Patriots

Background

Etymology

The term Patriot (from Greek πατριώτης, "fellow countryman") had previously been used mid 17th century by Andries Bicker and the Loevestein faction, but when French troops invaded the Republic in 1747, "Patriots" demanded the return of the Orange stadtholderate, which ended the Second Stadtholderless Period. From 1756 onward, however, Dutch States Party regenten once again began styling themselves "Patriots". The Orangist party did try to reappropriate the term, but it was forced on the defensive, which became apparent when it renamed one of its weekly magazines to De Ouderwetse Nederlandsche Patriot ("The Old-Fashioned Dutch Patriot"). Patriotism and anti-Orangism had become synonymous.

The Patriots can be divided into two separate groups: aristocrats and democrats. The aristocratic Patriots (also called oudpatriotten or "Old Patriots"), initially the strongest, can be viewed as oppositional regenten, who either sought to enter the factions in power, or tried to realise the so-called "Loevesteinian" ideal of a republic without Orange; they came from the existing Dutch States Party. The democratic Patriots emerged later, and consisted mainly of non-regent members of the bourgeoisie, who strove to democratise the Republic.

Finally, the term Patriottentijd for the historical era is a historiographical invention of 19th-century Dutch historians, comparable to the terms "First Stadtholderless Period", "Second Stadtholderless Period", and "Fransche Tijd (French Era)" (for the era of the Batavian Republic, the Kingdom of Holland and the French First Empire, 1795–1813). Herman Theodoor Colenbrander for instance, used the term as the title of one of his main works: De patriottentijd: hoofdzakelijk naar buitenlandsche bescheiden (The Hague, 1897). The term was often used in a pejorative fashion, but lately has acquired a more positive connotation.

Perceived decline of the Dutch Republic

After the halcyon days of the Dutch Golden Age of the first two-thirds of the 17th century, the Dutch economy entered a period of stagnation and relative decline. The absolute size of Dutch GNP remained constant, but the economy was overtaken by that of other European countries in the course of the 18th century. Besides, in a number of economic sectors, such as the fisheries and most industries that had sprung up in the early 17th century, an absolute decline occurred. The country's deindustrialization resulted in de-urbanization as artisans that had worked in the disappearing industries had to move to areas where work was still to be found. The shrinking industrial base was also concentrating in particular areas, to the detriment of other areas where certain industries (shipbuilding, textiles) had formerly been prominent. Remarkably for an era of rapid population growth in other European countries, the size of the Dutch population remained constant during the 18th century at around 1.9 million people, which (in view of the constant absolute size of the economy) resulted in a constant per capita income. But this was somewhat misleading as economic inequality markedly increased during the 18th century: the economy became dominated by a small group of very rich rentiers, and the economy shifted to what we would now call a service economy, in which the commercial sector (always strong in the Netherlands) and the banking sector dominated. These shifts had a devastating effect for the people who experienced downward social mobility and ended up in the lower strata of Dutch society. But even those that were not affected by such downward mobility, and remained in the upper and middle classes, were affected by this perceived economic decline.

The economic decline worked through in the political sphere as after the Peace of Utrecht of 1713 the government of the Dutch Republic felt constrained to enter upon a policy of austerity as a consequence of the dire state of the Dutch public finances. Both the (mercenary) Dutch States Army and the Dutch navy suffered a large shrinkage in the following period, and consequently the Republic had to give up the pretense of being a European great power, in the military sense, with the diplomatic consequences that entailed. It became clear that the Republic had become a pawn in European power politics, depending on the good will of other countries such as France, Prussia and Great Britain. This decline in international diplomatic standing also contributed to the malaise that resulted from the perceived decline.

Growing disaffection with the political system

The disaffection with the perceived state of the economy and diplomatic decline was paired with a growing disaffection with the political system of the Dutch Republic among middle-class Dutchmen. The Dutch "constitution" defined the Dutch Republic as a confederation of sovereign provinces with a republican character. Formally, power was supposed to flow upward, from the local governments (governments of select cities that possessed City Rights, and the aristocracy in rural areas) toward the provincial States, and eventually the States-General. Those local governments, however, though ostensibly representing "The People" according to the prevailing ideology, had in fact evolved into oligarchies dominated by a few families that in the cities at least were not formally part of the nobility, but were considered "patrician" in the classical sense. The members of the regenten class co-opted each other in the city council, which elected the magistrates and sent delegates to the regional and national States. This situation had come about gradually, as in medieval times corporate institutions, like the guilds and schutterijen had sometimes had at least nominating powers to the vroedschappen, bestowing a certain amount of political power on members of the middle class (though calling this "democracy" would be an exaggeration).

The concentration of power in a more and more closed oligarchy frustrated the middle class, that saw its opportunities for political and social advancement blocked, also because the political patronage in regard to all kinds of petty offices was concentrated in the hands of the oligarchs, who favored their own political allies. Though offices were often venal and for sale, this fact was ironically less resented than the fact that those offices were not available on the same footing to everyone. Opening up the political system to the middle class had therefore been an objective of political reformers like the so-called Doelisten who in 1747 helped elevate the Frisian stadtholder William IV to stadtholder in all seven provinces, on a hereditary basis, with greatly expanded powers, in the hope that he would use those powers to promote the political influence of the would-be "democrats." That hope proved vain, also because of his untimely death in 1751, after which he was succeeded by his infant son William V, who was three years of age at the time. Power devolved upon regents, first the dowager Princess of Orange, and after her death in 1759, de facto Duke Louis Ernest of Brunswick-Lüneburg, who saw even less merit in "democratic" experiments. Duke Louis would retain a virtual guardianship in accordance with the so-called Acte van Consulentschap even after the young Prince had come of age. Meanwhile, the greatly expanded powers of the stadtholder consisted primarily in his right of appointment, or at least approval, of magistrates on the local and provincial level, which were enshrined in the so-called regeringsreglementen (Government Regulations) adopted by most provinces in 1747. These powers allowed him to overrule the elections by the local vroedschappen if the results did not comport with his wishes, and so bestowed great powers of political patronage on the local level on him (and the regents who ruled in place of the under-age William V before 1766). The end result was that the "States party" regenten that had ruled the country during the Second Stadtholderless Period were replaced by Orangist party men, who were ideologically opposed to popular influence, closing the door to "democratic" experiments. Though the "democrats" had been in the Orangist camp in 1747, they therefore soon came into an alliance of convenience with the disenfranchised "States party" regenten.

The American imbroglio

The American Declaration of Independence did not elicit enthusiasm from everyone in the Dutch Republic once it became known there in August 1776. The stadtholder wrote to the griffier of the States-General, Hendrik Fagel, that it was only "... the parody of the proclamation issued by our forefathers against king Philip II". But others were less scornful. Dutch merchants, especially in the Amsterdam Chamber of the moribund Dutch West India Company (WIC), had long chafed against the restrictions Britain's Navigation Acts imposed on direct trade with British North America. The American Revolutionary War opened new perspectives to unfettered trade, though for the moment primarily on the smuggling route via the WIC colony of Sint Eustatius. That entrepôt soon became an important export port for the supply of the American rebels with Dutch arms. The Amsterdam regenten were particularly interested in opening formal trade negotiations with the Continental Congress; secret diplomacy was soon embarked upon by the pensionaries of a number of mercantile cities, like Engelbert François van Berckel (Amsterdam) and Cornelis de Gijselaar (Dordrecht), behind the back of the stadtholder and the States-General. The French ambassador to the Republic, Vauguyon, arranged contacts with the American ambassador to the French court, Benjamin Franklin, in 1778, which in time led to the sending out of John Adams as American emissary to the Republic. In 1778, there also were secret negotiations between the Amsterdam banker Jean de Neufville and the American agent in Aachen, William Lee. The two concluded a secret agreement on a treaty of amity and commerce between the two Republics, the draft of which was discovered by the British when they intercepted Henry Laurens at sea. They used this as a casus belli for declaring the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War in December 1780 (together with the actions from Dutch territory by the American privateer John Paul Jones, and the planned Dutch accession to the First League of Armed Neutrality).

The war went disastrously for the Dutch, despite the fact that the Dutch fleet had been enlarged appreciably in the preceding years. but it was scarcely used by the Dutch, with the stadtholder, as Admiral-General, in supreme command. At the start of the war, a number of Dutch warships were surprised by ships of the Royal Navy, who according to the Dutch, sneaked up under a false flag, and when they had approached the unsuspecting Dutchmen (who were not yet aware of the start of the war), ran up their true colors and opened fire. The Dutch ships then struck their colors after firing a single broadside in reply "to satisfy honor." In this way individual ships, and even a complete squadron, were lost. The British blockaded the Dutch coast without much response from the Dutch fleet. There was one big battle between a Dutch squadron under rear-admiral Johan Zoutman and a British one under vice-admiral Sir Hyde Parker, which ended inconclusively, but on the whole the Dutch fleet remained in port, due to a state of "unreadiness," according to the Dutch commanders. This lack of activity caused great dissatisfaction among Dutch shippers who wanted convoy protection against the British, and also among the population at large, who felt humiliated by what many saw as "cowardice." The stadtholder was generally blamed. After a brief wave of euphoria due to Zoutman's heroics (which were duly exploited in the official propaganda), the navy again earned the disapproval of public opinion because of its inactivity. This only increased after the States-General in 1782 agreed with France on a naval alliance or concert that led to a planned joint action against Great Britain. To that end a Dutch fleet of ten ships of the line would in 1783 be sent to the French port of Brest to join the French fleet there. However, a direct order to set sail was disobeyed by the Dutch naval top with again the excuse of "unreadiness," but some officers, like vice-admiral Lodewijk van Bylandt, the intended leader of the expedition, let it be known that they did not want to cooperate with the French. This caused a scandal, known as the Brest Affair in which Pieter Paulus, the fiscal (prosecutor) of the Admiralty of Rotterdam was to lead an inquest, but this never resulted in a conviction. But the damage to the reputation of the Dutch navy and the stadtholder as its commander-in-chief in Dutch public opinion was appreciable, and this undermined the regime.

The Patriot Revolt

The pamphlet "To the People of the Netherlands"

In the night of 25 on 26 September 1781, the anonymous pamphlet Aan het Volk van Nederland ("To the People of the Netherlands") was distributed in a number of Dutch cities. It was later discovered that it had been written by Adams' friend Joan Derk van der Capellen tot den Pol, and that its successful distribution had been organised by François Adriaan van der Kemp. Though the pamphlet was immediately proscribed as seditious by the authorities, it enjoyed a wide circulation.

"Seditious" it certainly was, as the pamphlet repeatedly exhorted the burghers of the Netherlands to arm themselves and take matters into their own hands. As was usual at the time, the pamphlet contained a romanticized overview of Dutch history, going back to the mythical ancestors of the Dutch people, the Bataven, and taking the Middle Ages and the early history of the Republic in stride. But the perspective was decidedly anti-stadtholderian, and emphasized that the people are the true proprietors, the lords and masters of the country, not the nobles and regenten. The author likens the country to a great company, like the VOC, in which the administrators serve the shareholders. ...The great that are governing you, the Prince or whoever has any authority in this country, only do this on your behalf. All of their authority derives from you...All men are born free. By nature, no one has any authority over anyone else. Some people may be gifted with a better understanding, a stronger body or greater wealth than others, but this does not in the least entitle the more sensible, stronger or wealthier to govern the less sensible, the weaker and the poorer...In these companies, usually called civil societies, peoples or nations, the members or participants pledge to promote each others' happiness as much as possible, to protect each other with united force and to maintain each other in an uninterrupted enjoyment of all property, possessions and all inherited and lawfully acquired rights... The author then continues with a diatribe against the stadtholder: ...There is no freedom and no freedom can exist in a country where one single person has the hereditary command over a large army, appoints and dismisses the country's regents and keeps them in his power and under his influence, deals with all the offices, and by his influence on the appointments of professors controls the subject matter that is being taught to the country's youth studying in universities, where the people is kept ignorant, where the people is unarmed and has nothing in the world... Therefore:...Anything which is attempted at this time to save our truly almost irretrievably lost fatherland will be in vain, if you, o people of the Netherlands, remain passive bystanders any longer. So do this! Assemble each and everyone in your cities and in the villages in the country. Assemble peacefully and elect from the midst of you a moderate number of good, virtuous, pious men... Send these as your commissioners to the meeting places of the Estates of your Provinces and order them ...to make, together with the Estates ...a precise inquiry into the reasons for the extreme slowness and weakness with which the protection of this country against a formidable and especially active enemy is being treated ...Let your commissioners publicly and openly report to you about their actions from time to time by means of the press...Arm yourselves, all of you, and elect yourselves the ones that must command you. Act with calmness and modesty in all things (like the people of America, where not one drop of blood was shed before the English attacked them in the first place)...

The exercitiegenootschappen

Since the late Middle Ages cities in the Habsburg Netherlands had employed citizen militias for external defense (mostly against incursions from neighboring provinces), and to keep public order. These militias, called schutterijen, played an important part in the early stages of the Dutch Revolt when they on their own successfully defended important cities against the Spanish troops of the Duke of Alba, which helped to give them an aura of heroism. In this early period the militia often formed a separate and independent center of power of the burghers who were its members, rivaling the vroedschap as the power center of the elite. This independence was symbolized by the fact that the schutterij usually elected its own officers. But starting in the early 17th century the militias lost their independence and became subservient to the regular city magistracy. They also became a part of the regular defense structure of the country, next to the States Army (though not part of that mercenary military formation). During the revolution of 1747 the Doelisten attempted to restore the independent role of the schutterijen, but this attempt failed. By the early 1780s the militias were but a caricature of their proud predecessors, subservient to the city magistrates, who made officer commissions the preserve of the regenten class, and more like recreative societies than serious military formations. Many Patriots took this decline of the schutterijen as a synecdoche for the decline of the Republic, and the reform of the militias was seen as an important part of the necessary reform of the Republic. But as elsewhere the stadtholderian regime blocked such reform.

From 1783 onwards, the Patriots therefore started to form their own militias, parallel to the official schutterijen, which they called by innocuous names like exercitiegenootschappen or vrijcorpsen (Free Corps) in order not to provoke the city governments. In contrast with the schutterijen these competing militias were open to members of all religious denominations; they elected their own officers; and they trained regularly in military drill (exercitie) and the use of arms. The Patriots proposed to use the militias to promote the representation of their officers in official councils, and to defend the rights of free assembly and speech of the citizenry.

Depending on local political circumstances the Free corps sometimes remained a parallel military structure, and sometimes gradually took over the old schutterij. An example of the latter was the city of Utrecht where under the direction of the exercitiegenootschap Pro Patria et Libertate (in which the student leader Quint Ondaatje played a prominent role) the schutterij was taken over by the Free Corps, while the old organisational structure with company names like "the Pikes" and "the Black Boys" was studiously retained (including the old flags and banners).

Overturning the old order in Utrecht and Amsterdam

Implementing the Patriot manifestos brought a fundamental rift between the "democratic" and "aristocratic" wings of the Patriot movement to light. Initially both saw a common interest and a basis for cooperation (as the Leiden Draft explicitly proposes). This was exemplified by the Utrecht example where in July 1783 the vroedschap acceded to the demand of the local Free Corps to be recognized as the new manifestation of the schutterij under the direction of an elected Burgher Defense Council. Both factions were opposed to the 1674 Government Regulation that gave extensive powers to the stadtholder to appoint city magistrates. This was a standing invitation to abuse. Nicolaas de Pesters, schepen of Utrecht, was infamous for his abuse of political patronage. The matter came to a head when in January 1783 a member of the Utrecht vroedschap (i.e. a regent) proposed to disavow the appointment rights of the stadtholder, and in August 1783 a petition of members of the newly reconstituted schutterij urged the vroedschap to no longer brook such interference. Attempts to come to an understanding with the stadtholder in the fall of 1783 failed, because the latter insisted on his "due rights." Then in January 1784 an occasion presented itself to test the stadtholder's resolve, when a vacancy in the vroedschap occurred. The regenten accepted the challenge and, studiously ignoring the stadtholder, appointed a moderate member of the schutterij to the vacant post.

But the honeymoon between the "democrats" and "aristocrats" did not last. On 23 April 1784 a draft of a new "constitution" for Utrecht province, to replace the 1674 Regulation, was published in the Utrecht Patriot newspaper Utrechtse Courant, after the Utrecht States had imprudently invited all citizens to lodge their objections to the Regulations in early 1784. This draft of 117 articles proposed that henceforth the Utrecht city vroedschap was to be popularly elected under a form of census suffrage in indirect elections. This relatively moderate proposal directly attacked the co-option rights of the regenten. Another objectionable proposal was the institution of an elected body of 16 burgher representatives to sit in permanent session to hear and address grievances of citizens against the city government. The regenten were not about to let go of their powers without a fight, but instead of getting into a direct confrontation with the democrats they at first tried to drown the proposal in red tape. The States drafted a far more conservative counter-proposal and tried to push this through by subterfuge. This elicited a strong response of the Utrecht schutterij in the form of a petition opposing that counter-draft. The schutterij also elected a group of 24 representatives (among whom Ondaatje), which called themselves the "Constituted," to conduct direct negotiations with the vroedschap. The Constituted soon set themselves up as a rival power center to the vroedschap, and started acting like the proposed Burgher Council from the draft-constitution.

A creeping civil war

It is true that compared to the French revolution the Patriot revolution was singularly bloodless and that widespread military maneuvering remained the exception. But there actually were military actions by regular forces on both sides, aimed at deciding the issue by military means, and blood was spilled in battle. To understand how this came about, it is important first to understand the way the forces on both sides were distributed in the seven provinces and the Generality Lands. The States Army, commanded by the stadtholder, was a mercenary army, paid for by the several provinces according to a formula for apportionment, called the repartitie. Holland paid for more than half of the troops, and it was known which regiments belonged to its repartitie, though this had no consequences for the operational command, as the army was an institution of the Republic as a whole. The troops were in peacetime usually divided over a number of garrisons in different parts of the country. These garrisons played an important role in local politics, as the officers were Orangists to a man, and the troops in the whole felt a strong allegiance to the stadtholder. The garrison cities, like Nijmegen in Gelderland, The Hague in Holland, and 'Hertogenbosch in "States Brabant" were strongpoints of Orangist influence, even though the surrounding provinces might tend to favor the Patriots. So even without explicitly threatening military violence, the army played an important role in local politics.

Before 1784 the States army was the only official standing army in the Republic, but during the so-called Kettle War, a minor military conflict with the Austrian emperor and sovereign of the Austrian Netherlands, Joseph II, the States of Holland lost confidence in the States army under the wavering command of the stadtholder, and decided to raise a separate military formation of brigade strength, outside the States army, under the command of the Rhinegrave of Salm-Grumbach, an officer in the States army, for its own account. This so-called "Legion of Salm" was not subject to the stadtholder as Captain-General of the States army. After the crisis passed, the States of Holland decided to abolish it, as an austerity measure, but several Holland cities, Amsterdam among them, decided to take over the financing for their own account, so that from 1785 on the Legion continued in being as a military unit that was not part of the official military command structure, and also not part of the Free Corps federation, because the members of the Legion were mercenaries, just like the soldiers of the army. The Legion did not play a role, until the Rhinegrave in September 1786 became commander-in-chief of all forces of the province of Holland, including the States army troops under the Holland repartitie, and later also the Free Corps in the provinces of Holland and Utrecht.

Foreign interference

The Patriot Revolt did not take place in a diplomatic vacuum. The Dutch Republic had from its inception been a battlefield of Great Power diplomacy in which the Holland regenten (lately in the guise of the States Party) had been sympathetic to France, and the Orangists usually favored the British. Since the 1688 Glorious Revolution followed by a 1689 naval treaty, the Dutch had been in nominal alliance with the British, while the diplomatic relations with France had been strained due to the Franco-Dutch War and the War of the Austrian Succession. Dutch relations with France had, however, markedly improved during the era of the American Revolutionary War, when the Dutch at first profited from their "neutral-flag" trade of contraband goods with the French and Americans, and later fought alongside the French against the British during the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War that had recently ended. Franco-Dutch relations became even better when France offered its good offices, both to obtain the 1784 treaty of Paris with Great Britain that ended the war, and subsequently to obtain peace with emperor Joseph II, that ended the Kettle War with the Treaty of Fontainebleau. Shortly after that, special envoy Gerard Brantsen, a moderate Patriot, crowned this with the treaty of amity and commerce with France of October 1785.

One person who observed this thaw in Franco-Dutch diplomatic relations with great alarm was the new British ambassador to The Hague, accredited since 1784, Sir James Harris. Harris had a tendency to see French conspiracies everywhere, and in the Dutch case he may have been right. Because the French saw the discomfiture of the Dutch stadtholder with great pleasure, although their enthusiasm was limited to the advance of their old friends, the Amsterdam States Party regenten; they were far less enthusiastic about the democratic designs of the other wing of the Patriot party. With the support of the Cabinet of William Pitt the Younger Harris set about to reestablish British influence in the Dutch Republic, and he did not always limit himself to diplomatic means. One important task was to shore up the morale of the dispirited stadtholder after his departure from The Hague in September 1785. William at that time had two options: either to give in to the Patriot demands and accept some kind of compromise as to the Government Regulations, or to hold on to his "due rights" at any cost. The latter was his favorite option (he was wont to quote the maxim Aut Caesar, aut nihil) and Harris, in concert with William's wife Wilhelmina of Prussia, encouraged him to take this option. But Harris did far more: he was supplied with ample funds from the British Secret Service and he used that money to buy influence left and right, beginning with a generous pension-with-strings-attached of £4,000 per annum for the stadtholder himself. Ably assisted by "confidential agents", of which baron Hendrik August van Kinckel is the best known, he used these funds to subsidize the establishment of Orangist Free Corps in provinces like Zeeland and Friesland where the Orangists were in the majority, which were used to intimidate the Patriot minorities in these provinces. He tried to lure the conservative regenten in Amsterdam away from their anti-Orangist stance with promises of trade concessions by Britain, and promises of concessions from the stadtholder that would safeguard their own privileges, but avoid any "democratic" experiments.

Aftermath

The stadtholder returned to The Hague on 20 September 1787 at the head of the States-army troops that had marched together with the triumphant Prussian army. A purge of the States of Holland and the States General, both institutions who had their seat in The Hague, started immediately. The immediate result was that Mappa, who was in charge of the fortress town of Naarden was ordered by the reconstituted States of Holland to surrender it to the Prussians, which he did on 27 September.

Even before the return of the stadtholder the Holland ridderschap had taken the initiative to have the States repeal all legislation of the preceding years with a "Patriot" imprint. The "Orange Restoration" proceeded apace. Everywhere the Patriot members of the local vroedschappen and city magistracies were purged. The Grand Pensionary of Holland Pieter van Bleiswijk (who had chosen the Patriot side in 1785) was replaced by his Zeeland colleague Laurens Pieter van de Spiegel in November 1787. On the instruction of Princess Wilhelmina and ambassador Harris he started criminal proceedings against a number of Patriot leaders on a list Wilhelmina provided, like Robert Jasper van der Capellen, two burgemeesters, and two Elburg ministers, who were all sentenced to death in absentia. Daendels and Ondaatje were sentenced to perpetual banishment, as were a number of other Patriot leaders. A limited Amnesty was declared in November 1787, but the "extra-judicial" persecution of Patriots was more effective anyway: in Gouda 200 houses were looted by the Orangist mob; in 's Hertogenbosch 829; in Utrecht the bill ran to one million guilders.

More than 40,000 Patriots (including women and children) fled abroad to Antwerp and Brussels in the Austrian Netherlands, and from there to towns in French Flanders (in those days still Flemish speaking), like Saint-Omer and Dunkirk, where they were hospitably received by the French government, at the request of Van der Capellen tot den Marsch, who wrote a memorandum to King Louis XVI asking for financial support of the refugees. The king provided funding for the financial relief, which was administered by the Frisian Patriots Court Lambertus van Beyma as Commissioner, and Johan Valckenaer, as his secretary. They represented the "democrat" and "aristocrat" wings of the Frisian Patriots, respectively, however, and soon fell out over the disbursements. This led to a schism in the Patriot community in France. The followers of Valckenaer eventually came out on top, as they won the support of the French comptroller-general Charles Claude Guillaume Lambert, who was enraged by Beyma's venality. The two factions, "Valckenisten" and "Beymanisten" split, and formed competing clubs that became embroiled in internal French politics during the French Revolution. Valckenaer became involved in the Batavian Legion that fell afoul of the Jacobins, who distrusted foreigners. But eventually the Dutch Patriots got back in the good graces of the French government after the Thermidorian Reaction and Dutch volunteers formed part of the French army that invaded the Dutch Republic in late 1794. Daendels and Jan Willem de Winter even became générals de brigade.