Prince of Orange from 1751 to 1806
William V
(Willem Batavus; 8 March 1748 ? 9 April 1806) was
Prince of Orange
and the last
Stadtholder
of the
Dutch Republic
. He went into exile to London in 1795. He was furthermore ruler of the
Principality of Orange-Nassau
until his death in 1806. In that capacity he was succeeded by his son
William
.
Early life
[
edit
]
In
The Orangerie
(1796),
James Gillray
caricatured William's dalliances during his exile, depicting him as an indolent
Cupid
sleeping on bags of money, surrounded by pregnant amours
Jacques Firmin Beauvarlet,
Portrait of Willem V, Prince of Orange,
1765, engraving
William Batavus was born in
The Hague
on 8 March 1748, the only son of
William IV
, who had the year before been restored as stadtholder of the United Provinces. He was only three years old when his father died in 1751, and a long regency began. His regents were:
- Dowager Princess Anne
, his mother, from 1751 to her death in 1759;
- Dowager Princess Marie Louise
, his grandmother, from 1759 to her death in 1765;
- Duke Louis Ernest of Brunswick-Luneburg
, from 1759 to 1766, and kept on as a privy counsellor, in accordance with the
Acte van Consulentschap
, until October 1784;
- Princess Carolina
, his sister (who at the time was an adult aged 22, while he was still a minor at 17), from 1765 to William's majority in 1766.
William was made the 568th
Knight
of the
Order of the Garter
in 1752.
Stadtholder
[
edit
]
William V assumed the position of
stadtholder
and Captain-General of the
Dutch States Army
on his majority in 1766. However, he allowed the Duke of Brunswick to retain a large influence on the government with the secret
Acte van Consulentschap
. On 4 October 1767 in Berlin, Prince William married
Princess Wilhelmina of Prussia
, the daughter of
Augustus William of Prussia
, niece of
Frederick the Great
and a cousin of
George III
. (He himself was George III's first cousin).
[1]
: 55?58
He became an art collector and in 1774 his
Galerij Prins Willem V
was opened to the public.
Portrait by
Johann Georg Ziesenis
(
c.
1768?1769)
The position of the Dutch during the
American War of Independence
was one of
neutrality
. William V, leading the pro-British faction within the government, blocked attempts by pro-American, and later pro-French, elements to drag the government to war in support of the Franco-American alliance. However, things came to a head with the Dutch attempt to join the Russian-led
League of Armed Neutrality
, leading to the outbreak of the
Fourth Anglo-Dutch War
in 1780. In spite of the fact that Britain was engaged in fighting on several fronts, the war went badly for the poorly prepared Dutch, leading to the loss of
Sint Eustatius
and
Nagapattinam
.
[1]
: 58?63
Scandals like the
Brest Affair
undermined belief in the Dutch navy. The stadtholderian regime and the Duke of Brunswick were suspected of treason in the matter of the loss of the
Barrier
fortresses.
[1]
: 56
The deterioration of the prestige of the regime made minds ripe for agitation for political reform, like the pamphlet
Aan het Volk van Nederland
, published in 1781 by
Joan van der Capellen tot den Pol
.
[1]
: 64?68
After the signing of the
Treaty of Paris (1783)
, there was growing restlessness in the United Provinces with William's rule. A coalition of old
Dutch States Party
regenten
and democrats, called
Patriots
, was challenging his authority more and more. Mid September 1785 William left The Hague and removed his court to
Het Loo Palace
in
Gelderland
, a province remote from the political center.
[1]
: 104?105
In September 1786 he sent States-Army troops to
Hattem
and
Elburg
to overthrow the cities' Patriot
vroedschap
, despite the defense by Patriot
Free Corps
, organised by
Herman Willem Daendels
. This provoked the Patriot-dominated
States of Holland
to deprive him of his office of Captain-General of the Army.
[1]
: 107?109
(His function was given to
Rhinegrave Salm
.) In June 1787 his energetic wife Wilhelmina tried to travel to
The Hague
to foment an
Orangist
rising in that city. Outside
Schoonhoven
, she was stopped by the Gouda Free Corps, taken to a farm near
Goejanverwellesluis
and after a short detention made to return to
Nijmegen
.
[1]
: 127
To Wilhelmina and her brother,
Frederick William II of Prussia
, this was both an insult and an excuse to intervene militarily. Frederick launched the
Prussian invasion of Holland
in September 1787 to suppress the Patriots.
[1]
: 128?132
Many Patriots fled to the North of France, around
Saint-Omer
, in an area where Dutch was spoken. Until his overthrow they were supported by King
Louis XVI of France
.
[1]
: 132?135
Exile in Great Britain and Ireland
[
edit
]
William V joined the
First Coalition
against Republican France in 1793 with the coming of the
French Revolution
. His troops fought in the
Flanders Campaign
, but in 1794 the military situation deteriorated and the Dutch Republic was threatened by invading armies. The year 1795 was a disastrous one for the
ancien regime
of the Netherlands. Supported by the French Army, the revolutionaries returned from Paris to fight in the Netherlands, and in 1795 William V went into exile in England. A few days later the
Batavian Revolution
occurred, and the
Dutch Republic
was replaced with the
Batavian Republic
.
[2]
: 1121
[1]
: 190?192
Directly after his arrival in England, the Prince wrote a number of letters (known as the
Kew Letters
) from his new residence in
Kew
to the governors of the Dutch colonies, instructing them to hand over their colonies to the British as long as France continued to occupy the "mother country". Only a number complied, while those that demurred from doing so became confused and demoralised. Almost all Dutch colonies were eventually captured by the British, who in the end returned most, but not all (
South Africa
and
Ceylon
), first at the
Treaty of Amiens
and later with the
Convention of London
signed in 1814.
[2]
: 1127
In 1799 the
Hereditary Prince
took an active part in the
Anglo-Russian invasion of Holland
, engineering the capture of a Batavian naval squadron in the
Vlieter Incident
. The surrender of the ships (that had been paid for by the Batavian Republic) was formally accepted in the name of William V as stadtholder, who was later allowed to sell them to the Royal Navy (for an appreciable amount).
[3]
But that was his only success, as the troops suffered from choleric diseases, and civilians at that time were unwilling to re-instate the old regime. The arrogance of the tone in his proclamation, demanding the restoration of the stadtholderate, may not have been helpful, according to
Simon Schama
.
[1]
: 393?394
After the
Treaty of Amiens
in 1802, in which
Great Britain
recognised the Batavian Republic, an additional Franco-Prussian Convention of 23 May 1802 declared that the House of Orange would be ceded in perpetuity the domains of
Dortmund
,
Weingarten
,
Fulda
and
Corvey
in lieu of its Dutch estates and revenues (this became the
Principality of Nassau-Orange-Fulda
). As far as
Napoleon
was concerned, this cession was conditional on the liquidation of the stadtholderate and other hereditary offices of the Prince. William V, however, had no interest in towns, territories and abbeys confiscated from other rulers, including alternatives as
Wurzburg
and
Bamberg
, but wanted what was his due: his arrears in salaries and other financial perquisites since 1795, or a lump sum of 4 million guilders. The foreign minister of the Batavian Republic,
Maarten van der Goes
, was willing to secretly try to persuade the
Staatsbewind
of the Batavian Republic to grant this additional indemnity, but Napoleon put a stop to it, when he got wind of the affair.
[1]
: 452?454
The last of the Dutch stadtholders, William V died in exile at his daughter's palace in
Brunswick
, now in Germany. His body was moved to the Dutch Royal Family crypt in the
Nieuwe Kerk
in
Delft
on 29 April 1958.
In 1813, his son,
William VI
returned to the Netherlands and proclaimed himself king, thus becoming the first
Dutch monarch
from the House of Orange.
Issue
[
edit
]
Willem V and
Wilhelmina
with their children
Louise
,
William
, and
Frederick
William V and Wilhelmina of Prussia were parents to five children:
- An unnamed son (23?24 March 1769).
- Princess Frederika Luise Wilhelmina of Orange-Nassau
(
The Hague
, 28 November 1770 ?
The Hague
, 15 October 1819), married in
The Hague
on 14 October 1790
Karl, Hereditary Prince of Braunschweig
(London, 8 February 1766 ?
Antoinettenruh
, 20 September 1806), a son of
Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg
and
Princess Augusta of Great Britain
, without issue.
- An unnamed son (born and deceased on 6 August 1771).
- Willem Frederik, Hereditary Prince of Orange-Nassau
(
The Hague
, 25 August 1772 ? 12 December 1843), who became the first King of the Netherlands as William I .
- Prince Willem Georg
Frederik
, Prince of Orange-Nassau
(
The Hague
, 15 February 1774 ?
Padua
, 6 January 1799), unmarried and without legitimate issue.
Ancestry
[
edit
]
Ancestors of William V, Prince of Orange
[4]
|
---|
|
Appreciation
[
edit
]
During his life and afterward, William V was a controversial person, in himself, and because he was the unwilling center of a political firestorm that others had caused. Many historians and contemporaries have written short appreciations of him that were often acerbic.
Phillip Charles, Count of Alvensleben
, who was the
Prussian
envoy to the Hague from 1787 (so not someone who must be suspected to be prejudiced against William) may be taken as an example. He wrote:
His education has all been theory. Duke Louis of Brunswick kept him away from practical affairs and did all the work himself, while the stadtholder merely signed documents. Hence this habit, this compulsion, of talking about public affairs, and turning the functions of stadtholder into the holding of tedious audiences of five, six, seven hours in length, swamping practical problems in useless verbiage, though putting forward wide-ranging proposals, often marked by sound reasoning, sometimes even by genius. Finally, the cardinal defect of settling nothing, of bringing nothing to a point, of replying to nothing, of signing nothing, of concluding nothing; but always of being the stadtholder in theory and never in practice. When he sets to work he does not know how to distinguish the functions of the head of the chancery from those of a mere secretary. In place of taking decisions on a hundred cases, he wastes his time in copying out some memorandum that has been presented to him. Nothing will ever change him, his bent is fixed, and when the Patriots declared that he fulfilled his functions in a ghastly fashion they were quite right.
[5]
His great-great-granddaughter Queen
Wilhelmina of the Netherlands
was less kind. She simply called him a
sufferd
(dummy).
[6]
Legacy
[
edit
]
See also
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
h
i
j
k
l
Schama, Simon (1992).
Patriots and Liberators. Revolution in the Netherlands 1780-1813
. Vintage books.
- ^
a
b
Israel, J.I. (1995).
The Dutch Republic. Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall 1477-1806
. Clarendon Press.
- ^
James, W.M. (2002).
The Naval History of Great Britain: During the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Vol. 2 1797-1799
. Stackpole books. pp. 309?310.
- ^
Genealogie ascendante jusqu'au quatrieme degre inclusivement de tous les Rois et Princes de maisons souveraines de l'Europe actuellement vivans
[
Genealogy up to the fourth degree inclusive of all the Kings and Princes of sovereign houses of Europe currently living
] (in French). Bourdeaux: Frederic Guillaume Birnstiel. 1768. p. 88.
- ^
Cobban, A.
(1954).
Ambassadors and secret agents: the diplomacy of the first Earl of Malmesbury at the Hague
. Jonathan Cape. p.
23
.
- ^
Meerkerk, E. van (October 2007).
"De laatste stadhouder. Willem V (1748-1806)"
.
Historisch Nieuwsblad
(in Dutch)
. Retrieved
11 May
2018
.
- ^
Earle, Anton et al. (2005),
A preliminary basin profile of the Orange/Senqu River (pdf)
,
African Centre for Water Research
, retrieved 30 June 2007
External links
[
edit
]
|
---|
International
| |
---|
National
| |
---|
Artists
| |
---|
People
| |
---|
Other
| |
---|