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 September 30.
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 August 15.
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who abolished the Council of Brabant, repealed reforms,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 January 11 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 February 17 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 July 27 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 November 21
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 December 2.
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 April 20;
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
September 13 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 November 6,
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 December 15 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 February 16
and captured it on the 24th.
On March 12 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 April 5.
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 June 20,
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 June 26.
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 August 25.
On September 18 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 November 7.
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 January 16 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 February 4.
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 March 4 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 April 11 and urged resisting the French.
The French committee sent Jean-François Rewbell and Sieyès
to The Hague, and on May 16 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
November 10, and the Assembly discussed it over five months.
In April 1797 the government’s securities fell 20%.
On July 20 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 September 4 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 October 11,
killing 540 men and capturing eleven ships.
A declaration of Vreede’s nine principles were issue
on December 12 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 April 12 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 March 6.
Federalists and Orangists were disenfranchised on April 23,
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 July 31.
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 August 27 and at
Krabbendam on September 10; but nine days later at Bergen
they were defeated by a smaller Franco-Dutch force.
The battle of Alkmaar on October 2 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 November 19.
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 September 14 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 June 25 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 September 12, 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 November 23 the Dutch Estates decreed
that the French military was not to be obeyed
except in defense against the enemy.
This upset Napoleon who on December 10 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 March 22,
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 May 23,
and on June 6 they were persuaded to accept Napoleon’s
brother Louis as King of Holland.
The monarchical constitution was ratified on August 7.
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 October 14
he ordered his brother to occupy Hanover,
but Louis returned to The Hague in November.
On December 15 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 November 11 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 October 9,
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 December 17
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 December 26.
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 May 29,
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 November 24, 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 August 4
and defeated the French at Weltevreden on the 26th.
Governor-general Janssens surrendered
the last Dutch colony at Salatiga on September 17.
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 November 12 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 November 30.
The commissioners recognized him as their sovereign prince
Willem the First, and on December 2 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 March 31, and Napoleon abdicated on April 11.
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 March 30 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 May 6.
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 July 31.
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 March 16 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 June 12.
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 September 26.
On the 21st Willem had been crowned king at Brussels.
He disbanded the Dutch field army on December 22 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 March 29 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 December 11
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 February 3 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 June 21,
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 British cruisers on 25 July 1800
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 April 2 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 Alexande
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 August 16.
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 September 2
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 October 21,
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 October 26.
In September the British had also taken the island
of Heligoland in the North Sea.
Denmark declared war against Britain on November 4.
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 March 13,
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 August 21
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 December 7.
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 March 21 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 May 31.
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 August 30.
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 May 29 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 April 27
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 August 14,
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 October 19.
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 March 15, and King Gustav IV Adolf
and Queen Fredrika were crowned on April 3.
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
or 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 May 29.
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 April 6 and capitulated on May 3.
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 November 19 to evacuate
northern Finland, and by December 13 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 March 7 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 March 29,
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 December 10.
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 May 2.
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 October 19.
Bernadotte reached Stockholm on November 2,
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 April 5 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 August 11,
and on the 23rd this army
was victorious over the French at Grossbeeren and again
on September 6 at Dennewitz where the Prussians
lost most of the 10,000 casualties.
Sweden had declared war against Denmark on September 3.
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 July 26 they invaded Norway,
captured Fredrikstad and garrisoned Fredriksen.
Karl Johan negotiated with Kristian Frederik for a week,
and on August 14 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 August 14 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 March 15 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 November 11,
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 December 1 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 March 25.
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 July 19.
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 July 12 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 August 14, 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 September 4,
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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