fronts. That thinking proved completely wrong and immediately after the battle Japanese forces under General Hitoshi Imamura began the invasion of Java itself. General Hein ter Poorten had too much ground to cover with too few troops, many of them poorly trained local militia and native contingents.

General Hein ter Poorten

British, Australian and American forces also fought valiantly to oppose the Japanese advance but they had little support, were badly outmatched and had to fall back to avoid being cut off. Dutch forces destroyed bridges and did whatever they could to slow the invaders but were steadily pushed back. The Japanese moved quickly to secure the key oil facilities and despite gallant opposition the Dutch colonial forces were overwhelmed one by one. At Porong the Allies offered very stiff resistance with the 8th and 13th infantry battalions and 3rd cavalry of the Dutch colonial army, backed up by the American 131st Texas field artillery regiment taking a heavy toll on the invaders. Finally, however, the Dutch defenders under Major General Gustav A. Ilgen had to retreat to Madura and on March 9 was forced to surrender. Moving rapidly south, with Tjilatjap captured, Soerabaja about to fall and their forces concentrating on Bandoeng from two sides, it became clear to General ter Poorten that further resistance would be pointless. On March 8 he announced the surrender of the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army in Java. The Governor-General agreed and on March 12, with the other Allies present, the defenders surrendered with witnessing Lt. General Masao Maruyama promising that the prisoners would be treated according to the rules of the Geneva Convention -a promise that was not honored.

NSB leader Anton Mussert

The Dutch East Indies was effectively conquered. Some small groups continued to resist but large-scale guerilla warfare was impossible due to the dubious loyalty of the native population. The Dutch forces who were not included in the surrender mostly regrouped in Australia and participated in the eventual Allied counter-attack. The Dutch people in the occupied East Indies endured horrific suffering. The only positive thing about this for the Dutch government-in-exile was that it effectively killed any chance of the NSB gaining popular support with the Dutch empire being destroyed by the Nazis’ allies. Even for those Dutch people who were radical nationalists predisposed to sympathize with the Germans, they were suddenly faced with the fact that collaboration meant cooperating with those who would see the Netherlands reduced to a total nonentity while it was those loyal to the Queen who were fighting for the complete restoration of the Netherlands as a significant power around the world. Dutch air and naval forces continued to fight alongside the Allies in Europe and Asia while the resistance at home carried out important surveillance work for the Allied cause.

Dutch colonial troops in Australia

The year of 1943 passed marked by suffering, endurance and a determination, embodied by the stout-hearted Queen Wilhelmina, to fight on. The first hope for liberation came in 1944 with the Allied invasion of Western Europe. Hopes were high for a quick rescue from Nazi clutches but these were dashed with the failure of “Operation Market Garden”. The plan, consisting of a series of airborne attacks on key bridges in advance of a push by British XXX Corps came close to success but ultimately ended in disaster. The Dutch underground had tried to warn the Allied high command that the area was not so weakly defended as they believed, that they were dropping their troops almost on top of the Waffen-SS Hohenstaufen Division but, unfortunately, the Allied leadership chose to ignore the Dutch warnings and the result was a defeat that ended any hope of winning the war by Christmas and which gave a morale boost to the Germans at a time when the war effort had become a long succession of defeats. Nonetheless, despite this setback, the Allied advance into the Netherlands continued and royal leadership was to play a key part, oddly enough a royal from Germany but firmly committed to the Dutch cause.

Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands

That was Prince Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld, husband of the future Queen Juliana of the Netherlands. Like the Queen, he wanted to stay in the Netherlands at the time of the German invasion and wanted to lead the resistance. However, he was finally induced to go into exile where he joined the Dutch squadron of the British Royal Air Force, eventually rising to the position of Wing Commander in the RAF. He also helped to organize and coordinate Dutch resistance forces and in 1944 was appointed to command the Dutch military. He flew both fighter and bomber missions, served as the top Dutch liaison with the Allied high command and participating in the meetings setting out the overall Allied strategy in the war. A major problem, partly due to the failure of Market Garden, was that the Dutch had been called on to rise up against the Germans in conjunction with the Allied attack but as it did not succeed as planned, German retaliation hit hard and the winter of 1944 saw 20,000 Dutch civilians purposely starved to death.

Queen Wilhelmina inspects Coldstream Guards

However, the end was in sight and as the Germans retreated the Allies pushed forward and the Netherlands was liberated. Prince Bernhard, as commander of the Dutch Armed Forces, took the surrender of the Germans at Wageningen on May 5, 1945. At the same time, the Dutch people took matters into their own hands to weed out and punish those who had collaborated with the Nazi occupiers during the war. Of course, there was no greater moment of liberation than the return of Queen Wilhelmina who, true to character, refused to wait until the war was over but came in March to the liberated areas of southern Netherlands where she received a rapturous welcome. Still, the Queen, who had often clashed with the government-in-exile (and basically ruled as she pleased), was disappointed to see the same political divisions maintained as there had been before the war. She disliked politicians in general and received considerable push back from the political elites over her determination to see the Netherlands and particularly the Dutch empire, completely restored as they had been before the war. On the other side of the world, that struggle was still going on in the war with Japan.

Admiral Conrad "Ship-a-Day" Helfrich

In July of 1945 the largest Allied invasion of the Dutch East Indies occurred with Dutch military forces taking part. Because of the significant contribution of Dutch air and naval forces in the campaign, the Netherlands was regarded as one of the major Allied partners alongside the British, Australians, New Zealanders and Americans. The Allies land on Borneo to take back the vital oil facilities from the Japanese who, since the Imperial Navy had been wiped out, were cut off from their devastated home islands and isolated from all help. Less than a month later, while Japanese forces were still operating in the East Indies, Japan is forced to admit defeat and surrender. At the ceremony on the American battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, appropriately enough, it was Admiral Conrad E.L. Helfrich who signed the acceptance of Japanese surrender on behalf of the Kingdom of the Netherlands at 9:21 AM. The war was finally over but hardships still remained. At home, the country was in ruin and in the Dutch East Indies, Japanese forces belatedly allowed the nationalist leader Sukarno to declare independence after their forces were already defeated (unknown to Sukarno at the time), setting the stage for the Indonesian War for Independence.

The ruins of Rotterdam

In the end, the Netherlands suffered immensely from World War II, losing 205,901 men, women and children, the highest death rate of any Nazi-occupied country in western Europe. 30,000 men, women and children, military and civilian, died in the Dutch East Indies in battles, massacres, prison camps and internment camps at the hands of the Japanese or Indonesian collaborators. The fate of the Netherlands is an example of the hateful mentality that gripped more than a few countries in that era. Germany and the Netherlands had a long history of friendship, in World War I there was considerable sympathy for Germany and hatred of the British blockade. Queen Wilhelmina granted German Kaiser Wilhelm II sanctuary and rebuffed all Allied efforts to hand him over for trial as a war criminal. Likewise, no other western country had such long-standing peaceful ties to Japan than the Netherlands. Fortunately, that was one relationship that was eventually restored, illustrated by the very close friendship that exists today between the Dutch Royal Family and the Japanese Imperial Family, particularly between King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima and Crown Prince Naruhito and Crown Princess Masako. The Emperor himself has expressed to the Dutch royals his deep regret for the painful conflict between the Netherlands and Japan in World War II. All could certainly join in such a sentiment.

Field Marshal Montgomery & Prince Bernhard

In the end, the Netherlands was never the same after the war. In spite of a successful military campaign, betrayal by the American president cost the Dutch their empire in the East Indies and at home, along with the rest of western Europe, began the incremental session of powers to greater European unity all in the name of economic security and preventing another European war. The Dutch were one of the innocents of the Second World War, the victims of unprovoked aggression for the sake of control of the channel coast, airbases near to England, oil and other resources. However, the Dutch fought valiantly in defense of their territory and despite initial defeat, inspired and encouraged by their tenacious Queen with her determination and moral clarity, continued to struggle through the darkest days, contributing to the Allied war effort more than most know until final victory was achieved. It is a record that all patriotic men and women of the Netherlands can be proud of.

Inauguration of a King

Yesterday The Kingdom of the Netherlands inaugurated a new monarch and it was a day tailor-made for monarchists. Even an ocean away your humble mad man made it a point to display the Dutch flag and wear an orange shirt. The leftist elite media, of course, insisted on showing the odd crank in the crowd but they only served to make them look extremely isolated and pathetic in the midst of such throngs of patriotic well-wishers. The ceremony was very "Dutch" which is to say, uncomplicated, not ostentatious but still very dignified and quite regal. One could feel "history" in the air as the new "Princess Beatrix" (that will take some getting used to) came on to the balcony and introduced the new king. When HM King Willem-Alexander spoke, he took the occasion, quite appropriately, to pay tribute to his mother and to thank her for her years of dedicated service. It was a very touching scene, filled with what people on the other side of the world used to call 'filial piety' which is becoming all too rare these days. When the new royal family showed themselves to the people the roar was deafening but they also seemed perfectly comfortable with their new positions, even the new Princess of Orange, now the youngest royal heir to a throne in the world.

At the official inauguration ceremony, King Willem-Alexander, for all of his talk about not wanting to be addressed as "Your Majesty" and having a more informal monarchy, even managed to look quite majestic in his ermine robe. Queen Maxima looked 'every inch a queen' if I may misquote the Bard of Avon. As much as the royal happenings though, my interest was on the crowd outside. From the dignified to the tacky it seemed the whole country had turned out to cheer their new king and it was a heart-warming thing for monarchist eyes and the sort of thing I never get tired of seeing. Some people would no doubt by turned off by some of it, with some people seemingly going out of their way to look and behave with as little dignity as possible, yet I cannot get upset at anyone celebrating their monarchy. And, there were affectionate tears and some who watched in awed silence as history unfolded before their eyes, another new page in the history of the venerable House of Orange. Even those who admitted to the reporters that they were not "really royalists" could not resist getting into the spirit of the occasion and it was touching to see all the happy and eager children with their little projects or souvenirs or the groups that sang songs for the new king.

The occasion also struck me as very much putting the lie to the old republican mantra about monarchy being archaic, out of date and stuck in the past. Looking at both the crowd and the royal couple one cannot but be struck by how much things have changed in the monarchy and The Netherlands as a whole in just the last few years. Among the groups of children were many Asian and African faces, we have a new king who has said he intends to be more "hands-off" when it comes to government than has been the case in the past, which is quite a change from the days of King Willem I or King Willem II when the Dutch monarch was absolute in all but name. And considering what has happened to the Dutch Royal Family in just the previous generation, who would have ever thought that there would be a Queen consort of The Netherlands who is a Latin American Roman Catholic? If anything, the Dutch monarchy has displayed an almost matchless ability to change, whether one regards those changes as being for the better or the worse.

Yesterday was a great day to be Dutch. Just the fact that The Netherlands has a king rather than a queen again is itself almost historic but it is the great love and affection that the Dutch people have for their monarchy and their royal house that I have always found most endearing. Today the watchword may be "change" but one thing that has not changed is the presence of the House of Orange whose princes, kings and queens have watched over, guided and been intimately intertwined with the destiny of the Dutch people, through good times and bad, from the birth of the country to the present day and, hopefully, for an even greater span of time yet to come. Let the cranks wave their ugly cardboard signs around, if yesterday was any indication, the cause of monarchy is alive and well in the Kingdom of The Netherlands. Again, all our congratulations to the new sovereign and consort and Lang leve de Koning!

The New King and Queen

The Kingdom of The Netherlands has a new sovereign. The Mad Monarchist sends congratulations to the new royal couple; Their Majesties King Willem-Alexander I and Queen Maxima of The Netherlands as well as congratulations to a job well done and best wishes for a happy retirement to now Princess Beatrix and, of course, all our best to all the people of The Netherlands, the ABC islands and all loyal Dutch people around the world. Long live the King!

And while I admit, I think it's atrocious, if one is so inclined, join in singing the "King's Song". It wouldn't have been my choice but it's the choice that was made...

Consort Profile: Prince Claus of the Netherlands

Prince Claus of the Netherlands was born Klaus-Georg Wilhelm Otto Friedrich Gerd von Amsberg at Haus Doetzingen outside Hitzacker, Germany on September 6, 1926 to Claus Felix von Amsberg and Goesta von dem Bussche-Haddenhausen the second of seven children and the only son among them. He and his siblings were mostly raised in Lower Saxony in the home of their grandparents while their father ran a large plantation in the former German East Africa, then the British mandate of Tanganyika. Young Klaus joined his father there in 1936 when he attended a boarding school in the country until 1938. After that he returned to Germany and studied at the Baltenschule Misdroy. After the National Socialist party came to power he was also compelled by law to join the Nazi youth groups, first the Deutsches Jungvolk and then the Hitler Jugend. Although he was able to avoid most of the worst aspects of the Second World War, in 1944 he was conscripted into the German army, serving with the 90^th Panzergrenadier Division in March of 1945. Fortunately, he was captured by the U.S. Army at Meran before ever seeing combat.

Once the war was over, Klaus von Amsberg was able to continue his higher education, attending Lueneburg and later going to law school in Hamburg. After graduation he joined the West German diplomatic corps and was sent overseas, serving as a diplomat in the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean and the Ivory Coast in Africa. Later he came home to Germany when he was transferred to Bonn. In 1964 he attended a special reception in honor of the upcoming wedding of the Landgrave of Hesse and it was there that he met the Dutch Crown Princess Beatrix. The two hit it off right away and soon became a couple. When their engagement was announced it caused some controversy in The Netherlands over those who protested to their future monarch marrying a German. It was unfortunate but perhaps not unexpected given how fresh memories still were of World War II and how the Netherlands had suffered during the conflict. Nonetheless, the couple would not be deterred and on March 10, 1966 the two were married. The press gave coverage to a small number of people who protested the wedding but, in reality, the most prominent of these were from an anarchist group who would have protested no matter who the princess married. A year before the wedding Klaus von Amsberg became a Dutch subject and adopted the Dutch version of his name, Claus van Amsberg, and after his marriage to Princess Beatrix became officially HRH Prince Claus of the Netherlands.

Despite the early problems Prince Claus had, once the Dutch people got to know him and saw how happy he made their beloved Beatrix, he became an accepted and respected member of the Dutch Royal Family. In 1980 his wife became HM Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands and Prince Claus became Prince-consort, entitled to be called “Prince of the Netherlands” but he did not use the title out of respect to his father-in-law and predecessor Prince Bernhard. Prince Claus became just as popular and respected as the Queen and over time opinion polls conducted by the media found Prince Claus the most popular member of the Royal Family. Prince Claus won people over by being a good husband and father, his service to the less fortunate and his informal, down-to-earth style. He became involved in a number of non-government organizations and charities and was respected around the world as an expert in the field of the overall development of third world countries. His extensive knowledge and expertise on the subject caused him to be sought out for advice by various countries and organizations.

However, Prince Claus could also raise a few eyebrows now and then. Never having much time for pomp and ceremony, the Prince consort was known for speaking his mind and having a rather refreshing, if sometimes blunt, sort of honesty. Many people adored him all the more for open, outspoken nature, but it also ruffled a few feathers now and then among those who were used to royals being frequently seen but never heard. This was, though, all part of the familiar and un-pretentious attitude of Prince Claus who liked dealing with anyone and detested excessive formality and stuffy protocol. Generally, this endeared him to people and probably the most famous example of his casual style was his “revolt” against neckties. He called it “a snake around my neck” and in 1998 caused quite a stir when he called on people to cast them aside and “venture into open-collar paradise”, ending his speech by taking off his own necktie and throwing it to the floor. It was typical of a prince who was often depressed by the many restrictions on speech and movement and in numerous other areas inflicted on members of the Royal Family.

Prince Claus began to suffer increasingly from cancer and Parkinson’s disease. He stopped his royal duties and his illness became ever more severe until his death on October 6, 2002 at the age of 76. HM Queen Beatrix was grief-stricken by the loss and appeared more visibly shaken than any of her subjects had ever seen her.

MM Video: Queen Beatrix

MM Video: Princes of Orange

Battlefield Royal: Prince Maurits van Nassau

Maurits Van Nassau, Prince of Orange, Stadtholder of the United Provinces of the Netherlands, was one of the great military geniuses of his time and one of the most influential military commanders in the history of war. He seemed to have been destined for martial greatness from the day he was born. That day was November 14, 1567, in what is now Germany, the son of Prince Willem the Silent (who would instigate the Dutch war of independence from Spain) and his wife Princess Anna of Saxony. He was named after his grandfather Maurice, Elector of Saxony, a noted general who greatly expanded the influence of his branch of the venerable Wettin dynasty. He grew up being trained for leadership as, although the emerging Netherlands was republican in style, they looked to the Princes of Orange for leadership. Maurits studied in that great center of German learning of Heidelberg before moving on to Leiden where he was schooled alongside his brother, Filips Willem, the eldest son and heir of Willem the Silent. The Dutch businessmen who were the leaders in their community paid for this education as Willem the Silent had sacrificed the family fortune carrying on the struggle against the Spanish.

As the second son, Maurits van Nassau was expected to be a military leader rather than a political one and he grew up to be what we might now call a rough character. He never married, being totally unsuited to the domestic setting, and preferred the occasional mistress while spending most of his time living rough in the field with his troops (though he did father a number of children by his mistresses). After the murder of their father in 1584 in Delft, Maurits van Nassau took up some positions of leadership right away even though his brother, Filips Willem, became Prince of Orange. There was some, mostly long-distance, trouble between the two and their opposing factions of supporters. Part of this was political and part was religious as Prince Filips Willem was a Catholic and Maurits was a Protestant. Eventually, however, his brother died and Maurits van Nassau succeeded as Prince of Orange and was promptly elected Stadtholder of the United Provinces. As he also held the position of Captain-General and Admiral-General of the Dutch forces, it would be largely left to him to win the war against Spain his father had started for an independent Netherlands.

The only way to do this was on the battlefield and there, Maurits van Nassau was a real ‘Dutch master’. He set about his task with methodical and comprehensive dedication the Dutch were known for. He studied the Roman history of warfare, learning from their methods of organization. Mathematically gifted, it was only natural that he would develop a new, more streamlined, method of marshaling troops for battle. Prior to this time, armies were little more than armed mobs, lacking cohesive units and set command structures. Prince Maurits changed this and divided his army up into smaller units (the birth of the modern battalion) which could be much more easily maneuvered on the field. He also developed a totally new method of deployment. The established military wisdom of the day was to arrange troops in very deep formations (military paintings of the period will show huge, solid squares of soldiers jammed together) so that continuous strength could be pushed forward with rear ranks immediately moving up to take the places of those killed. Prince Maurits recognized that this effectively wasted a large portion of the army as those in the rear ranks had to wait their turn at the front-line and, indeed, might go through a whole battle without seeing action at all. Maurits thinned out the ranks into longer lines, pikemen in the middle and musketeers on the flanks, so that as many guns as possible could give fire on the enemy from start to finish.

Some questioned how he would make up for losses and plug gaps in the line with this new tactical formation. That’s where his new battalions would come in. With the army organized into these smaller units they could be maneuvered even in the midst of battle to take up new positions where there was danger. Maurits van Nassau also placed a great deal of emphasis on training and drill in order to accomplish these battlefield maneuvers. He also took care to arm his men with the latest weapons; lighter muskets, muskets with greater range and he organized his artillery according to caliber so that the right weapons could be brought up for the right job. Since the fall of the Roman Empire, battles had more often than not consisted of mixed mobs of soldiers having at each other with commanders having little to do once the battle was joined but to inspire their men. Maurits van Nassau changed all that for good.

He poured over books on tactics, strategy, astronomy and every possible subject that could help him in his task. Intense study, combined with his own extensive battlefield experience made him one of the great military strategists in Europe. What had been a rather unorganized revolt against Spanish authority became a very organized and state of the art war effort under his leadership. As he lacked the well established authority of a monarch, he also knew that his continued leadership would depend on achieving quick and significant victories. The war in the Netherlands was one dominated by battles for cities and fortresses more than clashes in open fields and so siege warfare was paramount. It helped that Prince Maurits had taught himself to be a master of mathematics and when he set to work on taking Spanish positions his genius was evident. More than in any other field, the legacy of Maurits van Nassau would be most felt in his contributions to the development of siege warfare. He was the first to integrate artillery and engineer units into the infantry and engineering was something necessity had long made the Dutch experts at anyway, which gave them a considerable edge.

In 1590 he took Breda, in 1592 Steenwijk, and Geertruidenberg was captured by his forces in 1593. Prince Maurits also took great care that his soldiers were well trained, disciplined, well paid and that they had competent officers. He encouraged his officers to sit in on classes at local universities and finally established himself the first modern military academy for the specific training of army officers. Many future victorious Dutch commanders as well as future generals in the English Civil War learned their trade under Maurits van Nassau. After securing a string of victories in taking Spanish-held cities, he put his engineers to work building a defensive line that could be easily held while he used his highly expert and fast moving army to continue to harass the Spanish forces in the south. One of his greatest victories came on January 24, 1597 when he moved under cover of bad weather with 7,000 men to attack 6,000 Spaniards at Tournhout. His victory was so complete that Dutch losses numbered only 100 dead while the Spanish lost some 2,500 men. Three years later he invaded Flanders and won another crushing victory at Nieupoort but it was a costly one and this, combined with his long and vulnerable supply lines, convinced him to abandon Belgium and return north.

Back in the United Provinces he won a number of smaller battles while also having to deal with a challenge to his political power from Johan van Oldenbarnevelt. From almost the very beginning the Dutch republic was divided between those who favored a more ‘republican’ republic and those supporters of the House of Orange who favored something more monarchial. In the end, for the time being at least, Prince Maurits was successful in making himself the unquestioned leader of the Netherlands. However, the years and battles were catching up with him by that time. He had convinced his half brother, Prince Fredrik Hendrik, to marry and have children to continue the Orange dynasty and soon set back off to continue the fight with the Spanish. However, it would be his last campaign and accomplished no stunning successes for the first time in his career. Prince Maurits van Nassau, Prince of Orange, died of a liver problem on April 23, 1625, seeming much older than his 57 years. His life was over but his legacy would go on.

Unlike other great military leaders, Maurits van Nassau never held off hordes of foreign armies nor did he conquer vast tracts of enemy territory. However, his battles were brilliantly conducted and his sieges absolute masterpieces of strategic thinking. His establishment of the battalion as the primary unit of battlefield maneuver set the pattern for armies up until only very recently and his innovations in siege craft, organization of troops and the training of officers is still felt very much today. The great Swedish King Gustavus Adolphus borrowed from his book extensively and, with a few improvements of his own, became one of the influential captains of history. Almost every subsequent giant in the art of war owes something, whether they realize it or not, to the groundbreaking work done by Prince Maurits van Nassau. It would be some time longer before the war with Spain was finally and completely won but it almost certainly would not have happened were it not for the efforts of Prince Maurits and, therefore, the very existence of the modern Kingdom of Netherlands is owed, at least in part, to him and his achievements.