The decline of Dutch prosperity in the eighteenth century was relative rather than absolute. Nonetheless, before the War of the Spanish Succession the Dutch were one of the great powers of Europe and, afterwards, they were exhausted, barely existing as a satellite of England. Not only the English, but particularly the French, exerted a great influence on Holland during this time, first on its social life and then on the intellectual tastes of the inhabitants. The philosophes, and especially Montesquieu, purveyed ideas that took root in the upper middle class, whose adherents called themselves "patriots." [1] When in 1795 the armies of revolutionary France entered The Netherlands, the Stadtholder, William V, fled to England and the Dutch Republic ceased to exist. For almost twenty years this territory was occupied by French armies. Although in the beginning many welcomed the French, they soon learned to despise the invaders. After the flight of the Stadtholder, the patriots or unitarists wanted to start a revolution and establish a convention as had the French. They were opposed by the federalists, or supporters of the traditional Dutch Republic, who were reluctant to relinquish one of the glories of seventeenth-century statesmanship. But by that time, in Paris the Terror was over and a spirit of moderation suffused the deputies accompanying the invading army, who decided that the transition to be effected in government was to be both gradual and peaceful. [2]
Napoleon, in order to bind the Batavian Republic more closely to France, placed it in March 1805 under a grand pensionary of his appointment, Schimmelpennick, who disappeared by June 1806. Napoleon then created the Kingdom of Holland, with his brother, Louis Bonaparte, as monarch. No great fraternal affection existed between the two, and Louis soon regarded himself as a Dutchman. The ex-bishop of Autun, Talleyrand, was called upon to devise a constitution for the Dutch nation and it was duly presented to King Louis. Relations between the two rulers became strained after Napoleon's return from the Austrian campaigns. Having resolved that he needed Holland as one of the main arteries of his realm, the emperor sent troops into that country to occupy part of it. Louis balked but was unable to spur the Dutch council into resistance; consequently he was forced to abdicate and flee. On July 9, 1810, Holland was annexed.[3]
During the period of annexation (1810-1813), the French language was officially introduced into all schools, theaters, universities, and newspapers, destroying a national sense of identity. In the year1812 the Dutch nation reached the depths of misery: trade and commerce were gone, the great manufacturing centers of Leiden and Haarlem ground to a halt and, finally, the blow of conscription came for the terrible Russian campaign of 1812 from which, of 15,000 men sent, only a few hundred returned. [4] But the era that saw the formation of the Batavian Republic and its subsequent annexation also nourished counterforces that were to be mounted against Napoleon in the form of Austria, Prussia, and the Confederation of the Rhine. In 1808, to withstand further deterioration of political ideals, leading intellectuals formed a moral and scientific union, the "Tugendbund," significant in the spiritual reawakening of Germany. This was the epoch of Jahn's open-air gymnasia and Fichte's exhortive Reden an die Deutsche Nation. Holland was also influenced by this upsurge of nationalism. With Napoleon's eclipse in 1814 the House of Orange was restored, replete with monarchical trappings granted by the Treaty of Paris.[5] The years that followed were to prove uneasy and war was to erupt again with the Revolution of 1830, bringing in its wake the creation of Belgium as a separate state.
These tumultuous times were witnessed by D. P. G. Humbert de Superville not only in Holland, to which he returned in 1802 -never to leave again -after an eleven-year stay in Italy, but also in Rome, where he had been a zealous revolutionary and a prisoner of war during the uprising in the Papal States. This combined early experience of French thought and revolution was to remain with him, and we shall see it reemerge in the 1820s, less sanguinary but no less ardent, metamorphosed into the "nouveau Christianisme" of Enfantin, Lamennais, and Saint-Simon. [next chapter: Introduction, Humbert's formative years]