In January 1789 Emperor Joseph II banned meetings of the Estates of Brabant and Hainaut, and they were dissolved on the 26th. In March the Emperor demanded that the Brabant States General modify their constitution. When they refused, he had some eminent men including clergy arrested. Hundreds of people fled before emigration was ended on 30 September. The exiles appealed to Britain, Prussia, and the Dutch Republic. Hendrik Van der Noot had left in April, and he appealed to Holland’s Grand Pensionary Laurens Pieter Van de Spiegel and William Pitt at London before finding more support at Berlin. At Liège people were inspired by the fall of the Bastille and started a revolt on 15 August. Prince-bishop Van Hoensbroeck fled to the imperial chamber at Wetzlar. Reformer Jan Frans Vonck left Brussels and joined emigrants at Breda.
Emigrants led by the former Col. Jean-André Van der Mersch prepared to invade Belgium in October. On the 24th the Brabantine people issued a manifesto that rejected Austrian rule in Brabant. Van der Mersch led hundreds to Turnhout, and on the 27th they forced Austrian troops to withdraw. The young Prince of Ligne led a band that took over Ghent as insurrections against the Austrian occupation spread to Diest and Tirlemont. The Austrian governor fled from Brussels to Luxembourg where in December he was joined by Count Trauttmannsdorff who abolished the Council of Brabant, repealed reforms, and proclaimed a general amnesty. The States General of Brabant declared their independence on the last day of the year. Van der Noot and Vonck found refuge in Antwerp, but the Austrian garrison there capitulated by the end of January 1790.
On 11 January the States General in Brabant met and proclaimed the United States of Belgium with a constitution using language from the American Declaration of Independence and a sovereign congress led by Minister of State Van der Noot and Secretary of State Van Eupen. The constitution would unite the Belgian provinces in regard to national defense, foreign policy, and coinage. The assembly was to be sovereign without the old veto, but decisions required a three-fifths majority. Yet revolutionary Vonckists considered this an antiquated government. On 17 February the Archbishop of Mechlin criticized the revolutionaries as “enemies of religion and of the state.” The Statists organized a day of protest with thousands of peasants with pitchforks and rifles led by priests on horseback making a crowd of 20,000 people in Brussels. Capuchins preached in churches that God wanted them to kill Vonckists.
Emperor Joseph II died on 20 February 1790 and was succeeded by his brother Leopold II who sent Count Cobenzl to Luxembourg with 30,000 troops to govern Belgium. By May most of the Vonckists had fled to France. On 27 July Prussia’s King Friedrich Wilhelm II and Austria’s Leopold signed a treaty at Reichenbach that recognized Belgium’s old constitution and granted them amnesty. Diplomats from the three powers of Britain, Prussia, and Austria in October met at The Hague with Emperor Leopold who gave the Belgians until 21 November to accept their conditions. The Belgian Congress refused, and the States General appointed Archduke Charles the grand duke of Belgium; but an Austrian army restored their authority by occupying Brussels on 2 December. Van der Noot and Van Eupen fled north to the Dutch Republic, and on the 10th the conference at The Hague declared Leopold II sovereign over Belgium. The revolt in Liège was also suppressed, and an Austrian army entered the city on 12 January 1791. Hundreds of pamphlets were smuggled into Belgium, and reading societies were organized. The people of Liège joined the United Belgians on 20 January, 1792, considered the birthday of modern Belgium. They adopted a new constitution in April.
After spending 44 million guilders over twelve years Holland’s navy had more than a hundred ships by 1789. In November 1790 the Orange family allied with Austria, Prussia, and Britain. The States General dissolved the East India Company on 27 May 1791 by compensating shareholders with 30% of the nominal value of their stock, and on the first of June 1792 they set up a council for their American colonies and territories in Africa. Prince Willem of Orange married his first cousin Frederike Luise Wilhelmine of Prussia in Berlin on 1 October 1791.
Emperor Leopold II died on 1 March 1792, and his 24-year-old son Franz II was influenced by bellicose ministers. France’s Foreign Minister Dumouriez urged an invasion of Belgium to drive out the Austrians, and France declared war against Austria on 20 April; but the French suffered defeats at first. Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick, who had led the Prussian suppression of the Dutch patriots in 1787, invaded Lorraine in July 1792 and the Netherlands on 13 September occupying Nijmegen and Utrecht three days later. Dumouriez’s French army forced besieging Austrians away from Lille, and his larger army defeated them at Jemappes on 6 November, giving the French control over Belgium. On the 16th Dumouriez made peace with the Dutch at Antwerp. On 12 December he announced an election for a National Convention of Belgium and Liège to meet in January 1793 at Alost. On the first of February the French declared war against the Dutch Stadtholder Willem V. The French organized a colony for 2,500 exiles at Gravelines; but followers of Johan Valckenaer and Court Lambertus van Beyma could not agree, and the exiles dispersed. After the commune dissolved, the Batavian Revolutionary Committee was organized.
On 15 December the French Convention ordered the Revolution implemented in Belgium with the help of the Vonckists. Dumouriez wanted a Belgian republic; but Danton persuaded the French to annex Belgium. On 31 January 1793 the French asked the Belgians to vote on this; but very few people voted, and Belgium was incorporated into France in February. The French Convention ordered Dumouriez to attack the Dutch Republic; but he opposed this. They besieged Breda on 16 February and captured it on the 24th. On 12 March he wrote a letter to the Convention urging them to stop their criminal violence, and on the 18th an Austro-Dutch force defeated his French army at Neerwinden. Dumouriez defected to an Austrian camp at Tournay on 5 April. That month the princes Willem and Frederik of Orange led 22,000 Dutch troops to aid the Coalition armies in Flanders that defeated French forces in sieges of Condé and Valenciennes. The French increased their army to 650,000 men and defeated Hessians in September. The Dutch and the Austrians retreated to Hainaut. In a treaty on 19 April the British hired 62,000 Prussian troops. The people of Liège voted to join the French Republic on 20 June, but Austrians ruled Belgium from March 1793 to June 1794.
Emperor Franz II came to Brussels in April 1794 to try to win over the Belgians, and he stayed until June. In May the French defeated the Coalition at Tourcoing. Pichegru’s French army invaded Flanders again, and 82,000 French soldiers led by Jourdan defeated the Austrians at Fleurus on 26 June. After another defeat at Waterloo the Dutch army with less than 16,000 men and the British with 20,000 withdrew into Brabant. The French besieged Sluis which capitulated after three weeks on 25 August. On 18 September a French army of 116,000 men defeated the Austrian army of 83,000 at Sprimont near Liège.
On the first of October 1795 France annexed Belgium and Luxembourg including western Scheldt and Maastricht. In 1796 the French official L. G. de Bouteville governed the Belgians and developed administration and law courts that the Brabant revolution of 1790 had abolished. In September the French shut down many religious orders and monasteries, confiscating their property. About 10,000 clergy became homeless, and the property taken was worth about 511 million francs. The government began selling the property by the end of 1796. In 1797 the secular clergy were required to promise loyalty to laws and popularity. Most refused and had to look for other work. In September this became an oath opposing anarchy and royalty which almost all Belgian priests refused. Persecution led to 595 Belgian priests being sentenced to death in 1798, though all but a hundred escaped. In September military conscription was introduced, and thousands of Belgians resisted. Riots broke out in eastern Flanders in early October, but the French restored order by the end of the month. In western Flanders the uprising was put down in November. That month in Brabant an army of 10,000 peasants was chased by French soldiers until they were surrounded in Hasselt. Pieter Corbeels had printed books criticizing the French, and he was executed in June 1799. In Flanders between 1798 and 1806 more than a hundred members of gangs were put to death.
In 1798 Liévin Bauwens smuggled parts for the secret spinning jenny out of England, and he built the first mechanical spinning-mill on the continent. By 1810 Ghent’s spinning-mills employed 10,000 people. The English mechanic William Cockerill brought machinery to Verviers-les-Biolley that transformed the woolen industry in 1799. With wheat coming from France many Belgians could work in factories and sell goods to millions of people, stimulating prosperity and population growth.
On 14 October 1794 a revolutionary uprising in Amsterdam broke out and was soon suppressed. After more victories Pichegru led a French army across the Meuse River to besiege Nimwegen which fell after bombardment on 7 November. In December while Pichegru was conquering North Brabant and Dutch Flanders, the States General sent diplomats to Paris to negotiate. In January 1795 the French army crossed frozen rivers. On the 14th British and German commanders decided they could no longer defend Holland, and on 16 January the Estates of Utrecht surrendered. Two days later Stadtholder Willem V and his Orange family fled to England.
The Dutch Republic was transformed into the Batavian Republic in cooperation with revolutionary France. French representatives took control of the Dutch provinces led by the Amsterdam revolutionary committee which sent delegates to the Estates of Holland, and on 26 January 1795 they took over the hall of the Estates and elected Pieter Paulus chairman of the Provisional Representatives. Patriots replaced Orange regents and were guided by “liberty, equality, and fraternity.” Nobles no longer had power as deputies were elected. The former Council Grand Pensionary Van de Spiegel and Count Willem Bentinck were arrested on 4 February. The other provinces followed the pattern of Holland in February. On the 23rd the States General abolished the stadtholdership. Four days later the Committee of Naval Affairs replaced the admiralty boards, and on 4 March the Council of State became the Committee of General Affairs. The Dutch had an army of 50,000 men and a navy that could help the French against the British. Although the population of the Dutch was only 2.5 million, one-fifth of France, their wealth was equal to France’s.
Jacob Blauw and Caspar Meyer went to negotiate with the committee in Paris. Blauw and Valckenaer returned to The Hague on 11 April and urged resisting the French. The French committee sent Jean-François Rewbell and Sieyès to The Hague, and on 16 May they agreed on a treaty between the Batavian Republic and France. The two republics formed an offensive and defensive alliance, and the Dutch agreed to support 25,000 French troops and pay an indemnity of 100 million guilders. The Dutch were not to shelter emigrants nor the French the Orange party. Dutch relations with the British became hostile. By September the Dutch were supporting 36,000 troops, and only 7,000 of them were within their borders. The Dutch generals Herman Willem Daendels, Jean-Baptiste Dumonceau, and Jan Willem de Winter were taken into the French service. Daendels became commander-in-chief in the United Netherlands and wanted to increase their army to 24,000 in peace and to 36,000 in war.
In the summer Willem V declared that the Dutch colonies were delivered to the English. The British soon took over the Cape of Good Hope and then Ceylon in February 1796, Demerara, Essequibo, and Berbice in April, the Moluccas that spring, Malacca in August, and Sumatra’s west coast in November.
Delegates from various provinces met at The Hague on 26 June 1795. The States General on 26 November voted to hold a National Assembly, though Zealand, Friesland, and Groningen opposed. The unanimous vote came on 18 February 1796, and the National Assembly met on the first of March to consider a constitution with 147 articles that would make all hereditary offices and dignities illegal. Pieter Paulus was elected president, but he died on the 17th. Then different presidents were elected for two weeks each. A commission of 21 members was to draw up a constitution within six months. Holland owed 455 million guilders while the debt of the smaller provinces combined was only 155 million. In Holland taxes were more than 25 guilders per person, but in Gelderland they were 8 guilders, in Overijssel 6.7, and in Drente 5. The tract The Poor: The Children of the State argued that private charity was inadequate, and the Floh commission studied how to establish a national administration to help the poor and unemployed.
The scholarly Simon Stijl presented a draft of a constitution on 10 November, and the Assembly discussed it over five months. In April 1797 the government’s securities fell 20%. On 20 July the French ambassador recommended the new constitution. On 6 August Pieter Vreede and eleven others published an Address to the Batavian People urging them to vote against the proposed constitution, and the vote on two days later was only 27,955 for with 108,761 against while 400,000 did not vote, many because of required declarations. Democrats led the opposition to the French. Democratic members took over the Directory in France on 4 September by a coup d’état, and this encouraged the Dutch democrats. After six months of preparation a plan to invade Ireland was canceled in September. De Winter led a Batavian fleet, but the British defeated them at Camperdown on 11 October, killing 540 men and capturing eleven ships.
A declaration of Vreede’s nine principles were issued on 12 December by 43 members of the Assembly. Delacroix, Ducange, and the ultras presented a plan based on this that was signed by 50 members and sent to Paris for approval. They were supported by Joubert, Daendels, and Midderigh who was the last president as they executed a coup d’état on 22 January 1798. As the Constituent Assembly representing the Batavian people they appointed an Intermediary Executive Council of five members and a constitutional commission of seven. Corruption and persecution by the democrats on this council caused 29 members who had sworn to the declaration of aversion to resign. On 12 April the French Directors made a treaty with the Batavian Republic requiring them to support 25,000 French troops and beyond that pay France 1,200,000 guilders annually.
A constitution with 527 articles was presented on 6 March. Federalists and Orangists were disenfranchised on 23 April, and yet about 40% of the men did vote. On the first of May the Executive Council reported that the Constitution passed by a vote of 153,913 to 11,597. The names of the old provinces were ignored as the nation was divided into eight departments each with about 232,000 people and seven circles that in turn were divided into about 65 communes. Two chambers were to nominate the five members of the Executive Council who were aided by eight ministers of foreign affairs, war, navy, finance, justice, police, education, and economy. Church and state were separated, and after three years churches were to be self-supporting. There was to be personal liberty and freedom of the press.
Daendels had transferred command to Joubert. Daendels chastised the French ambassador Ducange at a banquet, and Joubert let Daendels go to Paris where he persuaded the Directory not to support the Executive Council. They did not want Jacobins governing. Talleyrand persuaded the Directors to banish Ducange and recall Daendels. Moderates took over by another coup in June, forming an Intermediate Executive Council, and they won a large majority in national elections on 31 July.
Nelson’s British victory over the French fleet at Aboukir in August 1798 showed the British domination of the seas and raised the Dutch cost of living the following winter. In Amsterdam 81,000 people out of less than 200,000 needed assistance. In 1799 the Batavian Republic’s revenue was 36,350,000 guilders, but they spent 79,666,000 in a year of war. An Anglo-Russian army of 40,000 men commanded by Prince Frederick, the Duke of York, invaded Holland and were victorious at Callantsoog on 27 August and at Krabbendam on 10 September; but nine days later at Bergen they were defeated by a smaller Franco-Dutch force. The battle of Alkmaar on 2 October was a tactical draw; but four days later at Castricum the British and Russians capitulated and were allowed to depart, and they left Holland on 19 November.
The Batavian Republic’s Financial Minister Alexander Gogel had proposed a general taxation plan in 1799, but the legislature did not approve it until 25 March 1801. In 1800 the Dutch government needed 78 million more guilders in revenue to balance spending. The public debt increased from 760 million guilders in 1795 to 1,126 million in 1804. Annual interest payments rose from 24 million to 34 million while foreign loans were decreasing. During that decade the Dutch contributed 230 million guilders to the French. In 1801 only 69,000 voted out of more than 400,000 eligible.
In 1800 the French metric system became law. In 1801 Napoleon’s Concordat with the Catholic Church allowed churches to reopen, and local authorities were made responsible for maintaining them; but they had to renounce their claim to the confiscated land. The French proclaimed more federal power in the Batavian Republic on 11 June 1801. The Dutch Executive Authority increased that federal power and on 14 September summoned the primary assemblies proclaiming a referendum on the new constitution, but four days later the Assembly annulled that. General Augereau commanded the French forces in Batavia, and the next day he had them close the Assembly. In the plebiscite on the first of October only 16,771 voted in favor with 52,219 against out of 416,619 eligible to vote. Yet the French Directors ruled that those who had not voted counted as tacitly affirming the French coup d’état.
Rutger Jan Schimmelpenninck went to Paris to negotiate in December, and on 27 March 1802 he signed the peace treaty the French had made at Amiens with Britain who recognized the Batavian Republic. The Dutch regained all their lost colonies except Ceylon. Prince Willem had come to France in February, and by July he made an agreement with Napoleon that recognized him as Prince of Orange-Fulda while his father Willem V ruled only Nassau. In May 1803 the British navy captured 1,200 French and Dutch merchant ships, provoking another war. Napoleon asked the Batavian Republic to support a French army of 25,000 men under a French general and prepare 300 ships to transport 60,000 men. Dutch envoys tried to get him to reduce these demands, and on 25 June they agreed to support 18,000 French troops and a Dutch army of 16,000 under a French commander. In the spring of 1804 a fleet of 387 ships gathered at Flushing.
In 1803 the Napoleonic Civil Code had been imposed on the Dutch. Napoleon became Emperor in May 1804. Schimmelpenninck met with Napoleon at Cologne on 12 September, and Bonaparte appointed him the Pensionary of the Netherlands with autocratic power. He went to Paris in October and accepted. General Marmont and the Marquis of Sémonville were ruling arbitrarily, and on 23 November the Dutch Estates decreed that the French military was not to be obeyed except in defense against the enemy. This upset Napoleon who on 10 December gave them 48 hours to remove four legislators, and they were dismissed. Schimmelpenninck proposed a treaty in January 1805, and he returned with the Emperor’s proposals to The Hague in February. The Legislature accepted them on 22 March, and they called for a vote on them from 9 to 16 April; but only 14,230 votes were cast out of 353,000 men over 20 who were eligible to vote. The departments had elected 19 legislators for three years, and they chose the council pensionary who appointed the council of five to nine members and five secretaries of state.
Finances improved under Schimmelpenninck and Gogel so that the budget for 1806 had 49 million guilders of revenue to cover 46.5 million of spending, though war expenditures of 30 million still caused a deficit. In 1805 a law strengthened the central government by depriving municipalities from applying financial regulations and by curtailing the guilds which were completely abolished in January 1808.
On 6 January 1806 France’s Foreign Minister Talleyrand advised Schimmelpenninck that Holland needed changes for the future. He had Navy Minister Carel Hendrik Ver Huell lead a delegation to Paris. A new constitution was prepared by 23 May, and on 6 June they were persuaded to accept Napoleon’s brother Louis as King of Holland. The monarchical constitution was ratified on 7 August. Louis appointed Ver Huell as his Marshal as well as Minister of Navy, and he made the capable Gogel Minister of Finances. Annual interest payments on the public debt were up to 35 million guilders while revenues were only 50 million. Government expenses were 20 million, but nearly 30 million went for war expenditures. Gogel reformed taxes to relieve the poor and collect more from the rich, and increased revenues reduced the deficit. Louis wanted to decrease the military, but Napoleon demanded a large navy and at least 30,000 troops for Holland. A Dutch School Law took more responsibility for primary education that would increase the number of elementary schools to 4,551 by 1811.
On 11 November 1806 the British proclaimed a blockade of all ports from Brest to the Elbe, and ten days later Napoleon in conquered Berlin decreed a blockade against England. Louis was forced to raise 15,000 soldiers at Ziest, and he established his headquarters at Wesel with 10,000 French and Dutch troops. After Napoleon’s victory in the battle of Jena on 14 October he ordered his brother to occupy Hanover, but Louis returned to The Hague in November. On 15 December the Emperor decreed that no ship should leave a Batavian port without permission, and even fishing boats were searched. Louis supported the newspaper Le vrai Hollandais to make Dutch affairs better known in France; but after articles critical of France appeared, Napoleon had it suspended.
The poet Willem Bilderdijk (1756-1831) had refused to take the oath in 1795 and went into exile. In 1806 he returned from Germany, and Louis made him his librarian, court poet, and in 1809 president of the Royal Netherlands Institute the King had founded in 1808. Bilderdijk initiated a revival movement to give Christian responses to the ideals of the French Revolution. He wrote Sickness of the Learned in 1807, Fingal, and the tragedy Floris V in 1808, and he translated many works including the Napoleonic Code in 1811.
On 28 January 1807 Louis made Daendels the governor-general of Westphalia and acquired East Friedland. In March the Kingdom of Holland borrowed 40 million guilders at 6% interest. The Dutch fought with the French against the Prussians and Russians at Eylau in February and at Friedland in June. In the treaty of Fontainebleau on 11 November some territory was added to Holland, but more significant was the loss of Flushing that was annexed by France to control the Scheldt waterway. Louis offered his resignation to his brother on 9 October, but Napoleon kept him on and refused to approve military reductions. Holland had to declare war against Sweden. Also on 11 November the British announced their blockade of France and its allies, offering prizes for ships. Napoleon responded with his Milan decree on 17 December in which he condemned any ship searched by the English.
In 1807 the departments were merely for administration. In January 1808 a major storm broke sea dykes and caused a major flood as far as the Rhine. The Amsterdam Town Hall became a royal palace. By 1808 most of Zeeland’s shipyards, industrial mills, and factories were closed. In 1809 the Napoleonic Code was fully implemented integrating the judicial system.
In the spring of 1809 the French metrical system was given Dutch names. The Dutch had 12,000 troops fighting in Germany and 3,000 in Spain. In August the Dutch gathered 30,000 troops in Brabant’s fortresses, and the British bombarded and captured Flushing on the 15th. Napoleon demanded that his brother abdicate, but Louis refused. Eventually the British destroyed the fortress and docks of Flushing and left on 26 December. Napoleon kept Louis at Paris under guard, and he sent Marshal Oudinot to command the northern army at Antwerp. Louis sent a letter in February 1810 to Amsterdam informing them he would abdicate, and he left Paris in April. The French ambassador left Amsterdam on 29 May, and Napoleon dismissed the Dutch ambassador Ver Huell from Paris. Louis abdicated in favor of his 6-year-old son Napoleon-Louis on the first of July, and Oudinot arrived in Amsterdam three days later. On the 13th France annexed the Dutch nation.
On 14 July 1810 Charles-François Lebrun, Duke of Plaisance, arrived in Amsterdam to govern as lieutenant-general for Napoleon. On 11 October the Organic Decree called for uniting the Netherlands with France under the French system in 1812. A Council of Holland with thirty members was appointed, but their meetings ended on 18 October with the decree from Fontainebleau organizing new departments. Napoleon learned of problems in the Java colony and decided to remove Daendels on 24 November, and the successor Janssens he appointed reached Java on 27 April 1811 with 500 French soldiers commanded by General Jumel. A British force invaded Java on 4 August and defeated the French at Weltevreden on the 26th. Governor-general Janssens surrendered the last Dutch colony at Salatiga on 17 September. Napoleon visited the Netherlands from late September 1811 to November. He had the trade embargo against the British enforced, and 1812 was a miserable year for the Dutch. They sent 30,000 soldiers on the disastrous Russia campaign, and only a few hundred returned while others died or suffered captivity. In 1811 and until July 1812 the Netherlands imposed military conscription but raised only 17,300 troops. There was resistance in various places and desertions, and a crowd of several hundred protested at Leiden in April 1811. The Dutch often paid substitutes.
After the critical defeat at Leipzig in October 1813 Napoleon’s imperial army had only 40,000 men left when they reached the Rhine at Mainz. Prince Willem had served in the army under Wellington in Spain, and he gathered Dutch troops in Germany. As soon as they learned about Leipzig the former pensionary of Rotterdam, Gijsbert Karel van Hogendorp, and his friends urged the Dutch to rise up against French rule. Lebrun withdrew the garrison from Amsterdam and went with them to General Gabriel Molitor in Utrecht. Allied troops entered Dutch territory and captured Zwolle on 12 November and Groningen on the 15th. That day the Dutch revolt began in Amsterdam. Lebrun appointed Molitor his replacement and left for France on the 17th. Unable to get the States General to meet at The Hague, Hogendorp declared a government in the name of Prince Willem on the 21st until the Prince would arrive. The next day officers organized an Orange guard, and they went to Hogendorp’s house where he read them a proclamation. They sent commissioners to Amsterdam. A Prussian army led by General Bülow crossed into Holland at Doethinchem on the 23rd. On 25 November in Amsterdam the commissioners proclaimed “the restoration of our dear fatherland.” Only in Liège did the people support French rule.
Prince Willem left London, and an English frigate took him across the Channel. He reached The Hague on 30 November. The commissioners recognized him as their sovereign prince Willem the First, and on 2 December he left for Amsterdam. Four days later he took over the general government and called for volunteers, but few came forward. Cossacks led by Benckendorff came from Rotterdam to Breda, and they plundered Antwerp and Brussels. Bülow’s Prussians drove Molitor’s French army across the Meuse. About a million allied soldiers advanced as far as the Rhine, and Blücher’s Prussian army crossed the Rhine on the first of January 1814. The Allies captured Brussels in February and occupied Paris on 31 March, and Napoleon abdicated on 11 April. French garrisons stayed in Dutch and Belgian fortresses until King Louis XVIII ordered them to surrender.
Hogendorp had drafted a constitution, and a commission worked on it at his house and presented it to Prince Willem on 2 March 1814. The Provincial States were not sovereign as in the Republic, but they were given more administrative power. The Prince did not have the right to dissolve the Parliament. The lower house was elected by the provincial states, but the King appointed those in the upper house for life. He could appoint and dismiss ministers and did not have to follow their advice. Notables met at Amsterdam and on the 29th approved the constitution 448 to 26. On 30 March the assembly took the oath and inaugurated the Prince.
The peace made at Paris on 30 May 1814 recognized the sovereignty of the house of Orange over Holland with increased territory. British Foreign Minister Castlereagh had been urging Willem to unite the Belgians with the Dutch, and the other three allies (Austria, Prussia and Russia) had agreed at the congress of Chatillon in February. Conservative Belgians at Chaumont wanted to renew relations with Austria, and a Chatillon deputation got the Austrian General Vincent appointed governor-general at Brussels under Emperor Franz on 6 May.
Prince Willem went to Paris with the former foreign secretary Anton Reinhard Falck. A secret protocol signed by the Allies in London on 21 June 1814 called for the reunion of Belgium and Holland, and a month later the Holland government at The Hague also accepted this secretly. Willem became governor-general on the first of August, and on the 12th he appointed Secretary of State Van der Capellen to govern. The next day a secret treaty was signed giving back the former colonies of the East Indies Company except Ceylon. The Netherlands also did not get back the Cape in Africa and Esquibo, Demerara, and Berbice in the West Indies. The treaty was ratified three weeks later. Willem took over the government of Belgium on 31 July. On the first of October 1814 he decreed that Flemish (Flanders Dutch) would be an official language in Belgium, but it was not compulsory.
In February 1815 the union of Belgium and Holland was announced at Brussels. On 16 March the States General welcomed King Willem, and one week later the great powers meeting in Vienna recognized him as King of the Netherlands and Grand Duke of Luxembourg. In April a new constitution commission was set up with Hogendorp as president and 24 members, half of them Catholics. When Napoleon returned to Paris in March, Louis XVIII took refuge at Ghent. Napoleon led an army into Belgium on 12 June. A Dutch-Belgian force supported the Allies led by Wellington that defeated Bonaparte for the last time on the 18th at Waterloo south of Brussels. Troops from the Netherlands participated in the invasion of France and joined the Holy Alliance on 26 September. On the 21st Willem had been crowned king at Brussels. He disbanded the Dutch field army on 22 December while his son Willem of Orange went to Russia to wed Tsar Alexander’s sister Anna Pavlovna on 21 February 1816. The United Kingdom of the Netherlands had official seats in The Hague and in Brussels.
King Willem promoted art, science, and the use of Dutch. In the south the Belgians used French and Dutch in higher education. In 1815 the government reorganized three high schools in the United Provinces as universities. In 1817 three universities opened in the Belgian provinces of Ghent, Louvain, and Liège. The six universities in the Kingdom started professorships in science. Although the population of Belgium was about three million to some two million Dutch, the former had only about 60,000 eligible voters to 80,000 in the north. The French noble Maurice-Jean de Broglie had been nominated by Napoleon and was Bishop of Ghent from 1807 until his death in 1821, and he was a fervent critic of Willem’s government. In 1817 he was condemned in a Brussels court and deported.
In 1816 the Netherlands Bank was founded with capital from the widow Johanna Borski. About 83% of the Dutch people were workers, peasants, or farm laborers. Poor harvests in 1816 and 1817 caused an economic depression that did not begin to recede until 1820. In 1817 the Dutch had 11% of the people receiving public assistance compared to 12% of the Belgians, but by 1828 these figures had changed to 9% of the Dutch and 14% of the Belgians. In 1818 the state began the Society of Charity to train urban paupers to cultivate waste land. In September 1819 the government made the use of Dutch compulsory in administration and the law courts of Flanders, Antwerp, and Limburg, and it was to go into effect in 1823 and then was gradually imposed on secondary schools. The law was often ignored, and in 1829 Willem allowed the use of French in notarial acts. Wages were frozen in 1820, and for Verviers weavers they did not go up until 1827.
The Dutch education law of 1806 was not applied to the Belgian provinces until 1821. That year the French metric system was re-introduced after having been canceled in 1815. In 1822 Willem founded the industrial bank Société Générale with 50 million gold francs. Willem’s royal government considered the States General advisory, and he did not have a council cabinet until 1823. In April 1824 liberals started the Mathieu Laensbergh in Liége, and in 1825 it became committed to the Romantic movement which was also favored by the Journal de Bruxelles in 1826.
In 1822 schoolmasters had to get official permission to teach except for religious congregations which were ordered to do so in 1824. In 1825 no one was allowed to teach without a degree from one of the state universities. The Philosophical College was founded at Louvain, and future priests were required to attend lectures there before going to seminaries. In June 1825 the King decreed that all Latin schools founded without his permission were to be closed; this applied mostly to seminaries and boarding-schools run by clergy. Catholics strongly opposed these policies, and in 1827 Willem promised to make the requirement optional; but negotiations broke down, and it was not implemented until 1829. After it became optional, the College closed in January 1830.
The United Netherlands made a trade treaty on 17 March 1824 that granted Britain free navigation in India as a favored nation, and the Dutch were obligated to suppress piracy near Sumatra. On 29 March the Dutch Commercial Company was founded. From 1824 to 1827 Dutch exports increased from 84.5 million to 96 million while imports went up from 46 million to 60 million. They were the second maritime nation after the British. By 1830 the industrial city of Ghent had 66 cotton factories with 35,000 workers, and Liège’s metal industry and coal mines employed 60,000 men. Peace had increased the Belgian population to 3.9 million and the Dutch to 2.3 million.
On 17 August 1827 a new concordat with the Catholic Church allowed bishops to regulate education of the clergy; the King could exclude candidates for bishoprics, and the bishops had to swear allegiance to the King. This was criticized by Catholic liberals in the south and Protestants in the north.
Since 1818 a law to restrain the press was enforced by the Calvinist Cornelis Felix van Maanen. Editors of the Courrier were prosecuted for opposing the government. After they published a speech about the views of Belgian liberals in October 1828, Louis de Potter who edited the Courrier was sentenced to 18 months in prison and fined 1,000 guilders. In January 1829 petitioning began, and 300,000 people signed them. In May the government repealed the press laws, but they started publishing Le National managed by the King’s friend, the notorious Italian Libry-Bagnano. De Potter kept writing from prison, and in the summer he published the pamphlet “Union of the Catholics and liberals in the Netherlands” urging cooperation. King Willem spoke to the States General on 11 December about new press laws and asked for support for education but urged rejection of demands.
In 1829 the index of food prices went up from 64 to 97. From December 1829 to February 1830 clergy supported a petition drive in West Flanders for press freedom that got 350,000 signatures or a mark by the illiterate. As more Belgians were given ministerial offices, the States General was less attended. On 31 January 1830 a plan for a national subscription to indemnify dismissed members of the States General appeared in 17 Belgian newspapers, and on 3 February a patriotic confederation was proposed to compensate officials involved in “legal resistance.” The plan was devised by the Courrier’s former editor Tielemans. He and De Potter were tried, and De Potter was banished for eight years and Tielemans for seven years. Their correspondence was published implying that the patriotic confederation was a state within the state.
In January 1830 Foreign Minister J. G. Verstolk published a report claiming how much more prosperous and healthy the United Netherlands was compared to the Old Republic. The Belgian statistician A. Quetelet showed how the new state was better than other nations in mortality, primary education, and had more newspapers. A royal resolution allowing the use of both languages in Belgium was popular there.
Denmark during the French Revolution maintained neutrality which enabled them to increase their trade and prosperity. In 1789 Denmark started a School Commission led by Ernst Schimmelmann who had set up schools on his estates. In March 1791 Danish landowners were given more flexibility. The government also provided mediation on labor obligations (hoveri). By 1795 agreements had been made in about 600 of 759 manors, and by the end of 1799 hoveri was removed from two-thirds of Denmark’s peasant farms. However, serfdom remained in Schleswig and Holstein. In 1793 Copenhagen set up a police court and no longer allowed the police-master to inflict arbitrary punishment, giving the poor the protection of law. In June 1795 a fire destroyed central Copenhagen, and the city provided temporary relief. Well-planned building ensued, and that year Norwegian forest owners were permitted to cut timber. In March 1792 an ordinance had called for public relief for all in real need. In 1798 a special commission began handling poor relief in Copenhagen, and comprehensive relief was decreed in 1799. The 1801 census showed that only 3% of Danes were paupers while 13% were in Britain. In 1792 Denmark-Norway abolished the slave trade, and it became illegal in 1803.
Foreign Minister Andreas Peter Bernstorff managed to have good relations with Russia, and in 1794 he negotiated an alliance with Sweden. Trade with the East Indies and China brought in valuable goods. In February 1797 an ordinance eliminated import restrictions and lowered duties, stimulating trade. Sidi Yussef, the new Bey of Tripoli, had demanded more tribute in 1796, and on 16 May 1797 six Tripolitan ships attacked three Danish vessels. The Danes blockaded the harbor and forced the Bey to make peace and agreed on the 25th to a commercial treaty. Bernstorff died on 21 June, and Denmark began convoying merchant ships.
In 1796 the Scandinavian Literary Society was established at Copenhagen. On 27 September 1799 a press ordinance banned anonymous publications and required approval by Copenhagen’s police-master for those with less than 24 pages. In November this law was extended to the duchies.
The British did not recognize the right of warships to protect commercial vessels, and on 25 July 1800 British cruisers attacked and captured the Danish frigate Freia which was guarding a merchant fleet. The ship was returned, but the Danes had to agree not to escort merchant ships until the issue was resolved. Russia, Sweden, and Prussia made a treaty of armed neutrality. On 16 January 1801 Denmark agreed to join as long as it did not break their agreement with England; but two days earlier the British had declared an embargo against Danish ships in English ports, and they ordered that the Danish West Indies (Virgin Islands) be occupied. On 2 April a British squadron of 51 ships commanded by Hyde Parker and Horatio Nelson attacked Copenhagen. The Danes and Norwegians suffered 1,600 casualties and the British 1,200. They negotiated a truce for 14 weeks, and Denmark promised not to join the armed neutrality. Russia’s Tsar Paul had died, and Tsar Alexander made peace with Britain which Denmark also accepted.
Danish trade continued to flourish especially with North America. About 12,000 ships passed through the Sound annually. As the German empire was dissolving, Holstein became part of Denmark on 9 September 1806. When Russia’s Alexander and Napoleon made a secret treaty at Tilsit in July 1807, they expected Denmark to declare war against Britain. The powerful British navy threatened Danish ships, but Foreign Minister Kristian Bernstorff ignored the warnings. Prince Frederik arrived from Holstein, but he and the royal family fled from Copenhagen. Crown Prince Frederik declared war against Britain on 16 August. On that day the British with 54 warships and 380 transport vessels landed 30,000 troops at Vedbaek north of the capital. They surrounded Copenhagen by the 18th, and on 2 September a three-day bombardment began that destroyed public buildings and 305 houses, damaging several thousand more and leaving 7,000 people homeless. Denmark had less than 14,000 soldiers and militia to defend the capital, and on the 7th the elderly General Ernst Peymann signed a capitulation and surrendered their fleet of 69 ships. The British fleet departed on 21 October, but the war would go on for seven years. The British attack was criticized by many, and Tsar Alexander declared war against the British on 26 October. In September the British had also taken the island of Heligoland in the North Sea. Denmark declared war against Britain on 4 November. On Christmas Day the British occupied the Danish West Indies.
Denmark being at war against England was naturally allied with Napoleon who was also fighting Sweden. Thus Denmark declared war on the Swedes on 29 February 1808. Denmark’s King Kristian VII died on 13 March, and he was succeeded by his son Frederik VI who had been acting as regent since 1784 because of his father’s mental illness. On the 19th he informed his administration that he would instruct them directly instead of using the state council. During Denmark’s era of neutrality the British captured 600 of their merchant ships, and they would lose almost as many during the war when the Danish government issued letters of mark and reprisal for 600 privateers.
In 1808 Jean Bernadotte, Prince of Pontecorvo, occupied the Jutland peninsula with 33,000 soldiers, but 14,000 of them were Spaniards who soon left to fight for their independence. Bernadotte withdrew his French army from Denmark in 1809. The war between Denmark and Sweden lasted from 14 March 1808 until the peace at Jönköping on 10 December 1809. Kristian August was a general in the Royal Danish Army and commanded about 9,500 soldiers, and a force of 2,200 defeated 250 Swedes at Toverud in Norway on 20 April 1808. He was promoted to field marshal and was appointed Governor-general of Norway in 1809. In July he was elected Crown Prince Karl August, but he died suddenly of a stroke on 28 May 1810. Then Sweden’s King Karl XIII adopted Bernadotte as his heir and named him Karl Johan, and on 21 August the Riksdag of Estates elected him Crown Prince.
In the spring of 1811 smuggling through Holstein was suppressed, and privateering became too dangerous and unprofitable. During the war Danes and Norwegians captured 2,000 British merchant ships valued at 28 million riksdalers and those confiscated were worth 15 million. Norway needed grain while Jutland and the Danish duchies could not sell their surpluses. Denmark had a growing deficit as copper and silver coins stopped circulating. By 1812 the rigsdaler was worth only one-fourteenth of its value in silver. On 5 January 1813 the government established a state bank (Rigsbank) to replace the credit institutions. Circulating paper money was to be replaced by the non-metal rigsbankdaler, and taxes multiplied by six in real value. A 6% levy was imposed on real property. Many investors, creditors, and savers were bankrupted.
On 5 April 1812 Sweden made a treaty with Russia which promised to support the transfer of Norway from Denmark to Sweden. Denmark’s King Frederik VI tried to negotiate an alliance with Russia and Britain against Napoleon; but they rejected his offer, and he renewed his alliance with the French Empire. His brother-in-law Prince Frederik of Hesse joined the French army in northern Germany. On 5 January 1813 Denmark declared bankruptcy, and its economy would be affected for decades. By September the national bank was worth only 8.5% of its nominal value, and on the 14th the government prohibited debtors from making payments unless they did so with silver.
The Napoleonic War prevented grain from getting to Norway, and in Akershus Stiftamt in southeastern Norway 12,679 people died in 1808 and 21,391 in 1809. That year the Association for the Welfare of Norway was founded. Ship captains used British and French licenses to obtain fortunes, disregarding Napoleon’s blockade. In June 1810 five Norwegian brigs captured a convoy of 47 British ships. Nicolai Wergland published his prize-winning Mnemosyne fostering Norwegian nationalism in 1811, and in September King Frederik VI founded the Royal Frederik University at Christiana which began teaching in 1813.
On 10 April 1813 Karl Johan (Bernadotte) warned Frederik VI that he must cede the Trondhjem bishopric to Sweden and join the Sixth Coalition against Napoleon, or Sweden would attack Denmark-Norway. That spring Frederik sent Prince Kristian Frederik to Norway. After Napoleon’s defeat at Leipzig in October, the Danes defected and left Germany. Karl Johan in Sweden with a force of 25,000 men moved from Hanover to the Danish frontier in late November. The Danish army of 9,000 retreated but had to fight German troops led by Ludwig von Wallmoden-Gimborn near Oldesloe and again at Bornhoved on 7 December. The Danish army led by General Tettenborn moved farther north and crossed the Eider. On the 10th they defeated an equal force of anti-French allies at Sehested. However, General Chernikov surrendered the fortress at Glückstadt on 5 January 1814. On the 14th Denmark in the treaty of Kiel ceded the kingdom of Norway to Sweden but retained control over Iceland, the Faroe Islands, and Greenland. Denmark had ruled Norway since 1380.
In March 1814 a Danish ordinance gave Jews equal rights, and their religion was subjected to the same restrictions as Christians. King Frederik began meeting with the State Council in April. In July the government required a school in each parish paid for by parish taxes and a low tuition that poor families did not have to pay. Children were to be educated from the age of 6 or 7 to 13.
At the Congress of Vienna in June 1815 Denmark had to give up its claim to Swedish Pomerania to Prussia and received only Saxe-Lauenburg and 3.5 million talers in exchange. Prussia also assumed Denmark’s 600,000-taler debt to Sweden.
Hans Nielsen Hauge (1771-1824) was from a poor Norwegian family and nearly drowned when he was 13. He founded a revival movement in May 1796 traveling and holding meetings. He emphasized repentance and conversion by relating directly to God. In six years he mostly walked 10,000 miles and preached about three times a day. He published 33 pamphlets and books with editions of more than 50,000 copies that reached an estimated 100,000 Norwegians out of less than a million literate people. In addition to printing he was also successful in business and managed investments for his friends. His system was communistic, but an official persuaded him to stop using that term. In 1804 Bishop Peder Hansen of Christianssand complained to the Danish Chancellery supported by other prominent persons. He was accused of violating the Conventicle Act of 1741 which outlawed preaching by anyone not ordained. Hauge was arrested in October, and the government confiscated his property. He had been imprisoned before, but this time the severe punishment harmed his health. In 1806 he was allowed privileges, and in 1809 the government took advantage of his business skill to let him found salt factories during the salt famine caused by the British blockade. In 1811 he was released to his farm where he directed his movement. In December 1813 he was ordered to pay a fine of 1,000 rigsdaler and court costs.
Denmark’s King Frederik VI wrote an open letter to Norwegians on 18 January 1814 that Norway had been ceded to Sweden. On the 24th Kristian Frederik received the order to surrender Norway to Sweden and return to Denmark, but he refused to do so. Instead he visited his advisor Peter Anker at Eiswold and then went to Trondhjem where people asked him to draft a constitution for Norway. Professor George Sverdrup advised him not to take the throne but let the people give it to him. He returned to Christiana and summoned an Assembly of Notables to meet at Eidsvold on 16 February. On that day the Assembly agreed they would not follow the treaty of Kiel, and they elected Kristian Frederik the Regent. He accepted and published rules for electing delegates to a Constituent Assembly. Sweden appointed Count von Essen as Governor-general of Norway, and he sent Trøndelagen’s Governor Count von Rosen to Christiana to negotiate with Kristian Frederik. Rosen replied that the Norwegians had declared independence. On the 25th the congregation of Our Savior church in Christiana swore to maintain Norway’s independence. King Frederik on 21 March in another letter to his cousin Kristian Frederik advised him to negotiate with Sweden so that Norway would have as much independence as possible while in the union with Sweden. Kristian Frederik appointed a royal cabinet of ministers for finance, interior, justice, commerce, and manufacturing and mining. He sent Carsten Anker to England; but Prime Minister Liverpool said that if Norwegians persisted with independence, Britain would help Sweden.
The 112 delegates of the Constituent Assembly met at Eidsvold on 10 April 1814, and Kristian Frederik arrived with his cabinet. The Assembly appointed a committee of fifteen to draft a constitution. They developed the following ten principles that were adopted:
1. Norway is to be a limited hereditary monarchy:
it shall be a free, independent, and indivisible kingdom,
and the regent shall have the title of king.
2. The people shall exercise the lawmaking power
through their representatives.
3. The people shall have the right to tax themselves
through their representatives.
4. The right to declare war and conclude peace
shall be vested in the regent.
5. The regent shall possess the power of pardon.
6. The judicial department shall be separate
from the legislative and executive departments.
7. Freedom of the press shall be established.
8. The Evangelical-Lutheran Church shall be
the state church of Norway, but all religious sects
shall have the right to worship according to their own faith.
Jews shall be excluded from the kingdom.
9. The freedom of industry shall not be limited
by further restrictions.
10. No personal, mixed, or hereditary privileges
shall hereafter be granted.1
An eleventh principle for uniform compulsory military service was rejected. The representatives in the National Legislative Assembly would be elected from 123 districts, and all men over the age of 25 could vote. The King would choose his ministers, but they would be responsible to the Assembly. The judiciary would include commissions of arbitration for suits prior to litigation. Lower court judges would select two men by lot to advise them, and cases could be appealed to a jury court and from there to higher courts. The Independence Party had a majority of the people and the delegates, but the Union Party wanted to unite with Sweden. On 17 May 1814 the new constitution was signed, and they voted for independence with Kristian Frederik as King of Norway. He had already issued 3 million riksbankdaler in unsecured paper.
Kristian Frederik was determined to resolve conflicts by diplomacy instead of war. On 18 May he received letters from Russia and Prussia that they would not recognize Norway’s independence and would aid Sweden. Russia promised Karl Johan an army of 30,000 men, and Britain offered subsidies and naval forces for a blockade of Norway which began on 31 May. Austria also supported the union with Sweden. Kristian Frederik ordered the military to use a completely defensive strategy. Envoys arrived in Christiana by 30 June and proposed an armistice for three months if three Norwegian fortresses were surrendered to Swedes, and Kristian Frederik must renounce all his powers. He said he could abdicate or die for the cause if the representatives chose war. His cabinet and others agreed not to abandon the fortresses.
Swedes had invaded Norway, and Kristian Frederik urged Norwegians to fight for their freedom and fatherland. A Swedish fleet took over the Hvaløerne islands and at Kragerøen the Fredrikstad fortress which did not resist. General Gahn led a Swedish force of 2,500 men, but Norwegians pushed them back at Lier on 2 August 1814 and defeated them at Matrand. Sweden had an army of 40,000; but the Norwegians had only 27,000, and they also faced the British navy and troops from Russia and Prussia. Field Marshall Essen led a Swedish force through Enningdalen, and General Vegesack’s army of 6,000 besieged Fredriksten. Kristian Frederik agreed to a cease fire at Moss on 14 August, and the Swedes agreed to the Convention of Moss with two of his ministers that acknowledged the Norwegian Constitution with mutually agreed upon changes and the Parliament if they ratified the convention. Prince Frederik was to renounce his claims to the Norwegian crown and leave the country. Sweden’s King Karl XIII ratified the Convention on 30 August. On 11 October the abdication of Kristian Frederik was announced, and he left for Denmark. Swedish commissioners negotiated the union with the Norwegian Assembly, and all but four representatives from Bergen voted in favor. On 4 November they elected Karl XIII the King of Norway, and five days later Crown Prince Karl Johan arrived and took the oath to uphold the Norwegian constitution.
The final Act of Union was ratified by the Norwegian Assembly on 31 July 1815 and by the Swedish Rigsdag on 6 August. Until 1818 crops and fishing in Norway were very poor, and the lumber trade was diminishing. People could not pay taxes, and the government could not pay clergy and officials. The King appointed Field Marshal Henrik von Essen as Statholder in Norway, and Peter Anker became Minister of State. The first Assembly under the Union met in July 1815 and tried to reorganize the finances. They abolished hereditary nobility in Norway, but the King vetoed it twice. Yet a veto was not allowed to stop its third passage in 1821, and it became law. That year on 29 May the Assembly passed a bill agreeing to pay its debt to Denmark, and this reduced the danger of foreign intervention. King Karl Johan’s circular on the first of June asking for help in overthrowing the Norwegian government had little effect. Changes he wanted were an issue in the 1824 campaign, and liberal writers criticized them. In 1827 the Assembly impeached the minister Jonas Collett for excessive spending and promulgating unconstitutional ordinances. He was tried and acquitted. In 1829 the Students’ Union voted to make 17 May a holiday, and they arranged a private festival. The King tried to stop the celebrations.
On 2 February 1789 Sweden’s King Gustav III (r. 1771-92) opened the Riksdag meeting by thanking the loyal Finnish subjects and the peasants for supporting the war against Russia that he had declared in June 1788. He added six peasants to the Secret Committee so that the three lower estates outnumbered the nobles 18 to 12. At a plenary session on the 17th he criticized the aristocrats for failing to cooperate, and he promised that he would defend liberty. Three days later he detained 19 nobles who led the opposition including Count Hans Axel von Fersen. The next day Gustav announced to the Estates his Act of Union and Security that was supported by the three lower estates but not by the nobles. This gave the King power to declare war and make peace. On 3 April the King issued the “Charter of the Rights of the Swedish and Finnish Peasantry” which freed them from remaining restrictions regarding the forest, hunting, and fishing rights, sale of property, and the employment of farm workers. The Act of Union enabled commoners to buy noble land, and he confirmed the hereditary tenure of peasant tenants of the crown.
Sweden’s national debt had risen to 10,300,000 riksdalers with four-fifths in foreign loans. The Secret Committee proposed guaranteeing the debt up to 21 million. Gustav went to the House of Nobility on 27 April and pushed through a grant for an unlimited time for new taxes by a voice vote, and the next day he dissolved the Riksdag and released the last of the detainees.
Gustav III went back to Finland to take command of his army. In January 1790 he sent Axel Fersen to Paris as his secret agent, and in February the King banned writers and newspapers from reporting on the revolution in France. In April the Swedes attacked Baltischport, Reval, Fredrikshamn, and Kronstadt to get control of the Finnish Gulf. The King and the Swedish navy with 30,000 men were trapped in Viborg Bay, and on 3 July they fought their way out, losing a third of the fleet. One week later at Svensksund they nearly destroyed the Russian fleet which lost 53 ships and 9,000 men. On 31 July the British and Prussians made a treaty of friendship and subsidy with Sweden. Tsarina Ekaterina II and Gustav III made peace at Värälä in Finland on 14 August, confirming the status quo prior to the war.
Count Fersen tried to help Louis XVI and his family escape from Paris, but they were captured at Varennes on 20 June 1791. That year Gustav III studied the British constitution, and he sent envoys to Russia, Britain, Spain, German principalities, and to French émigrés at Koblenz, and he intended to support Austrian Emperor Leopold II. Sweden and Russia made a defensive alliance on 19 October. Gustav convened the Riksdag in January 1792 at Gävle to avoid controversies in the capital and consider a government similar to the British system. The national debt was estimated to be nearly 30 million, and the 1789 tax was continued.
Gustav III supported literature and the arts especially opera. General Karl Fredrik Pechlin opposed monarchy and had followers such as Jacob van Engeström who devised a constitution with a strong council and a unicameral legislature. Pechlin led conspirators who planned to seize power. On 16 March 1792 a group of masked aristocrats surrounded King Gustav at an opera, and Jacob Johan Anckarstrom shot him in the back. Their quick arrest prevented the attempt coup. The court condemned five; four were sentenced to exile, and Anckarstrom was beheaded. The King survived for 13 days before dying of the infected wound. On the day he died, he appointed his brother, Duke Karl of Södermanland, regent until his son at age 18 became King Gustav IV Adolf. In a codicil to his will that day Gustav III also named a regency council of five that included the Barons Armfelt and Taube. After his brother died, Duke Karl declared the codicil void.
In July 1792 Regent Karl began relying on the patriotic Gustaf Adolf Reuterholm who was devoted to Freemasonry, and he restored some freedom of the press. Gustav III had recalled Baron de Staël from Paris in 1791, and he replaced Taube as the main advisor for foreign policy. Reuterholm’s disciple Thomas Thorild in December published a pamphlet urging the end of all limits on free expression. The pamphlet was seized, and press restrictions were revived. Thorild was tried, and he was sent into exile for four years. This provoked a riot on 7 January 1793 over the merchant Niclas Ebel’s speech in Stockholm. People also reacted to the execution of Louis XVI. Radicals became more prominent at Uppsala University, and 550 students formed a convention.
Peasant holdings increased as reforms continued. Baron Rutger Maclean in 1793 organized tenancies on his manor into 75 holdings, leased them, required improved cultivation methods, and converted labor dues to rent. Maclean established schools for children and sent a scholar to study Pestalozzi’s teaching methods in Switzerland.
As Reuterholm gained more power, he became despotic. He intercepted communications from Baron Armfelt who was minister to the Italian courts. He and his associates were going to be prosecuted in December 1793, but Armfelt escaped and went to Russia. The Armfelt conspiracy was considered a Jacobin attempt to overthrow the monarchy. Sweden began negotiating with Denmark in the summer of 1793, and they agreed on an Armed Neutrality Convention at Copenhagen on 27 March 1794. Reuterholm was suspicious of Jacobin influence and closed the Swedish Academy in 1795. Yet Sweden had been negotiating with revolutionary France for three years, and in September 1795 they agreed on a defensive alliance with a French subsidy to Sweden for defending maritime rights of neutrals.
Gustav IV Adolf could rule as King of Sweden after he turned 18 on the first of November 1796. He dismissed Reuterholm who left the country, and the regent Duke Karl withdrew from the government. In December 1797 he made Fredrik Wilhelm von Ehrenheim Foreign Minister to negotiate with Germans, and he suggested trading German territory to Denmark for Norway. The King blamed Jacobins for killing his father, and he detested the French Revolution. He was more able to work with bureaucrats than his father, and he reduced court expenses and pensions while improving support for widows and orphans of public servants.
Poor harvests in 1798 and 1799 and the collapse of the Hamburg market caused an economic crisis in Sweden. On 29 October 1799 Sweden formed a defensive alliance with Russia in the Gatchina treaty. In December the King appointed Count Fersen as Chancellor, and he worked to suppress radical faculty and students. In late 1799 and early 1800 riots broke out in Stockholm, Gothenburg, Norrköping, Linköping, Malmö, and other towns. In 1800 Sweden had 2,347,000 people with only 230,000 in towns. Stockholm was the largest city with 75,000, and Gothenburg was next with 12,800. Both cities suffered from fires in wooden buildings in outlying districts.
A Riksdag was announced in January 1800. The Riksdag opened on 15 March, and King Gustav IV Adolf and Queen Fredrika were crowned on 3 April. That month a university orchestra included an excerpt from the Marseillaise in a composition, and four teachers were dismissed and were put on trial. In the elections royalists had a majority among the Clergy and the Peasantry Estates, and they also dominated the Burgher Estate. Sweden’s government began working on monetary reform, but the Nobles’ request that the discussions of the Secret and Bank Committees be made public was denied. In May the Secret Committee presented their plan for monetary reform to the Estates. Two-thirds of national debt notes were to be redeemed by imposing a special levy that would take 2% of the national wealth. Radicals tried to limit the duration of the grant so that the Estates would meet regularly. During the controversy 12 radicals renounced their noble status and left the hall on 29 May. The King ordered six radicals tried for offending the Speaker of the Noble Estate; but in 1802 one was acquitted, and the others got token sentences.
In 1801 the education and culture committee proposed reforming secondary schools, using privative initiatives to add more parish schools. In June 1800 Sweden and Russia revived the League of Armed Neutrality. Gustav Adolf visited Tsar Paul in St. Petersburg in December, and by the end of the month Denmark and Prussia joined the Northern League against the British. On 19 March 1801 the English seized the Swedish colony St. Barthélemy, but they gave it back in July 1802. In July 1803 Gustav IV and Queen Fredrika visited her native Karlsruhe in Baden, Germany. The French later entered Baden to capture the Duc d’Enghien, and they executed him at Paris in March 1804. In April both Tsar Alexander and Gustav IV refused to recognize Napoleon as Emperor. When Prussia did, Gustav broke diplomatic relations with Berlin. In February 1804 Gustav prohibited the importing of Danish newspapers, and in August he banned French books and journals. Enclosure acts improved agriculture in March 1803 for Skåne, in 1804 for Västergötland, and by 1807 half the farms in Sweden were enclosed.
On 3 October 1805 Sweden joined Britain, Austria, and Russia in the Third Coalition against France. Sweden increased its Sralsund garrison to 8,000 men, and the British subsidized half of them. On the 31st Sweden declared war on France. In November 1805 Gustav took command of his army of 12,000 men in Pomerania and the allies that included 17,000 Russians. In 1806 Sweden occupied the province of Lauenburg in Hanover; but when Prussia annexed Hanover in March 1806, one thousand Swedes were captured. Prussia allied with Russia in August, and Swedes reoccupied Lauenburg.
Gustav IV returned to Stockholm in September 1806. He confiscated 375,000 pounds of British subsidies that were on the way to Russia and justified it as collection of a debt from Russia. On 6 November a thousand Swedes surrendered to Marshal Bernadotte as Lübeck fell. On 3 July 1807 Gustav IV announced that the armistice would end in two weeks. Prussians and the British withdrew from Pomerania. Gustav abolished serfdom in Pomerania, established a constitution, and implemented Swedish religious and educational reforms. He convened the Pomeranian Landtag in Freifswald in August on Sweden’s four-estates plan, and he guaranteed Pomerania’s debts.
On 21 February 1808 Tsar Alexander informed the Swedish ambassador that Sweden must give up its alliance with Britain and join Russia and Denmark, and on that day a Russian army invaded Finland. On 14 March the Swedes received Denmark’s declaration of war. On the 2nd the Russians had captured Helsingfors and besieged the island fortress of Sveaborg that guarded Helsinki. On the 22nd Russian troops occupied the fortifications on the Hangö Peninsula that the Swedes had abandoned, and they took over Åbo. They landed on the Åland Islands on 12 April. Swedish Admiral Cronstedt who commanded Sveaborg agreed to an armistice on 6 April and capitulated on 3 May. The Russians captured 7,000 soldiers, 2,000 cannons, and 110 ships. The Russians moved down the west coast and inland toward Karelia. After a rebellion pushed the Russians out of the Åland Islands in May, the British and Swedish fleets dominated the Baltic Sea. Sweden’s army of 66,000 men included 20,000 Finns. Gustav IV formed a new militia and conscripted unmarried men between the ages of 19 and 25 to add 30,000 more troops. The Russian army of 55,000 moved north against the discouraged Finns who agreed on 19 November to evacuate northern Finland, and by 13 December the remaining 10,000 Finnish soldiers crossed the Kemi river into Sweden. Gustav degraded 120 officers in September causing resentment.
On 7 January 1809 Gustav IV levied a wartime tax five times what the Riksdag had approved in 1800, and this was very unpopular. Sweden had lost Finland and Pomerania. Lt. Col. Georg Adlersparre had been relieved of his command on the Norwegian front. He learned that an attempted coup in Stockholm had failed. He organized officers, claimed he had made an armistice with Norwegians, and on 7 March he issued a manifesto calling for peace, a repeal of the war tax, and a new system. On the 13th General Adlercreutz and six officers got to see Gustav IV Adolf in the palace. When the King refused to summon a Riksdag, they arrested him. His uncle, Duke Karl of Södermanland, once again became regent and formed a provisional government with the Generals Adlercreutz and Klingspor and Count Axel von Fersen. On the 22nd Adlersparre and his private army arrived at Stockholm. A Riksdag had been summoned for the first of May. Gustav IV abdicated on 29 March, and Duke Karl was persuaded to become King Karl XIII. The provisional government first repealed the war tax. Sweden had lost British subsidies in March 1809, and the Riksdag had to more than double the taxes of 1807; but they devised a progressive income tax ranging from 0.25% to 10% regardless of social status.
At Sweden’s Riksdag on 11 May the Estates voted to exclude Gustav IV and his heirs from the throne. A committee drafted a new constitution that was presented to the Estates on the first of June. Both the King and the Estates could initiate or veto legislation. Citizens were protected against governmental abuses and had the right of free expression on public issues. The farmers (Peasantry) wanted equal taxes on landed property, but on the 27th Duke Karl persuaded them to accept only minor concessions on manorial land taxes. Two days later Duke Karl was crowned King Karl XIII. Adlersparre’s group suggested the popular Danish commander in southern Norway, Prince Kristian August, as the crown prince, and the Riksdag accepted him on 18 July. He had proposed a unified constitution for all of Scandinavia, but Denmark’s Frederik VI opposed that.
Meanwhile in March 1809 the Russians had driven the Swedes out of the Åland Islands. About 7,500 Swedes attacked the Russians holding Umeå in August, but they were forced to depart. On 17 September the Swedes made peace with Russia. Sweden lost Finland, the Åland Islands, and northern territory, reducing the kingdom by a third. Denmark and Sweden also ended their war on 10 December. Sweden even made peace with France on 6 January 1810, and by joining the continental system the French gave Pomerania back to Sweden after being there since July 1807.
In the fall of 1809 the Generals Adlercreutz and Klingspor and the Counts De La Gardie and Ruuth secretly planned to increase royal authority by amending the constitution, and they gained support from radical farmers. De La Gardie had initiated the graduated income tax, and on 13 January 1810 he proposed that the Noble Estate renounce their privileges if the other estates did also; but the other three estates were afraid they would lose their property advantages or have higher taxes. In March the Riksdag legislated freedom of the press. Noblemen had dominated the session that ended on 2 May. The Riksdag had voted in April to amend the constitution to replace the four estates with a bicameral legislature; but to take effect it had to be passed by another session, and with growing conservatism it never did. Kristian August moved from Norway to Sweden and adopted the Swedish name Karl August. On 28 May while attending army maneuvers on horseback, he had a stroke and died. A rumor circulated that he had been poisoned. When his body was being moved to the royal palace, the crowd stoned the royalist Count Fersen who was in a carriage as grand marshal. When he tried to take refuge at a home, they beat him to death while police and soldiers watched. Rioters then attacked the homes of the wealthy and powerful.
On 18 July 1810 Denmark’s Frederik VI wrote to Sweden’s Karl XIII offering himself as a candidate for crown prince of Sweden. On 10 August the Secret Committee of the Estates nominated the Danish Duke of Austenburg; but four days later they selected the French Marshal Bernadotte, and the Estates unanimously elected him crown prince. He had offered to loan Sweden 8 million francs, and he became a Lutheran at Helsingør on 19 October. Bernadotte reached Stockholm on 2 November, and three days later he was proclaimed Prince Karl Johan, the adopted son of Karl XIII. On 13 November the French demanded that Sweden declare war against Britain, and they notified Karl Johan that he had forfeited his European appanages as Prince of Conte Corvo. Sweden agreed to declare war, and Karl Johan told the council that he had become Swedish.
In March 1811 Karl XIII had a stroke, and Karl Johan acted as regent officially until January 1812, the month that Napoleon occupied Swedish Pomerania and sent the Swedish garrison to Paris as prisoners of war. When Karl XIII recovered, he allowed Karl Johan to govern. On 5 April a secret treaty between Sweden and Russia promised cooperation so that Sweden could take over Norway. A new military conscription law passed in May. In June the British made a friendship treaty with Sweden and Russia at Örebro. After Napoleon’s Grand Army invaded Russia, Karl Johan severed his connection with Paris. Karl Johan in August met with Tsar Alexander at Åbo in Finland, and on the 30th they agreed on an expedition against Sjælland as a step toward taking Norway. In 1811 Karl Johan founded the Royal Agricultural Academy and in 1813 economic societies in each of the 24 counties. Sweden’s cultivated land increased from 850,000 hectares in 1800 to 1,400,000 by 1830.
In the winter of 1812-13 Karl Johan assembled an army of 30,000 men in Swedish Pomerania which the French had evacuated. On 3 March 1813 Sweden formed an alliance at London with the British who recognized Norway as part of Sweden and provided subsidies for the Swedish army. In a conference at Trachenberg in Silesia on 9-12 July with Tsar Alexander and the King of Prussia, Karl Johan was given command of the allied Northern Army of 158,000 Russians, Prussians, and Swedes in the campaign against Napoleon. The armistice was denounced on 11 August, and on the 23rd this army was victorious over the French at Grossbeeren and again on 6 September at Dennewitz where the Prussians lost most of the 10,000 casualties. Sweden had declared war against Denmark on 3 September. In the important battle at Leipzig on 16-19 October the Swedes were the last to enter the fighting. The allies criticized Karl Johan for managing to lose only 1,200 Swedish troops in the war.
After the Leipzig battle Karl Johan sent the Prussians and most of the Russians to drive the French out of Holland while he led the Swedes and some Russians through Hanover to fight the Danes in Holstein. Denmark asked for an armistice, and on 14 January 1814 at Kiel they signed a peace treaty that ceded Norway to Sweden in exchange for 1 million riksdalers and Pomerania on the continent. Sweden’s Foreign Minister Lars von Engestrom criticized Karl Johan and Chancellor Wetterstedt for giving Iceland, Greenland, and the Faroe Islands to Denmark because he believed they traditionally belonged to Norway.
On 17 May 1814 Norway’s Assembly proclaimed a constitution and elected Danish Karl Frederik as their king. Karl Johan in Sweden gathered an army of 70,000, and on 26 July they invaded Norway, captured Fredrikstad and garrisoned Fredriksen. Karl Johan negotiated with Kristian Frederik for a week, and on 14 August they agreed on an armistice at Moss. Norwegian soldiers could not be taken out of Norway for an offensive war unless their Storting (Assembly) approved. Nobles had more power in Sweden which retained the Riksdag with the four Estates. Karl Johan complained that Denmark did not give up Norway peacefully, and so he sold Pomerania to Prussia for 5 million riksdalers that included 1.5 million for himself. Guadeloupe in the West Indies had been promised to Sweden by the British. When the French demanded its return, the British paid Karl Johan 24 million francs in compensation. He used most of it to pay down Sweden’s foreign debt, and he also forced Norway to pay 3 million riksdalers to help alleviate Sweden’s debt.
After 1815 peace, vaccinations, and improved farming helped Sweden to prosper. The production of grains increased from 495,000 metric tons in 1802 to 654,000 in 1820 while potatoes grew from 44,000 to 216,000. Potatoes were used to make alcohol, and the 1810s and 1820s were considered drunken decades. By 1830 the annual consumption of alcohol reached 44 quarts per person. Karl Johan complained that this was ruining the country.
In 1810 Romantics began publishing their journal Phosphoros. Erik Gustaf Geijer (1783-1847) was a liberal philosopher, poet, composer, and historian, and in 1811 he published his influential essay, “On False and True Enlightenment in Relation to Religion.” In 1815 a school for girls opened in Gothenburg. Johan Olof Wallin was called “David’s harp of the North” for composing 150 hymns that he published in 1819 in a new book of psalms. In 1820 the church government allowed private prayer meetings.
Karl XIII died in February 1818, and Karl Johan became King Karl XIV and continued ruling Sweden-Norway until his death in 1844. Reforming the old guild system for arts and crafts began in 1823. Professors at the University of Uppsala were paid with grain until 1825. That year Sweden’s Royal Institute of Technology was founded, and it began offering programs two years later. In 1824-25 the King sold five navy ships to Mexico and Colombia, but the increasingly conservative Tsar Alexander persuaded the Swedes to renounce the contract and limit their trade with the rebelling Spanish colonies. Alexander was the guardian of Gustav IV Adolf’s son Gustav, and after the Tsar’s death in November 1825 he proclaimed himself Prince Gustav of Sweden; but Karl XIV got Tsar Nicholas to persuade Gustav to change his title to Prince of Wasa. Karl XIV was then sympathetic to Russia in their war against the Turks in 1828-29. H. N. Schwan was the first commoner to be appointed to the Council of State in 1827. Controversies increased in the Riksdag in 1828, but the government used an 1812 law to confiscate journals that challenged the official newspapers until things began to change in 1830. Esaias Tegnér taught Greek and published his version of Frithjof’s Saga in 1825. He crowned with a laurel wreath the Danish poet Adam Oehlenschlager (1779-1850) at a graduation ceremony at Lund in 1829.
The constitution that Sweden’s Gustav III imposed on Finland with the Form of Government in 1772 and the Act of Union and Security in 1789 gave the Crown much power there. Yet the King was bound by the “Law of 1734” which the Riksdag had approved in 1736. By 1800 most of the Finnish gentry spoke Swedish while ministers used the language of their parishioners. In July 1788 Sweden’s King Gustav III had violated the constitution by starting an aggressive war without approval of the Riksdag against Russia. The conspiracy of 113 officers in the Anjala League that had communicated with Tsarina Ekaterina was discovered and tried. Nine officers were sentenced to death but only one was executed. The Swedes defeated the Russians in the major naval battle of Ruotsinsalmi-Svensksund on 9-10 July 1790 inflicting about 10,000 casualties and capturing more than fifty ships. However, the war was bankrupting Sweden, and on 14 August at Värälä in Finland the two sides agreed to a treaty that accepted conditions prior to the war. Yet Empress Ekaterina agreed to pay the ally Sweden an annual subsidy of 300,000 rubles to fight with the First Coalition against France.
On 21 February 1808 Tsar Alexander invaded Finland with 24,000 Russian troops who pushed back the Finnish army of 22,000 men. On 15 March the Tsar proclaimed that Finland always was part of the Russian Empire, and in June he instructed his commander, Count F. W. von Buxhoewden to call for an election of representatives from the four estates to meet in St. Petersburg to discuss Finnish needs. The Finns and the Russians agreed to an armistice at Olkijoki on 11 November, and the defending Finns withdrew to Sweden.
Finns were concerned that this violated their constitution, and their chairman, Baron C. E. Mannerheim, suggested the estates convene in the usual way. Tsar Alexander agreed, and on 1 December he said that issues regarding Finland were to be submitted to him. The summons to convene the Diet went out on the first of February 1809, and about 125 members of the four estates met at Porvoo on 25 March. Three days later Alexander opened the Diet, and the next day he and the delegates created a self-governing Finland. The Tsar as Grand Duke of Finland issued his Act of Assurance” promising
… to confirm and ratify the religion and fundamental laws
of the Land, as well as the privileges and rights
which each Estate in the said Grand Duchy in particular,
and all the inhabitants in general, be their position high or low,
have hitherto enjoyed according to the Constitution.2
The four estates then took an oath of allegiance to follow the fundamental laws and the constitution and accepting Alexander as Grand Duke of Finland. On 4 April the Tsar decreed that he considered the oath binding on all inhabitants of Finland, and the decree and the Act of Assurance were read by ministers from pulpits throughout Finland. After discussing administration and agreeing on taxes the Porvoo Diet completed its work on 19 July. All the taxes collected stayed in Finland. Peace was established on 17 September 1809. Sweden ceded Finland and the Åland Islands to Russia. In many ways the government of Finland continued to work as it had before. A Secretary of State was appointed and given a staff and office in St. Petersburg. A Russian was appointed governor-general. He represented the Grand Duke (Tsar) and was in command of the Russian forces in Finland even though he usually did not know Swedish which remained the official language of Finland until 1863. The upper part of the government was organized by 1811 with a Council of 14 members that was increased to twenty in 1820 with ten members running the government and the other ten on the Supreme Court. Finns continued to control schools and churches with personal freedom and equality before the law.
Adolf Iwar Arwidsson favored independence and being unable to publish in Finland, he sent letters that were published anonymously in Sweden and circulated in Finland. He founded his own newspaper in 1821, but he was forced to leave the country in 1823. In 1828 the first lectureship in Finnish was initiated at the University of Turku which that year was transferred to Helsinki with more generous grants.
In 1794 Magnus Stephensen founded a society in Iceland for general enlightenment. The Althing assembly of Iceland had been meeting at Thingvellir since 930 CE, but the 1798 session was the last one. On 11 July 1800 a royal decree dissolved the Althing permanently and replaced it with a court headed by Stephensen as chief judge with two associate judges. He promoted the enlightenment and noted that up to 1800 Icelanders dressed in native style, but after that they began to adopt Danish clothes. He also reported that during a period when the Iceland’s population was decreasing, the sugar imports went from 663 pounds in 1772 to 15,500 in 1806. In the same period tobacco importation increased from 3,280 kilograms to 32,000. In the winter of 1808-09 Stephensen went to Bergen in Norway and arranged to ship four cargoes of provisions to Iceland. After the cargo was damaged on the coast of Norway, a ship with Count Trampe arrived in the spring.
A royal order on 3 February 1809 to send four cargoes of supplies did not occur, opening an opportunity for the British. The London merchant Samuel Phelps sent Captain George Jackson on the Clarence to Reykjavik where he threatened bombardment if they were not allowed to land. His Danish interpreter, Jürgen Jürgensen, came back with Phelps in June with armed men who seized the Danish governor and proclaimed a national government protected by the British with Icelandic laws. Jürgensen announced on 12 July that he was protector in command of the armed forces and that officials had to swear allegiance. The British were given the right to trade and live in Iceland. He promised to resign by July 1810 after an assembly formed a government. Then he began confiscating the goods of the Danish merchants. The British government would not support this, and the man-of-war Talbot came to Reykjavik on 14 August, and on the 22nd the captain made an agreement with Phelps and the Stephensen brothers cancelling Jürgensen’s actions. The administration was restored, and the Danish property was returned. The British still had the right to trade and live there. The Talbot left with Phelps and Jürgensen on 4 September, leaving Magnus Stephensen and his brother Stephan in charge. In 1810 they were replaced. The long war had ruined Danish commerce, and in 1815 Stephensen tried to improve the economy by proposing to the Danish government free trade.
1. Quoted in History of the Norwegian People by Knut Gjerset, Volume 2, p. 425.
2. Quoted in A History of Finland by John H. Wuorinen, p. 114.
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