BRITAIN AND THE NETHERLANDS

BRITAIN AND THE NETHERLANDS

Volume VI

WAR AND SOCIETY

PAPERS DELIVERED TO THE SIXTH ANGLO-DUTCH HISTORICAL CONFERENCE

EDITED BY

A.C. DUKE AND C.A. TAMSE

• SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.Y.

Published with the support of a grant from the Prince Bernard Foundation in Amsterdam.

Respectfully dedicated to J. S. BROMLEyand E. H. KOSSMANN

@ 1977 by Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Originally published by Martinus Nijholl. The Hague. Netherlands in 1977

Softcover reprint of the hardcover lst edition 1977 AII rights reserved, including the right to tram/ate or to

reproduce this book or parIs Ihereo[ in any [orm

ISBN 978-94-017-0002-3 ISBN 978-94-015-7518-8 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-015-7518-8

Contents

Preface Vll

1 The English People and War in the Early Sixteenth Century by C.S.L. Davies, Wadham College, Oxford 1

2 Holland's Experience of War during the Revolt of the Netherlands by A.Th.van Deursen, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam 19

3 The Army Revolt of 1647 by J.S. Morrill, Selwyn College, Cambridge 54

4 Holland's Financial Problems (1713-1733) and the Wars against Louis XIV by J. Aalbers, Rijksuniversiteit, Utrecht 79

5 Municipal Government and the Burden of the Poor in South Holland during the Napoleonic Wars by S. Schama, Brasenose College, Oxford 94

6 The Sinews of War: The Role of Dutch Finance in European Politics (c. 1750-1815) by M.G. Buist, Rijks-universiteit, Groningen 124

7 Britain and Blockade, 1780-1940 by G.F.A. Best, University of Sussex 141

8 Away from Impressment: The Idea of a Royal Naval Reserve, 1696-1859 by J.S. Bromley, University of Southampton 168

9 Problems of Defence in a Non-Belligerent Society: Military Service in the Netherlands during the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century by F.C. Spits, Rijks-universiteit, Utrecht 189

10 World War II and Social Class in Great Britain by A. Marwick, The Open University, Milton Keynes 203

11 The Second World War and Dutch Society: Continuity and Change by J.C.H. Blom, Universiteit van Amsterdam 228

Index 249

Preface

War has ever exercised a great appeal on men's minds. Oscar Wilde's witticism notwithstanding this fascination cannot be attri­buted simply to the wicked character of war. The demonic forces released by war have caught the artistic imagination, while sages have reflected on the enigmatic readiness of each new generation to wage war, despite the destruction, disillusion and exhaustion that war is known to bring in its train. If there never was a good war and a bad peace why did armed conflicts recur with such distressing regularity? Was large-scale violence an intrinsic condition of Man? The answers given to such questions have differed widely: it has even been suggested that the states of war and peace are not as far removed from one another as is usually supposed. The causes of war and the interaction between war and society have long been the subject of philosophical enquiry and historical analysis. Accord­ing to Thucydides no one was ever compelled to go to war; Cicero remarked how dumb were the laws in time of war, while Clausewitz's profound observation concerning the affinity between war and politics has become almost a commonplace.

War being the severest test a society or state can experience historians have naturally been concerned to investigate their rela­tionship. Moreover the preparation of war, the organization of the armed forces and financial resources, warfare itself and its reper­cussions are so many expressions of a society's character and pol­itical structure. War being too serious a matter to remain the pre­serve of military historians 'War and Society' was certain, sooner or later, to provide a fitting theme for an Anglo-Dutch Conference. Since their inception in 1959 these conferences have happily demonstrated (by the harmonious co-operation of British and Dutch scholars) that war has no exclusive claim to creativity. But it was not until the meeting held in September 1976 in the congenial surroundings of Kasteel Oud-Poelgeest, close to Leiden, that the interrelationship between war and society in the two countries be­came the chief concern of the participants.

The organizing committee at Leiden enhanced the interest of the week's intensive exchanges with memorable visits to the towns and

viii PREFACE

fortresses which have played a signal part in the defence of the Netherlands since the birth of the United Provinces. In particular Naarden, the scene of so notorious a massacre in 1572 and still pre­serving its impressively symmetrical fortifications, epitomized the horror and the power of war in early modem society. Both then and later war has been associated with so many changes in state and society and, in its tum, been influenced by political and societal circumstances that the eleven contributors had no difficulty in finding important and interesting subjects. These cover political, social, financial, psychological and juridical aspects of war be­tween the sixteenth and twentieth centuries.

Since 1959 the Anglo-Dutch Conferences have served to foster closer ties between British and Dutch historians and stimulated original lines of approach. In his introduction to the first volume of Britain and the Netherlands the late Pieter Geyl doubted whether English historians would emulate their colleagues in the Nether­lands and take the trouble of learning Dutch. Could he see the present prosperity of Dutch historical studies in British universities he would be agreeably surprised. In the Netherlands too the interest in British history has deepened, so that a generation of historians are growing up on both sides of the North Sea conversant in the history of the other country. In particular the substantial studies on Dutch history by young British historians, one of whose number contributes to the present volume, would have given immense satis­faction to Geyl. Future conferences will surely fortify the remark­ably close relationship which exists between historians in the two countries and so realize more fully the vision of the original be­getters of the 'Anglo-Dutch'.

Once more the Conference acknowledges with pleasure its generous benefactors. The Dutch Ministry of Education, the Leids Universiteits Fonds and Shell Nederland n.v. all gave assistance. Deeply appreciated, too, was the warm hospitality provided by the Rector Magnificus of Leiden University, the Department of Military History of the Royal Netherlands Army, the Burgo­masters and Councillors of Dordrecht and Oudewater and the Dijkgraaf and the Hoogheemraden of the Hoogheemraadschap Rijnland at Leiden. The Prins Bernard Fonds, which has a dis­tinguished record as a patron of the Humanities and Arts in the Netherlands, was graciously disposed to make a subvention towards the publication of the papers delivered to the Sixth Anglo­Dutch Historical Conference.

July 1977 A.C.D. C.A.T.

1. The English People and War in the Early Sixteenth Century

C.S.L. DAVIES

WAR is not the first subject to come to mind when thinking about the Early Tudor period. The Reformation, with its far-reaching effects on political institutions, on the economy, on the whole nature of society, compels attention; while from the perspective of European history, England plays only a marginal (though vital) part in the Habsburg-Valois struggle. Only from the angle of Scottish history (and perhaps, too, that of England's dependency Ireland) does England in the first half of the sixteenth century appear largely as a military power; and Irish and Scottish history have been unreasonably neglected by historians of England.

War, though, mattered enormously to Henry VIII. Only eighteen at the time of his accession, he set to work feverishly to build up England's military strength. Having inherited five ships from his father, he built no fewer than eighteen more within six years of his accession, including the monstrous, unwieldy, and in the event largely useless Henry Grace a Dieu; not content with this, at least three large ships were bought from Genoa, and one from LUbeck. Europe was scoured for weapons; handguns from Italy, armour from Innsbruck, great guns from Brabant, including Hans Poppen­ruyter of Mechelen's 'Twelve Apostles'. In 1512 an army was sent to invade Guienne from northern Spain, in alliance with King Ferdinand. In 1513 Henry himself led an army of some thirty thousand men into France, capturing Therouanne and Tournai, and put to flight a French column at the so-called Battle of the Spurs.1

The campaign was followed by elaborate ploys and counter-ploys of rather showy diplomacy, first the universal peace of London in 1518, then the Field of Cloth of Gold in 1520. Notwithstanding all this parade of peace, invasions of France were launched again in

1 C.G. Cruickshank, Army Royal (Oxford, 1968).

2 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE AND WAR

1522 and 1523, the second under the Duke of Suffolk getting to Montdidier within sixty miles of Paris, mainly because the French wisely refused to give battle, before being forced to turn back by cold and shortage of food. Further attempts to win glory in the 1520s came to grief on lack of opportunity and the unresponsive­ness of the English tax-payer. During the 1530s Henry, under the influence of the realist and cautious Thomas Cromwell, conducted a much more defensive policy. In 1544, however, there came another attempt to gain military glory; an attack on Paris on two fronts, by Charles V and by Henry. In the event, the Emperor was glad to conclude the peace of Crepy, and Henry contented himself with the capture of Boulogne.

All this effort was largely useless. Tournai, captured with such eclat, was returned to France in 1518; Boulogne was recovered by the French in 1550; the town in any case, under the terms of the treaty of 1546, was due to be returned in 1554. Finally, in 1558 the French captured the last remaining English footholds on the con­tinent, the garrisons at Calais and Guisnes.

All this had cost a good deal in lives and money. The greatest campaign, that of 1544, involved an army of some forty-eight thousand men, of whom about eleven thousand were Germans or Netherlanders, while the remaining thirty-seven thousand were English. This was almost certainly the largest English army sent abroad until that date, or at any time subsequently until the reign of William III. One historian has made a rough calculation that the proportion of men under arms (about ten per thousand of the population) was a good deal higher than was normal in France or Spain (about two to four men per thousand).2

The build-up of the Navy, in part at least a belated response to the much greater French threat since the acquisition of Brittany in 1491, was still more spectacular. During Henry VIII's reign the fleet expanded from some five ships to about forty-five, while to the single dockyard at Portsmouth were added those at Deptford and Woolwich in the Thames Estuary and Gillingham on the Medway. Moreover, whereas before 1509 naval administration had been usually handled by one full-time official, the Clerk of the Ships, the foundations were now laid for an organized naval administration,

2 For the size of the 1544 expedition, see Letters and Papers Foreign and Domestic of the Reign of Henry VIII [hereafter L.&P.], (ed. J.S. Brewer et al., 21 vol., London, 1862-1910), XVII, pt. ii, no. 526; XIX, pt. i, nos. 273-6. The figures are discussed in Appendix A of my D.Phil. thesis (Oxford, 1963), on Supply Services of English Armed Forces, 1509-50. For rough comparisons, see R. Bean, 'War and the Birth of the Nation State', Journal of Economic History, XXIII (1973), 211.

IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 3

complete with a regular financial allocation.3 Fear of invasion was responsible, too, for the building of an impressive series of small but efficient fortifications along the south coast, the rebuilding of the fortifications at Hull from 1541 and Berwick from 1558, and, at huge cost and to no effect in the long run, the pouring in of money to the defence of Calais and Guisnes, and those short-Jived English possessions, Tournai (1513-18) and Boulogne (1544-50). 4

The most important theatre of war was, however, Scotland. James IV invaded England in 1513 in fulfilment of the traditional Franco-Scottish alliance while his brother-in-law Henry VIII was in search of glory on the battlefields of northern France. James was left dead on the battlefield, Queen Catherine writing exultantly to Henry 'your Grace can see how I can keep my promise, sending you for your banners a King's coat'. 5 For the next fifteen years Scotland underwent the trials of a royal minority; and the situation recurred in 1542 when, shortly after losing a battle to the English, James V died, and Scotland passed to a seven-day old girl. Henry promptly secured from the Scottish prisoners in England a promise to work for the marriage of Queen Mary to the English heir, Prince Edward. The marriage was accepted by a Scottish Parliament, then repudi­ated in favour of a French (and Catholic) alliance. Attempts, by military force and diplomacy, to force the Scots to keep to the engagement, known in Scottish history as the 'rough-wooing', dominated English politics between 1542 and 1550. They involved a mass invasion and burning of Edinburgh by Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, in 1544; and another invasion by Seymour (now Duke of Somerset and Protector to his nephew, King Edward VI) in 1547, producing an English victory at Pinkie, followed by the establishment of a string of English garrisons through the Low­lands. English intervention prompted the arrival of a French army in 1548, and Queen Mary was spirited away to marry the Dauphin. The object of the war having disappeared, peace was concluded in 1550. English efforts had failed; except in so far (and it is a significant

3 M. Oppenheim, The Administration of the Royal Navy, 1509-1660 (London, 1896); C.S.L. Davies, 'The Administration of the Royal Navy under Henry VIII', English Historical Review, LXXX (1965), 268-86.

4 For Hull, see L.R. Shelby, John Rogers, Tudor Military Engineer (Oxford, 1967); for Berwick, B.H.St.J. O'Neil, Castles and Cannon: a Study of Early Artillery Fortifications in England (Oxford, 1960); for Calais and Guisnes, H.M. Colvin, in The History of the King's Works (ed. H.M. Colvin, London, 1963), III (pt. n 1485-1660, 337 seqq. The fortification of Calais cost about £150,000 from 1538-53; Tournai, during five years of English rule, £40,000; and Boulogne from 1544 to 1550 £120,000 (ibid., 361, 381, 392). These were substantial sums: the royal income at the beginning of Elizabeth's reign was about £160,000 p.a.

5 L.&P., I, pt. ii, no. 2268.

4 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE AND WAR

and incalculable exception) that it had prompted French inter­vention on such a scale as to produce a Scottish reaction, and the eventual establishment, with the Scottish Reformation, of a regime generally well-disposed to England.

War mattered and it was waged on a large scale. On the other hand, it was intermittent. The only permanent large-scale force was the Navy; and to some extent the garrisons at Calais and Guisnes though these were always rundown during peacetime.

Military expenditure was a major portion of royal finance, and the whole history of taxation, forced loans, the acquisition and sale of royal lands, debasement of the coinage, with their multifarious effects, would require separate treatment. So, too, would the effect of war on the economy, and its technological spin-off in ship­building, gun foundries; the effect on the balance of payments; on commercial strategy, of the large-scale import of munitions; the disruption of trade in wartime, both from enemy action and from the 'call-up' of merchant ships and seamen for royal service. All this, though important, affected the average Englishman at one re­move. I would prefer to concentrate on his involvement in, and atti­tudes towards, war.

England itself was in the fortunate position of not being directly affected by war at its most brutal and characteristic, for there were few incursions on English soil. Of course, along the Scottish border, raiding was endemic, part of the way of life. From time to time there was a threat of large-scale Scottish invasion, most notably in 1522; but more commonly the North probably suffered more from the effect of provisioning large English armies sent to invade Scotland than from actual Scottish attack. The French burnt Brighton, then a small village, in 1514. More seriously in 1545 the fleet stood by and over a hundred thousand men were mustered on land to repel a French invasion. In fact the French did little more than land a raiding-party on the Isle of Wight; and after a brief naval engage­ment off Shoreham, the French fleet was dispersed by an outbreak of plague. What England was spared was vividly illustrated by English tactics elsewhere. Lord Dacre, defending himself in 1514 from accusations of lethargy, reported on the effectiveness of his raids into the Scottish borders, listing the townships burnt and the general devastation: 'whereas there was in all times passed four hundred ploughs and above, which are now clearly wasted and no man dwelling in any of them'. The Earl of Surrey in 1522, tried in vain to provoke the French to fight by wholesale burning of villages. Most striking of all, in 1544 Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, on Henry's orders, burnt Edinburgh, Leith, and several other towns

IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 5

'which we dare assure your Majesty be well burnt'.6 The aim was similar to that of modern strategic bombing; in part, to deny supplies to the enemy, but, more important, to terrorize the inhabi­tants in the hope that they would rise against their rulers and force a surrender. The Scottish Lowlands in the 1540s experienced two major invasions, English occupation, occupation by a French army, and devastation both as deliberate policy and on a more casual basis; all of it adding up to a face of war rather different to that of the fashionable game of chivalry popular at the palaces of Green­wich and Fontainebleau.'

There were not many English professional soldiers, in the strict sense; only the garrisons of the various fortifications, nearly all of them quite small except that of Berwick which had about two hun­dred and forty men at the beginning of Henry VIII's reign. Calais and Guisnes had a permanent garrison of about 500 men in peace­time.s Normally men were recruited for particular campaigns. Through most of the period this was done by sending summonses to individual landowners to send a specified number of soldiers, who were then paid by the King. For defence there was a universal obligation for service on able-bodied males; and from 1544, against long-established precedent, some men were recruited for foreign service on this 'national' basis, through the nobility and gentry acting as royal officers (lords lieutenants and commissioners of musters), rather than, as before, through the 'quasi-feudal' landlord­tenant connection. The first became the normal method of re­cruiting men for service, for the Netherlands and for Ireland, in Elizabeth's reign, but it was very much the exception before 1558.9

Although, then, the government's attempts to prevent the 're­taining' of soldiers to great men through formal contacts had largely succeeded by the end of Henry VII's reign, government still at this

6 L.&P., I, pt. ii, no. 2913; m, pt. ii, nos. 2499, 2511, 2540; Hamilton Papers: Letters and Papers Illustrating the Political Relations of England and Scotland in the Sixteenth Century (ed. J. Bain, 2 vo!., Edinburgh, 1890-2), II, nos. 166,240.

7 See the contemporary The Complaynt of Scotlande (ed. J.A.H. Murray for the Early English Text Society, Extra Series, XVII-XVllI, London, 1872-3). For the Scottish war generally, see M.H. Merriman, The Struggle for the Mar­riage of Mary Queen of Scots; English and French Intervention in Scotland, 1543-50 (London Ph.D. thesis, 1975). .

8 L.&P., II, pt. i, no. 973. Berwick had a garrison of about 600 in the early years of Queen Elizabeth; H.M. Wallace, 'Berwick in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth', English Historical Review, XLVI (1931), 80; P.T.J. Morgan, The Government of Calais, 1485-1558 (Oxford, D.Phil. thesis, 1966), pp. 4, 132.

9 J.J. Goring, The Military Obligations of the English People, 1511-58 (London Ph.D. thesis, 1955). There is a useful summary of this invaluable thesis in his 'Social Change and Military Decline in Mid-Tudor England', History, LX (1975), 185-97.

6 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE AND WAR

period relied on a 'feudal' system of recruitment, in the wide sense of a fundamental dependence on the landlord-tenant tie. to

Why the tenant was prepared to go is not very clear. Essentially it seems to have been a matter of a traditional, unwritten obligation. There are cases of tenants refusing, and of landlords suing them, alleging 'ancient and laudable custom ... throughout the whole realm of England'. The government tried to reinforce the obligation by an act in 1549 threatening those who refused to serve with the loss of their land. More generally, though, it looks as if tenants were prepared to go on a short summer expedition abroad from a com­bination of a feeling of duty, fear of offending their landlord, reasonable pay (6d a day, about equivalent to a craftsman's wages though beginning to lag behind in the 1540s), and possibly a spirit of adventure, a break in routine, and the hope of spoil.ll That last certainly explained the recruitment of some 'professionals'; 'a great number of wild persons', mostly unemployed runaway apprentices, got themselves embodied as 'adventurers' at Calais in 1522 in the hope of booty. When the Earl of Surrey attacked Morlaix in 1522, the soldiers 'rifled the chests of warehouses of the merchants, for the town of Morlaix was very rich, especially of linen cloth, and the gentlemen suffered the soldiers to do what they would' .12 William Patten commented that 'many hands make light work, how soon the dead bodies' of the Scots on the field at Pinkie 'were stripped of their garments stark naked'. Characteristically Patten was shocked that the Scots were 'all clad alike' so that many gentlemen 'whom no man need to doubt, we had rather have spared' for their ran­soms were slain, and 'villains' were spared.13 Vague hopes of profit presumably, for many men, outweighed darker fears of imprison­ment, mutilation, or death, at least before they actually set out on campaign.

10 A. Cameron, 'The giving of Livery and Retaining in the Reign of Henry VII', Renaissance and Modern Studies, XVIII (1914), 11-35; Goring, Social Change, pp. 189-90.

11 Thomas Becon, The Policy of War (London, 1542), reprinted in his Early Works (ed. J. Ayre for the Parker Society, I, Cambridge, 1843), p. 251, recog­nized that many soldiers went in hopes of plunder, and for a holiday from sexual and other constraints at home. Mr. J.P. Cooper reminded the conference that certain leases and tenures specify military service.

12 Edward Hall, The Union of the two noble and illustre famelies York and Lancaster (London, 1542; ed. H. Ellis, London, 1809), pp. 643, 646, 675, 686, 106.

13 William Patten, The expedicion into Scotlande of . . . Edward, duke of Soomerset (London, 1548), reprinted in Fragments of Scottish History (ed. J.G. Dalyell, Edinburgh, 1198), pp. 61-8, 11. Patten is also reprinted in An English Garner (ed. E. Arber, 8 vol., London, 1817-96), III, 51-155 and in Tudor Tracts 1532-88 (ed. A.F. Pollard, London, 1903).

IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 7

Neither this system, nor that of the conscript army which suc­ceeded it, was likely to produce much in the way of a disciplined, efficient, modern army. Englishmen were supposed to be equipped with sufficient body armour and weapons to serve; in practice the equipment was often deficient. More important, the weapons them­selves had hardly changed from the fourteenth century; the bill, a sort of short pike, and the traditional English long-bow. More modern weapons, handguns and pikes, could be and were supplied from central stores, while the government had of course a cum­brous but by contemporary standards efficient artillery siege-train. What was more difficult to provide for a largely amateur force was the training and discipline needed for modern weapons and modern tactics. The English did not evolve the battle tactics of massed infantry formations deployed with increasing sophistication by the Swiss pike phalanx, German Landsknechte and Spanish tercios.14

Instead they seem to have relied on straightforward confrontation, generally with superior forces on the English side; it was as well for them that the major French effort was usually devoted to Italy, and that they were never involved in a great set-piece battle like Mari­gnano or Pavia.

Successive Venetian ambassadors reported on the old-fashioned weapons of the English, on their 'great courage and presence of mind', but also of their need to be 'largely supplied with victuals' and their inability to 'endure much fatigue'.Is English armies had a distressing tendency to break up ignominiously when short of food and drink, or when the weather was cold or wet. By way of contrast the more professional European troops tended to mutiny as a body for more payor better conditions. The English army sent in 1512 to invade Guienne from northern Spain was shamefully treated; equipment was unserviceable, no tents were provided, food was dear, while Ferdinand of Aragon took the opportunity of conquer­ing Navarre for himself instead of helping the English attack Bayonne. Mutiny decided the commanders to return home, in spite of orders from Henry VIII to winter in Spain. An army sent into northern France in 1522 broke up because of food shortage; its successor in 1523 melted away, once more in defiance of a royal command to stay in arms all winter. The soldiers thought 'it was no

14 For Elizabethan attempts to deal with this problem by the creation of a 'select militia', see L. Boynton, The Elizabethan Militia (London, 1967); it was fortunate that England was defended by a navy.

15 Calendar of State Papers, Venetian (ed. R. Brown et al., 9 vol., London, 1864-98),1509-19, no. 1287; 1527-33, no. 694; 1534-54, nos. 703, 934; 1556-7, no. 884.

8 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE AND WAR

worse being hanged in England than dying of cold in France' .16 Both of these incidents produced bad blood between the English and their allies the Netherlanders, who were blamed for not pro­viding food, and for profiteering; 'we beat the bush and they take the birds',17 1544 was more successful, in that Henry captured Boulogne; but the Duke of Norfolk had to bring the other division of the army which was besieging Montreuil back to Calais because of supply difficulties and from there the troops slipped away quietly to England. No wonder the English did not believe that the Duke of Guise was serious when he marched against Calais just after Christmas 1557.

Nevertheless, long wars did produce something of a more pro­fessional soldiery. Companies of mercenaries, mainly German, were recruited for the main campaigns in Europe, and also for the Scot­tish wars of the 1540s. Many of these were conveniently diverted to deal with the peasant revolts of 1549. In addition, garrison ser­vice was professional. Elis Gruffudd, a member of the Calais garri­son, produced a splendid chronicle (in Welsh, and unfortunately for the most part unprinted and untranslated) which nicely encapsu­lates the contempt of the professional for the mere wartime soldier.1s On the 1523 debacle he writes of the soldier who 'said it was too much for them to be lying under hedges and bushes dying of cold', or who 'wanted to be home with his wife which was a more com­fortable place for his head than here'; 'and yet they had no reason to complain except of their own sluggishness and slovenliness .... There was many a man weak in body who preferred from sheer lazi­ness to lie under the hedge rather than take the trouble to make a snug warm hut ... which was well known to me, Elis Gruffydd, and Sion Dafydd, and those who were in Sir Robert Wingfield's tents.'19

The wars of the 1540s, especially, saw the emergence of some-

16 Gruffudd, ed. M.B. Davies (see below n. 18), vol. VIT, 8-10. 17 Hall, Union, p. 670. 18 For Ells Gruffudd (Ellis Gruffydd), see T. Jones, 'A Welsh chronicler in

Tudor England', Welsh History Review, I (1960),1-17; and P. Morgan, Journal of the Flintshire Historical Society, XXV (1971-2). His Welsh chronicle is in the National Library of Wales, Mostyn MS. 158; extracts dealing with the major campaigns have been translated by M.B. Davies for the Bulletin of the Faculty of Arts, Fouad I University, Cairo and offprints of these are available in the Insti­tute of Historical Research, London, as follows; 'Suffolk's expedition to Mont­didier, 1523', VIT (1944), 'The enterprises of Paris and Boulogne', XI (1949), 'Boulogne and Calais from 1545 to 1550', XII (1950). See also M.B. Davies, 'Surrey at Boulogne', Huntingdon Library Quarterly, XXIII (1959-60),339-48. The Welsh original for the 1523 campaign is printed by T. Jones, 'Disgrifiad Elis Gruffudd, 0 Ymgyrch Dug Suffolk yn Ffrainc yn 1523', Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, XV (1954).

19 Gruffudd, vol. VIT, 8.

IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 9

thing like a professional soldiery. Such were the hard-fighting cap­tains, left behind by Somerset in the garrisons in Scotland, enduring in many cases three years of siege and plague, men like Sir James Wilford whose horse was shot under him at Dunbar, to his soldiers (allegedly) 'a gentle lamb', in the field 'a lion'.20 Thomas Church­yard was recalling his own experience in the 1540s when he wrote that in the reign of Henry VIII 'all chivalry was cherished, soldiers made [much] of, and manhood so much esteemed that he was thought happy ... that sought credit by the exercises of arms and discipline of war'. Churchyard describes at length the career of Nicholas Malby, who started as a victualling clerk at Guisnes in 1547, became a light horseman a year later, served in the French army for several years, at the same time as Churchyard himself was serving in the opposing Imperial forces, eventually graduating to the Irish war under Elizabeth, and finishing as President of Con­naught.21 The 1540s saw in effect the creation of that characteristic Elizabethan figure, the professional captain, for the first time since the Hundred Years' War; men like Roger Williams, who fought for both the Spanish and Anglo-Dutch armies in the Netherlands wars, wrote manuals of military instruction, and complained of the bad treatment and poor standing of the professional soldier.22

One such professional, though of higher social class than most, was William, Lord Grey of Wilton. In spite of inheriting an ancient barony, he was serving fairly continuously at Calais and Guisnes in the 1530s and 1540s, was wounded at Montreuil in 1544, and rose to become captain of Boulogne in 1546. He was with Somerset on the invasion of Scotland, in 1547, performed some notable feats of valour, and was injured again, this time in the mouth. In 1558 he was back again defending Guisnes against hopeless odds after Calais had fallen. He refused to surrender until his exasperated soldiers mutinied; they 'flatly answered that for his vain glory they would not sell their lives', and threatened to throw him over the walls. Grey, wounded a third time, was taken prisoner and ran­somed for £8,000 - it burdened his estate for the next thirty years,

20 Ulpian Fulwell, The Flower of Flame (London, 1575), as series of con­ventional eulogies on Henry VIII's wars, which does however include a lively description of the siege of Haddington told hy Captain Dethick.

21 A Generall Rehearsall of Warres n.d. 11579, Sig A ii et passim, A Short­Title Catalogue of books .•. 1475-1640 [hereafter S.T.C.] (ed. A.W. Pollard et al., London, 1926), no. 5235. The article on Malhy in Dictionary of National Biography [hereafter D.N.B.] does not mention Churchyard's hook, and con­tains nothing on his military career before 1562.

22 The Works of Sir Roger Williams (ed. J.x. Evans, Oxford, 1972).

10 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE AND WAR

but he was back in harness a year later, leading an assault on the Scots in 1560, and dying as Governor of Berwick in 1562.23

Grey's life emphasizes one point. It has become traditional to see the Tudor period very much in terms of the displacement of an old, military-orientated nobility, by a new, humanist-trained, loyal, and essentially civilian service nobility and gentry. This view under­estimates three factors; first the extent to which military exercises were an essential part of the 'humanist' educational system; secondly, the continual importance of the 'old' nobility in military affairs; third, the extent to which military experience was a key feature in the creation of 'new' nobles.

The first point can be dealt with briefly. In spite of the anti­militarism of some of the leading humanists, especially Erasmus and John Colet, in spite, too, of some of the sneers of humanists at an anti-intellectual strain in some aristocratic quarters (most notably Richard Pace's probably apocryphal story of the gentleman who would rather his son be hanged than study letters, 'for it becomes the sons of gentlemen to blow the horn nicely, to hunt skilfully, and elegantly to carry and train a hawk', but learning 'should be left to the sons of rustics'),24 in fact all serious schemes for the education of the nobility included training in the qualities of knightliness, and assumed, indeed often explicitly stated, that military service would be required of the gentleman.25

As for the military importance of the older nobility, the most striking example is that of the Howard family, Earls of Surrey and Dukes of Norfolk. In fact the Howards were not that old; the first

23 For his life, written by his son Arthur Lord Grey of Wilton see A Commen­tary of the Services and Charges of William Lord Grey of Wilton, K.G. (ed. P. de M.G. Egerton for the Camden Society, Old Series, X, London, 1847); see also Churchyard's testimony in An English Garner, IV and L. Stone, The Crisis of the Aristocracy, 1558-1641 (Oxford, 1965), p. 455.

24 Frequently quoted, e.g. by K. Charlton, Education in Renaissance England (London and Toronto, 1965), p. 80.

25 This is a large field. See, amongst others, R.P. Adams, The Better Part of Valor; More, Erasmus, Colet and Vives on Humanism, War and Peace (Seattle, 1962); A.B. Ferguson, The Indian Summer of English Chivalry (Durham, N.C., 1960). For humanist educational schemes, see in general R. Kelso, The Doctrine of the English Gentleman in the Sixteenth Century (Urbana, Illinois, 1929), F. Caspari, Humanism and the Social Order in Tudor England (Chicago, 1954), K. Chariton, Education and J. Simon, Education and Society in Tudor England (Cambridge, 1966). For particular schemes, see Thomas Elyot, The Governour (Everyman edn., 1907) and Humphrey Gilbert, Queene Elizabeth's Achademy (ed. F.J. Furnivall for the Early English Text Society, Extra Series, VIII, London, 1869). More generally, see J.R. Hale, 'The Military Education of the Officer Class in Early Modern Europe', in Cultural Aspects of the Italian Re­naissance; Essays in Honour of Paul Oskar Kristeller (ed. C.H. Clough, Man­chester, New York, 1976), pp. 440--61.

IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 11

Howard to gain a peerage was John, created a baron in 1470, and granted the Dukedom of Norfolk in 1483. But they were descended in the female line from the Mowbray family, their predecessors as Dukes, and ultimately from Edward I and they behaved in the Tudor period as if they were protagonists of an old medieval nobility whose values were being threatened by an upstart new­created aristocracy. (Rapid assimilation into the ranks of the estab­lished, and snobbish contempt for their immediate successors, are recurring features of the history of the English nobility). Thomas Howard recovered the Dukedom, which had been lost at the change of dynasty in 1485, by commanding the English forces against the Scots at Flodden in 1513. His second son Edward was killed in a spectacular sea-battle off Brest in 1512. His elder son Thomas, who succeeded as Duke of Norfolk commanded a ship in 1512 and was later Lord Admiral. But most of his service was as a soldier, serving under his father at Flodden, serving in Ireland, leading an army of invasion into France in 1522, into Scotland in 1523, com­manding the royal forces against the rebellion of the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536, commanding a division of the army in 1544. Thomas's son Henry, Earl of Surrey, the distinguished poet, delighted Henry by his gallant, possibly foolhardy exploits, as commander of Bou­logneinI545-6.Henry'snephew,CharlesLordHowardofEffingham, Lord Admiral, was of course in supreme command of the English fleet against the Armada.26

Nevertheless, there is something in the view that the old nobility was being challenged by a new Tudor aristocracy; but it would be wrong to see this exclusively in terms of the rise of a new, university­trained, essentially civilian nobility, of men cast in the mould of William Cecil. Military service was a frequent route to high honours in the sixteenth century. The two leading figures of Edward VI's reign, Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, and John Dudley, eventually Duke of Northumberland, were distinguished soldiers; and while Seymour's position at the head of the country was due primarily to his being the King's uncle, Dudley's qualifications for high office seem to be entirely military and political. John Russell, seemingly an archetypal member of the new nobility (created a baron in 1539, Earl of Bedford in 1550), had won distinction as a captain in 1513, had been sent to Paris to represent the English

26 See D.N.B. and G.B. Cokayne, Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, etc. (rev. ed. V. Gibbs et al., 13 vol., London, 191~); for the con­tinuing military importance of the nobility in the first half of the century, Stone, Crisis, ch. v. For Gruffudd on Surrey's 'pride of folly' and general unprofes­sionalism, in 1545, see M.B. Davies, 'Surrey at Boulogne', 344.

12 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE AND WAR

Court as a champion at the tourney in 1514, and then made a career in diplomacy; but it was his military ability which led to his becoming a great magnate in the West Country in 1539. He vindi­cated that trust by putting down the Western Rebellion ten years later. William Herbert, who was similarly made a great man in Wales (Earl of Pembroke in 1551) was so far from being the gradu­ate-administrator that he was popularly, though mistakenly, believed to be illiterate. He is said to have seen service in the French army in the 1520s, played a prominent role against the rebels of 1549, and commanded the English contingent at St. Quentin in 1557.27 St. Quentin, too, saw John Dudley's three sons win their way back to favour with Mary's government after the debacle of 1553. One, Henry, was killed; the other two, Ambrose and Robert, went on to be the Elizabethan soldier Earls of Warwick and Leicester.

What can we say about attitudes to war? Soldiers naturally grumbled when, as all too often, things went wrong. This was especially so of the two invasions of France in 1522 and 1523 which turned into fiascos; and this unpopularity rubbed off on Wolsey, who was responsible for seeing to the supply services. There was also opposition by tax-payers. Parliament in 1523 refused to vote the taxes asked for, and in 1525 (when the capture of Francis I by the Emperor at the battle of Pavia gave Henry hope that the crown of France might at last be his) rebellion broke out against demands for an 'amicable grant' to finance an invasion; the government was forced to give way, and the invasion was called off. There followed instead a renversement des alliances. Henry would ally with Francis against the Emperor. This in turn foundered on the opposition of merchants and clothiers, who objected to the disruption of trade with the Netherlands. The government once more gave in after initial bluster.

There was of course a certain amount of principled opposition to war, or at least to war among Christians. The need for unity against the Turk was often stressed by opponents of the fratricidal wars of western Europe. Erasmus comes to mind immediately in this con­nection. But predictably such opposition had little effect on policy. Henry VIII, especially, preferred the more glittering world of professional honour; he appreciated Dean Colet's courage in preaching at Court against the French war, but ignored his doc-

27 D.N.B., XXVI, 220-3 and Complete Peerage; see also Dictionary of Welsh Biography down to 1940 (Oxford, 1959), p. 355.

IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 13

trine.28 Of course Henry was just as prepared to extol the virtues of peace as of war when it suited him; as in 1518 when the Treaty of London was celebrated with feasts, allegorical pageants (promising a united front against the Turks) and tournaments.29 All too soon, however, the familiar pattern of alliance, counter-alliance, and in­vasion re-asserted itself.

There was also a continued strain of realist, as opposed to pacifist or quasi-pacifist, opposition to particular wars, perhaps also to the whole concept of war as a means to glory, among responsible statesmen. Henry VII's minister, Edmund Dudley, warned in his Tree of Commonwealth against the course Henry VIII pursued in his early years: war was expensive, it was better to build up al­liances, to build up defence as a deterrent against attack. But as for aggressive war, 'there are many ways to enter into it and the be­ginning seemeth a great pleasure, but the way is very narrow to come honorably out thereof'.30 Thomas Cromwell prepared a speech for Parliament in 1523 in which he pointed out how much more difficult the conquest of France would be now compared to the days of Henry V, and urged Henry not to waste his time on 'ungracious dogholes' like Boulogne and Tournai, but to concen­trate instead on the conquest of Scotland.31 Significantly, when Cromwell himself was the King's minister, there was heavy ex­penditure on the navy and on fortifications, but no adventurist foreign policy. The resumption in 1543 of the old Anglo-Burgun­dian alliance against France was very much due to Henry's own initiative, against the better juqgement of his Councillors, too aware of the likely financial consequences. The old Duke of Norfolk des­pairingly told his son in 1545 to stop sending the King reports of daring deeds done in Boulogne; what Norfolk 'and the rest of the Council worketh in for the rendry [surrender] of Boulogne and the concluding of peace in six days, you with your letters set back in six hours'.32

We are faced here with two competing concepts of war. The first the chivalrous, war as a sort of elaborate court game, an extension

28 R.P. Adams, The Better Part; J.C. Margolin, Guerre et paix dans fa pensee d'Erasme (Paris, 1973); J.H. Lupton, A Life of John Cofet (London, 1887), pp. 189-93, quoting Erasmus's life of Colet.

29 S. Anglo, Spectacle, Pageantry and Early Tudor Policy (Oxford, 1969), pp. 126--36.

30 Edmund Dudley, The Tree ofCommonweafth (ed. D.M. Brodie, Cambridge, 1948), pp. 26, 48, 50.

31 R.B. Merriman, Life and Letters of Thomas Cromwell (2 vol., Oxford, 1902), 1,30-44.

32 L.&P., XX, ii, nos. 455, 738.

14 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE AND WAR

of tournament by other means, essentially a matter of personal rela­tions, of quarrels, reconciliations, between monarchs ;33 the second more realist, hard-headed, robust, directed more to national interest than to the dynastic, personal interests of monarchs, more pro­fessional, more long drawn-out, giving opportunity for individual acts of gallantry but over-all far less glamorous. The first concept was that of Henry VIII, especially in his early years. War for him seems to have been partly a matter of personal rivalries: partly an attempt to emulate his ancestors. The sober Italian historian Poly­dore Vergil, who offended English susceptibilities by doubting the historicity of King Arthur, thought Henry 'not unmindful that it was his duty to seek fame by military skill' though seeking good reason for war first.34 The cult of chivalry was revived (a similar cult had been promoted under Edward IV, especially by the printer­publisher Caxton, but had withered under Henry VII). In 1513 there appeared a translation of Titus Livius's life of Henry V which went out of its way to point out the parallel with Henry VIII 'now of late entered into semblable war against the Frenchmen'; and in 1523-5 Lord Berner's translation of Froissart was printed. The Court re­sounded to the clang of tournaments, at which the King himself was no mean performer; and spectacle was assiduously promoted.35

In principle Henry's subjects were receptive to the mood, to judge at least by the attitudes of Edward Hall, an able historian, a lawyer, and a Member of Parliament, who was nonetheless rather naively impressed by grandeur and court ceremonial, which he described with loving awe. On a lower level, the traditional tales of romantic chivalry, such as Bevis of Hampton, of Guy of Warwick, of the 'Seven Champions of Christendom', castigated by the hu­manist Ascham as 'tales of bold bawdry and open manslaughter', retained their popularity until well into the seventeenth century.36 There was a good deal of popular interest in the wars, part perhaps of a general thirst for news of all sorts. Town chronicles, for in-

33 Nicely illustrated by John Dudley's reluctance, after the death of James V in 1542 'to invade upon a dead body, upon a widow or on a young suckling his daughter, and especially upon the time of the funeral of the said King', Hamilton Papers, I, no. 342.

34 Anglica Historia (ed. D. Hay for the Camden Society, 3rd Series, LXXIV, London, 1950), pp. 160-1.

3S Anglo, Spectacle; and also his Great Tournament Roll of Westminster (2 vol., Oxford, 1968); A.B. Ferguson, Indian Summer; J.J. Scarisbrick, Henry VIII (London, 1968), ch. ii. For Berners, see N.F. Blake, 'Lord Berners: a Survey', Medievalia et Humanistica, New Series, II, 1971, 119-32; The First English Life of King Henry V (ed. C.L. Kingsford, Oxford, 1911), pp. ix-x.

36 See R.P. Adams, 'Bold Bawdry and Open Manslaughter', Huntingdon Library Quarterly, XXIII (1959--60); L.B. Wright, Middle Class Culture in Elizabethan England (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1935), pp. 389-95.

IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 15

stance, naturally note battles in France, or news from Scotland. Wriothesley's chronicle records the deaths in 1545 of Lord Poynings 'who had done great feats of arms against the Frenchmen, for whose death great moan was made', and the Duke of Suffolk, 'whose death all true Englishmen may greatly lament, which had been so valiant a captain in the King's wars'.37 Men eagerly tipped carriers or serving men who had come from the North 'to hear tell what skirmishes hath been betwixt us and the Scots, and to know which of our warriors played the valiantest part and prettiest feat'.38

Yet Henry's chivalric revival seems to have lacked conviction. The only popular literature which celebrates contemporary English feats of arms seems to be the Border ballads, and they, of course, are the product of a peculiar and untypical society to which war was not merely endemic but, in a sense, an essential part of the local economy.39 Hall goes into ecstasies over Henry V, 'almost the Arabical Phoenix', and, on his own day, describes the BattIe of the Spurs 'with great triumph' - with a long digression on the magnifi­cence of Henry VIII's clothes. But when he comes to chronicle the handing back of Tournai to the French, he makes no particular comment, except to note that 'many a young gentleman and many a tall yeoman wished they had not spent their time there' because they were now faced with unemployment; 'many a tall yeoman that lacked living fell to robbery'. The wars of the 'twenties are described by Hall in terms of breakdown of supply systems, the iniquities of England's Flemish allies, and the burden of taxation, the whole being shaped into a crushing indictment, not of Henry who was primarily responsible for the war policy, but of that convenient scapegoat, Wolsey.40

37 Charles Wriothesley, A Chronicle of England during the Reigns of the Tudors (ed. W.D. Hamilton for the Camden Society, New Series, XI, XX, London, 1875-1),2 vol., I, 158-60.

38 Peter Ashton's preface to a translation of Paolo Giovio, A Shorte Treatise Upon the Turkes Chronicles (1546), S.T.C. no. 11899, quoted by H.S. Bennett, English Books and Readers 1475 to 1557 (2nd edn. Cambridge, 1969), p. 143. See Bennett, ibid., 135-45 and M.A. Shaaber, Some Forerunners of the Newspaper in England 1476-1622 (Philadelphia, 1929, repro 1966), for the general demand for news.

39 See J. Reed, The Border Ballads (London, 1973), G.M. Fraser, The Steel Bonnets: the Story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers (London, 1971) and D.L.W. Tough, The Last Years of a Frontier (Oxford, 1928) for an introduction to a larger subject. Reed makes the point that small-scale raids, family feuds etc., feature much more prominently in the ballads than great events (p. 123).

40 Hall, Union, pp. 46, 550-2, 596-7. He is also, interestingly, sceptical about the motives of the nobles who encouraged Edward IV to war in 1475, talking of their 'natural inclination' for a French war which grew from hope of spoil or from 'a certain privy canker' inherited from their forefathers (p. 301).

16 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE AND WAR

On a higher level the poet laureate Skelton celebrated the death of James IV at Plodden -

King Jamey, Jemmy, Jocky my jo, Ye summoned our king - why did ye so -

and also sang his patron Thomas Howard's achievements in France in 1522,

Of chivalry he is the flower Our Lord be his succour.41

But the two great court poets of Henry's reign, Wyatt and Surrey, in spite of their own careers, employ surprisingly few military images. Thomas Wyatt once used a striking metaphor of a gun. As -

The furious gun in his raging ire When that the ball is rammed in too sore, And that the flame cannot part from the fire Cracketh in sunder, and the air doth roar, The shivered pieces; right so doeth my desire ... 42

The only direct echo of war in the poetry of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (who, as we have seen, was a dashing commander) seems to be his tribute to Sir Thomas Clere, who gave his life to save Surrey's at the siege of Montreuil.43 In the magnificent series of court por­traits by Holbein only one, that of Sir Nicholas Carew depicts the subject in armour or in particularly military posture. There is no counterpart in Henry VIII's case to that magnificent equestrian portrait of Charles V by Titian. Of Hans Eworth's portraits, for a slightly later period, only two have a military theme. Sir Thomas Wyndham is shown against an armed encampment, while another veteran of the Scottish wars, Sir John Luttrell, takes part in a curious allegory involving a naval battle giving way to peace.44

41 Complete Poems (ed. P. Henderson, 3rd edn., London, 1959), pp. 140-1, 312.

42 Collected Poems of Sir Thomas Wyatt (ed. K. Muir and P. Thomson, Liverpool, 1969), p. 45; even this image is adapted from the Italian poet Serafino (ibid., 312).

43 The Poems of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (ed. F.M. Padelford, 2nd edn., Seattle, 1928), p. 99. M.B. Davies, 'Surrey at Boulogne', argues for some indirect reflections of his Boulogne experiences in his poetry.

44 See P. Ganz, The Painting of Hans Holbein (London, 1956); R. Strong, Hans Eworth: a Tudor Artist and his Circle (Leicester, 1965); E. Waterhouse, Painting in Britain, 1530-1790 (Harmondsworth, 1953), pp. 15-16. Mr. J.P. Cooper drew attention to the widespread use of military imagery in funeral monuments, in particular the long-persisting custom of depicting the most un­military knights (such as Sir Thomas Pope - one-time Treasurer of the Court of Augmentations) in armour. Nevertheless it seems odd that the military interests of Henry VIII's court or, indeed, that of Francis I, do not find more echoes in high art.

IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 17

At one level this lack of response is easily explicable. The French wars lacked purpose, the Scottish ones glamour. Scotland did not represent much of a threat to the English, except to the borderers; and they probably preferred the situation as it was to a union which would end their special privileges. Henry's claim to the French throne was hardly serious now that the French were not, as in Henry V's reign, torn apart by civil war, and, as Thomas Cromwell pointed out, England had lost, except for Calais, the bases from which to attack. Henry's predecessors, could in any case, make out a rather more convincing case for their policy: to vindicate their right to rule in sovereignty those parts of France in their possession, and especially Gascony, in which Englishmen had a strong economic interest.4s Henry does not seem to have taken his own claim to be King of France very seriously, to judge by the speed with which peace was made when the diplomatic pavane dictated, and Henry retired from the field with a pension, which he chose to interpret as a tribute. Ironically, on one occasion he told the Imperial ambassa­dor that he could not allow Charles V to attack France because it 'is our true inheritance ... for which our brother and ally the French king payeth us yearly a great pension and tribute'.46

There is a temptation to see the problems in wider terms; as part of a transition from 'medieval' chivalry to a 'modern' realist view of war. This is misleading. On the one hand, general enthusiasm for war during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries seems fairly re­strained, except perhaps in the immediate aftermath of the great victories, Crecy, Poitiers and Agincourt.47 On the other, Eliza­bethan England sees another revival of the cult of chivalry, care­fully fostered by the Court, but this time deriving its strength from a real international threat, and also from Calvinism, which in­spired a sense of solidarity with co-religionists in France and the Netherlands and helped to cultivate a strong sense of national identity, of England as an 'elect' nation.48 The defence of religion, the defence of the nation (and the two were inextricably linked) made war at the very least a regrettable necessity, a serious study for serious-minded men, and helped to heal the schism which was so apparent in the early years of Henry VIII, between honour and

45 J. Palmer, The War Aims of the Protagonists', in The Hundred Years' War (ed. K. Fowler, London, 1971), pp. 51-74.

4/j Hall, Union, p. 746. 47 K. Fowler, 'Introduction' and C.T. Allmand, 'The War and the Non­

combatant', in The Hundred Years' War (ed. K. Fowler), and P.S. Lewis, 'War, Propaganda and Historiography in Fifteenth-Century France and England', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th Series, XV (1965), 1-21.

48 W. Haller, Foxe's Book of Martyrs and the Elect Nation (London, 1963).

18 THE ENGLISH PEOPLE AND WAR

morality, between chivalry and practicality. So when Catholic in­vasion as well as rebellion seemed likely in 1539, the humanist Richard Morison not only wrote An exhortation to styr all Englyshe men to the defence of theyr countreye but translated Frontinus The strategemes sleyghtes and policies ofwarre.49 The early Elizabethan Puritan, Lawrence Humphrey, writing a treatise Of Nobilitye took war seriously as part of the duty of a nobleman, though condemn­ing those wars which 'princes play (as they say) for balls' (a remi­niscence of the Henry V story). Nobles should try to dissuade princes from unnecessary wars, yet in the end they should obey his will, 'for in the prince is composed the realm's safety', a significantly utili­tarian concept, as opposed to that of honour. 50 Many of his succes­sors went further, and began to talk of military exercises as good in themselves, as an antidote to sloth and vice and to use metaphors of holy warY The schism was not completely healed; soldiers con­tinued to complain loud and long of the contempt in which they were held. Nevertheless some degree of synthesis, some sense of a national purpose, had emerged, and it is, perhaps, no coincidence that Elizabeth's reign should see a revival of the cult of chivalry; no coincidence, either, that a vital part in that revival should be played by a young aristocrat, Sir Philip Sydney whose international con­nections included such leaders of militant Protestantism as Languet, du Plessis Mornay, and William of OrangeY

49 S.T.C. nos. 11402, 18110. so Lawrence Humfrey [Humphrey]; The Nobles, or Of Nobilitye, sigs. Nii-iv. 51 J. R. Hale, 'Elizabethan Divines on War', in Florilegium Historiale: Essays

Presented to W. K. Ferguson (ed. J.G. Rowe and W.H. Stockdale, Toronto, 1971), pp. 368-99.

52 For Elizabethan chivalry, see, amongst a large literature, F.A. Yates, Astraea: The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century (London, 1975), pt. ii.

2. Holland's Experience of War during the Revolt of the Netherlands

A.TH. VAN DEURSEN

LATE in 1648 the small town of Schoonhoven petitioned for the right to nominate a permanent representative to the Admiralty of Amsterdam. The States of Holland were unenthusiastic: an expan­sion of the admiralty boards was not, they thought, in the national interest and now that the war was over the task of these boards would become lighter.1

The States badly misjudged the situation for within four years the United Provinces were engaged in a naval war with England. Nevertheless, this incident clearly shows that the States saw the peace of Miinster as a turning-point in the existence of the Republic, which th,roughout its entire history had been at war. The memories of even the oldest inhabitants did not go back beyond Den Briel and Heiligerlee. As for the younger generation, the enemy had always been encamped on the borders, Dunkirk privateers had always terrorized the sea, priests and monks had always been obliged to lead a furtive existence, while consumer prices had remained at a consistently high level in order to pay for this war.

That was the Eighty Years' War in the experience of ordinary people. In this essay we have endeavoured to illuminate this experi­ence by concentrating on five facets of the war as it touched Hol1anders. First, we shall examine the character and spirit of the Spanish army fighting in Holland between 1572 and the Pacification of Ghent, before passing on to observe the mood and tactics of the Beggar forces during this period. In the third place we shall con­sider how the nature of the warfare changed in the time of Maurice and Frederick Henry, now that the rebels had a secure base from which to launch their attacks. But even after Holland had ceased to be in the forefront of the war on land Dunkirk privateers waged a

1 Resolutien van de Staten van Holland [hereafter Res.H.] (295 vo!., The Hague, 1772-1798),1648, p. 442 (18 December).

20 HOLLAND'S EXPERIENCE OF WAR

ruthless war against Dutch seamen and this will form the subject for the fourth section. Finally, we shall consider the predicament of Catholic Hollanders, whose religious affiliations made them pol­itically suspect in the opinion of their compatriots.

I

The Dutch army in the struggle against Spain included only a few regiments of Netherlanders, for it was composed predominantly of foreign mercenaries: Scots, English, French, and especially Ger­mans. The Spanish army was scarcely less international in compo­sition. It numbered only about eight thousand native Spaniards, according to the guess of the abbe Brantome, a French contem­porary.2 Not a bad guess either, judging from the results of modern statistical analysis, which have shown that until at least 1609 the Spanish army was always made up for the greater part of German and Walloon mercenaries, with the latter usually preponderant.3

Yet it was the Spaniards who gave this motley collection its special identity. It was no coincidence that a chronicler of the opening phase of the revolt constantly heard Requesens's triumphant sol­diers shouting, 'Hispania, Hispania, victoria, victoria !'4 The Spanish soldiers formed the military elite in the armies of Philip II. They received the highest pay and drew the best quarters; but they were also the most disciplined, and the toughest in the face of deprivation and hardship.5 Far from home, unable to desert to their native land, and so compelled to make a virtue of necessity, the Spanish soldiers developed into Europe's finest, their courage and technical military prowess every bit a match for the heroes of subsequent swashbuckling legends.6

Yet it was not just the professional skill of the Spanish soldiers which stamped the royal force; that spirit which is the fruit of in­spiration was also of Spanish origin. The Spanish had been at war for generations. Little by little they had wrested the Iberian Penin­sula from the Arabs. Just when this task was completed in 1492 with

2 E. Gossart, Espagnols et flamands au XVle siecle, I, L'etablissement du regime espagnol dans les Pays-Bas et !'insurrection (Brussels, 1905), p. 15.

3 G. Parker, The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road 1567-1659 (Cam­bridge, 1972), p. 271.

4 H. Brugmans, 'Utrechtsche kroniek over 1566-1576', Bijdragen en mede­deelingen van het historisch genootschap, XXV (1904), 175, 178.

5 Parker, The Army of Flanders, p. 32. 6 cr. ibid., p. 13.

DURING THE REVOLT OF THE NETHERLANDS 21

the fall of Granada, Columbus had stepped ashore on the American islands, and the Spanish had found themselves privileged, as they believed, to conquer a whole hemisphere for Castile and the holy faith. When the war began in the Netherlands the Spanish were battle-hardened, they had always been victorious, and they had always stood as the champions of Catholic Christendom against heathens and Mohammedans. Almost inevitably they saw the struggle in the Netherlands from the same perspective. Spanish chroniclers of the Eighty Years' War such as Coloma, Lanario, and Camero, never speak of the Spanish but always of the Catholic army. In the days of Philip II, declares Lanario, the Catholic reli­gion was forced to take up arms.7 The Spanish army was the instru­ment of this religion, the weapon of the Catholic Church. 'Re­member, gentlemen', Requesens told the Spanish troops in Antwerp, 'that you are Spaniards, and that your King and natural lord is today the sole defender of the Catholic religion, which, for our sins, is persecuted and molested throughout most of the world, and you should esteem it highly that God has chosen you to be His instru­ment to remedy this situation ... .'8

Such an army prepares for war in a way peculiar to itself. When Father Gutierrez mentions a skirmish between Spanish soldiers and the Dutch sailors of Olivier van Noort, he tells how the Spaniards girded themselves beforehand 'with the true Spanish weapons' of confession and sacrament.9 Thus they assured themselves of divine assistance, which they believed might be made directly manifest and revealed in signs and wonders. 'Milagro' (miracle), the Spanish cried out, if while digging in they chanced upon an image that some prudent priest had hidden away from the Beggars' fury.lO They carried crosses, little paper icons and relics with them as tangible guarantees of God's favour. ll Even in the opinion of their enemies, the Spanish seemed to have boundless confidence in their saints. Indeed, they were a people who selected even their curses and their expletives as good Catholics, swearing 'by the cross and by St.

7 'Coligese manifiestamente de todos los autores que han escrito de la historia del rey don Felipe Segundo deste nombre, que por sustentar dentro de sus Estados de los Paises Baxos, y en las tierras que son sugestas, la religion catolica fue forc;:ado a tomar las armas', Francisco Lanario, Las guerras de Flandes, desde el ana de 1559 hasta el de 1609 (Madrid, 1623), fo. 1.

8 Parker, The Army of Flanders, p. 178 (1574). 9 De reis am de wereld van Olivier van Noort 1598-1601 (ed. J.W. IJzerman,

2 vol., The Hague, 1926), p. 254. 10 J. Brouwer, Kronieken van spaansche soldaten uit het begin van den tachtig­

iarigen oorlog (Zutphen, 1933), p. 76. 11 Parker, The Army of Flanders, p. 179.

22 HOLLAND'S EXPERIENCE OF WAR

Vincent'.12 Spaniards were ostentatiously Catholic. At the battle on the Zuiderzee Bossu's flagship bore a name calculated not only to make its Catholic provenance clear, but to be as defiant and pro­vocative as possible: The Inquisition,13 This attests not only to their self-assurance, but also to a positive disdain for their opponents. To have used kidglove tactics would have done them too much honour; these heretics deserved nothing but tl1e naked, iron fist. For as the Spaniards always identified themselves with the Catholic Church, so they always equated the revolt with heresy. 'Lutherans' is their common curse word,14 not only for the Beggars, but almost all Netherlanders. Spanish mutineers in Utrecht, a city loyal to the king, cursed its citizens in 1574 as 'great Lutherans and traitors to God and the king' .IS The term was employed even beyond the borders of Christendom. On Bat jan, in the Moluccas, the Spaniards praised themselves to the inhabitants as being far more useful allies than those cowardly Dutchmen: 'one of us is worth more than ten such dogs and Lutherans'.16 It was apparently only with consider­able effort that the Spaniards could bring themselves to take their enemies seriously. At Heiligerlee in 1568 the Spanish officer Londono grudgingly conceded that 'Lutherans' might be possessed of a modicum of military-strategic insight: 'overlooking their being heretics, they made decent use of the local situation'.1'

The Netherlanders, for their part, perceived in the Spanish not only the attributes of good Catholics, but a certain Spanish haughti­ness as well. Spanish pride was almost a byword in the sixteenth century, as the rebels, too, were well aware.18 They characterized their Spanish adversaries with a variety of nicknames. But in the Beggars' songs the Spanish were often referred to as 'seignor'.19 In

12 Daniel Souterius, Seer uytmuntende Nederlantsche victorien, I (Haarlem, 1630),81; D.F. Scheurleer, Van varen en van vechten. Verzen van tijdgenoten op onze zeehelden en zeeslagen, lof en schimpdichten, matrozenliederen (3 vol., The Hague, 1914), I, 68.

13 Cf. Calder6n de la Barca, El sitio de Breda . . . Edicion crftica con intro­ducci6n y notas (ed. J.R. Schrek, The Hague, 1957), p. 120, where a Spanish captain says to the defenders of the town: 'Perros erejes, ministro/Soy de la ynquisici6n santa.'

14 Scheurleer, Van varen, I, p. 24 (1574): 'Vene vous canaille/Luthranen ende rapaille'.

15 Brugmans, 'Utrechtsche kroniek', 182. 16 De reis van de vloot van Pieter Willemsz. Verhoeffnaar Azie 1607-1612 (ed.

M.E. van Opstall, The Hague, 1972), p. 278. 17 R. Fruin, 'Gedenkschrift van Don Sancho de Londono', Bijdragen en mede­

deelingen van het historisch genootschap, XIII (1892), 30. 18 Gossart, L'etablissement, p. 15; G. Parker, 'Francisco de Lixalde and the

Spanish Netherlands 1567-1577: some new evidence', Tijdschrift voor ge­schiedenis, LXXXIX (1976), 7.

19 E.g. Scheurleer, Van varen, I, 64, 75, 184.

DURING THE REVOLT OF THE NETHERLANDS 23

order to unmask the false pretensions of Spanish pomp the Spanish soldier was referred to most punctiliously as 'seignor', after he had been thoroughly defeated.20 The Spanish title of 'Don' was used with equal gusto for the sake of a puckish good laugh. Don Spek (Lean and Hungry) has sailed forth to master the sea, we are told by a song written to commemorate the Dutch victory at the battle of the Downs in 1639, but the Hollanders are ready for him: Don Turn the Cows is awaiting him, Don Jack, Don Wooden Leg, Don Fig, Don the Mangler, and even Don Waterdrinker, who during the fray would give his own name gratis to many a Spanish Don.21

It was an old score that was settled there in 1639. The dons and senores of 1639 were not identical with their grandfathers and great­grandfathers of 1572. The family resemblance, however, remained, even if only because the men of 1572 had made such an indelible impression. Before then Spanish soldiers had been almost unknown in Holland. Alva had quartered his troops in the great cities of Brabant and Flanders when he arrived in 1567. Indeed, until the capture of Den Briel, Spanish troops were only occasionally en­countered in the province.22 Only after April 1572 did people come into regular contact with them. The atrocities committed at Rotter­dam and Naarden in 1572, Haarlem in 1573, and Oudewater in 1575 are well known. But the human carnage of Rotterdam and Oude­water only shows on a larger scale what was in the years 1572-6, if not a daily experience, then at least a daily threat. The diary of Wouter Jacobsz., a prior from Gouda, tells us casually that in December 1573 'almost the whole of Vlaardingen had :lIed to Schiedam to escape the soldiers of the king'. 23 Accounts for Rijn­land indicate that in 1575 the village of Alphen was virtually de­populated.24 In Beverwijk there were only twelve houses standing in May of 1576. Most of the inhabitants lived in shanties or cellars,

20 See also the names of the Spanish vessels in the sea battle off Gibraltar in 1607, which were listed by the Dutch, not without a touch of irony, Scheurleer, Van varen, I, p. 77: - 'd'Admiraelschip St. Augustijn,/d'Vies-Admiraelsschip hiet divijn,/Delvega Nostra Dona;/Madre de Dios, st. Anna,/Met Nostra Dona del Regia,/Oock la Conceptiona:/S. Christoffel, S. Nicholaes,/El Dona de Rosaros dwaes,/EI Dona des Dolores,/Met Nostra Dona de la O,/Het twaelfste hiet St. Pedro,/Al Galions vol Seignores'.

21 Ibid., I, 293. 22 J.C.A. de Meij, De watergeuzen en de Nederlanden 1568-1572 (Amsterdam

and London, 1972), p. 209. 23 Dagboek van Broeder Wouter Jacobsz. (ed. I.H. van Eeghen, 2 vol.,

Groningen, 1959-60), I, 347. 24 N.W. Posthumus, 'Gegevens betreffende landbouwtoestanden in Rijnland

in het jaar 1575', Bijdragen en mededeelingen van het historisch genootschap, XXXV (1914), 170-1.

24 HOLLAND'S EXPERIENCE OF WAR

and Beverwijk was better off than many other villages in the neigh­bourhood of Haarlem.25 Nor would it be difficult to extend this catalogue of misery.

When a chronicler from Utrecht notes in 1574 that nineteen Spanish companies have decamped towards Holland, 'robbing and plundering as if the peasants were enemies',26 then this phrase almost becomes a refrain. The Spaniards had set to work in the same way in Flanders in 1567: in a land of heretics everything was booty.27 This was their outlook when they came to Holland in 1572. Arend van Dorp virtually attributes the success of the Revolt to their brutal impudence. Matters were critical when Orange re­turned from his unsuccessful campaign in 1572. The governing classes no longer had much confidence in him, and they were casting about for the best way to secure their own advantage. Yet the good God bestowed upon them 'a new and steadfast resolve by means of the scandalous slaughter in Naarden'.28 No one could feel secure from Spanish reprisals, for the Spanish commanders never kept a promise,29 or they gave it a perfidious interpretation,30 and Spanish troops campaigned as though there were not a loyal Catholic to be found in the whole of Holland. Indeed, it is two Catholic authors who assure us repeatedly that the Spanish went about their affairs without the slightest respect to religion. 'They were no respecters of persons', claims Wouter Jacobsz., 'and they were quite indifferent whether one was good or bad' - i.e. Catholics or Beggars. They violated girls and women, they reduced the richest in the land to penury, they respected neither altar nor chapel, and they did not keep the commandments of the church.31 The chronicler of Utrecht wrote in the same vein. Though a layman, he was a convinced Catholic and had no objection whatever to the persecution of heretics.32 No one could call him a friend of the Revolt, but he knows very well who his enemies are. They are the Spanish soldiers,

2S Res.H., 1579, p. 28. 26 Brugmans, 'Utrechtsche kroniek', 141. 27 Parker, The Army of Flanders, p. 179. 28 Arend van Dorp, Brieven en onuitgegeven stukken (ed. J.B.J.N. de van der

Schueren, 2 vol., Utrecht, 1887-8), 1,116-17. 29 C.M. Schulten, 'Het beleg van Alkmaar', inAlkmaar ontzet, 1573-1973 (ed.

T. Schaffer, T.H.P. Wortel et al., Alkmaar, 1973), p. 61; G. Parker, The Army of Flanders, p. 203.

30 Willem Janszoon Verwer, Memoriaelbouck. Dagboek vangebeurtenissen te Haarlem van 1572-1581 (ed. J.J. Temminck, Haarlem, 1973), p. 83. During the siege of Haarlem the defenders of a fort surrendered after being promised that their lives would be spared. 'Don Frederick said: "I promised you your lives, but not food. Interim perierunt miserii".'

31 Dagboek, I, 166. See also I, 120, 122; II, p. 550. 32 Brugmans, 'Utrechtsche kroniek', 10.

DURING THE REVOLT OF THE NETHERLANDS 25

'who rob the churches, abbeys and monasteries and attack the peasants as if they were enemies, nay even Turks'.33

This Catholic, too, attests to the Spanish failure to distinguish between Papists and Protestants. What protection had the habit afforded the nuns of Naarden ?34 A woman was a woman, once the Spaniard was over the city wall: he left no one in peace. He even gloried in the battle: Spanish soldiers refused to carry out an ad­vantageous military operation in August 1575 'because they feared that the war would be over too quickly'.35 The Spanish army was indubitably Catholic, but it made little effort to distinguish Catholic Netherlanders from Protestants.

II

If Arend van Dorp was right, and the Spanish conquerors of Naarden and Haarlem were the best propagandists Orange could muster, then the question arises whether the captains of the Beggars perhaps unwittingly abetted the Counter-Reformation. The Beggars were no strangers to Holland even before they occupied Den Briel in April 1572. Since 1569 they had made the seas unsafe for Dutch merchants, and since 1571 their raids had been directed especially against the more remote countryside of Holland.36

OoltgenspJaat, Huisduinen, Schellingwoude, Petten, Schagen, Schoorl and a string of other villages had already encountered the Beggars before they ensconced themselves in Den Briel. Nor was Den Briel the first town to become the target of their attacks. Dokkum had had that privilege in 1569, and the raiders had carried out their most daring action to date at Monnikendam in 1571. Many of the inhabitants of Holland were thus well-placed to judge if they had reason to greet the conqueror of Den Briel with, as the Beggars' song had it, 'the noble lord uplifted, of Lumey very wise'.37 Gouda certainly knew enough, for, on receiving the tidings in October 1572 that Lumey was in the neighbourhood and intent upon making the town his winter quarters, they sent out a message in unseemly haste 'that His Grace should be dissuaded, from coming here'. 38 His Grace appeared, nonetheless, with seven hundred companions. He

33 Ibid., 136. 34 Ibid., 122-3. 35 Ibid., 241. 36 De Meij, De watergeuzen, p. 311. 37 Scheurleer, Van varen, I, 3. 38 J. Tersteeg, 'Vijf bange jaren (Gouda 1572-1576)', Bijdragen vaar vader­

landsche geschiedenis en audheidkunde, 4e reeks V (1906), 8.

26 HOLLAND'S EXPERIENCE OF WAR

left again after thirteen days, but following that short visit the town petitioned the States of Holland for a tax reduction of four thousand guilders, on the grounds 'that the men and the train of His Grace would hear no reason, and coerced the burghers into servicing their every desire'. Nor does this sum appear excessive, for Alkmaar ob­tained a remission of eight thousand guilders following various visits by companies of Beggar troops in December 1572 and January 1573.39

Generally, the soldiers were received with a marked lack of enthusiasm. Occasionally, the most lawless elements in the ranks were cashiered,40 but this did little to improve matters. The States of Holland were obliged to note in November 1576 that the towns 'show themselves very reluctant' to accept garrisons:41 Perhaps people thought these were no longer necessary, since, as they be­lieved, the war was over. The Pacification of Ghent had just been proclaimed. In Gouda the news was received with jubilation ;42 and we have no reason to suppose that people elsewhere, especially in the countryside, were any less war-weary. The Spaniard will string us up if we help the Beggars, says an unknown poet, but the Beggar harries us if we tum to the Spaniard. Nowhere can we find peace, though we should like nothing so much as to abide upon our farms and milk our cows in perfect tranquillity.43

For such farmers every soldier was an enemy. In many villages the inhabitants refused to take the oath of allegiance to the rebels. The States of Holland decided in 1574 that everyone should indeed be obliged to take the oath and stand watch: if they refused they should be incarcerated.44 Apparently these comrades of coercion were considered reliable enough to share in the responsibility for the public safety. The farmer wanted peace first and foremost, and he may rarely have felt any personal involvement in the conflict. Yet it is probably fair to say that this disgruntled majority inclined slightly towards the Beggars if forced to a choice. In his memoirs of the campaign of 1568, the Spanish officer Londono remarked on the attitude of the inhabitants. In Groningen as well as along the Maas, according to this witness, sentiment was uniformly anti-

39 N.J.M. Dresch, 'Rekening van Maerten Ruychaver, thesaurier in het Noor­derkwartier 1572/1573', Bijdragen en mededeelingen van het historisch genoot­schap, XLIX (1928), 75 n. 2.

40 For two instances of men being dishonourably discharged see Res.H., 1574, pp. 67, 98.

41 Res.H., 1576, p. 195 (17 November). 42 Tersteeg, 'Vijf bange jaren', 15. 43 Schulten, 'Het beleg van Alkmaar', p. 63. 44 Res.H., 1574, p. 191 (12 November).

DURING THE REVOLT OF THE NETHERLANDS 27

Spanish. When Alva encamped at Slochteren, it was only with the greatest difficulty that his scouts could discover the location of the enemy, 'because the greatest part of this province were heretics, and they had such a strong dislike for us that they endeavoured to keep "ecret the retreat of the enemy'. 4S In fact the people of Groningen were by no means such wayward heretics at this time,46 but anti­Spanish they most certainly were. Londono's experience in the South was no different: William of Orange dared to take a small army across the Maas, because he relied upon 'the affection of these lands'. Nor was William disappointed. When he camped in Ton­geren he was lavishly entertained and given all the provisions re­quired. Alva, by contrast, was admitted the following day most reluctantly.47 Londono mentions only one case of Spaniards being received with beer, bread, cheese and sausages. That happened at a village in Groningen, where they were mistaken for soldiers of Count Louis of Nassau.48

Was it any different in Holland? In 1571 eight Sea Beggars attacked the small village of Petten. The inhabitants apparently did not consider offering resistance. They bought off the threat of being plundered for eighty guilders. Were there no men in the village at the time? Yes, but these were on the side of the attackers. No fewer than fifty volunteers enlisted with the Beggars.49 In March 1572 the local population again showed where its sympathies lay. The peasants of Wieringen helped to guard the Beggars' ships, when these became trapped in the ice. 50 Perhaps they were not yet suffi­ciently familiar with the Beggars, and hard reality would later cool their affection. The experiences at Gouda would suggest this, but the voices of anti-Spanish public opinion still resounded through the province. When Wouter Jacobsz. travelled by canal-boat in March 1574 from Amsterdam to Utrecht, two towns still loyal to Brussels, his companions made no secret of their sympathies for the Beggars, 'as they spoke of nothing but the progress of the wicked party', and lustily sang the Wi/helmus. S1

The Spanish made little effort to distinguish the good from the bad. They behaved as though they were conquerors in a hostile,

45 Fruin, 'Gedenkschrift', 43. See also ibid., 32: 'los paysanos, apasionados del conde Ludovico.'

46 J.J. Woltjer, 'Van katholiek tot protestant', in Historie van Groningen. Stad en Land (ed. W.J. Formsma et al., Groningen, 1976), pp. 207-32.

47 Fruin, 'Gedenkschrift', 69. 48 Ibid., 43. 49 De Meij, De watergeuzen, p. 57. 50 Ibid., 177. 51 Dagboek, I, 389. For the popularity of the Wi/helmus see also Verwer,

Memoriaelbouck, p. 86.

28 HOLLAND'S EXPERIENCE OF WAR

heretical land. They did not call themselves Spanish, but Catholic soldiers. In this way they obliged their opponents to adopt a similar attitude mutatis mutandis; the Beggars ceased to distinguish between Spanish and Catholic, and waged the struggle with Protestant slogans in their banners.

For the Beggars, that had, of course, always been self-evident. Calvinism was intimately associated with the anti-Spanish under­ground. It was the ideological flag and sometimes the pretext for the resistance against Alva. A boat bound for the market at Antwerp in February 1570 was attacked just outside Dordrecht by a small vessel with a crew of five. The raiders came alongside singing psalms and shouting 'long live the Beggars'. They locked up the crew and made off with five thousand daalders of tax money. 52 Though these men had no commission from William of Orange, they considered themselves Beggars and probably would have joined their fleet if they had been forced to flee the country. Orange expressed the pious wish in 1570 that the Sea Beggars should be 'men of good name and fame'.53 But no one signing on was asked to provide an attestation of good moral conduct. In practice, the Beggars' crews selected themselves.

The composition of the Beggar forces probably differed little from those of other fighting forces. Serving in the Beggar fleet were the unemployed, the uprooted, and the adventurer. 54 But as the 'Spanish' army had an elite of native Spaniards, so too among the Beggars there could be found a hard core of religious refugees who gave the army its Protestant and anti-Spanish stamp. In the North Holland regiment raised during the opening phase of the civil war, one meets many soldiers whose sobriquets give the impression of a consciousness of living on the fringe of human existence: Without Money, Seldom Rich, Gambled Away, Spoiled Early, Big Thirst, Unwashed. A few, however, bore names in line with their aspira­tions: Resistance Against Alva, Enemy of the Breadgod, Pope's Sorrow, Monks Sorrow.55 Similarly, professed anti-papists were probably more prominent among the real Sea Beggars, especiall~ among the captains. 56 These elements perhaps explain why the mentality of the Beggar army differed from that of the usual pro­fessional mercenary force. A German professional officer, who en­listed with Orange in 1573, mentioned in his notes a night assault

52 De Meij, De watergeuzen, p. 139. 53 Ibid .• 44. 54 Ibid., 172, 179. 55 J.W. Wijn. 'Het noordhollandse regiment in de eerste jaren van de opstand

tegen Spanje'. Tijdschrift voor geschiedenis, LXII (1949), 248. 54 De Meij. De watergeuzen, p. 179.

DURING THE REVOLT OF THE NETHERLANDS 29

on an enemy watch-post manned by two sentinels. The Spaniard was stabbed immediately, but the German was interrogated and then turned loose. 57 A true Beggar captain would most likely have killed both men. The Beggar did not share the mercenary's collegial affability or his professional calculation which declined to make the soldiers' trade any more dangerous than was necessary. The Beggars fought with far greater self-awareness and bitterness, with the vengeance of the exile and the elan of God's elect. In the war at sea they behaved with unrivalled cruelty. At the battle of Reimers­waal in 1574, important prisoners were simply cast into the sea without even being stripped of their valuables. 58

On such occasions there does not seem to be much to choose between the Spaniards and the Beggars. Yet there was a difference. The Spaniards murder and plunder without discrimination, the Beggars make distinctions. They were waging a civil war and they realized they needed the help of the population. Even before they surprised Den Briel, a pattern can be discerned in the Beggar terror. The names of six victims murdered and tortured by the Beggars before April 1572 have been recorded. With one exception these were all representatives of the Catholic church or supporters of Alva's government. 59 The Beggars knew who their enemies were, and the greatest anxiety about their arrival was felt by those who could be identified with Alva and especially with Rome. Lumey's arrival at Gouda in 1572 posed a special threat to the Catholic religion, for the magistrate in Gouda knew quite well that Beggars 'were much given to robbing the churches and houses of God'.ro Not that there was much of value left in the churches of Gouda. Church silver, worth 7,347 Flemish pounds, or 44,082 carolus guilders, had been confiscated to finance the Revolt.61 Even so, the religious houses could not escape the Beggars' violence. Two monks were killed and several beguines were raped.62 Churches and reli­gious houses were always considered fair game. Huisduinen had been able to forestall plundering in March 1571 with a payment of 150 guilders. But the church fell outside the bargain. The attackers

57 F. de Witt Huberts, 'Ben tot nu toe niet gedrukt dagverhaal van Haarlem's beleg, geschreven door een ooggetuige', Bijdragen en mededeelingen van het historisch genootschap, XLVII (1926), 10.

58 J.C. de Jonge, Geschiedenis van het nederlandsche zeewezen (2 edn., 5 vol., HaarIem, 1858-62), J, 113.

59 De Meij, De watergeuzen, pp. 177-8, esp. n. 128. 60 L.A. Kesper, 'De goudsche vroedschap en de religie', Bijdragen voor vader­

landsche geschiedenis en oudheidkunde, 4e reeks, II (1902), 404. 61 Ibid., 403. 6l Ibid., 405.

30 HOLLAND'S EXPERIENCE OF WAR

refused to 'leave it unmolested and undamaged for all the money in the world'.63

In the propaganda the Beggars' cause was identified with the Protestants' interest. One of the most familiar of the Beggars' songs stated it explicitly: exalt the glory of God, make great His praise, for He hath performed a mighty work for His Church.64 Computers may eventually provide an accurate count of the number of anti­Spanish and anti-papist epithets in the songs of the Beggars. But it seems reasonable to suppose that the anti-papist element will be predominant. 6S And if the Spaniards are called 'anti-christen', then it is not simply because this rhymes in Dutch with 'papisten'.66 In the sixteenth century the term always had apocalyptic undertones, the consequence of more than fifty years of anti-papal polemic. Within a short time this type of propaganda set the tone, even in Amsterdam, which remained loyal to Catholicism for longer than any other town in Holland. When in February 1578, this town accepted the government of Orange, the monopoly of Catholicism was guaranteed. But within two weeks, scabrous slogans scrawled on the walls heralded the end of the Catholic regime: 'eat priests, shit monks, wipe your arse with canons' .67 It is clear, however, quite apart from such public graffitti, that the tide was turning against Rome. For Wouter Jacobsz. relates that in February 1578 the Beggars has begun to make distinctions. 'They called some Catho­lics, others double Catholics, and still others three- or fourfold Catholics'.68 This suggests that the Beggars had won the contest for public opinion. Ordinary Catholics did not wish to have the Spani­ards back. They can only be called a 'silent majority' in the sense that they took no steps to re-open churches for their own services. When it was a matter of giving vent to their dislike for the Spanish, however, these Catholics were not silent at all. Perhaps the double Catholics were, and from the three- and fourfold Catholics one might even expect public protestations of attachment to the old faith. But these were rare. News of Spanish success was only 'surreptitiously related among the good', according to Wouter Jacobsz., in June 1578.69 It took exceptional courage for someone to express his Catholic convictions in public and state 'that he would help restore the Roman religion and cut the throats of all

63 De Meij, De watergeuzen, p. 57. 64 Scheurleer, Van varen, I, 5. 65 Ibid., I, 11, 15, 19,21, 25,27,29. M Ibid., I, 27: 'Dees papisten/Dees wreede antechristen'. 67 Dagboek, n, 709. 68 Ibid., 703. fig Ibid., 732.

DURING THE REVOLT OF THE NETHERLANDS 31

the others of the opposing religion'. Dirck Anthonisz., in 1579 the bailiff of Oegstgeest, was such a man.70 He was arrested, and after two months released again with the loss of his post. In this way the States of Holland made it clear that they neither regarded even these threefold Catholics as dangerous, nor did they take them seriously. Just two months' detention for outbursts which would have struck a more nervous government as tantamount to treason and con­spiracy! Already by this time it seems highly improbable that, in the words of the Catholic historian Rogier, 'the great majority of the population in Holland'71 remained true to Church and King. Holland's Catholics - the three- and fourfold excepted - had made their choice. If the throne could not fall while the altar stood, then the altar would have to be pulled down: better a Protestant dominee in the pulpit than the Spaniards within the gates.

III

After the Pacification of Ghent, military activity gradually subsided in Holland. Only along the borders did the strugg1e continue. Geer­truidenberg, betrayed to Parma in 1588, remained in Spanish hands unti11593. Heusden had to withstand a siege of almost five months in 1589. Yet gradually, the war receded. The direct involvement of ordinary burghers and farmers diminished. When the civil war was at its height in 1575, the States had discussed a proposal 'to con­script one in every four men in the towns and the countryside'. At the time it had been considered impractical, since so many were already participating in the war effort.72 The Union of Utrecht took the matter up again. In Article VIII provision was made for the registration of all male inhabitants between the ages of eighteen and sixty years, the purpose being transparently the formation of a militia. No further action was taken in the connection, however, and the impression is left that these plans for a general call to arms were never treated seriously. Holland returned to the subject once more in 1600, when the agenda of the assembled States included a proposal 'to train and use the children of the inhabitants in the service of the country, in the war on the sea and on the land'. A blueprint as we have it - the document itself has not been preserved

10 Res.H., 1579, p. 143 (25 June) and p. 186 (18 August). 11 For Rogier's view see his Geschiedenis van het katholicisme in Noord­

Nederland in de 16de en 17de eeuw (3 edn., 5 vol., Amsterdam and Brussels, 1964), TI, 336.

12 Res.H., 1575, p. 165 (20 August).

32 HOLLAND'S EXPERIENCE OF WAR

- for a general draft aimed at national miJitary training for the Dutch people. The States did little about it: 'it is found to be con­trary to the liberty and character of these lands'.73

Rightly so, in view of the form in which the initial proposal was cast. Yet congenital distaste for permanent and universal military service did not exclude compulsory cooperation in times of direct emergency. So villagers were called to lookout duty even after 1576. In 1579 everyone living in the land of Overflakkee was obliged to watch the coasts.74 South of the Maas, such duty became a per­manent institution. In 1621 letters were sent out a month before the expiry of the terms of the Twelve Years' Truce to all bailiffs and dike-reeves ordering them to organize householders once more for lookout duty.7s These peasants may not have remained in a con­stant state of alert, but they were ready to be called up at any moment, especially when a severe spell of cold weather caused the rivers to freeze over and exposed the province to the enemy.76

In the critical year 1629 the peasants of the whole province were mobilized. While Frederick Henry was besieging 's-Hertogenbosch with his main force, Montecuculi's troops looked as though they were about to invade the heart of Holland. Amersfoort was already in their hands, and Hilversum had gone up in flames. For the first time since Requesens's days Holland's security was directly threat­ened. In order to prepare the defences of the Waterlinie, the popu­lation between Texel and the Maas was called out: from every village 'the sixth man, above eighteen and below sixty years, each equipped with a spade and an axe'.77 For those who lived closer to the front no exceptions were made: they were required to answer the call and, armed with pike or rifle, to protect their own village.7s

The danger seemed suddenly to have returned to daily life; it was as if the clock had been put back fifty years and the pattern of the 'seventies had returned. When Montecuculi marched on Amers­foort, 'his people plundered the villages, imprisoned the house­holders, extorted money, and committed other barbarous atrocities,

73 Res.H., 1600, p. 436 (4 December). 74 Res.H., 1579, p. 237. For evidence that people were then worried about

coastal incursions see p. 206. 75 Algemeen Rijksarchief The Hague [hereafter A.R.A.], Holland 1384, fo. 7

(10 March 1621) addressed to the baljuwen, dijkgraven etc. of Voorne, Putten, De Lagewaard, Strijen, Krimpenerwaard, Zuid-Holland, Middelharnis, De Arkelse Waard, Oude and Nieuwe Tonge, Lopikerwaard and Beijerland.

76 E.g. Res.H., 1599, p. 29; Claes Wassenaer, Historisch verhael alder gedenck­weerdichste geschiedenissen in Europe (21 vol., Amsterdam, 1622-35), II, 71 (January 1622).

77 Res.H., 1629, p. 123 (29 July). 78 Res.H., 1629, p. 145 (14 August).

DURING THE REVOLT OF THE NETHERLANDS 33

making some walk on nails, hanging others up to break their wills; they also killed a few, and cut off ears and noses'.79 These are the terms in which Lieuwe van Aitzema describes the advance of the triumphant army. His story seems familiar, in two respects. It is as though we were reading again about the soldiers of Bossu and Don Frederick, sometimes in almost identical words. 'They talked only of eating and gorging themselves, they slugged and beat the burgh­ers who refused them', says Aitzema of the occupiers of Amers­foort.80 'When we have devoured everything in one place, we travel further; we gobble and guzzle, at the farmer's expense'. That is not Aitzema, but a German officer in the Spanish service, in March 1575.81 War is back in the land again, history repeats itself word for word. In the second place, Aitzema's account is strongly· remi­niscent of the blood-and-thunder tales from the chronicles of the contemporaneous Thirty Years' War. The same events, yes, and probably the same hyperboles, too. Militarypropagandahasmadeuse of such means through the centuries. Such stories should not there­fore be accepted at face value. According to the States of Holland, the enemy made an effort to mollify the farmers in the Gooi region and promised to harm no one.82 Though it would be equally rash to suppose that no harm was done, this may not be all that far re­moved from the truth. For the purposes of propaganda it was not necessary that Montecuculi's troops should kill or torture on a grand scale: a few atrocities were all that would be required to lend verisimilitude to the stories. Plausibility rather than accuracy was necessary. In this respect the reports of violence in 1629 stand com­parison with the Spanish barbarities from an earlier period in the Revolt.

In 1629 moreover the soldiers, like their predecessors in 1572, made no distinctions between Catholics and Calvinists. A priest who wanted to mediate with Montecuculi was told, 'that he should stick to his prayer book'. Nor did these Catholic troops restore the church in Hilversum to the local Catholics: instead they burnt it. 83

And it is a Catholic author, Lieuwe van Aitzema,84 who repeatedly

79 Lieuwe van Aitzema, Saken van staet en oorlogk, in ende omtrent de Vereenigde Nederlanden, beginnende met ket jaer 1621 (2 edn., 6 vol., The Hague, 1669-72), I, 866.

80 Ibid., I, 867. 81 K. Obser, 'Aus dem Freiheitskampf der NiederIande. Briefe eines badischen

Kriegsmanns', Bijdragen en mededeelingen van ket kistorisck· genootschap, XLVII (1926), 46.

82 Res.H., 1629, p. 154 (17 August). 83 Aitzema, Saken van staet, I, 867. 84 J.J. Poelhekke, Met pen, tongriem en papier. Figuren uit een ver en nabij

verleden (Amsterdam, 1976), p. 85.

34 HOLLAND'S EXPERIENCE OF WAR

noted that the invading army paid no heed to the confessional loyalties of the inhabitants.85

The invasion of 1629 therefore served to revive memories of Spanish cruelty. The psychological shock was probably not entirely unwelcome to the regents of Holland. If the inhabitants were not prepared to make peace, they had to be ready to bear the costs of war: they would be less likely to grumble at the financial burden of the war if the Spaniards appeared to threaten the province of Hol­land. In the eastern parts of the Republic the threat of a Spanish invasion had never been lifted. Mendoza's successes of 1598 cre­ated a minor panic in Gelderland and Overijssel,86 Spinola took Oldenzaal in 1605, Grol in 1606 and the Spanish would occupy both towns for more than twenty years. And in 1624 Hendrik van den Berg took advantage of the frozen rivers to plunder and burn in the Betuwe.87 If Holland were never exposed to these dangers it would grow complacent. For that reason the scare of 1629 could be said to have been salutary. Frederick Henry exploited these anxieties when, in 1636, he resolutely opposed any cuts in the budget. He warned that the enemy intended to gather 20,000 to 25,000 horse, and 'be not content to amuse himself with besieging towns, but to penetrate to the bowels and marrow of the state'. 88 And that would mean Amsterdam, and The Hague, and Leiden.89

Yet it is difficult altogether to escape the conclusion that the enthusiasm for the war had waned during the stadholdership of Frederick Henry. The resumption of the war in 1621 after the expiry of the Twelve Years' Truce seems to have had popular sup­port. The archducal emissary Pecquius - en route for The Hague in March in a bid to negotiate a lasting peace - was greeted in Delft by the local bully boys, who threw stones and dung 'to show their re­vulsion for Spaniards'.90 Baudartius, who recorded this incident, wasted little time explaining why the man in the street was so anti­Spanish; for ministers like himself the answer was obvious. The Reformed ministers had always been fiery propagandists for the

85 Aitzema, Saken van staet, I, 868. 86 Everhard van Reyd, Historie der Nederlantsche oorlogen begin ende voort-

ganck tot den jaere 1601 (Leeuwarden, 1650), p. 353. 87 Aitzema, Saken van staet, I, 271. 88 Res.H., 1636, p. 36. 89 The same purpose was perhaps also served by rumours about impending

raids by Dunkerkers (Res.H., 1632, p. 99 and 1635, p. 47). Attacks were also feared 'on the islands of Schouwen, Goederede or Voome, even on the town of Den Briel itself', Res.H., 1637, p. 61.

90 Gulhelmius Baudartius, Memoryen olte cart verhael der gedenckweer­dichste . .. geschiedenissen van Nederland . .. van den iare 1603-1624 (2 edn .• 2 vol., Amhem and Zutphen, 1624-5), bk. XIII, 44.

DURING THE REVOLT OF THE NETHERLANDS 35

war. They knew very well that their church had prospered in the struggle against Spain. The men of Baudartius' generation viewed the international power struggle, too, from a religious perspective. The Eighty Years' War and Thirty Years' War were for them ex­clusively contests of faith, waged between the alliance of the Protestant Powers and the mighty forces of the anti-Christ, led by the Spanish. Their hatred of everything Spanish was totaJ.91

The struggle against Spain had to be continued for the freedom of the Reformed Church and the fatherland. Baudartius related with satisfaction how in 1622 the towns of Holland had, at Maurice's request, formed a number of companies 'who have willingly left their work, wives, and children to serve and assist their fatherland in time of need'.92 This was not the first time the towns had had to reinforce temporarily the army. They delivered a fixed quota, though they were permitted to pay other volunteers to take the place of the towns' citizens.93 It would have been no different in 1622: love of country could go hand in hand with their readiness to accept some service money for the unemployed and the underpaid, who might very well have had wives and children to leave behind, but not always jobs or even houses.

In 1622 this pecuniary objective might well have weighed with the ordinary people in Holland. The Twelve Years' Truce had brought prosperity,94 but many skippers, sailors and soldiers had either suffered from unemployment or seen their earnings decline.95 This, at any rate, was Aitzema's assessment: 'the ordinary man around here was weary of the truce: multis utile bellum. Many recalled that in times of war there had been a good penny to be earned and they were quite certain that there had been more trafficking during the war than under the truce'.96

91 For instance at the synod of Dordt in 1618 lengthy discussions occurred concerning the proper rendering of the second person in the new translation of the Bible. One argument used by the advocates of the archaic second person singular 'du' was that the alternative, the polite plural 'gij', had been introduced by the Spanish! H. Kaajan, De pro-acta der dordfsche synode in 1618 (Rotter­dam, 1914), p. 116. The same uncompromising spirit animated the discourse of a minister against the sin of dancing. In the course of this he sniped at the new dress fashions, English, French and, worst of all, Spanish, 'our traditional enemies', P. Wassenburgh, Dans1eest der dochteren te Silo (Dordrecht, 1641), voor-reden (preface).

92 Baudartius, Memoryen, II, bk. XIV, 154. 93 Res.H., 1599, pp. 181 and 227. 94 J.G. van Dillen, Van rijkdom en regenfen (The Hague, 1970), p. 19. 95 Samuel Coster, Spel van Tiisken van den schilder (s.1., 1613), 1. 1579; G.A.

Bredero, Klucht vande koe, 11. 110-15; P.H. van Moerkerken, Het Nederlandsch kluchtspel in de zeventiende eeuw (2 vol., Sneek, 1892), I, 103 (Van Santen, Snappende Sijtgen).

96 Aitzema, Saken van staef, I, 5.

36 HOLLAND'S EXPERIENCE OF WAR

The lure of profits can arouse the lust for war. Those who antici­pate diminished returns in peacetime can enjoy the thunder of cannons, provided they are well out of range. 'We skippers and carriers used to earn money like mud', a pamphleteer has a skipper complain at the start of the truce.97 In 1621 it was hoped that the good old days would return, but the promise remained unfulfilled. Trade reacted somewhat uncertainly to the resumption of hostilities and the yield from taxes fell sharply in Amsterdam during the summer of 1621 as a consequence of 'the great diminution of trade'.98 The next two years were especially difficult for prices rose sharply reaching unknown heights.99 The butter riots of 1624 can be regarded legitimately as an expression of long pent-up feelings of social frustration.1°O

Perhaps the disappointments of the 1620s blunted the enthusiasm for war in the towns of Holland. But on the border of the province the resumption of war had never been welcomed. Here the chief concern was local security. And in 1621 that could not be assured. Spijk near Gorinchem was so troubled by the enemy 'that the poor people slept at night in the bushes or in the hedges, not daring to show themselves at their homes' .101 They wanted to reach an under­standing with the enemy and buy off the pillaging with an annual tribute, following the example set by villages in the border areas of Brabant and Flanders. Perhaps this was an exceptional state of affairs that did not last very long. Nevertheless, confidence in the protective power of the States' army was shaken in the twenties. Hendrik van den Berg's campaign in the Betuwe stirred unrest even in Holland. In The Hague, it was reported that even the farmers in the Gooi region had attempted to reach a tributary arrangement with the Count.102 Their example would, it was feared, be followed

91 Schuyt-praetgens, Op de vaert naer Amsterdam, tusschen een Lantman, een Hovelinck, een Borger ende Schipper, see Catalogus van de pamjlettenverzameling ben/stende in de Koninklijke Bibliotheek (ed. W.P.C. Knuttel, 9 vol., The Hague, 1889-1920), no. 1450. [hereafter Knuttel].

98 A.R.A., Holland 1384, fo. 27 (23 June 1621); cf. Bronnen tot de geschiedenis van het bedrijfsleven en het gildewezen van Amsterdam 1512-1623 (ed. J.G. van Dillen, 3 vol., The Hague, 1929-74), Rijks Geschiedkundige Publicatien, Grote Serle, 78, II, 403; 471.

99 Van Moerkerken, Het Nederlandsch kluchtspel, I, 116 (W.D. Hooft, Jan Saly); Baudartius, Memoryen, II, bk. XIV, 222; bk. XV, 182; bk. XVI, 124; G. Brandt and S. Centen, Historie der vermaerde zee- en koopstadt Enkhuisen, II (Hoorn, 1747), 38,42; Sarrmel Ampsing, Beschryvinge ende Laf der stad Haerlem in Holland (Haarlem, 1628), p. 415; Theodoricus Velius. Chronyk van Hoom . .. tot 1630 (4 edn., Hoorn, 1740), p. 611.

100 Bronnen, II, 536; A.R.A., Holland 1384, fos. 379-82. 101 A.R.A., Holland 1384, fo. 72 (14 October 1621). 102 A.R.A., Holland 1384, fo. 34Ov.

DURING THE REVOLT OF THE NETHERLANDS 37

by others. The Council of State believed in 1627 that a great many, including 'persons of substance from almost all the towns of Honand' had moved to a neutral zone or taken up residence in villages which had made some kind of tributary arrangement with the enemy. The Council did not state whether this was done to evade the heavy taxes levied in Holland or deliberately to harm the country,t03 but that is beside the point: such conduct was quite foreign to the spirit of 1572.

The old conviction that Spain epitomized tyranny gradually faded away. Repeated accords104 providing for exchanges of pris­oners made the war a little more humane. Maurice and Mendoza reached an agreement in 1602 which emphatically prohibited 'attacks on the weaker sex of women and sman children' .105 That made it easier to live with the war, but it also lessened the fear and the hatred of the Spaniard. The government in Brussels used to furnish its subjects who wanted to travel to the Republic with pass­ports in which the northern territories were labelled 'rebel pro­vinces'. The States General occasionally forbade the use of these documents,l06 but Frederick Henry never persuaded them to reci­procate by describing the Southern Netherlands as 'tyrannized provinces'.107 The matter of nomenclature was not regarded as sufficiently important, and no one wanted to hamper trade for the sake of a few insults. Propaganda about the Spanish tyranny graduany disappeared from official publications of the Republic. It was employed for the last time in 1632 in a manifesto aimed at the Southern Netherlands,lOs when there was a short-lived hope that these might unite against Spain out of mutual interest. But the old fierceness was gone. After 1629, the land war had lost its terror for Holland: the Spaniard was beyond the borders, the home force under iron discipline. Thousands of Hollanders, however, earned their living on the water and it is to these that we now turn.

IV

A few years after the discovery of America, a monk visited the king of Peru to preach the Christian religion to him. The monk added,

103 Res.H., 1627, p. 246. 104 In 1602, 1622, 1623 and 1638 (Aitzema, Saken van staet, I, 126). 105 Ibid., I, 128. 106 Groot-Placcaetboek van Holland en Zeeland (ed. C. Cau et al., 10 vo1., The

Hague, 1638-1801), II, 85 (19 April and 6 July 1633). 107 Aitzema, Saken van staet, II, 450 (1637). 108 Groot-Placcaetboek, II, 13 (22 May 1632).

38 HOLLAND'S EXPERIENCE OF WAR

however, that the Pope was head of Christendom, and that he had granted the kingdom of Peru to the Spanish. The monarch declined to accept this message, declaring that 'the Pope must be an ignorant and shameless fellow, so liberally to dispose of what belongs to others'. 109 So runs the story, at least, in the Utrecht edition of the tales of Christoffel Wagenaer, that related the adventures of Faust's famous famulus, Wagner, in Dutch. This edition is a revision, not a faithful translation. Wagenaer's experiences in Spanish America were a windfall for Dutch readers, who thus received a strong dose of anti-Spanish propaganda as well as entertainment. It is the well­known story of Spanish atrocities against the Indians, now given a spurious precision by the publishers, who for the first time gave a plausible account of the position in the Indies on Wagenaer's arrival in order to underline the changes after the arrival of the Spaniards. Santo Domingo had been densely populated at the time, but the blood-thirsty Spanish caused such havoc that the popula­tion of one and a half million was reduced to five hundred.llo

It goes almost without saying, that in the propaganda put out by the Republic the Black Legend was exploited to the fun. Naturally it also stressed the Spanish tyranny in the Netherlands. Since the appearance of the Spieghe/ der Jeught (Mirror of Youth) in 1615, Dutch school children had been able to learn all that Spain had done to mistreat their forebears.l11 But the publication of a book about Spanish cruelties in the West Indies was intended to do more than merely to arouse repugnance to all things Spanish. In the West Indies there was a score to be settled. The Spaniard had 'by force and murder snatched a land that did not belong to him'.ll2 These atrocities demanded retribution. The blood of Indian women and children cried out for vengeance,l13 and the political versemakers knew that the Dutch nation was destined to execute judgement.ll4

And as is so often the case when people take upon themselves the role of Providence, the fulfilment of this sacred duty was to be richly rewarded. The power of Spain depended on the possession of

109 J. Fritz (ed.), Die hi storie van Christoffel Wagenaer, diseipel van D. Johannes Faustus. Naar den utreehtsehen druk van Reynder Wyliex uit het jaar 1597 (Leiden, 1913), p. 144.

110 Ibid., 127. m D.L. Daalder, Wormeruyt met suyeker. Historiseh-eritiseh overzieht van de

nederlandsehe kinderliteratuur (Amsterdam, 1950), p. 39. 112 Scheurleer, Van varen, I, 180. Samuel Ampsing's triumph song following

the capture of the Spanish treasure fleet in 1628. 113 Ibid., I, 139. Commemorating the sailing of the fleet commanded by

Jacob Willekens to the West Indies in January 1624. 114 Ibid., I, 134. On the formation of the West Indies Company.

DURING THE REVOLT OF THE NETHERLANDS 39

their American colonies: deprive them of their American bullion, and the war would be over.ll5

The war at sea, in the Far East and the West Indies, was therefore bound up with the struggle against the Spaniard. He was to be opposed not only in Brabant and Flanders, but also in the Carib­bean and the Indian Ocean. And that was the task of the Dutch seamen. The songs glorifying the exploits of Piet Heyn were aimed especially at them. They had to have the conviction not only that they could resist the Spaniard anywhere in the world, but also that they might go over to the offensive. They should believe that a single sloop manned by Hollanders need not make way for a heavily armed Spanish galleon,116 Perhaps, too, Dutch mariners bore a personal grudge against the Spaniards, for they continued to en­counter the enemy even after the Seven Provinces' future had been assured. They constantly ran the risk of being killed or imprisoned in a chance encounter with Spanish men-of-war. And many, in­deed, were imprisoned, including the later admiral, Piet Heyn, who in his youth spent about four years rowing in Spanish galleys.l17

Such experience must have strengthened their animosity towards Spain. But some of the blame should also be borne by seventeenth­century ship-owners who, in their pursuit of maximum profits, sometimes took irresponsible risks at the expense of their seamen. Instead of waiting for the convoy, they sailed as soon as the wind was favourable. They armed their ships so inadequately that these could be captured by a sloop. us They sailed to Guinea with twelve men119 or to Trinidad with nineteen.12o The safe return of one of these undermanned vessels was in the nature of a miracle. In home waters the enemy was able, through the Dunkirk privateers, to take advantage of the inadequate protection of many Dutch merchant men. Dutch historiography has tended to make light of these privateers. Japikse, describing how at the end of the sixteenth century Netherlanders swarmed out over all the oceans of the world, proclaimed proudly: 'what significance were Spanish plans to strike the Republic's trade, the basis of its existence, in the face of all these exploits and grave threats? Of what significance the

115 Ibid., I, 142. On the departure of Willekens. 116 According to J.C.M. Warnsinck, Drie zeventiende-eeuwsche admiraals,

Piet Heyn, Witte de With, Jan Evertsen (2 edn., Amsterdam, 1944), p. 41. 117 Ibid., 15. 118 Res.H., 1624, p. 15. 119 A.R.A., Holland 2609, testimony of Heyn Claesz., 14 June 1611. 120 A.R.A., Archief Hof van Holland 5217, testimony of Pieter Frans, 30

May 1613.

40 HOLLAND'S EXPERIENCE OF WAR

damage inflicted by the Dunkirkers, even if stronger measures at sea from the Dutch side were in fact desirable ?'121

The damage inflicted by the Dunkirk privateers, however, was not inconsiderable. According to a reasonable estimate, the Re­public lost about 3,000 ships to them122 between 1621 and 1646, when Dunkirk fell. A number of Amsterdam traders put the losses in 1640 at several million guilders;123 even allowing for some exag­geration the annual figure can seldom have been less than a million guilders, and in the worst years it may have been more than double. These figures are not excessive. Mter 1621 the Dunkirkers usually had almost a hundred ships at their disposal ;124 if each one brought in no more than one or two prizes, then the privateers would have realized a million guilders. Though this state of affairs had its good side, for it provided employment in the shipbuilding sector in order to offset the losses,125 the profits made by the Dunkirkers at the expense of the Republic may have roughly equalled the advantages the United Provinces gained from import and export duties.

Dunkirk, wrote a pamphleteer in 1628,126 is for the Republic what Carthage was for Rome. It is the Algiers of the West, an empty belly that gobbles up everything, a bottomless Danaidean tub. It swallows up in a moment the most precious things that the Hollanders have carried with great effort, from far off lands. It was true: Dunkirk cost the Hollanders a great deal of money. The priva­teers also exacted another toll for they were 'the scourge of the sea­man's existence at that time'.127 'Just add up', urges the pamphlet­eer already cited, 'how many of your people have been cast over-

121 I.H. Gosses and N. Japikse, Handboek tot de staatkundige geschiedenis van Nederland (The Hague, 1920), p. 96.

122 R. Baetens, 'Organisatie en resultaten van de Vlaamse kaapvaart in de zeventiende eeuw', Mededelingen marine academie, XXI (1969-70),106. In 1626 Baetens reckons 336 vessels were sunk and 1,499 captured, which were worth 11,383,492 guilders to the privateers. A good 80 per cent of these ships came from the northern Netherlands. For the period 1642--6 the privateers earned 4,674,515 guilders from shipping from the Republic and around 2 million guilders in 1641. Baetens estimates the return for the years 1635-46 at 7 million guilders, a figure which is certainly not excessive when we remember how heavy were the losses in 1635. (Res.H., 1635, p. 150; H. Malo, Les corsaires dunkuer­quois et Jean Bart (2 vol., Paris, 1912-13), I, 318. The total amount raised comes to 22,781,308 guilders (Baetens, 'Organisatie', 109), and this figure does not in­clude vessels sunk. Moreover the public sales in Dunkirk did not fetch the normal market price.

123 Res.H., 1641, p. 4. 124 Baetens, 'Organisatie', 98. 125 A.M. van der Woude, Het Noorderkwartier (3 vol., Wageningen, 1972)

11,467. 126 Duyn-kerckens Naeckende SterfJ-Dagh, AI. Knuttel no. 3804. (c. 1628). 127 Van der Woude, Het Noorderkwartier, m, 713.

DURING THE REVOLT OF THE NETHERLANDS 41

board into the depths of the sea; yes, frequently with their noses and ears cut off beforehand' .128 Though more officially slanted sources make no mention of such barbarous practices, they do relate that from the beginning of the seventeenth century the Dunkirkers took stern measures against fishermen and sailors who offered resistance. They locked them in their holds and then sank their vessels,129 or they let prisoners decide by lot which of them should be cast over­board.l30 Between 1601 and 1606 the government of Brussels for­bade the Dunkirkers to take prisoners.131 A delicate balance of terror was maintained for the captains of the admiralties in the Republic also carried orders to cast all Dunkirkers into the sea. Only after 1628 did the practice of killing prisoners cease since Dutch sailors refused to be the dupes any 10nger.132

But if comparatively few were killed in the struggle with the Dun­kirkers, the number of prisoners was very great. Their fate at the beginning of the seventeenth century was uncertain and might de­pend on their confessional loyalties. In 1609, for example, fifty prisoners were taken on one occasion and brought into Dunkirk. Through the intervention of the Jesuits, the eighteen Catholics were taken aside, but the other thirty-two had to cast lots: ten were allowed to live, while the remaining twenty-two were condemned to the gallows.133 The execution of prisoners in Dunkirk appears how­ever to have been exceptional. Some even got a chance to serve with the privateers. Those who were not offered the chance or declined it might be put up for ransom. But those too poor to raise the ransom, or those who were not offered the opportunity because they were heretics, would be doomed to row in the galleys or endure imprison­ment with no prospect of release.l34 Nor were conditions in the dungeons made more tolerable for those awaiting ransom. If the prisoners were too comfortable - and there was small risk of that in the seventeenth century - they might not try hard enough to raise their ransoms. Descriptions of this accommodation by South­ern Netherlanders13s confirm that the Dutch poet who spoke of 'the filthy jail at Dunkirk'l36 was not guilty of poetic license.

128 Duyn-kerckens ... Sterff-Dagh, A3. 129 Malo, Les corsaires, I, 225; Emanuel van Meteren, Commentariifn olte

memorien van den Nederlandtschen staet, handel, oorloghen ende gheschiedenissen (Amsterdam?, 1608), bk. XXII, fo. 36v. alleges that fishermen were nailed to the ship.

130 Res.H., 1626, p. 129. 131 Malo, Les corsaires, I, 254, 256. 132 Aitzema, Staet van saken I, 775. 133 Malo, Les corsaires, I, 296. 134 Ibid., I, 250. m Ibid., I, 251. 136 Scheurleer, Van varen, I, 227, Lof des vryen vaerts.

42 HOLLAND'S EXPERIENCE OF WAR

Until 1609 it was usual to require a ransom of prisoners, but it is not possible to discover how large was the sum demanded for each man. The Archduke Albert wanted its scope to be limited in any case: 'nous faisons la guerre pour chastier les rebelles, et non pour gaigner de l'argent'.137 That guideline was laid down in 1598, and if the Archduke's exhortation had any effect, the sum raised by ran­soms in 1599 should have been low. That is possible, but it still amounted to 336,940 guilders. In 1600 the total was 145,650 guilders and in 1601298,950 guilders.138 These were fairly considerable sums, yet they may have still been larger before 1598. Anyway, the small town of Maassluis complained in March 1597 that it had had to raise 70,000 guilders in ransoms in two years.139 At that time the Dunkirkers used to take captive only the captains and other officers of the detained ships. The vessel and goods went free upon the promise of ransom. That was an improvement for the ordinary sea­man, since it kept him out of jail. For shipowners, however, this method must have proved crippling in the long run. The privateers no longer had the trouble of running home with their prizes; a single Dunkirk frigate could take a string of hostages on board in a short time and need only sail for home when the holds were filled with captive skippers. After the truce, the States General therefore abolished this convention and skippers were forbidden to promise ransom at the expense of their shipowners.140

Prisoners continued to be made as before, but now whole crews were taken at a time. Ransom remained the condition for release, but as the seamen could not raise their redemption from the ship­owners or expect the province to bear the costs,141 they had to rely on private initiatives. So about 1635 in the Noorderkwartier of Holland142 - probably elsewhere as well, but the matter has not yet been investigated - the so-called seamen's funds were started. These were funds to which participants were required to make a small contribution before each voyage.143 Occasionally a contributor owed his freedom to such a seamen's fund, but that was apparently exceptional. Probably by far the greater part of these funds went to

137 Malo, Les corsaires, I, 250. 138 Baetens, 'Organisatie', 106. 139 Res.H., 1597, p. 70. 140 Groot-Placcaetboek, 1,1072 (3 May 1621); Brandt and Centen, Enkhuisen,

II, 37. 141 Res.H., 1631, p. 131. 142 S. Lootsma, ' "Draecht elckanders lasten", bijdrage tot de geschiedenis

der zeevarende beurzen in noord-Holland', West-Friesland's "Oud en Nieuw", III (1929), 21; Van der Woude, Het Noorderkwartier, II, 372.

143 Lootsma, ' "Draecht" " 25. Participants did not all pay the same amount and deposits varied from a few stuivers to 3 guilders 12 stuivers.

DURING THE REVOLT OF THE NETHERLANDS 43

meet the costs of imprisonment, for it was the rule in Dunkirk, as elsewhere in Europe, that prisoners had to pay for their board and lodging. The fund also had to provide relief: every imprisoned con­tributor from Graft received a daily stipend of eight stuivers.144 Between 1634 and 1640 8,440 guilders was invested in that fund. Expenditures for daily support amounted in the same period to 7,857 guilders.145 Using as a basis of calculation eight stuivers a day, that means daily support for fifty-three years, a figure which does not appear excessive, for in 1635 alone, sixty to seventy seamen from Graft were taken prisoner.146 The expenses of this group for three months - and a shorter imprisonment is hardly likely - would have amounted to between 2,000 and 2,500 guilders. Additional funds for purchasing a prisoner's release were simply not available.

After 1621, however, there were two other ways by which a Dutch seaman might leave the dungeons alive: he could enter the service of the enemy, or be exchanged. The exchange of prisoners raised countless problems during the last twenty years of the struggle against Spain. The practice can be construed as another sign that the terrorism, characteristic of the Revolt in its early stages, had given way to regular warfare fought by professional armies. Of course neither government was prepared to place the welfare of the prisoners before what it conceived to be the interests of the state. Consequently the procedure of exchange was rarely straight­forward and often subject to long delays.

The numerical basis for the exchange presented obvious diffi­culties. In 1630, for example, Dutch towns submitted the names of 434 people known to be in the enemy hands. The Republic, how­ever, had only 271 hostages in its own prisons to offer in exchange. The States of Holland decided to attempt an exchange on a 'two­to-one' basis,147 though probably with little hope of success. In 1636, in any case, when the balance was again unfavourable to Holland, the States tried a different tack by offering twenty-five guilders for the capture of each Flemish fisherman, who might be included in the exchange.148 The States also showed interest in the plan of a certain Simon Cornelisz. Doot from Edam, who proposed an expedition to take prisoners along the Spanish coast, at a price to be agreed upon later.149 When the numerical advantage lay with

144 Ibid., 22. 145 Ibid., 25. 146 Van der Woude, Het Noorderkwartier, m, 713. 147 Res.H., 1630, p. 37. 148 Res.H., 1636, p. 29 (20 February). 149 Res.H., 1636, p. 82 (11 April).

44 HOLLAND'S EXPERIENCE OF WAR

the Northern Netherlands, the Republic was usually in no great hurry to agree to an exchange. When in 1636 Jan Evertsen brought in the Dunkirk admiral Colaert with two hundred of his men, it was promptly decided to make no more overtures to the enemy.1S0 After the victory off the Downs in 1639, the Republic again had a super· abundance of prisoners, so that the Dutch pressed for the exchange to include subjects imprisoned in Spain and the colonies.lSl

A second problem was caused by the constitution of the Repub· lic. The prisoners in Dunkirk were mainly Hollanders, but ex­changes were a matter for the United Provinces and the other provinces may have attempted occasionally to make capital out of this situation. The States of Holland believed, anyhow, in 1640, that the other provinces intended to make their approval of an exchange dependent on Holland's readiness to farm the convooien en !icenten (export and import duties) instead of having these collected by the Admiralties.1s2 Holland had always energetically resisted the former arrangement believing it to be detrimental to commerce. Sometimes exchanges were held up by a hitch in the financial arangements. The States customarily presented an account to those who had been re­patriated to the Southern Netherlands for the costs of their im­prisonment, and this was then paid by the Spanish government. But in 1641, however, Brussels had too little money in the exchequer,1S3 nor had the States any wish to put a premium on carelessness. In 1629, when the balance of prisoners was in their favour, they de­cided to exclude from the exchange those unfortunate Dutch sea­men who had only themselves to thank for their lot, either because their ships had been inadequately armed or because they had not waited for the convoy.1S4

Much also depended on the quality of the prisoners. The States were in no hurry, in 1629, to agree to an exchange because 'among the prisoners of the enemy in custody here were the boldest, bravest and most enterprising of all their seafaring folk, including those who were guilty of the death of admiral Piet Heyn' .155 Though the motive of revenge played a part, they were chiefly moved by a reluctance to restore the services of some of their best sailors so soon to the Dunkirkers. The States held out against an exchange in 1634 for the same reason. They had only experienced privateers to release, while

150 Res.H., 1636, p. 46 (7 March). 151 Res.H., 1639, p. 236 (10 December). 152 Res.H., 1640, p. 223 (12 October). 153 Res.H., 1641, p. 268 (1 October). 154 Res.H., 1629, p. 226 (22 December). 155 Ibid.

DURING THE REVOLT OF THE NETHERLANDS 45

the imprisoned Hollanders were 'simple and innocent fisherman', so that an exchange would not have been in the interests of the country. There was also a general reluctance to exchange prisoners before the end of the summer, the high season for privateering.156

A final and closely related problem hampering exchanges was the insistence that these should not provide the enemy with additional manpower. Spanish seamen incarcerated in Holland were usually only included in an exchange on the understanding that they would return to their native land. This was the condition also set for the release of the prisoners taken at the Downs,157 who had been bound for Flanders. Frederick Henry, especially, insisted strongly on this condition. ISS Presumably the Spanish prisoners themselves had no objections, for their administration complained in 1641 that those released made off post-haste in any direction, without even re­porting back for service.159

Such delays and prevarications must have imposed severe strains, not only on the prisoners, who could do little to hasten their release in any case, but also on their wives and loved ones. Sometimes womenfolk and friends campaigned for the seamen's release.1oo Once it even came to a demonstration in front of the home of Holland's Grand Pensionary, Jacob Cats. The women protesters shouted at him that the French and the Zeelanders exchanged their prisoners, and that only Hollanders were left to stay in the dun­geons, 'in stink and filth' .161

The regents of Holland may well have felt some sympathy for these prisoners and their anxious families, though this has gone un­recorded in the sources. But another and more persuasive reason why the Republic should care about the prisoners was voiced by Cats, speaking on behalf of Holland in the States General. Failure to exchange the prisoners might lead these to secure their own liberation by entering the service ofthe Dunkirkers. And that would certainly have catastrophic consequences, 'granted the prisoners' familiarity with all the inlets and currents of this province' .162

The concern was real enough. Many Dutch sailors had a genuine repugnance for the Spanish and a few may even have been members of the Reformed Church. Yet they all had one thing in common:

156 Res.H., 1640, p. 115 (28 June). 157 Res.H., 1639, p. 218 (3 November). 158 Res.H., 1640, p. 189 (20 September) and p. 199 (1 October). 159 Res.H., 1641, p. 268. 160 E.g. Res.H., 1641, p. 260 (25 September). 161 Res.H., 1640, p. 148 (19 July). 162 Res.H., 1640, p. 22 (12 October); see also p. 123 (4 July).

46 HOLLAND'S EXPERIENCE OF WAR

they had to sail to earn their living. The war at sea, like the war on land, was fought by professional forces. It is true, nonetheless, that whereas in the army foreigners predominated, the merchant fleet was composed for most part of seamen from Holland - less so the navy. Though these would have entered the Spanish service far less easily than German mercenaries would have done, it was not im­possible. In August 1579, Parma provided through De La Motte for the fitting-out of several privateering vessels. The States of Holland countered by preparing five or six ships themselves, less to offer resistance than to provide competitive employment and an attractive alternative for profit-conscious Dutch mariners who might otherwise 'offer themselves outside these lands in great num­ber, or enlist in the service of the enemy, if not used' .163

Competition to attract seamen apparently continued for the dura­tion of the war. In 1589 the strength of the Dunkirkers increased significantly, because 'they enticed the exiles and riff-raff from Holland and Zeeland to join them'. The States, however, evidently felt they could ill do without this same riff-raff and they responded by making it easier for them to obtain pardon,164 though with what success is not known. Perhaps the government in Brussels, in its turn, offered attractive terms in a bid to retain the services of these men. Archduke Albert deliberately encouraged defections from the North and the Rotterdammer Berck was even given a seat in the Dunkirk Admiralty. Dutch turncoats were regarded in Flanders as enterprising and energetic, and as more feared by the rebels than Flemish seamen. They were loyal, too, in the opinion of a Dunkirk clerk, provided they had something to show for it: 'il convient ne les laisser oisifs ny vagabonds', 165 in other words the lure of the booty will guarantee their loyalty.

It goes without saying that the Dunkirkers recruited their crews from among the prisoners, too. Until the fall of Sluis in 1604, they had in the rowing galleys of Frederick Spinola an effective means of persuasion to hand. Those who were unable to raise their ransom or who refused the oath of loyalty to the Archduke were chained at the oars.166 Coercion, promises and the expectation of good prizes brought many a sailor to choose the Spanish side,167 and so it prob­ably continued until the fall of Dunkirk in 1646. Moreover, the government in The Hague treated its seamen as though they were

163 Res.H., 1579, p. 196 (24 August). 164 Van Meteren, Commentarien, bk. XV, fo. 68. 165 Malo, Les corsaires, I, 248. 166 Ibid., I, 259. 167 Reyd, Historie, p. 321.

DURING THE REVOLT OF THE NETHERLANDS 47

poor relations: wages were paid well in arrears,168 compensation for the wounded and the crippled was meagre,169 while the ordinary mariner did not receive his fair share of the spoils.170 According to Blaeuhulck, a master of naval provisions, many sailors in Holland and Zeeland only joined the navy to gain free passage to England. There they jumped ship and embarked for Dunkirk in order to enter the service they really preferred. l7l The tide could always turn: Tromp's effective blockade of Dunkirk in 1638 prompted many sailors to move north.172 Nevertheless, the States of Holland had good reason to be anxious about losing experienced seamen to the captains of the Dunkirk privateers.

v

If these defectors were not already Catholic, they had at least to be prepared to become so upon taking up residence in Dunkirk. For the convinced Calvinist service with Spain was out of the question. But what of Holland's Catholics once the enemy had been expelled from the province? In the seventeenth century Catholics in Holland were no longer exposed to the terrors of the civil war. It remained to be seen whether their attachment to their Church would under­mine their loyalty to the Republic.

Catholics who accepted the new rebel regime suffered a certain handicap. Still in the seventeenth century, the Spanish were said to be more Roman than the Pope. In the propaganda of the Beggars and in the victory songs, Spaniards were invariably depicted as devout, bigoted Catholics. When Spaniards surrendered, they were said to sing the Miserere. 173 When they fled, they called upon Mary.174 If they fell overboard, they drowned in holy water.17S

168 De Jonge, Gesehiedenis, I, 229. 169 According to the deserter Van der Dussen in 1628 (C. de Jong, Gesehie­

denis van de oude nederlandse walvisvaart I Grondslagen, ontstaan en opkomst 1612-1642 (Pretoria, 1972), p.188. The edict of8 February 1645 mentioned sums ranging from 8oo guilders for the loss of both eyes or arms to 120 guilders for the loss of a foot, Groot-Plaeeaetboek, II, 2381.

170 De Jonge, Gesehiedenis, I, 243. 171 F. Graefe, De kapiteinsjaren van Maerten Harpertsz. Tromp, bewerkt door

M. Simon Thomas (Amsterdam, 1938), p. 111 (1637). 172 Malo, Les corsaires, I, 345. 173 Scheurleer, Van varen, I, 81 (battle of Gibraltar, 1601). 174 Ibid., I, p. 243 (battle of the Slaak, 1631). 175 Het eerste/ Nieu dieht gestelt/tot prijs vermelt van het Bestant/die hiet Rebel,

zijt verclaert we//Vry volek, vry Landt, KnutteI, no. 1397 (battle of Gibraltar, 1601).

48 HOLLAND'S EXPERIENCE OF WAR

After dying, they were said to travel to purgatory,t76 perhaps in order to find new fireworks to replenish their exhausted stores.177 Spain is the most faithful paramour of the Roman harlot,178 the mainstay and greatest bulwark of the Pope. The Battle of the Downs in 1639, it was ironically said, must have occasioned great joy in Rome. Since Maarten Tromp had made so many prisoners, the Pope had finally achieved his heart's desire, for Holland was full of Spaniards. Another feast day should be dedicated to this new St. Maarten, for Tromp could assuredly reckon on a speedy beatifica­tion for his signal success.179

The Catholics of the Northern Netherlands shared their faith with these Spaniards, but this aspect received no prominence in the propaganda of the Republic. It preferred to regard the Catholic layman as misguided rather than as a hardened sinner. Instead of identifying him with the Spaniard, it preferred to make him aware of the political peril of his confessional choice. The government, too, approached the matter from this perspective. They regarded the Catholic Church as an organization dangerous to the state, closely allied to Spain. It was on these grounds that Emanuel van Meteren defended the proscription of Catholic services. 'The Catholics, for political reasons, were not permitted to worship in public. Because of the war, these were suspended for a while.'180 When in 1644 the French ally urged the States General to grant Catholics freedom of worship, that body replied that freedom of conscience had always existed in the Republic, but they would not countenance services where people pledged their loyalty and devo­tion to the king of Spain, 'which nevertheless is known to happen in their official prayers' .181

Such prayers were delivered by the priests. Here too, then, the blame was laid upon the shoulders of the clergy and the flock was isolated from its shepherds. In the proclamations and laws, Catho­lic priests figure not as faithful witnesses who risk their lives to care for souls and offer the sacraments, but as enemy agents, stirring up the inhabitants against their legitimate government. For example, the edict of 1594 forbade gatherings 'of those who pretend to be of the Roman religion, on the pretext of worshipping, teaching or reading'. These were mere pretensions, designed to veil the machina-

176 Scheurleer, Van varen, I, 120 (battle of Malacca, 1615). 177 Ibid., I, 257 (battle of the SIaak, 1631). 178 Ibid., I, 179 (capture of treasure fieet, 1628). 179 Ibid., I, 307. 180 Van Meteren, Commentariifn, bk. XVI, fo. 7Ov. 181 Res.H., 1644, p. 55 (9 March).

DURING THE REVOLT OF THE NETHERLANDS 49

tions of the enemy.182 Priests raised capital for the Spanish army, 'under the guise of confession money' .183 In Holland itself they were accused of having taken up collections for the relief of 's-Herto­genbosch.184 Even Frederick Henry could state with certainty that the Catholic clergy 'dare in their sermons and prayers to slander the government of this state as illegitimate, and to pray for the king of Spain in his capacity as the count of Holland, to the great detriment of the state and its inhabitants'.18s

It cannot be denied that the conduct of the clergy gave some substance to these suspicions. Frederick Henry could appeal to recent experiences. In 1635 Catholic priests had refused absolution to French soldiers in the army of the Republic, 'in order to move them to desert the service of Hare Hoog Mogenden (Their High Mightinesses)'.186 A few years later the stadholder's position was again corroborated, when confiscated papers revealed that Roven­ius, the apostolic vicar, regarded the government of the Republic as heretical and illegitimate.187 He could hardly have done otherwise, for the Catholic mission in the North fell under the jurisdiction of the nuncio in Brussels. Throughout the war, the apostolic vicars remained in contact with the government in Brussels.ls8 When twenty Catholics from Holland complained in 1618 to the Archduke about Rovenius,189 Albert passed the case on to the ecclesiastical authorities, but this incident shows that Catholics in the North, also recognized a connection between their Church and the Spanish administration in Brussels.

Nor were the clergy content to let the matter rest with formal recognition. Cardinal Bentivoglio believed that Spain deliberately wanted to increase the number of Jesuits in the Republic in order to furnish itself with capable spies.l90 In fact their father provincial, Carolus Scribani, did collaborate with professional informers like Diego Lopez and Sueyro.191 Correspondence belonging to the English Jesuit Sympson, which was seized in 1598, proves that

181 Groot-placcaetboek, I, 218 (1 July 1594). 183 A.R.A., Holland 1384, fo. 25v., the Gecommitteerde Raden of Holland

to the baljuw of Rijn1and, 18 June 1621. 184 Res.H., 1629, p. 119 (27 July). 185 Res.H., 1636, p. 12 (31 January). 186 Res.H., 1635, p. 99 (18 May). 187 Rogier, Geschiedenis van het katholicisme, m, 539. 188 Ibid., m, 496. 189 Romeinsche bronnen voor den kerkelijken toestand der Nederlanden onder

de apostolische vicarissen 1592-1727 (ed. J.D.M. Cornelissen, 4 vol., The Hague, 1932-55), Rijks Geschiedkundige Publicatien, Grote Serie, 77, I, 242.

190 Ibid., I, 146. 191 L.M. Brouwers S.J., Carolus Scribani 1561-1629 (Antwerp, 1961), p. 474.

50 HOLLAND'S EXPERIENCE OF WAR

while he was in Rotterdam he passed on military and naval intelli­gence to Antwerp.192 Moreover imprisoned Jesuits were reckoned prisoners of war in 1626, and as such were included in negotiations about the exchange.193

There can be no doubt that the leadership of the Catholic Church in the Netherlands inclined towards Spain. But it is less clear what influence they exerted on the political outlook of the faithful. The historian most knowledgeable about Catholic Holland in the Eighty Years' War, Rogier, in his commentary on the death of Orange, seems to imply that all Catholics shared the opinion of the priests. The assassination cannot have cast the people into national mourn­ing, for 'William of Orange, in the eyes of the faithful and loyal Catholics of 1580, was a traitor ... the sentiments with which the majority of Delft's inhabitants watched the Prince's comings and goings in the town must have bordered on hatred' .194

But that is to tar all Catholics with the same brush. Most cer­tainly there were Dutch Catholics who would have joined the Spaniard Carnero in describing the execution of Orange's assassin as 'the glorious martyrdom of Balthasar Gerardsz.'.19S In 1610 a certain Roland Lee, who had plans to murder James I of England, considered Balthasar Gerardsz. a holy martyr, who had surely gone to paradise.196 Hendrick Achtervelt was a kindred spirit: he took the life of the minister Franciscus Schorickman at Deventer in 1599 'with premeditation, having sharpened both edges of his knife so that he could better execute that meritorious deed'.197 Neverthe­less, it is quite certain such zeal was exceptional. Had Catholics everywhere been so fanatical, the Spanish would have put down the Revolt without much difficulty and in far less than eighty years.

Naturally Catholics in Holland did give vent to their strong anti­protestantism. In the neighbourhood of Hoorn, they mocked and jeered at Protestant church-goers,198 and nearby, at Limmen in Kennemerland, the minister found his pulpit one Sunday morning

192 AR.A, Holland 1363 c, Sympson to Vestingham, 4 February 1598. 193 Res.H., 1626, p. 128 (23-4 September). 194 Rogier, Geschiedenis van het katholicisme, III, 509. 195 Antonio Camero, Historia de las guerras civiles que ha avido en los estados

de Flandes desdel ano 1559 hasta el de 1609 (Brussels, 1625), p. 182. Title of relevant chapter: 'De la muerte del principe de Orange y del glorioso martirio de Baltasar Gerardo Borgofion'.

1116 AR.A., Archief Hof van Holland 5213, testimony of Heyndrick Doessen, 27 December 1610.

197 Van Meteren, Commentarien, bk. XXI, fo. 3v. 198 AR.A., Archief Hof van Holland 387, fo. 192 (1624). See also F.S.

Knipscheer, 'De vestiging der gereformeerde kerk in Noord-Holland 1572-1608', Nederlandsche archie! voor kerkgeschiedenis, nieuwe serie, V (1908), 143.

DURING THE REVOLT OF THE NETHERLANDS 51

horribly befouled. The work of the papists, everyone believed.199 At Alkmaar, in a home for elderly women, Trijntge Gerits 'was so tor­mented and scorned by the old papist women', that she attempted to take her own life.20o On closer investigation it turned out to be not constant pestering that had driven her to take such extreme measures, but the suspicion she had fallen under concerning the theft of a chemise.201 This discovery should give us pause for re­flection. Religious hatred existed, beyond any doubt, but it did not usually become serious unless accompanied by other grievances. If Protestant sources tell of Catholics who profoundly desired, '0 shameful vindictiveness! That the Spanish banner might fly beside the way, and that they might purchase the destruction of the land with their own destruction', then the guilt cannot be attributed only to 'their Jesuits, who implant pernicious maxims among the country­men' .202 More likely than not, some unknown provocation stimulated these sharp reactions.

This was the case at Sloten where, in the winter of 1599 the peasants were called out to break the ice to prevent an attack by the enemy. Men who might otherwise have remained indifferent now had to face personal discomfort in the depth of a hard winter for a cause they did not really regard as their own. 'What do these sacra­mentarian Beggars want to do', they asked, 'harass us into chopping holes and taking arms against our friends? Better to take these rascals who are only ten or twelve strong here, and strike them dead, and then go down to The Hague, and strike the States dead, tOO.'203 They challenged their adversaries to strike the first blow, but it never came to a fight. Apparently the provocation had to be very serious before Catholics were willing to take the initiative and resort to arms. I wished, said the bailiff of Wassenaar in 1612, that I could stoke the fire to burn up the last Beggar.204 But a greater threat to the security of Holland might have lain in his readiness to gather the kindling to burn up the first Beggar too.

A latent danger for the Revolt did lurk in Catholicism. Those who had become used to the two faiths living together were startled to

199 A.R.A., Archief Hof van Holland 387, fo. 190v. The incident occurred on 22 October 1623.

100 Archief Hervormde kerk Alkmaar, 1, 27 November 1605. For another instance of the attachment of this generation to the old ways see Archief classis The Hague, 2, 7 July 1619.

101 Archief Hervormde kerk AIkmaar, 1, 4 December 1605. 202 Archief Hervormde kerk Haarlem, 3, 20 July 1621. 203 Res.H., 1599, p. 29. 104 A.R.A., Archief Hof van Holland 5215, Jacob van Banchem to Hugo

Grotius, 24 September 1612.

52 HOLLAND'S EXPERIENCE OF WAR

see how much passion the Spanish incursion into the Veluwe in 1629 aroused among Catholics.20S 'I should never have believed it before', wrote Reigersberch to his brother-in-law, Hugo Grotius. 'It is a good thing that we have seen it now so clearly'. Reigersberch believed a change of politics would now be necessary. Either things would have to be done in such a way that Catholics would be pre­pared to serve the country, or measures would have to be taken to prevent their endangering the state.206 Here was a stark choice: the first meant freedom of religious worship, the second led to the gal­lows and the stake. It is precisely the choice which the regents had always successfully avoided. They never denied the Catholics so much that they had to resort to desperate measures instead of unburden­ing their hearts with verbal abuse.107 Still less did they ever grant the Catholics so much that the Protestant character of the state was imperilled. The great majority of Catholics seem to have been satisfied with this modus vivendi. They strove to conduct them­selves in such a way that they would not be too closely identified with the Spaniards. The Jesuits, too, displayed great suppleness, allowing those who made their confession considerable room for manoeuvre,lOB even when this involved direct participation in the defense or, still more remarkable, offensive measures against the enemy. 209

By these means they helped to ensure the continuing existence of Catholicism. By the same they may also have contributed to the passivity of Dutch Catholics who did not challenge the ban imposed on their public services even after the war was over. After the peace of Munster, the Dunkirk menace was eliminated, and the Spaniards soon became allies in the wars against France. But nothing changed for the Catholics. There were occasional lapses of loyalty, most noticeably during the French invasion of 1672. At that time, too,

20S F.S. Knipscheer, 'Abdias Widmarius, predikant te Uitgeest, en het kerkelijke leven eener gereformeerde gemeente in de XVIIe eeuw', Nederlandsch archiefvoor kerkgeschiedenis, nieuwe serle, ill (1905),315.

206 Briefwisse/ing van Hugo Grotius (ed. P.C. Molhuysen and B.L. Meulen­broek,10 vol., The Hague, 1928-76), Rijks Geschiedkundige Publicatien, Grote Serle, 113, IV,9O.

207 See also, for example, A.R.A., Archief Hof van Holland 385, fo. 134, 21 July 1605 (Berkhout and Wognum); P.C. Hooft, Brieven (Haarlem, 1750), p. 372 (17 January 1636, Weesp). . .

208 F. van Hoeck S.J., Schets van de geschiedenis der Jezufeten in Nederland (Nijmegen, 1940), p. 131, n. 16.

209 J. Andriessen S.J., De Jezufeten en het saamhorigheidsbesef der Neder­landen 1585-1648 (Antwerp, 1957), pp. 54-5. Jesuits did, however, generally maintain that Catholics serving in the army of the Republic should be refused absolution, ibid., 58.

DURING THE REVOLT OF THE NETHERLANDS 53

however, it was the priests, rather than the laity, whose loyalty to the Republic was most in doubt. During the war, the Catholic laity had freed themselves from the political leadership of their clergy. The influence of this particular consequence of war would continue to be felt for several centuries.

3. The Army Revolt of 1647

l.S. MORRILL

I

IN order to win the civil war, Parliament had to trample on those very susceptibilities and conventional political wisdoms which it went to war to protect. The parliamentarian propaganda of 1642 is drenched in the language of civi1liberties: of freedom from arbi­trary taxation; from arbitrary imprisonment; from misguided paternalism; and from the centralizing tendencies of early Stuart monarchy. The dream-world of many Parliamentarians, particu­larly in the provinces, was of a well-ordered state comprising semi­autonomous local communities meeting common problems, and seeking powers to answer local needs, through free parliaments under the general regulation of a monarch whose role was that of chief justiciar and arbiter. Instead, as I have argued in a recent book, Parliament was forced to break with all the cherished nostrums con­jured up by their propaganda. They fought to protect a herd of sacred cows each of which was slaughtered to propitiate the god of war. Unprecedented fiscal demands were met by a massive invasion of property rights; rights of habeas corpus and trial by jury were swept aside by a massive introduction of droit administratif; billet­ing of troops, free quarter, martial law were soon widely in force. Unlike the king, Parliament abandoned all pretence of respecting the traditional modes of consultation with and delegation to the particular institutional bodies which had evolved in each county and borough. Indeed, every article of the Petition of Right, the most cherished statement of the rights of the subject drawn up in the early seventeenth century, was broken by Parliament in.the course of the war. And I have argued that, as a result, there was a great revulsion against the wars in 1645 and 1646 which took two forms: the militant neutralism evident in such movements as the Clubmen, who demanded a return to the old institutions and ways, and an end

THE ARMY REVOLT OF 1647 55

to centralization and government unresponsive to local needs and sensibilities, and the radicalism of the Levellers, again demanding an end to the powers assumed by Parliament, but seeking a massive democratization as well as a massive decentralization of power and justice. They are closely related movements, both earthed in the mythology of local community consensus government, and both created by the harsh facts of war. Neither could ultimately cope with the continuing existence of the New Model Army.1

In 1647 the Houses of Parliament were trapped between incom­patible objectives. They were committed to a settlement with a king who was committed not to agree to a settlement; they were con­scious that the continuing fiscal and administrative burdens threat­ened a further outbreak of provincial rebellions; they were also conscious of the continuing existence of an army owed £3m in arrears - this in the context of a kingdom whose royal revenues before the civil war had never approached £lm p.a.2 The apparent folly of the Parliament in attempting to disband the Army without settlement of its grievances must be weighed in that context. The struggle between Parliament and Army in 1647 is the history of two groups who ultimately needed one another but who long failed to recognize the fact.3

Recent work has made the policies of the Presbyterian alliance in Parliament more comprehensible. It has also emphasized that the Leveller ideas penetrated the Army rather later than had been thought.4 My task here is to examine those bread-and-butter griev­ances of the army with which they were exclusively concerned until the end of May 1647, and to see how far those grievances were subsequently redressed. Historians have too often presumed that once the Army was politicized, made aware of its political destiny and constitutional responsibilities by the Levellers, its material grievances became unimportant. Far from it. I want to argue that from early June onwards Parliament was providing remedies to those grievances, but that those remedies required an extension of the very administrative and legal abuses against which the Levellers

1 J.S. Morrill, The Revolt of the Provinces (London, 1976), sections 2 and 3. 2 I. Gentles, 'The Arrears of Pay of the Parliamentary Army at the End of

First Civil War', Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, XLVIII (1975), 52-63.

3 V. Pearl, 'London's Counter-Revolution' in The Interregnum (ed. G.E. Aylmer, London, 1972), pp. 29-56; I. Gentles, 'Arrears of Pay and Ideology in the Army Revolt of 1647', in War and Society (ed. B. Bond and 1. Roy, London, 1975), pp. 44-66.

4 Gentles, ibid.; J.S. Morrill, 'Mutiny and Discontent in English Provincial Armies', Past and Present, LVI (1972), 68-74.

56 THE ARMY REVOLT OF 1647

railed. By the end of 1647, the Leveller programme looked in many respects unsatisfactory to the rank and file, and this helped the Grandees to re-establish their control and put a brake on army radicalism.

II

In February 1647 the Scots army was paid off and returned home. The way was now clear for the Presbyterian leaders at Westminster to win the support of the many backbenchers eager to see an end to the burdens, fiscal and administrative, imposed by the civil war. It was this motive, rather than a prescient fear of army radicalism, which led the Presbyterians to call for the reduction of the Army to 5,400 men in England; the remainder were to be disbanded or sent to Ireland.5 Between the end of February and the end of May, the increasingly sour exchanges of views between the Houses and the officers of the New Model Army centred around the arrangements for the Irish expedition and around the safeguards of the rights of soldiers which should be enacted before the disbandment.6 The de­mands of the Army which gradually emerged during these months related almost entirely to the soldiers' rights as soldiers. There is little evidence that Leveller ideas, or any conception of the Army's responsibilities to promote broader political objectives, had emerged at this stage. On 20 May, for example, the agitators wrote to the Northern regiments7 counselling them to do 'nothing but what is relating to them as soldiers'.s But the best and most comprehensive evidence of this comes from the Army's debates at Saffron Walden in the middle of May. At these, the Council of Officers asked every regiment to draw up a list of its own grievances. The Council of Officers then made a digest of the demands of the soldiers, and pre­sented it to Parliament under the title the Declaration of the Army.

5 S.R. Gardiner, History of the Great Civil War (4 vol., London, 1894), ITI, 212-30; M.P. Mahony, The Presbyterian Party in the Long Parliament, 2 July 1644 to 3 June 1647 (Oxford D.Phil. thesis, 1972), ch. vii-ix.

6 The New Model was all too well aware that promises, subsequently ig­nored, had been made to other units which Parliament had disbanded (e.g. Massey's Western Brigade in the summer and autumn of 1646).

7 The Northern regiments contributed a separate force of 12,000 men under the command of the (presbyterian) Major-General Poyntz until he was over­thrown in a mutiny in July 1647. They were then merged with the New Model; Morrill, Mutiny, pp. 69-71.

8 The Clarke Papers. Selections from the Papers of William Clarke (ed. C.H. Firth for the Camden Society, 4 vol., 1891-1901), I, 91.

THE ARMY REVOLT OF 1647 57

An analysis of the original papers presented by eleven of the regi­ments is given in appendix II, below.9

These petitions show that while the language and the precise problems of every regiment were quite distinct,I° there was a general consensus about what were the main concerns, and a very clear agreement on priorities. Almost all the petitions begin with, and devote most space to, problems relating to arrears and indem­nity. These are the two major problems to which we shall turn in a moment. But it is also important to emphasize that the Declaration of the Army is a very fair reflection of the demands of the rank and file. As the officers said, some of the regiments were 'confused and full of tautologies, impertinences or weaknesses answerable to the Soldiers' dialects'll but it is the language, not the specific demands, which they smoothed out. The only substantial issues referred to in more than two petitions to be omitted by the officers were enforced service in Ireland and the charges of corruption wildly brought against committees of the Houses and in the counties. On the former issue, at least, the views of the officers had often been heard at Westminster.12

Two issues, however, stand out above the rest: arrears and in­demnity. While Professor Gentles has done much to elucidate the nature of the former,13 the latter has received little attention, and it is with this matter that I propose to begin.

Many of the principal military and fiscal ordinances passed by Parliament since 1643 had contained clauses freeing the agents of Parliament from any legal liability for actions undertaken on par­liamentary authority. There were, however, two main problems: the ordinances did not extend to protect officers and soldiers who had assumed emergency powers in prosecuting the war, and the

9 The originals are in the library of Worcester College, Oxford, Clarke MS. 41, fos. 105-25. I am grateful to the Provost and Fellows for their permission to consult and cite these papers, and to Miss L. Montgomery, custodian of the MSS., for her kindness and help. The eleven regiments included are those of Rich, Disbrowe, Ireton, Whalley, Boteler, Fairfax (foot), Hewson, (Hardress) Waller, (Robert) Lilburne, Harley and Lambert.

10 The exception to this is that Fairfax's foot regiment and Hewson's regiment presented identical petitions.

11 Cited in Gentles, Arrears of Pay and Ideology, p. 49. 12 Professor Gentles claims that 'a comparison between the Declaration of

the Army and the individual regimental papers bears out the officers' claim to have exercised a moderating influence'; Gentles, ibid., 50. He gives four ex­amples. Two of them were matters raised only by one regiment, one by two regiments. The fourth complaint was taken up by the officers using more moder­ate language. The Officers' Declaration was not intended to include every item included by every regiment, but to reflect fairly general issues. The real difference is one of tone.

13 Gentles, The Arrears of Pay of the Parliamentary Army, passim.

58 THE ARMY REVOLT OF 1647

enforcement of the indemnity clauses was in the hands of men deter­mined to ignore them. Colonel Rich's regiment described 'the sad complaints & the miserable sufferings of many of our fellow soldiers who now suffer, and the recalling to our serious meditations the miserable imprisonment and ignominious death of many who were real and faithful to the service, all which they have undergone for acting things which the exigency of war constrained them to do' .14 Thus, several regiments demanded an extension of indemnity to cover 'all things done as soldiers in relation to the war', or 'that which they have done in time and place of war' .15 The fact remained for others, however, that 'we conceive, that upon every trespass, or other thing done in the war (which we may be questioned for) it will be very chargeable and difficult either to derive a clear authority for the same from the Ordinances of Parliament, or to bring proofs sufficient to make up such a constructive conc1usion'.16 This also led on to a second and more far-reaching demand. The end of the civil war and the restoration of the normal processes oflaw (quarter sessions, assizes, borough courts) had led very many civilians to bring actions against soldiers alleging civil damage or criminal acts. Juries and justices were totally disregarding even existing indemnity rights, and were convicting soldiers or awarding damages against them. Thus Colonel Harley's regiment demanded that Parliament 'preserve us from the common law'.n It is also clear that many county committees, in pursuing local interests, had arbitrarily im­prisoned many men, and the regimental petitions are bitterly hostile to county committees.1s The soldiers demanded institutional pro­tection from existing committees and courts.

From late April onwards, Parliament was prepared to make con­cessions over Indemnity. On 30 April, even before the regimental petitions were drawn up at Saffron Walden, but in response to an earlier army petition, the Commons resolved to press ahead with a Bill ofIndemnity. By 21 May, this Bill had passed both Houses and had been published.19 Its central provision, however, was ambigu­ous, and certainly did not go as far as the soldiers wanted: 'that no person or persons whatsoever, who have since the beginning of this present Parliament, acted or done, or commanded to be acted any

14 Clarke MS. 41, fos. 113-14. 15 Ibid., fos. 105, 119. 16 J. Rushworth, Historical Collections (8 vol., London, 1659-1701), VII,

508; cited in Morrill, Revolt, pp. 175-6. 17 Clarke MS. 41, fos. 120-3. 18 Ibid., fos. 108, 119; see also British Library [hereafter Brit.Lib.l. Thomason

Tracts E 392(9) and Rushworth, Historical Collections. VII, 505-10. 19 Commons Journal, V, 158, 166, 174, 181; Lords Journal, IX, 201.

THE ARMY REVOLT OF 1647 59

act or thing whatsoever, by authority of this present Parliament, or for the service or benefit thereof, by Sea or by Land, ought to be sued, indicted, prosecuted or molested for the same'. Unfortu­nately the precise meaning of the phrase 'for the service or benefit' of Parliament was left unexplained. Did it include the many acts of military requisition, often in the grey area between distraint and plunder, sanctioned not by a warrant derived from an ordinance but by the exigencies of war?

The much more radical claims of the 21 May ordinance came in the second half, and showed the extent to which, even at this stage Parliament was willing to accommodate the Army. Any soldiers or civilians who believed themselves protected by the ordinance, and who were 'not able to defend a suit at common law, or may find themselves aggrieved in the proceedings thereof' were granted the right of appeal to a new standing committee of Parliament (com­prising fifty-two members of the Commons and twenty-six of the Lords) who were given swingeing powers (a) to stay proceedings before all courts and commissioners (b) to imprison plaintiffs who continued actions against those under the protection of the In­demnity commissioners (c) 'to receive, hear and determine such aforesaid complaints, and to that end to examine witnesses upon oath' (d) to annul any verdict, sentence or judgement made else­where and to award triple damages to the complainant (e) to inhibit all lawyers from acting on behalf of plaintiffs continuing their actions at common law or initiating collateral actions, including the power to commit any lawyer who took instructions 'to safe cus­tody'. The ordinance clearly conceded that judges and juries, especially in the boroughs, were not honouring, and were not expected to begin honouring, rights of indemnity.20

This ordinance did not satisfy the soldiers who demanded, in a petition of 4 June, a clarification of the indemnity clauses; indeed, a blanket protection for all things done in time and place of war, sufficient 'to meet all the evasions and elusions of a subtle lawyer or to convince the senses of a Country Jury.'.21 Within three days the soldiers' demand was satisfied by a new ordinance that dis­tinguished their indemnity 'for all such acts as the exigency of war hath necessitated them unto' from that of civilian officials, only in­demnified for actions clearly derived from parliamentary ordi­nance.22

20 C.H. Firth and R.S. Rait, Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum (3 vol., London, 1911), I, 936-S.

21 Rushworth, Historical Collections, VII, 50S. 22 Firth and Rait, Acts, I, 953-4.

60 THE ARMY REVOLT OF 1647

On 4 June the Army did indeed express regret that their indem­nity should be 'the occasion of setting up more arbitrary courts than there be already' but the actual operation of the committee soon won them over and by December, the Army actually demanded an extension of the system with the creation of county committees of indemnity chosen jointly by the Army and Parliament under the control of the central committee.23 In December the Army also asked that these new indemnity committees should be made re­sponsible for the raising and disbursing of local rates for the relief of maimed soldiers and widows - powers which had always resided with the Justices of the Peace. At first sight this is a surprising re­quest. What was the connection with indemnity? In fact it would have been only one of several radical extensions of the jurisdiction of the indemnity commissioners which were assumed by the com­mittee in the course of 1647 and 1648. One of the demands made by several regiments in May was that royalists and neuters should be excluded from office. As Hardress Waller's men put it: 'faithful, cordial, godly men some whereof related to this army ... are dis­countenanced, distrusted, and put out of office and places of authority and others ambidexters and neuters &c, are preferred to places of trust, yea some [who] were apparent malignants are made tryers and judges of those who have been and still are faithful and cordial in the behalf of the kingdom's good'.24 The problem was greatest in the boroughs over whose governors Parliament often had restricted control. On 9 September Parliament passed an ordinance disabling from office all those who had ever been se­questered as enemies of the Parliament. Those who had wriggled back to power were also to be heavily fined. A second ordinance on 4 October extended the prohibition to all borough electors. Both these ordinances were to be enforced by the Indemnity Commission­ers. Within a few weeks, they received complaints about the town governments of Maidstone, Stamford, Carlisle, Wigan, and else­where, and had launched investigations which led to heavy purges.2S

Several regiments had also asked that apprentices who had en­listed for Parliament during the war should, upon disbandment, be made free of their trades or crafts as though they had completed their apprenticeships.26 Legislation already existed to protect them in this respect,27 but enforcement lay with the local courts and it is

23 Lords Journal, IX, 556--63. 24 Clarke MS. 41, fos. 117-18. 25 Firth and Rait, Acts, 1,1009,1023; Public Record Office [hereafter P.R.O.]

SP 24/1, passim. 26 Clarke MS. 41, fos. 108-110, 112-15. 27 Firth and Rait, Acts, I, 37.

THE ARMY REVOLT OF 1647 61

clear that local governors were simply refusing to implement it. Parliament soon granted power to enforce these ordinances to the Committee of Indemnity.28

The papers of the Indemnity Committee confirm the extent to which the soldiers' demands had been gratified by 1647. The com­mittee, meeting on three or four days each week, soon came under the control of a small number of men. None of the peers and only a minority of the Commons attended the committee. Almost all the most active members in 1647-8 were future Rumpers, and several of the most assiduous were amongst those who withdrew to the Army during the counter-revolution in July. Only two men associ­ated with the Presbyterian leadership (John Birch and John Swinfen) were at all active on the committee. More characteristic of the leader­ship in 1647 were men like Miles Corbett, Humphrey Edwards, Michael Livesey, William Purefoy, John Weaver and John Lisle. It was not so much the Independent leaders as their second-ranking supporters who led the way.29

The total number of cases heard by the committee is difficult to determine, since many were heard on several dispersed occasions. But Professor Aylmer has estimated that more than 1,000 were be­gun by the end of 1648, about a third of which were brought by soldiers.30 The great majority of these were quite straightforward. Quartermasters who had taken up quantities of military supplies (food, clothing, colours, carts, boats) sought protection from actions for payment brought by their suppliers.31 Soldiers sought protection from men requiring payment for board and lodging;32 and from those suing them for having distrained goods or seized arms.33 Many other soldiers had become involved in brawls or skirmishes with civilians while executing warrants or while simply on the

28 Firth and Rait, ibid., I, 1054. 29 The Committee of Indemnity Papers (P.R.O. SP 24), fall naturally into two

main groups. The first series of sixteen volumes comprise the fair copy order books arranged in chronological order from 1647-1655. The main series (more than fifty volumes) comprises the original petitions presented to the Commis­sioners. These are arranged in alphabetical order. For the purposes of this paper I examined the first three order books, covering the period up to the middle of 1649, and a random sample of twelve boxes of petitions. I am most grateful to Professor G.E. Aylmer for allowing me to read and use his unpublished paper, 'Indemnity and Oblivion, 1647-1659'. I consulted the petitions in the P.R.O., but the order books form part of the collection of microfilms recently issued by Harvester Press, under the title 'Unpublished State Papers of the English Civil War and Interregnum', and it is in this form that I consulted them.

30 Aylmer, unpublished article. 31 E.g. P.R.O. SP 24/1 fos. 54-5, 131. 32 E.g. P.R.O. SP 24/1 fos. 6, 13; SP 24/70 unfoliated petition of Richard

Price. 33 E.g. P.R.O. SP 24/1 fos. 20, 143; SP 24/31, petition of Richard Aylesworth.

62 THE ARMY REVOLT OF 1647

march.34 Perhaps the commonest petitions of all relate to the seizure of horses. But in many of these latter cases, no authority derived from an ordinance was alleged. They had simply commandered horses when the old ones had died, gone lame, or were about to foal.35 In some cases the situation became even more deeply con­fused. Thomas Smallwood, a common soldier, commandeered a horse at the battle of Rowton Moor, and subsequently sold it to an Elizabeth Kent. The latter was later sued at common law by the original owner, who was awarded £8 damages and £5 costs. But the ordinance was held to protect not only the soldier who seized the mare, but the person who subsequently acquired it, and Mistress Kent got her money back on appeal to the Commissioners.36

John Carpenter of Culham, Oxfordshire, was another beneficiary of this loose interpretation of the ordinance. He was taken prisoner by the royal garrison at Oxford, and only released on payment of a ransom of £60. Major-General Browne, parliamentarian governor of Abingdon, responded by taking prisoner an Oxford man, from whom he similarly demanded a £60 ransom which, with the con­sent of his council of war, he handed over to Carpenter. However the Oxonian 'hath since sued your petitioner for the said 601i & at Oxford Assizes last obtained a verdict for the same against your petitioner'. Carpenter was rescued by the Commissioners.37

Readers of Professor Holmes' study of the truculent, uninhibited Lincolnshire parliamentarian, Colonel Edward King,38 will be un­surprised to learn that he appears in the papers of the Indemnity Commissioners both as petitioner and as defendant. In July 1647 he sought redress against the action of Nehemiah Rawson who had sued him in the courts for seizing and selling wool valued at £440 from the Parliamentarian garrison at Tattershall castle (part of his feud with parts of the local Parliamentarian establishment ?). Since he had deployed the money 'for the good of the state' he was in­demnified, but the county committee was ordered to repay Rawson out of county funds. Yet at the same time King was himself being brought before the same committee by Thomas Wallett, high con­stable of Elloe hundred, who claimed that King had fined him £100 for failing to call a general meeting of all the inhabitants of his hundred. Four months later, King was vindicated in a report from Lincolnshire Members of Parliament Sir Anthony Irby and Sir

34 E.g. P.R.O. SP 24/1 fos. 77, 133. 35 E.g. P.R.O. SP 24/1 fos. 18, 32. 36 P.R.O. SP 24/1 fo. 9. 37 P.R.O. SP 24/38, petition of John Carpenter. 38 C. Holmes, 'Colonel Edward King and Lincolnshire Politics', Historical

Journal, XVI (1973), 451-84.

THE ARMY REVOLT OF 1647 63

Edward Aiscough. Yet Wallett 'hath been faithful to the Parliament & constantly performed his duty to them for their service', and the county committee was again ordered to reimburse him. The com­missioners trod carefully in the shark-infested waters of Lincoln­shire politics.39

Many of the petitions reveal that the soldiers had pleaded the Ordinance of Indemnity in the common law courts, but that the judges or juries had ignored it. In one case at York assizes, for example, both counsel for Sir Edward Rhodes, an officer in Lord Fairfax's army, and the Justice of Assize had argued for an ac­quittal on the ordinance, but the jury had convicted.40

Furthermore many cases surely fell outside the scope of the or­dinance. One soldier who was being sued for a pre-war debt owed to a royalist was protected by the commissioners.41 But perhaps the most important creative extension of the ordinance came with the willingness of the commissioners to act on behalf of parliamentary soldiers who found on their return to their tenancies that their landlords were determined to evict them or convert their copyholds to rack rents.42

Several important points can be made about the working of the indemnity ordinances as they affected soldiers: (1) They were very broadly and generously interpreted by the commissioners. (2) They were willing to extend its scope to give protection to soldiers in their non-military problems. (3) In the years 1647-8 they almost invari­ably protected soldiers. The only exceptions involved soldiers who refused to submit themselves to the committees for taking accounts. The ordinances had specifically excluded such actions from the jurisdiction of the Indemnity commission. Other groups of peti­tioners (notably excisemen) were quite often refused protection from the courts. (4) The tough action of the commissioners in awarding triple damages against those harassing soldiers may have greatly reduced the number of soldiers taken to court and may have strengthened the resolve of judges to implement the ordinances in the courts. (5) The petitions do confirm the deep hostility felt to­wards the Army by large sections of the civilian population. It underscores all the other evidence recently presented that there was a very real threat of the collapse of order in the summer of 1647. But the greatest threats came not from the Levellers but from the clashes of soldiers and civilians in many garrison towns, in the

39 P.R.O. SP 24/1 fos. 21, 71. 40 P.R.O. SP 24/11, petition of 30 November 1641. 41 P.R.O. SP 24/5 fo. 137. 42 E.g. P.R.O. SP 24/38, petition of Richard Caswall.

64 THE ARMY REVOLT OF 1647

fresh wave of Clubmen or neutralist risings, in the activities of mysterious brigand groups like the Dalesmen and the Mosstroopers of the Scots Border Counties or the Moorlanders of north Stafford­shire.43 This also gives credibility to the desperate attempts of the moderate majority in Parliament in the summer to cut the Gordian knot by disbanding the Army as the probable prelude to a sell-out to the king. (6) And finally, the evidence powerfully suggests that only strong, effective executive action by a centralized, bureau­cratic body exercising droit administratif could protect soldiers and civilians from a backlash in the provinces. Indemnity had not only to be pronounced but effected, and it could only be effected by action at the centre.

III

Parliament's response to the Army's other major concern, the ques­tion of arrears, may have taught the soldiers the same lesson. For from the outset the Army's demands were moderate and realizable. The problem was not so much one of principle as of enforcement. The total volume of arrears was in the region of £2·8m.; arrears for service in the New Model was about £1·2m.44 As late as early June, Fairfax's foot regiment, one of the most militant, declared that it would accept four months' arrears in cash and the rest in deben­tures. Four months' pay for the whole army would have cost less than the amount Parliament borrowed in order to raise a force to get rid of the New Mode1.45 In the Saffron Walden petitions, the regiments concentrated on two other points. Firstly, they demanded a far more effective method of establishing the arrears of each soldier. At that time each soldier's claim had to be established by his presentation of proof of his length of service in each of several armies (perhaps those of Lord Grey, Lord Manchester and the New Model). And he had to certify the extent of his obligations to civilians for free quarter during his service. Most regiments de­manded revised, speedier procedures and a guarantee that no soldier was to be disbanded until his accounts had been audited and arrears certified.

43 Morrill, Revolt, pp. 125-6; D.E. Underdown, Pride's Purge (London, 1970), pp. 38--44,90-5.

44 Gentles, Arrears of Pay of the Parliamentary Army, pp. 54-5. 45 Bodleian Library, Tanner MS. 58 fo. 129. See Gentles, Arrears of Pay and

Ideology, p. 50. At the end of May Parliament increased its cash offer from six to eight weeks.

THE ARMY REVOLT OF 1647 65

Secondly, the regimental papers demanded that Parliament should specify and secure future sources of revenue adequate to pay off the remaining bulk of their arrears.46 In the event, the problem for Parliament was not to specify which revenues should be attached; it was to collect any revenue at all.

Nothing could be done to reduce the volume of arrears. If any­thing they were greater in December 1647 than in May.47 Yet by December Fairfax was asking for a reduction of 18,000 men, and nearly half the army did submit to disbandment uncomplainingly.48 It is crucial to remember that in the Saffron Walden petitions, the soldiers asked not for full payment, but for speedy and effective statement of accounts, and for guarantees of future payment. Parliament concentrated on meeting these conditions.

Ordinances in June and December 1647 radically changed and simplified accounting procedures as they affected the Army.49 In particular, the slow and cumbersome methods whereby every soldier received a debenture only after proving the precise extent of his obligations for free quarter was abandoned in favour of standard reductions from the arrears of everyone (e.g. three shillings per week for foot soldiers, or six shillings and eight pence in the pound for all cavalry officers).so

In an attempt to create resources to pay the Army, the monthly assessment was extended, reformed, and attached firmly for the pay of the Army (23 June), both the excise and customs machinery was overhauled, action was taken against royalists who had not paid the second half of the fines which they were required to pay once their lands had been restored, and the Army was voted money from the sale of episcopal lands. 51 On paper, Parliament had made ade­quate provision for the Army. What went wrong was simply the refusal or inability of the county committees to raise the money voted or at least to hand it over. The City of London in particular collected during 1647 none of the money voted on the monthly assessments. S2 As a desperate measure to meet this crisis, Parlia­ment created on 23 September a new Committee of the Army, con­sisting of most of the New Model's friends in the Houses. This

46 Two clear statements of these points come from the regiments of Colonels Whalley and Boteler; Clarke MS. 41, fos. 112,115.

47 Gentles, Arrears of Pay of the Parliamentary Army, pp. 56-7. 48 I am grateful to Professor Gentles for drawing my attention to this point

and for allowing me to read his unpublished paper 'The Army and the City of London, 1645-8', in which it is discussed.

49 Firth and Rait, Acts, I, 940-8, 956-7, 1051-2. 50 Firth and Rait, ibid., I, 940-8. 51 Firth and Rait, ibid., I, 958-84, 1004-7, 1025-6, 1032-42, 1049-51. 52 Gentles, unpublished article.

66 THE ARMY REVOLT OF 1647

committee was given unprecedented powers to oversee the action of the county committees with respect to assessments. In particular they were given direct powers to fine and imprison defaulting assessors and collectors. An ordinance of 12 October extended to this committee power to collect arrears from two wartime assess­ment ordinances.53 The qualified success of these measures may well account for the quiescence of the Army in the face of the disband­ments of February 1648.

Almost all the other grievances included in the regimental peti­tions in May resolved themselves. The soldiers' right of petitioning was vindicated and the 'Declaration of Dislike', Parliament's de­nunciation of that right, was expunged from the Journals;54 following the collapse of the counter-revolution, eleven leading opponents of the Army were expelled from the Commons.55 Major new ordinances secured the position of ex-apprentices who had served in the Army,56 extended Elizabethan legislation to give succour to war invalids, widows and orphans,57 and restricted the freedom of boroughs to elect or co-opt into office former royalists or neutrals.58 Above all, the problem of the relief of Ireland was com­pletely shelved until 1649, and (except for money voted in December 1647 at the Army's request), nothing was done to help the depleted and demoralized forces which had already served there for years. At no time between July 1647 and the execution of the king did Parliament authorize impressment, and even in 1649 there was no return to the general powers of impressment exercised between 1643 and 1646.

Thus between June and December 1647 a programme of action was worked out which went a long way towards meeting the de­mands of the soldiers as expressed in all their petitions up to early June 1647, when parliamentary action precluded a partnership of the two. At no time did Parliament refuse to meet the soldiers' demands. But in May and June they did insist on an immediate disbandment before the details of the programme had been settled. Nonetheless a series of concessions in those very months (above all in the setting up of the Indemnity Committee) prepared the way for the main series of reforms introduced in August-September and then December 1647. The central feature of this programme was a

53 Firth and Rait, Acts, I, 1025-6. 54 Commons Journal, V, 202; Lords Journal, IX, 247-8. 55 Gardiner, History, ITI, 334-52. 56 Firth and Rait, Acts, I, 1054; Lords Journal, IX, 610. 57 Firth and Rait, ibid., I, 938-40, 997-8, 1055-6; (based on 43 Eliz. c. 3). 58 Firth and Rait, ibid., I, 1009, 1023-4.

THE ARMY REVOLT OF 1647 67

recognition of the hostility of the provincial communities both to the Army and to existing fiscal burdens. Yet the consequent cen­tralization and extended executive action was totally incompatible with Leveller demands and preconceptions. By the time of the Putney debates both officers and rank and file had to make a painful choice.

IV

Colonel Hewson's regiment summed up its grievances thus: 'that unless we be relieved in these our grievances and answered in our just desires before we are disbanded, we fear that we should be hanged like dogs for the good service that we have done this king­dom as many of our fellow soldiers have been already since they were disbanded even for that which they have done in time and place of war and in obedience to the Parliament's commands'. S9

The Army was hated by the local communities. Even the radical county bosses were opposed to a standing army which drained local resources. Petitions against free quarter, against the burden of taxation, against religious libertinism in the Army, poured into Parliament in the early months of 1647. For example, a petition from the previously very Parliamentarian county of Essex ex­pressed the fear of being 'eaten up, enslaved, and destroyed by an army raised for their defence'.6o Above all, the Army was faced by the bitter hostility of the authorities in the City of London, who several times demanded its immediate disbandment, most notably in the Common Council's Humble Representation of December 1646.61 A wave of fresh mutinies across the provinces both height­ened anti-military feelings and reflected the existing poor relations between soldiers and civilians.62 The army leaders had no illusions. If they were to receive their arrears, gain effective indemnity, return to their trades or to husbandry, the soldiers had to rely on a strong central authority and upon determined executive action. This is precisely what the Levellers could not provide. Leveller pamphlets in late 1646 and early 1647 were implicitly anti-army. They railed

S9 Clarke MS. 41, fos. 119-20. 60 Gardiner, History, III, 220. 61 Gentles, unpublished paper, emphasizes the religious motivation behind

the Corporation's opposition to the Army. He cites City of London, Guildhall MSS., Journal of Common Council 40, fos. 199-200. See also the Remonstrance of May 1646 (ibid. fo. 168) and a contemporary comment on its aims, 'in plain terms the disbandment of the army' (Brit.Lib. Thomason Tracts E 340 (20».

62 Morrill, Mutiny, pp. 53-68, Underdown, Pride's Purge, pp. 38-44.

68 THE ARMY REVOLT OF 1647

against the inherent evils of the new, corrupt, centralizing bureau­cracy which had broken the old legal restraints provided by the jury system and by community involvement in the dispensation of justice. The Levellers emphasized the enormous costs of the war: overtaxation, arbitrary methods of taxation and collection, etc. The Army, if not the cause of the oppression of the artisans, craftsmen and tenant-farmers who formed the Levellers' principal constitu­ency, was the main occasion of it. The Army might have experi. enced the same spiritual liberation as the Levellers, but it was seen as part of the bloated, usurping, centralized power which fed on the lifeblood of the people. The Large Petition of March 1647, rightly seen as the most important summary of Leveller objectives up to that time, completely ignored the Army.63 Indeed the thrust of Leveller thought was incompatible with the attainment of the Army's material ends. Here I am saved from false emphasis by the work of Dr. Manning, whose excellent recent account of Leveller ideas, devised to argue a very different case, makes my point for me.64 He shows how the well-known Leveller critique of existing economic and social conditions led them to formulate a plan for the total reconstruction of political institutions. The crucial feature of these reforms, however, was not the election of annual parliaments by manhood suffrage, but a withering away of the state. As he says, 'perhaps the most striking thing about the Agreements [of the People] is what they omit: the lack of reference to executive govern­ment. The central government is almost eliminated'. Instead, England was to be transformed into a federation of self-governing county communities, with popular elections of all local officials -justices, sheriffs, jurors etc. All central courts were to be abolished and replaced by hundredal courts under democratic control. There would be no standing army and no centralized financial institutions. Parliaments would meet regularly, with prescribed terms of refer­ence, to settle matters of common concern, but members would be immediately answerable to their constituents who would also elect triers to examine the members' performance. It is true that this radical programme of decentralization was played down in the Case of the Army Truly Stated, the central text of the Army-Leveller dialogue, but then the whole document is extremely evasive about how the Army's needs could be met. A great deal of the document consists of a confused rhetoric about arrears, and it does concen-

63 n.M. Wolfe, Leveller Manifestoes of the Puritan Revolution (New York, 1944), pp. 138-41.

64 B.S. Manning, The English People and the English Revolution (London, 1976), ch. ix and x.

THE ARMY REVOLT OF 1647 69

trate on describing how corruption in the central organs of power was responsible for the Army's plight. Yet it demanded the aboli­tion or curtailment of precisely those sources of revenue most likely to meet the immediate financial needs of the Army. It called for an end both to excise and sequestrations, and for a moderation of composition fines, for example. The Levellers main solution to the intractable problem of arrears was the sale of bishops' lands (the profits from which had already been fully allocated) and a fresh sale of dean and chapter lands. In addition, the receivers of cus­toms and excise were to be made to disgorge 'their excessive fees and profits', and the London companies to hand over sums tied up in 'dead stocks in . . . the halls and companies'. Even more im­practicably, there was to be an immutable Act of Indemnity and Oblivion but no central committee to enforce it.65 As we have seen, the problem was not to enact indemnity, but to force local courts to acknowledge it. The most direct and imposing Leveller pro­gramme for solving the Army's problems, however, was not the Case of the Army, but Richard Overton's Appeal From the Degener­ate Representative Body of the Commons of England . . . to his Excellency Sir Thomas Fairfax and All the Officers and Soldiers under his Command (July 1647). This contained a pungent attack on droit administratif, and demanded the abolition of all central courts and offices. In particular, 'That all Courts which are not established by the just old Law of the Land: and all illegal offices, and Officers, belonging to the same, and all other vexatious and unnecessary Courts, be abolished by act of Parliament. And that provision be made that for time to come, no Courts or Offices whatsoever may be obtruded upon the free commoners of England, either by Royal Grant, Patent, Act of Parliament, or otherwise contrary to the Old Law of the Land. That according to the old Law and custom of the Land, long before, or sometime after the Conquest, there may be Courts of Judicature for the speedy trial and determination of all causes, whether Criminal or Civil, erected and established in every Hundred ... to be holden once or twice every month ... [and] that all such officers ... to be chosen by the Free Commons, as Mayors, Sheriffs, Justices of Peace etc. may be left to the free election of the people ... .' No institution or person, not even Parliament itself could imprison without cause shown and speedy recourse to trial by jury.66 Nothing could have been further from the minds of those

65 Wolfe, Leveller Manifestoes, pp. 198-222. 66 Printed in G.B. Aylmer, The Levellers in the English Revolution (London,

1975), pp. 83-4.

70 THE ARMY REVOLT OF 1647

who formulated the demands for indemnity in the regimental peti­tions in May.

This is not to deny that Leveller influence had penetrated deeply into the Army in May, June and July. But let us recall the context. Until 25 May, the soldiers were only concerned with their grievances as soldiers. Their regimental petitions at Saffron Walden were almost exclusively concerned with pay, conditions of service and guarantees of security for disbanded men. There was little difference in the demands of the regiments and of the controlling group of officers. It is true that a large minority of 'moderate' junior officers at Saffron Walden were opposed to the articulation even of those demands, but these officers were hopelessly out of touch with rank and file feeling and quickly deserted their regiments, or were dis­missed, at Saffron Walden or in the following weeks. Perhaps one hundred and sixty 'Presbyterian' officers were replaced in the next four weeks. The result was an army in late May united behind Fairfax, Cromwell and Lambert. When Cromwell reported to the Commons that the Army was firmly under the officers' control, and would peacefully disband if the grievances expressed in the Declara­tion were satisfied, he was being perfectly truthfu1.67 As we have seen, these demands were in fact met in the following months: they were not unattainable.

It was Parliament's decision to confront rather than to conciliate which transformed the situation. That decision clearly involved a calculated risk of an army revolt. But it was not totally unreason­able. Politically, the Presbyterian leadership was bidding for the support of the great many 'backbench' Members of Parliament (including a majority of the recruiters) whose primary interest lay in a reduction of the tensions and conflicts in the provinces, exacer­bated as they were by the continuing fiscal burdens and continued existence of quartered troops. The disbandment of the New Model would consolidate the support of such Members of Parliament be­hind the Presbyterians and isolate the Independent caucus further. Subsequently this would aid the Presbyterians in their attempt to reach agreement with the king on their terms. Beyond this, the Presbyterians were themselves genuinely fearful of a counter­revolution in London and the provinces and believed that to give in to the Army would be more likely to produce such a revolt.68

Furthermore their success in disbanding other parliamentarian armies in 1646 suggested that the New Model might be peacefully

67 Gardiner, History, III, 257-8. 68 Mahony, thesis, ch. viii and ix; Underdown. Pride's Purge, pp. 76-81.

THE ARMY REVOLT OF 1647 71

reduced.69 Finally they were not wholly vindictive in th~ir behaviour towards the Army. In late May and early June they did make some concessions to the Army: they increased the amount of money payable on disbandment; they went some way to modify the methods for auditing soldiers' accounts; they made major conces­sions over indemnity; and on 21 May they made promises that no man who had volunteered should be forced to serve abroad, they promised additional help for maimed soldiers, widows and orphans, and they re-emphasized that soldiers could count time spent in the Army towards their period of apprenticeship. But they insisted on immediate disbandment before these concessions had been embodied in ordinances; they declined to meet the other grievances; and they made it clear that they were prepared to use force to dissolve the New Model if necessary.

For the time being, the option of an alliance with the legislature and central executive was denied to the Army. Not surprisingly, the New Model turned with far greater attention and sympathy to the Levellers, who offered a friendly hand, a rhetoric of support (we understand your problem, we are all the victims of the same corrupt power) and a doctrine of popular sovereignty which justified the Army's defiance of Parliament. It explained how the existing legis­lature had become as corrupt and tyrannical as the king had been, and it suggested that power had to be taken away from all future governments, to prevent both kingly or parliamentary tyranny. It was not only the rank and me who were taken up with Leveller ideas. The officers' own ideas, as reflected in the petition of 14 June or in the terms which they offered to the king, the Heads of the Proposals, represent a diluted but recognizable Leveller inspira­tion. The demands for Parliaments of fixed duration, and for the decentralization of local and judicial offices come straight from earlier Leveller tracts. In particular, the statement in the Declara­tion of 14 June that 'all authority is fundamentally seated in the office and but ministerially in the persons' is related to the crucial Leveller claim that all representatives were directly answerable to a sovereign people.70 Thus in the ensuing weeks, there was no prospect of a compliant Parliament, and both officers and men were obsessed with the need to destroy the power of the existing body. The Levellers had not split the Grandees from the rank and me.

The resolution of the crisis by the military coup d'etat in early August transformed the situation. Almost immediately, Parliament

69 Morrill, Mutiny, passim. 70 Brit.Lib., Thomason Tracts E 409(25) 39.

72 THE ARMY REVOLT OF 1647

resumed redressing the original grievances of the Army, particu­larly by the creation of the new Committee of the Army. The Indemnity Commissioners were beginning to gain a reputation for their resolute protection of soldiers hounded by civilian enemies. Now the ambiguities of the Leveller programme began to appear. Neither the Grandees nor the agitators were pressing on with the demands for political reform. They looked increasingly content with the activities of the purged and chastened Parliament. In mid­October, the civilian Levellers returned to the offensive by issuing the Case of the Army Truly Stated. How was it issued? Not by the existing agitators, who never subscribed it, but by agitators newly elected for just five regiments.

This raises a question which has never been answered. These new agitators acted alongside the old ones, and there were allegations that they were unrepresentative even of the regiments they served.71 It is far from clear whether the other regiments and the older agi­tators ever wholeheartedly supported or subscribed to the Case of the Army. The officers agreed to a series of debates on the gist of this document (the Agreement of the People), but it is worth specu­lating whether their agreement to do so was based not so much on a fear of the Levellers as on a belief that they could regain majority support. Certainly their decisive and successful actions after the Putney debates reveal few signs of weakness or lack of confidence. It may be that they simply allowed themselves, briefly, to be out­manoeuvred tactically. I am not suggesting that Leveller support had entirely evaporated amongst the rank and file, simply that the officers had other reasons for fearing the implementation of the Leveller programme beyond their genuine aversion to particular aspects of its constitutional provisions. That is, they could see that the implementation of the Agreement of the People would destroy all the achievements of the previous six months in reducing the material problems of the Army. Thus they sought on the first day of the debates to counter Sexby's demand for an end to the 'rotten studs - I mean the Parliament' by ponderous talk of the Army's commitment to honour existing engagements.72 On this interpreta­tion, their great error of judgement was to allow the debates on the second day to centre around the question of the franchise, possibly because they hoped to exploit the divisions on this question within the Leveller-inclined members of the Council. They had misread

71 Gardiner, History, III, 378. I am grateful to Blair Worden for pointing out to me how little is known about the activities of the different groups of agitators who seem to have coexisted for some months.

72 A.S.P. Woodhouse, Puritanism and Liberty (London. 1938), p. 2 et seq.

THE ARMY REVOLT OF 1647 73

the situation, for this proved to be an emotive issue on which they could not retain the initiative. But note what happened: in Ivan Roots' words, 'the debates went on . . . and discussion went into side issues and dead ends. One senses something of Cromwell and Ireton's satisfaction at this'.73 The debates fizzled out. Furthermore, the Grandees' subsequent actions reveal little evidence of anxiety. They ordered a series of separate rendezvous to sound out rank and file opinion (a repeat of the Saffron Walden procedures). When two regiments attempted to join a rendezvous to which they had not been summoned (carrying Leveller emblems and papers in their caps) Cromwell dispersed them with ease and subsequently had one leader shot. But note several points normally overlooked. The several rendezvous of the Army were held and did accept the offi­cers' proposals for a new petition to be presented to Parliament; there were no more mutinies and no protest after the execution of Arnold, the mutineer; the permanent exclusion of the agitators from the Council of Officers was barely questioned; and within eight weeks 18,000 men quietly disbanded, many of them (those who volunteered during the July crisis) receiving no payment before­hand.74 I find it hard to believe that the rank and file were not reluctantly behind their officers throughout the crisis: that at the Putney debates the Levellers were trying to regain lost ground amongst soldiers who as individuals both felt the force of Leveller ideology, and yet were aware that their essential interests were now being safeguarded by the existing institutions. Of course there was a clash of ideals at Putney; of course the debates witnessed some of the most invigorating and moving moments in the course of the whole Revolution; of course the Levellers were proposing a massive redistribution of power, were demanding the establishment of civil rights and economic freedoms which struck sympathetic chords in the hearts of many soldiers. But their minds and pockets were telling them, day in, day out, that the existing system was now benefiting them; that the urgent needs and requirements discussed earlier in the year had not gone away, but were now being met by strenuous legislative effort and determined executive action. By the time that Fairfax presented the Humble Representation to Parlia­ment on 8 December, I would suggest that it reflected the agreed interests of the whole of the Army as surely as did the officers' petition after Saffron Walden. The Humble Representation, longest

73 I.A. Roots, The Great Rebellion (London, 1965), pp. 119-20. 74 The decision to merge the New Model with other regional forces had

swollen the number of men under Fairfax's command to at least 36,000 men.

74 THE ARMY REVOLT OF 1647

of all the army declarations, was exclusively concerned with bread and butter questions.

The great bulk of it is concerned with arrears. It accepts the need for a reduction in the size of the Army, but insists that the griev­ances of the soldiery be met before the disbandment. Although it complains about 'the difficulty and delay of getting things passed in Parliament', it is more critical of 'the neglect or slowness of County committees, assessors, or collectors . . . and through the general backwardness of all (especially in the city of London)'. It next pro­posed an extension of the powers of several existing committees. Above all, it 'propounded a way whereby all the soldiery of the kingdom may be instantly put in a condition of constant pay ... all free quarter (with the abuses, exactions, annoyances and unequal pressure that accompany it) immediately taken off, no further debts of arrears incurred upon the kingdom and that which is already in­curred put in a way to be recovered and overcome in time'. These measures included a temporary increase in the monthly assessment from £60,000 to £100,000, and an increase in the power of the Committee of the Army to supervise collection, with additional local commissioners to be nominated by the Lord General and the army council. Every regiment was to be allocated the revenues of stated counties with power to 'assist' in the collection. Recently introduced procedures for stating accounts were to be continued and extended. For the securing of future payment of arrears, more money should be allocated from the composition fines (they ask for two-thirds of all receipts), and dean and chapter lands should be sold. The petition acknowledged that the only secure form of in­demnity was for soldiers to 'fly to some committee or commissioners for relief': and they asked for an extension of the system which had been in operation since June. Local committees were to be created under the control of the Grand Committee, the new com­missioners to 'be such as ordinarily reside in the respective counties and mixed of such as have been military officers of Parliament together with such as have appeared active and faithful for the Parliament in the late War, for which purpose we shall (if admitted) offer names'. The petition also seeks the transfer of responsi­bility for the relief of maimed soldiers, widows and orphans from the Justices of the Peace to the commissioners for indemnity; tougher action to secure the rights of apprentices who had served in the Army, and fresh guarantees against the future impressment of men who had served in the first war. The rights of ex-soldiers were clearly distinguished in this clause from the rights of others.75

75 Lords Journal, IX, 556-63.

THE ARMY REVOLT OF 1647 75

By early December, the Army was asking for more of what it had already been given. This programme is totally incompatible with Leveller objectives. Furthermore, Parliament passed a series of measures on 24 December which went a long way towards meeting these demands. It launched a fresh and largely successful in­centive scheme to bring in arrears of assessment; the Army was voted additional money from the excise (the tax most hated by the Levellers); the demand for two-thirds of all composition fines was conceded; more money was allocated from the sale of episcopal lands (though no move was yet made to sell the capitular lands); the Army's desire for the auditing of soldiers' accounts to be under­taken by the Committee of Army was gratified, and the rates of de­duction for free quarter lowered; a fresh ordinance for the relief of war victims was passed (though it did not go so far as the petitioners had asked) and the Indemnity Committee was empowered to en­force the ordinances regarding former apprentices. Parliament accepted the Army's suggestion as to the reduction in the number of soldiers.76 Within two months 18,000 men had quietly disbanded­some of them77 receiving no arrears, others precisely the amount parliament had offered at the end of May 1647. There were no mutinies.

Throughout the spring and summer of 1648 the Army was quiesc­ent. Yet succeeding events went some way to vindicate the fears of the Presbyterian caucus in the spring of 1647. The alliance of Parliament and Army required an extension of fiscal demands and further extensions of centralized institutions running roughshod over customary local institutions and practices. They helped to provoke the counter-revolution which Presbyterians had always feared. The aims of most of those groups whose revolts are given the collective title 'the second civil war' had much less to do with the restoration of the king than with the reassertion of provincial independence and a shedding of the burdens and bureaucracy of war. The second civil war came closer to expressing the Clubmen philosophy than the royalist one. Or so I have assessed elsewhere.78

Parliament received little active support except from the Army. Passivity and reluctant collaboration were more characteristic of the response of local communities than was resolute enthusiasm.

Everywhere we are forced back to the problems of the relation­ship between the centre and localities. Everywhere we find evidence

76 Firth and Rait, Acts, I, 1048-62. 77 Gentles, unpublished paper, citing Brit.Lib., Thomason Tracts E 419(17),

E 420(2), E 421(13), E 429(10), E 520(11 and 14). 78 Morrill, Revolt, pp. 125-31,206-8. See also A.M. Everitt, The Community

of Kent and the Great Rebellion (Leicester, 1966), pp. 231-70.

76 THE ARMY REVOLT OF 1647

that this tension provides a context within which historians must examine the Army revolt of 1647. By separating out the particular problems posed by this context I have doubtless distorted the over­all picture. For too little has been said about the king; parlia­mentary politics and groupings within the Army have been over­simplified; the appeal of the Levellers to the economic interests, even perhaps (though I doubt it) to the 'class' interests of the common soldier, has been ignored. Yet I hope that in addition to drawing attention to a neglected aspect of the Army's history in 1647, I have shaken a few assumptions. Above all, I have sought to challenge the assumption of a self-evident identity of interest be­tween civilian Leveller and soldier. Parliament, with its newly developed structure of centralized, executive committees with para­legal powers and unchecked jurisdictions was offering the Army its bread and butter. The Levellers offered them ideological jam. The Army could not have both. It had to choose. Would it be surprising if the great majority chose bread and butter? Soldiers may not live by jam alone.

February:

March:

April:

May:

June:

July:

August:

THE ARMY REVOLT OF 1647

APPENDIX I

THE ARMY REVOLT OF 1647

Scots paid off and go home. Initial parliamentary decision to reduce army to 5,400.

77

Parliament plans to send part of army to Ireland, part to be disbanded. Declaration of Dislike passed (ban on army petitions).

London militia remodelled as start of counter-revolution. Army agitators elected.

Leveller interest in the Army begins in earnest. Army Debates at Saffron Walden lead to full statement of material grievances. Officers report Army under control and willing to disband if concessions are made. (25) House of Commons vote immediate disbandment.

(4) Army seizes the king. (14-23) Leveller-influenced general political demands by the Army. (23-27) Conciliatory moves by Parliament forestall con­frontation.

Counter-revolution in London forces Parliament's hand. Army debates at Reading again postpone confrontation. Radicals in Parliament flee to the Army.

Army occupies London.

September: Army and Parliament cooperate to resolve original military grievances.

October:

November:

December:

February 1648:

Levellers denounce backsliding by the Grandees (Case of the Army Truly Stated, and a digest of its constitutional provisions, Agreement of the People).

Army debates on the Leveller Proposals (The Putney De­bates). Agitators subsequently silenced. Army council re­constituted without them. Mutiny by two regiments easily suppressed.

Grandees present fresh Remonstrance restating the original material grievances of the Army. Parliament acquiesces.

18,000 soldiers peacefully disband.

78 THE ARMY REVOLT OF 1647

APPENDIX II

ARMY GRIEVANCES AT SAFFRON WALDEN, MID-MAY 1647 Based on the returns of eleven regiments. The number of regiments in-cluding each item is given in brackets. Each item taken up in the Report of the Council of Officers is indicated by the symbol @.

Number of Nature of Grievance Regiments

1 Arrears. Demands for new accounts procedures/ for 12-16 weeks cash/for guaranteed future pay-ment of residue. 10 @

2 Ireland. Resistance to conscription for service there/and to serving under officers nominated by Parliament. 5

3 Indemnity. From prosecution in the courts for actions done 'in time and place of war' / 9@

3A The particular case of Ensign Nicholls. 7@

4 Impressment. Freedom from, for men who had freely enlisted in the past. 6@

5 Petitioning. Vindication of the soldiers' rights to/ denunciation of the parliamentary 'Declaration of Dislike' and censure of particular officers. 11@

6 Purge. Of all ex-royalists and neutrals still in office, particularly in the towns. 7@

7 Free Quarter. Clearer regulation of. 7@

8 Corruption. Demand for investigations of misuse of public funds by civilian commissioners. Gen-eral hostility to county committees. 4

9 Pensions. For maimed soldiers, widows and or-phans of parliamentarian soldiers. 4@

10 Apprenticeships. Ex-apprentices who have served in the Army to be granted full freedom of their trades or crafts. 5@

11 Religion. Demand for freedom of worship/de-nunciation of the Covenant/attack on the works of Thomas Edwards and other vituperative Pres-byterians. 3@

12 Law Reform. 2

13 Others. 2

4. Holland's Financial Problems (1713-1733) and the Wars against Louis XIV*

J. AALBERS

THE naive image of the Periwig Period once projected in Dutch historiography has recently undergone a gradual and subtle meta­morphosis. We have learnt that it is better to speak of a time of stagnation and one which, moreover, can be traced back to the second half of the seventeenth century, conventionally eulogized in the past as the Golden Age. So far the revision has been chiefly concerned with the economic and demographic aspects. Although such scholars as Charles Wilson and A.M. van der W oude have made interesting observations on the part played by public finance in the process of stagnation, it still awaits proper investigation. As an old-fashioned political historian I can hardly be expected within the scope of this lecture to make good this lacuna. However, pre­cisely because of my experience as a political historian, I am con­vinced that a thorough study of Dutch public finance in this period can be very enlightening. While conducting my research into the background of the foreign policy of the Republic after 1713 I was impressed by the extent to which the financial predicament of the

II This paper is based on source material drawn in the first place from the Algemeen Rijksarchief in The Hague (the archives of the Grand Pensionaries Heinsius, Van Hoornbeeck and Slingelandt, the Greffier Fagel and the Financie van Holland). From the municipal record offices of Amsterdam and Alkmaar we have consulted the correspondence between the deputies to the States in The Hague and the burgomasters and from the record offices of Haarlem, Leiden, Gouda and Gorinchem the minutes of the meetings of the provincial estates. I also consulted certain collections for Delft and Dordrecht. The following foreign archives also yielded useful information: the Public Record Office and the British Library, the Archives des Affaires Etrangeres of the French Ministry for Foreign Affairs (Correspondance de Hollande) and the Bibliotheque Nationale (collection Helvetius) in Paris. For more complete references see my forthcoming doctoral thesis entitled De Republiek en de vrede van Europa. De buitenlandse politiek van de Republiek der Verenigde Nederlanden en haar achtergronden na de vrede van Utrecht, voornamelijk gedurende de jaren 1720-1733.

80 HOLLAND'S FINANCIAL PROBLEMS (1713-1733)

province of Holland appeared to determine that policy. Inparticular, the preference for neutrality needs to be seen against the background of the acute financial difficulties of the Republic's leading province. In the historiography these neutralist tendencies have been vari­ously judged: where some historians have criticized the inertia of Dutch foreign policy, others have described it more positively as 'pro­Dutch'. For myself I would avoid both terms, since they imply a freedom of choice, which, in reality, the United Provinces no longer possessed. The great financial difficulties in large measure dictated a policy of non-alignment. Since these difficulties were the result of the Republic having been at war with France almost uninterrup­tedly between 1672 and 1713, my research can claim some kinship with the theme of this conference. Nevertheless I realize that I can do only partial justice to 'War and Society', for I wish to concen­trate attention on the financial repercussions of the wars against Louis XIV.

Since the France of Louis XIV, which had been aiming at 'a universal monarchy and religion', advanced its frontiers during the wars after 1672, the Republic had had to meet the challenge as best it could. Whereas the Dutch considered themselves as primarily a maritime power during the period 1650 to 1672, the Republic was forced after this to fight a land war. The United Provinces had to do its duty on the continent, because the French threat had become a harsh reality. The war on land was, after all, for the Republic a war in a neighbouring country: the Southern Netherlands. But the burden of fighting a continental war exhausted the Republic. During the War of the Spanish Succession it had maintained an army of over a hundred thousand men, and, by the end of the war, this had grown to a hundred and thirty thousand men, far beyond its means. In addition the Republic had borne the heavy costs of capturing, repairing and maintaining many important towns. Nor should we overlook the subsidies and loan guarantees provided by the Re­public for several allied princes.

Mter the Republic's exertions on the continent the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht proved a bitter disappointment to the Dutch. The original purpose of the war had been achieved: France had, indeed, been pushed back. But as a result of the 'Tory betrayal' Great Britain was the principal beneficiary, acquiring Gibraltar, Minorca, large parts of north America and extensive commercial advantages in Spain's overseas possessions, among these the famous asiento. The passivity of the States of Holland, their policy of waiting and watching, furnished the opportunity for this 'Tory betrayal'. The War of the Spanish Succession therefore acquired a

AND THE WARS AGAINST LOUIS XIV 81

traumatic quality the effect of which was felt for a long time after­wards.

By 1713 the Republic was then financially exhausted after three protracted and very costly wars with France. The burden of debt had grown so heavy, and the provinces were so far in arrears with their payments that in 1715 the Public Treasury of the Union had to suspend payments for nine months, which severely damaged the reputation of the Republic. When it reopened, confidence was not restored because the interest paid on federal loans was reduced from 4 to 3 per cent.

Several provinces were behind with their contributions, as laid down under the old system of quotas (i.e. fixed percentages); the province of Friesland, in particular, complained that its assessment was unreasonable. The provinces dependent on farming were already in serious straits, since the relative increase in taxes coincided with declining prices for agricultural produce and falling rents. Worse still, in these same years the finances of these provinces were thrown into confusion by very severe flooding, so that heavy addi­tional taxes for the repair of dikes were required, and by outbreaks of cattle-plague. Therefore they were less able than usual to heed the warnings and entreaties of the Council of State. No wonder even after 1715, the Public Treasury of the Union found itself facing a grave financial crisis, whenever the interest on loans negotiated by the Union had to be paid. It often looked as though a second closure of the Treasury would be unavoidable.

In the past Holland had always come to the rescue of the Public Treasury of the Union, by advancing money on behalf of the other provinces, which paid slowly or not at all. Holland could always be counted on by the Union and this gave it a dominant influence in the Republic. After 1713 it was usually Holland that most strongly supported the Union and, in an emergency, the Receiver-General of the confederation always applied first to Holland. Even now Holland tried to keep the Public Treasury of the Union afloat to the best of its abilities. On many occasions the province, which already paid 58 per cent of the expenses of the Union, saved it from closing down for a second time. Nevertheless HoIland, too, faced very great financial difficulties, and this gave right-minded regents in the other provinces cause for concern.

During the War of the Spanish Succession the States of Holland had been obliged to borrow on a grand, even excessive, scale, be­cause the taxes, which were already steep, could not cover even half the costs of the war. Consequently the debts had mounted spectacu­larly. The wars with France and England put Holland in debt to

82 HOLLAND'S FINANCIAL PROBLEMS (1713-1733)

the tune of over thirty-eight million guilders, and the cost of the War of the League of Augsburg came to twenty-eight million guilders. But the War of the Spanish Succession increased the debts of Holland by a further one hundred and twenty-eight million guilders. The States of the province had been forced themselves to borrow astonishingly large sums. Moreover, these debts did not in­clude the fifteen million guilders, negotiated for Holland on the credit of the Union. These large sums were raised without any kind of sinking fund being created, to pay even the interest, let alone repay the capital. Each time a new loan was contracted, the im­portance of such a fund had been underlined, but the desperate financial plight had made this impossible. Consequently there was, throughout the War of the Spanish Succession, a permanent shortage of money to pay the interest; later, after contracting loans, great efforts had to be made in order to find resources to bear the heavy interest and to make the repayments. During the last years of the war the situation had worsened dramatically. At first it had been fairly easy to raise loans on the security oflife annuities, redeemable annuities and '20 year interests' (loans to the government which attracted a high rate of interest for 20 years).

After 1710 it proved impossible to provide the necessary funds by floating new loans, and Holland turned to lotteries as the best means of finding money quickly: three lotteries, worth twenty-four million guilders, were held in June 1711, January 1712 and February 1713. But the remedy proved worse than the disease, for the conditions of the draw were very unfavourable. It was only with the greatest effort and the use of such dubious devices that Holland managed to keep its head above water by the end of the war. As a result of having raised so many loans, the Public Treasury of the province was acutely embarrassed, for in order to sustain such onerous debts more money than ever before was needed. Furthermore, the millions raised by the 'lottery loans' were scarcely sufficient to meet the recurrent expenditure of the war. During the last few years of the war the finances of Holland were on the verge of collapse. Fagel, the greffier of the States General, correctly maintained that the State had for too long been burdened by debt, during the War of the Spanish Succession, and had been plucked from all sides, so much so that little was left but a carcass. The underlying sense of tragedy is obvious here.

After 1713 the States of Holland had the task of meeting the interest charges on negotiated life annuities, redeemable annuities and bonds bearing interest for 20 years, as well as the payment and redemption of the lotteries. Together these amounted to some

AND THE WARS AGAINST LOUIS XIV 83

fourteen million guilders annually. The entire 'ordinary revenue', derived from a real property tax known as the verponding, which was levied on seigneurial rights, estates and houses and also on government securities and shares in the East and West India Com­panies, the gemene middelen (excise duties), the 20e en 40e penningen (taxes on inheritances and sales of real property), the klein zegel collectief(a stamp duty), the taxes on weddings and burials, the 40e penning on furnishings and the discounts on offices, this entire 'ordinary revenue' was insufficient to cover the interest payments on all these burdens. In 1719, for example, the States of Holland were still more than 1,200,000 guilders short of what was required. The deficit was further aggravated by certain other expenses, the huis­lasten (the day-to-day expenses of the States of Holland), Holland's quota of the military budget and the interest to be paid on loans raised by the Public Treasury of the Union. These were known collectively as the 'ordinary expenses'. Contemporaries found this deficit both strange and alarming, for before the War of the Spanish Succession Holland had been able in peacetime to meet all the 'ordinary' expenses from the 'ordinary' revenues. But in 1719 the 'ordinary' expenses exceeded the 'ordinary' revenues by no less than 8,700,000 guilders, and this even though the army had been more drastically reduced after 1713 than after the Peace of Rijswijk.

To make good the shortfall in the 'ordinary' revenues the States of Holland was obliged to continue the 'extraordinary' taxes in peacetime. It was decided, though, in December 1713 to drop one of the two rei!le en personele lOOe penningen (extraordinary taxes on real property and personal wealth, the gegoedheid), so that the in­habitants might enjoy, to some degree, the benefits of peace after a long and hard war, but that was the only concession. Between 1714 and 1719 one lOOe penning reifel en personeel and an addi­tional 200e penning on government securities, company shares and offices were levied; these brought in rather more than half the amount raised by the 'extraordinary' taxes in wartime.

Nor could the deficit in the 'ordinary' taxes simply be made up by prolonging the 'extraordinary' taxes. In 1719 a deficit of more than 1,600,000 guilders remained and even this did not reflect the full gravity of the situation, because two dubious solutions had been employed to keep it as low as this. The first expedient was that, following a resolution of 15 December 1714, the so-called new government securities, which had been hitherto exempt from 'extra­ordinary' taxation were now made liable. In Amsterdam it was believed that this might damage the credit and good faith of the

84 HOLLAND'S FINANCIAL PROBLEMS (1713-1733)

country and Slingelandt, secretary to the Council of State, certainly felt that this measure had undermined public confidence. On 21 December 1715 the States of Holland resolved to reduce by 934,916 guilders the annual charges of 1,815,000 guilders (set aside for the annual prizes), which resulted from the three lotteries of 1711,1712 and 1713. This conversion ofa proportion of the annual prizes into long-term debt was so damaging to the finances, that one is inclined to suppose that the States of Holland had merely adopted a stopgap measure without considering the future implications. To obtain a more honest impression of the deficit one should therefore add 934,916 guilders to the figure of 1,600,000 guilders, so that the total deficit in 1719 was more than 2,500,000 guilders. Even so, this does not include the running debts, on which no interest was paid, such as the backpay of the army, the outstanding subsidies to the Admiralties, the arrears due to the purveyors and contractors and, finally, the subsidies still owing to foreign rulers.

In spite of the heavy taxes and the questionable methods em­ployed Holland still had a deficit in peacetime. Towards the close of Heinsius' career as Grand Pensionary of the States of Holland, the situation had become so desperate that debts were scarcely ever re­deemed. There were fears that in the event of another unexpected war Holland would be quite unable to match the contributions it had made previously, even were the 'extraordinary' taxes to be raised once more to the levels reached during the War of the Spanish Succession. This was an even greater problem, because it was thought that credit could no longer be relied on to supply the deficit, after the excessive use made of it during the war. Despite the poverty of the public finances there was still much private wealth in the country. Horace Walpole noticed this in Amsterdam, 'there being more money in particular hands of that city than ever was known, which is now lent out upon good security for I t and 2 at the most per cent'. Foreign envoys might well have held the view that, once the worst years were past, the States of Holland could, in the case of a new war, tap these sources of private capital. But the States saw matters differently. True, every now and then they floated medium size loans but this was only a stopgap. In the ab­sence of a sinking fund to pay interest charges (and also the princi­pal) the commissioners, who investigated the finances, came in 1721 to the conclusion that the negotiation of fresh loans offered no solution. So the state would remain poor in spite of the great private wealth in the country.

Although it was essential to put Holland's finances on a sound footing again, this was prevented by the serious defects in the exist-

AND THE WARS AGAINST LOUIS XIV 85

ing system of taxation. These may be summed up as the problem of inegaliteit (i.e. non-uniformity in levying taxes). The gemene midde/en (the excise duties which were farmed) bore heavily on the population. During the wars against Louis XIV some of the already numerous excises had been raised and new ones added; then, as a temporary measure all the imposts were increased by 10 per cent, and this surcharge was then retained. In the years following the Peace of Utrecht the excise duties brought in some eight million guilders annually in the Zuiderkwartier (i.e. Holland south of the river IJ), and for the whole province the total proceeds in 1719 ex­ceeded nine million guilders. In Holland the imposts on essential commodities more than quadrupled the original price of the pro­ducts, so that further increases were scarcely conceivable.

The deputies of Leiden often declared in the assembly of the States of Holland that the burden of the excises was already un­bearably heavy for the impoverished commonalty. In 1731 they urged the States to reduce the imposts on such vital commodities as bread, meat, beer and peat, and they attributed the exodus of the inhabitants and the decline of industries to the same exorbitant excises. Isaac van Hoornbeeck, who had succeeded Heinsius as Grand Pensionary, took the same view. Without doubt the excises drove up the cost of living. As a consequence, wages in Holland were relatively higher than those of other countries, so that the competitive position of Dutch industrial goods on the European market was weakened. A connection between the increasing burden of excise duties during the French wars and the economic stagna­tion certainly existed. Though it would be mistaken to ascribe the stagnation in the economy solely to the high level of indirect taxa­tion, this fiscal aspect, which attracted the attention of Charles Wilson already in 1963, deserves to be studied more closely by Dutch economic historians.

It may have been impracticable to increase the excise duties, but these duties could have been made to yield more, if fraud had not been so widespread. This can be attributed in the main to the lack of a uniform levy: as a rule the magistrates only maintained and supported the duties, insofar as these were considered to be in the best interest of their town, in the hope of attracting new citizens or, at least, of dissuading residents from migrating elsewhere, and also to safeguard local trades. As long as the magistrates were concerned only for the narrow advantage of their town and cared little for the commonweal, there was no chance whatsoever of introducing uni­form excise duties.

In the past the States of Holland had thought they could combat

86 HOLLAND'S FINANCIAL PROBLEMS (1713-1733)

this inegaliteit by obliging regents, ministers, officers and courts to take an oath to uphold the edicts. However the frequent recourse to such resolutions clearly shows that the measures were ineffective. Although the Gecommitteerde Raden (the standing committee of the States of Holland) were charged to see that the edicts were properly enforced, this body was ill-suited to the task. A uniform levying of excise duties could, in fact, not be achieved until an im­partial judge had been appointed, able, if need be, to call to book regents, who had either practised fraud themselves, or condoned it in their fellow citizens. But existing political and social attitudes and ideas rendered proposals along these lines wholly unacceptable.

The same problem of inegaliteit bedevilled the 'extraordinary' taxes which had also to be increased greatly as a consequence of the costly wars against France. An especially onerous tax to be intro­duced was the lOOe penning reifel en personeel (the extraordinary tax on real property and private wealth, the gegoedheid), which after 1702 was levied no less than twice a year. Nor should we forget that the hapless taxpayer had to meet the increased fiscal demands at a time when the prices for his agricultural produce and his income from rents were falling. The basis for the assessment of both the verponding (the ordinary tax on real property) and the reeie lOOe penning (the extraordinary tax on real property, in effect an extra­ordinary verponding) had been fixed as long ago as 1632: I2l per cent of the rental value in the case of houses and 20 per cent of the value of lease for estates. In neither case did the taxes take in account of subsequent price fluctuations or changes in the relative economic strength of the towns. Consequently these taxes on real property had given rise to glaring inequalities.

During the first half of the seventeenth century all the towns of Holland prospered, but it was a different story after 1650. The trade with the Mediterranean and the Baltic, in which the towns of Holland's Noorderkwartier had formerly participated, became in­creasingly concentrated in Amsterdam until, eventually, that town monopolized them. Likewise, the traffic on the river Maas had shifted, for the greater part, from the older trading centres to Rotterdam. With the price for agricultural produce falling on the international market and the taxes for the upkeep of the dikes in­creasing, because the threat of flooding by the sea and the rivers was growing in this period, the value of estates declined, the country­side became poorer and the trade in the country towns languished. The outbreaks of cattle-plague in the eighteenth century further aggravated their wretched situation. Furthermore, during the wars against France the garrisons left the frontier towns of Holland for

AND THE WARS AGAINST LOUIS XIV 87

the 'barrier' fortresses in the Southern Netherlands, and this meant another severe blow to the trade of these towns on the borders of Holland.

The contraction in the economy was closely bound up with the catastrophic drop in the population of Holland's Noorderkwartier. In the Zuiderkwartier of the province there was demographic stag­nation, even a slight fall in the countryside, and a more pronounced decline in almost all the towns of the region, except Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Schiedam. It was to these towns that the population had gravitated. Amsterdam drew people from all over the country, but above aU from towns and villages of the Noorderkwartier. As the delegates to the States of Holland from Gorinchem put it:

the trade, prosperity and population of the city of Amsterdam has in­creased so greatly, that it has now become one of the wonders of the whole world, and Rotterdam has grown considerably, but all the other towns (apart from a few, which have maintained their position, thanks to well-established industries, or the great wealth of their inhabitants) have declined so far that hardly any trace of their former prosperity remains.

This trend was reflected in the diminishing rental value of the houses in the towns that were in decline and in the decreasing value of leases in the case of country estates. But as no revision of the assess­ment list was made, the taxes on real property had become more onerous than they otherwise would. On its own the ordinary ver­ponding - 12! per cent of the rental value in 1632 - often represented more than half the rental value by the eighteenth century. So if in peacetime a lOOe reele penning (an extraordinary verponding) was levied in addition to the ordinary verponding, it was possible that the amount of tax would exceed the income, and during the War of the Spanish Succession two such extraordinary verpondingen had been levied! Inability to pay these taxes obliged owners increasingly to sell out, in many cases with the unfortunate result that no pur­chasers could be found, or the houses were knocked down for prices, which were far lower than the taxes that were due. The new owners, in their turn, were usually no better placed to pay the ver­pondingen, so that the houses had to be put on the market again. Often such properties did not find buyers at the second auction, and they would be declared of no value and pass into the ownership of the province. The same fate also befell abandoned houses. Only a minority of the houses that became the property of the province could be leased, so that the bulk fell into ruin. These dilapidated and derelict houses had to be pulled down before too long because of the

88 HOLLAND'S FINANCIAL PROBLEMS (1713-1733)

risk of accidents. It was the same story with landed property, where the outgoings exceeded the return on capital.

This happened especially in the Noorderkwartier and the de­clining towns of the southern part of the province. In Gorinchem, for instance, of the 1,778 houses listed in the register of 1632, only 1,209 were still in private ownership in 1721 and by 1724 the number had dropped to 978. Already by 1680 there were 775 fewer houses in Haarlem than in 1632. As a result the town had to find an additional 6,000 guilders from the municipal treasury for each verponding: through the years Haarlem paid several hundred thousand guilders to the province in ordinary and extraordinary verpondingen than had, in fact, been collected. It was a heavy drain on municipal finances. No wonder Haarlem decided in 1716 that its consent to the verponding and the reiile lOOe penning would, in future, depend on the amount collected by the burgomasters. Other towns followed Haarlem's example and gave only limited consent to the taxes, so that in a short space of time the arrears - known as the restanten -mounted rapidly.

To towns in this plight, Amsterdam's insistence that a supreme effort should be made to payoff arrears must have sounded nothing short of hypocritical. For in fiscal matters the interests of Amster­dam diverged sharply from those of the other towns: still growing in wealth and size, that city benefited from the retention of the assessment list of 1632. The other towns could point to the great discrepancy between Amsterdam's share in the imposts, which amounted to 33 per cent or more, and the contribution of only 18 per cent to the verponding, as proof of the fiscal absurdity. Amster­dam had then an undeniable stake in avoiding any revision of the old assessment lists and preventing new taxes, which might remove the advantage the town enjoyed under the existing quota system. Each year the city fought stubbornly for the continuation, as far as possible, of the existing fiscal arrangements. But at the end of 1713 it had reluctantly to accept that one of the two lOOe penningen should be reduced. Concerted opposition from a growing number of towns forced Amsterdam in 1720 to be content with a 200e penning on landed property. But even after this date the lOOe penning on houses remained.

A similar divergence of interests existed with the tax on capital known as the lOOe penning personeel. This tax on private fortunes (gegoedheid) was based on the value of annuities, government securities, shares, houses, seigneurial rights, tithes and other prop­erty assessed in the verponding. Once again the assessment was based on an outdated register, which had not been revised since 1674, so

AND THE WARS AGAINST LOUIS XIV 89

that by the early eighteenth century this had given rise to many anomalies. Inegaliteit occurred for the following reasons. Certain families listed in the register had died out and the fortunes of others had, in the meanwhile, declined, though these were still expected to pay the sum laid down in 1674. Conversely, other families had pros­pered and were, therefore, underrated, while the nouveaux riches might not figure at all. The towns suffering economic and demo­graphic decline were convinced that, while their inhabitants were penalized, many living in Amsterdam escaped scotfree. In their opinion the retention of the unrevised register of 1674 meant that their own old families, who bore the brunt of taxation, would con­tinue to decline, whereas so many families in Amsterdam were underassessed or not assessed at all. There was some justice in the complaint that these Amsterdam dynasties were 'very wealthy people, who make great profits by controlling their own capital, making it available to private persons or for trade, evade the taxes needed by the province, while they watch on, mercilessly, as their fellow-citizens collapse under the burden of those taxes'.

Haarlem, especially, was forever pressing for a revised register of the lOOe penning personeel, because this would allow the old fam­ilies, whose wealth lay in real property, to obtain some respite; in this way they might set off their assessment for the lOOe penning personeel against their payment of the taxes on real estate. Haarlem, along with other towns, wanted either to revise the 1674 assessment or to scrap it altogether. As well as taxing newly acquired wealth and relieving older families, who were overtaxed, a revised list could also serve as the basis for a compulsory loan in emergency. This was a strong argument in favour of making a fresh assessment, for in the event of another war, it was thought that Holland could only raise money on interest by means of such forced loans. Once again Amsterdam did its best to frustrate any endeavour to change the fiscal status quo. When the delegates of Haarlem insisted that the commissioners ofthe States of Holland should be entrusted with the revaluation of the assessment of 'the oldest, most fundamental and, in an emergency, most profitable tax', their counterparts from Amsterdam declared they could see no point in such a proposal. The arguments employed by Amsterdam in support of the existing state of affairs were little more than attempts to rationalize its understandable reluctance to see the advantages it enjoyed under the old register taken away by the commissioners of the States of Holland. But the city had other important grounds for fearing a re­vision of the lOOe penning personeel carried out by the commissioners. The British ambassador, Cadogan, observed that Amsterdam

90 HOLLAND'S FINANCIAL PROBLEMS (1713-1733)

refused to consent to any revision 'out of an apprehension that the new tax might affect their trade'. Amsterdam was fearful that any revaluation, which was not controlled by the municipal authorities, might deter merchants from settling in Amsterdam or drive others from the city. After having tried and failed to force Amsterdam to have the register of 1674 revised, Haarlem and the other towns changed their tactics, and, eventually, they succeeded in having the old assessment list withdrawn.

The conflict between Amsterdam and the other towns concerning a revision of the 1632 register, which would have undone the ine­galiteit in the unequal levying of the verponding and the lOOe pen­ning reifel, was however exacerbated in the 1720s. At this time Amsterdam started to advocate an active foreign policy, because of the danger represented by the Ostend Trade Company. The other towns seized on this issue, because they thought they had found a lever to force Amsterdam to meet them over the inegaliteit. The towns, whose economies were either stagnant or in decline, took fright at any aggressive policy that might lead to the levy of a new lOOe penning reeel, before the more prosperous towns, and Amster­dam in particular, had provided for a more equitable distribution of the fiscal burden. Amsterdam was indeed suspected of wanting to dominate the other towns of Holland in the same way as Venice had done towards the terra firma. This could be achieved, if Amsterdam were able to precipitate a rupture with the emperor, Charles VI. By acceding to the Treaty of Hanover the Dutch East India Company would have been given a free hand against the Ostend Trade Com­pany. In commerce, where Amsterdam had the largest stake, the city could in that way take the law into its own hands at the expense of the other towns. Any aggravation ofthe already inequitable fiscal system would, in fact, simply give Amsterdam yet another oppor­tunity to lure people away from the overtaxed towns to the com­mercial capital of the province. Dordrecht, Haarlem and other towns therefore made their co-operation in the field of foreign policy conditional on Amsterdam making concessions on the matter of the tax register. In this way concessions were wrung from Amsterdam, though it was not until the 1730s that the commissioners of the States of Holland revalued the verponding on houses.

Looking at the fiscal organization as a whole, we can readily appreciate why contemporaries should suppose that the most im­portant, perhaps the only, means to preserve the state, was the achievement and maintenance of egaliteit in taxation. On the other hand, it was regrettable that the endeavour to put Holland's finances

AND THE WARS AGAINST LOUIS XIV 91

on a sound footing again often came to grief because of disputes about the inegaliteit.

The Grand Pensionary Van Hoornbeeck, unlike his predecessor Heinsius, took an evident interest in the financial problems, but most of his projects for the reorganization of the finances in the period 1720 to 1727 foundered. Because decisions had to be unani­mous, interminable consultations had to take place, so that it was difficult, sometimes impossible, to reach a conclusion. The most urgent warnings of the Grand Pensionary went virtually unheeded, because of the continuous bickering about the inegaliteit. Van Hoornbeeck could do no more than keep the public finances afloat, though, under the circumstances, this was no mean feat.

When in 1725 Slingelandt, the Treasurer-General of the Union, reviewed progress since the Peace of Utrecht and, especially since 1721, when an important report had been drawn up concerning the finances of Holland, he was forced to conclude that no really fundamental decisions, which would assist the reorganization of the finances, had been taken. In his opinion the improvement of certain taxes and the sale of demesnes did not touch the heart of the prob­lem. It was by such measures that Van Hoornbeeck had tried to reorganize the public finances; while Slingelandt acknowledged that, in themselves, these were not unimportant, they still made only a negligible contribution towards the reduction of the huge annual deficits, which were the result of ordinary expenses outstripping ordinary revenue. He observed that the experience of those years had not only shown that the members of the States of Hol1and were quite unable to reach any sort of understanding about the measures required to restore public finance, but that the resistance to change increased, the closer the proposed remedies came to the underlying causes of the problem. Indeed, he thought people had not dared to broach the most fundamental aspects of the financial problems of the province, because they were afraid, or rather because they had decided beforehand, that such drastic proposals would find no favour with influential members in the States. Slingelandt therefore considered that a constitutional solution was essential. The re­organization of public finance was hopeless, unless the constitution of the assembly of the States of Holland were changed first. Accord­ing to him, the States should once more adopt article XIV of the Ordinance of the Assembly (1585). This stated that disputes should be submitted to impartial arbiters, provided two-thirds of the mem­bers gave their consent. Hand-in-hand with this suggestion went his well known proposal for enabling the provinces as a corporate

92 HOLLAND'S FINANCIAL PROBLEMS (1713-1733)

body to reach decisions swiftly and to ensure the proper implemen­tation of the resolutions of the States General.

As Grand Pensionary in succession to Van Hoornbeeck, Slinge­landt tried after 1727 to persuade the States of Holland to allow either the submission and arbitration of disputes or the overruling of a recalcitrant minority by at least fifteen members, who would include representatives from a certain number of the larger towns. In Slingelandt's view the members had to choose between the re­organization of the provincial finances on these lines, and the down­fall of the system of free government by the States, without a stad­holder. But the Grand Pensionary failed to get these proposals accepted: the small towns were especially jealous of their indepen­dence, while the larger towns were only prepared to adopt them with all sorts of restrictions.

Slingelandt attributed the failure of these projects for the re­organization of the finances to the rejection of his scheme to alter, in advance, the constitution of the assembly of the States of Holland. But we shall not understand the fundamental problems facing the Republic if we look only at the constitutional aspects. Already in the seventeenth century the United Provinces and the province of Holland had been wrestling with the problem of taking decisions; these constitutional flaws notwithstanding, the state had continued to function. Ironically, the wars of the seventeenth century, which were to prove in the long run so disastrous for the finances, had assisted decisive policy-making. It is perhaps not too much to say that war was the motor which kept the Republic going, for the fear of a powerful enemy had forced the provinces as a whole, and especially the towns in the leading province of Holland, to remain united. Sheer necessity had forced these bodies to reach decisions and abide by them, at least where the security of the Republic was concerned, although it has to be admitted that these decisions were not always strictly observed or impartially implemented.

But once peace had been achieved the pressure was off: the engine of state began to slow down perceptibly. Cohesion between the provinces, and within the provinces, was sapped. This, more than the constitutional problem, was one of the principal reasons why the public finances of Holland were not reorganized. Characteristi­cally, the Grand Pensionary Van Hoornbeeck, a serious man and one not given to rash opinions, once complained, in conversation with Chambery, secretary to the French embassy, 'that in order to get his financial projects accepted, he wished the Republic did not suppose that peace abroad was assured'. And this was said by a man

AND THE WARS AGAINST LOUIS XIV 93

who had been far from happy about the war policy during the period 1702-13 and who was continually struggling with the financial consequences of the war! This is indeed a paradoxical situation. Apparently war, or the threat of war, was required to goad the politicians into taking sufficient measures to defray the costs of war. But such a war, or even the threat of war, was also - and here we encounter another paradox - contrary to commercial interests, and, in the absence of any overhaul of the finances, nothing short of disastrous.

5. Municipal Government and the Burden of the Poor in South Holland during the Napoleonic Wars*

S. SCHAMA

I

THE upheavals and indignities which overtook the Dutch Republic at the end of the eighteenth century were, in several respects, the progeny of war. Military reverses had traditionally acted as the trigger of domestic disorder and, save that on this occasion the Stadholder was the intended victim, rather than the beneficiary of the agitation, the 'Patriot revolution' of the 1780s was no exception. The somewhat inglorious course of the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War (1780-84) precipitated a campaign of sustained invective in which the hapless William V, pilloried variously as tyrant or poltroon, was held answerable for the loss of colonies and naval debacle.1 By

• I should like to thank the participants in the sixth Anglo-Dutch Historical Conference, and the members of Professor Richard Cobb's seminar on French history at Worcester College, Oxford, to whom a slightly modified version of this paper was presented, for helpful criticism during discussion.

ABBREVIA TIONS

A.R.A., B.Z. Algemeen Rijksarchief, Archief van Binnenlandse Zaken 1798-1813.

G.A.D. Gemeente-Archief, Delft. G.A.H. Gemeente-Archief, The Hague. G.A.L. Gemeente-Archief, Leiden. G.A.R. Gemeente-Archief, Rotterdam. G.A.S. Gemeente-Archief, Schiedam. G.A.V. Gemeente-Archief, Vlaardingen.

1 In particular, as Admiral-General of the Union the Stadholder was held formally responsible for the ignominious capitulation of St. Eustatius in the Dutch Antilles, and the abortive attempt to rendezvous with the French fleet at Brest. In a more general sense he was held by opinion in the maritime provinces to have unduly favoured the strengthening of the Army at the expense of the re­equipping ofthe fleet. See J.S. Bartstra, Vlootherstel en legeraugmentatie (Assen, 1952), passim. The pungency of the diatribes intensified after 1782 when hostile opinion succeeded in removing the eminence grise Duke Louis of Brunswick -Wolfenbiittel from The Hague. For some of the more typical items of demon­ology see J. Hartog, De Patriotten en Oranje 1747-1787 (Amsterdam,1882), pp.

MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT AND BURDEN OF POOR 95

1785, moreover, the more audacious among the Patriot politicians and journalists had extended their diatribes to the regent oligarchs, accused of pilfering office and degrading national morality by sumptuary excess, venality and nepotism. The manifest incapacity of the Republic to protect its integrity without becoming the cats­paw of the Anglo-French power struggle, engendered odium and apprehension which ripened into revolutionary disaffection.

In 1795, the Batavian Republic owed its establishment even more directly to the arbitration of force when, as one of its tribunes declared 'Providence froze the rivers so that Liberty and General Pichegru might enter the Fatherland unimpeded'.2 In both cases, then, war proved to be the necessary if insufficient condition of the eighteenth-century Dutch revolutions.

There was an associated sense in which the legatees of military vulnerability believed they owed their warrant for rule to the exer­cise of arms. The Patriots of the 1780s, and by no means only the most radical among them, were greatly taken with the idealized image of the citizen-soldier: the incarnation, not merely of martial, but of republican virtues. 'Every burgher must be a warrior' de­creed the influential Patriot newspaper the Post van den Neder­Rhijn 'for that is the lesson of nature'.3 And much of the rhetoric arguing, in pamphlets, broadsides and journals for a wholesale national regeneration drew not only from an authentically native vocabulary of historical and scriptural allusion, but also from the classic repertoire of the republican 'commonwealthman' delineated

167-231. From being dubbed 'malle Willem' (William the simpleton) and an 'obdurate good-for-nothing', he was later compared with Nebuchadnezzar: 'Wat het is cen vrij volk te zijn, Catalogus van de pamflettenverzameling berustende in de Koninklijke Bibliotheek (W.P.c. Knuttel ed., 9 vol., The Hague, 1889-1920) [hereafter Knuttell V, no. 19987; to Rehoboam persecuting the Israelites (A. van der Kemp, Staatkundige aanmerkingen (The Hague, 1783); and described as the instrument chosen by Lucifer to bring hatred, discord and strife to the Netherlands (Haagsehe Correspondent, no. 73, 1786). By the time that the country was in a state of virtual civil war it was commonplace in the Patriot camp to refer to William as 'The Tyrant' or 'The Traitor'.

2 Cited in C.H.E. de Wit, 'La Republique Batave', in Oeeupants-Oeeupes 1792-1815 (Brussels, 1969), p. 146. The politician was Pieter Paulus, the first President of the Batavian National Assembly.

3 See C. te Lintum (ed.), 'Een rotterdamsch gedenkschrift uit den patriot­tentijd en de dagen der revolutie', Bijdragen en mededelingen van het historiseh genootsehap, XXXI (1910), 142. Such sentiments were legion, even in the early phase of the Patriot rebellion. In the Redevoering van F.A. van der Marek (1783), for example it is said that 'to defend freedom and justice it behoves every man to become a soldier', and in the other major Patriot newspaper, the popular Amsterdam Politieke Kruijer in November 1782 (no. 9) an article appealed to the people to 'arm yourselves, all; in that alone will be your strength and your safety; let, ere long, the name of soldier be unknown and exchanged for that of the armed citizen ... '.

96 MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT AND BURDEN OF POOR

by Caroline Robbins, and more recently traced back to its Renais­sance taproots by J.G.A. Pocock.4 As in other eighteenth-century radical critiques of social ossification and political decay, militia was to be the agency by which mere men would be transformed into citizens, and the militiaman cast in the role of chastiser of corrupt faction. The right of citizens to exercise in arms, expressed in the Republic by the foundation of 'Drill Societies' in Utrecht, Dord­recht, Brielle, Rotterdam and many other towns after 1783, was used both as a starting-point from which to challenge the authority of urban oligarchies, and the means by which they might be prised open to electoral accountability.s Once those societies turned into spontaneously mustered 'Free Corps', hundreds or even, in the larger centres, thousands strong, that challenge became alarmingly explicit. Invidious portraits were drawn, sometimes literally in the lampoons and caricatures of the time, between citizen phalanxes sworn before an 'Altar of Liberty' to uphold and defend the tradi­tions of communal freedom, and the mercenary gangs of German hirelings who passed for the regular troops of the Republic. On the one hand there were the verminous swarms of office-hunters bat­tening on the body politic; on the other, the Patriot warrior, up­right and godly, musket at the ready, black cockade in his tricorn, the pure republican blood of Claudius Civilis coursing through his veins, solemnly pledged to the 'good cause' of Liberty or Death.6

The extravagance of Patriot rhetoric was, if anything, made even more ornate by the burgher-tribunes of the Batavian Republic. Though popular militia played a much less important role in the second Dutch revolution than the first, its ideologues apparently believed that the enthronement of popular sovereignty would, ipso facto, generate the authority required to complete the root and branch transformation of governing institutions thwarted in 1787. In the oratory gusting across the National Assembly in 1796 and

4 J.G.A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment (Princeton, 1975), pp. 289-93, 528; C. Robbins, The Eighteenth Century Commonwealthman (Cambridge, Mass., 1959).

S These were formed much earlier than often supposed and had spread throughout Holland in the course of 1783. See the Brief van een utrechts burger aan zijn vriend te Amsterdam (Knuttel, V, no. 20669) and for their organization, the Verslag van gecommitteerde, besluiten en provisioneele welten van de Societeit van Wapenhandel, opgericht binnen Leiden (Knuttel, V, no. 20655). For their more general political implications see S. Schama, Patriots and Liberators, Revolution in the Netherlands 1780-1813 (New York, London, 1977), pp. 81-8.

6 As a splendid pictorial example of this idealization see the engraving, dated 1784, by Reinier Vinkeles, of Otto Dirk Gordon, the Colonel-Commandant of the Pro Patria et Libertate Society in Utrecht. He is shown wearing the black cockade, and with his finger pointing to the musket, the symbol of patriotic vigilance and purity.

IN SOUTH HOLLAND DURING NAPOLEONIC WARS 97

1797, democracy was treated as a political elixir, heady and potent, perhaps dangerously so, but certain, if administered in correctly measured dosage, to bring about the long-awaited process of reju­venation. The eventual discovery that in an embattled revolutionary republic freedom and power were not only not complementary but actually irreconcilable is one of those ingenuous educations at which historians are apt to wax ironical. But it is difficult to resist the impression that both Patriots and Batavians were mobilized simultaneously on two battle fronts: that of the real, and that of the ideal. One was only too tangible: that of the regiments of Pruss ian soldiers invading the Republic in the autumn of 1787 at the behest of the Stadholder and his British eminence grise, James Harris, or that of the overwhelming reality of 25,000 French troops in 1795, devouring requisitions like locusts and exacting as the price of fraternity, a cool hundred million guilders in indemnification. But the Batavians formed up in battle order not so much against pal­pable adversaries as against what they insisted was the morally degenerate ethos of the pruikentijd - the time of the periwigs. The Stadholderate and the federated provincial sovereignties of the Union of Utrecht were equally reviled as 'Gothic monstrosities', however ostensibly opposed, both instruments for beguiling the burgerij into surrendering its sovereignty.

Given the pungent revivalism of this polemic, it is not surprising to find a disproportionate number of predikanten and ministers of minority denominations among the Batavian zealots. Their good fight was more akin to a crusade than an insurrection. Their arsenal comprised the whole rigmarole of republican ritual and ceremonial, some indigenous, some imported: liberty trees planted before town halls; tricolour bunting, illuminated tableaux portraying the alle­gorical death of tyranny (often a dragon with William V's head on top), interminable processions of children clad in white followed by Batavian worthies; recitations of doggerel verse; plays and panto­mimes; denunciations from the Sunday pulpit of the enemies of the people - anything, in fact, other than the real weaponry of a conscripted army and summary revolutionary justice.'

7 The ritual of the Batavian Revolution along with its innumerable public feasts, tableaux and ceremonies has scarcely been noticed by historians, much less SUbjected to serious analysis or iconography. Purely descriptive accounts of some of them can be found in C. Rogge, Tafereel van de geschiedenis der jongste omwenteling (Amsterdam, 1196), but the most illuminating source is the fine collection of Batavian prints and engravings in the Prentenkabinet of the University of Leiden. I am grateful to the Curator for permitting me an all-too­hurried inspection of this splendid collection in August 1916. An article on revolutionary feasts and ceremonies in the Netherlands is being prepared.

98 MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT AND BURDEN OF POOR

The shooting war, however, persistently intruded into the war of words. As the mobilization of taxes, manpower and ships - but most of all of taxes - became more than the Batavian Republic could materially bear, so the grand projects with which the reformers of the National Assemblies had meant to regenerate the State - the codiiJ.cation oflaws; the abolition of guilds and their replacement by a liberal economic order; the creation of a unified central govern­ment responsible to a national elected legislature - all became sub­sumed in the struggle to survive as a separate (if hardly independent) nation state. The 'war against tyrants' which had initially been seen as a harbinger of salutary change gradually came to seem a pro­tracted misfortune. It was the peculiar fate of the Batavian Re­public that the conflict which had provided its aspirant reformers with their opportunity for far-reaching change, should at the same time, have circumscribed any possibility of success in that enter­prise.

While it is incontestab1e that the lofty work of recreating a re­publican democracy shrank before the imperatives of war into the more mundane business of fiscal cadasters and blockade-running, the evanescence of libertarian idealism does not, of itself, entail that nothing in the Netherlands was materially altered by the sobering experience of these years; plainly, much was. It is now generally accepted by Dutch historians that, for all the optimistic nostalgia of Oranje hoven proclaiming the national liberation in 1813, the 'old times' were not coming again.s Even so ardent a devotee of the old Union as Gijsbert Karel van Hogendorp acknowledged the impracticability of its resurrection.9 A centralizing paternalist administration was entrenched in The Hague, staffed by many of the ministers and bureaucrats who had received their apprenticeship during the Batavian and Bonapartist periods. Some of the reforms enacted at that time, but imperfectly implemented such as the unification of taxation (1805) or the abolition of the guilds (1808) were affirmed rather than repealed by William 1. So that from an institutional point of view, the real discontinuity in Dutch history

8 The reference is to the famous proclamation of 17 November 1813: 'Oranje Boven! Holland is vrij .... De zee is open./De koophandel herleeft./Alle partijschap heeft opgehouden./AI het geleden is vergeeten/en vergeven/ ... Elk dankt God!/De oude tijden komen wederom/Oranje boven'. (Up with Orange/Holland is free/ ... The sea is open/trade revives/All party strife has disappeared/All that has passed is forgotten/And forgiven/ ... Every person thanks God/The old times are coming back again/Up with Orange!) The text is said to have been written by Gijsbert Karel van Hogendorp.

9 See H. van der Hoeven, Gijsbert Karel van Hogendorp, conservatief of liberaal (Groningen, 1976), pp. 104-12.

IN SOUTH HOLLAND DURING NAPOLEONIC WARS 99

dates not from 1813 but from 1805, or even from 1798 when the first 'unitary' constitution was introduced.10

The historian must beware, however, of investing these innova­tions with more competence than they merit. Even in the consider­ably more centralized (though not as centralized as De Tocqueville supposed) milieu of French government, reforming impetus from the centre could go awry amidst the bewildering complexities of departmental or even parochial social geography.u In the Nether­lands where, historically, power gravitated upwards from town to sovereign province, any attempt to reverse that pattern of authority might well be expected to have failed. And the restoration, after 1801, of many urban regents and magistrates to the offices they had enjoyed before 1795, together with their well-documented resist­ance to any encroachment on their jurisdiction, seems, on the face of it to bear out that presumption. But after 1805 any such resistance was constrained by the implicit coercive power on which the re­gimes of Schimmelpenninck and Louis Bonaparte were established. Hendrik van Stralen's law on local government of 1805, reinforced by Louis Bonaparte's law of 1807 subordinating local to depart­mental and national administrations, was far more than a paper formality. From this time on in the Netherlands, the tail ceased to wag the dog. Men accustomed to regard municipal and corporate privileges as sacrosanct were obliged to defer to superior authority.

That this represented a decisive inversion of the traditional hier­archy of governing institutions hardly needs emphasizing. What re­mains unclear - not least because the period between 1798 and 1813 has received less than its fair share of modern research - is the nature of the process whereby municipal autonomy was eroded. What follows is a tentative attempt to correlate that process with the growth of indigence in the major urban centres of south Hol­land, a phenomenon itself attributable in the short term to the dislocations of war and blockade. From the available evidence it appears that after the renewal of war in 1803 there occurred some­thing like a chronic breakdown in the capacity of municipal administrations to cope with the relief of their needy by traditional means and from traditional resources. A concomitant result of their financial plight was a shift in the power of the purse, almost by

10 See Schama, Patriots, ch. xi; L.J.G. Rogier, 'Uit verdeeldheid tot eenheid' in Terugblik en uitzicht (Hilversum, Antwerp, 1964), pp. 248-61.

11 See, for example, the conclusions of historians who have studied the im­pact of the Revolution at a local level: C. Lucas, The Structure of the Terror (Oxford, 1973); W.F. Scott, Terror and Repression in Revolutionary Marseilles (London, 1973).

100 MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT AND BURDEN OF POOR

default, to those agencies which, through subsidies and the ad hoc re­allocation of national revenues, were able to tide them over in what many burgomasters and poor deacons described as an emergency.12 The long-term implications of this crisis in local government are self-evident. It mattered little that the personnel of the regent elite were restored, in the contemporary phrase, op het kussen van de stad (on the 'cushions' of office). For when they got there they found, to their acute discomfort, that the cupboard was bare, the roof over their heads was falling in, and that the needy were thronging omin­ously at the gate.

II

Precisely because the Dutch Republic had been admired throughout Europe for the affluence and the enlightenment of its institutions for the succour of the infirm, the aged and the indigent, their inade­quacy in the face of rising destitution is a touchstone of the predica­ment of municipal government in the first decade of the nineteenth century. After ploughing through sheaves of lamentations and warnings of impending bankruptcy from burgomasters, town councillors and poor house regents, King Louis Bonaparte came to the conclusion in 1808 that:

all those who have investigated this matter ... and who are in a position to make an impartial judgement recognize that our old institutions for the relief of the poor, as good as they once were ... can no longer be con­sidered satisfactory in the present time. . . . Unprecedented calamities and the terrifying increase of the destitute oblige us to acknowledge that measures for their relief must be of much greater extent than hereto­fore .... 13

Of course it would be jejune to suggest that such a situation had arisen overnight with the throttling of what was left of the Dutch maritime economy by the Continental System and the British counter-blockade. The spectre of brigades of vagrants and vaga­bonds, issuing forth from the towns to infest the countryside, and

12 See, for example, the report from Middelburg in Zeeland in A.R.A., B.Z. (VB) 381; Haarlem in A.R.A., B.Z. 203 and B.Z. (SB 230) where the condition of the Diaconie and the needs of the poor were described, even in 1800 as schreeuwend (lit. 'screamingly' or 'wildly expensive'); Franeker in Friesland where the same problem was described as being of the most 'urgent' (drin­gendste) necessity (SB 231). Similar complaints came in from The Hague, Rotterdam, Amsterdam and Leiden virtually every year after 1798. The only problem after 1803 when the situation deteriorated even further was how to find adequate terms to describe the urgency without crying wolf.

13 See A.R.A., Collectie Dassevael 50, 92.

IN SOUTH HOLLAND DURING NAPOLEONIC WARS 101

the more tangible problem of unemployment created by the con­traction of labour-intensive industries such as whaling and textile weaving, had exercised the social commentators of the 'Specta­torial' press as far back as the mid-eighteenth century.14 Modern economic historiography of this period, dominated by the work of Johan de Vries has argued persuasively that many of these appre­hensions were grounded in a moral diagnosis of the Republic's ills rather than an objective assessment of its decline.1s And cer­tainly the foundation in the 1770s of numerous 'public' (that is, non­denominational) poor-houses intended to provide a livelihood from work rather than charity bears witness to Dutch enthusiasm for the revived 'philanthropism' then current in northern Europe, rather than to an alarmed reaction to any sudden increase in the numbers of needy. It was that same philanthropic concern, reinforced by the revolutionary argument, much rehearsed in France, that a truly democratic and humane republic had the duty to provide work for aU its able-bodied citizens in want, which informed the debates in the Batavian legislatures between 1796 and 1800.16 The most radi­cal proposals, emanating from reformers who were often ministers of the minority denominations like Cornelis Rogge and Boudwijn van Rees, urged the wholesale replacement of the multifarious insti­tutions of relief with a national system, managed by publicly appointed authorities and funded by a nationally imposed direct tax. Predictably those suggestions raised the hackles of the in­numerable custodians of Church foundations and private endow­ments who insisted on the immutability of bequests and implied that any attempt to override their independence would be tanta­mount to an attack on property. The result was that the eventual Dutch Poor Law of 15 July 1800 did no more than arrange for the supervision, through a hierarchy of commissioners and inspectors, of the relief of those not already catered for by private or church foundations. 17

14 In 1776 the Nederlandsche laarboek commented that 'the common people (gemeen) are perishing from wretchedness and want; the poor houses lie crammed with their bodies'. For similar comments in the earlier period see J. Hartog (ed.), De spectatoriale schriften van 1741-1800 (Utrecht, 1872).

IS Joh. de Vries, 'De oeconomisch - patriottische beweging', De Nieuwe Stem, VII (1952) and De economische achteruitgang der republiek in de acht­tiende eeuw (Amsterdam, 1959).

16 For a discussion of those debates see P.B.A. Melief, De strijd om de armenzorg in Nederland 1795-1845 (Groningen, 1955); for some of the ideas which informed them, H.F.J.M. van den Eerenbeemt, 'Het huwelijk tussen filantropie en economie: een patriotse en bataafse illusie', Economisch en sociaal-historisch jaarboek, XXXV (1972), 72 seqq.

17 For information concerning the poor in the respective departments, as well as protests, implicit and explicit against any attempt at 'amalgamation' with

102 MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT AND BURDEN OF POOR

However ineffectual a compromise the Law proved to be the mere signalling of official interest in the condition of poor relief means that, at least from 1798, the historian has some data from which to try and assess the magnitude of the problem. Like all freshly-minted bureaucracies discovering the joys of official statis­tics, the clerks, registrars and projectors who staffed the embryonic agencies and ministries at the Binnenhof in The Hague tended to be memorandum- and circular-happy. Their files in the Archie! van Binnenlandse Zaken (Internal Affairs) brim with information on every conceivable topic of public jurisdiction from the reclamation of sandy waste land to the establishment of a national archive! It must always be borne in mind that much of this data is more notable for the zeal of its synthesizers than for the accuracy of its contents, and this is especially true of the returns from burgomasters and town councillors listing the numbers of the poor and the financial resources of the institutions for their relief after 1798.18 With the possibility of an ad hoc subsidy, or fiscal relief in the offing, local officials would naturally err on the side of over-estimation of indi­gence rather than the other way about. But whatever the short­comings of the central sources, the historian is in the fortunate position of being able to use a wide range of local sources for cross­reference. The prolific documents surviving from municipal poor administration (stadsarmenbesturen) where they existed (as at Rotterdam for example); the Diaconie church charity deacons; and the bills, accounts, and annual monstering inventories from the in­numerable old age homes, hospitals, orphanages and workhouses dotted throughout the Republic make it possible to piece together a mosaic, however fragmented, of urban poor relief in this period.

Economies of time and resources dictated that the sample of evidence for what follows was necessarily limited to one region, the area now approximating to the province of south HoIland, and to six towns: Rotterdam, The Hague, Leiden, Delft, Schiedam and Vlaardingen. Although differing widely in size and social make-up (see Table I) it is questionable to what extent the group comprises a range representative of the country as a whole. Some towns out­side south Holland with comparable economic anatomies and histories such as Haarlem, with a semi-moribund textile finishing

public authorities see the files of AR.A, B.Z. 202-9. The reply of Neder­Betllwe Ambts in the Dpt. of the Rijn is fairly typical, 'Herewith a prompt response must be given to your [the Directory's] question [whether they would be willing to coalesce], and is unanimous, that we hold our muniCipal property, in thrift and orderly management, as a gift from our ancestors ... and except by force this shall never be alienated from us ... .' (A.R.A., B.Z. 206).

18 A.R.A, B.Z. 192-202.

IN SOUTH HOLLAND DURING NAPOLEONIC WARS 103

TABLE I

Approx. average Approx. Estimated

annual gross average ordinary municipal annual gross revenues and

Population exp.1750s municipal expo income in in 1795 and 60s 1806-13 1811

Rotterdam 55,000 fl. 450,000 fl. 750--800,000 fl. 240,000

Hague 38,000 240,000 509,000 220,000

Leiden 28,500 200,000 380,000 95,000

Delft 16,000 150,000 300,000 125,000

Schiedam 10,000 90,000 170,000 32,000

Vlaardingen 5,000 15,000 45,000 6,900

Sources for the above and for all statistical references in the paper: Algemeen Rijksarchief, The Hague, AR.A B.Z. 102, 202, 1010, 1171, 1011, 1229-30; 1042, 1122, 1030,971; 1043. Gemeente-Archief Rotterdam, Archief v.d. Commissie voor het Burgerlijk Armebestuur 421,721-87; Stadsrekeningen 283-9. Gemeente-Archief The Hague: Oud-Archief, 1166; 1517-37; 1617-18; 1669-1715; 2876; 2867; 5605; 5636; 5659; 5661-3; 5668-74; Armenzorg: 5757-60; 5761-9; 5770-2; 5785-6; 5822-3; 5878; 5880-2; 5914-24; Archiefvan burger­lijk armbestuur: 157-82; 157-72; 178-9. Gemeente-Archief Leiden: Secretarie-Archief: 5553-5; 5865-70; 5874; 5907-11 ; 5928-30; 5933-5; 5946--50; 5967-8; 5969; 5972-3a; 5995-7; 6008; 6024; 6094. Gemeente· Archief Delft: Hoofdarchief van de Diaconie: 13-15; 18-20; Archief van de Carner van Charitate: 36--7; 49; 66--8, 80-2, 84-5; Archief van de Com­missie over de Godshuizen: 1888; Stadsrekeningen en Collectenboeken 1700-1815. Gemeente-Archief Schiedam: Archief van Ordinaris Thesaurier: 685-736; Comite van Finantie: 2922-2940; 3225-3230; Stadsrekeningen 1750-1813. Gemeente-Archief Vlaardingen: Oud-Archief, Rekeningen: 117-20; Wees­boeken 279-80; Rekeningboeken van gasthuizen 313-18; Stadsrekeningen 1750-1815; misc. (Oud-Archief): 403; 423-7; 487-8, 496.

industry analogous to Leiden's decayed cloth shops, obviously went through a similar experience.19 Amsterdam, on the other hand, with something like a third of its population of 200,000 on winter relief in 1808, was uniquely prostrated. But then, despite the vigilance with which its burgomasters and magistrates attempted to exclude 'alien' needy, it is evident that for at least twenty years before the

19 According to the deacons and the burgomaster, the Reformed Church Diaconie alone in Haarlem was spending at least fl. 125,000 a year on poor relief (A.R.A., B.Z. 197). By 1808 the city was almost derelict, with just one cotton mill left, two woollen factories, one major brewery and two soap boilers. For tabulated information on its economic plight see AR.A., B.Z. 783.

104 MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT AND BURDEN OF POOR

Batavian revolution, and to an even greater extent after 1800, Amsterdam acted as a sieve for the impoverished of adjacent re­gions like the Gooi to the east and the Noorderkwartier to the north. Conversely, there were many areas relatively less affected by war and blockade than south Holland. Friesland and Groningen, for example, almost certainly benefited from the heavier coastal traffic to and from ports like Harlingen towards Hamburg and the Danish 'peephole' of Tonningen. Delfzijl, at the northernmost tip of Groningen, like Emden across the Ems (a Dutch port between 1807 and 1810) became an exit and entry point of major significance through the re-alignment of trading routes north-south down the great riparian arteries of Napoleon's commercial empire.20 The same was initially true of towns like Arnhem, Nijmegen and 's­Hertogenbosch on the Rhine and Maas routes south to the pros­pering hinterlands of Liege and Westphalia. But severe protective tariffs imposed on Dutch manufactured goods (even after the annexation to the French Empire in 1810), coupled with the ex­treme difficulty of obtaining raw materials such as hops and grain for brewing, flax for linen spinning and Ardennes clay for the ceramic industry, all meant that instead of sharing in the relative prosperity of Berg and the Belgian departements reunis, Dutch Brabant and Gelderland became disproportionately depressed in the period after 1806. The data for rising poverty in towns like 's­Hertogenbosch gathered by Professor Van den Eerenbeemt bear this OUt.21

Granted, then, that any map of the incidence of relief throughout the Netherlands would show wide variations from region to region and even from town to town, south Holland as one of the most

20 Despite this, the condition of the Friesland towns left a lot to be desired (see A.R.A., B.Z. 2(0). In 1797, by no means the most severe of the years in this period the Stads Arme Kassen (City Poor Fund) was already laying out fl. 30,984 for the support of just 1,159 souls - with an income estimated at only fl. 3,000, and the Paupers Orphanage in the same town some fl. 12,380 with an income of only fl. 1,200. Some other smaller Frisian towns remained similarly depressed like Sneek and Dokkum. Even Harlingen which should have been doing fairly well out of the coastal trade was in serious deficit by the end of the 1790s.

21 See H.F.J.M. van den Eerenbeemt, 's-Hertogenbosch in de bataafsche en franse tijd 1794-1814 (,s-Hertogenbosch, 1955). Professor Van den Eerenbeemt has been the pioneer in analysing the problems and extent of poverty in the eighteenth-century Netherlands, concentrating for his evidence principally on the south of the country. See his important articles, 'Armoede en drankmisbruik in de meierij van 's-Hertogenbosch', Brabantia, VII (1958), 310-20; In het span­ningsveld der armoede. Agressief pauperisme en reactie in Staats-Brabant (Tilburg, 1968); 'De oorzaken van het pauperisme in Nederland in de 18de eeuw', Maandschrift &onomie, XXVII (1963), 156-66.

IN SOUTH HOLLAND DURING NAPOLEONIC WARS 105

densely populated areas provides a reasonable case study in gauging the strain on municipal finance imposed by the poor. The most perfunctory scrutiny of urban balance sheets discloses a dramatic change in fortune between the middle of the eighteenth century and the first decade of the nineteenth (see Table I). In almost all cases, and even allowing for a monetary depreciation of something like a half over this period22 the rise in gross expenditure was steep. The extent and rate naturally varied according to differing economic circumstances and the degree to which a local economy was suffer­ing from long-term structural malaise or merely from the short­term disruption of the war. In Leiden where the cloth industry was already in climacteric by the 1720s, aggregate expenditure on average ran at around fl. 200-220,000 per annum, though in more depressed periods like the 1740s it could rise to fl. 300,000. In 1795, expendi­ture on the same items reached fl. 395,000, but in 1803, the year of renewed hostilities rose to fl. 419,000 and thereafter remained at around 50 per cent higher (in real values) than the mid-century mean.

By contrast, Vlaardingen, with its neighbour Maassluis the centre of another ancient labour-intensive industry, herring fishing, had suffered calamitously from the rapacity, first of French, then British privateers. In the period between 1796 and 1800 41 of its boats had been captured by British patrols in the North Sea, effectively excluding it from the deep sea catches. Over half its fieet of 120 boats lay idle and the choice for its fisher community was either to beg from the town's charities; risk night fishing the deep shoals or else sign up, as a number did, for voyages north and east to Danzig and Archangel. Of the five thousand souls in Vlaar­dingen, one in three was in receipt of some sort of relief by 1808. Its

22 The problem of inflation and depreciation in the eighteenth century remains a stumbling block for any accurate assessment of real economic trends. The classic Prjisgeschiedenis of N.W. Posthumus provides helpful indices, but more remains to be done before the air of unreality surrounding most value quota­tions is satisfactorily removed. In particular this problem makes the true assessment of cost differentials between the middle of the eighteenth century and the end, very problematic. But for the most part I am here concerned with the short-term deterioration of the poor relief operation between 1790 and 1810 during which period it seems fairly safe to assume depreciation was not greater than around 50-75 per cent. Comparing the end of the eighteenth century with the end of the seventeenth century presents even more formidable problems since one is dealing with a pre-statistical period. Here the historian must fall back on the deduction from a lack of petitions, protests, complaints etc. coming from the towns to the States of Holland that while the long wars had taken a very serious toll, they were still a long way from considering the burden of the poor, in the literal sense, insupportable. That does seem to have been the case by 1810.

106 MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT AND BURDEN OF POOR

modest revenues were forced to meet, as best they could, expenditure which rose from fl. 15,000 in the middle of the eighteenth century to fl. 65,178 in 1806-7, admittedly a winter of exceptional severity. Downstream, Maassluis was in an even starker predicament.23

Rotterdam, a city twice the size of Leiden, which had suffered much less than other Dutch towns from the eighteenth-century stagnation, with its fortunes supported by the Atlantic trade, was in a different situation again. Its gross expenditure, and that portion of it represented by disbursements to its 'municipal poor adminis­tration' (see Table III) followed a different chronology again. Its mid-century average of around fl. 400,000 was prone to shoot up towards the fl. 900,000-million mark only during a period of com­mercial disruption, as during the Anglo-Dutch War. But after 1803, of course, this disruption became the norm and for that period its expenditure remained at the higher level. More significantly, after 1807 the city was incurring annual current deficits despite every effort, through loans, and additional imposts, to make its account roughly balance. The sum provided in subsidy for the poor in 1808 was four times that spent in 1770, and nearly eight times the average for the later 1770s.24

What of the other side of the balance sheet? In 1810-11 when Baron d'Alphonse, Napoleon's Intendant-General de I'Interieur for the annexed Dutch departments was collating data on municipal indebtedness he was given hair-raising estimates of the differences between gross expenditure and ordinary revenue.2S The declared ratios for these were: Leiden, five to one; Rotterdam and The Hague four to one; Gouda and Dordrecht three to one, Delft two

23 See A.R.A, B.Z. 182. Between 15 November 1799 and 15 April 1800, the municipality of Maassluis spent fl. 46,429 on just 600 households - nearly half its community - on poor relief.

24 See G.AR., Burgerlijk Armbestuur, 283-4, and in particular the eloquent general reports of 1 May 1808 and 1 May 1809. The latter spelled out the causal nature of the problem unequivocally referring to 'the stoppage of trade; the dearness of elementary commodities of life; the disaster of the war and other calamities' as contributing to the totals of the poor being 'very much noticeably greater (than in previous years) and requiring thousand more guilders for relief'.

25 AR.A., B.Z. 1011. For example the figures, expressed in francs, were (one guilder = 2·05 francs),

Rotterdam Schiedam Delft Vlaardingen Maassluis Brielle Dordrecht Gouda

Income Expenditure 439,994 1,831,006 56,546 410,000

217,556 395,252 12,556 80,000 1,434 44,000

34,480 100,000 129,372 420,000 118,184 313,000

IN SOUTH HOLLAND DURING NAPOLEONIC WARS lO7

to one and, for what it is worth, Vlaardingen was said to be spend­ing eight times, Maassluis forty times as much as it received from ordinary revenue. All these figures, it goes without saying, must be treated with scepticism. 'Ordinary income' - in this case a rough estimate of revenues derived from local taxes and excises - was a concept which belonged more in the realm of French imperial fiscal aesthetics than Dutch economic reality. The towns of Holland historically had the right, or sometimes permission from the States, to impose 'additional' penningen or stuivers as the need arose, either as an earmarked surtax on existing provincial duties, or else as separate indirect taxes reverting directly to the municipal treasury. As estimated expenditure needs rose, so town treasurers corres­pondingly resorted to hiking up the scale and incidence of these ad hoc expedients. But stagnating or contracting commercial turnover, within as wen as between towns, along with what was thought to be more elastic patterns of consumer demand imposed at least a con­ceptual ceiling on what could be done in this area. Likewise de­pressed property prices, a marked feature of this period, affected the take of taxes based on rental values. The '80th penning' im­posed in Leiden on wine and spirits and earmarked for the poor, yielded exactly half as much in 1799 as it had a century earlier when the city had been at its apogee.26 And at a time of sharply rising food and fuel prices, burgomasters were constrained by the con­sideration that attempts to augment sources of indirect taxation ad infinitum would merely contribute to the numbers of the needy those same revenues were destined to alleviate.

In any case, a considerable part of municipal income was de­rived from extra-fiscal sources, principally rent from rural and urban property, and a broad portfolio of investment in public and even commercial securities. At the same time, of course, their in­creasingly frequent excursions to the money-market at rates of interest much higher than anything asked in the eighteenth century, meant that a delicate trade-off between returns on investment in other cities' (or the nation's) debts and obligations to the town's own creditors became ever harder to achieve. In the case of the major cities like Rotterdam and Amsterdam, where the still sub­stantial concentrations of private wealth profited off public penury to a degree that verged on the indecent, there was a real fear of being so far disadvantaged by these arrangements that they might

26 G.A.L., Secretarie-Archief 5553. This is a good instance - and there are countless instances of municipalities complaining about declining revenues from collections and special tolls - of inflation and monetary depreciation exacer­bating rather than qualifying the dimensions of the problem discussed here.

108 MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT AND BURDEN OF POOR

incur debt-servicing obligations so steep they could not be ade­quately funded without suspending altogether basic civic expendi­tures. Such a doomsday never in fact materialized, even for Amster­dam which by 1810 found itself in something like the predicament of contemporary New York City. But instead of what, in normal times, had been the complex web of inter-municipal and inter­provincial credit, transferring surplus disposable income from relatively well-off to relatively hard-pressed sectors of the country, there emerged instead a kind of hierarchy of desperation which only the national administration was in a position to arbitrate.

From the municipalities' point of view this was not an unmixed blessing. Many of its securities had been sunk in the provincial debts of the old provinces, but since 1799 those debts had been con­solidated into the gigantic and bloated Dutch national debt. 27

While this paid far higher rates of interest to its stockholders than had obtained in the palmier days of the States of Holland, much of the benefit was notional since it was chronically in arrears on pay­ments and Ministers of Finance, especially under the Kingdom of Holland were in the habit of staving off one payments crisis by printing new sets of securities into which old obligations were allegedly incorporated, with new premiums, naturally. And what had been an increasingly unsatisfactory situation for towns hard­pressed to meet anxious creditors - traders in goods and services as well as their own stock-holders - became a nightmare when Napoleon reduced the interest on the Dutch debt by two-thirds: the tiercering of infamous memory. This was, of course, a thinly dis­guised default, and its consequences were catastrophic, not only for the towns but for all corporate and private stockholders depending on interest payments to make ends meet. Many of the privately or ecclesiastically-endowed charitable foundations which in 1800 had disdained any suggestion that they should be publicly supported, now found that with their income reduced they were obliged to come to the municipality with begging bowls in hand. But the situation one tier above them was not much better. Although com­pensated after 1813 for their losses, the tiercering went a long way to completing the transformation of the towns of Holland from creditors to debtors of superior institutions. For the first time they were placed in the position of supplicants vis-a-vis the national

27 On the amalgamation of the provincial debts and Gogel's attempts to overcome local protests about this see s. Schama, 'The exigencies of War and the Politics of Taxation in the Netherlands 1795-1810', in War and Economic Development (ed. J.M. Winter, Cambridge, 1975), pp. 107-17; see also F.N. Sickenga, Geschiedenis der nederlandse belastingen, tijdvak der omwenteling (Amsterdam, 1865); also A.R.A., Gogel 29, 173, Archief van Financien 386.

IN SOUTH HOLLAND DURING NAPOLEONIC WARS 109

government which, under the Kingdom of Holland was spending at least fl. 250,000 on directly subsidizing deficitary municipal coun­cils, and through special fiscal concessions, effectively funding their obligations to a much greater extent. All that stood between the Stadhuis and an incapacity to meet immediate commitments for day-to-day supplies of tallow for street lighting; grain for the poor house bakeries; drugs for their pharmacy; peat for winter heating; stone and labour for the maintenance of the bridges, canals and reverberes on which it prided itself, was the goodwill of bureau­crats in The Hague to make short-term disbursements, or to mani­pulate national revenues to make good their shortfall. The en­croachment on historical autonomy which this cumbersome exer­cise in fiscal redistribution represented was decisive. It might be said, without much exaggeration, that it represented the end of the celebrated autonomy of the Dutch 'city republics'.

III

To what extent was this phenomenon attributable to the growing burden of the poor? The raw data is illuminating (see Tables II-III). In 1811, the global sum expended in Leiden on all forms of public assistance - not only hospitals, old age homes, orphanages, asylums, the city spinschool, and the house of correction - but also food, peat and clothing distributed to the unaccommodated poor, came to over fl. 160,000 or some 55 per cent of its total revenues, and 46·7 per cent of its budget.28 This compares with 14·2 per cent on administration and salaries; 12·5 per cent on police, justice and fire services, and 24·5 per cent on public works and debt servicing. As might be expected, Haarlem, like Leiden with one in four souls on some kind of relief, spent an almost identical proportion of its budget on the same items.29 In most towns in Holland where relief corresponded to, or exceeded the national 'average' of one in nine,30 this item had become the paramount factor in urban finance. In Schiedam, a relatively prosperous town in the eighteenth century, its fortunes built on distilling, but where about 10 per cent were dependent on public support, the cost in 1811 was about fl. 60,000 or 37 per cent of revenues and 46 per cent of total expenditure. In

28 G.A.L., Secretarie-Archief 5907-14; for comparable figures for The Hague see G.A.H., Oud-Archief 157-82.

29 A.R.A., B.Z. 1011; estimate of d' Alphonse. Part of his statistics were pub­lished in: F.-J.-B. baron d'Alphonse, Aper~u sur fa Hollande (paris, 1813).

30 The Aper~u may be found in A.R.A., B.Z. 1229-30. See the tables at pp. 482-99 (Vol. II).

TABLE II

The Certified Accounts of a Dutch Town, Rotterdam, 1770-1810

1770 1771 1772 1773 1774 1775 1776 1777 1778 1779 1780 1781 1782 1783 1784 1785 1786 1787 1788 1789 1790 1791 1792 1793 1794 1795 1796 1797 1798 1799 1800 1801 1802 1803 1804 1805 1806 1807 1808 1809 1810

Gross revenues + income (including

loans; interest from securities etc.)

fl. 910,072 825,263 786,235 790,587 492,670 487,311 483,682 563,233 571,612 520,285 520,278 757,156

1,087,544 745,335 535,956 651,883 683,087 657,981 699,830 768,492 991,319 594,070 651,085 601,193 633,358

1,018,532 920,072 856,130 618,736 829,073 769,888 772,195 770,537

1,118,955 910,842

1,112,859 1,004,890

844,014 846,980 713,196 816,136

Gross expenditure

920,535 639,867 878,873 664,298 481,960 451,717 459,833 538,532 453,446 480,753 515,802 772,183

1,092,646 692,594 577,251 606,332 638,889 678,457 636,847 894,980 822,331 697,323 712,112 597,830 633,118

1,048,345 914,117 848,280 626,075 843,175 806,822 758,094 777,102 979,288 913,161

1,029,410 973,476 862,244 945,479 789,128 972,024

Subsidy to the Poorhouses and

relieffund

70,470 61,803 85,104 87,126 59,099 34,637 37,010 33,349 38,411 39,487 43,070 41,508 55,445 40,897 46,759 75,113 34,742 52,930 42,374 75,828 46.072 49,232 46,498 54,297 47,058 63,743

104,792 59,902 56,058 70,552

112,164 100,904 92,894

100,704 64,466

227,122 138,220 263,635 287,212 154,500 337,401

Of the fl. 263,635 provided as subsidy from municipal income for the poor institutions of Rotterdam: (1807)

fl. 229,921 General Poor Administration 3,276 Diaconie (Church)

17,250 Hospitals 13,187 Misc.

fl. 15,000 was also provided for the Workhouse.

IN SOUTH HOLLAND DURING NAPOLEONIC WARS 111

TABLE III. Vlaardingen, 1795-1810

Subsidies Income Expenditure to Poor

1795 18,764 19,055 6,142 1796 10,893 11,176 5,221 1797 11,328 9,554 ? 1798 4,976 3,588 less than 1,000 1799 21,457 19,359 7,007 1800 13,597 13,314 3,930 1801 16,000 11,295 3,161 1802 24,752 42,661 19,775 1803 12,858 10,834 8,639 1804 47,990 47,613 15,575 1805 49,171 44,310 16,822 1806 67,292 65,178 20,429 1807 34,902 35,556 16,296 1808 28,824 27,824 10,423

(9 months) 1809 52,856 52,739 16,423 1810 46,325 43,195 15,329

Rotterdam where the incidence had risen steeply from one in nine in 1807 to one in seven by 1811, the respective figures were 49 per cent and 44 per cent. To take an entirely different case, in the little village of Haastrecht near Rotterdam, with a total population of 1,206 souls, 2,400 of the 3,000 guilders of its estimated revenues for 1811 went straight to the Diaconie for the relief of its poor.31

The chronological variations in the subsidies to municipal poor authorities and Reformed Church deaconries, expressed as a pro­portion of gross expenditure differ according to particular urban circumstances. In Rotterdam the subsidy was around 7·6 per cent in 1770, rising to 9 per cent only in 1793, the first year of the war but had reached 22·5 per cent by 1805 and 34·72 per cent by 1810 at a time when gross expenditure had itself doubled. In 1810, no less than fl. 337,401 was spent on supporting some eight thousand souls in a city of 55,000. In The Hague, the numbers of poor had trebled over forty years from 1,400 to 4,070 and the expenditure on what was known as the Heilige Geest Huiszittenhuis - domiciliary or outdoor relief for those not catered for by a religious community, and later called the City Poor Authority (Burgerlijke Armebestuur) doubled from fl. 34,393 in 1770 to fl. 63,103 in 1812. In Schiedam the subsidy

31 A.R.A., B.Z. 971.

112 MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT AND BURDEN OF POOR

to institutions for the poor and sick quintupled between 1770 and 180732 and in Leiden expenditure on the single institution of the City Orphanage (which had doubled between 1727 and 1780) doubled again over the next thirty years. In Vlaardingen the subsidy to the Heilige Geest Huiszittenhuis reached fl. 14,515 by 1809 or more than twice the worst levels of any year in the eighteenth century before the war.33

Even when allowing for uncertain rates of inflation - which would in any case affect the real value of urban revenues as much as its commitments - these figures speak for themselves. When coupled with information about the rise in the incidence of relief they surely dispose of any presumption that increased expenditure, or the re­curring laments from town halls to the ministers in The Hague, can be attributed merely to a greater degree of philanthropic conscien­tiousness. No burgomaster, however roused by civic zeal or humane compassion would have gone so far towards bankrupting his books unless the need was visibly compelling.

Moreover, traditional sources of income for poor relief had con­tracted in inverse proportion to civic exigency. The relative afHu­ence of philanthropic institutions in the Netherlands, social and religious motivation aside, had generally been a function of the surplus disposable capital generated by the mercantile economy. Even a relative impoverishment of those sources in a milieu of un­certain employment could have serious effect. For the greater part of the eighteenth century, income for the Church institutions de­rived from investment and rent managed by shrewd regents and regentesses kept up with recurring demands and higher prices of elementary commodities. But once again the war dramatically affected those balances for the worse. And at a much more primitive level, the declining receipts of the Sunday boxes passed round intimidatingly in morning and evening services, or else taken round houses to catch backsliders, both reflected and aggravated this situation. In Delft (see Table IV) the boxes in the Oude Kerk in 1800 yielded fl. 1,975; in 1720 the figure had been fl. 6,208 - in a city with a more or less constant population. Within the much narrower band of eight years between 1795 and 1805 the '4th stuiver' (i.e. 20 per cent) duty on the sale of wine and spirits varied in inverse relation to the need for which it was earmarked: fl. 21,892 for an estimated expenditure of fl. 16,596 in 1795 against fl. 19,687

32 G.A.H., Oud-Archief 5757, 5770-2. In Schiedam the outlay in subsidies doubled from an average of fl. 30,000 1800-5 to fl. 60,000 1806-10, see G.A.S., Comite van Finantie 2946; Archief van Ordinaris Thesaurier 736.

33 G.A.V., Oud-Archief 313-15.

IN SOUTH HOLLAND DURING NAPOLEONIC WARS 113

T ABLE IV. Church Collections for the Poor: Delft

1710 1720 1730 1740 1750 1760 1770 1780 1790 1795 1800 1805 1810 1813

Oude Kerk

(fl.) 6,347 6,208 6,365 5,426 5,762 5,120 5,008 4,786 4,273 2,558 1,974 1,985 2,126 1,758

Nieuwe Kerk

(fl.) 4,432 5,142 4,954

1,846 1,932 1,736 1,639 1,764

The congregations of the two largest churches were about the same - around 2,000, but the Oude Kerk was slightly the more prestigious and, despite the tombs of the House of Orange in the Nieuwe Kerk, attracting a slightly better­off social group.

for outgoings of fl. 25,681 at the later date.34 Likewise the Rotter­dam Reformed Church Council complained that the fines, boxes and excise concessions which even in 1786 had brought in around fl. 30,000 a year, by 1804 yielded a mere fl. 6,213. All this meant that the erosion of municipal independence vis-a-vis the national government was mirrored at the lower level by the declining autonomy of the Reformed Church Diaconie from public munici­pal poor administrations. This was reflected in a shift of the burden of responsibility after 1805 which the ecclesiastical commissioners would have regarded as intolerable trespass even five years earlier. In Leiden the Diaconie gladly abdicated virtually all authority to the city's poor commissioners; in Rotterdam over 60 per cent of the city's poor were relieved directly by the Stads Armebestuur and only 17 per cent by the heavily subsidized Diaconie. In The Hague, despite a forced loan in 1803 on the rental value of property in­tended to assist the Diaconie in its straitened circumstances, it remained indebted to the tune of nearly fl. 100,000 by 1805 and was in no position to stand on its dignity.35 Moreover the real burden of the increase was in relief to the unaccommodated poor, and with

34 G.A.D. (1795-1813) 62. 35 G.A.H., Oud-Archief (Burgerlijk Armebestuur) 5757.

114 MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT AND BURDEN OF POOR

estimates of grain purchases, baking and medicinal costs increasing, economies of scale could only be met adequately by the city treasurer. Where credit was suspect for the smaller endowed insti­tutions tradesmen were refraining from making deliveries and applying directly to the city for payment. What went for the Reformed Church was of course true to an even greater degree for the more impecunious communities such as the Walloon Reformed Church, the Lutherans, the Roman Catholics, and especially for the Ashkenazi Jewish community where the numbers of indigent were disproportionately high.36

All figures for expenditure need to be glossed for price rises in elementary commodies such as grain, tallow, peat and grits. But when the aggregate numbers of poor in relation to the total popula­tion - according to d' Alphonse, some 192,000 out of 1·9 millions, of which over 167,000 were on outdoor casual relief37 are taken into account, the basic outline of the situation during the Napoleonic Wars seems a little clearer. This was surely not a case of a more or less constant number of poor costing more per capita, but rather the overall costs of relief being driven up steeply by a massive aug­mentation of demand. There were important seasonal variations, as much as 12·5 per cent in Rotterdam, probably more in Amsterdam.38

But even at the lower level, poor commissioners were apprehensive about the narrowing margin dividing those who gave from those who received.

IV

What could be done to make this burden more tolerable'1 In Delft the commissioners of the Carner van Charitate made what they evidently regarded as swingeing retrenchments. One of their poor schools, set up since the Batavian Revolution was closed and the pupils sent out to work with city tradesmen at wage rates subsidized by the Carner. Allowances of what were now regarded as sinful luxuries like sugar, tobacco and tea were done away with altogether,

36 G.A.L., Secretarie-Archief 6094 (report of Parnassim on the Jewish com­munity). For these problems see also the reports printed in Gedenkstukken der algemeene geschiedenis van Nederland van 1789 tot 1840 (ed. H.T. Colen­brander, 24 vo!., Amsterdam, 1905-22), Ryks Geschiedkundige Publicatien, Grote Serie, 5, V, 284-6.

37 A.R.A., B.Z. 1229-30. 38 Cited in the Rapport, written in 1805 and deposited in G.A.L. 5973 but on

an unnamed major city that is almost certainly Amsterdam.

IN SOUTH HOLLAND DURING NAPOLEONIC WARS 115

and the standard weight of loaves decreased.39 In some other towns the distribution, either of peat turves, or of the money assigned for its purchase was suspended - partly because it was commonly sus­pected that by buying cheaper excise-free smuggled peat, the recipi­ents were pocketing the difference to blue on demonjenever.40 In Leiden, rye loaves for distribution to the poor dominated wheaten or partly wheaten by a factor of 4 : 1 even in 1754; by 1806 the pro­portion was 14 : 1.41 On the whole, however, there was a conscien­tious effort not to cut back on the high inherited standards of relief so long as the financial crisis was not actually terminal. Within the better-endowed old age homes and private Hofjes inmates continued to receive a diet containing fresh and dried vegetables; herring or cod and on Sundays a little pork. But inevitably the orphanages and 'industry or spin schools' tried to cut comers by offering Rumford soups or various kinds of gruels and porridges, originally from a barley base, but when that became too expensive, buck­wheat. It is perhaps worth pondering that at the same time that the Netherlands was becoming a major supplier of oats to Britain42 its own indigent were subsisting on slops of buttermilk and buckwheat. Imports of the grain - both for animal as well as pauper fodder -rose spectacularly from a mere fl. 14,000 worth in 1803 to fl. 600,000 just five years later.43

Philanthropists and poor commissioners were much given to lamenting the alleged adulteration of diet and in particular to re­gretting that alcoholic consumption remained constant or even on the increase as the intake of more wholesome foods fell. But their attitude was, perforce, ambivalent. On the one hand they were saddened by the decline of beer - still, of course the staple beverage in orphanages and old age homes - considered to have patriotic as well as nutritious properties, and which, in the words of one brewer in Rotterdam 'would awaken the spirit of the Nation as ofyore'.44 On the other hand those same satanic factories of addiction which were rotting the national fibre with distilled spirits (and there were

39 G.A.D., Archief van de Carner van Charitate 36-7. 40 G.A.D., Archief van de Carner van Charitate 85. 41 G.A.L., Secretarie-Archief 5933-4. 42 F. Crouzet, L'economie britannique et Ie blocus continental 1806-1813

(Paris, 1958), p. 99. 43 Official values as given by d'A1phonse, A.R.A., B.Z. 1011, 1229-30. 1808

was an exceptional year when no less than fl. 620,000 worth of buckwheat was imported. In 1809 the figure falls back to approx. fl. 245,000 but that still re­presents an extraordinary increase over the 1803-4 average of around fl. 13-14,000 worth. Real values would of course modify this phenomenon some­what but would hardly affect the overall trend.

44 A.R.A., B.Z. 784.

116 MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT AND BURDEN OF POOR

two hundred of them remaining in Schiedam alone) were, through the substantial duties slapped on their produce, supplying the poor authorities with vital revenue which they could scarcely afford to forego in the name of moral sobriety.

As the crisis of resources became aggravated, philanthropic ideals all too often gave place to time-honoured fears and remedies. Even in the relatively enlightened centre of Leiden, the poor commissioners' reports were increasingly coloured by references to the ancient bogey of gangs of rural 'alien' poor allegedly trying to scrounge off the ex­hausted charity of the city fathers.45 In reality those most likely to try and gain access to the hospitals or work houses were labourers from the immediate hinterland whose religious affiliation (or lack of one) excluded them from relief since in very few villages would there have been any Heilige Geest non-denominational support. In 1806 the Commission complained that Catholic peasant farmers from around Soeterwoude, Leidschendam and Oegstgeest were bringing their babies to be baptized in Leiden with the deliberate intention of qualifying in later years for support as a 'native' pauper.46 As in many other towns there was a general reversion to the so-called 'acts of indemnity', roundly condemned in the Revolution as a violation of the rights of man, which required all prospective migrants to the city to certify under oath that their place of birth would be respon­sible for their care should they ever fall in need of relief.

These cautionary measures undoubtedly contributed to the em­bittering of relations between town and rural hinterland to a degree that was unusual in Holland. However inchoate this resent­ment, it seems likely that the disorderly 'march' on Leiden in May 1813, when a rather motley troop, primarily of peasant farmers and labourers, succeeded in invading the town and terrorizing it for three days (drie schoft Oranje boven, when the Orange flag flew briefly there), had a strong tinge oflatent chouannerie in the elabor­ate humiliations inflicted on the local sub-prefect and the city worthies.47 This feeling may well have been exacerbated by the capacity of many of the better-off burghers to buy their sons out of conscription musters after 1810. Moreover many of those who were paid to fill their places signed their names with a cross and were de­clared to come from the same villages and stricken fishing ports

4S G.A.L., Secretarie-Archief 5555. 46 Ibid. 47 For an account of the drie schoft Oranje boven see Gedenkstukken, VI,

389-400, 1510-12; and for a much abbreviated version, Schama, Patriots, pp. 628-30; Woordenboek der nederlandsche taal, vol. XIV, col. 771.

IN SOUTH HOLLAND DURING NAPOLEONIC WARS 117

most hostile to the towns which had denied them relief - and most vociferous in their Orangist enthusiasms two years later.

On the other hand it should certainly not be assumed that the poor were uniformly hostile to conscription. Enrolment in the Imperial Army of 1810-11 when it was still at the zenith of its prestige was, after all, a preferable form of outdoor relief to the bread-lines stretching across the Pieterskerkhof. So that the entirely honourable concern of King 'Lodewijk' Bonaparte to protect the Dutch from the scourge of a conscription which, he properly in­sisted to Napoleon was abhorrent to their native traditions, was in some sense misplaced. It merely threw the potential soldiery straight back on the parish. Part of the military momentum of this period derived from the tendency, if not the need, to export latent social distress to a remote theatre of war. Even Louis relented from his fastidiousness when in 1809, in a rather clumsy action, he ordered a force of cadets for the 'Royal Guard' to be recruited from the overcrowded orphanages. While this too, went down in the history books as tantamount to an act of abduction, there was notably little protest at the time from the cadets themselves, many of whom showed little reluctance to exchange the coarse 'peppercloth' coats and hose of the institutions for the dark blue serge and piping of the Army.

Where there was violent resistance, as in the sporadic riots and brawls which flared up in Amsterdam, Utrecht, Rotterdam, Scheveningen and Katwijk in the spring and autumn of 1811, it was as much an expression of economic desperation as patriotic outrage, though, to be sure, by this time the French Imperium had come to be synonymous with destitution as well as brutality. Almost in­variably the fracas would begin with the crowd, assembled to see off the conscripts, taking umbrage at the soldiers' manhandling of women who, with children or babies at the breast, attempted to hang on to their menfolk or to plead with the recruiting sergeant. Usually too, the most vocally angry among the crowd would be other women of more matronly years and, according to one intimidated officer's account, of formidable amplitude.48 For these women, conscription and the loss of perhaps the only breadwinner meant a condemnation to the bread-lines or even to the workhouse and sometimes the break-up of the family, a dreadful catastrophe in a culture which placed so much emphasis on family solidarity.49 Of

48 A.R.A., B.Z. 1073. 49 The study of the family in Dutch history is as yet in its infancy and has so

far been restricted largely to emulating the exercises in 'reconstitution' pioneered by the Cambridge Group for the History of Population. It might perhaps be

118 MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT AND BURDEN OF POOR

the 120 households which had voluntarily committed children to the paupers' orphanage in Leiden by 1799 (not, of course, the most rigorous period of the war) three-quarters had done so since 1793-4. Thirty-four were the wives of soldiers or sailors; twenty-one had male spouses already in some other poor institution; eleven had abandoned their family for parts unknown, seven were working and residing indefinitely in another town, and the rest were unemployed, or part-employed within Leiden itself.

Fashionable though the observation may be, it is difficult to resist the impression that women and children formed a disproportion­ately large part of the debris of the Dutch economic and military disaster of the time. According to the returns from burgomasters on which d'Alphonse based his estimate of the numbers relieved in 1810 (see Table V), of the unaccommodated poor, 99,326 were

TABLE V. Rotterdam Bankruptcies

1780 21 1800 67 1785 26 1801 51 1790 55 1802 39 1791 35 1803 55 1792 36 1804 60 1793 47 1805 66 1794 44 1806 60 1795 36 1807 55 1796 59 1808 52 1797 42 1809 50 1798 39 1810 84 1799 64

female and 67,758 male, about the proportion to be expected, given relative employability in a distressed situation. Of that number, moreover, 29·57 per cent were under the age of 12. For the 139 orphanages in the country the ratio drops slightly with 9,530 girls and 7,794 boys. At a local level the pattern was much the same. In the Rotterdam Stads Armhuis (City Poor House) in 1808, of 729 inmates, 319 were women, 127 men, 154 girls and 127 boys (i.e. under 15).50 The case of Adriana van Egmond who, herself a widow, had struggled to maintain her sister-in-Iaw's children when their

more fruitful to concentrate on an historical study of relations within the family in the Netherlands, an area of social experience profoundly affecting the essen­tial nature of Dutch culture.

50 G.A.R. (Burgerlijke Armbestuur) 776, 786.

IN SOUTH HOLLAND DURING NAPOLEONIC WARS 119

TABLE VI

A. The Leiden Municipal Workhouse in 1802

Total number of inmates = 90 (21 Roman Catholics)

Age Male Female

Under 10

10-14

15-20

20-25

Over 25

4

11

5

1

2

23

7 (youngest is aged 6, daughter of ex-inmate)

30

13

7

10 (includes three women in their '40s, all with children)

67

According to the data collected for F.-I.-B. Baron d'Alphonse, and used by him in the Aper~u sur fa Hollande (Paris, 1813) there were, in 1811, 17,307 orphans accommodated in 139 orphanages throughout the country. Of this number 7,794 were boys and 9,350 were girls. 7,057 were under 12 3,813 12-15 3,070 15-18 3,371 18+

B. Composition of the poor in 1811

Some 191,842 were listed as officially indigent or requiring more than temporary relief, or 10·7 per cent of the whole population of the Dutch departments of the Empire (excluding Deux-Nethes). Of this number,

24,758 were 'accommodated' 167,084 were unaccommodated (outdoor or domiciliary relief) or were

installed in workhouses. Of the accommodated poor

2,018 were classified as sick 5,433 as aged or infirm (including the mentally iII)

17,307 as orphans.

120 MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT AND BURDEN OF POOR

father, Jan Bulper, disappeared into the Army and their mother died in the Leiden pest-house, but who, after four years had been forced to commit them to the Paupers' Orphanage in that city, could be multiplied thousands of times throughout the country. 51 In 1806 the Leiden Poor Commissioners noted that

... it is a very painful spectacle, which nevertheless happens not infre­quently these days, to see mothers claiming that their children would be much happier here than in their own charge, and that only the necessity for them to make a livelihood forced them apart ... one has to avert one's eyes from these scenes and put oneself in the position of those mothers who are obliged to cast out children they dearly love and to remember that the attachment of a poor woman to her family is no less strong and warm than those of more fortunate circumstances .... S2

The constitution of 1798, asserting that the State had a positive duty towards the poor had used a stock metaphor of north European 'pbilanthropism' in describing them as the 'children of the state'.53 Ten years later that had ceased to be a figure of speech.

The gloomiest place for the thousands of voluntarily committed children - not orphans in the strict sense - were the optimistically renamed kinderhuizen usually modelled on the old paupers' orphan­age in Amsterdam which housed 4,000 of the estimated 17,000 orphans in the whole country. The regimen in such institutions was grimly Dickensian. In Leiden the two custodians, JuJJrouw Soet­brood and Mijnheer Senechal stripped the newly admitted children of their clothes (admittedly a necessary hygienic precaution), had them boiled in the house cauldron and replaced by the coarse brown or grey cloth coats, skirts and hose. Their hair was cropped and they were given the standard familiarization with house rules. 54 Work began at 4.30 in the morning in spring and summer, 5.00 in the winter and was divided into sessions of uplifting instruction and the 'practical' work of carding, combing, spinning or, more ambitiously, knitting or weaving, that was supposed to pay for the inmates' upkeep. Children slept two to a bed in Leiden and Rotterdam, but very often three or four in the more crowded institutions in The Hague and Rotterdam. Punishments - the only commodities with which the custodians tended to be over-liberal - were generally the blok aan't been (leg fetter) or the hok, a damp and sepulchral solitary confinement cell. Not surprisingly d' Alphonse thought such insti-

51 G.A.L., Secretarie-Archief 5555. 52 For the account of life in the work - or kinder - huis see G.A.L. 5947. S3 See, in particular, C. Rogge, De armen kinderen van den staat. Of onderzoek

no pens de verpligting van het Gouvernement om de armen te verzorgen; en ontwerp van plan daartoe strekkende (Leiden, 1796).

54 G.A.L., Secretarie-Archief 5946-7; 5968.

IN SOUTH HOLLAND DURING NAPOLEONIC WARS 121

tutions a blot on the Dutch reputation for enlightened philanthropy, and commented astringently on the contrast between the handsome quarters and generous food allotted to the wardens and regents, and the austerity inflicted on the paupers. 55

Despite a continuing propensity to see material destitution as contingent on the want of certain moral characteristics, the scenario of social dereliction was so stark that the custodians of the poor were less given to harping on the theme that penury was the wages of sloth and depravity and more willing to accept their victimization by economic force beyond their control. The preamble to the 1808 Leiden Poor Commissioners' report has a surprisingly modern ring to it:

... That no greater calamity can befall the needier section of the people of a town than a want of the work necessary for them to support them­selves and their often numerous family, is a truth born out by the experi­ence of every generation, but especially in our own when it has become incontrovertible. And what, at the same time, could be more natural and more rooted in the character of this people, than that the daily increase of poverty and indigence, notwithstanding the most conscientious and zealous efforts to rise above it, should gradually sap all the moral vigour and ambition from which alone the impulse for honesty and decent con­duct spring - as much for the poor as for the rich - and eventually lead to the complete extinction of those qualities. At the same time, the most generous donations, given with the best of intentions, can not, in the long term, ever benefit the unfortunate as much as the opportunity to earn his own livelihood, and to eat his food together with his family as the result of his endeavours. 56

A collapse of manners, then, was the consequence, not the cause, of poverty and both, it was hoped, might be put right by contriving some employment more conducive to the restoration of self-respect than the picking of tow. The Leiden Spinschool established in 1796, the somewhat euphemistically designated 'Mendicants Institute' in The Hague and the Rotterdam Poor School were three cases in point. At their best, as in Leiden and Rotterdam, there was a serious attempt to combine decent material conditions - a balanced diet, adequate if simple clothing, heat and light in the winter - with an education which took some account of the· 'useful arts' and the need to acquire an elementary trade or craft. The poor children at Leiden, unlike their counterparts in the workhouse, had the addi­tional advantage of being sent out to work, virtually at the city's

55 A.R.A., B.Z. 1229-30. He referred to 'Ie mephitisme qu'iIs respirent (in the orphanages and workhouses) atrophie leur constitution' and was alarmed by the observable fact that many of the children contracted infirmities and diseases in the institutions which worsened as they grew older.

56 G.A.L., report of Armeninrigting 1812.

122 MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT AND BURDEN OF POOR

expense, with a wide variety of trades from apothecaries and book­binders to cobblers, glaziers and stone masons.57 But however com­mendable in principle, such schemes were prodigiously expensive. It had been one thing to entertain these ideas as remedial social exercises in what, from the perspective of 1810, looked like the palmy days of the 1780s and even the 1790s; quite another as Jan Slicher grumbled in The Hague, to go on subsidizing the Institute to the tune of at least fl. 20,000 a year. 58 Thus the same financial stringencies which militated against indiscriminate relief, also seriously constrained more considered projects. Gradually, the notion that cheaply produced broadcloth, hose, spun yarn and the like, might actually meet the costs of the 'reformed' institutions dis­appeared. The price of the raw materials was becoming prohibitive during the blockade, and the customers non-existent. There was even some opposition in Leiden and Haarlem from hard-pressed manufacturers alarmed at undercutting competition from institu­tions they deemed to be using sweated labour.59 De Stassart, the prefect of the Bouches de la Meuse department, was horrified at the sums of money eaten up by the Rotterdam school for no returns of any substance, and since the Imperial government had a veto on municipal expenses, it simply declined to prolong the experiment which had provided work for over a thousand of the city's poor.60

The more fortunate of the children were given work at the im­probably named Feijenoord Instituut set up in the old city pest house by the entrepreneur, G.J. ter Hoeven, and which certainly proved to be profitable, if not for the children then for Ter Hoeven.

However regrettable, it was patently unrealistic to expect these experiments in practical philanthropy to be underwritten so long as urban finance lay at the base of a colossal pyramid of debt extend­ing from the national government - or for that matter from the Tresor imperial by 1812-13 - down through the departments to the smallest hospices and gasthuizen struggling for survival. And as long as the relentless, predatory war continued to bleed the Nether­lands white of money, and latterly of men, nothing could be done except, as Louis Bonaparte put it, to play for time and hope that

57 G.A.L., Secretarie-Archief 5996. 58 G.A.H., Oud-Archief 5772, 5779. 59 G.A.R., Sociale en Maatschappelijke Aangelegenheden, 10: Verslag van

de commissie van oppertoezicht over het algemeene stadsarmebestuur over het resultaat van de leer en werkscholen; see also report for 1809.

60 See the report on the Feijenoord Instituut in G.A.H. 5757. It was claimed, at least, that each child received half a pound of bread, a quarter of a pound of meat and a quarter of grits or gruel each day plus a quart of beer - certainly a heavy charge on the city.

IN SOUTH HOLLAND DURING NAPOLEONIC WARS 123

Holland might not be effaced from the map like other ancient Republics before her: Venice and Genoa. However modern the administrators and councillors (few called themselves regents any longer) liked to think of themselves, the habits of scriptural allusion were too ingrained for many not to see idle wharves, unattended looms and empty dye-vats as an ugly moral blemish tainting the Fatherland for whoring after false political gods. This, at least was the lesson drawn by the more conservative commentators on the 'French time' like Van Hogendorp and later, Groen van Prinsterer. Other more liberal survivors into the nineteenth century like Falck, Appelius and Thorbecke saw the experience less as a providential scourge and more as the inevitable culmination of inertia and ne­glect under the old Republic. Neither analysis was exactly on the mark. For while there had been much to complain of under the Dutch old regime, the violent dislocation of an already degenerating economic life which had, through the weight of the poor, brought urban finance to the verge of collapse, had essentially been a short­term phenomenon, the result of a debilitating military conflict. The consequences, however, were more enduring. The havoc inflicted on urban autonomy was so comprehensive as to preclude any reversion to the old conglomerate federalism. Whether the war had been the occasion or the cause of this turning-point it may be in order, in the context of this collection of papers, to speculate whether its cauter­izing impact contributed something to the special Dutch concern, continued into our own time, for finding some sort of international order to protect small and vulnerable nations from being trampled underfoot by the most implacable of the horsemen of the apoca­lypse.

6. The Sinews of War: The Role of Dutch Finance in European Politics (c. 1750-1815)

M.G. BUIST

ON 9 October 1787 the Amsterdam banker Henry Hope addressed himself in a detailed letter to the Russian court banker Richard Sutherland. Two months earlier a new war had broken out between Russia and Turkey and Henry Hope was very keen to show Suther­land that in this situation Russia was in urgent need of a foreign loan. The war, he wrote, would impose an additional burden on the already inadequate Russian resources and force the country to seek help abroad. A loan in Amsterdam offered the best solution; this would enable Russia to meet its needs 'in various parts of Europe'. Moreover it would reduce the strain on the exchange rate of the rouble. The predicament of the Dutch Republic seemed however scarcely favourable for floating a new loan: at that moment a Pruss ian army had intervened on behalf of the Prince of Orange and was besieging Amsterdam, where a group of radical Patriots in­tended to make a last stand. But once the situation in Amsterdam returned to normal, Hope was confident Dutch investors could be persuaded to subscribe to a small loan of, for instance, 1,500,000 guilders.

In consequence of the Turkish war, the last Russian loan in Holland had fallen below par and a further drop was likely, when news of an extension of the Russian loans spread through the Re­public. But interest in the loan would certainly revive once news arrived of Russian successes against the Turks, 'for the credit of a country depends largely upon its successes, and conversely, its success depends upon its credit'.1 Parts of this letter of Henry Hope merit closer attention for they help to explain why Amsterdam had become such an important market for foreign loans and how this market functioned. An examination of the position of the various persons or groups of persons engaged in the business also repays

1 M.O. Buist, At Spes Non Fracta, Hope & Co. 1770-1815 (The Hague, 1974), p.95.

THE ROLE OF DUTCH FINANCE 125

study: the issuing house with its aids, the investors who had to furnish the capital and the foreign governments which were in need of credit. Subsequently consideration will be given to the effects these loans had on the Dutch economy and the benefits reaped by the countries which placed their loans on the Amsterdam capital market. In conclusion I shall try to gauge the impact Dutch foreign loans had on the political and military history of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century.2

The origins of the Amsterdam capital market can be traced back to the late medieval period when the growth of shipping, trade and industry in the province of Holland and the remarkable degree of urbanization had helped to bring about capital accumulation.3

Even before the Revolt against Spain towns and provinces had sometimes negotiated loans, and after the rise of the Dutch Re­public the States General and the Provinces alike often covered their deficits in this way. Likewise, in the course of the seventeenth century, European rulers raised loans on the Dutch capital market, though only when the States General considered the granting of credit expedient for diplomatic reasons. In most cases domestic governments and foreign rulers alike did not call on private bankers but on public officials. Sometimes these officials, who were usually tax receivers, could persuade Dutch capitalists to take a share in such a loan. In the long run, however, the tax receivers showed themselves less suited to act as bankers, if only because the sums required became steadily larger.4

A second source of capital developed out of the mercantile sector, where a number of houses succeeded in obtaining from a foreign government a monopoly of articles, such as quicksilver, copper or diamonds, on condition that they would provide ad­vances against their sale. If the burden of these advances became too great, the house, which held the monopoly, could form a syndicate with other firms and in this wayan advance might gradually be transformed into a loan. This happened in 1618, when the Amsterdam merchant Louis de Geer combined with other houses to provide the Swedish King, Gustavus Adolphus, with a loan. Another example was the Amsterdam house Deutz, which in

2 I am deeply indebted to J. C. Riley for allowing me to read some chapters from his forthcoming book on the Amsterdam capital market and inter­national finance in the eighteenth century.

3 H.P.H. Jansen, Hollands voorsprong (Leiden, 1976), pp. 13-14. 4 B.E. de Muinck, Een regentenhuishouding omstreeks 1700 (The Hague,

1965), pp. 21-2, 26, 84-91; J.G. van Dillen, Van rijkdom en regenten. Handboek tol de economische en sociale geschiedenis van Nederland lijdens de republiek (The Hague, 1970), pp. 457-8.

126 THE ROLE OF DUTCH FINANCE

1659 secured a monopoly of the sale of Austrian quicksilver. When, during the wars against Louis XIV, the Emperor faced a financial crisis, Deutz started in 1695 to issue a number of loans on the security of quicksilver, which as a novelty, were organized as a long­term advance and broken down into bonds or obligaties, which investors could buy.s Most of these loans were guaranteed by the States General, as it was in the interest of the Dutch Republic that the Emperor should have funds to pursue the war against the French. Thus a private banker could operate with the assistance of a state guarantee. When, however, hostilities ceased, in 1715, the guarantee was withdrawn. And for the rest of the eighteenth century similar guarantees were virtually ruled out because the Dutch Republic pursued a policy of neutrality and on the whole avoided political commitment.

The next step was to divorce the loan from the delivery of a given article and instead to require as security a number of specified sources of revenue accruing to the ruler. Mixed forms also occurred, in which, apart from the security of the revenues, a monopoly of the sale of a given article was granted. This sort of loan still existed in the nineteenth century, when the house of Rothschild, for instance, issued a loan for the Spanish Government on the security of, among other things, the production of certain quicksilver mines. Some­times loans were issued on the security of the crown jewels, but this was the case only with loans for less important states, for no great power could degrade itself by demonstrating so glaringly its des­perate financial need.6

In the second half of the eighteenth century Amsterdam became an increasingly important market for foreign loans and in the late 1760s Austria, Denmark, Sweden, Russia and several smaller German states all raised loans there. Dutch trade and finance had amply profited from Dutch neutrality during the Seven Years' War. Particularly as a financial market Amsterdam was rapidly growing, not only because of a major extension of acceptance credit, but also thanks to the enormous growth of the trade in specie, the continual transfer of British subsidies to the Continent and the marketing of British domestic loans by Amsterdam houses like Clifford and Hope. When the war ended in 1763, excessive speculation in colonial products and the serious overstraining of the whole credit system led to a violent crisis. On the whole, the Amsterdam merchant com-

5 Ibid., 458-9; J.E. Elias, De vroedschap van Amsterdam, 1578-1795 (2 vol., Amsterdam, 1903-5), II, 1046-50.

6 Buist, Spes, pp. 19-20.

IN EUROPEAN POLITICS (C. 1750-1815) 127

munity weathered the storm well, although some firms, among these De Neufville, were ruined as the result of their own recklessness.7

The experience in financial activities gained during the Seven Years' War was probably not lost on a number of leading Amster­dam merchant houses, which began to expand their business in this field. As we have already seen, this shift in the activities of the Amsterdam merchants also included an increased interest in foreign loans. An additional explanation of the growing importance of Amsterdam as a financial market may have been that firms like Clifford, Hogguer and Hope, which during the Seven Years' War had taken part as agents in the marketing of British securities, saw a chance of earning bigger commissions by issuing foreign loans on their own account. British and French loans were out of the ques­tion, as these were usually issued in their own countries, where, on account of a well-developed economy, there was a home market for these securities.8

A fresh economic crisis hit Amsterdam in 1772, when excessive speculation in shares of the British East India Company led to a string of bankruptcies in London, which spread to Amsterdam, where speculation in English shares was just as rife and acceptance credit just as overstrained. The house of Clifford & Sons was obliged to suspend payments as a result of its rash conduct, ruining a number of smaller firms in the process. Once again a slump in commodity trade followed, though this time it lasted longer and had more serious consequences than the crisis of 1763. Since 1772 London had been growing in importance as a centre for billbroking, at the expense of Amsterdam, which lacked both a central bank and deposit banks. The sharp fall in the turnover figures with the Am­sterdam Exchange Bank of a number of prominent houses like Hope and Hogguer indicates that there had been a decline in ex­change dealings, for these firms had been particularly active in the financial sector during the preceding decade.9

The continuous rise in the number of foreign loans may also point to a decline in exchange dealings. In the eyes of Hope & Co. and their correspondents anyway, a decrease of mercantile or credit operations automatically led to a growing activity in the loan sector. In 1780 the outbreak of the fourth Anglo-Dutch War and the ensuing British naval operations against Dutch shipping caused

7 E.E. de Jong-Keesing, De economische crisis van 1763 te Amsterdam (Amsterdam, 1939), pp. 121, 159-60; W.P. Sautijn Kluit, De Amsterdamsche beurs in 1763 en 1773 (Amsterdam, 1865), pp. 3-8, 10-13.

B Elias, Vroedschap, II, 798, 1059. 9 Buist, Spes, pp. 480-3.

128 THE ROLE OF DUTCH FINANCE

another commercial setback. At home the growing antagonism between the followers of the Prince of Orange and the Patriots aggravated the general atmosphere of unrest and insecurity and contributed to another expansion of foreign loans, which lasted till 1793. Perhaps, too, the unhappy experience of the speculation in British securities during the crisis of 1772 and even more the war with Britain, which aroused strong feelings against that country, turned Dutch capitalists away from investing in British securities and persuaded them to spread their portfolio,lo

In his letter of 9 October 1787 Henry Hope referred to the con­flict between the Patriots and the Orangists and this was decided in favour of the latter following the intervention of the Prussian army. This turn of events, however, placed the Dutch Republic in the position of a protectorate of Prussia and England. Indeed the preference Dutch investors showed for loans to great powers like Russia, France and Austria and even to second-rate states such as Sweden and Spain, might be legitimately interpreted as indicating their pessimism about the continued independence of the Re­public.

In 1793 this period of activity on the loan market came to an end. Early that year the Convention of revolutionary France declared war on 'the King of England and the Stadholder of Holland', and by March Dumouriez reached the great rivers which divided the Republic. His defeat by the Austrians and his subsequent defection provided a brief respite, but a major victory of a French army in September brought back the threat of a French invasion and caused Dutch investors to tighten their purse strings. One of the reasons for the French invasion of the Republic was the French revolution­ary leaders' conviction that the capture of Amsterdam would cut France's enemies off from this important financial market while enabling the revolutionary government to float French loans there.ll

After the French conquest of Holland this expectation was realized to the extent that the foreign loan boom ceased abruptly. But there was no question of the market being receptive to French loans. Dutch capital was too mobile, so that the only way to tap Dutch wealth was by levying a huge war contribution. The Batavian Republic, as it was now called, was also in dire need of money and its forced loans and levies on capital and income compelled Dutch

10 A.C. Carter, Getting, Spending and Investing in Early Modern Times. Essays on Dutch, English and Huguenot Economic History (Assen, 1975), p. 30.

n Gedenkstukken der algemeene geschiedenis van Nederland van 1795 tot 1840 (ed. H.T. Colenbrander, 22 vol., The Hague, 1905-22), Rijks Geschiedkundige Publicatien, Grote Serle I, I, 423-4.

IN EUROPEAN POLITICS (C. 1750-1815) 129

investors to sell part of their foreign securities,12 Despite govern­ment interference with the capital market foreign loans reappeared surprisingly soon on the Amsterdam market. Closer investigation shows, however, that the lion's share of these loans were prolonga­tions of older loans, which were converted into new ones at a higher rate of interest.13 When the financial burdens of war became un­bearable a government could resolve its difficulties in one of three ways: it could reduce its debt to one-third, as, for instance, France did in 1798, payoff the interest in depreciated paper money, as happened in Austria, or simply suspend all payments. This became increasingly common in the lean last years of the Napoleonic era.

Within the limits of Napoleonic Europe however, the Amsterdam capital market remained important. Satellites and defeated enemies of France alike continued to find their way to Amsterdam, in order to arrange payment of their war contributions to the French Treasury. The government of the Batavian Republic kept a jealous watch over the Amsterdam capital market, in order to get its loans subscribed, but several times it had to give way following an imper­ial command from Paris. In this way the Amsterdam capital mar­ket was a source on which countries like Portugal, Spain and Prussia could draw in order to anticipate their revenues so as to pay their war contribution. The Louisiana loan to the United States of America was a special case, but ultimately the proceeds of the loan were paid into the French war chest, and part of the money was even spent on the purchase of Russian timber destined for the French invasion fieet. 14 This example demonstrates the important contribution the Amsterdam capital market made to the French war effort.

As the Continental System increasingly paralysed trade to and from European ports, the Amsterdam loan market dried up. Private persons and even governments suffered from a credit famine and after 1807 new foreign loans could not be floated in Holland, as one government after another failed to honour its financial obligations. The market value of securities issued in Amsterdam declined after 1805 and this together with the forced sales already mentioned, explains the decrease in the value of Dutch holdings in foreign loans. Sometimes the defaulting government abused its own negligence to

12 E.H. Kossmann, 'The Crisis of the Dutch State 1780-1813, Nationalism, Federalism, Unitarism', Britain and the Netherlands IV Metropolis, Dominion and Province (ed. I.S. Bromley and E.H. Kossmann, The Hague, 1971), p. 173.

13 Buist, Spes, ch. vi. 14 P.I. van Winter, Het aandeel van den amsterdamschen handel aan den

opbouw van het amerikaansche gemeenebest (2 vo!., The Hague, 1927-33), II, 386-7; Buist, Spes, pp. 192-7.

130 THE ROLE OF DUTCH FINANCE

buy back its securities at a low price. Nevertheless in a way the situation may have looked worse than it fundamentally was. In 1794 Robert Voute, an agent of Hope & Co., told a Russian mini­ster that the investor was obJiged to view his bonds as evidence of money which he had once possessed, and not as proof of money which he could call his own. If this was true, it also meant that depreciated bonds could regain their nominal value in the future. In fact only France and Sweden reduced their debts by two-thirds, while Spain allowed its debts to sink slowly in the morass of its own financial disorder. Russia and Austria however, the most important debtors, resumed their payments after 1815 and reached an agree­ment on the reimbursement of the arrears. Only when we bear this in mind, does the quick recovery of the Amsterdam market for foreign loans after 1815 become explicable. Foreign loans thus served to keep intact part of the Dutch wealth, earned during the seventeenth and early eighteenth century, and in that way helped to see the country through a prolonged period of economic stagnation.1s

After this sketchy review of the history of foreign loans in Holland before 1815, we need to consider in what way the bankers in Amsterdam came into contact with prospective borrowers. The loan negotiations were commonly conducted in Amsterdam between a special envoy of the foreign government and the banker. The banker was usually in the most advantageous position, as he con­trolled the way to the investors' purse and knew most about the condition of the market. It was possible, however, that a Minister of Finance might negotiate with two houses at the same time and could therefore play them off against each other, but he could only play such tricks if his credit was first-class. Agreement had to be reached on the conditions on which the loan was to be issued, i.e. the amount of the loan, the interest rate, the rate of issue, the term and the commission due to the banker and his aids. Of the first importance was the size of the loan itself. Although the borrower would have a certain sum in mind, such considerations as the state of the market, the anticipated willingness of the investors to sub­scribe and the general availability of investment capital had also to be taken into account. Excessive expectations might have to be dis­couraged, but on the other hand very modest demands could prove

15 In 1820 the first Russian loan after the Napoleonic period was floated on the Dutch market. In 1818 Hope & Co. took part with Baring Bros. in a series of loans for the French Government, in order to meet the war indemnity to the former allies: J.J. Weeveringh, Handleiding tot de geschiedenis der staats­schulden (2 vol., Haarlem, 1852-5), II, 678; V.A. Nigohosian, La liberation du territoire fran~ais apres Waterloo (1815-1818) (Paris, 1929), pp. 67, 74, 147-8.

IN EUROPEAN POLITICS (C. 1750-1815) 131

unattractive. In 1787, for instance, Henry Hope warned the Swedish Minister of Finance that too small a sum would create an adverse impression, 'in view of its modest proportions' .16 An impressively large issue was to be preferred to numerous smaller loans, as these might be interpreted as indicative of a continuous, pressing need on the part of the borrower.

No less important than the amount of the loan was the rate of interest. Apart from the obvious financial advantage to the borrower, a low rate of interest possessed status value. It was a symbol of a country's creditworthiness and it had to tally with the rates of prior issues or with the rate of interest of loans to other powers of similar political rank. During the second half of the eighteenth century the rate of interest on foreign loans in Amsterdam ranged from 3! per cent to 5 per cent, the precise level being determined by the standing of a country or minister and the estimated volume of capital seeking investment. As a rule domestic loans gave returns below those paid by foreign borrowers, but at least till the dramatic events of 1787 this disadvantage was offset by the investor's conviction that domestic loans were more secure. When the demands on the Amsterdam loan market grew, a slight rise in the rate of interest was perceptible, but even then unpredictable fluctuations could aJways occur. Incidentally there seems little truth in the allegation that the issuing house and the borrower both preferred a relatively large commission to a higher rate of interest. In fact the interest rates for foreign loans fluctuated within a narrow range, usually a little above the rate paid on domestic loans.

There is no reason however to connect this quite small rise in the rate of interest with the steady rise in commodity prices since the middle of the eighteenth century. Most investors then as now seemed unaware of the loss in real value of their securities as a result of inflation. After 1800 the rate of interest rose to 6 per cent, but this can be attributed to the scarcity of capital and loss of con­fidence in the creditworthiness of the borrowers among investors.

In the period before 1793 most loans were contracted and issued at par, and bankers were anxious to keep the rate at that height. Indeed not until 1790 was a minimum rate of issue below par allowed, pointing to growing difficulties in getting loans subscribed. The scarcity of money in the Napoleonic period resulted in take­over agreements below par. On account of the slow but persistent fall in the rates of older loans, most bankers preferred to issue new loans at prices not much above those of old loans at the same rate

16 Buist, Spes, p. 89.

132 THE ROLE OF DUTCH FINANCE

of interest, so as not to compromise the earlier loans. Sometimes a margin existed between the takeover price and the rate of issue and this accrued to the issuing house and its aids. In 1802 for instance a loan for Portugal was taken over by Hope & Co. at 90 per cent, but sold at 95 per centP

The term of a loan usually ranged from between ten to fifteen years. Redemption took place in the last five to ten years of the term, depending on the amount of the loan. Loans were commonly prolonged, usually by converting these at a lower rate of interest, at least if the market allowed. Owing to these prolongations a simple addition of the sums of the various loans may give a wrong im­pression of the total amount owed by a certain country. Until 1793 the investor could usually choose between reinvesting in the new loan - often with preferential treatment - or getting his money back. During the Napoleonic wars the option of ready cash dis­appeared and the investor had no alternative but to exchange his bonds for new. As a sort of bonus the old securities were usually converted at par, even when the actual rate of these securities was 10 per cent or more below that level,18

All loans entered into at Amsterdam carried the stipulation that interest and principal should be paid in that town and in guilders current. The latter provision meant that bondholders were not affected by fluctuations in the rate of exchange and were protected against inflationary practices of needy governments. During the Napoleonic era some governments disregarded this stipulation and occasionally paid in depreciated paper money, as Austria did. After 1815, a<; we already saw, most governments mended their ways and recommenced payments in the proper manner.

As a rule the banker was assisted by other, usually smaller, houses which were concerned with selling the bonds. One or two loan brokers, whose task it was to test the market, brought these houses together and induced them to subscribe a given proportion of the loan sum, a form of underwriting still known in the banking world of today. In the language of the day these houses were called 'entrepreneurs', a description which can give rise to misunder­standing, but which is not covered by the rather colourless name of 'commission agent'. Perhaps the term 'loan entrepreneur' is more apt. These loan entrepreneurs were often merchant houses of sub­stance, with extensive interests in such areas as commerce and

17 Ibid., 390, 394, 403. 18 E.g. the Spanish loan of cft. 30,000,000 in 1807. This included a clause

which allowed the conversion of an earlier loan at 95 per cent although the bonds then stood at around 60 per cent; ibid., 336.

IN EUROPEAN POLITICS (C. 1750-1815) 133

brokerage. On other occasions some of them acted as issuing houses; for example Pieter Stadnitski, who opened loans in Am­sterdam on French life annuities and who was equally active in loans on the security of America's domestic debt.19

As the loan activity in Amsterdam grew, the number of these loan entrepreneurs also increased. In 1780 eight loan entrepreneurs underwrote a loan contract with Hope & Co., while in 1792 their number had risen to thirty-two. During the Napoleonic wars, how­ever, the number of loan entrepreneurs dwindled to a mere five in 1807. Most loan entrepreneurs lived in Amsterdam, the remainder hailed from smaller towns in the provinces of Holland and Utrecht. There were no clear dividing lines between brokers, loan entre­preneurs and the issuing houses when it came to the subscription of the loans. The issuing houses usually underwrote their own loans for a substantial sum and brokers repeatedly subscribed to loans they had helped to arrange, partly for their own account, partly on behalf of others. When the prospects of a new issue arose, it was of the utmost importance for the issuing house to know if the loan entrepreneurs were willing to participate. It often happened that the contract with the loan entrepreneurs was signed simultaneously with the loan contract or very shortly afterwards.

The rate of the commission granted to the loan entrepreneurs was not high. Ranging from 1 per cent to 1 t per cent, it rose to 2 per cent when the number of loans increased and services of the loan entre­preneurs became more indispensable. The commission of the issu­ing house, from which all other expenses had to be met, was naturally higher and fluctuated between 4 per cent and 7 per cent, percentages which perhaps reflect the state of the capital market at a given moment and the credit rating of the borrower. A threat of war and a subsequent tightening of the capital market could raise the commission. For handling payments of interest and principal an extra commission was charged, varying from! per cent to I per cent for payment of interest and 1 per cent for payment of the principal.

Sometimes there was an outcry against the scandalous gains Dutch bankers made on their loans, for instance in Russia in 1794.20 However, if we deduct from the commission of 6! per cent paid to Hope by Russia the 2 per cent due to the loan entrepreneurs and t per cent to the brokers, 4 per cent remains, which does not

19 Van Winter, Aandeel, II, 466-7; J.C. Riley, 'Life Annuity-based loans on the Amsterdam Capital Market toward the end of the eighteenth century', Economisch-en sociaal-historisch jaarboek, XXXVI (1973), 113-25.

20 Buist, Spes, p. 131.

134 THE ROLE OF DUTCH FINANCE

seem an excessively high percentage, especially when we keep in mind that the brokerage for the payment of interest was included in this commission and that the Russian Court expected huge ad­vances on the loan sum.

Of the three parties concerned in the emission of a loan, the issuing house had by far the strongest position, as we already saw, but this position should not be exaggerated. There always existed a great deal of uncertainty about the investors' reaction to a new issue. In his letter of 9 October 1787, for instance, Henry Hope trusted that despite the difficult political situation in Holland Dutch in­vestors would be prepared to subscribe to a loan of 1,500,000 guilders. In reality, however, soundings of the market taken by the loan entrepreneurs were so favourable that within a week two con­tracts were arranged for a total of 6 million guilders. Of course it was a well-known ploy of bankers to paint too sombre a picture of the market in order to check the greediness of prospective borrowers or to magnify their achievement in retrospect, but in this case the surprise and the satisfaction of Henry Hope, expressed in his letters to close business friends, was patently sincere.21

Information on the political and financial situation of a govern­ment which wanted to issue a loan was even more sketchy and unreliable. Diplomatic channels could be used, but even their information might be often distorted or partial. Sometimes a business correspondent would have political inside information at his disposal, but the problem of the reliability remained. Thefinancial situation of most countries was shrouded in mystery and informa­tion on this point was simply not available, as nearly all government officials had themselves a very inadequate understanding of state finance. Information concerning the value and dependability of the securities offered was given with great reluctance, lest it expose weaknesses in the system of absolute government.

The issuing house was in a strong position vis-a-vis the borrower government, owing to its indispensability in reaching the investors. The name of the house constituted both a guarantee for the in­vestor that the terms on which the loan was effected would be scrupulously kept while, on the other hand, giving the borrower the certainty that his loan would be fully subscribed. Switching from one house to another was of course possible, but the standing of both houses had to be similar and their number was quite limited. Choosing a second-rate house was decidedly risky, not simply because of its inferior financial resources but also its lack of repu-

21 Ibid., 96-8.

IN EUROPEAN POLITICS (c. 1750-1815) 135

tation with the investing public. Inadequate experience made such a house more vulnerable to market upsets and its loans were the first to decline in price, were the creditworthiness of the borrower called in question.

Sometimes loans to a foreign government could be turned by the issuing house to commercial advantage. Most government bor­rowers had a mercantilistic trade policy, but sometimes they were willing to relax their protectionist regulations or grant exemptions from import or export prohibitions. In 1794 for instance, when Dutch firms tried to save their goods from seizure by the invading French army, Hope & Co. received special permission from Em­press Catherine II to import a large quantity of sugar into Russia.22

These advantages were all the more important with a loan of the mixed form, where part of the securities consisted of the monopoly of sale or certain articles. Sometimes the issuing house was ap­pointed Court Banker and as such handled all financial affairs of the government in question; in a case of special merit, a title might even be conferred upon the banker himself, though this was rare.

This brings us to the delicate subject of the relationship between the issuing house and the borrower government. Almost all rulers concerned were absolute monarchs, a few even despots; they re­cruited their ministers and senior civil servants from among the nobility. In these states, the bourgeois merchant was looked down upon as socially inferior: even when, as happened occasionally, he was ennobled for his financial services to court circles. On the other hand the borrower's position in respect of the issuing house was that of a supplicant, obliged to answer embarrassing questions. In this complex and ambiguous position, the issuing house had to observe the existing rules of etiquette and in correspondence show great deference without, however, adopting an obsequious manner which would have undermined its own position.

It was of utmost importance for the issuing house to retain the investors' confidence and for that reason it stoutly defended their interests in all cases where the payment of interest or principal was at stake. Thanks to the lengthy efforts of partners of Hope & Co. payments were resumed by Russia and Austria after 1815. For the same reason issuing houses used to support each other. When a government, which had defaulted on previous loans, approached another house for a new one, it was first required to fulfil its finan­cial obligations before negotiations could proceed.

Though the investors were, in some measure, protected by the

22 Ibid., 48.

136 THE ROLE OF DUTCH FINANCE

self-interest of the issuing house, they were, as a group, in a weak position. Of all parties concerned they suffered most from insuffi­cient information on the loans to which they were asked to sub­scribe. Not until the appearance of the Prijs-courant der effecten in August 1796 did the investors obtain a regular source of news on the stock-market.23 The appearance of such a price-list was probably not fortuitous; since the French invasion regular interest payment on a number of foreign loans had been jeopardized and the price of these bonds had therefore been liable to fluctuations. The loss of income on their securities and the string of loans and levies by the Batavian Government forced the investors of moderate means to sell at reduced prices and thus opened a wide field for speculations. In these circumstances it was important to have at hand up-to-date information about market quotations. Before 1796 most investors were dependent on their brokers for information on loans, and the late appearance of the Prijs-courant implies that there was previously little need for more detailed knowledge about the loan market. Probably most investors bought to hold, not to sell or to speculate, and as long as the value of the securities remained fairly stable and about par, they were content. We may assume therefore that trans­actions in futures and other speculations in securities were confined to a small group of professional operators and that, at least until 1795, the smaller investors kept out of this market.

According to contemporary observers Dutch investors were rather stupid, with little insight into the nature of their investments and cared little about the yield of their securities. The American diplomat William Short, writing to Alexander Hamilton, depicted them as 'a class of heavy, dull people', whose great ignorance rendered them fearful of every change and who could only be tempted by their excessive avarice to enter occasionally into new combinations. Short's judgement may however have been coloured by his anger at the conditions imposed by Dutch bankers. But it is a moot point whether the ordinary investor today manages his affairs better. 24

A way of acquiring securities otherwise difficult to obtain was by the substitution negotiation, i.e. the loan on the security of bonds of another loan. This form of loan was repeatedly applied to parts of the American domestic debt, the most famous being the 'Joint Property of original American Stocks', the substitution negotiation, through which in 1803 Dutch investors participated in the Louisi-

23 Joh. de Vries, De economische achteruitgang der republiek in de achttiende eeuw (Amsterdam, 1959), p. 68.

24 Van Winter, Aandeel, J, 191.

IN EUROPEAN POLITICS (C. 1750-1815) 137

ana 6 per cent loan.2s Sometimes a substitution venture was funded on a stock of bonds of a depreciated loan and thus took the character of a speculation on an eventual rise in their value. As usual most of the investors were to be found among the wealthier members of society. First of all came the 'capitalists', as they were called respectfully in their own time, the merchants, the manu­facturers and the regents, the wealthy oligarchy which dominated the towns and provinces in the Dutch Republic, especially in Holland. Investors were also to be found among physicians and lawyers, university teachers and minor government officials. That lesser merchants, even shopkeepers, servants and artisans invested money in foreign loans is probably attributable to the ingrained habit of saving among broad layers of the population.26 In addition to these individual investors the religious and the charitable insti­tutions also bought bonds to hold.

As a rule the countries which approached Dutch houses for the issue of a loan needed the name of these houses to enhance their credit standing. Britain and France, two of the most important borrowers, raised their loans on the home market and only used the Amsterdam houses as commission agents. For that reason they have been omitted here. But in most of these borrowing countries capital formation was negligible or, at best, in its infancy. Predominantly agrarian, they still retained a feudal structure, in which the land­owning nobility was omnipotent. The majority of such countries were situated in the outer zone of Europe. These included Sweden, Russia, Poland, Austria, a number of German states, Naples, Spain, and Portugal. The young United States, a pioneer country with a matching hunger for credit, was a special case but there, too, the capital formation was inadequate for the demand.

The proceeds of the loans were usually employed for purposes connected with war. These might be military preparations, the waging of the war itself, or the postwar recovery. Sometimes the proceeds were spent on currency reforms or the payment of war contributions. Under Gustavus III of Sweden, the loan sums did not only finance the preparations of war, but helped to circumvent the Riksdag's right to discuss the budget.27

In this way Dutch loans had a significant role to play in several central and eastern European wars in the eighteenth century, in­cluding the War of the Austrian Succession, the Seven Years' War,

25 Van Winter, Aandeel, II, ch. x; Buist, Spes, pp. 57-60, 188-90. 26 Van Winter, Aandeel, II, 187. 27 Buist, Spes, pp. 86-7.

138 THE ROLE OF DUTCH FINANCE

the wars between Russia and Turkey and the ill-starred war be­tween Sweden and Russia (1788-90). As for the wars in western Europe and across the Atlantic, the Dutch purchase of British securities during the Seven Years' War certainly assisted the British war effort. 28 In the same way the insurgent British colonies in America were supported by Dutch loans during and after the War of Independence. The part played by Amsterdam during the Napoleonic period and its contribution to the French war effort has already been considered.

The market quotation of a loan reflected the standing of the borrower in the same way as the rate of interest. The Prussian envoy to the Dutch States General, Thulemeyer, reported regularly on the credit of other European countries to Frederick the Great. In the second half of 1813 Napoleon's political and military position rapidly deteriorated; French authorities in Amsterdam therefore strictly supervised the sales of French and Italian stocks, because such sales and the consequent fall in prices might be construed as indicating a lack of confidence in the future of the Napoleonic regime.29

We now come to the question of the role and influence of Dutch loans at home and abroad. Already in the eighteenth century the continuous outflow of capital was held to be detrimental to the Dutch economy and this opinion has been repeated ever since. It is not possible in the space available to accord this controversial subject the attention it deserves. But we should note that the market in loans grew because other outlets for investment were gradually blocked: even a more developed system of deposit banking prob­ably would not have helped as the demand for capital in the Nether­lands was quite insufficient. Dutch merchants were understandably reluctant to accept deposits from outsiders as they already had difficulty in investing their own capital profitably.

It has also been argued that foreign governments used Dutch loans to build up rival trades or industries. But our knowledge con­cerning the use made of Dutch loans indicates that this is only true in as far as such loans released foreign capital which otherwise would have been employed for war purposes, for use in trade or industry. Moreover this only applied to Britain or France, as they alone had a home capital market. In the case of Britain, the growth

28 Carter, Getting, Spending and Investing, pp. 32-5. 29 'Depeches van Thulemeyer, 1763-1788' (ed. R. Fruin and H.T. Colen­

brander), Werken uitgegeven door het historisch genootschap, 3rd series, XXX (1912),90, 102, 132, 168-9, 173, 189, 192,213,244,270--1,278-9,283-4,292, 294,296; Buist, Spes, p. 257.

IN EUROPEAN POLITICS (C. 1750-1815) 139

of its trade and the corresponding decline of the Amsterdam staple market were both closely connected with structural change, which had little to do with the import of Dutch capital. Modern British industry, in its early stages, was largely financed by a small circle of relatives and local connexions; later, thanks to rapid capital accu­mulation, it was able to finance itself by regularly ploughing back the greater part of its profits.30 In this scheme Dutch capital had no part to play. French trade presented a far less serious threat to Dutch commerce than was the case with British competition: furthermore the danger was partly structural, partly mercantilistic in origin.

Dutch loans evidently played an important, though not neces­sarily decisive role in European politics. Dutch capital certainly helped to sustain the British war effort during the Seven Years' War and gave financial aid to Russia during the Turkish wars; but even here it is uncertain whether these loans were indispensable and whether no other resources were available. The impact of Dutch capital will only become clearer once we know what proportion the Dutch loans formed of the total amount available for war and how decisive this proportion was.

It is clear, however, that Dutch loans are to some degree com­parable with the war subsidies, procured by financially more power­ful allies. Dutch loans, however, had the immense advantage that they could be spent at one's own discretion; governments in re­ceipt of war subsidies had to suffer the irritating influence of the rich ally on their affairs. By borrowing in Amsterdam Russia pro­cured itself a freedom of action in the case of its wars against Turkey. This implies that after 1793, when the loan boom in Am­sterdam ended, a number of governments lost this freedom of action. In the wars against Napoleon the allies had once again to toe the British line for wars without British financial backing were practically out of the question.

It has also been argued that thanks to Dutch loans the aristo­cratic regimes in the outer zone of Europe were able to keep intact their antiquated and inequitable fiscal systems, instead of being forced to redistribute the tax burden according to wealth and in­come. There is something to be said for this opinion, but it should be remembered that after 1793, when Dutch loans were no longer available these aristocratic regimes were able to hold their own without resorting to radical structural reforms, thanks to British

30 F. Crouzet, 'Capital Formation in Great Britain during the Industrial Revolution', Capital Formation in the Industrial Revolution (ed. F. Crouzet, London. 1972). pp. 172, 183, 184, 190.

140 THE ROLE OF DUTCH FINANCE

subsidies and inflation. Indeed it might be argued that throughout the nineteenth century, when London and Paris had surpassed Amsterdam as a loan market and Rothschild had taken the place of Hope & Co., the availability of foreign loans hindered reforms in countries like Spain, Naples, Austria and Russia. One might go still further and suggest that during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries foreign loans helped preserve the antiquated social struc­tures of the ancien regime in eastern and southern European countries and to ward off radical reforms till revolution became inevitable.

7. Britain and Blockade, 1780-1940

G.F.A. BEST

BLOCKADE is not among the more dramatic or complicated devices of war. In the general history of war it figures mainly as one of the several means by which a Power (usually a naval one) may seek to enforce its will on its enemy; a means which sometimes has succeeded but at other times has not, and which invites controversy only insofar as its specific share of the aggregate of causes of victory and defeat has often been peculiarly difficult to distinguish from the others. More interesting and much more controversial is its place in the symbiotic histories of the ethical and legal contexts of war. It is within those intimately related contexts that blockade is here to be considered, with particular attention to two things which have often been said about it: first, that it may fairly be seen as a logical antecedent and a practical precursor of the most ruthless and awful practices of the total wars of the twentieth century; second, that it is characteristic of what has been identified as a British, an Anglo­American, or an 'Anglo-Saxon' idea of war distinct from (and, as has often also been alleged, morally inferior to) a supposed 'con­tinental' one.

Let us begin by simply examining this latter charge; adopting for the time being the rather loose, extensive use of the word which has been customary with all but professional international lawyers, and attempting as yet no critical evaluation. This charge is no merely historical matter. Eminent international law writers can still make it. Castren, for example, in his influential 1954 textbook, wrote that 'The Anglo-American countries have adopted a stricter attitude than the continental countries of Europe with regard to the legal effects of war and the waging of war'.1 Again 'In Anglo-American countries (as distinct from continental) it has in general been held that a war is waged against the whole of the enemy population'. 2 In

1 E. Castren, The Present Law of War and Neutrality (Helsinki, 1954), p. 37. 2 Ibid., 18.

142 BRITAIN AND BLOCKADE, 1780-1940

both places, he further remarks that the 'Anglo-American' idea has gained increasing acceptance in this century, as applying more aptJy to the total wars it has Jearnt to wage. Meyrowitz has more recently put it more specifically. 'S'agissant du droit de la guerre economique et de la guerre maritime la conception anglo-americaine a prevalu. En revanche, Ie droit de 1a guerre n'a pas sanctionne la tentative de ces m~mes puissances maritimes de transposer dans la guerre aeri­enne les regles nees dans Ie milieu maritime et adaptees aux con­ditions de la guerre sur mer: il a refuse notamment de consacrer l'assimilation qu'on a essaye d'etablir entre Ie blocus et la pratique des bombardements aerie-ns strategiques.'3

When and where does this idea begin? About fifty years before Meyrowitz, an eminent German jurist wrote: 'Before this war (1914-18) the best French exponents of international law could say that under their guidance a new and more humane law regulating the relations of the individual to the war of states and their armies had been formed. In this war, the Anglo-American conception, which makes war an annihilation of a whole enemy people and denies every progress of human thought, has already conquered the Allies ... .'4 Fifty years earlier still, language even more severe was directed to the same end by the continental jurist of highest reputa­tion about the middle of the nineteenth century, Heffter: 'maritime wars, more cruel and murderous than land wars, whose precise rules they have not acquired, have (because of a lack of balance among maritime powers) retained up to our own times a more or less piratical character.'5

One more backwards leap takes us close to the origins of this emotive concept. It was put together (to the best of my knowledge) in the seventeen-eighties and 'nineties as part of the propaganda made by revolutionary America and even more revolutionary France against Britain, their primary and, for a while, their com­mon enemy. British maritime might was what made Britain most dangerous to them. It was also what made (and what, indeed, had for many years made) Britain most unpopular with the other European powers whose sympathy and support the revolutionists carefully cultivated. Blockade and its associated practices being by the later eighteenth century British specialities, its identification

3 H. Meyrowitz, 'Refiexions it propos du centenaire de la Declaration de Saint-Petersbourg', Revue Internationale de la Croix-Rouge (1968),549.

" A. MendeIssohn-Bartholdy, cited in O. Nippold, The Development of Inter­national Law after the World War (trans. A.S. Hershey, Oxford, 1923), p. 123. Nippold's preface is dated 1917.

5 A.W. Heffter, Le Droit International de I' Europe (trans. J. Bergson, ed. F.H. Geffcken, Berlin and Paris, 1883), § 119. See also §§ 138-9.

BRITAIN AND BLOCKADE, 1780-1940 143

with Britain was only to be expected, as was its stigmatization by Britain's enemies as something to which neutrals as well were en­titled to object. Among the objectors by that epoch were its arch­neutrals, the Dutch; which perhaps helped American and French publicists and propagandists to forget that blockade had actually been invented by the Dutch, and first practised in a recognizably modern form in the Eighty Years' War, two centuries before.6 That the British, however, had in the course of their wars of commercial and colonial expansion carried the practice further than the Dutch or any other country, was incontestable. Nor were the British them­selves, who felt in 1780 for the first time the force of organized neutral resentment, likely to contest it. What had made Britain and her Empire wealthy and (excepting the unfortunate loss of the thir­teen colonies) secure, was well understood to be the successful aggressiveness of her maritime policies in time of war, the successful exclusiveness of her commercial policies (not that they were any more exclusive than any other country's, until the new United States tried to set a different example) in time of peace. The Navigation Acts and the ruination, so far as possible, of rivals' and enemies' commerce went naturally together. What more natural, therefore, than that within ten years of Benjamin Franklin's unsuccessful attempt to insert a 'freedom of the seas' clause into the 1783 peace treaty and within eight years of his successful insertion of the same into an American treaty with Prussia, citoyen Barere should tell the French National Assembly that, having already 'prononce Ja liberte de Ja France, ou plutot la Hberte de l'Europe', they should proceed to 'proclamer la Hberte du commerce, ou plutot la liberte des mers'; to put it bluntly, the end of British maritime dominance.7

To the historian of international relations and politics, these clustered events might seem sufficiently explained by ordinary con­siderations of power politics and commercial calculation; to which historians of 'ideas' in general or of economic theory in particular would no doubt wish to add strong traces of the shift, then just

6 J. Westlake, International Law (2nd edn., 2 vol., Cambridge, 1910-13), II, 257-9.

7 Franklin was following a 'model treaty' produced by a committee of the Continental Congress in 1776; see S.F. Bemis, Diplomatic History of the United States (5th edition, New York, 1965), pp. 25-6. The status of that 1785 treaty was well assessed by the distinguished Russian jurist, F.F. Martens, at the 2nd Hague Conference, 1907: 'it must be remembered that that treaty was signed by a philosopher-king and a prince among philosophers, who for the rest had few illusions concerning the practical effect of their agreement .. .', Proceedings of the Hague Peace Conferences (ed. J.B. Scott, 3 vol., New York, 1920-1), III, 823. Ban:re's speech, on behalf of the Committee of Public Safety, delivered on 21 September 1793, is in the Moniteur of 23 September.

144 BRITAIN AND BLOCKADE, 1780-1940

beginning, from mercantilist towards free trading doctrine. As an episode in the history of the international law, however, and as the first blast of the continental trumpet against Britain's blockades, its special significance lies in the theoretical sanction promptly applied to it from (of all people!) the work of Rousseau, and from thence­forth repeatedly cited as if it were an inspired writing and a sacred text.

'La guerre n'est donc point une relation d'homme a homme, mais une relation d'Etat a Etat, dans laquelle les particuliers ne sont ennemis qU'accidentellement, non point comme hommes, ni meme comme citoyens, mais comme soldats; non point comme membres de la patrie, mais comme ses defenseurs. Enfin chaque Etat ne peut avoir comme ennemis que d'autres Etats, et non pas des hommes, attendu qU'entre choses de diverses natures on ne peut fixer aucun vrai rapport.'s

It would be interesting to know how, exactly, that passage of Rousseau is to be understood in the light of the rest of his writings.9

For present purposes, however, what Rousseau may really have meanfis less important than what he was actually supposed to have meant by those who cited him. As usual with Rousseau, he had something to offer to everyone. Humanitarians and peace-lovers, carrying forward into the post-revolutionary age those hopeful Enlightenment enthusiasms which had also possessed Rousseau, could draw from this passage reassurance that war could be moder­ately waged with only minimal disturbance to the peaceful pursuits of a not naturally warlike mankind. Military men, who could not have expected to find anything likeable in Rousseau, nevertheless could appreciate the way Rousseau here seemed to be reiterating their own maxim, that war was best left to the official authorized warriors. To continental publicists generally, whenever they were supporting their country's cause against Britain, Rousseau's words were a godsend, as apparently validating their theory and practice of war as a direct clash of armies, and as casting an unfavourable light on the British counterpart of denying to the enemy the use of the sea, and seizing his sea-going property.

The most influential, and perhaps the first important, deployment of Rousseau's maxims was made in 1799, precisely in this anti­British context. The occasion was the opening of the French Prize

8 Du Contrat Social, Livre I, ch. iv. 9 Westlake, International Law, pp. 39-40, says Rousseau was putting a rather

new juridical idea 'into a philosophical form' and, 'with his usual levity', ex­aggerating it. J.S. Bromley has pointed out to me that Rousseau was well read in the political writers of the previous century, and that this passage echoes sentiments common among them.

BRITAIN AND BLOCKADE, 1780-1940 145

Court, the public focus and legal centre of France's maritime war. An address was given by Jean Etienne Marie Portalis, a distin­guished revolutionary constitutionalist, who had just returned from a brief exile to his homeland to become Napoleon's leading legal ideas-man. It included a passage which incorporated several of Rousseau's phrases almost word for word and paraphrased the rest.1° Its provenance and authorship lent it the look of superior juridical status, but in fact it was only Rousseau writ large. Writers who, thenceforth, cited it as fundamental doctrine were relying on Rousseau at one small remove.

The lasting vogue on the continent of Rousseau's remarks, the persistence of their echoes through the following century and a half, are presumably better explained in political than intellectual terms. Whatever Portalis might have been, Rousseau certainly was no expert in international law. It is surely extraordinary that this passage, alone from all his works, whether in its original form or in Portalis's version, should quickly find so secure a place in the works of international law writers and be cited along with, and as if it were in the same class as, Grotius, Bynkershoek, Vattel and such. To even sympathetic eyes, his meaning might have seemed obscure or enigmatic. The use made of his words from 1793 onwards by publi­cists of new-style nations in arms was often prima facie nonsensical, and was seen to be so not merely by British writers but by at least one weighty continental contemporary.l1 Such was the remarkable theoretical underpinning of the continental case against blockade, as it was put by Britain's continental enemies (chiefly, of course, France and then Germany) between the seventeen-eighties and the nineteen-forties. In its essentials, it changed very little throughout that long period; as may fairly be said also of the material particu­lars of the case, to which we now turn.

Blockade, it was alleged, infringed the principle of the immunity of non-combatant civilians which had been basic to the inter­national law of war ever since it began to solidify in the years of Vitoria and Grotius. Blockade (so ran the argument) was not aimed with discrimination at an enemy's armed forces but was aimed indiscriminately at a whole enemy population ;12 and in its

10 I have not yet seen it in a contemporary source. Writers who subsequently used it thought it unnecessary to cite an exact attribution. See e.g. J.e. Blunt­schli, Revue de Droit International, IX (1877), 540, where he merely refers to Heifter, Droit International, pp. 260-1 n. 3, where no reference is provided for it at all.

11 See below, pp. 158-9. 12 The very concept of an 'enemy population', of course, would have been

repudiated by the publicists whose views are being summarized.

146 BRITAIN AND BLOCKADE, 1780-1940

purest, complete, 'total' form it hit the civilians forming the vast majority of that population in a most odious and hurtful way, by seeking their starvation. We are reminded here of the analogies between blockades and sieges. Naval operations called blockades have often been nothing more or less than extensions across water of the lines drawn around a fortified place by armies operating on land. The peculiarly commercial purpose of blockade which came to dominate its modem definitions was not always there in earlier days. A blockaded port's trade would inevitably be stopped but that might be merely incidental to the main purpose of the opera­tion, the surrender of its armed defenders. Just as a siege could, if allowed to continue over long enough a period of time, achieve its object by starving them out, so could a blockade; and just as non­combatants would surely suffer in the one case, so would they in the other. Against the legitimacy of this effect, humanitarian writers had always raised troubled voices. Should not the civilian populace of a place under siege or about to be besieged or blockaded be allowed to quit it? But that was not the way it might appear to the military mind. The commander of the pla,ce besieged might be very pleased to let out the 'useless mouths' (as they were known), provided their departure would not lower his soldiers' morale; his soldiers would eat better for the civilians' going, jqst as the besieging soldiers might, if the released civilians were allowed to linger nearby, eat worse.

The commander of the besiegers would see the matter differently. The more non-combatants there were inside the place, the sooner were its defenders (unless they were very hard-hearted) likely to find themselves enfeebled by hunger or harassed by mutiny. It was not at all clear what line should be taken by international law about this recurrent situation in which considerations of humanity pulled one way and military ones pulled the other. Military history showed that non-combatants had sometimes been let out, sometimes not; it remained unclear whether, when they were let out, it was because of kindness or calculation; all that could be said, by the close of the eighteenth century, about the relevance of international law to these recurrent cases of besieged or blockaded starved non-combatants, was that responsible parties showed uneasiness about it by dis­claiming responsibility and blaming one another.

One of the nastiest of all such cases actually occurred at exactly this epoch. Well over 15,000 civilians succumbed during the long siege-cum-blockade of Genoa through the spring of 1800,13 Mas-

13 That was the figure reported by Keith to the Admiralty in his dispatch of 10 June 1800. The Keith Papers (ed. C. Lloyd for the Navy Records Society, 2 vol., London, 1950), II, 112-13.

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sena, tenaciously holding the place for Napoleon, seemed to be willing enough to let people go, but the Austrian generals, Ott and Melas, and the British admiral Keith, steadfastly refused to let refugees through their lines.14 This very terrible episode attracted the attention of Thomas Arnold, in the fourth of his Introductory Lectures on Modern History, a lecture on (in effect) War and Society: ' ... if any man can defend the lawfulness in the abstract of the starvation of the people of Genoa, I will engage also to establish the lawfulness of the massacres of September'.15 To put the screw of starvation on a single city was not impracticable. To do the same to a whole huge country was quite another matter. This, nevertheless, was what Britain and her allies were doing to Germany and her continental allies by the end of the 1914-18 war: the 'Hunger­Blockade' of which German propaganda then and subsequently made so much. Nothing nearly as effective was technically possible at any earlier epoch; yet a similar strategy had been attempted against the French in 1793.16 1792's harvest had been poor. French society was, for obvious reasons, disturbed and dislocated and in part rebellious. The war which had begun between France and all her neighbours was of unprecedented totality: the first ideological war of modern times, in which no holds seemed to be barred. An acrimonious propaganda war at once broke out, in which each side's departures from the established rules and norms were justified as retaliations to the other's earlier departures. Such arguments, which have marked most modern wars, are almost impossible to unravel. I mention this one merely as the context of the British and Russian Governments' agreement (25 March 1793) to put a stop to the export of foodstuffs to France from their own ports and to stop neutrals taking food there as well; a programme of blockade in its loose, legally inadequate sense, to which the British Order in Coun­cil of 8 June 1793 gave further strength. French historians have not lost sight of its significance. Lefebvre, whom I suppose to be not unrepresentative, surely enough points out that 'this measure . . . for the first time treated the civilian population of an entire country

14 It is difficult to ascertain the rights and wrongs of this affair. Keith was undOUbtedly a hard man; but humanitarian generosity served Massena's interest! I hope to find an opportunity soon to study the whole tragic incident with the care it deserves.

15 (Ist edn., Oxford and London, 1842), p. 221. The lectures were delivered in 1841 and 1842.

16 P. Kennedy, whose Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery (London, 1976) provides the best general historical context for this particular study, and J.S. Bromley have reminded me that all grain going to France had been contraband on earlier occasions; most recently, in 1709. 'But France tightened her belt and held out', H. Richmond, Statesmen and Sea Power (Oxford, 1946), p. 93.

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like that of a besieged town',17 British historians' handling of it makes an instructive contrast, if J. Holland Rose is allowed to be fairly representative of the insular approach. In his magnum opus, I find no mention of 'blockade', 'contraband', or even 'orders in council', in the index, while the text's only reference to these striking measures is the deadpan information that the Treaty with Russia included the 'prevention of neutrals from helping France indirectly'118

The dramatic idea of a 'hunger-blockade' was from that time on­wards a familiar theme in the literature of law and war, attracting more attention than (considering that there were no further attempts at naval blockade on that vast scale until the 1914-18 war) it might otherwise have done because of the continental idee fixe that war at sea was something intrinsically different from war on land and be­cause the general drift of nineteenth-century international legal opinion was towards a strictly commercial definition of blockade. By far the biggest single European hunger-making event between 1815 and 1914 was, in fact, the German siege of Paris. This gave British controversialists excellent ammunition when subsequently defending blockade against German charges that its pressures on non-combatants were abominable. German controversialists, for their part, saw no similarity; which I can only explain in terms of the idee fixe already mentioned, and which is so important that it requires further elucidation. Whether or not the siege of Paris pre­cedent ought to have been thought to add legitimacy to the practice of total naval blockade, the fact is that it seems to have made no such impression on the thinking of dedicated anti-blockaders, wherever they were. The German presentation of the Allied block­ade in World War I as peculiarly iniquitous aroused many respon­sive echoes in, for instance, the United States, where it early became a standard element of anti-British sentiment and a lasting obsession of (to take an especially prominent example) Herbert Hoover.19 The tender consciences or guilty feelings of Britons too were touched; a conspicuous instance being the pacifistic novelist Vera Brittain's

17 G. Lefebvre, The French Revolution from 1793 to 1799 (trans. J. H. Stewart and J. Friguglietti, London, 1967), p. 21. Whether one follows him in accepting this as a 'first time' depends on whether one considers it as a 'strategic' measure, while characterizing the earlier attempts as merely 'tactical' and opportunistic.

18 J.H. Rose, William Pitt and the Great War (London, 1911), p. 123. Rich­mond, Statesmen, p. 180 only mentions the matter as an opportunity for demonstrating 'that the interpretation of international law is not infrequently governed by expediency rather than by principle'.

19 See W.N. Medlicott, The Economic Blockade (2 vol., London, 1952-9), I, passim.

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anti-blockade newspaper article within ten weeks of the start of World War II: 'It's War on Babies.'20 Thus vigorously survived, nearly a century and a half after its beginning in the French Revo­lutionary War, the disposition to believe that Britain's way of making war was, in this respect anyway, peculiarly inhuman.

The other big part of what I have been calling the continental case against blockade was its damaging effect on neutrals: Britain being accused, from at least the middle of the eighteenth century of a ruthless disregard for neutrals' rights 'on the high seas'; an accu­sation which was not without its uses when continental Great Powers were concerned to excuse and justify their disregard for neutrals' rights on land.

To understand the effect of blockade on neutrals, we must go back to the history of its definitions, remembering that two ideas and definitions of blockade are in question: the stricter, towards which international law and the victims of blockade have always naturally tended, and the looser, always more congenial to (because less demanding of) blockaders. Ever since blockade became recog­nized as a belligerent right, the only problem has been: how close must it be? There has never been any question of neutrals defying an effective close blockade except at their own risk. A blockader able physically to seal a place off as closely as siege lines on land seal it off has been accorded the lawful right to stop all traffic in or out and to seize anyone and anything seeking to go in or out. Argu­ment has only developed about the definition of 'close'. For neu­trals, as for prospective victims of blockade, there have been advantages in requiring a lawful blockade to be unmistakeably close and tight, leaving shipping everywhere else unmistakeably 'free'. For strong maritime powers, on the other hand, who could realistically hope to dominate the high seas as well as to blockade particular places or stretches of coast, a looser definition could be more convenient. This has meant, for the British navy in its wars with France and Germany and for the American Union's navy in its war against the Confederacy, a rather remote-seeming blockade by cruisers instead of a really close, wall-like one. But throughout this argument about how close a blockade actually needed to be, there was little disagreement among the law-minded about its need to be 'effective'. What Britain's critics most objected to in this respect was her tendency to proclaim what they called 'paper blockades', i.e. proclamations of blockade of large stretches of coast which could not, as a matter offact, be systematically and thoroughly blockaded,

20 Ibid., I, 46; the Daily Herald, 15 November 1939.

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and where stoppage by the nominally blockading force consequently became very much of a hit-and-miss matter. This was exactly what had happened during the peak years of ;Britain's economic war with the First Empire: some continental ports being strictly blockaded, others blockaded by Order in Council merely!21 Once that all-in war was over and the Powers that mattered returned with a will to the tasks of peace and progress, 'paper blockades' quickly came to seem unacceptable to every state hoping to reap the bene­fits of neutrality during others' wars. Of such states, Britain was not the least. There was, therefore, no good reason why Britain could not concur in the fourth article of the 1856 Declaration of Paris to the effect that blockades, if they were to be recognizable by inter­national law and hence binding on neutrals, must be really effective.

The argument about the nature of effective blockade cannot be realistically pursued without a glance at the two other, related, rights claimed by maritime belligerents as they sought to bar the use of the seas to their enemies: the right to intercept and seize contra­band, and the right to do the same to all enemy sea-borne property. Contraband, for a start. Contraband goods, from the later middle ages, were understood to be those which directly supported an enemy's military capability. There was never any serious dispute about a belligerent's right to stop and seize contraband anywhere on the high seas. Neutrals commonly understood by the end of the seventeenth century that they had no right to complain about this unless they were willing to risk the loss of their neutral status. What was not commonly agreed, and what caused recurrent arguments of mounting acerbity until 1916, was exactly how far the contraband list extended. In its origins it normally meant the most obvious and indispensible weapons and munitions of war. By the First World War, Britain was willing to extend it, first, to everything that could possibly help support a sophisticated industrialized war effort and, second, to everything tout court.

The other and much more controversial maritime belligerent right accompanying blockade and potentially 'perfecting' it, was the seizure of enemy ships and property; a practice hurting neutrals more than at first meets the eye. It damaged them because their non­contraband property might be on board a belligerent's merchant ship; because their own neutral merchant ship might be carrying a belligerent's 'private property' ; and because, in any case, they might be virtuously hoping to prosper in the non-contraband carrying

21 W. Galpin, The Grain Supply of England during the Napoleonic Period (New York, 1925), p. 101.

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business while the belligerent's merchant fleets were at risk. Each Atlantic naval power in turn, as it became strong and bold enough to claim and exercise this right, did so. The British made the run­ning up to the 1790s. During the French wars, there was little to choose between Britain and France. The French, of course, being in naval terms the weaker of the two and therefore relying relatively more on privateers, and as ideological patrons of the principle of 'the freedom of the seas', said they were being driven unwillingly down to their enemies' level by military necessity and the right to reprisal;22 the Americans, however, found each as bad as the other, and became embroiled in hostilities with each in turn, in defence of a neutral's 'legitimate trade'. But in the next major war to disturb the waters of the Atlantic, it was the Americans' turn to take belli­gerent interference with neutral trade to previously unprecedented lengths. Their record remained intact - the Russo-Japanese war did not go on long enough for those belligerents to achieve much -until the outbreak of World War I, when Britain drew much strength in the answering of United States' complaints from the recollection of the United States' practice of half a century before.

The Allied blockade in the First World War nevertheless did go beyond anything the North had done in the American civil war. In justifying it to the Americans and the other neutrals, the British pointed out that geographical circumstances and developments in naval technology alike (e.g. submarine mines, U-boats, reconnais­sance aircraft) compelled them to interfere with neutrals to the extent that they did. Not only had theirs to be a distant blockade, closing the English Channel between Dover and Calais and the North Sea across the top, and laying mine-fields in the way of the Germans; ipso facto it could not avoid controlling neutrals' access to their own coasts, cutting across the main lines of neutrals' traffic with other neutrals, and leading to such an application of the always controversial 'continuous voyage' principle as would ensure that Germany could not use her neutral neighbours to break the block­ade for her.

Through this long history of naval powers' interference with neutral traffic and enemy non-contraband traffic there developed

22 E.g. Desforgues's reply to Gouverneur Morris, 14 October 1793: French reprisals 'will continue only as long as our enemies employ against us, means disapproved by the laws of humanity and by those of war .... You will see on the one hand, the firm determination of destroying several millions of victims, merely to satisfy a spirit of vengeance or of ambition, and on the other, the desire of repelling unjust aggression by severe laws, and a regret at being re­duced to that extremity'. State Papers and Pub lick Documents of the United States (12 vol., Boston, 1819), I, 457-8.

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two main lines of opposition. There was, for one thing, a persistent endeavour to clarify and strengthen neutral rights, achieving its first flimsy successes in the Armed Neutralities of 1780 and 1800 and its soaring swan-song at The Hague in 1907. In the Armed Neu­tralities, the neutral part of the world leagued together for mutual protection against British navalist pretensions. For a very little while, each league to some extent succeeded. British Governments were momentarily embarrassed by the strength of this concerted defiance and its high-sounding principles received an advertisement which remained an inspiration to anti-blockaders until well into our own century. But neither succeeded by much or for long; the principal reason being that the leading neutral on each occasion, Russia, when next it became a maritime belligerent, did what all sometime neutrals have done in the same circumstances; it asserted as a belligerent the very rights or powers it had denied as a neutral, thus somewhat (one might have thought) diminishing the interest and importance of the Armed Neutralities as hopeful precedents.23 It remains obvious nevertheless that neutrals have always played a large part in the history of the international law of sea war in general and of blockade as a special part of it; a part far larger than they have ever had in relation to war on land. The histories of blockades in particular wars are at least as much diplomatic as military. They consist largely of the negotiations and agreements which have registered the participants' estimates of the strengths of their respective bargaining positions. Neutrals of no great military potential like Holland and the Scandinavian countries in World War I and Spain and Sweden in World War II sometimes made up for it by their economic importance, and played a bigger part than the number of their warships alone would warrant. Be­sides enjoying these opportunities for successful self-assertion, neutrals (which in this context can only mean countries which expected or hoped to be neutral in times of wars to come) naturally figure conspicuously in the development of international law for another reason. As representatives of great powers noted with vary­ing degrees of irony, small powers were enthusiastic believers in international law and produced many of the most ardent promoters of it. International law made great progress during the nineteenth

23 One of the weightiest monuments to this, as it now appears, too idealistic trust in the power of neutrality is: The Armed Neutralities of 1780 and 1800: a collection of official documents preceded by the views of representative publicists (ed. J.B. Scott for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, New York, 1918). Critics of the principles of those leagues are apparently considered un­representative!

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century, pari passu with the international commerce for whose good so much of it existed and with which it shared so many ideals of international peace. Neutrals for the time being were sailing with the wind behind them. The Declaration of Paris, 1856, conceded to them a great deal of what they had, for many years, demanded; and two of the 1907 Hague Conventions likewise were meant especially for them: that, defining the rights and duties of neutrals during wars at sea, and that, agreeing in principle upon the desirability of an international prize court which should administer a suitably up­dated and improved prize law.

The profound regard, even reverence, for trade which was explicit in those developments was the dynamic also of the other main line of opposition offered, between 1815 and 1914 and even later, to the mainly British idea of a blockade as nearly total as possible. This was the movement to secure the immunity, the inviolability, of enemy private property in wartime. To most of us now this must surely seem surprising. Attuned as we have become to the demands of total war, this nineteenth-century attempt to place the values of peace on a pedestal secure above the violences of war may seem variously noble, eccentric, pathetic or misguided. It never achieved anything. Like many ideas which from time to time in history have possessed men's minds, this one disappeared in the end as if it had never been. Yet, for many men of that age, including some of its most intelligent leaders of opinion, it was a major preoccupation, and for this not unattractive reason: they believed that war was a retrograde institution, and that civilized mankind was well on the way to learning how to do without it. Limitations and restraints on warfare seemed to men of this cast of mind not only desirable but progressively possible. The body of laws and customs upon which European and North American belligerents increasingly set store witnessed to the reasonableness of this belief. If the general interests of humanity could bring them to agree, for example, that their re­spective military machines should so restrain their operations as to help each other to protect their sick and wounded members (as agreed in the 1864 and 1906 Geneva Conventions) and so as to protect the lives and property of 'enemy' non-combatants in land war (as uniformly required in their manuals of military conduct), what was unreasonable about proposing the protection of 'enemy' non-contraband property in sea war too? Wars being, in their essence, military contests, and the growth of international com­merce being, for this school of thought, the spread of civilization, it seemed to them self-evidently desirable also to limit belligerent operations so as to protect as much intrinsically 'peaceful' trade as

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possible: not just the neutral's, but that of the (temporary) enemy as well.

This international movement of opinion came to its historic climax at the 1907 Hague Conference. Its advocates in those de­bates spoke at length and fervently, supporting their cause with a, by then, familiar liturgy of references to authorities beginning with Benjamin Franklin. 'The analogy with the ru1es prohibiting pillage in war on land, the trivial practical military advantage that the destruction of commerce gives nowadays, reasons of humanity, the unjustifiable disturbance of transactions which are of as much in­terest to all neutrals as to the belligerents themselves, the necessity of restricting fighting to the organized military forces of the belli­gerents and of excluding innocent private parties, the danger of provoking a spirit of vengeance and reprisal, were all set forth in a striking manner. The impossibility of admitting that war must be prevented or quickly terminated by making it as horrible as possible, the slight influence that commerce and the business world would really have in provoking or preventing war, the heavy burden of naval expenditures caused by the necessity of protecting commerce in case of war - nothing, it may be said, was omitted which might hold the attention.'24

When the United States' diplomatic delegates, who had made this cause their own, pressed it to a vote, they found twenty supporters (including Germany), while Britain, France, Russia and Japan were in the minority with seven others. Since unanimity was required for any project to become a Convention, the matter was dropped. But it commanded the undiminished allegiance of its supporters until 1917 (having made some mark, predictably, at the 1909 London Naval Conference which picked up the loose maritime ends left at The Hague) and it retained some vitality between the wars. President Hoover presumably had it in mind when in 1929, apropos of the prospects for naval disarmament, he told the British Prime Minister that there was a common American view 'that good relations be­tween the two countries cou1d never be fully established until the problems associated with the capture of property at sea had been squarely faced .. .'.25 Hoover's ideas, however, as we have already noted, tended to be those of the past. The bulk of his fellow­Americans had not, in fact, sustained this point of view throughout the 1914-18 war and still less were they to do so during the 1939-45 one. On both occasions, the United States, once it became a belli­gerent, showed that it understood how to practice total war as

24 Proceedings of the Hague Peace Conferences, I, 241. 25 Medlicott, Economic Blockade, I, 11.

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thoroughly as any other power. In this respect, as in most others, what might be called the Franklin-Cobden Weltanschauung was, for better or for worse, dead.

Having concluded a sketch of the mainly continental but also, as we have seen, in part American case against blockade, let us turn to the main points of the British (mainly British but also, as we have seen, French and American when it suited them) defences of the practice; summarizing them as if they were constant from the French to the German wars which, for the most part, they were. War at sea, it was first of all pointed out, was very different from war on land. It pursued the same end, the reduction to surrender­point of the enemy's power of resistance, by the apparently very different means of denying him the use of the sea. Its aim was to pre­vent him trading on the sea and to prevent him from using it to sustain his overseas bases or to land armies of invasion on your shores; per contra, your aim was to engross his trade, to seize his overseas possessions and to be able to land troops anywhere on his shores you liked. So long as theoreticians of land war defined it primarily in terms of direct military conflict (e.g. the clash of armies) the British style of sea war, in which the clash of navies might be not much more than an incidental accompaniment to the essential strategy, was bound to look different; and not only different but, to the unsympathetic eyes of those who suffered from or in it, more disagreeable. They judged it disagreeable and deplorable, first, be­cause it violated the rights of neutrals as land war did not, and second, because it violated the rights of non-combatants as land war did not. To the first of these charges the blockader's answer was, that neutrals were bound to be involved, and that the only way for a maritime power (a fortiori, an insular power) to engage in warfare without inconveniencing neutrals would be for it to surrender as soon as neutrals began complaining: quod erat absurdum! Sea war being largely about trade, and neutral traders being present on the seas, they had to accept the fact that sea-powers at war would get in their way. This constituted a kind of intrinsic, involuntary mili­tary necessity. And, continued the blockader's argument, in prin­ciple neutrals accepted it. They accepted unquestioningly the principles of banning contraband and of imposing blockade. All that remained to be argued about was the fringe of adjustments to be made from time to time about the definition of contraband and the scope of blockade; matters which, happily, could be left fluid, to be loosened or tightened according to the necessity of the case at any particular time. Such was the core of the blockader's explana­tion of his interference with the rights of neutrals. It amounted, one

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might say, to asserting that neutrals' rights in sea war were not absolute but relative, and to declining to accept the continental land powers' suggestion that a sea-power should not engage in war­fare except with one hand tied behind his back.

The essential difference between sea and land war was, however, stressed much less by the blockader in answering the charge that he unscrupulously violated the rights of enemy non-combatants. The law of land war, as it developed through the nineteenth century, made much of the distinction between combatants and non­combatants, for the excellent purpose of protecting the latter so far as the realities of warfare permitted. Whether those realities actually permitted as much protection as the relevant codes and manuals desiderated had always been questionable, for any jurist who might know enough about war to question it, inasmuch as non-combatants of invaded and occupied territory had, in fact, suffered considerably in almost every land war that was fought. 26 The Franco-Prussian war notably demonstrated this. French non-combatants found themselves deprived of goods and cash under the titles of 'requisi­tions' and 'contributions'; they found themselves fined, driven to forced labour, starved and bombarded, if they were unfortunate enough to inhabit a besieged city; taken hostage, and, if they were very unlucky, shot under suspicion of spying or 'banditry'. To the dispassionate observer, the rigorist German contention that all this was perfectly 'legal' (as perhaps it technically was) did not make the situation of the French non-combatants look particularly 'protected'. To the British observer about the turn of the century, as he wrestled to find a legitimate place for his style of sea war within civilization's requirement that all warfare should be lawfully conducted, the realities ofland war seemed to make it considerably more damaging and painful for non-combatants than sea war was! British publi­cists, therefore, relied increasingly on the parallels between the two sorts of warfare's actual effects on non-combatants. Of those writers, Corbett was the weightiest from the military point of view, Westlake the weightiest from the juridical. Corbett argued in his very influential Some Principles of Maritime Strategy, that the ends of land and sea war were, in fact, much the same: 'to strangle the whole national life' of the enemy. 'By closing his commercial ports we exercise the highest power of injuring him which the command of the sea can give us. We choke the flow of his national activity in

26 This had been emphasized as early as 1802 by J.N. Tetens, Considerations sur les droits reciproques des puissances belligerantes et des puissances neutres sur mer, avec les principes du droit de guerre en general (Copenhagen, 1805), p. 176.

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the same way that military occupation of his territory chokes it ashore.' And, he pointedly added, the way we do it is the more humane.27 Westlake approached the same destination by another route. One lawful means of making war, he wrote, is 'to isolate (the) enemy - to cut him off from the comfort and assistance which every group of men derives from intercourse, especially commerce, with their fellowmen. Not to mention so obvious an example as blockade, consider what happens when a country is invaded. Does the invader dream of allowing the population of the port which he has not yet occupied to employ the ports which he has occupied, and the routes across the occupied territory leading to those ports, for the purpose of continuing its commerce with third countries, and bringing back the profits of that commerce to strengthen the enemy government which still maintains itself in the occupied part?' Of course not! The invader and the blockader were, therefore, in the same case. 'The latter power has no sovereignty over the sea. True, but neither has an invading power any sovereignty over the occupied territory. Each asserts his physical superiority in a region in which he encounters no neutral right'. If the British were to give up their claim to capture, he argued in another place, continental powers should equally give up their claim to contributions, etc. The effects of British and continental practice being so similar, why, he won­dered, did England 'incur on its account an unpopularity which the continental nations do not. .. .'? 'Perhaps because they have all acted alike in that respect, or may hope to do so, while they cannot hope to rival England in the power of capturing at sea ... .'28

The blockader's line of argument so far was a somewhat negative retaliatory one; as if the blockader, surprised at being criticized for damaging the interests of individual non-combatants (which he had not consciously set out to do), had gradually realized that his critics probably damaged non-combatants' interests more than he did, and found it useful to say so. He had, however, a second and more positive means of justifying the effects of his strategy on non­combatants. He could in effect ask: Why not? He could launch a counter-attack by saying to his continental critics, at any rate be­tween 1793 and 1814, and again after the 1870s: It was not we but you who nationalized war by activating the whole people to partici­pate in the decision to fight and in the actual fighting too; it was you who dissolved the distinction between State and citizen; your talk

21 J. Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy (London, 1911), pp. 91, 187, 194.

28 Westlake, International Law, II, 147-8, 258.

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about war being between States and not between citizens, to put it bluntly, is humbug! This argument is, indeed, more often to be sensed than seen; sensed, moreover, among the politically-minded, to whom it could be philosophically acceptable, rather than among the juridically-minded, for whom its implicit abolition of the com­batant/non-combatant distinction made a distasteful difficulty, and for whom the beginning of every definition of war was that it was a relationship between States. So long as every self-respecting 'civi­lized' power was at least paying lip-service to that distinction (which is, indeed, a crucial one), war could not avowedly be waged against the whole of a people held morally and politically respon­sible. But what may not often have been expressed was often enough felt. The tendency to consider justified war-measures which pressed directly upon such 'responsible' civilians seems to be clearly present in many phases of modern war; in, for example, Pitt's Government's punitive attitude towards the French at the outset of the Revolutionary Wars, and in the revolutionaries' response; Grant's and Sherman's grand strategy for winning the American Civil War; the Germans' feelings about the French after Gambetta had taken over the national leadership in 1870-71; the general theory of strategic bombing from its emergence during World War I; and, of course, whenever it strove after totality, blockade.

In whatever terms this line of argument may have been developed, however, the feelings which encouraged it may have been expressed, its theoretical foundation had to include a rejection of the pure Rousseau-Portalis doctrine (see above, pp. 144-45). A remarkable and perhaps, in continental terms, unique early rejection of it came in 1802 from the pen of Johannes Nikolaus Tetens, a Schleswig­born savant in Danish government employment. Prima facie this attack on the enthusiasts of the anti-British school is rather sur­prising. Denmark had played a prominent and willing part in both Armed Neutralities. The second one's abrupt collapse and Den­mark's subsequent prompt yielding to Russian force majeure can­not have been popular with the Danes. By the same token Tetens's plea for quiet and calm consideration of the extravagances of the 'continental' movement is unlikely to have been popular either. Whether his book was in any way influential, then or subsequently, I do not know. One may, however, suspect that it fell into the limbo which can swallow even the cleverest of unpopular or unfashionable writings. Tetens is hardly ever mentioned by subsequent publicists, continental or British. Yet his book was (me iudice) one of the most clear-headed, profound, and penetrating pieces ever written about the principles of the law of war, in general, and about its maritime

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form in particular. All that can concern us here is his preliminary dismissal, as 'absurd' and 'chimerical', of the Rousseau-Portalis dogma. 'L'idee que quelques auteurs modernes ont pris pour base de leurs recherches sur Ie droit de guerre et par laquelle celle-ci ne serait qu'un combat des governments iso!es de leurs peuples, laisse voir facilement tout ce qu'elle contient de bizarre, des qu'on s'occupe ala developper.'29 He proceeds to develop and with some thoroughness to demolish it.

Westlake, Britain's leading international lawyer a century later and one of the grand masters of the genre, was more peremptory. Accepting as 'philosophically sound' the 'denial of war as a relation of individual to individual', he wrote that the dogma's other element, 'that war is a relation of state to state in which individuals are in­volved only as taking an active part in the defence of their country, does not practically delude anyone into denying the identification even of civilians with their state so far as necessary for the purposes of war'. 30 If civilians stood completely passive and ineffective in their relation with the State and its armed forces, they should not be deliberately hurt. The more active and valuable their share in the war-effort, the more could pressure legitimately be put upon them (without, of course, going anything like so far as to equate them with the military; as Westlake, in that civilized era, needed not explicitly to add). To a continental power engaged wholly in mili­tary operations on land, such identification of civilians with State could only practically matter if it manifested itself in popular resis­tance to invading or occupying troops, whether formally encouraged by their government or not. A sea-power, unable to experience so directly the military effect of that identification, but no less liable in principle to be confronted by it, faced the more delicate and poten­tially more opprobrious task of calculating a military effect it could experience only indirectly. How fairly British blockade policy makers made that calculation during their wars with France and Germany is open to question. That they were legally entitled to make it, and to assert pressure accordingly, is however beyond question if Westlake's summary of the matter is accepted. It followed that, not experiencing like an invading army the diffused enmity of a hostile populace, they could nevertheless discern it in, for instance, the hostile government's ideology and acts of State, especially such identifications of its interests with those of its civilians as its under­taking the management of their food supplies (upon which the

29 Tetens, Considerations, pp. 8, 172-3. 30 Ibid., 40.

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British government laid stress in attempting to stop those of the French in 1793 and of Germany in the First World War).

In conclusion, we return to the big moral and legal questions noted at the outset: has the British way of blockade really been as disreputable a way of making war as continental critics so often have alleged, and has Britain herein helped fatally to lower the standards of the international law of war? From this law's point of view, the question is quite momentous. The international law of war after all consists (to put it crudely) of a series of practical compromises between what morality, ideology, etc. on the one hand would like men to do, and on the other what war beckons or drives men to do. lts history is of the balance between two constantly changing variables; ideology, common religious and moral notions on the one side, on the other the material means of fighting war; of which the incessant development of ever more efficient weapons during the past hundred years has been the most conspicuous part. This development has provided the material for the law of war's most conspicuous problem: how to 'keep up with' the latest developments in scientific weaponry and its strategic implications; in other words, how to prevent that becoming 'accepted' and so to speak 'normal', which to begin with seemed shocking and unlawful. In the history of the law of war, black marks tend to be given to States responsible for first persistent use of weapons or practices which have stretched the existing laws and customs away from their ideals of humanity and self-restraint and thus lowered the threshold of the whole system.31 Do Britain's blockades earn her a black mark?

Blockade's relevance in this context may be the better assessed after a glance at two other and more modern war practices which have come under this condemnation and which have, in fact, been partly justified as reprisals for blockade, and as being based on the same principle. Unrestricted submarine warfare is one of them. Ger­man opinion from 1915 to 1917 was considerably divided about its moral and legal merits as well as its political and military merits. The arguments against it were never forgotten. But the arguments for it proved the stronger. Admiral Scheer observed that although it had begun as a retaliation, 'it is adapted to the nature of modern war and must remain a part of it. ... Being pressed by sheer necessity, we

31 The most plausible justification for such stretchings has been that they would beneficently shorten or decisively win a war. Sometimes this has seemed to be true (e.g. Hiroshima), sometimes not (e.g. unrestricted U-Boat warfare). The case against them rests on a calculus of gains and losses, including the long­term ones. A war won quickly at the cost of making all subsequent wars nastier may not be a good bargain for humanity.

BRITAIN AND BLOCKADE, 1780-1940 161

must legalize this new weapon, or', he continued, with commendable insight into what he was actually proposing, 'to speak more accurately, accustom the world to it'.32 A suitable comment on that was offered by the United States Naval Advisory Staff in its advice to President Wilson during the peace-making months of 1919. 'Acts which before the war were held illegal have been justified by inter­ested nations on the grounds that they were necessary for the successful prosecution of the war. If these acts are permitted to stand as precedents and are not hereafter formally forbidden, there will not exist in the future even such regulation of maritime warfare as was possible before the present war.'33

Aerial bombardment offers an even more notorious example of the same downward development. Its practical possibilities were still so uncertain that nothing much was said or done about it at the Hague Conferences of 1899 and 1907, when so much was done about land war and so much nearly done (then and at the ensuing London Naval Conference of 1909) about sea war. Aerial warfare's extraordinarily rapid development since 1914 has partly on that account been almost without benefit of specific legal control. Argu­ments about the legality or otherwise of this or that style of aerial action have to rest on general principles merely; with the extra­ordinary result that (to cite a comparison of the type often used to illustrate the absurdity of the situation) the soldier who, as he fights his way into a village, shoots a seeming civilian, can probably be charged with a war crime, while the pilot whose bombs obliterate aJI the seeming civilians in the village, along with the village itself, can probably not! 'Blanket', 'carpet' or 'area' bombing of this kind became possible in the 1914-18 war. Although it was much dis­cussed and deplored between the wars, no effective legal restraints were agreed to be placed upon it. What had been done in the First World War was as nothing beside what was done in the Second. But although area-bombing was thereafter even more deplored, the one­sided set-up of the Nuremberg and Tokyo war crimes courts made it impossible for them to pass judgement on it. The opportunity to condemn it decisively as illegal was missed; and those who cared for the law of war were left to bemoan the danger, that even so in­humane a war practice might be establishing a prescriptive right to

32 Cited in A.C. Bell, History of the Blockade of Germany and of the Countries associated with her in the Great War (produced and printed for official purposes only, H.M.S.O., London, 1937), p. 423.

33 W.R. Schilling, 'Weapons, Doctrines and Arms Control: a case from the good old days', Journal of Conflict Resolution, VII (1963), 206.

162 BRITAIN AND BLOCKADE, 1780-1940

acceptance by going on without Hague-weight international legal rebuke for over thirty years.34

We may now return to the topic of blockade, British-style, asking what contribution (if any) it has made to this debit side of the modern history of the law of war: the wilful conduct of war by means more inhumane than they had to be, and the progressive slackening, notch by notch, of the limitations placed by 'civilized' belligerents upon it. First, as to its harsh effects on non-combatants; which must have reference chiefly to the effects of the Allied block­ade on the Central Powers during the latter part of the First World War. There can be no denying that many German and Austrian civilians were suffering severely from malnutrition by the time the war ended; nor has it ever been persuasively denied that the collec­tive German will to go on fighting was thereby to some extent re­duced. Since the German government by that stage of the war had assumed complete control of the German economy, indissolubly in­volving its 'civilian' sectors with its 'military' ones (and, for that matter, making the distinction between 'civilian' and 'military' as nearly merely theoretical as it could be), the direction of scarcening resources of food and clothing to the armed forces at the expense of the civil population seemed to make the latter's privations a matter primarily of German, not British, responsibility. Food and clothing for the German armed forces and the non-combatant supporters of their military efforts could therefore with perfect legitimacy be stopped. German government policy made it impossible to stop them without stopping also the food and clothing going (perhaps) to those non-combatants who really had nothing to do with keeping the Ger­man armed forces in the field. To have allowed the unfortunate existence of these, so to speak, ultra-non-combatants to inhibit action against the combatants would have been as unreasonable as, for instance, to allow the unfortunate presence of civilians in defended buildings to inhibit the direction of shellfire against them -a disadvantageous self-limitation never expected ofland armies. The action of blockade, however, could fairly be considered much more

34 The most that can be said on the other side has been well said by T.J. Farer: 'Strenuous denials by states accused of intentionally bombing exclusively civilian targets ... , the articulate outrage that precipitated those denials, the opinions of influential scholars, United Nations Resolutions, retrospective con­demnation of Allied behaviour in World War Two, contrasted with the virtual absence of any defence of this behaviour, all support the judgement that the bombing of civilian targets [he would better have said, the deliberate and ex­clusive bombing] remains outside the accepted pale of admissible conduct except, perhaps, in interstate wars of national survival and then only as a means of ultimate recourse.' 'Illegal Means for the Conduct of Armed Conflicts', Revue de Droit penal Militaire et de Droit de la Guerre, XII (1973), 167.

BRITAIN AND BLOCKADE, 1780-1940 163

humane than that of artillery, bullets or bombs. Blockade gave generous advance notice of its ultimate effects. It did not suddenly, unavoidably, maim or slaughter. British and other apologists of blockade were not, so far as I can judge, being hypocritical when they argued that blockade was, in fact, a relatively humane device of warfare. German complaints about it during the First World War, leaving aside the question of its continuation after the armistice, which is not relevant to a discussion of the law of war, seem to me to lack substance, and to be dismissable even without inquiring (as one might legitimately do) whether the Allies were doing to Germany anything worse than the Germans had done to Paris in 1870/1, or whether the Germans would not willingly have initiated no less strict a blockade on the British, had they been in a better position to do SO.35 To sum up about the so-called 'hunger-blockade', then, as affecting non-combatants in the enemy land: the concept and the very phrase Jent themselves to emotive propaganda purposes, and their popularity with Britain's continental enemies seems more explicable on those than on solid juridical grounds.

Britain's style of blockade may however be open to more serious criticism from the international legal point of view, when its effect on neutrals is considered. The law of war relies upon restraint. It 'works' in proportion with belligerents' willingness to exercise self­restraint; not to do this or that, emotionally or militarily tempting though it might be, because to do it would be to damage the objects for which the law exists (which is only one step from saying, the objects for which war itself is undertaken). Westlake took the exis­tence of the law of war for granted when he defined war as 'an effort by each of two nations to bend the other to its will, by all the means in its power which do not violate neutral rights, and are not ruled out as inhuman'.36 Restraint for the sake of neutrals has always been a cardinal principle of the law of war; particularly of the law of war at sea, which has necessarily involved neutrals much more than war on land. Reviewing the modern histories of war and the law of war, one can hardly fail to conclude that the room provided for neutrals and the safe protection and pursuit of their interests has progressively shrunk. The will to be neutral may be as strong as ever. It is the power to sustain neutrality that has, in our century, diminished.

35 E.g. R. Binding, cited by B.H. Liddell Hart, Through the Fog of War (London, 1938), p. 220: 'How can one bear it, this German shriek for sympathy to America? Look how cruel it is! England is trying to starve millions of women and children to death! . . . As if we would not starve out all England in cold blood until the thinnest English Miss fell through her skirts!'

36 International Law, II, 147. My italics.

164 BRITAIN AND BLOCKADE, 1780-1940

This is largely to be explained by the spread, or revival, of ideological wars. Who is not for a totalitarian ideology must be against it. But neutrality was not easy to maintain within Woodrow Wilson's plan for the League of Nations.37 Further explanations of the decline of neutrality may be found in the 'shrinkage' of the globe brought about by modern commerce and communications, and the discovery of weapons and delivery systems which either facilitate or absolutely require the disregard of neutral rights. So far as such matters have to be included in any complete history of the decline of neutrality, they lie far beyond this paper's province. But such a history would have also to take account of something which lies very much within it: the extent to which the erosion of respect for neutrality has partly resulted from belligerents' choice; whether or not to exercise restraint for neutrals' benefit. It seems to me that those continental writers have been justified, who have accused Britain of lacking in such restraint in her conduct of war at sea. From 1756 until 1800, at any rate, it was British policy to lean as heavily on neutrals as they would bear; more heavily, for sure, than strictly military advantage required.38 The judicious Tetens (who was, as we have seen, no Anglophobe extremist) noticed this. He must have had Britain in view when he drew the fine distinction between interferences with trade that might be justified on grounds of military necessity and interferences explicable only on grounds of military convenience or commercial advantage. 'Soit donc qu'un belligerant ait un grand interet it isoler, pour ainsi dire, son ennemi dans Ie monde commer­«ant; soit meme qu'il n'ait pas d'autres moyens d'arreter Ie com­merce de cet ennemi, protege par des forces navales superieures, que celui de forcer les Neutres it s'abstenir de toute liaison commerciale avec lui; ce n'est pourtant pas Ie cas OU la Puissance en guerre puisse alleguer une necessite urgente pour se croire en droit d'exiger des Neutres une telle renonciation. Nous avons vu dans la derniere, et meme dans quelques guerres precedentes, des tentatives de cette sorte. Le bon sens s'en indigne dans toutes Ies parties de I'Europe. Pour faire seulement quelque mal de plus a son ennemi on ne doit point blesser les droits des autres.'39

Every believer in the value and viability of a law of war has to

37 The British government brought this up in answer to Dutch complaints about the intensification of the blockade in November-December 1939. See F. Kalshoven, Belligerent Reprisals (Leiden, 1971), pp. 152-5, 159-60.

38 1756, because that was the year when British prize courts became markedly more odious to neutrals by their adoption of the 'Rule of War of 1756', denying to neutrals in wartime participation in commerce from which they had been excluded in time of peace.

39 Tetens, Considerations, p. 40.

BRITAIN AND BLOCKADE, 1780-1940 165

insist on that last point. There is no limit to the amount of injury that may be inflicted (by a power strong enough to do it) on an enemy; but a power concerned to minimize the costs and cruelties of war is invited to limit its infliction of injuries to those only which will pro.duce the desired political result, besides, of course, leaving third parties out of it as far as possible. By that test, Tetens clearly judged the British to have been at fault: the extent of their inter­ference with neutral trade had exceeded what was absolutely neces­sary; it had gone to lengths explicable only in terms of a ruthless or cavalier attitude towards the rights of lesser powers and of an aggressive mercantilist determination that any profit which might be made from the war should be made by the British and no one else. The nation of shop-keepers was also the nation of trade-grabbers. This image of Britain, which attained its most perfect form under the influence of Napoleonic propaganda, and had currency at that epoch among Britain's allies as well as her enemies,40 cast some con­tinuing shadow over the British reputation during the 1914-18 war, when neutrals were quick to sense in British blockade policy and management an arriere-pensee that British trade might sometimes be substituted for neutral; even when it was trade with the enemy!41

By the twentieth century, however, war had not the relatively simple commercial raison d'etre of the pre-revolutionary age. If Britain's practice of blockade continued to bear harder on neutrals than it absolutely had to, mercantile greed could no longer be the main reason. How far in fact the blockades of 1914-18 and 1939-42 did so bear on neutrals may be endlessly debated. Neutrals of course complained about it, and Germany of course supported them. The controversy that ensued ranged for the most part far beyond the tidy terms of juridical science. Into those further regions this paper cannot venture. Its purpose is the modest one of investigating a peculiarly controversial area of the history of the law of war and of establishing, though only in outline, whether Britain, the arch­blockader of modern history, has been as much of a law-breaker in this respect as Britain's critics have made out. Extracting, then, as best we can, the strictly legal issues from all the others which have naturally adhered to them in political and historical debate, we dis­cover that the British blockade during the First World War was so

40 See for example, at one end of Europe, the Spanish nationalists' resentment of British commercial penetration of Spain's Latin American empire as one of the prices of alliance; and at the other, Russian anti-westerners' conviction that Alexander I was being lured by the British to adopt policies furthering their commercial interests at Russian expense.

41 There is much evidence of this scattered throughout the pages of Bell, History, e.g. pp. 177, 181.

166 BRITAIN AND BLOCKADE, 1780-1940

conducted as consistently to stretch the law in Britain's interests and against those of neutrals. The House of Lords having declined to be party to the ratification of the Declaration of London (to which Government and Admiralty alike had been reconciled), Britain had a technical right to depart from it. This right it proceeded to use as freely as political prudence permitted; which boiled down to mean­ing, as far as Washington could stand. The contraband lists were repeatedly extended. Neutral ships were compelled to come into Allied ports for search.42 The European neutrals were chivvied into accepting an ever more intensive scrutiny and control of their im­ports and exports. By early 1916, writes its French historian, the Allies' blockade was 'only distantly connected with the monument of law erected by the Powers in 1909, and was in certain respects entirely out of keeping with it. . .'.43 According to its best British historian, it would have been even more out of keeping, had some of the suggestions made at the Contraband Committee been adopted !44 Blockade was in fact being practiced as economic warfare of the most far-reaching and (with the crucial proviso that it killed no neutrals) ruthless kind. This understanding of it was made explicit in the terms of reference given to the Ministry of Economic Warfare when its embryo was formed in 1936 in readiness for the next big war: 'Economic warfare is a military operation .... But, unlike the operations of the armed forces, its results are secured not only by direct attack upon the enemy but also by bringing pressure to bear upon those neutral countries from which the enemy draws his sup­plies.'4S Nothing could be more explicit than that! Neutrality was indeed becoming no less uncomfortable than difficult a status to maintain. The events of 1939 and 1940 repeated the lessons of 1914-18. Professor Kalshoven of Leiden, who has subjected this episode in the modern history of the law of war to expert juridical scrutiny, concludes that British measures in restraint of neutral trade were unlawful; that they could only hope to find justification as reprisals for previous German illegalities; yet that they were not, all things considered, justifiable as such.46

The modern history of Britain and blockade therefore ends very much as it began, with the impression of a country making the law

42 This convenient practice, much more time-consuming than search at sea, had been declared illegal by the Hague Court as recently as 1913: L. Guichard, The Naval Blockade 1914-18 (trans. C.R. Turner, London, 1930), pp. 29-30.

43 Guichard, ibid., 75. . 44 Bell, History, pp. 152-5. 45 Cited by Medlicott, Economic Blockade, p. 17. 46 Kalshoven, Reprisals, pp. 142-7, 147 seqq. and 156-9.

BRITAIN AND BLOCKADE, 1780-1940 167

to suit itself and breaking it when it didn't suit.47 Some share of responsibility for the failures of the law of war in the modem period must come Britain's way. Yet the amount of it should not be exaggerated. The kind of measures taken by Britain's enemies and justified as reprisals for the illegalities of the blockade were not necessarily as justifiable as their proponents made out. If the block­ade as it developed through the autumn and winter of 1914 was open to serious criticism, the phase of the U-boat campaign opened as reprisal for it could have been even more so. A paper responding to the present one might be built around the theme of Germany and Submarine Warfare; and it might do worse than begin by considering President Wilson's remark to his Secretary of State, apropos of the very controversy with which we have been con­cerned: 'It is interesting and significant how often the German foreign office goes over the same ground in different words and always misses the essential point involved, that England's violation of neutral rights is different from Germany's violation of the rights of humanity. '48

47 Nippold, International Law, p. 153, cites one Schrameier as writing in Deutsche Warte, 5 September 1914: 'as long as England's supremacy at sea continues, the principle "England rules the waves" will be synonymous with "England waives the rules".'

48 Cited in Bell, History, p. 446.

8. Away from Impressment: The Idea of a Royal Naval Reserve, 1696-1859*

IJ

1.S. BROMLEY

NOW that the prejudices, as well as the aspirations, of those diverse groups who still style themselves the working class increasingly shape national policies, it seems urgent for historians to dig down to the substrata of ancient servitudes. Although much less studied than her mines and mills, Britannia's crowded warships were answerable for inhumanities that came close to, if they did not in some respects exceed, those of the slave-plantations. The Leveller, Richard Over­ton, in A remonstrance of many thousand citizens understated in 1646 the case against naval impressment: ' ... to surprize a man on the sudden, force him from his Calling ... from his dear Parents, Wife and Children ... and if he live, to return to a lost trade, or beg­gary ... .'1 He refers to the company of such as a man has no com­fort to be with, but not to the crimes and diseases they brought into the fleet, nor to its ferocious code of punishments, which were not truly humanized until the 1860s.2 Even when other conditions of ser­vice had been improved, especially after the mutinies of 1797, flogging remained - and indeed became the focus of Radical attack in parliament following the publication in 1813 of Thomas Hodg­skin's Essay on naval discipline, shewing part of its evil effects on the minds of the officers, on the minds of the men, and on the community; with an amended system by which pressing may be immediately abol-

* In its original form this paper was delivered as the Enid Muir Lecture at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 22 November 1974.

No place of publication has been given for pamphlets published in London. 1 Reprinted in Leveller Manifestoes of the Puritan Revolution (ed. D.M.

Wolfe, New York, 1944), p. 125. 2 By the Naval Discipline Acts of 1860-6. The Admiralty's Additional

Regulations and Instructions of 1813, art. 2, required commanding officers to send returns every quarter of offences and punishments; from 1853 these were laid before Parliament. As Lord High Admiral in 1827-8, the Duke of Clarence (later King William IV) limited the use of the 'cat' to extreme offences. 'Running the gauntlet' and 'starting' had been abolished in 1806-9. cr. E.L. Rasor, Reform in the Royal Navy (Hamden, Conn., 1976), ch. iii and vi.

IDEA OF ROYAL NAVAL RESERVE, 1696-1859 169

ished. The 'evils of impressment', as this title neatly suggests, must be set within the whole rough context of shipboard life, which in wartime meant confinement, the probability of being 'turned over' from ship to ship without shore leave, and above all (in contrast with the army and the marines) 'unlimited service' - that is, 'for the duration' - at wages which, if not always in arrears, were invariably far below wartime levels in the merchant marine. Hence the mass flight of seamen into hiding, frequently into foreign service, when the press-warrants went out. Hence that notorious 'aversion' from naval service which, in the early nineteenth century, in full peace, could mean a delay of six months in the commissioning of a man­of-war and which, in certain major recruiting-grounds like Tyne­side, could sour working-class attitudes to the state itself. There were Benefit Clubs in northeastern England whose rules made Crown service in any form a reason for expulsion".3

Evasion and desertion, not to mention press-riots, were in them­selves the most eloquent form of protest. So we should not attach too much weight to the absence of any organized movement among seamen themselves against impressment, which did not even figure as such in the demands of the mutineers of 1797, who were immedi­ately concerned with their conditions of service. The seamen of South Shields indeed got up a petition in 1834, when James Silk Buckingham (formerly R.N.) moved in the Commons for an enquiry; but that is late and it came from a region where the art of strike action, whether of keelmen or seamen, had been precociously acquired.4 Buckingham himself said: 'Seamen, from their imperfect education and generally careless habits, were not likely to have investigated the matter with the same care which landsmen would bestow on any grievance affecting themselves'; there was 'their iso­lated occupation at sea, and their frenzy of enjoyment on shore'.s In 1770, when the press was used (not for the first or last time) as a

3 Capt. G.H. Gardner, R.N., 'The formation of reserves of officers and sea­men for the Royal Navy, and the evils and inadequacy of impressment to pro­vide the same in 1871', Journal of the Royal United Service Institution, XV (1872), 620. This lecture is the best available survey of the whole subject, being based on a manuscript study by Lieutenant John Hoskins Brown, the first Registrar­General of Seamen, who had collected pamphlets and news-cuttings on manning when he was on half-pay after 1815. The MS. is now in the library of the N[ational] M[aritime] M[useum], Greenwich.

4 Hansard, 3rd ser., XXI, 1066, 1080 (4 March 1834); N. McCord and D.E. Brewster, 'Some Labour Troubles of the 1790s in North East England, Inter­national Review of Social History, XIII (1968), 366-83; N. McCord, 'The Seamen's Strike of 1815 in North-East England', Economic History Review, 2nd ser. XXI (1968),127-43; D.E. Lowe, 'A Trade Union of the North-East Coast Seamen in 1825', ibid. XXV (1972), 81-98.

5 Hansard, ubi cit., 1066-7.

170 A WAY FROM IMPRESSMENT:

diplomatic weapon, on this occasion to force a decision over the Falkland Islands, a petition indeed appeared in The Gentleman's Magazinrf' from His Majesty's 'dutiful and loyal, but oppressed sailors' against the 'impolitic, abominable practice' which answers no good end, not even the manning of the navy - in fact, after seven months' mobilization, the line of battle was only three-quarters mustered.7 Yet the very language of this document betrays the hand of some civilian sympathizer, possibly 'the Sailors' Advocate', General James Oglethorpe, who had published a pamphlet under that title in 1728 and was to reissue it, nominally as 'the seventh edition', in 1777, with a preface by Granville Sharp containing much legal antiquarianism, laced with sneering innuendo about Ad­miralty cunning and corruption.8

So far as the equity of impressment was concerned - as distinct from its high cost, menace to public order, injuries done to trade, its sheer inefficiency as a method of conscription - the tone and content of opposition was in fact set by The Sailors Advocate as early as 1728. Others, like Defoe, had described its barbarities, which perhaps were at their worst during the wars of William and Anne, when the flow of critical pamphlets began. Oglethorpe, the friend of debtors, not only collected eyewitness stories of press­gangs, afloat and ashore, but challenged the constitutionality of press-warrants, as an abuse of the Prerogative irreconcilable with Magna Carta and the rights of Englishmen, reaffirmed after all by the Glorious Revolution. This line of attack was still deployed, among others, by Buckingham in the two Commons' debates he introduced in 1833-4, when the First Lord of Admiralty, Sir James Graham, also devoted much of his replies to the question of legality . Yet, despite attempts to contest it in the courts, notably by London radicals in 1776-7,9 this dogmatic approach, sometimes .conveyed in startlingly seditious language, proved a failure and later critics were wary of relying on it. They could still exploit the

6 Vol. XL (Sept. 1770),401. 7 N. Tracy, 'The Falkland Islands Crisis of 1770', English Historical Review,

XC (1975), 68. B On Sharp's collaboration with Oglethorpe see J.A. Woods, 'The City of

London and Impressment 1776-1777', Proceedings of the Leeds Philosophical Society (Literary and Philosophical Section), VIII, pt. ii (1956),111-27. The 1st edn. of The Sailors Advocate is reprinted in The Manning of the Royal Navy: Selected Public Pamphlets, 1693-1873 [hereafter Pamphlets], (ed. J.S. Bromley for the Navy Records Society, London, 1976), pp. 71-83.

9 Woods, loco cit. See also An enquiry into the nature and legality of press warrants (1770) and The rights of the sailors vindicated (1772), this last so pungent that it evoked the pen of Junius: The Letters of Junius (ed. C.W. Everett, London, 1927), pp. 252-6,263-6,370-2.

IDEA OF ROYAL NAVAL RESERVE, 1696-1859 171

injustice of applying impressment to one class only - and that a class to which the nation was acutely aware of owing special obli­gations for its basic safety. Nobody disputed either proposition. None knew better than naval officers themselves what it meant to storm the taverns, endure the brickbats of angry women, or pick prime seamen off merchant vessels within sight of home after a long voyage. In fact, the best accounts of pressing come from them: from Robert Tomlinson in 1774,10 Richard Standish HaIy,ll Anselm John Griffiths12 and John Gourlyt3 between 1822 and 1838. What the critics had to do was to show the admirals a foolproof alternative. To maintain, as did a manning pamphlet of 1772, that King George III had broken his coronation oath might win a hear­ing among Wilkesites or Americans. Otherwise it helped to ruin a good cause. Still more so no doubt did the overtones of class war in that same effusion: 'the most polished ... part of mankind have always taken advantage of their superior knowledge to oppress the rest of their species ... .'14 By enmeshing the whole problem in democratic rights, indeed, an able pamphlet of 178615 probably helped to defeat Parliament's last serious attempt to deal with the question before the enactment of the Royal Naval Reserve in 1859.16

This was the 'Fellowship of Seamen'. I should like to touch on it next, as a kind of fulcrum for my discourse. Not only does it antici­pate in all essentials (except a retaining fee and annual gun-drill) the Act of 1859, but its pedigree can be traced to an Act of 1696: we will look at that later. The Fellowship got its name and outlines from an unknown John Green, apparently a shipmaster and perhaps a shipowner, who in 1780 published A plan for the better regulation of mariners in the merchant service, to increase their numbers, and

10 A plan for . .. manning the royal navy, reprinted in The Tomlinson Papers (ed. J.G. Bullocke for Navy Rec. Soc., 1935).

11 Impressment: an attempt to prove why it should, and how it could be abolished (Poole, 1822). It leaves the impression of deep emotion.

12 Impressment fully considered with a view to its gradual abolition (1826), a systematic analysis of permanent value.

13 On the great evils of impressment (1838), reprinting A Letter to Lord Melville (Aberdeen, 1814) with many informative appendices, including a detailed com­mentary on Graham's legislation of 1835.

14 The rights of the sailors vindicated, p. 25 n.; the reference to the King's perjury is in a Postscript contributed by 'The Sailors' Advocate', pp. 72-8.

15 Impress of seamen: considerations on its legality, policy and operation. Applicable to the motion intended to be made in the House of Commons on Friday, 12th May 1786, by William Pulteney, esq. (1786), probably by Lt. John Mackenzie, R.N. and reprinted in Pamphlets, pp. 124-40.

16 22 and 23 Vict., c. 40. The Act came into force on 1 Jan. 1860, the Reserve being known until 1862 as the Royal Naval Volunteers.

172 A WAY FROM IMPRESSMENT:

form the whole body of British seamen into a distinct corporation, to be called the Fellowship of Seamen.n His ideas were taken up by a group of independent M.P.s, a committee of whom produced a 'Marine Plan'18 that same year - so quickly as to make one wonder whether Green was not already acting for the same group. It was the substance of a series of (slightly varying) Seamen's Bills between 1780 and 1786, at first managed by Sir Herbert Mackworth, M.P. for Cardiff and a central figure in the industrialists' opposition to Pitt's Irish Propositions of 1782, then by Sir James Johnstone, M.P. for Dumfries, and his brother-in-law William Pulteney, also of Dumfries, who sat for Shrewsbury. It was said to have been the product of much discussion with shipowners (who had helped to sabotage major reform in the past), but not with the Admiralty, which was why Mackworth resigned charge of the bill in 1782 and why it ultimately failed. The Plan was statesmanlike in proposing to phase out pressing by degrees, while retaining it as a sanction to encourage membership of the Fellowship, itself embracing five classes, from apprentices to those of 25 years' service. In addition to disablement allowances, it offered rising wage-scales and after 27 years a retirement pension - comparable in fact with the first long-service pension accorded, but not until 1813, to able seamen who had served 21 years in the navy itself. Membership involved naval service when required, but then only for three years; there was to be a regular rotation of service, administered by Marine Offices in the ports under a central board in London, which would maintain registers of the movements of every Fellow and supply Admiralty with information on demand. Admiralty distrust of an independent Board, doubtless to be dominated by shipowners, may explain its decisive hostility to the Fellowship plan, and we know that the R.N.R. in its early years owed most to the fostering care of the new Marine Department of the Board of Trade and its Superintendents in the principal ports.1!> In other words, a voluntary reserve required an administrative authority and framework that would command the confidence of the shipping interest. With its record of impressment, the navy itself could not provide that.

17 Copy in N.M.M., Greenwich. 18 Reprinted 1803 in Reports of the Committees of the House of Commons, 1st

ser., X, 762-5 and in Pamphlets, pp. 337-46. Cf. John Stevenson, An abstract of the bill for manning the royal navy with volunteers (1787) and [Anon.I, A view of the naval forces of Great Britain (1791).

III Public Record Office, London, MT9/28/WH9 (1866); MT9/41/M6104 and M6583 (1868). The Department dates from the Mercantile Marine Act of 1850.

IDEA OF ROYAL NAVAL RESERVE, 1696-1859 173

Equally, as some professional denigration of the infant R.N.R. in the 1860s sharply indicates,20 naval standards of seamanship and discipline, which were conservative, dictated Admiralty control over recruitment.

Now, looking forward, this would be no obstacle to producing a reserve of ex-naval men, a prospect that was taken seriously after the introduction of ten-year 'continuous service' contracts in 1853. Baited with short-service pensions and fed by a stream of boys from the navy's own training-ships, themselves to be increased in num­ber, such contracts (as some hoped) would produce a professional reserve of ex-bluejackets, possibly sufficient in time to provide the fleet with experienced skeleton crews which it might not be too difficult to augment in emergency, bearing in mind the high propor­tion of artificers and other landsmen (as we sometimes forget) in a man-of-war's complement. In this way, the navy could become 'the principal and best root of its reserves'.2l Such was to be the Royal Fleet Reserve created in 1900 and described by Sir Edward Grey's Naval Reserves Committee three years later as the best possible form of reserve:22 in the Estimates for 1912-13 it was nearly one­third larger than the quite different Royal Naval Reserve, which consisted entirely of officers and men from the merchant marine and fisheries.23 As originally conceived, to be sure, the R.N.R. itself had been intended to recruit young men from 'school-ships' partly financed by the state :24 the more mature merchant seamen who gradually built it up, though to nothing like the total of 30,000 for which its statute provided, were merely to have covered a waiting period. They remained, and it took long for the Admiralty to appreciate them enough to give the volunteers a uniform or up-to­date drill-ships and batteries, or require them (in 1906) to take regular part in annual fleet manoeuvres.25 With the biting tongue of greatness, Admiral Fisher in 1904 called them 'the most expensive, futile, and absolutely unworkable and inefficient system of reserves

20 E.g., Vice-Adm. W.F. Martin, Memoranda on naval reserves (1860), and Commander A.H. Gilmore, A naval reserve of the future (1869), both reprinted in Pamphlets, pp. 285-317.

21 Martin, Memoranda, p. 22 (Pamphlets, p. 295). 22 P[arliamentary] P[apers] 1903 (Cd. 1491), XL, 23. 23 The figures were respectively 26,227 and 20,163 (excluding the small R. N .R.

Colonial Branches): P.P. 1913 (1), XLll, Vote 7. 24 Report of the Hardwicke Manning Commission, P.P. 1859, sess. 1 (2469),

VI, paras. 54-66. 2S F.C. Bowen, History of the Royal Naval Reserve (London, Lloyd's Cor­

poration, 1926), ch. viii; Report of Committee on . .. the Royal Naval Reserve, P.P. 1892 (C.6609), LI, 25-30.

174 A WAY FROM IMPRESSMENT:

ever devised by the wit of man'. 26 No doubt there was room for such sarcasm in the age of dreadnoughts; already the nineteenth-century revolution in gunnery would have made any Fellowship of Seamen useless without the minimum of 28 days' annual drill (travel-time and Sundays included) performed by the R.N.R. ; and the notion of a nuclear reserve of ex-bluejackets, to say nothing of an increased input of trained ('first-class') boys, can in fact be traced as far back as the 1830s.27 The consolidation of the Coastguard in 1831, followed by Admiralty control in 1856, already offered a small working model of a truly professional reserve.

To the extent that these ideas developed, with larger peace es­tablishments - a larger 'standing navy' - and Continuous Service to support them, impressment was bound to fade into the background, although it is still mentioned as the ultimate resort in an Admiralty paper of 1882.28 There were other reasons why it looked a broken reed to Charles Henry Pennell, the very able chief clerk to the Admiralty who thought out Continuous Service and much else, in a period characterized by weak and constantly changing Boards of Admiralty. Was it expedient, he asked in 1852, 'to stake the safety of the country on means . . . which, if they fail, all else fails?'29

And well might they fail when steamships and railways facili­tated evasion: always in the shadows lurked the great American asylum, a profound influence on all this thinking after 1776. Even if public opinion would tolerate some form of conscription in emergency (as Pennell himself doubted), it would have to be one of imminent national danger, far beyond the experience of the Crimean War. But before that war, before the introduction of Con­tinuous Service, the navy went on discharging at the end of each commission, in practice every three years, even the crews which its

26 The Papers of Admiral Sir John Fisher (ed. P.K. Kemp for Navy Rec. Soc., 2 vol., 1960-4), I, 23.

27 Graham's navy estimates for 1834-5 provided for entering the unprece­dented number of 1,000 boys: Hansard, 3rd ser., XXI, 1087; cf. Pamphlets, pp. xiv, 189-94. J.H. Brown submitted to the Admiralty 'Suggestions for a naval reserve', dated 27 March 1845, proposing to select 5,000 short-service pension­ers who had served in the fleet as petty officers or able seamen: copy 1D Naval Historical Library, Ministry of Defence, Earl's Court, London (cf. P.P. 1859, sess. 2 (45), xvn, 142). In this memorandum Brown refers to recommendations made to the Secretary of Admiralty in 1838 and says that he is now submitting them 'in an amended form'; cf. Pamphlets, p. xiv n.

28 H.I. Vansittart Neale, 'Manning the Navy - Seamen', Feb. 1883 (copy in Naval Hist. Library).

29 'Observations on the naval resources of France and England', P.P. 1859, sess. 2 (45), XVII, 194: Pennell's italics.

IDEA OF ROYAL NAVAL RESERVE, 1696-1859 175

officers had painfully assembled and trained.30 Had war then occurred with France instead of Russia, we should not now be told that pressing effectively disappeared in 1815, or that it was abolished in 1835, when all that Graham's Enlistment Act then did was, for the first time, to limit compulsory service to a maximum of five years - and even this was repealed in 1853, when the old prerogative power was clearly reaffirmed by statute under the less tainted name of compulsory service. 31

How it might have operated after 1853 (or 1815) we do not know, because it was never needed. But at all events this was no victory for the enemies of impressment. In fact, the reinvigoration of the im­pressment debate after the revolutionary wars, which had more or less brought it to a halt,32 lasted only twenty years. The defeat of Buckingham's second motion in March 1834, by 88 votes (218 to 130), followed a year later by the introduction of limited service, marked its climax. When the debate was resumed in the 'forties, by a younger generation represented by Captains William Bowles, brother-in-law of Palmerston, and the Hon. Joseph Denman, for many years captain of the queen's yacht, it took a different form. Although Bowles was a compulsive pamphleteer and in 1853, with encouragement from Palmerston, produced Heads of a Bill for constituting a reserve,33 their main thrust was directed through two public enquiries, the departmental committee of 1852 under Admiral William Parker and the Royal Commission on Manning of 1859, chaired by the Earl of Hardwicke but dominated by Edward Cardwell, better known for the army reforms of Gladstone's first ministry.34 Bowles and Denman shared Wellington's and Palmer­ston's nightmare vision of invasion, carried out by French steam­ships whose crews (as they supposed) might be mobilized in a fort­night, while the English Channel lay virtually denuded of a home squadron, as it was during the Tahiti war-scare of 1844. So for them impressment was no remote possibility, some ancient hunting weapon rusting on the castle-walls. Or rather, it was just that: it

30 See (e.g.) Lt. B. Sharpe, R.N., A letter to the right hon. the earl of Auckland ... (1843), reprinted in Pamphlets, pp. 204-26, and Capt. A.P. Eardley-Wilmot, R.N., Manning the navy (1849).

31 5 and 6 Will. IV, c. 24; 16 and 17 Vict. c. 69, sections v and x. 32 Pamphlets, pp. xxi-ii. 33 Reprinted in Pamphlets, pp. 281-4. 34 Minutes of evidence taken by the Parker Committee from Bowles and

Denman in P.P. 1859, sess. 2 (45), XVII, 126-7, 129-33; in Denman's cross­examination by the Commission, P.P. 1859, sess. 1 (2469), VI, 147-58. Cf. Vice­Adm. Bowles, Pamphlets on Naval Subjects (London, 1854) and Adm. Bowles, A militia our only naval reserve (2nd edn., 1860), reprinted in Pamphlets, pp. 274-81.

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must be taken down and refurbished. Passionately wedded to the principle of compulsory service, they revived the notion of a sea­militia, which had quite a respectable pedigree dating back to an abortive bill of 1743, presented by Vice-Admiral Vernon.35 Instead of pressing, there would be a lottery (or balloting) on the familiar model of the regular (land) militia, but confined to seafarers living within a certain distance of the coasts, which would be divided into Maritime Districts under the deputy lords-lieutenant. Using mere parish lists, these civilians would administer call-up with the usual stimulus of bounties, relying so far as possible on volunteers, en­rolled for five years. Unlike the eighteenth-century precedents, how­ever, no provision was made for substitutes. Nor was anything said about a register of seamen's movements, although it had been pre­cisely the object of Lieutenant John Hoskins Brown, our first Registrar-General of Seamen and the closest student impressment ever had, to promote a system of balloting when he inspired Graham's Registration Act of 1835 - and Graham's object toO.36 In 1839 balloting was even mentioned by that long-lived and highly sceptical Secretary of Admiralty, Sir John Barrow,37 for all his in­grained suspicion of the inventiveness of 'naval croakers' on half-pay.

Except for the disappointing twenty-year (1853-73) experiment of the Royal Naval Coast Volunteers, the idea of a maritime militia, despite a tenacity which kept it alive till 1874,38 was still-born. The regular militia, though it had sent drafts to armies abroad in war­time, was rooted in home defence; indeed, only the fear of invasion in 1852, which revived it, can explain the establishment of the Coast Volunteers, for their active service was limited in emergency to a distance not exceeding 300 miles of the British coasts. Some of them, being smugglers, did not get on well with their officers, who were from the Coastguard.39 Any maritime militia would have

35 Text in House of Commons Sessional Papers of the Eighteenth Century (ed. S. Lambert, Wilmington, Delaware, 1975), VIII, 141-63. This may be compared with the bills (ibid. XI, 145-217,279-331) promoted by Alexander Hume in 1758-9 (Commons Journals, XXVIII, 49-516), which appear to be based on A plan for regulating the marine system of Great Britain (1758) by John Blake, a merchant captain, who proposed the lotting of recruits on board returning vessels by muster masters appointed for this purpose.

36 5 and 6 Will. IV, c. 19; Pamphlets, p. xvi n.; Hansard, 3rd ser., XXI, 1088. 37 In the Supplement to his Life of George, Lord Anson (1839); cf. Pamphlets,

pp. xxi, 357. 38 See Rear-Adm. Sherard Osborn, C.B., F.R.s., On the impressment of

British Seamen (1874); but this seems from some internal evidence to have been composed, at least in part, by 1862.

39 I have discussed them briefly in a contribution to War and Society (ed. M.R.D. Foot, London, 1973), ch. xi: 'In the shadow of impressment: friends of a naval militia, 1844-74'.

IDEA OF ROYAL NAVAL RESERVE, 1696-1859 177

differed in respect of its officers from the county militias, who served under gentlemen they knew and whose sporting habits they might well share - a point well taken by a Commodore of the Royal Victoria Yacht Club who in 1846 suggested a marine militia officered by yacht-owners, and in 1852 by Captain Charles Elliot, R.N., Governor of Bermuda, who warned that his proposals for a 'Re­serve Class of Sea Fencibles' depended on a judicious choice of officers: 'A harassing mode of exercise ... could not be too care­fully shunned.'4O (That a similar tolerance was enjoined on the naval officers who trained the R.N.R. was one reason why the navy did not love it.) A more cogent objection to a sea-militia, however, was stated by the Hardwicke Commission: the ballot would of necessity fallon a much higher proportion of those eligible than was the case with its regular (territorial) model, especially as in practice reliance could only be placed on men from the short-haul and coastal trades.41 But these two were not all they had been. 'It is very evident', wrote Captain the Hon. M.F.F. Berkeley in Letter to Sir John Barrow, Bart. in 1839, 'that the nursery for seamen has been greatly injured and broken up by the introduction of steam naviga­tion. Instance the port of Dover alone: there is not now one sailing vessel out of that port. The packets, with few exceptions, are all steamers. Look to Portsmouth and Plymouth. The numerous sailing craft between the Isle of Wight and the mainland no longer exist. The wherries and watermen at both places do not muster ten where formerly they mustered ten times ten.'42 Barrow himself had made the same point, likening this 'diminution of sailors' to the effect that the railroads had had on post-horses.43 It would not be long before their impact would destroy directly that 'nursery for seamen' on which the navy had relied more than on any other - the fleets of colliers which had seemed destined eternally to work their difficult passage between Tyne and Thames.44 Then, in 1853, the coastal trade followed the others in being thrown open to foreigners and the manning clauses of the Navigation Acts were repealed.45 The

40 T. Willis Fleming, A marine militia the country's best national defence (1846); Elliot, A plan for the formation of a maritime militia, or, sea fencible force (1852), p. 29.

41 P.P. 1859, sess. 1 (2469), VI, para. 34. 41 Reprinted in Pamphlets, p. 197. 013 Ibid., 356. 44 For an evocation G.J. Marcus, Heart of Oak (London, 1975), pp. 178-80. 45 Compulsory apprenticeship, introduced in 1824, had gone by the board in

1849: indentures fell from 30,132 in 1845 to 18,803 in 1870. This, along with the increase of foreign seamen in the merchant marine, is the background to the national debate about training-ships, which came to a head with the parlia­mentary motions of S.R. Graves, M.P. for Liverpool, in 1871-2. The school-

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nineteenth century was back with the old problem of the Nursery that had so much vexed the mercantilists.

There are certainly traces of this old worry in the eighteenth­century pamphleteering to which I tum next - for example, in Jonas Hanway's Reasons for an augmentation of at least twelve thousand mariners (1759) - but they seem trifling by comparison with the attention then given to ways and means of manning the navy, of 'Encouragement' as opposed to 'Increase'. After all, English ship­ping in the two decades preceding the American Revolution re­sumed, in giant strides, the accelerated growth it had known in 1660-88.46 On the other hand, so did the requirements of the war­time fleet - double in 1782 what they had been in 1695.47 What is more, they were four or five times the usual peace establishment, since most of the ships were laid up on the return of peace, thus creating unemployment for a mass of deserving men that did not escape the eyes of contemporary publicists: there was a problem of demobilization as well as of mobilization. This last, the more familiar, was conveniently defined in 1859 by the First Lord, Sir Francis Baring: 'You then have to go into a limited market for a large and sudden supply.'48 The demobilization question was boldly confronted in the most successful of all manning pamphlets, Thomas Robe's Ways and means to man the navy, one of several pamphlets occasioned by the armaments of 1726-7; it was revised in 1740 and appeared again (without acknowledgement) in the fourth edition (1774) of Malachy Postlethwayt's Universal Diction­ary of Trade and Commerce.49

Robe, a professional publicist who held a minor office in the royal household, and was at one time possibly in the pay of Robert Walpole,50 was not the first proponent of a permanent naval reserve - a body of thoroughbred seamen, that is, available on call, as dis­tinct from the whole formless reserve so uncertainly provided by the merchant marine. Like other original ideas, this one can be found

ships vainly proposed by the Hardwicke Commission in 1859 were intended to supply the merchant marine as well as the navy, a proposal defended as late as 1873 in the Suggestions of Adm. Sir P.W. Grey, reprinted in Pamphlets, pp. 318-29.

46 See R. Davis, The Rise of the English Shipping Industry (London, 1962), ch. ii. 47 See C. Lloyd, The British Seaman 1200-1860 (London, 1968), pp. 286-9,

and Pamphlets, p. xxvii n. 48 Hansard, 3rd ser., CLV, 1026. 49 In Pamphlets, pp. 84-94; for its bibliographical history, ibid., 84 n. so His career is sketched, ibid., 388-90.

IDEA OF ROYAL NAVAL RESERVE, 1696-1859 179

in Sir William Petty's Political Arithmetick (1676, though not pub­lished until 1690). Calculating that English shipping required 48,000 men and the navy a possible 36,000, he decided that the existing deficiency could be met by fitting 6,000 'able bodyed Trades­men' per annum for the 'Sea-Service', to a total of 24,000, and re­taining them at the rate of £1 p.a. 'for every year they had been at sea, even when they stay at home, not exceeding £6. . . .'51 'Sea Service' then meant naval service, and the retaining fee was the state's quid pro quo for being able to count on 12,000 'Auxiliaries' upon all emergencies, the remainder going to replace men absorbed by the navy from the merchant marine. They were to be 'Tradesmen' in order that they might have an occupation when not at sea. Robe, instead, offers preferential employment in coasters and short-haul merchantmen, so far as his 10,000 (later 15,000) 'King's Men', wearing a national livery and silver badge, could not be absorbed by the peacetime navy itself or by the dockyards: such a guarantee, he thought, would quickly draw volunteers. No retainer and no term of contract is mentioned, but they would be free to quit at six months' notice, while long service would eam a pension - a highly original suggestion at that time. Take away Robe's uniform but add disablement or sickness benefits, and a graduated wage-scale, and there is the Fellowship of Seamen in stark outline. That too was baited with a 'preference over all seamen not in the Fellowship in respect to the navigating, rigging, loading and unloading any ship or vessel, not belonging to His Majesty, and all other employments therein'. 52 An anonymous writer of 1758, whom I take to be Vice­Admiral Charles Knowles, had gone one better in proposing tied houses for married seamen. 53

Four years earlier, another anonymous essayist returned to Petty's notion of a retainer - £5 a year for 10,000 men - but signifi­cantly devoted most of his space to finding the money for it: a tax on racehorses and 'upon every pack of Hounds, every Greyhound, Pointer, Setter, and Gun-Spaniel, and so on every dog in general, except some few that are absolutely useful and necessary'. S4 His instinct for the financial obstacle was sound, even if his solution was hardly the royal road to the hearts of the backbenchers. Another

51 The Economic Writings of Sir William Petty (ed. C.H. Hull, 2 vol., Cam­bridge, 1899), I, 276-7.

5l Pamphlets, p. 341. 53 Philo Nauticus, A proposal for the encouragement of seamen, reprinted in

Pamphlets, pp. 104-13. cr. P.H. Clendinning, 'Admiral Sir Charles Knowles and Russia 1771-1174', Mariner's Mirror, LXI (1975),39-49.

54 An essay toward a method of speedily manning a fleet upon any sudden emergency (1154), pp. 39-41.

180 A WAY FROM IMPRESSMENT:

proponent55 of a retaining fee - this time for 24,000 able seamen at £2 a year (£1 extra for London cost of living) - costed it at £56,000 a year, with another £1,200 for the 'port-clerks' who were to ad­minister this 'bounty-pay' and no less than £20,000 to provide 'a blue jacket, waistcoat and trousers at the expense of the Admiralty', to say nothing of ten new schools for 4,000 sons of seamen. It is thus eloquent of the realism acquired by 1780 that the authors of the Fellowship of Seamen allowed for neither uniform nor retaining fees, while offering free schooling only for the children of men killed in battle.

Perhaps this will suffice to show that the principles of the Royal Naval Reserve of 1859 were laid down over a century earlier, except for its annual gun-drill, which would have seemed less necessary in an age when any seaman could be counted privileged who had not at some time slung his hammock between the decks of a man-of­war, and when the skills required by the fleet were still mainly those of the merchant service - the naval punishment regulations would take care of the difference in discipline. Nor should we, in our easy way, dismiss these schemes (which have largely gone unnoticed) as the vapourings of cranks and donneurs d'avis. In point of fact, government itself was not deaf to them, at least during the first half of the eighteenth century. In 1749, it flew a kite of this sort itself: as much as £10 a year for such a number of able seamen as would (with those actually serving during peace) make up a total of 20,000. Allowing for an increment of marines, waisters, 'idlers' and other landsmen, such a reserve would have taken care of up to half the fleet's complements at the height of the Seven Years' War. The Commons indeed accepted it on 14 April as a good idea. Then we hear no more about it. Perhaps it looked too costly, especially when the war just fought began to recede into the past: 'We commonly do not think of danger', as John Mackenzie wrote in 1786, 'till it is at our doors.'56 Little as it may have promised political dividends, Barrington's kite, for which the prime minister Henry Pelham also spoke, is unlikely to have been buried simply because some Members discerned in it a dark ministerial design to catch votes or even to govern by court martial, though these accusations were made in the debate. 57

To some extent, undoubtedly, minds were prejudiced by memories of what had happened to the voluntary register of up to 30,000 'seamen, watermen, fishermen, lightermen, bargemen, keelmen or

5S Bourchier Cleeve, His majesty's royal bounty (1756), reprinted in Pamphlets, pp.95-103.

56 Impress of Seamen, in Pamphlets, p. 134. 51 W. Cobbett, Parliamentary History, XIV, 538-63 (14 April 1749).

IDEA OF ROYAL NAVAL RESERVE, 1696-1859 181

sea-faring men' enacted by parliament in 1696. In return for re­pairing on board 'in 30 days after summons', registered men were offered a bounty (or retainer) of £2 a year and a double share of prizes, a monopoly of promotion, and exclusive access to the pro­jected palace hospital at Greenwich in case of 'age, wounds, or other accidents' (not necessarily incurred in the sea-service); so far as it was capable to receive them, the hospital would also provide for their widows and educate their children; in fact, the hospital was to be administered for a time by the Commission of the Regis­ter.58 The Admiralty itself offered the registered men freedom from impress and from turnovers. 59 These were rash promises. Wren's masterpiece was hardly off the drawing-board and the first physi­cian was not appointed until 1703.60 Moreover, the very first call­up, in March 1697, was contaminated by threat of violence, for impress officers were empowered to take up registered men who had failed to answer the proclamation. An amending statute soon had to prescribe penalties for 'registered persons [who] have fraudu­lently lent their certificates to mariners', with the result that press gangs were inclined to disregard such protections.61 When Rooke's squadron was arming for the Danish Sound in March 1700, many reservists must have been on the high seas or otherwise unavailable, since 'very severe' pressing began even before the deadline for them to show Up.62 By November 1702 the number of reservists was only 17,000. In fact, this was a creditable figure - much the same as the actual strength of the R.N.R. in December 1866, after a comparable period (six years) of enrolment, and nearly half of them were away from Britain at the time; but the Parliament of William III seems to have expected a lightning response and to have been accordingly disillusioned when only 13,000 had registered after the first year.63

According to one contemporary student of the matter, the 'en­couragements' attracted a number of 'Cobblers, Barbers, Alehouse-

58 7 and 8 Will. III, c. 21; J.J. Keevil, Medicine and the Navy 1220-1900, (3 vol., Edinburgh and London, 1957-63), II, 206-8.

59 London Gazette, nos. 3242 and 3243. 60 Keevil, Medicine, II, 201-2. 61 Admiralty notice, 6 March 1697, in London Gazette no. 3268 ; proclamation,

27 May 1697, ibid., no. 3192; 8 and 9 Will. III, c. 23, s. 8; Queen Anne's Navy (ed. R.D. Merriman, Navy Rec. Soc., 1961), p. 176. Certificate no. 1610, dated 15 October 1698 for John Howell, 'Aged Forty Years being a short well-sett man of a Darke browne Complexion', survives in the Bodleian Library, Rawlinson A 290, fo. 43.

62 John Dennis, Essay on the navy (1702), p. 39. 63 Merriman, ubi cit.; J. Reddie, On manning the navy, reprinted from

Journal of the Royal United Service Institution, XI (1867), 279-355, Annex B (copy in Naval Hist. Library); Calendar of State Papers Domestic, 1698, p. 129 (report of proceedings in House of Commons, 4 March).

182 A WAY FROM IMPRESSMENT:

keepers, and some grave seniors who could well digest the 40s. per ann. and to be exempt from all Services and Duties on shoar', such as juries and parish offices; and these landlubbers, receiving as much as a master's mate and other petty officers, 'in bad weather ... lay like Swabs in the Scuppers ... so many Stumbling Blocks' in the way of the 'true Sons of Neptune'.64 Knowing what we do of working-class attitudes to differentials, this spectacle must itself have served to discredit the scheme in the eyes of able seamen; throughout the eighteenth century, it seems, the navy's failure suffi­ciently to reward its petty officers was a taproot of resentment.65 Rather a different view, though one that also penetrates deep into the thought processes of seamen, who notoriously disliked parti­ality, was propounded by the author of Tack-about (1703). Re­minding us that mariners are 'apt upon every little matter to be dis­obliged' and 'will be humour'd in their own way, or not at all', he reports that the inducements offered to volunteers were seen as no more than the due of the whole class: 'This makes them cry, Register One, Register All; Pay One, Pay All . ... '66 In one respect it is hard for us not to agree with them, since the Act of 1696 offered as a privilege what later67 became known as the allotment of a portion of naval wages (two months in six) to a man's family -clearly a central feature in any attempt to make the Service more alluring and one which the Inscription Maritime strongly emphasized in France. As for a bed at Greenwich, we must accept Defoe's trite observation that 'it does not seem to belong much to the character of the English seaman to think much of such remote things'. 68 How far did Jack understand a contract, anyway? A searching memoran­dum written for Sir Robert Walpole in 1726, probably by Admiral Byng, Viscount Torrington, refers to the vice of all English regula­tions concerning seamen: excessive reliance on the civil magistrate and rules 'rather fitted for the discipline of some Colledge, or Fra­ternity of Monks, than for the Government of a thoughtless Herd

64 Dennis, Essay, p. 38. 65 See the remarks of 'A Sea-Officer' in Some hints for the more effectually

regulating and disciplining his majesty's navy (1758), reprinted in Pamphlets, p. 119: petty officers could be dis-rated and given a dozen lashes at the whim of a captain. Adm. Philip Patton expressed himself strongly about their rewards (and their inadequate numbers) in Sketch of a Plan (1802), in Pamphlets, pp. 142-5. Cf. Richard Clarke, M.D., Plans for increasing the naval force of Great Britain (1795), pp. 25-33.

66 Tack-about; or, a new model of a marine establishment (1703), pp. 5-6; copy in British Library, Reference Division.

67 The first Allotment Act was 31 Geo. II, c. 10 (1758). It was much modified by 35 Geo. III, c. 28 (1795).

68 Some considerations on the reasonableness and necessity of encreasing and encouraging the seamen (1728), p. 42.

IDEA OF ROYAL NAVAL RESERVE, 1696-1859 183

of Sailors ... and the sadling whom down with such Rilles as they cannot comprehend serves only to make them resty and froward, and to kick at their Rillers instead of obeying them'.69

So far as registration, if not the cheap and unsatisfactory services of county and parish officers, was an essential accompaniment of any naval reserve, Jack Tar might thus fairly be held responsible in part for the failure of Parliament to repeat its bold experiment of 1696, which was repealed in 1710, years after it had become a dead letter. After that experience the seamen would distrust any register as 'a mere snare to entrap them into a description of their names, ages, and place of abode, that they might be the more readily found when the press-gangs were sent in their pursuit' - the words are Buckingham's, used in 1834 to throw doubt on Graham's registra­tion plans.70 In this way, therefore, Jack was a poor friend to those who were constantly seeking to find, if not an end to impressment, at least a civilized mode of conscription. He would prefer to take his chances of evasion and obtain the vastly higher wages available in time of war on merchantmen, not to mention the windfalls to be got from privateering. This is why a freeze on merchants' wages was so often suggested by Defoe and other reformers as a major contri­bution to the whole problem; it occurred again in the 1786 version (Pulteney's) of the Marine Plan - in face of the proven failure of the wage-freeze written into an Act of 1741.71 In opposing a bill based on Lieutenant Tomlinson's ideas in 1777, Lord Mulgrave quoted the fate of the Register Act of 1696 as proof 'how ineffectual prospects of future advantage were, when put into the scale against the temptation of a great present increase of wages'.72 Evidently, that disastrous experience weighed heavily on posterity.

Nevertheless, the notion of a volunteer reserve was revived by Thomas Robe, as we have seen, and his ideas were to some extent adopted in a series of interesting if sterile Commons' Resolutions in 1740.73 Their 'encouragements' show that some public men at least sought reasons for the earlier failure in its details rather than its principle, or in a stereotyped image of Jack's fecklessness. The

69 'Some Considerations relating to the Seamen of this Kingdom', Cambridge University Library, Cholmondely (Houghton) MSS. 18, no. 11, pp. 3, 5. I am grateful to the Marquess of Cholmondely for permission to quote from this, and to Dr. David Aldridge for an informed opinion on the handwriting.

70 Hansard, 3rd ser., XXI, 1109. 71 Pamphlets, p. 339 n. Cf. Tomlinson Papers, pp. 128-9; D.A. Baugh, British

Naval Administration in the Age of Walpole (Princeton, 1965), pp. 238-9; Davis, Rise of shipping industry, p. 137.

72 Pari. Hist., XIX, 101 : debate on Temple Luttrell's bill, 25 March. 73 Printed in PostIethwayt, Universal Dictionary (4th edn.), II, s.v. 'Seamen'.

184 A WAY FROM IMPRESSMENT:

Resolutions were silent on actual figures, and Robe's long-service pension disappears, but the advantages of registration were to be for life after a certain retiring age. These advantages include the reservation to registered men of all petty officers' berths in navy and merchant marine alike,74 thus directing a signal to the most desir­able recruits. Another shrewd provision was that 'the management of the said register, with power of appointing inferior officers' should lie with 'the fraternity of Trinity-house of Deptford Strond', a corporation of pilots more likely to command the confidence of able seamen than the Navy Board, which had had the oversight of the first Office for Registering Seamen and finally, in 1699, taken over its duties.7s Pilots would be some guarantee against 'the abuses of power'. In all probability this is more than an Opposition point; it also reflects the influence of the shipping interest in Parliament, which had bitterly resisted the Admiralty's recent attempt - power­fully advocated by Walpole - to introduce a compulsory register, closely modelled on the Inscription Maritime.76

If it had pleased some to see 'the badge of slavery' even in a voluntary register, a general one was bound to be tainted by French tyranny, 'the most flagrant barefaced attempt upon the liberties of his majesty's subjects ... that ever was brought into parliament', reminiscent perhaps of James II. Lord Gage put the objection succinctly: ' ... it is not only to enslave, for the best part of their lives, upwards of 150,000 free born subjects, and to invest the crown with an absolute power over them; but also, thereby to give the crown a farther power of influencing of the elections throughout England. '77 Sir William Wyndham went so far as to say that this was to pur­chase 'success against the most formidable enemy' too dear.7s

74 In merchant ships 'as boatswains, gunners, etc.': there were of course warrant officers in the navy, whose petty officers at this time included quarter­masters and their mates, boatswain's, gunner's and carpenter's mates, yeomen, and captain's coxswain. These were petty officers 'before the mast', as distinct from petty officers of the quarterdeck, such as the midshipmen and captain's clerk.

7S The Sergison Papers (ed. R.D. Merriman, Navy Rec. Soc., 1950), pp. 216-17.

76 The bill is reprinted in House of Commons Sessional Papers (ed. S. Lambert), VII, 415-29; cr. Baugh, 235-6, and Pari. Hist., XI, 414-35 (5 February 1740). A Translation of the French King's Ordinance . .. the 15th of April 1689 (re­printed in Pamphlets, pp. 330-6) was published at the time by J. Millan 'oppo­site the Admiralty Office': it translates, rather awkwardly, Titre I of the 8th book of the fundamental Ordonnance de Louis XIV pour les armees navales. Lord Gage called the government bill 'no more than almost an exact copy' of this: ParI. Hist., ubi cit., 421.

77 Ibid., 422. 78 Ibid., 427.

IDEA OF ROYAL NAVAL RESERVE, 1696-1859 185

Similar fears were loudly voiced when Walpole brought in a weaker substitute measure the following year since it included a coercive power to search any house suspected of hiding a seaman. 'Who', asked Gage on this occasion, 'can be for a clause that subjects the whole nation as well as himself to the caprice and insolence of every little dirty officer. . . 1'79 This is the rhetoric that had killed the Excise Bill eight years earlier. Yet the 1741 measure went no further than an Act of 1706, which had passed the Commons in four days: autres temps autres moeurs. On the other hand, a draft bill for a universal register of seamen, fishermen, bargemen, etc., prepared by a committee of flag officers, later in 1706, never got on to the statute book. Historians have overlooked it, including the fact that the young Walpole, the strongest man on the Lord High Admiral's Council, was a member. 80

Despite this forgotten tradition in Admiralty circles favouring an orderly conscription of seafarers, we may allow that it would have been difficult to domesticate the French bureaucracy in the English shires, and that the Inscription itself did not invariably function without reinforcement from port closures and some degree of co­ercion: one of the two features that had made it attractive to English reformers, strict rotation of service, had not withstood the strain of large armaments, although the 'system of classes' was cer­tainly sophisticated enough to ensure a relatively rapid mobiliza­tion.81 It is also true that it took many years to perfect a register of British seamen after this was at last introduced in 1835.82 None the less, there is no disguising the fact that two powerful interests in British politics immediately scented danger: the shipowners, who would have been subject, in peace as well as war, to tighter control

79 Pari. Hist., XII, 62 n. (extract from London Magazine, July 1741); cf. Baugh, 237-9, and House of Commons Sessional Papers (ed. S. Lambert), VII, 467-73.

80 4 and 5 Ann., c. 6; Pari. Hist., VI, 518-19. The flag officers' draft was pre­sented to the Admiralty on 28 October 1706: Historical Manuscripts Commis­sion, House of Lords Manuscripts, new ser., VII, 526-37. Walpole was at the Admiralty June 1705-February 1708.

81 Both features had impressed Capt. George St. Lo when he was a prisoner in France in 1689-91: see his England's Safety (1693). In England's Interest (1694), reprinted in Pamphlets, pp. 16-41, he became the first English advocate of a general register. On the working of the Inscription between 1689 and 1713 I have attempted some evaluations in a forthcoming volume of essays to be published in memory of Louis Dermigny (ed. P. Boisset, Montpellier); but see the useful article by M. Perrichet, 'Contribution a I'histoire sociale du XVIIlo siecle: l'administration des classes de la marine et ses archives dans les ports bretons', Revue d'histoire economique et socia/e, XXXVII (1959), 89-112.

82 See P.G. Parkhurst, Ships of Peace (New Malden, Surrey, published by the author, 1962), app. K, 'Memorandum on value of registers of seamen'.

186 A WAY FROM IMPRESSMENT:

of their labour than seems to have been required by the manning clauses of the Navigation Acts or the signing-on imposed by law from 1729 ;83 and the landowners, whose markets frequently de­pended on the inland and coastal navigation.84 Both these influen­tiallobbies might suffer from embargoes and pressing too, but only in wartime - and some knew how to defeat the Impress. For some Members, doubtless, the voluntary reserve resolved upon in 1740 was no more than face-saving, since in the grave manning crisis of that year it was generally agreed that something needed to be done. In the furious debate of 13 March 1741, Pulteney also threw out briefly a suggestion on the lines of Robe's pamphlet. That the Admiralty did not pursue it (or the 1740 Resolutions either) until 1749 is intelligible when the realities of war may be said to have called for tougher measures; it would have been surprising if government had adopted the Marine Plan, which bears certain re­semblances to the 1740 Resolutions, when it was introduced at the height of the American war.

Until its decisive rejection in 1740, a general (or compulsory) register had been the answer of most reformers to the collapse of the Act of 1696.85 It had even been the subject of two abortive bills before 1740.86 In 1803 Nelson himself, like Norris and Wager be­fore him, expressed adherence to the principle, although he did not see it as a substitute for impressment.87 Interestingly enough, it constituted the outer husk of which the Fellowship of Seamen was to be the kernel, so that it is legitimate to regard the Marine Plan as an ingenious cross-fertilization of two lines of thought: by facili­tating impressment the general register would drive seamen into joining the voluntary one. In other words, the Plan was an attempt to combine the remedies favoured respectively by the navy and the shipowners in 1740. The Admiralty then desired the French-style compulsory registration, whereas a petition from the London mer-

83 Davis, p. 142. Cf. Graham in Commons debate, 4 March 1834: 'For the last century the imperfect state of the registration was complained of, and efforts were made to complete it' (Hansard, 3rd ser., XXI, 1102).

84 A point well made in F.A. Johnston, 'Parliament and the Protection of Trade 1689-1694', Mariner's Mirror, 57 (1974), 402-3. Cf. Gage's speech of 5 February 1740, Pari. Hist., XI, 423.

85 E.g., J. Dennis and the author of Tack-about. 86 In 1706 and 1720. A draft of the first is among Walpole's papers at the

Cambridge Univ. Library: Cholmondely Houghton MSS. 64, no. 4. The second is referred to in the MS. 'Considerations' which I have attributed to Byng, ibid., 18, no. 11, p. 1. The coercive clauses of the bill which emerged in 1706 (4 and 5 Ann. c. 6, ss. 1-5) were no longer acceptable in 1741.

87 His celebrated letter to St. Vincent of February 1803 was cited by Bucking­ham and Graham for opposite reasons in 1833-4 (Hansard, 3rd ser., XX, 654-5, and XXI, 1088).

IDEA OF ROYAL NAVAL RESERVE, 1696-1859 187

chants, presented by Sir John Barnard (ferocious enemy of a general register) in 1741, vague as its language is, asked for 'a proportion­able number of the sailors' to be distinguished as a 'body of men' by bounties and encouragements.88 In 1780, again, the author of the Marine Plan was to claim the approval 'of a very numerous and re­spectable body of masters of ships',89 many of whom would have been shipowners, to whom the Plan offered protected labour and more defensible ships. Unhappily, by then, the navy had evolved a real Impress Service, more efficient and cunning than of old, which perhaps procured by means of crimps and bounties90 more men than it ever pressed, at least ashore; it was clearly less disposed to risk structural changes in manning than it had been during the half­century after 1690.

Furthermore, as the pamphleteering evidence suggests, public opinion was falling increasingly under the spell of the state's 'plea of necessity', especially in the decades of revolutionary agitation. There was never to be a national campaign to free the seamen, who constituted a tiny percentage of the population.91 Outside coastal places, nobody need have seen press-gangs in action. In any case, the black man was already beginning to focus British sensibility on himself. The solution, when it came, owed little to outward pres­sures, but everything to the hard application of a handful of devoted officers and civil servants, like John Hoskins Brown and Sir Henry Pennell.92 So far as statesmen - Graham, Palmerston, Cardwell­had anything to do with it, they were beneficiaries of a party system

88 Introduced before the Commons debate on 13 March, Pari. Hist., XII, 119-20. 'Bounties', of course, were at this time a term for retaining fees as well as for the gratuities normally paid to volunteers on enrolment.

89 J. Green, Plan, p. v. Cf. the postscript to Thomas Urquhart's A letter to W. Wilberforce (1816), addressed from Lloyd's Coffee House. But the West India interest was opposed to the tonnage duty required to finance the Plan.

90 See the suggestions in Mackenzie, Impress of seamen (1786), in Pamphlets, pp. 137-9. There was clearly a striking contrast between the slow pace of the Falkland Islands mobilization in 1770-1 and the speed with which armaments were got ready in 1787-91, for which see the recollections of Sir T. Byam Martin, Impressment of Seamen (1834), reprinted in Pamphlets, pp. 173-88.

91 Perhaps one per cent in 1688 (R. Davis, 'Merchant Shipping in the Econ­omy of the Late Seventeenth Century', Economic History Review, 2nd ser., IX (1956),71) and again in 1851 for the U.K. as a whole, but as much as one and a half per cent in 1811 : see the figures appended to the report of the Hardwicke Commission, P.P. 1859, sess. 1 (2469), VI, 362-3. Nevertheless, these are enor­mous percentages compared even with 1956, let alone 1976.

92 One may compare the argument of O. MacDonagh, 'Emigration and the State, 1833-55: an Essay in Administrative History', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., V (1955), 133-59, and idem, 'The Nineteenth­Century Revolution in Government', The Historical Journal, I (1958), 52-67; cf. H. Parriss, 'The Nineteenth-Century Revolution in Government: A Reappraisal reappraised', ibid., III (1960), 17-37.

188 A WAY FROM IMPRESSMENT:

that allowed government greater freedom than the kaleidoscopic votes which upset the best intentions of such eighteenth-century predecessors as they had had. Moreover, they could not escape the massive unpopularity of naval service, in full peacetime, such as even the eighteenth century had not witnessed, though it was indeed the cumulative legacy of that century's omissions. It is hardly too much to say that the true significance of the Royal Naval Reserve in its first thirty years was precisely - in bringing shipowners into collaboration with government, and reservists with bluejackets - to overcome the deep estrangement between blue ensign and red duster. The navy thus learnt that it need not try to become the only nursery for its own seamen, while the historic nursery reasserted it­self as part of 'the naval array of England'.

9. Problems of Defence in a Non-belligerent Society: Military Service in the Netherlands during the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century

F.C. SPITS

EVERY student of the Dutch anned forces during the nineteenth century is bound to conclude that, from a military standpoint, the Netherlands was very backward. The Dutch achievement in the field of defence is perhaps summed up in the phrase, 'the less, the better'. The army was kept as small as possible and drew its re­cruits from the lowest strata of society. The training period was reduced to a minimum - at one time not more than about three months. Compared to that of neighbouring countries Dutch mili­tary expenditure was very modest indeed and only figured in the budget for the sake of decency. No wonder both armaments and equipment were in short supply and usually obsolete. The same in­difference obstructed the necessary modernization of the army organization and defence principles in general. During the nine­teenth century these remained virtually unchanged.

At the beginning of the century there was a considerable differ­ence between the liberal and conservative conceptions concerning the formation and organization of the military forces. In the ensu­ing debate the two poles of opinion were represented by those who wanted a professional army and those who preferred a militia of armed citizens. The Conservatives were in favour of an army com­posed entirely of professional soldiers with the King as supreme authority and, nominally, as supreme Commander. Conscription was considered by them to be reprehensible in principle. As a con­cession to modern times they were, however, prepared for the civilian population to be called up in the event of an invasion, but they considered that it would be contrary to civil liberties for some part of the population to receive training in preparation for such an emergency in peacetime.

On the other hand the Liberals favoured a national militia, which had all the advantages of being more numerous and having a higher morale. Moreover such a force would be too unwieldy for an

190 MILITARY SERVICE IN THE NETHERLANDS

expansionist war and quite unfitted for service outside the home country. Of course, no responsible politician envisaged the Dutch launching a war of aggression, but at least in theory this was the role assigned to a supplementary professional army. Moreover be­cause of its greater preparedness it would also fulfil a defensive task. When danger threatened it could protect the mobilization and the concentration of the militia. It was also indispensable as a school for officers.

Those in favour of this more liberal conception did not object to a period of military training in peacetime as a preparation for war. But it had to be reduced to a bare minimum and should, if possible, be on a voluntary basis. As for obligatory military service those called up should be permitted to provide a substitute. It was con­sidered as self-evident that military service should not be imposed on the well-to-do citizen in peacetime.

There was one point on which the Liberals and Conservatives were in agreement: the army and the militia should not be merged. Each one should exist independently of the other keeping its separ­ate entity. It would never do to apply the same rules to the citizen and to the professional soldier. Otherwise there was a risk that the entire nation would be inculcated with the military outlook. Not­withstanding the theory matters turned out quite differently in practice. It soon became apparent that, for various reasons, an army composed entirely of volunteers was out of the question. As a result of a series of measures, the army and the militia ceased to exist as separate entities and recruits and volunteers were combined in mixed companies in a ratio of four to one. Thus the difference between the two categories disappeared. The militia men were trained, clothed, administered, fed and placed under the same rules of discipline and order as the professional soldiers. Though no one had wanted to revive the hated system of conscription it had un­expectedly returned. As in the Napoleonic period, the armed citizen had to do his duty as a soldier.

In this heterogeneous military force the professional element dominated. As the cadre consisted of professional soldiers and the rest was partly made up of volunteers and substitutes, the mentality of the standing army set the tone. The civilian element could scarcely assert itself as the term of service was very short and, as a result of substitution, well educated young men did not serve as conscripts. In this skeleton army as it was called, the civilian found himself in the same position as the soldier, who was socially despised and deprived of all his rights. As this arrangement was in force throughout the nineteenth century, it was inevitable that, except for

THE SECOND HALF OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 191

the volunteers in the royal army, only the sons of the less well-to-do served. It seemed as if only the less fortunate had the right to shed their blood for their country. Because of substitution, what once had been a national duty, had degenerated into a military service mainly restricted to the lower classes.

The middle classes contested this point of view. They claimed that in the hour of danger, there would be no discrimination. After all, a soldier's training was still thought to be a simple matter. The Napoleonic recruit had been given some instruction in shooting and taught which eye to use when aiming while he was marching towards the enemy. During the first half of the nineteenth century, technology was still at a stage when it was possible to learn how to use arms during the period of mobilization. The sons of good families, called to military service, would be ready for combat at the first encounter with the enemy. At that moment there would no longer be any question of privilege.

All this was changed by the totally different warfare of the third quarter of the century. It was as if war had acquired a new dimen­sion. Two fallacies which until then had been stubbornly upheld were now thoroughly shaken. The notion that a regular army was superior to a conscript army appeared to be completely outdated, for within a few weeks of the outbreak of the war against Prussia (1870) the French imperial army had been completely wiped out. 'Habitue a vivre dans les chambrees et a penser dans les bureaux', it was totally unsuited to modern warfare.1 Another conception which had almost become an article of faith and which, for almost a century, had haunted the established powers, was also overturned at this time. The success of the levee en masse during the French Revolutionary wars was not repeated. Gambetta's makeshift mass armies were no match for the well drilled Prussian troops. Enthusi­asm and patriotism could not make up for skills acquired by systematic training.

Prussia was the only country that had maintained personal mili­tary service after the Napoleonic era. Its victories in 1866 and 1870 were generally attributed to this fact. An army drawn from all strata of society and therefore representative of the strength of the whole nation was bound to be far superior to a mercenary army. It was as though the whole nation had taken up arms against the French regular army. The Prussians not only outnumbered the enemy but also displayed their technical superiority, the conse­quence of their long period of training.

1 J. Monteilhet, Les institutions militaires de fa France, 1814-1932 (Paris, 1932), p. 54.

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Major improvements in firearms were mainly responsible for the transformation. Both their rate offire and their accuracy increased, and tactics had been consequently affected. Hitherto fighting had been of the close order type and bayonet attacks had proved de­cisive. The effects of firearms had, however, become so murderous that advances in serried ranks were out of the question. The bat­talion therefore had to be subdivided when still a considerable distance from the enemy and split up into groups of skirmishers. The result of this 'atomizing' was that the individual soldier on the battlefield was no longer simply called on to obey the commands of his officer, but had to depend more than ever on his own resources. Dispersed in small groups, the soldiers with the best education were bound to become the leaders. The commanding officer was unable to fulfil his traditional position and especially in rough terrain, he soon lost sight of what was happening. It was therefore of the greatest importance that the well educated should start serving in the ranks. This was already the case in the Prussian army. Hence the saying that the Prussian schoolmaster had carried the day at Gravelotte and Sedan.

The Franco-Prussian war had undermined the notion that the levee en masse was particularly effective. Enthusiasm alone was no substitute for technical proficiency. Moreover, the time required to mobilize and concentrate the troops had been reduced in a few years from months to days by the strategic use of the railway. If the citizen wanted, as he claimed, to play an effective part in the front­line of the battle he would have to undergo training well in advance. The increased standard of preparedness made it essential to exploit to the full the available manpower. The well-known phrase 'si vis pacem para bellum' took on a new significance.

All this brought about a military revolution in other countries. Berlin replaced Paris as the Mecca of the military. The Prussian example was followed both with regard to strategy, organization and tactics, and also in matters of dress and military terminology. In many armies the Pickelhaube replaced the kepi.2 The French themselves hastened to adopt the Prussian military system. The Danes and the Austrians had already done so. In 1874 Russia intro­duced personal military service. By the end of the decade military substitution had become a thing of the past in European armies.

This war left its mark on the Netherlands. Here too, military thinking was strongly influenced by it. The military vocabulary

2 J. Luvaas, 'European Military Thought and Doctrine, 1870-1914', in Theory and practice of War (ed. M. Howard, London, 1965), p. 71.

THE SECOND HALF OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 193

which, for ages had been entirely French, now began to include a multitude of German loan words. Terms such as Ausdauer, Nach­schub, Schwerpunktbildung gradually began to replace feu sacre, a cheval and arme blanche and on reading-tables the Memoires de Ste. Helene gave way to Das Volk in Waffen. In sartorial matters too the admiration for Prussian achievements was manifest. Where previ­ously there had been a tendency to give, surreptitiously, a French touch to the uniforms, now the narrow trousers and high collar of the Prussian officer were adopted; it was as if, wrote one military publicist, this was the insignia which guaranteed victory.3

In the meantime the mobilization in the summer of 1870 brought to light the shocking defects of the Dutch army organization. Nothing had been prepared. There was a shortage of everything. If the country had been involved in the Franco-Prussian war it would have lacked a proper defence. Apparently no legal provision had been made for 'a state of war'; no preparations had been made for the necessary expropriation, billeting, requisitioning or inundation. Some of the fortresses had fallen into disrepair; there were no bomb­proof buildings while the mi,litary railway transport had not been organized. A terrible shortage of horses made it almost impossible to mobilize the field-artillery. Moreover, there were only seventy rounds of ammunition available for each infantry soldier. The pro­ficiency of the soldiers was abominable, their arms defective, the cadre insufficient, and the citizen soldiery useless. Except for the morale of the troops and their cheerful acceptance of hardship, scarcely any aspect of the defence came up to scratch.

The deplorable state of the country's defence, which could not be kept from the public, caused sharp criticism. Something had to be done. In 1871 Thorbecke, who had once again been charged with forming a new Liberal cabinet, was obliged to pay a great deal of attention to the matter of defence and entered the Second Chamber 'carrying a rifle on his shoulder'. All the attention was focussed on the problem of military substitution, which was considered the main cause of the lamentable shortcomings. The debate on its abolition, which took place in the summer of 1873, can hardly be considered one of the highlights of Dutch parliamentary history. The negative result was partly due to the failure of the Secretary for War, General van Limburg Stirum. He entered upon office at the express wish of the King, but as an inveterate military man he made a strange impression on the dyed-in-the-wool parliamentarians and

3 Verslagen van de Vereeniging ter beoefening van de Krijgswetenschap (1890-1), 390 seqq.

194 MILITARY SERVICE IN THE NETHERLANDS

alienated the most influential military authority in parliament De Roo van Alderwerelt. His bill proposing the abolition of military substitution was defeated by 43 votes to 52, though the margin of defeat was smaller than a few years ago. In 1861 the law concerning substitution had been approved without demur, but in 1873 many people were beginning to question its wisdom.

After his resignation the General, a keen advocate of personal military service, returned to the fray, this time using different tactics. In 1875 he founded the Anti-Dienstvervangingsbond, an association which was to put the matter to the test of public opinion since it had been rejected by the Parliament.4 The association's main aim was to gain the support of the electorate and in this respect it was not un­successful, for within a short time, it had acquired more than ten thousand members. It had also sent a number of petitions to the King and the States General. An appeal to the 'people' by the dis­tribution of pamphlets was however considered inadvisable: such a remedy might turn out to be worse than the disease.

For many years, General van Limburg Stirum, who was ex­tremelyactive if rather muddle-headed, remained the driving force of the association. He was a war invalid, having lost a leg in the siege of the citadel of Antwerp, but had remained in active service and astonished everyone by the way in which he had overcome his physical handicap. 'With his wooden leg, he rode his horse until he reached an advanced age', according to his biographer, De Bas. Besides being a good horseman, he was apparently also an excellent swimmer. When well into his seventies he still 'surged through the waves with his one leg with a vigour that many a young man might have envied'. S Under his guidance the association developed into an extra-parliamentary, even anti-parliamentary pressure group. In its publications, which ran to at least thirteen hundred pages, numerous accusations were levelled against the so-called representatives of the people, the self-interested defenders of the privilege of birth, who induced the flower of the nation to neglect their sacred duty towards their country. Most of the publications were written by the General, whose inexhaustible talent for devising fresh invectives was unrivalled. No doubt his fervour owed something to the trau­matic defeat that he had suffered in the Second Chamber.

In the circumstances the introduction of personal military service seemed the obvious step to the General. In the first place it would bridge the gap between soldiers and civilians and help to make the

4 H.W. Groeneveld, Voor mijn land en mijn koningin! (The Hague, 1891), p. 3. 5 F. de Bas, Menno DavidgraafvanLimburg Stirum (The Hague, 1891), p. 13.

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army a national institution, which it was far from being at the time. The army was thoroughly unpopular, partly because most of the men were professional soldiers. In the newspapers it was always dis­paraged. Soldiers were turned away from cafes and in theatres and music halls they were allowed to occupy only the cheapest seats. Because almost no one outside the proletariat wore uniform, service in the army carried a social stigma. Consequently the 'nation', which at that time could be virtually equated with the moneyed classes, was estranged from the army; it neither knew nor cared about the army.

This alienation could be brought to an end if the members of the governing class were themselves prepared to serve in the army. If the sons of ministers and deputies took the King's shilling, public interest would no longer be confined to 'a grudging grant of mil­lions of guilders but would be replaced by a conscientious concern that the money should be properly spent'.6 Wearing a uniform would cease to be a badge of poverty or an obstacle to advancement in career. Instead service in the army, would, once more, be regarded as an honourable and a worthwhile experience.

One of the results of replacement was that the dregs of society got into the army. Time and again complaints were made about the quality of the substitutes. They were viewed as the cancer infecting the rest of the army. A German observer wrote: 'Schnapps is the answer for the Dutch volunteer and substitute. The other half of the army belongs to the destitute and is corrupted in the alcoholic atmosphere of the barracks'.' According to the opponents of the system, substitution meant that the best were replaced by the worst. If the system were abolished the recruits would profit from the leavening of the better educated rather than being debased by the riff-raff; in this way the army would gain morally and intel­lectually. Because this would produce a militia of a higher calibre, it would be possible to create an officers' corps and the former sub­stitutes would be able to find employment in the colonial army. The result, they argued, would be both a better army, and a better nation. Service in the army would foster public spirit. It was hoped that by stimulating interest in the army other public organizations would also benefit. Hitherto the upper classes had been inclined to regard the State as a necessary evil to which excessive taxes had to

6 C.B. Spruyt, De persoonlijke dienstplicht uit een politiek en sociaal oogpunt (Arnhem, 1882), p. 15.

7 Quoted by F.A. van Tuerenhout, Over verplichten persoonlijken krijgsdienst (Utrecht, 1873), p. 17.

196 MILITARY SERVICE IN THE NETHERLANDS

be paid, and they had neglected their civic responsibilities.8 Per­sonal service would overcome their vulgar self-interest. In this re­spect the army would serve as an important school for civic edu­cation.

The most offensive aspect of the existing military system was its social inequality. The upper classes had no difficulty in providing a substitute but for the lower middle class it was a heavy burden while the poor had to pay with their time and, possibly, even with their lives. II What it boiled down to was that those who had most to lose and would gain most by the retention of the system, placed the burden on the shoulders of those who had nothing to lose. Yet at the same time, efforts were being made to achieve greater equality and social justice in taxation and education and by widening the franchise. In the field of defence the old situation remained un­changed. The rich considered that all they need to do for their country was to give some of their own money and someone else's blood. It was a scandalous custom, and compared by Van Limburg Stirum with the Chinese practice of allowing a condemned man to send a substitute to the gallows, provided he supported the dead man's family.lO

Time and again the opponents of social1y discriminatory military service insisted that privileges conferred by birth foster class hatred. By drawing attention to the disgraceful sauve qui peut attitude of the propertied classes, existing tensions between the classes could easily be exacerbated. Following the Paris Commune Europe was haunted by the spectre of the impending struggle between labour and capital which was thought to have been triggered by the uprising in 1870. This fear was shared by the governing classes in the Netherlands; the military publicist Groeneveld warned that the seed of dissension which socialism was sowing so freely, would flourish unless the propertied classes were conscious of their duty, for in the Nether­lands too, the standard of revolt had already been raised. If matters should come to a head, on which side would the army - that main­stay of social order - stand? Would it in the end, prove reliable, consisting, as it did, of the poorest strata of the population ?11

These were undoubtedly sound arguments which the opponents of privilege based on birth elaborated in the journal of the associa­tion and in a series of brochures but they also started to launch

8 Spruyt, Persoonlijke dienstplicht, p. 18. 9 Van Tuerenhout, Persoonlijken krijgsdienst, p. 18. 10 M.D. van Limburg Stirum, Het zoogenaamd breken met partijverleden in

militaire zaken (The Hague, 1875), p. 12. 11 Groeneveld. Voor miin land. p. 19.

THE SECOND HALF OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 197

personal attacks against the spokesmen of the majority in Parlia­ment who rejected personal service. Among those who demanded an end to substitution two trends can be discerned: one authori­tarian, the other more democratic. The former missed no oppor­tunity to show its contempt for the so-called representatives of the people, who, in order to save their sons from military service, were prepared to stoop to base corruption, manipulating the power of the State to their own advantage. Van Tuerenhout, himself an officer in active service, was one of the most capable in this group. Once when in a fairly moderate speech he accused Parliament of class politics, he was sharply reprimanded by one of the Liberal members. 12

The more progressive wing considered that the root of the trouble lay in the composition of the Chamber, and in the system that pro­duced it. No reforms could be expected so long as the members placed their own interests before those of the country. This applied to the taxation system, operated in favour of the well-to-do, but also to the military system. Without an extension of the franchise the burden of military service would never be equally divided. Van Houten, a radical Liberal deputy, was acutely conscious of the rigidity of Dutch politics and in the Chamber expressed his opinion far more forcibly than Van Tuerenhout. 'We have here an oligarchy which bears no burdens, ... which has not imposed a single burden on itself since [the constitutional reform of] 1848.'13

Which arguments did these 'self-interested promoters of the general good' use to defend their unpatriotic behaviour? What was their point of view and what sort of army did they favour? On the latter question there were three possibilities: a national militia, a royal army, dominated by the professional soldier and a national army, which stood midway between the two. Except for the Conser­vatives, all the parties in Parliament thought that a national militia should form the basis of the country's defence. This at least was the theory, but in practice Parliament unanimously preferred to main­tain the existing system - a regular army, reinforced and supple­mented by a contingent of conscripts, recruited from the families of the poor. A majority - Conservatives and conservative Liberals, Catholics and Anti-Revolutionaries - rejected the notion of a national army, which by this time had been adopted by the other

12 Handelingen der Staten-Generaal, Session 1872-3, Second Chamber, p. 1782.

13 Geschriften van den Antidienstvervangingsbond (ed. M.D. van Limburg Stirum and A. Ising, The Hague, 1885), III, 1043. S. van Houten, Vijfen­twintig jaar in de Kamer, 1869-1894 (4 vol., Haarlem, 1903-15), I, 259.

198 MILITARY SERVICE IN THE NETHERLANDS

European countries. Support for personal military service was only gaining ground in progressive and radical Liberal circles. If we take as our criteria defence policy and the attitude shown towards mili­tary affairs, then Parliament was still predominantly conservative in the early 'seventies.

The conservative standpoint of the majority based its defence on Adam Smith's time-honoured principle of the division oflabour and the liberty to choose one's profession. Military service was a pro­fession: whoever aspired to it could serve as a soldier, in much the same way as another might well become a postman or a road­sweeper. Those who were less suited to a soldier's work or did not feel attracted to it, could find a replacement. Of course every citizen had a responsibility for the defence of the national territory, but this was essentially no different to his duty in respect of public order, fire prevention and street cleaning. Clearly, it would be absurd if everyone were to join the fire brigade, police force or night watch. It was not only undesirable, it was unreasonable, for, by doing such work oneself, the working classes would be deprived of their livelihood.14

According to the principle of the division of labour, substitution was in no way immoral. On the contrary, the State would be guilty of an intolerable abuse of its power if it violated the right of re­placement. A breach of this right was only permissible if circum­stances warranted and only after the necessity had been demon­strated. But was it necessary in peacetime? Military experts were by no means agreed on this point. At the time of the parliamentary debates in 1873 four out of the five military specialists had spoken out against personal service. By demanding military service of its citizens, the State would trample underfoot personal liberty, 'one of God's noblest gifts', and its sphere of influence would increase considerably at the expense of society. IS

In their approach to both personal liberty and social equality, the conservative Liberals and the Catholics seemed to think along the same lines. They argued that by championing the cause of sub­stitution they were not acting on behalf of the rich. The great majority of those replaced came from the middle classes - artisans, farmers and minor civil servants. Moreover, if the propertied classes were to serve in the army, they would have so much more to lose: their careers might be jeopardized, their studies interrupted and their businesses decline. The sacrifice of such men would there-

14 [Een warm vaderlander), PersoonJijke dienstplicht (Dordrecht, s.d.), p. 2. 15 [Een staatsburger), Persoonlijke dienstplicht en legerorganisatie (Amster­

dam, s.d.), pp. 12,47.

THE SECOND HALF OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 199

fore be much greater than that demanded of the poor citizen, who would gain by being in military service where he would be better dressed, fed and housed than in civilian life. It could therefore be claimed that if personal military service were introduced the real injustice would be suffered by the upper class.

Even after 1898, when military service had been made obligatory, the arguments put forward by the opponents seemed as cogent as ever. They still maintained that the Prussian victories were the result of the superiority of the Prussian infantry and the incompetence of the French military leaders rather than to the composition of the army. None of the arguments put by those in favour of compulsory military service - greater interest in the army, a higher standard among the ordinary soldiers, the disappearance of caste-feeling and militarism - made the slightest impression. Whereas advocates of change believed personal military service would lead the citizen to accept his military duties more readily, the opponents expected that enforced service and life in barracks would only foment resentment among educated men. It was even doubtful whether the army would benefit if the rabble were replaced by the flower of the nation. After all, it still remained to be seen whether young men reared and edu­cated in polite society would also prove better soldiers. Would they be able to withstand the hardships of military life? Moreover sub­stitution was no barrier to military success: Napoleon's armies, notwithstanding the system of replacement, had carried all before them in Europe for twenty years. Furthermore a problem might arise about discipline and order if the ordinary soldiers were more intelligent than the officers. The commanders would then have an arduous task to ful:fil, for the baionette intelligente might well prove less amenable to discipline than his educational inferior. lei

The principle of substitution found its strongest support among the Catholics who tended to be ultra-conservative in outlook. At an early stage in the controversy the orthodox protestant Anti­Revolutionaries showed themselves ready to modify their position in the light of criticism of substitution based on national and social grounds. Possibly the annexation of the Transvaal (1877) played a part, for it certainly strengthened the feeling of racial affinity with the Boers and aroused Dutch national consciousness. Already in the political programme of 1879 Abraham Kuyper rejected the system.l7

Among the Liberals, too, a greater sensitivity to democracy was evident. Quite early in the 1880s there must, therefore, have been a

16 Handelingen der Staten-Generaal, Session 1897-8, Second Chamber, pp. 830 seqq., 851.

17 A. Kuyper, "Ons Program", (5th edn., Hilversum, Pretoria, 1907), p. 317.

200 MILITARY SERVICE IN THE NETHERLANDS

majority in Parliament in favour of abolishing substitution. It is, to say the least, surprising that this did not come about until 1898. Why did this majority tolerate the continuation of an army drawn from the lower classes for so long, a military force, which, in that era of nationalism was quite unrepresentative of the nation? How could it believe that the country's safety could be assured with such an anachronistic system of defence?

The explanation for this delay was the insistence on the part of the Catholics that the system of replacement should be retained as a matter of principle. Whenever abolition was brought up, it pro­voked a storm of protest in the Catholic press and electoral associ­ations. They feared that eventually priests would be obliged to serve because exemption for the clergy would be offensive to the Liberals. However, this cannot have been the main reason, for the Anti­Revolutionaries were prepared to give every possible guarantee on this point. Far more important was the fear - and this was often criticized by the opponents of replacement - that, in the barracks, the Catholic part of the population would come into contact with men of different or no religious persuasion. Despite the telegraph, railways and newspapers, the clergy had, according to one hostile contemporary, brought about a division between Catholics and the rest, which was so complete as to be scarcely credible. The Catholics lived in a world of their own, and nothing that did not come from the clergy was allowed to disturb their seclusion. IS

The desire to preserve this exclusively Catholic environment goes far to explain their rabid aversion to the barracks. Barracks were regarded as dens of vice and cesspits of depravity where swearing and drinking were the order of the day. No Catholic parent would wish to expose their sons to such a pernicious influence. Substitu­tion protected them from contamination and was therefore elevated into a sacrosanct principle to be maintained at almost any price, even when this meant discrimination against the poor.I9

Nevertheless, despite all the agitation, this principle would have been called into question earlier had it not been that the Anti­Revolutionaries were dependent on Catholic support in matters both parties considered infinitely more important. Among the problems requiring urgent attention, defence was accorded a low priority. The fate of the confessional schools was a matter of far greater importance. In order to resolve the problem of schooling

18 Geschriften van den Antidienstvervangingsbond, II, 378 n. 18. 19 J. van WeIy, Schaepman (Bussum, 1954), p. 432; Bescheiden betreffende de

buitenlandse politiek van Nederland, 1899-1919 (ed. C. Smit, 8 vol., The Hague. 1957-74), Rijks Geschiedkundige Publicatien, Grote Serie. 128, VI, 172.

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and to realize the common aim of 'breaking the privileged position of secular state education' it was absolutely essential for the Anti­Revolutionaries and the Catholics to co-operate and to form and maintain the so-called right wing coalition. For those prepared to pay a high price for this - and this was especially true of the two distinguished leaders, Schaepman and Kuyper - it was therefore imperative that a divisive issue like compulsory military service should be kept in the background for as long as possible. Nor were these the only parties to be embarrassed by this matter: the Liberals, too, were at sixes and sevens about personal military service.

Many years therefore passed by before this delicate question was again broached. But the matter of a reserve officer corps eventually made further postponement virtually impossible. With the creation of mass armies in the neighbouring countries the Netherlands, too, were obliged to follow suit in a modest way. Within a few years the military contingent doubled, with the consequence that the officers' corps had to be strengthened. To this end a reserve officers' corps was proposed and in 1893 it was decided to set this up.

The introduction of personal military service could no longer be delayed, since reserve officers had to be recruited from the middle and upper classes. In 1898 a Liberal cabinet therefore introduced a bill to the effect that the propertied classes should also be subject to military service. Once again the Catholics strongly opposed it and, once again, they closed ranks to fight the bill. It was surely no accident that the principal speaker for the right wing Catholics, Bahlmann, died of a heart-attack while fiercely denouncing the proposed legislation. Anyway this tragedy brought the acrimonious debate to a close. Except for Schaepman, all the Catholics voted against, but they were not supported by any of the other parties and the bill was passed by an overwhelming majority. For the right wing this meant that the unity of the coalition could once again be es­tablished, since an important point of difference no longer existed.20

Of course the slow response of Dutch military institutions to the changed situation should not be solely attributed to party politics and parliamentary tactics. There were more fundamental reasons. In the first place the Dutch army was composed of a corps of volun­teer officers supplemented by conscripts recruited from the lower classes. The antipathy felt by the citizens towards the army was exacerbated by the knowledge that, even after the reform of the army, they would have to serve on the same basis as the professional

20 E.H. Kossmann, De lage landen, 1780-1940 (Amsterdam and Brussels, 1976), p. 265.

202 MILITARY SERVICE IN THE NETHERLANDS

soldier. They feared that the army would now leave its stamp on the whole society, a threat which might be reduced by the retention of the replacement system. Another important reason was that in a small country like the Netherlands domestic affairs dominated politics.21 This was demonstrated by the complete lack of interest in matters of defence: a problem concerning army organization was hardly one that would concern the whole cabinet. No Dutch govern­ment ever bothered to give an opinion concerning the necessary army reforms. For this reason the Secretary for War took office and laid it down again without regard for the span of a particular cabi­net, and a good deal more frequently too: the four ministries during the period 1870-79 saw no fewer than fourteen War Secretaries.22

Finally, the lack of seriousness with which defence problems were treated could also have been influenced by the strength of the de­fensive strategy of the Netherlands. The fortresses and fortifications in the polders possessed a remarkable, even unique, defensive value. It was rightly assumed that their defensive capability was all the greater because firearms had been improved and firepower in­creased. Furthermore military thinking at this time was strongly convinced of the superiority of a defensive strategy. It was not necessary to consider fighting in open country, for it would be sufficient to defend the Vesting-Holland (Fortress Holland).

It is this geo-strategic factor which must have influenced thinking on army formation. The short length of the Waterlinie, the limited number of troops needed for its defence, the relatively simple task of defending the fortresses, surrounded as they were, by water, and the little training demanded for this task - all that must have led, more or less consciously, to the belief that the Dutch did not need to exert themselves to any great extent in order to defend their country. Compared with other countries they were in such a privi­leged position that vigilance for the security of the national border seemed superfluous, at least according to the tenets then current.

21 J.e. Boogman, 'The Netherlands in the European Scene, 1813-1913', in Britain and the Netherlands in Europe and Asia, m, (ed. J .S. Bromley and E.H. Kossmann, London, 1968), pp. 138-59.

22 N. Bosboom, Het militaire vraagstuk (The Hague, 1905), p. 10.

10. World War II and Social Class in Great Britain*

A. MARWICK

FROM the very earliest stages of the Second World War observers were sure that British class distinctions were being broken down. Vivienne Hall was a middle-class spinster in her early thirties, who lived at home with her mother in Putney in South West London, and worked as a shorthand-typist for the Northern Assurance Company in the City. When war broke out she volunteered to work in her local A.R.P. Report Centre. She kept a diary of her war experiences, most of which her mother discovered and destroyed -historians of seventeenth-century Holland are not the only ones to have difficulties with their sources. The record remains, however, of Miss Hall's thoughts on the second day of war, 4 September 1939: 'There is one thing, and one only, about this war - it is an instant and complete leveller of "classes".'1 About a year later, at the be­ginning of the Blitz, an American journalist reported home that 'Hitler is doing what centuries of English history have not accom­plished - he is breaking down the class structure of England'.2 Many of the propaganda films of the war period often put forward this notion (though, of course, some of the best wartime feature films, such as Noel Coward's In Which We Serve, present the en­during subtleties of the British class system). For some years after the war, historians were inclined to argue that some sort of social revolution had indeed taken place during the war.3 More recently, such writers as Anthony Howard, Angus Calder, and Henry Pelling have argued that very little real social change took place during the

• The author wishes to place on record his thanks for assistance of the Keeper of the Public Records and the Trustees of the Imperial War Museum.

1 Vivienne Hall's Diary, Imperial War Museum. 2 New York Herald Tribune, 21 September 1940, quoted (approvingly!) in

The Observer, 22 September 1940. 3 E.g. E. Watkins, The Cautious Revolution (London, 1951); R. Brady, Crisis

in Britain. Plans and Achievements of the Labour Government (London, 1950); C.F. Brand, The British Labour Party: a Short History (Stanford, 1964).

204 WORLD WAR II AND SOCIAL CLASS

war and this on the whole is also the view of the late Tom Harris­son,4 co-founder of the pioneer social research organization, Mass Observation. Paul Addison has stressed the significance of the war in the realm of political change but by implication seems to suggest that the class structure remained almost totally unaltered.5 In general, I have myself been associated with the view that both of the great total wars of the twentieth century have occasioned consider­able transformations in most aspects of social life. In endeavouring to analyse the relationship between war and social change I have broken war down into four dimensions: destruction - disruption, involving upheaval and direct damage, but also, as some of the 'disaster' studies underta,ken by sociologists have suggested, in­volving a 'reconstructive' effect, a desire to rebuild better than before;6 the test dimension, implying that war is a challenge to society, imposes new stresses upon it, and induces the collapse of some institutions and the transformation of others; participation of hitherto underprivileged groups who tend, through their contribu­tion to the national cause, to make social gains; and the psycho­logical dimension - total war is a great emotional experience com­parable to the great revolutions in history.'

However, this somewhat blunt analysis is far from satisfactory when it comes to a study of such a subtle and complex subject as social class. In fact, it is because of the generally unsatisfactory way in which historians of the modem period have tended to handle class categories, that I am now orientating my researches towards this major topic. Such distinguished British students of war and society as Professor Michael Howard and Dr. Paul Addison both imply that the rigidity of the British class structure was not always necessarily a disadvantage to Great Britain, but they nowhere make

4 A. Howard, 'We are the Masters Now', The Age of Austerity 1939-1945 (ed. T.M.B. Sissons and P. French, London, 1963), pp. 15-32; A. Calder, The People's War (London, 1969); H.M. Pelling, Britain and the Second World War (London, 1970), ch. xii; T. Harrisson, Living through the Blitz (London, 1976), p.l00.

5 P. Addison, The Road to 1945: British Politics and the Second World War (London, 1976).

6 See e.g. M. Wolfenstein, Disaster. A Psychological Essay (London, 1957); W.H. Form, S. Nosow, G.P. Stone and C.M. Westie, Community in Disaster (New York, 1958); Man and Society in Disaster (ed. G.W. Baker and D.W. Chapman, New York, 1963); A.H. Barton, Social Organization under Stress: a SOciological Review of Disaster Studies (Washington, 1963).

7 A. Marwick, Britain in the Century of Total War . .• War, Peace and Social Change, 1900-1967 (London, 1968); idem, War and Social Change in the Twentieth Century: a Comparative Study of Britain, France, Germany, Russia and the United States (London, 1974).

IN GREAT BRITAIN 205

very clear what they understand by the term 'class'.s This may well be as it should be, for if we turn to the social scientists we often find such a wilderness of mystification as to render it very difficult in­deed for historians to make any use of their concepts. Traditionally, sociology has tended to make distinctions between a person's class (which is understood fundamentally in economic terms), his status, and his power group. For the historian, a broader mapping is needed which makes it possible to put individuals and groups definitively into one all-inclusive social class. And in fact, this is actually what real people in Britain during the period of my studies did do. Over and over again in the sources, one finds references to the 'upper class', the 'middle class', the 'working class', and also sometimes to the 'upper middle class', and 'the lower middle class'. To the historian it is a good rule that wherever possible he should use the language of the people he is studying, rather than invent abstract conceptualizations.

Since British people obviously thought that there was an upper class, a middle class, and a working class, I shall take this simple threefold structure as an initial working hypothesis, leaving aside the question at the moment of whether it makes better sense to divide the middle class into an upper middle class and a lower middle class. My approach to the subject is through the traditional methodology of the historian, the accumulation of all sorts of different types of evidence, letters, diaries, official documents, novels, films and so on. This evidence is inevitably imperfect, frag­mentary, and impressionistic, and since essentially it tells us about people's perceptions of class, the approach is often described as 'subjective'. This can be contrasted with the 'objective' study of class, which often seems to be based on no evidence whatsoever, impressionistic or otherwise. Class structure, then, is taken to mean a broad mapping of society into a number (three, in the present case) of social groups, to a single one of which most individuals can be convincingly allocated, though there will always be groups who straddle the fringes of class boundaries. Of course people do have different perceptions of the overall class structure, but my hope is that by building up a series of mappings to overlay, as it were, one on top of the other, it may eventually be possible to present a reasonably definitive picture of the class structure of any given society. So far my researches have not taken me as far as that, either

8 Addison, Road to 1945, pp. 76, 104, 129-32, 139, 221, 261-2 and 270-6; M. Howard, 'Total War in the Twentieth Century: Participation and Con­sensus in the Second World War', War and Society: a Yearbook of Military History (ed. B. Bond and I. Roy, London, 1975), pp. 222-3.

206 WORLD WAR II AND SOCIAL CLASS

for Britain or for the two other countries that are the subject of my studies, France and the United States. To make it possible to pro­ceed for the moment on an interim basis let me suggest what I take the main indicators of class to be. They are: first, power and authority, a double heading which could be broken down into political, legal, and economic elements, but which in modem societies is usually a pretty inextricable melange of the three; second, wealth - which, obviously, in part overlaps with my first indicator; third, work situation - the fact that at this conference I have spent some eI1.joyable days touring the historic beauties of the Netherlands, while on full pay, indicates pretty clearly that I am not in a working-class occupation, where, characteristically, the work is manual and often undertaken under dirty and relatively unpleasant conditions; fourthly, the degree ofJreedom and security - again, it does not matter too much if I indulge in a little jenever before one of our sessions, whereas work discipline is usually some­what tighter in working-class occupations though, at the same time, security of salary is usually considerably less; fifthly, prestige; sixthly, culture and life style. Also very relevant to questions of class, though not in any real sense an indicator, is the matter of the particular historical evolution of any given society. In Britain, before 1939 there had been no violent revolution overthrowing the old landed aristocracy. Admittedly, landed power had given way to, or rather made terms with, industrial power throughout the nineteenth century. But there still existed unimpaired what I am going to call the British upper class 'box', defined by the ethos, attitudes and manners of the traditional aristocratic upper class, but now in 1939 inhabited by an amalgam of that older class and the more successful members of the industrial and commercial classes.

Because class is such a complex topic I am proposing now to pro­ceed immediately to the summary of my main conclusions about the effects of the Second World War; I shall then endeavour in the second half of this paper to identify particular areas and items of change, and non-change, during the war. Overall, I shall be main­taining my previous position that the Second World War did in­deed bring important changes in British society,9 and that these changes included questions of class and attitude towards class. But it is also necessary to look at the way in which modem wars serve as a 'searchlight' (to use an idiom developed by the suffragist leader

9 See especially A. Marwick, The Home Front: the British and the Second World War (London, 1976).

IN GREAT BRITAIN 207

Mrs. H.M. Fawcett in regard to the First World War) and show up social continuities and assumptions which often remain concealed in time of peace. However great the scale of the changes brought about by the war, as it became apparent in the years after the war, the slowness of developments during the war period itself, and the very powerful traditional resistances to change which manifested themselves at all stages during the war, must be very forcefully stressed. Perhaps I can best try to make clear what I am getting at here by quoting from two different drafts of a Ministry of Labour memorandum on industrial morale, dating from September 1942. The first draft was drawn up within the Ministry and depended on reports sent in from all over the country by regional controllers, industrial relations officers, labour supply inspectors, employment exchange managers, welfare officers, and factory inspectors, all of whom were well qualified to present an authentic view of what was actually happening in the realm of industrial relations. Their draft, in part, read:

Many employers still cherish the right to discipline their workers and to manage labour in their own way and resent the alleged curtailment of managerial rights. Management are slow to realise that times are chang­ing and that their relations with their work people must change also.

That I believe to be, not just a neat, but also a deeply true, encapsu­lation of how the circumstances of the war, what I would call the participation dimension, were modifying the class relationship be­tween employers and workers. But traditional senior Civil Service attitudes, reflecting those of the big industrialists, were very power­ful within the Ministry: a small committee, led by Sir Lindsay Scott of the Ministry of Aircraft Production, insisted on redrafting the passage in a manner which brings out well a resistance to, and total unwillingness to accept, any change in relationships between em­ployers and workers:

Many employers still consider it important that they should have the right to discipline and manage their workers in their own way, and dis­like curtailment of managerial rights. to

I stress this business of the slowness of, and the resistance to, change, because too many historians have fallen into the trap of first of all believing the testimony of such as Vivienne Hall and more particularly emotional stories of the mixing of classes in air raid shelters during the Blitz in 1941, and then, being disillusioned by the

10 Bevin Papers, Churchill College Cambridge: BEVN 2/13.

208 WORLD WAR II AND SOCIAL CLASS

obvious class nature of British society in the late '40s and early '50s, compounding their error by arguing that while there was a sudden and complete change in the early stages of the war, this was totally reversed at the end of the war. There is in fact plenty of evidence that there was very little real mixing of social classes in air raid shelters. But the main, and perhaps slightly ironic point, is that while people in a slightly romantic way in 1939, 1940, and 1941 were actually talking about the mixing of social classes this was then scarcely true; yet, in 1943, 1944, 1945 when opinion polls often showed that ordinary people were rather worried that the old status quo would be maintained at the end of the war, real and long lasting developments towards the modification of the British class structure were in fact taking place.

At the basis of my argument about the war's effect on class in Britain, lies an attempt to draw contrasts between British society as it existed in the 'thirties and British society as it became in the late 'forties and early 'fifties. To make the contrast entirely valid for my present purposes, I have, of course, to try in some way to take account of changes which would have taken place by the late 1940s whether or not there had been a war. Nonetheless, this is the valid contrast for the historian to make. Those historians who have seen the war as having had no significance as an agency of social change, or who have even seen it as an agency of reaction, usually turn out to be comparing late 'forties society with some ideal society of their own - this, certainly, is the charge I would make against Dr. Angus Calder.

British society in the 1930s was a pretty rigidly polarized society. Although the language used is of the three classes I have already identified, much heated argument and peaceful discourse was con­ducted in a manner which suggests in alI classes, and among all political persuasions, a fundamentally dichotomous view of society, the traditional Marxist model in fact, of propertied (with their hangers on, the middle classes) on one side, and propertyless on the other. In upper-class and middle-class circles a broad contempt for the working class is readily perceptible. Let me try to capture the essence of this contempt through a leading article on the Unem­ployed March of 1936, published in a provincial middle-class news­paper.

We suppose that many marches are organised as a diversion for people who have nothing else to do. They are believed to have a certain propa­gandist value as they attract crowds of spectators at various points who wonder what on earth the marchers hope to achieve. Usually collections are taken en route, and thus on arrival in London, the pilgrims are able

IN GREAT BRITAIN 209

to have a fairly good time. In other cases misguided local authorities have seriously contemplated making the cost of these expeditions a charge on the rates, despite warnings regarding the illegality of the proposal. Is it not high time that public opinion condemns this new stunt and refuse to afford it the slightest encouragement? Nothing useful has ever been achieved by past marches. The procession usually sets out without invi­tations; it arrives with no plans for its reception; no responsible person regards it as anything more than mere propaganda; and after a few days' sightseeing in the Metropolis and some entertainment in the soup kitchen the marchers return without ever meeting the Minister whose flesh they wanted to make creep ... 11

Now that piece of perhaps rather contemptible middle-class con­tempt was circulated among a number of upper-class politicians and civil servants, including Sir John Simon and Sir Kingsley Wood; they expressed approval of its tone, though decided it would be un­wise to make a public statement along these lines themselves.12 Upper-class Socialists (the very phrase is used, for example, by one of them, John Strachey, in a letter to an upper-class Conservative friend, Sir Robert Boothby),13 naturally tried to avoid being overtly contemptuous of their working-class fellow Socialists, but their clear sense of belonging to a separate class comes through in, for instance, the publications and the letters and diaries of Hugh Dalton.14 At the bottom end of society, contempt seems to have been met by two contrasting reactions. The 'thirties, very properly, are well known as a decade of deep political bitterness and many working-class figures very clearly had a definite conflict model of their relationship with other social classes. But enough work has now been done to show how strong also was the old deferential attitude towards their social superiors among large sections of the British working class.1s From the implicitly dichotomous models of class held in the 1930s, there developed in the late 'forties much more subtle models involving a range of status groups of a style more usually associated with American society, though still within the overall use of the three major class categories. The movement, also, is away from contempt and conflict, towards consensus and integration. And within that movement, deference declines also.

11 Western Mail, 24 September 1936. 12 Public Record Office [p.R.O.], H.L.G. 30/61. 13 Quoted in H. Thomas, John Strachey (London, 1973), p. 65. 14 B.B.J.N. Dalton, Some Aspects of the Inequality of Incomes in Modern

Communities (London, 1920). Dalton's private papers are in the Archives Department of the British Library of Political and Economic Science.

15 R.T MacKenzie and A. Silver, Angels in Marble, Working Class Conserva­tives in urban England (London, 1967); E.A. Nordlinger, The Working Class Tories:. Authority, Deference and Stable Democracy (London, 1967).

210 WORLD WAR II AND SOCIAL CLASS

One particular incidence of this last development which seems to me worth a little attention concerns servants, and indeed the service trades generally. The statistics are clear enough: over a million female domestic servants throughout the 'thirties declining to around 350,000 in 1951. This process was largely a function of the disruptive and the participation dimensions of the war: quite flatly, domestic servants could do a good deal better for themselves by working in the various war industries. Upper-class and middle-class households, losing their servants during the war, were in many cases unable to get them back again at the end of the war. That in itself reduced their social distinctiveness as compared with those households which had never had any servants. But I believe it goes further than this; I believe the whole conception of the nature of service work changed during the war. This is very difficult to es­tablish, but one can at least point out that Ernest Bevin's own papers and the files of the Ministry of Labour are full of discussions of the nature of domestic service in an attempt to develop it into a kind of social service to be provided for the handicapped poor, rather than for the indolent rich. In a note of 10 September 1943 dictated by Bevin himself, the Minister of Labour emphasized three 'facts' in regard to Domestic Service.

(1) We cannot neglect the volume of employment that it offers to men and women. If you take in the whole question of gardening, valeting and other forms of service, while the men would be a minority, still there are some openings. For women it seems to me it is one avenue of rational and decent employment;

(2) That we can never again expect the modern educated girl of the standard which the new Education Act proposes to produce, to accept the servility of domestic service as hitherto known;

(3) on the other hand domestic service should not be limited so that it is only available for those who can afford to keep a person full time. We must cater for that type of service, to assist the professional woman or even the working woman who chooses to go to employment or for domestic reasons, size of family or house desires to employ for a number of days in a week domestic help.16

If I speak of a decline of 'meniality' as a consequence of the slow changes of the war I shall, very properly, be accused of coining the very sort of abstraction that I said historians should avoid. So, not to belabour the point, I shall simply content myself with comment­ing that I believe the war did push Britain towards a more 'Ameri­can' situation in which such jobs as bar-tending (an American word

16 BEVN 2/4. A neglected White Paper of the post-war 'Welfare State' is the Report on Post-War Organization of Domestic Employment, Cmd. 6650, 1945.

IN GREAT BRITAIN 211

not a British one), waitressing, and hair cutting as well as those of chauffeur, gentleman's gentleman, and charlady (the word dis­appears from the language in the years after the war) could now be approached with a kind of dignity and lack of meniality which was not true of these jobs in the pre-war era.

These self-evidently, are all matters of detail and attitude. The basic social structure - upper class, middle class, and working class - of Great Britain did not change as between the 'thirties and the late 'forties. There was, indeed, as I have pointed out e1sewhere,17 to be a further flood of social change in the 1960s. But there were changes in what I have described as the indicators of class, and, above all, there were significant changes right across all of my indicators in regard to the position of the working class relative to the other classes in society. These changes were vitally important in the subsequent history of British society, but again they had very definite limits placed upon them. To that particular question I shall return at the very end of this paper. From being the object - almost as if behind bars - of the social surveys of the 'thirties, the working class moves towards being subject in society, an active force. Often, indeed, in the post-war period it is the middle class whose 'plight' is subjected to close sociological scrutiny.

I move now to some of the specific areas of upheaval in the war itself. First of all, the Blitz. The whole question of living through the Blitz has recently been examined in a book of that title based on the Mass Observation files, and written by the man most qualified to do so, the late Professor Tom Harrisson. Harrisson rightly stresses the complexity of reactions to the Blitz, emphasizing that there was understandably enough much bewilderment and resent­ment against the ineffectualness of the original measures against the raids. But it is clear from the wealth of other sources that the Blitz did bring ordinary people to feel a sense of involvement with the nation's destiny which had often been lacking in pre-war years. There is a marvellously subtle and infinitely a.p1bivalent range of overtones in extracts from a diary of an upper-class lady living in London:

An aggressive Labour bus-driver told me the East End people were saying their houses were destroyed, or allowed to be destroyed and no­one cared; but when the West End was touched the Government started the barrage!

Bruton Street, Bond Street, and Park Lane all bombed yesterday; much damage to the two former, but people are carrying on as usual. Milkman

17 Marwick, Home Front, p. 184 and idem, War and Social Change, p. 224.

212 WORLD WAR II AND SOCIAL CLASS

delivers slowly, pushing his tricycle during raids; the paper comes, and so on and so forth. Wonderful stoicism.

Three women Legion officers killed in East End; Mrs. Knowle and the Misses Cooper; yesterday, while running a mobile canteen. Several fire­men too; and two were blown over a building on an escape ladder which was broken in half. One is just stunned to read of these happenings which often are beyond belief. Such heroism everywhere in all classes.

The Tube stations are filled with people packed together for the night. Wondered if I would join them, then concluded that even loneliness was best at home. 18

The blending of the sense of class unity and class distinction is so evident as to need no further comment. On the whole, the evidence in regard to ordinary people is of good morale and a certain self­confidence. This comes through in the secret reports the Govern­ment itself had made on civilian attitudes, in letters sent abroad, which, naturally, passed through the hands of censorship, and in private letters and diaries.19 William Penny, a determined, if not aggressive bus driver, noted in his diary in the early stages of the blitz: 'We are all in the "Front Line" and we realise it'.20

Another major upheaval which has received much attention from historians is that of the evacuation of children (and to begin with mothers also) from the target areas in the cities to more peaceful country areas. Taking place in the period of the phoney war, the first evacuation anticipated the Blitz by almost a year. This first evacuation is most striking for what it reveals about continuing class prejudices rather than suggesting any mixing of classes. There is little of the Christmas spirit about this Christmas letter which the wife of a London barrister, Mrs. Gwladys Cox received from an old school friend:

I have been very busy this year with Red Cross work, attended lectures, and, since last December, passed six exams in various branches of the Red Cross .... I have no evacuees thank goodness. You have perhaps heard mention in Parliament of evacuees sent from Liverpool to North Wales. It was terrible - dirt and disease among the children and mothers. The wretched local Red Cross have the job of 'de-lousing'. But most of them have returned to Liverpool now, Anglesey was too dull with no pubs open on Sunday. We do not want any more.ll

Earlier Mrs. Cox had herself recorded: 'After tea we watched numbers of strange looking people with babies, children and odd

18 Hilda Neal's Diary, 18 September 1940, Imperial War Museum. 19 See e.g. P.R.O., CAB 67/9 (41) 44; CAB 00/12 WP (40) 407 and CAB 68/7

WP/R (40) 196. 20 Henry Penny's Diary, 12 September 1940, Imperial War Museum. 21 Owladys Cox's Diary, 22 December 1939, Imperial War Museum.

IN GREA T BRITAIN 213

parcels of clothes and bedding struggling up West End Lane. They turned out to be East Enders evacuated from bombed areas to empty houses all about here. '22

It is in the second and real evacuation, when the bombs were actually falling, that we begin to find hard evidence of the develop­ment of a genuine concern among middle-class families over the appalling conditions which had bred the slum children billeted upon them. However, it may be that too exclusive an attention has been devoted to evacuation. Evacuation is perhaps better seen as a part, though an important one, of a whole process in which middle-class and upper-class people became involved in various kinds of social work and social care for working-class families. The pre-eminent organization in this respect was the Womens Voluntary Service. Organized by Lady Reading, it was in many ways an extremely upper-class organization. We find one middle-class lady exulting that her work with the W.V.S. had brought her in contact with a titled lady.23 On the other hand, in Coventry, one of the most blitzed areas, the W.V.S. was run by a Labour Councillor, Mrs. Pearl Hyde, the daughter of a publican.

The war involved the bringing into positions of influence and authority of individuals who, though usually not necessarily working-class in origin, thought of themselves as in a real sense spokesmen of the people rather than of the establishment of the 1930s. D.N. Chester, lecturer in public administration at Man­chester University, who did come from a working-class background, became secretary to the important Beveridge Committee. From the records we can see both the immense, and successful, efforts Chester made to push forward with the Beveridge proposals, and we can also see the immense resistance he faced from such estab­lished interests as the Federation of British Industry, the major Insurance Companies, and strongly Conservative politicians, par­ticularly at the War Office.24 In the media, which I return to at the end of the paper, film makers in the left-wing British documentary tradition, who had been outsiders in the 'thirties, were now brought in to help with the production of propaganda films; J.B. Priestley, assumed a special importance as a radio broadcaster.

22 Ibid., 25 September 1939. 23 Doris King to H.E. Strong, 15 August 1944: 'I am quite enjoying my holi­

day. I go some mornings and sort paper for the W.V.S. 1 feel I ought to do something. One feels rather like a scavenger. I am getting to know Wendover's "best" people. I help a Lady Something.' Strong Collection, Imperial War Museum.

24 Beveridge Papers, BEV VIII 31, British Library of Political and Economic Science, and P.R.O.: S.I.C. (32).

214 WORLD WAR II AND SOCIAL CLASS

What the Beveridge Report represents above all is the attempt at deliberate social planning. It would be fair to say that few, if any, of the planning papers which poured out in full flood in 1943 and 1944 aimed directly at the modification of the class structure, but several of them did have implications in this sense. A National Health Service and a Social Insurance scheme open to all members of the community, instead of being, as in the 'thirties, restricted to the working class, would help to ensure that standards of service were roughly equal across the social spectrum, instead of there being, as was widely, and usually accurately, believed, a second-rate service for the working class. Policies directed towards the maintenance of full employment, would inevitably enhance the bargaining position and status of the working class. Comprehensive housing policies would, in theory at least, remove some of the more obvious depriva­tions of culture and material life style traditionally one of the most obvious indicators of working-class status. Taxation was not really a deliberate engine of social policy at all: the introduction of heavier and more progressive taxation was primarily aimed at financing the war; but it did in practice have the effect of compres­sing the range of disposable income, and thus, in a purely economic sense, it had the effect of bringing classes together. Rationing, though in essence a forced response to the German submarine cam­paign, was also in fact designed to recognize working-class partici­pation and maintain morale: in general, standards were levelled out to those of the relatively prosperous artisan of the inter-war years, and, for the first time in its history, the working class as a whole found its basic nutritional needs being met. Nevertheless, what needs to be stressed once again in this whole question of deliberate social planning, is the enormous, and powerful, resistance there continued to be to it throughout the war. It is fashionable now to say of the Beveridge Report that it was an old-fashioned document directed towards the problems of the 1930s. What is less often stressed is the enormous efforts which were made to keep the Com­mittee from coming to any serious conclusions, to stop these con­clusions once arrived at from being published, to prevent the pub­lished report from being openly debated, and to avoid any Govern­ment commitment towards adoption of the Report. Yet thanks to the slow build-up of the forces of radical change, by the end of the war the Conservatives, as much as the Labour Party, were bound to the main lines of the Beveridge and associated proposals. We should note too, that many upper-class figures had little interest in Bever­idgism and such boring matters. Actually, Beveridge himself, as he confessed to his sister, would have preferred to have continued to

IN G REA T BRITAIN 215

work on what he regarded as the central manpower question rather than be shunted off on to questions of social security.25 In the diary of Captain Crookshank, a leading young aristocratic Conservative, there are no references at all to the Beveridge Report at the time of its publication in December 1942, and only three references to the House of Commons debate in February 1943 which was finally forced on a reluctant Churchill. They are for 16, 17 and 18 February, and read as follows: 'First of 3 days debate on Beveridge. John Anderson spoke well. Shakes had a goodbye cocktail party'; 'I went for a while to the House of Commons -Beveridge again'; 'Morrison wound up on Beveridge but Labour voted against us, 335-119 were the figures'.26 Such was the laconic nonchalance of the upper class in the face of what has often been regarded as one of the greatest documents of social reform in twentieth-century history.

For a majority of younger men, the biggest upheaval of the war was service in the army. The army in many respects represented the ultimate parody of the hierarchic assumptions of the British class structure of the 'thirties. Since at the same time the propaganda idea was being steadily developed of this as a people's war on behalf of democracy, for many soldiers the contrast was all too sharp and en­gendered a strong reaction against notions of hierarchy. A particu­lar reaction was most strongly marked among certain young officers of upper-class background, who formed an important body of re­cruits into the Labour Party towards the end of the war. At the same time, the army offered opportunities for education in political and social subjects which most men would not have received in peace time. Strongly against the wishes of both Churchill and the War Office, the army Bureau of Current Affairs, thanks again largely to the influx of outsider figures of the 'thirties of which I have already spoken, became something of a centre for the propagation of democratic ideas.27 Whatever the exact train of causation there can be no doubt that sentiment among the rank and file in the army, who were after all simply civilians in uniform, was turning strongly towards the idea that Britain must be a more egalitarian society after the war. One Methodist Minister reported of his encounters with the soldiers on leave: 'Most of them are thinking of a world where there will be better opportunities for everyone, and more

25 Beveridge to Mrs. R.H. Tawney, 29 July 1941, BEY ITa 78. 26 Crookshank Diaries, Bodleian Library, MSS. Eng. Hist. d 360 voL, II,

p.188. 27 Professor Ken Haley has suggested to me that there is a shortage of hard

evidence for this oft-stated contention.

216 WORLD WAR II AND SOCIAL CLASS

economic security than there has been since the early ages of mankind.'28

If one can identify areas of upheaval (albeit with very strict limits on the extent of change occasioned by these upheavals), one can also identify certain themes of continuity, which were, however, almost always bent in some degree by the pressures of war. The most remarkable instance of survival, especially in view of all the propagandist talk of the war as a great leveller and mixer of classes, is that of the upper class. In the autumn, winter and spring of 1940-41 Sir Stafford Cripps, who had been regarded as so far to the Left in the 1930s that he had been expelled from the Labour Party, was marooned in cold and miserable isolation as Britain's Ambassador to Moscow. In his deepest agony he did not turn to his Socialist cronies, but instead conducted a fascinating personal correspond­ence with his Conservative contemporary and fellow barrister, Sir Walter Monckton, who was then at the Ministry of Information. However, although the correspondence is important evidence of the continued existence of a close-knit upper class, which transcended political frontiers, it is very important to note also that much of it was taken up with discussing the possibilities of, and indeed the necessity for, social change occasioned by the war. In a holograph letter of 25 September 1940, Cripps wrote from Moscow to 'My Dearest Waiter' describing war as a 'pre-natal period?> There is something of the old patronizing manner in his remark that: 'No­one can blame the ordinary man & woman with much too much to do at the moment and with no knowledge or opportunity of ap­preciating the needs of the future.' Cripps desires change, but he is not at all optimistic about it coming about in Britain:

What has temporarily brought Russia and Germany together is because historically they are both an attempt to get away from an effete civilisa­tion which the countries we represent are trying desperately hard to cling to and to revivify. It is indeed a revolutionary war but we are on the side of the past - at the moment. We talk some of us about the old order changing but in our hearts we are clinging to it as the one solid thing we can visualise.

Cripps feared that an Allied victory would reinforce the old will against change thus making it 'more difficult to make any change without a revolution'. 'But why preach to the converted!', he con­cludes the letter, recognizing that his Conservative friend shared his own aspirations.

28 Archway Letter, 13 September 1940, Imperial War Museum. 29 The correspondence is in the Monckton Papers, Bodleian Library, Dept.

M.T.4.

IN GREAT BRITAIN 217

For his part, Sir Walter Monckton, in a self-typed letter from the Ministry of Information during an air-raid, commented rhetori­cally: 'doesn't it also mean showing now that we mean to get rid of the rotten parts of the established system. . . .' But apart from sharing sweeping political judgements with Sir Stafford, Sir Walter could also operate the establishment network to take care of his friends. On 10 August 1940, he wrote to R.A. Butler at the Foreign Office in regard to Lady Cripps's forthcoming visit to Moscow:

I feel a little anxiety about Lady Cripps' [sic] journey to Moscow, par­ticularly as I have in the last few days had a letter from Stafford begging me to take charge of her. I should not feel happy about it unless she were accompanied by some male companion throughout the journey. She, I know, would be content if Squadron Leader Norris who she and I both know were sent on this journey.

Nostalgically, Monckton wrote on 28 December: 'Does your mind ever play like mine with the old days when we battled in the Courts 7' Then in a striking letter of 20 January 1941 he writes a passage which suggests how much support there was among the upper-class establishment for the notion of Cripps as a successor to Churchill:

The fact is that there is no satisfactory successor or alternative to Win­ston. I am pretty clear now that Ernie Bevin will not fill the post. Anthony is too conventional a thinker to make a great leader, and one looks in vain among the rest for the right quality of mind and character .... I have discussed you as a leader with the most diverse people, from Nancy Astor up and down. I find them all attracted by the possibility.

Upper-class manners and life styles were remarkably unaffected by the war, and showed great resilience after the war ended. 'At the fashionable, carefree Cartano-Edman wedding reception I re­marked to Emerald how quickly London had recovered from the war and how quickly normal life had been resumed', 30 'Chips' Channon, Conservative politician and leading socialite noted in his diary. Perhaps it is more instructive to tum again to an upper-class Socialist, Hugh Dalton, Chancellor of the Exchequer in the first years of the post-war Labour Government. In describing a visit to the Cambridge Union he shows all the boisterous elitism of an exuberant ex-Public Schoolboy and University oarsman back in familiar territory:

30 'Chips': The Diaries of Sir Henry Channon (ed. R.R. James, Harmonds­worth, 1967), p. 414.

218 WORLD WAR II AND SOCIAL CLASS

In high spirits .... I went to Cambridge on 3.6.47 to speak at the Presi­dential Debate at the Union in opposition to a motion expressing no confidence in H.M.G. [His Majesty's Government]. There is supposed to be a Tory majority now, but I scored the first Labour victory of the term by 180 to 170 odd, which was very gratifying. Two points which I think turned votes were: (i) my declaration that we were spending, and would continue to spend,

substantial sums on the Universities, and (ii) a new declaration of Government policy which I made on the Olym­

pics. I said that I had been informed by the President of the C.U.B.C. [Cambridge University Boat Club] who had the good sense to belong to myoid college, that in the Olympics the Boat crews would have to row in old British boats with old British oars against foreign crews in new British-built boats with new British-built oars. Thus, I said, we should meet the export drive coming back again along our rivers. This would, indeed, be most unfair discrimination - Imperial Preference in reverse etc. I was, however, very glad to inform them that that very day, before leaving London, I had been in touch with the Admiralty as well as with the Secretary of State for Air who was not only an old King's man and an old President of the Union, but also an old Olympic Captain, and I was able now to say that the Admiralty would give special consideration to providing, as a most exceptional case, suitable boats and oars for the British crews in the Olympics. 'After that dec­laration of Government policy' I cried 'I am confident that no rowing man will vote for this ridiculous resolution.'3!

The Public Schools were the central agency for preserving the ethos of the upper class. In January 1941, there appeared in The Times the following letter from Lt. Colonel R.C. Bingham:

Never was the old school tie and the best that it stands for more justified than it is today. Our new armies are being officered by classes of society who are new to the job. The middle, lower middle, and working classes are now receiving the Kings commission. These classes, unlike the old aristocratic and feudal (almost) classes who led the old Army, had never had their people to consider. They have never had anyone to think of but themselves. This aspect of life is completely new to them, and they have very largely fallen down on it in their capacity as Army officers. 32

Colonel Bingham was relieved of his commission; but what he was saying was not so very different from the belief which seemed to be held throughout British society that the Public Schools, as institu­tions of leadership, were highly desirable. The Fleming Committee, set up by the Government during the war to consider the question of the Public Schools, was not concerned at all with the question of their possible abolition, but simply with ways in which places in

31 Dalton Diaries, 35, entry for 24.v.1947 to 29.v.1947, British Library of Political and Economic Science.

32 The Times, 15 January 1941.

IN GREAT BRITAIN 219

them could be made available to suitable children whose parents could not afford the high fees. Labour Party papers at Transport House, and Labour Party Conferences, are almost totally silent on the question of what was to be done about Public Schools. One working-class Labour MP, together with a number of his colleagues, conducted a personal investigation into five of the most famous of the Public Schools, Christ's Hospital, Eton, Harrow, Charterhouse, and Winchester. 'What did we find 1', he asked:

We found an utter absence of snobbery. After all, the average normal boy is the same all England over. Whether rich or poor, a young lad has to be made, under duress, to wash his neck as well as his face . . . there was a fine simplicity of living . . . most of the boys made their own bed. . . . These public schools breed character ....

. . . In the mass these boys have independence and poise.

The conclusion drawn was entirely in keeping with that of the Flem­ing Report: 'I ask the door to be at least ajar for the boy who has passed the entrance examination to the local grammar school, whose parents are ready for their boy to go to a boarding school, and who is temperamentally suitable.'33 In practice little was done even along the modest lines of making more free places available in the Public Schools. They remained as bastions of upper-class attitudes.

Objectively, the upper sections of the middle class probably suffered most from the war, losing their servants and being hardest hit by high taxation; the rest of the middle class was able to do well out of the welfare and educational policies of the war-time and im­mediate post-war period. But the pressures of war seem to have created, or at least revealed, a greater sense of middle-class identity than was apparent in the 'thirties. Sir James Grigg is certainly a difficult, though by no means utterly untypical, figure to place, as he recognized in his autobiography.

I had myself enjoyed a good secondary and university education, by means of a scholarship supplemented by my father's becoming a capi­talist; I had what used to be called 'got on in the world'; I had lived an interesting and I hope useful life; I had met and worked with all sorts and conditions from, as the phrase went, the highest to the lowest, and I had never once met from any of them patronage or sneers because I was the son of a carpenter. Was I a privileged person? Had my privileges been gained at the expense of the workers from whom I had originated ?34

When, in 1939, he became Permanent Under Secretary at the War Office it might be thought that his position as a member of the upper

33 The Times, 8 July 1943. 34 P.J. Grigg, Prejudice and Judgement [Autobiographical Reminiscences]

(London, 1948), p. 402.

220 WORLD WAR II AND SOCIAL CLASS

class was unchallengeable, yet in a series of fascinating letters to his father he makes it clear that he does not see himself as belonging to the same social class as such people as Lord Lothian and Lord Astor. His sense of being in a middle, not a top (or, of course bottom) position, is apparent in his reference, after the outbreak of war, to 'some of the richer people ... continually seeking new funk holes' and to 'the Trades Unions ... continually taking advantage of their present favourable bargaining position to introduce bigger and bigger doses of socialism'.35

In 1940 Mrs. Diana Brinton-Lee a lady with a small private income, married to a film technician and former First World War major, joined the Womens Volunteer Drivers Corps. She com­mented on her first week:

... the corps was not lacking in wealth and good looks. Glancing round the room, I could see shining sculptured heads, lambent eyes, and elegant figures in Saville Row tunics, which fell open to reveal khaki ties pinned to.the shirt bosom with large regimental diamond brooches.

Then she adds: 'Of course there were some middle-aged, middle­class people like myself.'36 No doubt the whole question of the manner in which women underpin existing class attitudes would be worthy of, as my colleague Dr. Alice Carter has reminded me, a separate study. Mrs. Brinton-Lee concluded her diary of 1940-41 with the following unequivocal statement: 'I believe the strength and civilisation of a nation is shown by the growth of its "middle classes", that is the number of people who are neither poor and oppressed or rich and idle. '37

Relative to other classes, the working class made substantial gains during the Second World War. They benefited because of their strong market position when labour power was an essential in­gredient to success and war; they benefited because the government knew it was vital to secure their full support and co-operation; they benefited because the government felt it necessary to recompense them for their sacrifice of life and limb in battle and of trade union privileges·at home. While the government tried to control the cost of living through food subsidies, wage rates steadily rose. Alto­gether average weekly earnings, standing at 53/3d in October 1938 rose 80 per cent to 96/ld in July 1945 (when the cost of living had

35 P.J. Grigg to his father, 15 July 1940, Grigg Papers. Churchill College Cambridge, PJ66 9/6.

36 The 1940-41 Diary of Mrs. Diana Brinton-Lee, entry for 17-25 August 1940, Imperial War Museum.

37 Ibid., 'Epilogue', May 1941.

IN GREAT BRITAIN 221

risen by only 31 per cent). Sensing their strong position, the workers did not hesitate to strike, even in time of war, to secure better working conditions or more bonuses. Each year from 1941 onwards, the number of days lost owing to strikes rose, and only fell again in 1945 when it was still almost twice that of 1938. Yet while sensing its new position of power, the working class in general continued to show a great reluctance to be involved in political or managerial decision making. Questions of industrial democracy were discussed in the T.U.C.'s 1944 Report on Post-War Reconstruction: it is clear from this report that full worker participation in management was not envisaged. Just over a year after the war ended, Sir Stafford Cripps, now back in the Labour Party and President of the Board of Trade, made a speech which, although again revealing of his own somewhat patronizing manner, also contained some essential truths. According to The Times' report:

Sir Stafford Cripps, speaking at Bristol last night, expressed the opinion that British industry controlled by the workers is at present an impossi­bility.

Replying to a questioner, he said: 'From my experience there is not as yet a very large body of workers in Britain capable of taking over large enterprises. I have on many occasions tried to get representatives of the workers on all sorts of bodies and working parties. It has always been extremely difficult to get enough people who are qualified to do that sort of job, and, until there has been more experience by workers of the mana­gerial side of industry, I think it would be almost impossible to have worker-control in industry in Britain, even on the whole if it were de­sirable. '38

Now, in the last substantial section of this paper, I turn to 'official' attitudes towards class, those apparently held by govern­ment, and the attitudes towards class projected by the mass media, whose most important and interesting branches for the period under review, were film and sound radio. Good taste, and a hearty fear of any formulation that might sound like Marxism, or even sociology, meant that both government and mass media in the 1930s spoke overtly of class as little as possible. The five 'social classes' of the British census, first introduced in 1911, were defined quite naturally as class I (professional etc. occupations), class II (intermediate occupations); class III (skilled occupations), class IV (partly skilled occupations), and class V (unskilled occupations). Class I is in fact predominantly middle class, while class II contains

38 The Times, 28 October 1946, quoted in: Industrial Democracy in Great Britain III Industrial Democracy and Nationalization (ed. K. Coates and A.J. Topham, Nottingham, 1975), 59-60.

222 WORLD WAR II AND SOCIAL CLASS

a number of people who by the commonsense standards that the people of the time themselves used, were undoubtedly upper class. This classification does not change with the war, and indeed it is still with us today: but in general, after the war there is a much greater inclination to talk perceptibly and sensibly about the exist­ence of classes. For all the official reticence in the 'thirties on the subject of the distinction between an upper class and a middle class, it does not take any very intensive study of the social legislation of the 1930s (though as far as I am aware no one has as yet undertaken such a study) to discover that in fact Britain, almost like a country of the ancien regime, had a kind of quasi-legal definition of the working class. This arose from the simple fact that almost all social legislation was explicitly or implicitly concerned only with the prob­lems of the working class. The most important topics in this respect were: housing, workmen's compensation, unemployment insur­ance, health insurance and medical provision, holidays with pay legislation, and general questions of household budgets, living standards and so on. Here I shall concentrate on housing and on social insurance.

The housing legislation of the late Victorian period, which per­mitted the building of subsidized housing supported by the rates, but not by central taxation, was explicitly concerned with the working classes and this principle was maintained by the post-1918 housing legislation which now provided central government sub­vention. In one of the background papers to the 1918 (Addison) Act, the Advisory Housing Panel on the Emergency Problem, among other conditions, laid down that:

The houses built must be for the occupation of the working classes, the definition of which term as given in the Housing Act, needs some ex­tension.

The right view appears to be that adopted in the Workmen's Compen­sation and National Health Insurance Act, namely that all persons should be included with incomes from all sources or below the limit of £160 per annum. In view of the great rise in prices the limit might possibly be raised to £200.39

In fact, no strict financial limit was written into the legislation; the voluminous, and often sadly amusing evidence, suggests that as far as the inter-war years are concerned the legislative view is clearly (a) that the working class definitely exists and (b) since the working class are instantly recognizable there is no need to define it further.

39 Ministry of Reconstruction, Housing in England and Wales: Memorandum by the Advisory Housing Panel on the Emergency Problem, Cmd. 9687, 1918.

IN GREAT BRITAIN 223

The following exchange in the House of Commons in April 1930 contains the essence of the matter:

MISS RATHBONE asked the MINISTER OF HEALTH what interpretation is placed by the Ministry upon the term working classes in administering the Housing Acts of 1890, 1909, 1923, 1923 (2), 1924, 1925 and the Bill now before the House? MR. GREENWOOD: The term 'working classes' are generally well under­

stood, and I am not aware of any practical difficulty in its interpreta­tion. The term has not been defined for the general purposes of any of the Acts mentioned in the question, and I do not propose to attempt the definition which Parliament and previous Ministers of Health have refrained from using.

MISS RATHBONE: Can the Rt. Hon. Gentleman tell us how he expects local authorities to know what classes of person should be admitted to the houses subsidised by the State if the Ministry have no accepted definition, and whether he is aware that large numbers of persons are taking advantage of subsidised houses and asking leave to build a motor garage?

MR. GREENWOOD: The local authorities have never found any practical difficulties in defining it for themselves.

LT. COMM. KENWORTHY: Is there any reason why a working man should not have a motor car and a motor garage ?40

But one particular difficulty did arise from the intention of the Con­solidating Act of 1925 to safeguard working-class occupiers in slum clearance areas or provide them with new homes. Now that it was a matter of providing legal defence for occupiers who might other­wise lose their homes, a much sharper definition was required. Thus there came into being the fifth Schedule to the 1925 Act, repeated as the eleventh Schedule to the 1936 Housing Act; the definition, it must be stressed, referred in law only to questions of slum clearance and rehousing:

For the purposes of this schedule, a house shall be considered a working man's dwelling if wholly or partially occupied by a person belonging to the working classes, and for the purpose of determining whether a house is a working man's dwelling or not, and also for determining the number of persons belonging to the working classes by whom any houses are occupied, any occupation on or after the fifteenth day of December next before the passing of the enabling act ... shall be taken into considera­tion.

The expression 'working class' includes mechanics, artisans, labourers, and others working for wages, hawkers, costermongers, persons not working for wages, but working at some trade or handicraft without em­ploying others, except members of their own family, and persons other than domestic servants whose income in any case does not exceed an average of £3 per week, and the families of such persons may be residing with them.

40 House of Commons Debates, vol. CCXXXVII, col. 3097, 17 April 1930.

224 WORLD WAR II AND SOCIAL CLASS

It may be noted that the phrases 'working class' and 'working classes' are used interchangeably: 'working classes' is in fact a synonym for the 'working class' of popular usage of which Ihave been speaking throughout this paper.

Legislation relating to unemployment - the greatest social issue of the inter-war years - also gave rise to the same kind of quasi­legal definition of the working class or classes. The first schedule of the Unemployment Insurance Act of 1935 gave a list of the em­ployees who would be exempted from the provisions of the act:

Employment otherwise than by way of manual labour and at a rate of remuneration exceeding in value £250 per year, or, in cases where such employment involved part time service only, and the rate of remunera­tion which, in the opinion of the Minister, is equivalent to a rate of re­muneration exceeding £250 a year for whole time service.

Occasionally the courts were asked to rule on the question of what constituted manual labour. On one occasion the High Court ruled that 'manual labour' and manual 'work' meant the same thing! On another occasion it reversed a previous Ministry of Labour de­cision by declaring that acrobats and professional footballers were not manual labourers but 'public performers'. Probably the most revealing document on the state of law and opinion in the 'thirties is the 1936 report of the Unemployment Insurance Statutary Com­mittee on Remuneration Limits for Insurance of Non-manual Workers, sitting under the chairmanship of Sir William Beveridge. In an economic situation in which many middle-class occupations were affiicted by unemployment, most of the evidence from em­ployees was in favour of raising the income limit, and employees' associations in favour included journalists, architects, correctors of the press and others connected with the printing trades, textile managers, coke-oven managers, colliery under-managers, navi­gating officers, marine engineers, chemists, shop assistants, actors, musicians, theatrical employees, and life-assurance workers. The banking and insurance associations were divided, while the char­tered accountants and solicitors' clerks, rock solid in their con­sciousness of middle-class respectability, were firmly against. The majority of the committee recognized that in practice there were difficulties in the 'manual-non-manual' distinction, and that, in any case, many non-manual occupations were subject to the threat of unemployment. And this time the income limit was £250 a year. Most of the witnesses in favour of increasing the limit had argued for £500 a year, whereas a Royal Commission in 1932 had suggested £350. So with perhaps greater respect for the principle of halving

IN GREAT BRITAIN 225

the difference than for sociological accuracy in defining working­class occupations, the committee recommended a limit of £400. However, more significant in getting at the essence of 'thirties atti­tudes, is the minority report of two (out of a total committee of 7) who argued for an income limit of £300 on the grounds that the 1920 Act had clearly intended only to include 'that body of non­manual workers which corresponded in the nature of income with the general body of manual workers'.41

All of this mumbo-jumbo disappeared in the comprehensive legis­lation of the war and post-war era. Because of certain legal techni­calities the Housing Act of 1946 was still officially described as an act for the housing of the working classes, but the Ministry of Health under Aneurin Bevan, made it clear that by working classes was to be understood everyone in the community engaged in any kind of occupation or activity. The 1949 Housing Act explicitly dropped any reference to the working classes. Similarly, with the institution of the universal social security system there was no longer any need to try to single out a legal working class for whom social insurance was uniquely intended.

Working-class figures appear hardly at all on films or radio in the 1930s, and when they did it was in idiotic stereotype. In March 1934, the BBC, with some daring, did decide to include one working­class speaker in a series of talks on 'National Character'. Pre­recording was not then technologically feasible, so instead producers had to insist on very carefully prepared and edited scripts. When William Ferrie came to the microphone he complained at once that he had not been allowed to deliver the script that he himself had written. His protest had scarcely begun when he was cut off. Subse­quently Ferrie made a complaint, which is much more germane to my point about class stereotypes, that the producer had also tried to insist that he should drop his aitches in conformity with an established prejudice about what working-class people ought to sound like.42 Early in the Second World War we find the beginnings of a willingness both to put genuine working-class voices on the air and to allow free discussion of working-class issues and grievances.43 For a short time in 1941, Wilfrid Pickles with his working-class

41 Ministry of Labour, Report of Unemployment Insurance Statutory Com­mittee on Remuneration Limits for Insurance of Non-Manual Workers, non­parI., 1936 (B.S. 23/40, British Library).

42 The Times, the News Chronic/e, the Daily Herald, 6 March 1934; National Union of Vehicle Builders, The Banned Broadcast of William Ferrie. With an Introduction by the Author (1934).

43 BBC Written Archives Caversham: Reconstruction-Political ('Working Man' Talks) 1941-3, Ace. No. 1644.

226 WORLD WAR II AND SOCIAL CLASS

Yorkshire accent, was actually allowed to read the news. However, it would be broadly true to say that it took the second set of social changes in the 1960s to liberate the BBC fully from the standard class images.

Propagandist documentaries of the Second World War tended to publicize the idea of a people's war and a better future for everyone once the war was over. Many feature films faithfully delineated the older class structure. However, with John Baxter's film The Ship­builders of 1943, we can see a clear breakthrough. It is instructive to compare this film with the 1935 novel of the same name by the Glasgow journalist George Blake, on which it is based. In its des­cription of the relationship between the Clydeside shipworker Danny Shields, and his boss Leslie Pagan, the novel is redolent of the older patronizing-deferential attitudes (the officer-batman rela­tionship of World War I was a recurrent stereotype in this type of presentation) :

A toff and a gentleman, thought Danny Shields as he walked eastward along the Dumbarton road that night of the Estramadura's launching; a toff and a gentleman.

His admiration of Leslie Pagan was flawless. To this decent working man's sense of respect for a good and efficient master there was added his memory of courage in battle, or steadfastness and kindness in the long trial of trench and camp. He never ceased to pray in his private mind and in the presence of whomsoever cared to listen the uniqueness of the younger man he adored and trusted with a faith almost religious. A toff and a gentleman !44

There is none of this in the film, which instead is an incredibly authentic portrait of the Glasgow working-class milieu, with Danny Shields emerging as a thoroughly rounded and independent­minded character.

Again one has to be careful. The most significant films of the post-war period, such as The Guinea Pig (1948), The Chance of a Lifetime (1950), and His Excellency (1951) all lay as much emphasis on the limitations of change as upon social change itself. The epony­mous guinea pig is a poor kid who, in anticipation of the imple­mentation of the Fleming Report, is taken into a Public School; after initial rebellion he is steadily socialized into upper-class atti­tudes. In The Chance of a Lifetime, the workers take over the run­ning of the factory, then find that they are not competent to do so, and gladly hand over once more to their boss. His Excellency is about an ex-docker sent out by the Labour government to govern a

44 G. Blake, The Shipbuilders (London, 1935), p. 29.

IN GREAT BRITAIN 227

colonial dependency, where he comes into conflict with the per­manent Lt. Governor who is a very upper-class figure. It is the latter who finally admits to his Excellency the Governor, in a rather flabby phrase which sums up quite well the social ethos of post-war Britain, 'the answer lies somewhere between us'.

On the whole, then, the war had remarkably little influence on the position of the upper class, though it did perhaps help to modify the political prejudices of some of its members. The middle class, though in its lower echelons often gaining from the social welfare legislation at the end of the war and post-war period, felt itself under pressure, abandoning many of the older easy assumptions of superiority, and beginning to see the need to defend itself as a class. For the working class, the relative changes were the greatest. I would say that the working class in 1945 assumed a position in British society analogous to that assumed by the middle class after the passing of the Great Reform Act of 1832. Just as the middle class then, having asserted its importance and the need to pay heed to its wishes, was thereafter prepared to go on being governed by aristocratic governments, so the working class, whose claims could henceforth never be ignored by governments, was on the whole content to leave both management and high politics to the classes which had monopolized them in pre-war years. Shortly before the General Election of 1945, Bevin, who understood the British working class better than any other front-rank politician wrote to Attlee: 'We have faced many great problems together and have overcome them.' He then added an aspiration which, on the whole, had come true: 'One thing it should have done is to remove the inferiority complex amongst our people. '45

4S Bevin to AttIee, 31 May 1945, BEVN 3/1.

11. The Second Wodd War and Dutch Society: Continuity and Change

I.C.H. BLOM

IN Dutch colloquial usage, the expressions 'before the war' and 'after the war' imply that the Second World War was a turning point in the recent history of the Netherlands. 'Before the war' conventionally stands for solidity, quality and decency. and 'after the war' for instability, uncertainty and unrest. But sometimes 'before the war' calls to mind unemployment, social misery and archaic relations. and 'after the war' material prosperity and greater compassion. In all cases this colloquialism betrays a consciousness of a great and fundamental difference in which the war itself is the breach. To some it represents the nadir in history: two authors entided their popular book about the occupation De Lange Nacht (The Long Night).1 On the other hand, this same period has been considered as one during which the purest and noblest notions cap­tivated the imagination of the Dutch. This was not only expressed through the resistance and the general state of mind during the war, but also in the ideas which were developed concerning post-war society. Pure and high ideals came to the fore. But when it came to realizing these ideals after the defeat of Germany, it seemed that. yet again, less lofty principles prevailed. This ambivalence is re­flected in the tide of another publication written for a wide public Visioen en Werkelijkheid (Vision and Reality).2 The Second World War is here considered as the most important breach in the modem history of the Netherlands.

Yet in recent publications3 it has been suggested. more than once.

• The author wishes to acknowledge his debt to Miss I. van Dijk and Miss A. Lavelle for translating his paper.

1 M. Smedts and C. Troost, De Lange Nacht (Amsterdam, 1965). 1 Visioen en Werkelijkheid. De i/lega/e pers over de toekomst der samen/eving

(ed. B. Bakker, D.H. Couvee and J. Kassies, The Hague, 1963). 3 E.g. I. SchOffer, 'Het trauma van de nederlandse nederlaag', Tijdschrift voor

geschiedenis, LXXXIV (1971), 536-51; R. Roegholt, 'De onvoltooide demo­cratie', in: J. and A. Romein, De Lage Landen bij de zee. Eengeschiedenis van

THE SECOND WORLD WAR AND DUTCH SOCIETY: 229

that the degree of continuity was at least as great, if not greater. Schoffer, for example, posits that 'many of the pre-1940 threads could be taken up after 1945'.4 If there is a watershed in the most recent history of the Netherlands, then this may be located in the 'sixties, rather than in the period of occupation.

In this analysis of the influence the Second World War exerted on Dutch society, I shall direct my attention to two aspects. After examining the degree to which the war, and the symptoms directly related to it, dominated life in the Netherlands during the period 1940-45, we come to the question of continuity and change already mentioned. Although historical studies on the Second World War are legion, unfortunately for our purposes scholars have not addressed themselves to these particular points. Because definite and precise information is often wanting my conclusions will be neces­sarily tentative. On many aspects we have to make do with impres­sions culled from the available literature. A constraint of a different order is the Jack of space which has sometimes compelled us to be excessively brief.

In order to assess the impact of the Second World War on Dutch society and political life, I have been especially influenced by the analysis of Marwick,s who distinguishes four modes in which twentieth-century society has been influenced by war. War in his view is, in the first place, 'destructive and disruptive', brings loss of life and health and inflicts material damage of all kinds. Secondly, it is a 'test of a country's social and political institutions', which may weather the storm, collapse or emerge to function more efficiently

het nederlandse volk (Amsterdam, 19735), ch. xxx; H.J.A. Hofland, H. Keller and H. Verhagen, Vastberaden, maar soepe/ en met mate. Herinneringen aan Neder­land 1938-1948 (Amsterdam, 1976); H.J.A. Hofland, Tege/s lichten of ware verhalen over de autoriteiten in het land van de voldongen feiten (Amsterdam, 1972). Publications of political scientists usually do not single out the war but consider the history of the Netherlands from ± 1920 to ± 1960 as one period, e.g. A. Lijphart, The Politics of Accommodation: Pluralism and Democracy in the Netherlands (Berkeley, 19752); H. Daalder, 'The Netherlands: opposition in a segmented society', in: Political Oppositions in Western Democracies (ed. R.A. Dahl, New Haven and London, 1966).

4 SchOffer, ibid., 546. 5 A. Marwick, The Deluge: British Society and the First World War (London,

1965); A. Marwick, Britain in the Century of Total War: War, Peace and Social Change (London, 1968); A. Marwick, 'The Impact of the First World War on British History', Journal of Contemporary History, III (1968), 51-63. And es­pecially A. Marwick, War and Social Change in the Twentieth Century. A Com­parative Study of Britain, France, Germany, Russia and the United States (London, 1974).

230 THE SECOND WORLD WAR AND DUTCH SOCIETY:

than before. Thirdly, war can lead, in conjunction with the second mode, to greater participation: this may include military participa­tion, but also the emancipation of women, political participation of social groups, the position of the working classes and so on. Finally war is a 'colossal emotional and psychological experience', which manifests itself in various ways. Each of these four modes consists of a number of components, which naturally bring us back to specific aspects of society: economic relations, political events, social development, etc. Two observations can be made concerning the applicability of Marwick's approach to the Netherlands. Of course his analysis rests mainly on the experience of society in Britain during the First World War, that is the experience of an actively belligerent country. The Dutch situation is entirely differ­ent because the Netherlands was an occupied territory during the Second World War. Strictly speaking, the war in 1940 lasted for only five days, so that the Dutch role as a belligerent was not significant. This difference could be of importance for the impact of the war.

In historical studies on the Netherlands in wartime, collaboration and resistance appear to be the most important problems.6 Accord­ing to many authors, this choice outweighed all other considerations in the mind of the population. In his preface to Warmbrunn's study, L. de Jong, without doubt the most important contemporary author, asserts: 'The real life of peoples of occupied Europe lay between the two extremes of collaboration and resistance' and 'Un­willing adjustment was the rule - intentional resistance the excep­tion.'7 But observations of this sort can rarely be verified from documentary evidence. There are, in fact, no trustworthy data for determining the state of mind of the population in an occupied territory. The diaries at our disposa18 usually claim our attention and they certainly give information concerning their authors them­selves, but they cannot give us anything more than a vague and uncertain indication of the prevailing climate of opinion. It was indeed exceptional for someone to keep a diary. Even the press, both the censored as well as the underground, should be treated with the utmost reserve.

6 The most important studies are published in the series of the Rijksinstituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie (State Institute of War Documentation). The cul­minating work of that Institute is L. de Jong. De geschiedenis van het konink­rijk der Nederlanden in de tweede wereldoorlog (7 vol., The Hague, 1969-76, work in progress). In volume VII which appeared after the completion of this paper can be found additional information relating to some of the themes developed below.

, W. Warmbrunn, The Dutch under German Occupation 1940-1945 (Stanford, London, 1963), pv.

8 A selection of diaries in: Dagboekfragmenten 1940-1945 (The Hague. 1954).

CONTINUITY AND CHANGE 231

Though all observations on public opinion and the mood of the population are inevitably impressionistic, I would venture to sug­gest that the choice between collaboration and resistance had a special significance for Dutchmen holding high office. Especially at the beginning of the occupation, little direct German influence was experienced by most people, but senior civil servants were con­fronted with the decision: cooperation or withdrawal.!) Company directors had to decide whether or not to accept orders from the Germans, but in most cases their decisions only became crucial much later in the war. My impression is, however, that the majority of the population, rather than seeking a place on the scale between collaboration and resistance, were relieved that this was unneces­sary. After the excitement of the first days of war and the first few months of tense waiting, it seemed, to the relief of most people, as if the normal routine went on as before. In fact, for part of the population, the miserable conditions of the 'thirties began to im­prove somewhat, because the number of unemployed fell continu­ally throughout the war (even though this was partly caused by the deportation of labour abroad). It was not until the war began to affect daily life more intensely, and escape from its consequences became more difficult, that the war began to influence the general state of mind more deeply. For most people it was not the choice between collaboration and resistance that first came to mind, rather a concern to stay out of harm's way as far as possible. Rather than face this difficult choice most Dutchmen wanted nothing more than an end to the war. In an analysis simply concerned with the choice between collaboration and resistance, it might be quite proper to interpret the non-committal attitude as somewhere midway between these two poles, but it is artificial and scarcely helpful when it comes to reconstructing the mood and conduct of the occupied population. lO

To my mind, the most satisfying picture of the situation during the occupation is given by Warmbrunn in his The Dutch under German Occupation. He distinguishes two phases: 'The long wait '40-'44' and 'The final winter '44-'45.' In the latter period there was 'great hardship and tragedy' for the whole population, which was most acute in the cities in the west of the country. During that winter life was totally dominated by the war and its consequences.

9 See the diary of a burgomaster: J.J.G. Boot, Burgemeester in bezettings­tijd (Apeldoorn, s.a.).

10 See also the recent suggestion that the Dutch people would have adopted the Nazi ideology had the Germans won the war: De SS en Nederland. Docu­lUenten uit de SS-archieven 1935-1945 (ed. N.K.C.A. In 't Veld, The Hague, 1976), I, 423.

232 THE SECOND WORLD WAR AND DUTCH SOCIETY:

Before that it had been different. Warmbrunn even speaks of a 'honeymoon', gradually giving way to a state of conflict, that in­tensified, especially after the spring of 1943. Except for rationing and curfew the 'normal daily routines' continued undisturbed for most people, during the first stages of the occupation. Of course a war was on, and the German occupier a reality, of which the Dutch people were aware, but in most cases this induced what I would call a 'conservative reflex': in other words people withdrew from public view into small trusted circles. Only later, when the restrictive measures of the Germans and other unpleasant consequences of the war became so intrusive that they could no longer be kept from the fireside, did survival force people to take bolder initiatives, travel­ling in search of food and organizing a system of barter for essential commodities.l1 The circumstances of the regions differed, but generally speaking the inhabitants of the towns and the western Netherlands as a whole suffered most: in the south of the country a different situation obtained.

Two groups in the population were affected almost immediate1y by the occupation. The Jews were persecuted by the Germans from the very beginning,12 but with the exception of the strike in February 1941, large-scale opposition to this policy was lacking: people did not want to become involved. The unemployed were another group to feel the direct effects of the occupation: as part of the Arbeits­einsatz (contribution to the German war effort, a euphemism for forced labour) pressure was put on them to work in Germany,13 It was mainly the Arbeitseinsatz which gradually brought more and more people into contact with the occupier and, therefore also, with the war. This and the ever increasing cost of living led to more resistance and, more importantly, to a favourable climate for resistance. In most cases people did not choose to join the resistance, they tended to 'find' themselves in it.

The impact of the Arbeitseinsatz, and therefore of the war and its consequences on the Dutch population, can be gauged from the following figures. In the first six months of the occupation around 100,000 men had been sent to work in Germany and this number gradually rose until by July 1944 it reached 530,000. Included in this figure are the 100,000 so-called 'border workers'. In the course of

11 Warmbrunn, The Dutch, pp. 11-17 and 99-120; the quotations have been taken from pp. 11,14 and 100.

12 J. Presser, De ondergang. De vervolging en verdelging van het nederlandse jodendom 1940-1945 (The Hague, 1965).

13 B.A. Sijes, De arbeidsinzet. De gedwongen arbeid van Nederlanders in Duits­land 1940-1945 (The Hague, 1966).

CONTINUITY AND CHANGE 233

time about 140,000 returned. These figures, however, do not show the growing threat to much larger sections of the population. Rationing, which had been introduced in 1939 for sugar and some vegetables in order to test the system, affected nearly all foodstuffs very early in the war.14 It was largely successful15 until the winter of 1944-5 when, especially in the cities in the west, food supplies broke down badly, so that by the last week of the war there was only sufficient food to provide one pound of both potatoes and bread for each inhabitant.16

In the first quarter of 1945 the average consumer was rationed to a daily calorific intake which in the worst affected parts could be as low as 619, after having declined gradually from 1,800 at the be­ginning of 1941 to 1,700 at the end of 1943. Midway through 1944 the figure fell abruptly from 1,500 to 1,000 at the end of the year.!' The cost of living index, which until the middle of 1944 was calcu­lated on the basis of 1938-39 = 100, shows a gradual rise to around 150, the wage index to 110-35.18 It was not until the winter ofl944-5 that the estimated black market prices, obviously always higher than the official prices, shot up, sometimes even hundredfold. The death­rate followed the same pattern, rising gradually at first but much more sharply at the end of the war.19

Although the impact of the war was at first comparatively slight, society was nonetheless influenced in various ways from the very beginning and people were aware of the war and followed its development. A recent publication of the Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek (Central Statistics Department), presents, in diagramatic forms, statistical information for various fields since 1900.20 In most diagrams the war years are readily recognizable either because these years appear on the graphs with peaks and slumps, especially in the last year of the war, or by the lack of data for this period, which is another pointer to the exceptional circumstances. Even without a training in statistics, it is evident that the period 1940-45

14 Bericht van de Tweede Wereldoorlog (6 vol., Amsterdam, 1970-1), V, 2339. 15 Joh. de Vries, De nederlandse economie tijdens de 20ste eeuw. Een verken­

ning van het meest kenmerkende (Antwerp and Utrecht, 1973), p. 157; P.W. Klein, 'Germaanse supermarkt', Bericht van de Tweede Wereldoorlog, V, 2352.

16 S.L. Louwes, 'De voedselvoorziening', Onderdrukking en verzet. Nederland in oorlogstijd (ed. J.J. van Bolhuis, C.D.J. Brandt, H.M. van Randwijk and B.C. Slotemaker, 4 vol., Amsterdam, s.a.), II, 623.

17 Louwes, ibid., II, 621; Bericht van de Tweede Wereldoorlog, V, 2338. 18 Centraal bureau voor de Statistiek (C.B.S.), Economische en sociale

kroniek der oorlogsjaren 1940-1945 (Utrecht, 1947), pp. 264-5. 19 C.B.S., 75 jaar statistiek van Nederland (The Hague, 1975), tables 13, 18;

p.13. 20 C.B.S., ibid., passim.

234 THE SECOND WORLD WAR AND DUTCH SOCIETY:

was exceptional, and careful analysis of the data can furnish us with a more sensitive impression. Some scholars have, for example, been able to make correlations between the fluctuations in marriage and birth and the course of the war, and in this way show how the war affected the life of Dutchmen, even though they were not always conscious.

Smulders sees a connection between the high marriage rate of 1939 and the general mobilization, and he explains the decline in 1940 and 1941, partly as compensation for the premature mobiliza­tion-marriages, and partly as a result of the uncertainty caused by the war.21 In 1942, however, the figure rose again as a result of delayed marriages. The threat of the Arbeitseinsatz could also have contributed to the rise. In 1943-4 the course of the war and worsen­ing circumstances led to another decline. Immediately after the war was ended, the figure rose markedly.22 Van den Brink studied the oorrelation between the monthly birth-rate and the corresponding conception figures. He was able to establish an often striking con­nexion between the decline in conception and, for example, the outbreak of war (both in September 1939 and May 1940), intensi­fied German action (e.g. at the beginning of 1941), German and Japanese military successes and the disappointment of Dolle Dinsdag (Tuesday, 5 September 1944) when it seemed, for a moment, that liberation was imminent. In the same way he relates peaks in the birth-rate to the Allied successes (e.g. D-day and the German defeat).23

When the post-war situation is compared with the pre-war years certain points stand out. From a demographic standpoint the death of 250,000 people as a direct result of the war,24 and the population explosion of the immediate post-war years, are especially striking.2s Yet their effect on the long-term demographic development of the

21 T. van den Brink, Eerste resultaten van een statistische analyse van de loop der geboortecijfers in Nederland (Amsterdam, 1949); C.B.S., Huwelijksvrucht­baarheid, een cohortanalyse (ed. R.H.M. Smulders, The Hague, 1973). Not only the prospect of war was important. Consideration must also be given to such long-term factors as age and sex, and in the short term to the disruption of supplies and family life. Nevertheless the influence of war was remarkable.

22 C.B.S., 75 jaar statistiek, table 13, 14; Bericht van de Tweede Wereldoorlog, V, 2338.

23 Van den Brink, Eerste resultaten, pp. 33-4. 24 Estimate of the Rijksinstituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie: 240,000 (including

Indonesia). According to the C.B.S. these were ± 230,000 (excluding Indonesia), C.B.S., Economische en sociale kroniek, p. 231. The number of dead has been variously estimated anywhere between 210,000 and 280,000 (the latter figure is a projection derived from a calculation of the total population if the death rate had been 'normal').

25 C.B.S., 75 jaar slalisliek, table 13; p. 9.

CONTINUITY AND CHANGE 235

Netherlands is slight, hardly more than a wrinkle in the constantly rising total population rate.26 It is true that in the long run the demo­graphic impact of the war is discernible in the population groups by sex and age (the so-called population-pyramids), but the deviation is relatively small.27 Also, the religious composition of the popula­tion did not change much, with, of course, the notable exception of the Jews, but even before the war they only formed rather less than 2 per cent of the total population.28 Again the tendency for people to enter professions with greater social standing, which had been under way at least since the end of the First World War, does not appear to have been greatly influenced by the Second World War.29 Finally the division of the working population over the different sectors shows that the gradual shift from agrarian to industrial and white collar sectors, which had been evident since 1900, continued with no marked interruption during the occupation.3O

This brings us to the economy, where the influence of war can be clearly demonstrated, most obviously in material damage, which has been assessed at approximately twenty-five or twenty-six thousand million guilders at pre-war prices.31 In the first years after the war the whole economy was directed towards the 'reconstruction and recovery'. This was the aim behind the rehabilitation of the mone­tary system, rationing, wage and price control, and the Marshall Plan: there was also a far greater degree of government intervention in order to combat the imminent and existing chaos. Gradually more normal conditions returned. By 1949-50 the level of prosperity was at least on a par with the pre-war standard. Government inter­vention lessened as a result, although it continued to be more intense and deliberate than it had been before the war.

Perhaps the real importance of the war lies less in the material destruction it caused than the opportunity it gave to the govern­ment for taking social and economic initiatives. Certain arguments can be advanced in support of this thesis: the Welfare State of the 'fifties was a long way from the depression of the 'thirties. Still I would like to draw your attention to certain considerations which

26 C.B.S., ibid., table 9; p. 9. 27 C.B.S., J3e Algemene Volkstelling 31 mei 1960 IV Geslacht, leeftijd en

burgerlijke staat (Hilversum, 1965), p. 10. 28 C.B.S., 75 jaar statistiek, table 37. 291.1.M. van Tulder, De beroepsmobiliteit in Nederland van 1919 tot 1954.

Een sociaal-statistische studie (Leiden, 1962), p. 90. 30 De Vries, Nederlandse economie, p. 14. 31 Estimate based on claims for damage according to the Rijksinstituut voor

Oorlogsdocumentatie; De Vries, Nederlandse economie, p. 88. P.W. Klein, 'Oorlog en armoede', Bericht van de Tweede Wereldoorlog (Amsterdam, 1971), VI, 2738 calls quantification in the matter guesswork.

236 THE SECOND WORLD WAR AND DUTCH SOCIETY:

call in question the decisive impact of the war on the Dutch econ­omy. First of all, the change in economic policy should not be over­estimated. The aim remained, as before, the creation of the opti­mum conditions for free enterprise, and the restoration of a free market and a free choice of production and consumption.32 True the government shouldered the responsibility for its operation; though intervention had occurred on an increasingly large scale before the war, the government after the war intended to do so on a long-term basis. Moreover, the change needs to be seen in the per­spective of the economic crisis in the 'thirties. It was the failure to resolve the economic problem rather than the war which prepared the Netherlands for government intervention on a grand scale, though it is also true that the shock effect of the war certainly eased the transition from unintentional to deliberate government inter­vention, on the basis of a widely accepted Keynesian concept. 33 But this development was indeed already evident in the cabinet crisis of 1939, as a result of the changing social and political position of the Roman Catholic Party. The choice of the Social Democrats as coalition partners in the government implied the acceptance of an interventionist economy before World War II.

Thirdly, the macro-economic analysis also points to the import­ance of continuity. Joh. de Vries in his examination of the Dutch economy during the twentieth century considers growth the essential underlying economic trend despite the delays and stagnation caused by the two World Wars and the depression.34 Important symptoms of this were the growing dependence on the world economy, increasing industrialization, diminishing regional differ­ences and the intensification of the government's role. While the period after the Second World War is regarded as a new phase, it fits nonetheless into a pattern of development, whose origins are to be found in the industrial revolution. One can therefore argue that, after the stagnation of the 'thirties, this phase sees a resumption of the main line rather than a new start.

The active support the government gave to industrialization, since the late 1940s, also fits into the same mould. It was not so much the war but the spectre of unemployment, which played an important role in the shaping of this policy, although the alarming increase in population and the severing of links with Indonesia also

3l De Vries, ibid., 174. See also G. Brouwers, 'Tien jaar economische politiek' in: Tienjaar economisch [even in Nederland. Herstelbank 1945-1955 (The Hague, 1955), pp. 76-106.

33 De Vries, Nederlandse economie, pp. 170-1. 34 De Vries, ibid., passim.

CONTINUITY AND CHANGE 237

fostered conditions for an active policy of State involvement in the economy. The direct influence of the war was limited, although the shock of the war probably made people more willing to accept an interventionist economy.

The housing shortage is often cited as proof of the long-term effects of the war, and with some plausibility: the ]oss of at least 100,000 dwellings, combined with a backlog in new house construc­tion was not easily made good. But the long-standing shortage of houses cannot be explained by the war. When the housing needs were calculated insufficient weight was attached to the steep rise in the growth of the population and the demand for more spacious accommodation, which people came to expect. Neither of these developments can be properly ascribed to the war.35

There was then no question of the war making a clear break in the underlying economic structure, though even the pre-1940 economy was not static, despite the stagnation caused by the depression. The war had shaken society to the core and therefore the early post-war years of 'reconstruction and recovery' were still deeply influenced by the war. This mental climate prepared people to adapt to far­reaching changes in economic policy. These were not, however, fundamental changes within the capitalist system of production, nor was there any question of undermining the system itself. Indeed capitalism became more firmly entrenched because it now received more active and conscious support from the State.36

In the field of industrial relations the Stichting van de Arbeid (Foundation of Labour), formed in secret during the occupation, asserted itself immediately after the war. Closer cooperation be­tween the pre-war employer and employee organizations in the interests of national prosperity was the aim. The 'conflict situation', allegedly characteristic of labour relations before the war, was to be replaced by the 'harmony-model', which owed something to the greater national solidarity and unity forged during the war. Class struggle would be replaced by class peace, social harmony and pros­perity. The government endorsed this by passing the Buitengewoon Besluit Arbeidsverhoudingen (Extraordinary Decree on Labour

3S W. Roest, Bouw en economisc/ze groei (Deventer, 1973), especially pp. 89-91; Klein, 'Oorlog en armoede', p. 2738 states that ± 165,000 houses were rendered uninhabitable and that there was a backlog of 300,000 houses directly after the war. According to the Rijksinstituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie 100,000 were totally destroyed and 50,000 seriously damaged. C.B.S., 75 jaar statistiek, pp. 34,35.

36 De Vries, Nederlandse economie, p. 174 refers to a mixed economy probably implying a fundamental change. Although this might seem to be simply a question of terminology it is worth noting that already in the 19308 the State was intervening in the economy.

238 THE SECOND WORLD WAR AND DUTCH SOCIETY:

Relations) of 1945, and giving the government through the College van Rijksbemiddelaars an important mediatorial role in labour rela­tions. In 1950 a more detailed piece oflegislation on the structure of the economic order was introduced in the form of the Wet op de Bedrijfsorganisaties (Industrial Organizations Act).37 All this was indeed new, although not as novel as was enthusiastically suggested at the time. Windmuller, the best commentator on the development of industrial relations in the Netherlands, emphasizes time and again the continuity with pre-war development: 'Consultation and co­operation between and among unions, employers and government for the mutual furtherance of public and private interests had become, by 1940, the hallmark of the Netherlands industrial rela­tions system.'38

The devastating experience of the war certainly reinforced the readiness to cooperate, but the structure of the first post-war years was more in the nature of a conclusion rather than a new beginning. In so far as the foundations were laid for such a beginning, in the regulations for the Publiekrechtelijke Bedrijfsorganisatie (Industrial Organization under Public Law) it was a 'dismal failure'.39 More­over the sociallegisJation should be regarded as a continuation of developments already under way before the occupation.

There was another phenomenon, which manifested itself at the end of the war, and during the first few years following it, which, had it succeeded, would have truly broken new ground in the field of industrial relations. This was the Eenheidsvakbeweging (Unified Trade Union Movement), later the Eenheidsvakcentrale or EVC (Trade Union Unity Centre). The EVC advocated a more radical trade union policy and was not afraid of conflict. For a few years the Eve was a dangerous rival to the traditional trade unions, especially the Socialist Nederlands Verbond van Vakverenigingen (Dutch Alliance of Trade Unions),40 and therefore threatened the continuity. Recent publications on the EVC make it clear that, as a result of the war and the consequent hardship, there was a broad

37 J.P. Windmuller, Labour relations in the Netherlands (Ithaca, 1969); F. de Jong Edz., Om de plaats van de arbeid (Amsterdam, 1956); D.U. Stilcker, Memoires. Herinneringen uit de lange jaren waarin ik betrokken was bij de voort­durende wereldcrisis (The Hague, 19663).

38 Windmuller, ibid., 86. 39 Windmuller, ibid., 290. 40 G. Harmsen and B. Reinalda, Voor de bevrijding van de arbeid. Beknopte

geschiedenis van de Nederlandse vakbeweging (Nijmegen, 1975), p. 282. For 1945 no reliable data are available. In 1946 the NVV had increased its membership from 162,323 to 242,645; in 1947 it was back to the pre-war level of 300,000 and was still rising steadily. The membership of the EVe however never rose above 176,873 the figure reached in 1948; Harmsen and Reinalda, ibid., 432.

CONTINUITY AND CHANGE 239

radical trend among the working classes, manifested in restiveness and rejection of the existing social and economic order. 41 Admira­tion of the Soviet Union also played a prominent role. With the return of 'normal' conditions, however, the radicalism diminished: with the coming of the Cold War, the EVC fell increasingly under the control of the Communist Party. The system was threatened, but not for long.

In politics, too, the slogan of renewal was much in vogue. This state of mind was best expressed through the Nederlandse Volks­beweging or NVB (Dutch People's Movement). After the unity achieved during the war many politicians believed that, under no circumstances, should pre-war conditions be allowed to recur, with their social fragmentation and deep political and cultural divisions based on confessional differences. Naturally, the pace could not be maintained, but ostensibly much did change: some political parties vanished, others changed in name or shifted their ideological posi­tion. Moreover, the alliance of confessional parties in the pre-war cabinets was now extended to embrace the Social Democrats. The leader of the Roman Catholic Party, Romme, referred to this de­velopment as the 'Nieuw Bestand' (New Agreement); other com­mentators described the new coalition governments, which lasted for more than 10 years, as 'Roman and Red', although some smaller Protestant parties also participated. Another reason for supposing that the political situation had changed was the electoral successes enjoyed by the communists: in 1946 they captured ten seats, whereas before the war they only held three. Here was yet more evidence of the growing radicalism among the working classes, who looked with admiration to the Soviet Union. If they had pursued this line it would have caused a real change in political relations, but this newfound radicalism quickly disintegrated. The Cold War and the consequent anti-communist propaganda, the gradually in­creasing prosperity, the disillusion caused by the evaporation of the wartime idealism and the disconcerting wrangling within the Com­munist Party, all contributed to the downfall of this radicalism.

The doorbraak was another expression of the ideology which inspired the NVB. The idea behind it was that differences of opinion in religion should not be allowed to divide political and labour organizations. Had it succeeded, it would have brought an import­ant change in the Dutch political system. Although in practice the

41 Harmsen and Reinalda, ibid., passim; G. Harmsen and L. Noordegraaf, 'Het ontstaan van de Eenheidsvakcentrale', Te elfder ure, XIV (1973),791-852; P. Coomans, T. de Jonge and E. Nijhof, De Eenheidsvakcentrale 1943-1948 (Groningen, 1976).

240 THE SECOND WORLD WAR AND DUTCH SOCIETY:

doorbraak was a complete failure, a new progressive party did emerge: the Partij van de Arbeid (Labour Party). Taking as its basis the ideas behind the doorbraak, the Partij van de Arbeid welcomed progressives, irrespective of their religion or other Weltanschauung.42

There was also a new 'liberal' party (the Partij van de Vrijheid, Freedom Party, later the Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie, Peoples Party for Freedom and Democracy) which might have served as a conservative complement, although this party was less enamoured of the doorbraak ideology. These developments did not however lead to the dissolution of the confessional parties, which was so essential for the doorbraak. From the beginning the prot­estant Anti Revolutionaire Partij (Anti Revolutionary Party) refused to be tempted by the doorbraak, and even rejected the formation of a single protestant party. The other main protestant party, the Christelijk Historische Unie (Christian Historical Union) lost some of its most prominent members to the new Labour Party, but came through the elections at least as strong as before the war. Hopes for the doorbraak were however wrecked by the resurrection of the Roman Catholic Party, renamed Katholieke Volkspartij (Catholic Peoples Party), which retained the loyalty of virtually all the catholic voters.43 Therefore, all that the doorbraak accomplished was to change the name and broaden the ideological basis of the Social Democratic party, and this was a development which had started well before the Second World War.

The new Labour Party therefore bore a strong resemblance to the pre-war Labour Party, which had swallowed up the Vrijzinnig Democratische Bond (Liberal Democratic Party) and the Christen Democratische Unie (Christian Democratic Union); it did not re­present the completely new progressive party, for which there had been so much enthusiasm in the Nederlands Volksbeweging. This came out clearly in a speech on national renewal, broadcast by Vorrink, the chairman of the Social Democratic Parties before and after the war, on 30 January 1946. After initially having stressed the importance of renewal, he earnestly warned against forsaking too lightly the positive aspects of the past, and he closed with this remark: 'We are making this new start at the point where our own course of development converges with that of others, who have come to the conclusion that a socialist renewal of society is re-

42 H.M. Ruitenbeek, Het ontstaan van de Party van de Arbeid (Amsterdam, 1955).

43 A.F. Manning, 'Geen doorbaak van de oude structuren; de confessionele partijen na 1945', in: L.W.G. Scholten e.a., De confessionelen (Utrecht, 1968), pp.61-87.

CONTINUITY AND CHANGE 241

quired. '44 The affiliation of the Labour Party with the Socialist International was also symptomatic of the political continuity. The most striking feature of party politics in the long run after the war is the loss of the liberal-democratic grouping, which had been part of the political spectrum since the tum of the century. Another casualty was the radically pacifist Christian Democratic Union, which though small had been present throughout the inter-war period.

The broad coalition of confessional parties and Labour, the 'Nieuw Bestand', in politics represented a change from the ex­clusively confessional parties, which despite all their internal diffi­culties, dominated the government during pre-war years. But again it must be emphasized that, after much hesitation in the 'thirties, the catholics had already in 1939 decided in favour of cooperation with the Social Democrats. The shock of the war made the transi­tion appear more abrupt than it really was, and probably gave the new alliance more solid foundations than it might otherwise have had. It could even be argued that the failure of a thorough-going renewal, that is the doorbraak and radicalization of the working classes enabled this coalition, which was only apparently new in 1945, to endure until 1958.

Also symptomatic of the underlying continuity in domestic politics is the continuity in political leadership. The most prominent post-war politicians had also held leading positions before the war. To name some examples from the various parties: Drees, Vorrink, Banning, Joekes, Oud, Schouten, Tilanus, Romme, Van Schaik, Kortenhorst, De Groot. In contrast most of the leaders in the Nationale Volksbewegingvanished from the political scene altogether. In this movement intellectuals were especially predominant:45

during and directly after the war they had been forced to leave their isolation and believed that, given the circumstances, they should accept social and political responsibility. They soon found themselves caught up, sometimes to their embarrassment, in con­sultations with the traditional political elite, which went on through­out the war. A good example of this political involvement of the intellectuals took place in the camp for hostages at St. Michels­gestel. This politically inexperienced group was particularly re­ceptive to all kinds of progressive ideas and plans for the renewal

44 Speech by K. Vorrink in: Jaarboek 1975 van het studie- en documentatie­centrum nederlandse politieke part yen (Groningen, s.a.), pp. 84-94; quotation on p. 93.

45 The Program en toelichting van de Nederlandse Volksbeweging (Amsterdam, s.a.2), had 441 signatories, 215 of whom were university graduates, among them 21 professors.

242 THE SECOND WORLD WAR AND DUTCH SOCIETY:

of Dutch society. However, they tended to forget that programmes devised by the elite would not necessarily win acceptance from the electorate, especially when these envisaged the radical transforma­tion of the system. When the movement for national renewal foundered the intellectuals retreated to their ivory tower. Only the Labour Party retained the loyalty of some progressive intellectuals but, in general, political indifference was once more characteristic of intellectual circles, and remained so until the 'sixties.

One last consideration concerning the political scene: a feature of politics in the 'thirties had been the questioning of the par1ia­mentary system, though this was usually vague and poorly articu­lated.46 It is not impossible that here lay the seeds for change, for traces can be discerned in the programmes of national renewal during and after the war, but the ideological struggle against authoritarian Nazism, which was also being waged during the war, made any anti-parliamentarian movement impossible. Because anti­parliamentarianism had been compromised it no longer offered an alternative after the war. As a result the forces of continuity were strengthened. Not until the 1960s were doubts expressed again about the formal democratic system and this time from a very different quarter.

After this discussion of the social and political developments we can be quite brief about what is perhaps the most characteristic feature of Dutch society: 'verzuiling' Qiterally, 'pillarization'). This term is used to describe the segmentation of political, cultural and social activities and the division of the population into sub-cultural social groups which, through their elites, usually behind the scenes, co-operate at the national level to overcome this division into confessional-political blocs. Neither the solidarity created by the war, the longing for greater national unity and renewal nor the up­surge of political awareness among the working class could break down 'the pillars of society'. Even the failure of the existing political system and certain of its leaders in 1940 could not bring about its overthrow: evidently it was more resilient than many had thought.

Within a short period the old leaders (or their successors in the same mould) revived the traditional organizations, despite the post­war chaos and the demand for renewal. The monopoly of the tra­ditional channels of communication was restored and the old sanctions (whether formally or not) were re-invigorated, in order to maintain or recover the hold of traditional values on the popu­lation. A good example is furnished by the re-establishment of a

4Ci A.A. de Jonge, Crisis en critiek der democratie (Assent 1968).

CONTINUITY AND CHANGE 243

catholic political party.47 For some time the bishops watched the many political activities, including those of catholics, with concern. Meanwhile they carefully brought the catholics back into a party of their own. Virtually all catholics, including those who had been active in the movement for national renewal, followed their spiritual leaders. The intervention of the bishops greatly assisted the re­covery of verzuiling. In a recent study of the broadcasting system, entitled Nationaal of Verzuild, the process by which the five ver­zuilde broadcasting corporations regained their position, despite opposition from renewers, and also the government, is clearly shown.48 To the question 'Nationaal or verzuild' the answer was plain: 'verzuild'. The same applies elsewhere. The system of con­fessionally and politically segregated organizations was easily maintained, though in some respects modified, usually in the inter­ests of greater efficiency. The 'conservative reflex', inherent in verzuiling, which had been checked during the war, was again in full swing.

Although there were portents of change in the 'fifties, it was only in the 'sixties that the whole system started to break down. This is not the place to explain developments in the 'sixties, but it is pertin­ent to ask why the system survived the ostensibly more violent shocks of the war. Arguably the verzuiling did not collapse after the war precisely because the chaos and great material problems re­quired the use of the old and trusted political framework. Discipline and tractability were widely accepted as essential for the reconstruc­tion and recovery of the post-war Netherlands. It was not really a good time for experiments. During the 'fifties the industrialization, which had been stimulated to some degree by the war, banished scarcity and furnished material prosperity. The structural weaknesses of the verzuiling then became more obvious and provoked a new onslaught. Significantly doorbraak and radicalism were both charac­teristics of politics in the 'sixties. This would seem to imply that the far-reaching changes, which took place during this decade, were the delayed response of Dutch society to the war.

This plausible idea deserves further careful research and at present it is impossible to express any well-founded opinion. But I am still sceptical of this hypothesis and incline to the view that after the war there was a complete restoration of the pre-war system. In the first place, the critique of verzuiling bore a very different charac­ter in the immediate post-war years to that of the 'sixties. More

47 Manning, 'Geen doorbraak', pp. 61-87. 48 H. van den Heuvel, Nationaal of verzuild. De strijd om het nederlands

omroepbestel in de periode 1923-1947 (Baarn, 1976).

244 THE SECOND WORLD WAR AND DUTCH SOCIETY:

evidence is therefore required before a clear link can be established between the two movements of protest. Moreover, there is very little proof that the confessional-political blocs were weakened internally by the war: they may well have been reinforced.49

Finally as I argued above, the industrialization and the affluent society can only to a limited extent be attributed to the war. According to this argument they are considered the condition and the cause of the collapse of verzuiling. It seems superfluous to intro­duce yet another explanation, namely that the system had been fatally harmed by the war, but the damage was concealed for a time by special circumstances. The influence of the prosperity (to define a complex phenomenon briefly, and therefore simplistically) may perhaps be less shocking and destructive than the war. It is, however, not at all unlikely that what happened was a gradual, or even creep­ing, erosion of the system, ending in an apparently sudden eruption. Such a situation was probably aggravated by influences from abroad.

It is now time to balance the argument, for so far the account has been rather one-sided. The impression has been given that the renewal was hollow and that in fact continuity, and political stability, were, despite the shock effects of the war, the hallmarks of Dutch society and politics after 1945. This is misleading. The imposition of a temporary military government, which was only dissolved in March 1946, the measures for reconstruction and re­covery and the treatment of Dutch collaborators had far-reaching consequences immediately after the war. 50 The war, too, profoundly altered the position of the Netherlands in the world, especially in the field of foreign policy and de-colonization. Finally, considera­tion should be given to the psychological effects and experiences of the war.

Without any question the loss of the Dutch colonies in Asia is directly related to the war there. This is not to say that, without the Japanese occupation, there would have been no withdrawal from Indonesia. But the timing and manner of the Dutch departure were strongly influenced by the war. The de-colonization did not leave Dutch society untouched and that influence continued well beyond the first post-war years. It aroused a political conflict which had,

49 See J.P. Kruyt and W. Goddijn, 'Verzuiling en ontzuiling als sociologisch proces', Drift en koers. Een halve eeuw sociale verandering in Nederland (ed. A.N.J. den Hollander, B.W. Hofstee, J.A.A. van Doorn en B.W. Vercruysse, Assen, 1968), pp. 227-63.

50 F.J.M. Duynstee and J. Bosmans, Het kabinet Schermerhorn-Drees 24 juni 1945-3 juli 1946 (Assen and Amsterdam, 1977); K. Groen, Landverraders. Wat deden we met ze? (Baam, 1974).

CONTINUITY AND CHANGE 245

until then, lain dormant. Before the war, for example, many fewer people were prepared to accept Indonesian independence than after 1945, although even then the conditions for that independence excited much controversy. But more than ever, the fate of the 'Indonesian possessions' affected the lives of all classes of people; many had relatives there and many young Dutchmen had done military service in Indonesia. These fears were reinforced by the continuous influx of repatriates and, later, spijtoptanten (people, who had initially opted for Indonesian nationality but later changed their minds). In general the Dutch people were frightened of what the future would bring from a material point of view: the watch­word Indonesie ver/oren, rampspoed geboren (Indonesia lost, disaster born) probably increased emigration from the Netherlands.51 The international nature of the conflict with the Indonesian republic forced the Dutch to adopt a considerably more active foreign policy than had been the case before the war. But we should be careful not to exaggerate the effects for, however important this conflict with Indonesia was, domestic problems still dominated politics. And in the 'fifties the emotional and economic adjustment to the loss of the colonies proved less painful than had been expected, though the the 'fifties the emotional and economic adjustment to the loss of the of the empire profoundly altered the relations of the Netherlands with the world and brought about a major shift in the Dutch economy.

It was not only the colonial issue which directed foreign policy into another channel. Probably more important in the long run was the abandonment ot a pre-war policy of neutrality and non­alignment in favour of a decisive participation in NATO and the European Common Market. 53 The inability to prevent the German invasion in May 1940 played an important role in this. The pattern of international relationships also changed as a result of the war. During the German occupation the Dutch government in London, for all its lack of influence, had been a formal member of the Wes­tern Alliance. After the war the government did not immediately

51 B.P. Hofstede, Thwarted exodus. Post-war overseas migrations from the Netherlands (The Hague, 1964); C.B.S., 75 jaar statistiek, table 9 and 21.

52 A. Lijphart, The trauma of decolonization. The Dutch and West-New Guinea (New Haven, Conn., 1966); C.V. Lafeber, Nieuw Guinea en de Volkskrant (Assen, 1968).

53 A. Vandenbosch, Dutch Foreign Policy since 1815. A Study in Small Power Politics (The Hague, 1959); H. Daalder, 'Nederland en de wereld 1940-1945', Tijdschrift voor geschiedenis, LXVI (1953), 170-200; A. van Staden, Een trouwe bondgenoot. Nederland en het atlantisch bondgenootschap 1960-1971 (Baarn, 1974).

246 THE SECOND WORLD WAR AND DUTCH SOCIETY:

advocate the formation of a strong regional alliance; indeed this was at first emphatically rejected. The creation of a strong inter­national security system through the United Nations was the main objective of Dutch policy. The Hague actively championed the rights of small nations and international justice. Both were tradi­tional elements of Dutch foreign policy and so were the moralizing characteristics associated with them. These elements were never lost sight of. In 1948 the rapidly increasing tensions of the Cold War and the need for closer co-operation in western Europe to overcome the material problems, both consequences of the Second World War, persuaded the Netherlands, without more ado, to join the western alliances. This completed the reorientation of Dutch foreign policy, which was widely supported until the end of the 'sixties. The isola­tion of Dutch public life, a consequence of the policy of neutrality, now came to an end. Dutch society was now exposed to American culture and values: earlier influences had usually come, if at all, from Germany. For example, before the war Dutch academic life had closely echoed the German universities but after 1945 British and American accents predominated.

There is not much documentary evidence concerning the psycho­logical effects of the war, but there can be no doubt that it played a decisive role in the private lives of many people. The more extreme sorts of reaction are described by Bastiaans and Cohen. 54 Even today the effects of war are still discernible. Some time ago a psychiatric clinic was specially founded for war victims. 55 Again the war disrupted the lives of many families, either because one of the parents, usually the father, did not survive, or because marriages broke down as a resu1t of prolonged separation or other strains imposed by the war. In the period 1946 to 1948, there was an ex­ceptionally high .divorce rate. S6 In many cases physical and mental distress caused by hunger and the fear of capture by the Germans could have a permanent effect. It is probable that part of the generation conflict, which was so acute in the 'sixties, can be traced back to this. Furthermore, for the small number of people in the resistance this period, when they had risked their lives for their ideals, took on an immense significance and the post-war years

54 J. Bastiaans, Psychosomatische gevolgen van onderdrukking en verzet (Amsterdam, 1957); E. A. Cohen, Het duitse concentratiekamp. Een medische en psychologische studie (Amsterdam, 1952).

55 The psychological difficulties of many war victims attracted public at­tention during the emotional discussion concerning the question of the release of the last three German war criminals in the Netherlands. This prompted the founding of a special clinic in Oegstgeest.

56 C.B.S., Echtscheiding in Nederland 1900-1957 (Zeist, 1958), p. 11.

CONTINUITY AND CHANGE 247

often brought bitterness and disillusion. Then there are the sur­viving Dutch National Socialists and the volunteers who fought alongside the Germans on the eastern front. The experiences of the war and the subsequent humiliation will have left a lasting imprint on the course of their lives. The same goes for all those directly caught up in the colonial conflict, especially the repatriates and spijtoptanten. In short, the Second World War, and especially the last year, was a traumatic experience for many people who lived through it. The denazification and the movements for national unity and social harmony were often avenues of escape from the trauma. But around 1950 the vividness of this experience began to fade and in many respects life resumed its pre-war pattern. The mentality of the 'fifties resembled that of the 'thirties, the verzuilde society had reasserted itself and photographs of the period even suggest visual similarities. But the experience had neither been mentally digested nor forgotten by many individuals.

By way of a conclusion, let us return to Marwick's categories. The destructive effect of war had been demonstrated from the statistical information~ about numbers killed, the value of the property damaged and the consequences of the loss of the most important colonies. The material losses were made good within four or five years, and Dutch political institutions triumphantly withstood the test of the war. Though during the war most of them were temporarily suspended, they reappeared virtually unchanged at the end of the war. The only significant break with the past was in the field of foreign policy. The third category, 'participation', is in this case difficult to assess. In support of this, one might point, perhaps, to the reinforcement of the position of the working classes and the temporary increase in political involvement but, in the long run, the pre-war political and social system, which had fostered political submission and tractability, remained unchanged until the 'sixties. The emotional and psychological experience was immense, especially in the private life of many people. In public life, after a few years, the experience of the war was reserved for ceremonial occasions.

In short, the Second World War did not renew Dutch society as one might have expected from Marwick's studies on the impact of modern war. This can probably be attributed to the Netherlands having experienced the war as an occupation. Dutch society was therefore not exposed to the test of modern warfare. The defeat was an accomplished fact within five days and German officials then took over the government. In the first years therefore life continued normally and later, when the situation deteriorated, the occupier

248 THE SECOND WORLD WAR AND DUTCH SOCIETY:

provided a scapegoat for everything unsatisfactory and unpleasant. As a result the desire for the restoration of the pre-war situation was stronger than the demand for the renewal of society. If the chaos caused by the war curbed the 'conservative reflex' from operating during the war, it was given free rein after 1945. In spite of the clarion call for renewal, changes were only made when there was no alternative or where the groundwork had already been laid before the war. A good example is post-war economic and social policy, where change was produced less by the war than by the spectre of unemployment in the 'thirties.

I would not for one minute deny that the war interfered with life in the Netherlands, especially in its closing stages. The effects also manifested themselves after the war, and sometimes even domin­ated Dutch political and social life in the first post-war years. How­ever in the long run it is not the degree of change but the measure of continuity which stands out. The answer to the question of influ­ence depends therefore on whether one looks at the short or long­term effects. At the outset I drew attention to the Dutch habit of drawing a distinction of 'before the war' .and 'after the war', as though the Second World War represented a drastic break with the past. While this may be true for many who lived through the war, its impact on the course of Dutch politics, society and culture is far Jess obvious. H there was a decisive transformation in the contem­porary history of the Netherlands this should be sought in the 'sixties rather than in the Second World War.

Index

Achtervelt, Hendrick, assassin, 50 Addison, Paul, historian, 204 Aiscough, Sir Edward, politician,

62-3 Aitzema, Lieuwe van, historiogra­

pher, 33, 35 Albert, Archduke of Austria, 42, 46,

49 Alphonse, Fran~ois Jean Baptiste

baron d', politician, 106, 114, 117, 120

Alva, Fernando Alvarez de Toledo, duke of, 23, 27, 28, 29

Amsterdam Admiralty of, 19; commerce of, 86,

87; financial market of, 124-33, expansion, 126-8, stagnation, 128-9, recovery, 130; financial role and influence of, 138-40; and Eighty Years' War, 27, 30, 34, 36,40; opposed to fiscal re­form, 88, 89-90; and Ostend Company, 90; population in­crease in, 87

Anderson, John, first Viscount Waverley, M.P., 215

Anne, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, 170

Anti-Revolutionary Party, 197, 199, 200,201,240

Appelius, Jean Henri, lawyer and statesman, 213

Aristocracy, Tudor, and Military service, 10-12

Armed forces of Dutch rebels, 25-31; of France,

2, and French Imperial, 117; of Scotland,6;ofSpain,2,andin the Low Countries, 20-5; of Tudor England, 2, 5-6, 7-8; of United Provinces, 80; embodi­ment of nation, 145, 191, 192, 197; militia (civic) including Drill Societies, 96, 189, 190, 195, 197; military schools of opinion concerning, 189-93, 197-200; neglect by Dutch Parliament, 193-4, 197, 200-2; organization of, 189-92, 193, 201; personal military service, 189, 190, 192, 194-6, 199-201; professional, 189-91, 195, 197, 201; role of officers in, 192, 199, 215, 218; social structure and status, 191, 192, 195-201,215-16, 218; sub­stitution, 191, 193-6, 198-200

see also Navy and New Model Army

Armed neutralities (1780,1800),143, 152, 158

Arnold, Richard, mutineer, 73 Arnold, Thomas, pedagogue, theo­

logian and historian, 147 Arthur, king, 14

Ascham, Roger, humanist, 14 Astor, Lady Nancy Witcher Shaw n~ Langhorne, M.P., 217

Astor, Waldorf, second Viscount, 220

Attlee, Clement Richard, Lord, statesman, 227

Aylmer, Gerald Edward, historian, 61

Balthasar Gerardsz., assassin, 50 Banking, see Amsterdam, financial

market of, also Loans and War, financing of

Banning, Willem, theologian, soci­ologist and politician, 241

Barere, Bertrand, statesman, 143 Baring, Sir Francis Thornhill, First

Lord of the Admiralty, 178 Barnard, Sir John, merchant and

politician, 187 Barrington, Daines, lawyer and

publicist, 180 Barrow, Sir John, Secretary of

Admiralty, 176, 177 Bas, Fran~ois de, military historian,

194 Bastiaans, Jan, author, 246 Baudartius, Willem, clergyman and

historian, 34, 35 Baxter, John, film producer, 226 Bedford, Earl of, see Russell, John Bentivoglio, Guido, Cardinal and

historian, 49 Berck, of Rotterdam, 46 Berg(h), Hendrik van den, count,

soldier, 34, 36 Berkeley, Captain (later Admiral)

Maurice Frederick Fitzhardinge, 177

Bemers, Lord, see Bourchier, Sir John

Bevan, Aneurin, politician, 225 Beveridge, Sir William, statesman,

214,224 Beveridge Committee and Report,

213-15 Bevin, Ernest, statesman, 210, 217,

227 Bijnkershoek, Comelis van, inter­

national jurist, 145 Bingham, Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph

Charles, 218 Birch, John, soldier, 61 'Black Legend' , 38-9; see also

Spaniards, characteristics of Blaeuhulck, Jacob Sieuwertsz., mas­

ter of naval provisions, 47 Blake, George, journalist, 226 Blockade

analogy with siege, 146-8, 163: as characteristic of maritime war­fare, 141-3, 145, 146, 148-9, 162-7: and commerce, 143, 146,

250 INDEX

148, 153-4, 155-7, 165-6; con­tinental European and Ameri­can criticism of, 141-50, 164-7; and contraband, 148, 150, 155, 166; effective or paper blockade, 149, 150, 151; English defence of, 148, 151, 155-9, 166; Eng­lish practice, 143, 144, 147, 148, 150--1, 157-8, 162-4; hunger blockade, 147, 148, 149, 163; neutrals' rights during, 143, 149-56, 163-7; non-combatants and, 145-8, 150, 153, 155-9, 162-3

Boothby, Sir Robert, politician, 209 Bossu, Maximilian de Hennin, count

of, 22, 23 Bourchier, Sir John, Lord Berners,

statesman and translator, 14 Bowles, Captain William, 175-6 Brandon, Charles, Duke of Suffolk,

soldier and politician, 2, 15 Brantome, Pierre de BourdeiIIe,

abbe de, soldier and writer, 20 Brink, T. van den, statistician, 234 Brinton-Lee, Diana, diarist, 220 Brittain, Vera, novelist, 148-9 Brown, Lieutenant John Hoskins,

176, 187 Browne, Major-General Sir Richard,

parliamentary general, 62 Buckingham, James Silk, M.P., 169,

170,175,183 Bulper, Jan, 1lS Butler, Richard Austin, Lord, states­

man, 217 Byng, Admiral George, Viscount

Torrington, 182

Cadogan, William, first Earl of, soldier and diplomat, 89

Calder, Angus, historian, 203, 208 Cardwell, Edward, Viscount, states-

man, 175, 187 Carew, Sir Nicholas, soldier, 16 Camero, Antonio, chronicler, 21, 50 Carpenter, John, 62 Carter, Alice Clare, historian, 220 Castren, Erik Johannes Sakarl. in-

ternational jurist, 141-2 Catherine of Aragon, Queen con­

sort of Henry VIII, 3 Catherine II, Empress of Russia, 'the

Great', 135 Catholicism and Catholics, Roman

rabid anti-Protestantism of, 50--2; attitude of Holland regents to, 52; attitudes to William 'the Silent', 50; Jesuits, 41, 49-50, 52; loyalties of clergy and laity, 48-53; proscription of, 4S; during Revolt of Netherlands, 30--1, 47-53; Spanish attach­ment to, 21-2

Catholic Party (Dutch), 197, 199, 200,201,236,239,240,241,243

Cats, Jacob, grand pensionary, 45 Caxton, William, printer, 14

Cecil, Sir William, Lord Burghley, statesman, 11

Chambery, French diplomat, 92 Channon, Sir Henry, politician and

diarist, 217 Charles V, Emperor, 2, 12, 16, 17 Charles VI, Emperor, 90 Chester, Daniel Norman, university

lecturer, 213 Chivalry, revival of under Tudors,

13-18 Churchill, Sir Winston Leonard

Spencer, statesman, 215, 217 Churchyard, Thomas, soldier and

writer, 9 Civilis, Claudius, Germanic leader,

96 Class

class struggle, 171, 196, 237; class structure, 203-5, 208, 211, 215-216; distinctions, 203, 205, 207-15, 218-26; indicators of, 206, 221-6; levelling of class distinctions by war, 203-4, 206-8,210--11,213,214-16,220, 225-7, 229; middle-class atti­tudes, 208-9, 213, 219-20, 227; resistance to change of class structure, 207, 213-16, 218; upper-class attitudes, 206, 208-9, 211-12, 216-19, 226-7; working­class attitudes, 169, 182, 209, 211-12, 220--1, 226-7, 239, 242

see also Aristocracy, Tudor and military service

Clere, Sir Thomas, 16 Clifford & Sons, merchant house of,

126, 127 Clubmen, 54-5, 64, 75 Cobden, Richard, economist and

statesman, 155 Cohen, Elie Aron, author, 246 Colaert, Jacob, admiral, 44 Colet, John, humanist, 10, 12 Collaboration with occupying forces,

230--1,247 Columbus, Christopher, navigator, 21 Conscription

in Eighty Years' War, 31-2; Dutch dislike of, 117; as source of employment, 117; effect on family, 117-18

see also Armed forces and Navy Corbett, Sir Julian Stafford, naval

historian, 156-7 Corbett, Miles, regicide, 61 Coward, Noel Pierce, author, actor,

composer, 203 Cox, Gwladys, letter-writer, 212-13 Cripps, Lady Isobel, nee Swithin­

bank, 217 Cripps, Sir Richard Stafford, am­

bassador and statesman, 216-17, 221

Cromwell, Oliver, statesman and general, 70, 73

Cromwell, Thomas, Tudor states­man, 2, 13, 17

INDEX 251

Crookshank, Captain Harry Freder­ick, Comfort, M.P., 215

Dacre, Thomas, Lord, 4 Dafydd, Sion, 8 Dalesmen, 64 Dalton, E. H. J. N. (Hugh), Baron,

statesman, 209, 217-18 Declaration of London (1909), 166 Declaration of Paris (1856), 150, 153 Defoe, Daniel, author, 170, 182, 183 Delft

and Eighty Years' War, 34, 50; poor relief in, 102-3,112, 114-15

Denman, Captain Joseph, 175-6 Deutz, merchant house of, 125, 126 Dirck Anthonisz., bailiff, 31 Dockyards, in Tudor England, 2 Doot, Simon Cornelisz., 43 Dordrecht

and Eighty Years' War, 28; de­mands fiscal reform, 90

Dorp, Arend van, soldier and poli­tician, 24, 25

Drees, Willem, statesman, 241 Dudley, Ambrose, Earl of Warwick,

soldier, 12 Dudley, Edmund, statesman and

lawyer, 13 Dudley, Sir Henry, soldier, 12 Dudley, John, Lord Lisle, Duke of

Northumberland, politician, II, 12 Dudley, Robert, Earl of Leicester,

courtier and politician, 12 Dumouriez, General Charles Fran-

90is, 128 Dunkirk and privateering, 39--47, 52

East India Company, English, 127 Eden, Robert Anthony, first Earl of

Avon, statesman, 217 Edward I, King of England, 11 Edward IV, King of England, 14 Edward VI, King of England, 3, 11 Edwards, Humphrey, regicide, 61 Eerenbeemt, Henricus Ferdinandus

Joseph Maria van den, historian, 104

Effingham, Lord Howard of, see Howard, Charles

Egmond, Adriana van, 116 Elizabeth I, Queen of England, 9, 18 Elliot, Captain Charles, 177 Erasmus, Desiderius, scholar and

theologian, 10, 12 Evertsen, Jan, admiral, 44 Eworth, Hans, painter, 16

Fagel, Fran90is, greffier, 82 Fairfax, Sir Thomas, Lord, parlia­

mentary general, 63, 64, 65, 69, 70, 73

Falck, Anton Reinhard, statesman, 123

Faust, 38 Fawcett, Dame (Henry) Millicent,

suffragette, 207

Ferdinand II, King of Aragon and Castile, 1, 7

Ferrie, William, 225 Fisher, Admiral John Arbuthnot,

first Baron, 173 Fleming Committee and Report,

218-19,226 Fortifications and defences

in Tudor England, 3; in United Provinces, 32; in Kingdom of the Netherlands, 193, 202

Francis I, King of France 12 Franklin, Benjamin, state;man, 143,

154, 155 Frederick, see Toledo, Don Freder­

ick de Frederick II, King of Prussia, 'the

Great', 138 Frederick Henry of Nassau, prince

of Orange, 19, 32, 34, 37, 45, 49 Froissart, Jean, courtier and chroni­

cler, 14 Frontinus, Sextus Julius, classical

author, 18

Gage, William Hall, Lord, M.P., 184, 185

Gambetta, Uon Michel, statesman 158, 191 '

Geer, Louis de, merchant, 125 Geneva Conventions (1864, 1906) 153 Genoa, siege-cum-blockade of 146-7 Gentles, Ian, historian, 57 ' George III, King of Great Britain

and Ireland, 171 Gladstone, William Ewart, states­

man, 175 Gouda and Eighty Years' War, 23,

25,26,27,29 Gourly, John, naval officer 171 Gra~am, Sir James Robert George,

FIrst Lord of the Admiralty, 170 175, 176, 183, 187 '

Grant, General Ulysses Simpson, 158 Green, John, shipmaster, 171-2 Greenwood, Arthur, M.P., 223 Grey, Edward, Viscount Grey of

Fallodon, statesman, 173 Grey, Thomas, Lord of Groby, regi­

cide,64 Grey, William, Lord of Wilton

soldier, 9-10 ' Griffiths, Anselm John, naval officer

171 ' Grigg, Sir James, statesman, 219-20 Groen van Prinsterer, Guillaume

political thinker and historian, 123 Groeneveld, H. W., military publi­

cist, 196 Groot, Paul de, politician, 241 Grotius (Hugo de Groot), statesman

and international jurist, 52, 145 Gruffudd, Elis, soldier and chroni­

cler, 8 Guise, Francis of Lorraine, second

Duke of, politician and soldier, 8 Gustavus II, Adolphus, King of

Sweden, 125

252 INDEX

Gustavus III, King of Sweden, 137 Gutierrez, priest, 21

Haarlem and Eighty Years' War, 23, 24, 25;

demands fiscal reform, 88, 89, 90; decline of, 102-3; poor relief in, 109, 122

The Hague and the Eighty Years' War, 34, 36,

51; poor relief in, 102-3, Bl, 113, 120, 121, 122

Hague Conventions (1907),152, 153 Hague Peace Conferences (1899 and

1907), 154, 161 Hall, Edward, chronicler, 14, 15 Hall, Vivienne, diarist, 203, 207 Haly, Richard Standish, naval officer,

171 Hamilton, Alexander, statesman, 136 Hanway, Jonas, publicist, 178 Hardwicke, Charles Philip Yorke,

fourth Earl of, statesman, 175, 177

Harley, Colonel Sir Edward, 58 Harris, James, diplomat, 97 Harrison, Thomas Harnett, social

scientist, 204, 211 Hefner, August Wilhelm, inter­

national jurist, 142 Heinsius, Antonie, grand pensionary,

84,85,91 Henry V, King of England, 13, 15,

17, 18 Henry VII, King of England, 5, 13,

14 Henry VIII, King of England, 1, 2, 5,

7, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 Herbert, William, Earl of Pembroke,

12 Hertford, Earl of, see Seymour,

Edward Hewson, Colonel John, regicide, 67 Heyn, Pieter Pieterse (Piet), admiral,

39,44 Hitler, Adolf, dictator, 203 Hodgskin, Thomas, publicist, 168 Hoeven, G. J. ter, 122 HogendorP, Gijsbert Karel van,

statesman, 98, 123 Hogguer & Co., merchant house of,

127 Holbein, Hans, the younger, painter,

16 Holland, Kingdom of

economy of, 104; tiercing of debt of, 108; towns lose financial in­dependence, 108-9, 123; philan­thropy in, 101-2, 115, 120-2

see also Poor relief Holland, province of

indebtedness of, 81-2, 83; revenues of, 83; private wealth in, 84; high wages in, 83; taxation and decline of, 85; decline of older towns, 86-7; demography of, 86-7; excises, 85; verpontiing, 87-8; sale of demesne lands in,

91; inequitable tax assessment in, 85-7; hard to reform fiscal system in, 91-3

Holland, south, urban economies of, 102-8

Holmes, C., 62 Hoornbeeck, Isaac van, grand pen­

sionary, 85, 91, 92 Hoover, Herbert Clark, 31st Presi­

dent of the U.S.A., 148, 154 Hope & Co., merchant house of, 126,

127, 132, 133, 135, 140 Hope, Henry, banker, 124, 128, 131,

134 Houten, Samuel van, statesman, 197 Howard, Anthony, author, 203 Howard, Charles, Lord Howard of

Effingham, admiral, 11 Howard, Sir Edward, admiral, 11 Howard, Henry, Earl of Surrey, poet

and soldier, B, 13, 16 Howard, John, Duke of Norfolk, 11 Howard, Michael Eliot, military

historian, 204 Howard, Thomas, Earl of Surrey, 4,

6, 8, 11, 13, 16 Humphrey, Lawrence, divine, 18 Hyde, Pearl, head of Coventry

W.V.S.,213

Impressment evasion of, 169, 174, 181, 183;

practice of, 168-70, 174, 175, 176, 181, 182, 183; protests against, 168-71, 184, 185, 187, 188; search for alternative to, 171-88

see also Navy Irby, Sir Anthony, M.P., 62 Ireton, Henry, regicide, 73

James I, King of Great Britain, 50 James II, King of Great Britain, 184 James IV, King of Scotland, 3, 16 James V, King of Scotland, 3 Japikse, Nicholas, historian, 39 Joekes, A. M., politician, 241 Johnstone, Sir James, M.P., 172 Jong, Louis de, historian, 230

Kalshoven, Frits, international jurist, 166

Keith, Admiral George Elphinstone, Viscount, 147

Kent, Elizabeth, 62 Kenworthy, Lieutenant-Commander,

M.P., 223 King, Colonel Edward, 62 Knowles, Vice-Admiral Sir Charles,

179 Kortenhorst, L. G., politician, 241 Kuyper, Abraham, theologian, publi­

cist, statesman, 199

Labour Party, British, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218, 219, 221; Dutch, 236, 239,240,241,242

Labour relations, 207, 209, 210, 220-1, 224-5, 237-8

Lanario, Francisco, chronicler, 21 Languet, Hubert, protestant author,

18 League of Nations, 164 Lee, Roland, catholic conspirator, 50 Lefebvre, Georges, historian, 147-8 Leicester, Earl of, see Dudley,

Robert Leiden

and Eighty Years' War, 34; poverty and poor relief in, 102-3, 109, 112, 115, 116, 118, 120--2

Levellers hostility to New Model Army, 67,

68, 72; influence on Army, 55, 56,70,71,73; notions of sover­eignty, 71; suspicions of central government, 68-70; writings of, 68,69,72

see also Putney, debates of Limburg Stirum, General Menno

David Count van, statesman, 193-5, 196

Lisle, John, regicide, 61 Livesey, Michael, 61 Loans (Dutch)

to finance wars, 124, 129, 137-9; to foreign countries (in general), 125,126,127,129,130,137,138; to France (forced), 128-9, 130; to Holy Roman Empire and Austria, 126, 129, 130; to Portugal, 129, 132; to Prussia, 129; to Spain, 129; to Russia, 124, 126, 130; to Sweden, 125-6, 130; to United States (Louisiana Purchase), 129, 136-137; and investors, 128, 135-7; technique and negotiations for, 130--5

see also Amsterdam, financial mar­ket of

London as financial centre, 127, 140; and

New Model Army, 65, 67, 70, 74 London Naval Conference (1909),

154,161, 166 Londono, Don Sancho de, 22, 26, 27 Lopez, Diego, 49 Lothian, Philip Henry Kerr, eleventh

Marquess of, statesman, 220 Louis XIV, King of France, 79, 85,

126 Louis Bonaparte, King of Holland,

99,100,117,122 Lumey, Guillaume de la Marek, Sea

Beggar, 25-6, 29 'Lutheran', as derogatory term, 22 Luttrell, Sir John, soldier, 16

Maassluis, poverty and poor relief in,106-7

Mackenzie, John, publicist, 180 Mackworth, Sir Herbert, M.P., 172 Malby, Sir Nicholas, soldier ,9

INDEX 253

Manchester, Edward Montague, second Earl of, parliamentary general,64

Manning, Brian S., historian, 68 Marshall Plan, 235 Marwick, Arthur, historian, 229-30,

247 Mary, Queen of Scots, 3 Mary Tudor, Queen of England, 12 Massena, Marshal Andre, 146-7 Maurice of Nassau, prince of

Orange, statesman and soldier, 19, 35,37

Melas, General Michael Baron von, 147

Mendoza, Bernardino de, soldier, diplomat and annalist, 34, 37

Mercenaries in English campaign (1544), 2,

8-9; in Dutch rebel army, 20, 28-9,48

Meteren, Emanuel van, histori­ographer, 48

Meyrowitz, Henri, international jur­ist, 142

Monckton, Walter, Viscount, states­man, 216, 217

Montecuculi, Ernest, Count, general, 32,33

Moorlanders, 64 Morison, Sir Richard, diplomat,

18 Mornay, Philippe de, seigneur du

Plessis-Mornay, protestant author, 18

Morrison, Herbert, Lord, statesman, 215

Mosstroopers, 64 Motte, De la, see Pardieu, Valentin Mulgrave, Constantine John Phipps,

second Baron, M.P., 183 Mutiny, 7-8, 22

Napoleon Bonaparte, General, First Consul, Emperor of the French, 145, 147, 199

Navigation Acts, 143, 177, 186 Navy

Admiralty, 172, 173, 174, 180, 181, 184, 185, 186; code of punish­ment, 168, 180; conscription and compulsory service, 174-6, 183, 185-6; 'Fellowship of Seamen', 171-2,174,179,180; naval offi­cers, 171, 175, 177, 182, 184,185; naval warfare, 169, 174, 175, 178, 180,181; organization, 169, 170, 174, 175, 178, 182-3; recruit­ment, see Impressment; Royal Fleet Reserve, 173-4; Royal Naval Coast Volunteers, 174, 176; Royal Naval Reserve, 171-4, 177, 180, 181, 188; sub­stitution, 176; technology, 174, 177; Tudor, 1,2-3

see also Blockade, War, Warfare Nelson, Admiral Horatio, Viscount,

186

254 INDEX

Neufville, de, merchant house of, 127 Neutralism, in English Civil War, 56,

64 Neutrality, 126; decline of, 163-5 Neutrals' rights, see Blockade New ~odelAulny

arrears of pay, 64-6, 74; debates at Saffron Walden, 56, 58, 64, 65, 70, 73; 'Declaration of Aulny', 56-7; demands indemnity, 58-64; dislike of, 67; disbands, 73; grievances of, 56-7, 77-8; 'Humble Representation', 73-4; and Levellers, see Levellers; and Parliament, 55, 56, 58, 64, 65-6, 70, 76

Noorderkwartier of Holland decline of, 86; population of, 87;

poverty of, 104 Noort, Olivier van, circumnavigator,

21 Norfolk, Duke of, see Howard, John Norris, Geoffrey, squadron leader,

217 Norris, Admiral Sir John, 186 Northumberland, Duke of, see

Dudley, John

Oglethorpe, General James Edward, 170

Orangist riots (1811, 1813), 116-17 Order in Council (8 June 1793), 147,

150 Ostend Company, 90 Ott, General Karl, 147 Oud, Pieter Jacobus, statesman and

historian of parliament, 241 Overton, Richard, Leveller publicist,

69, 168

Pace, Richard, diplomat and author, 10

Pacificism, 10-12 Pagan, Leslie, 226 Palmerston, Henry John Temple,

third Viscount, statesman, 175, 187 Pardieu, Valentin, de la ~otte,

soldier, 46 Paris, siege of, 148 Parker, Admiral Sir William, 175 Parma, Alexander Farnese, Duke of,

soldier and statesman, 31, 46 Patriots

propaganda and rhetoric of, 95-6; role of predikanten in, 97

Patten, William, chronicler, 6 Pecquius, Pieter, diplomat, 34 Pelham, Henry, statesman, 180 Pelham, Henry ~athieson, historian,

203 Pembroke, Earl of, see Herbert,

William Pennell, Charles Henry, Chief Clerk

of Admiralty, 174, 187 Penny, William, diarist, 212 Petty, Sir William, economist, 178,

179

Philip II, King of Spain, 20, 21 Pichegru, Charles, general, 95 Pickles, Wilfrid, radio broadcaster,

225-6 Pitt, William, 'the younger', states­

man, 158, 172 Pocock, John Greville Agard, his­

torian, 96 Poor

conditions of, 115; 'children of state', 120; education of, 121-2

Poor-houses, women in, 118 Poor relief

breakdown of in Holland, 99-100; Dutch Poor Law, 101-2; duty of state for, 101; falling income available for, 112-14; public poor-houses, 101

see also Delft, Haarlem, The Hague, Leiden, ~aassluis, Rot­terdam, Schiedam, Vlaardingen, poor relief in, also Holland, Kingdom of, philanthrophy in

Poppenruyter, Hans, gunfounder, 1 Portalis, Jean Etienne ~arie, lawyer,

145, 158, 159 Postlethwayte, ~alachy, publicist,

178 Poverty

in Holland, 100; and family, 118-21

Poynings, Lord Edward, statesman, 15

Priestley, John Boynton, author, 213 Prisoners, treatment of, 43-7 Privateers and privateering

Dunkirk, 39-47; Dutch losses to, 40-3; also mentioned, 183

see also Sea Beggars Propaganda, see War, ideological and

'Black Legend' Pulteney, William, Earl of Bath,

statesman, 172, 183, 186 Purefoy, William, regicide, 61 Putney, debates of, 67, 72-3

Rathbone, Eleanor Florence, social reformer and politician, ~.P., 223

Rawson, Nehemiah, 62 Reading, Lady Stella, nee Charnaud,

213 Rees, Boudewijn van, clergyman, 101 Reigersberch, Nicholas van, lawyer,

52 Requesens, Don Luis de, Governor

of the Netherlands, 20, 21, 32 Resistance movement, 230-1, 232,

247 Rhodes, Sir Edward, 63 Rich, Colonel Nathaniel, 58 Robbins, Caroline, historian, 96 Robe, Thomas, publicist, 178, 179,

183, 184, 186 Rogge, Comelis, clergyman, 101 Rogier, Lodovicus Jacobus, his­

torian, 50 Roman catholic Party, see Catholic

Party

INDEX 255

Romme, Carl Paul Maria, statesman, 239,241

Rooke, Admiral Sir George, 181 Roots, Ivan, historian, 73 Rose, John Holland, historian, 148 Rothschild, house of, 126, 140 Rotterdam

and Eighty Years' War, 23, 50; poor relief in, 102-3, 106, 111, 114, 118, 120-2; rise of, 86-7

Rousseau, Jean Jacques, political theorist, 144, 145, 158, 159

Rovenius, Philippus, apostolic vicar, 49

Russell, John, Earl of Bedford, 11-12

Schaepman, Hermannus Johannes Aloysius Maria, theologian, poet and statesman, 201

Schaik, Josephus Robertus Hendri­cus van, politician, 241

Scheer, Admiral Reinhard, 160-1 Schiedam

distilleries in, 115-16; and Eighty Years' War, 23; poor relief in, 102, 109, 111

Schimmelpenninck, Rutger Jan, grand pensionary, 99

Schoffer, Ivo, historian, 229 Schouten, Johannes (Jan), politician,

241 Scott, Sir Lindsay, civil servant,

207 Scribani, Carolus, jesuit, 49 Sea Beggars

at Alkmaar, 26; Den Briel, 25, 29; Dokkum, 25; Gouda, 25-6, 29; Huisduinen, 25, 29-30; Mon­nikendam, 25; Ooltgensplaat, 25; Petten, 25, 27; Schagen, 25; Schellingwoude, 25; Schoorl, 25; Wieringen, 27; composition of, 28-9; ideology (Calvinism) of,28-30

Seamen's funds, 42-3 Sexby, Edward, Leveller, 72 Seymour, Edward, Earl of Hertford,

later Duke of Somerset, 3, 4, 9, 11 Sharp, Granville, publicist, 170 Sherman, General William Tecum-

seh, 158 Shields, Danny, 226 Short, William, diplomat, 136 Simon, John Allsebrook, first Vis-

count, 209 Skelton, John, poet, 16 Slicher, Jan, burgomaster, 122 Slingelandt, Simon van, statesman,

84,91,92 Smallwood, Thomas, common sol­

dier,62 Smith, Adam, economist and moral

philosopher, 198 Somerset, Duke of, see Seymour,

Edward Spaniards, characteristics of

devout Catholicism, 21-2; cruelty, 23-4; pride, 22

Spinola, Marquis Ambrogio eli Philippo, soldier, 34

Spinola, Frederick, soldier, 46 Stadnitski, Pieter, loan entrepreneur,

133 Stassart, Goswinus Josephus Augus-

tinus, baron de, statesman, 122 Strachey, John, M.P., 209 Stralen, Hendrik van, politician, 99 Sueyro, informer, 49 Suffolk, Duke of, see Brandon,

Charles Surrey, Earl of, see Howard, Henry Sutherland, Richard, banker, 124 Swinfen, John, politician, 61 Sydney, Sir Philip, poet and soldier,

18 Sympson, jesuit, 49

Taxation and war, see Holland, province of

Tetens, Johann Nikolaus, philoso­pher and publicist, 156, 158-9, 164-5

Thorbecke, Johan Rudolph, states­man, 123, 193

Thulemeyer, Heinrich von, diplo­mat, 138

Tilanus, Hendrik Willem, politician, 241

Titian, painter, 16 Tocqueville, Alexis de, writer and

statesman, 99 Toledo, Don Frederick de, 33 Tomlinson, Lieutenant Robert, 171,

183 Trade Unions, 220, 221, 238-9 Transvaal, annexation, 199 Tromp, Maarten Harpertsz., lieu­

tenant admiral, 47, 48 Trijntje Gerits, 51 Tuerenhout, F. A. van, military pub­

licist, 197

United Provinces army of, 20, 80; capital exported

from, 138-9; decline of, 79-80; financial exhaustion of, 81-4; French invasion of, 128; Prus­sian intervention in, 124, 128; pursues neutrality, 79-80

see also Holland, Kingdom of United States, see Loans (Dutch) Utrecht

and Eighty Years' War, 22, 24, 27 Utrecht, Union of, 31,97

Vattel, Emmerich de, international jurist, 145

Vergil, Polydore, humanist histori­ographer,4

Vernon, Vice-Admiral Edward, 176 Vitoria, Francisco de, theologian and

jurist, 145 Vlaardingen

and Eighty Years' War, 23; poor relief in, 102-3, 105, 107, 112

256 INDEX

Vorrink, Jacobus Jan (Koos), states­man, 240, 241

Voute, Robert, banking agent in Russia, 130

Vries, Johannes de, historian, 101, 236

Wagenaer, Christoffel, 38 Wager, Admiral Sir Charles, 186 Wagner, 38 WalIer, Colonel Hardress, regicide,

60 . WalIett, Thomas, high constable, 62,

63 Walpole, Horace, man of letters, 84 Walpole, Robert, first Earl of Or­

ford, statesman, 178, 182, 184, 185 War

and blockade, see Blockade; and constitution of United Prov­inces, 92-3; economic effect, 235-7; ethics, 142, 146-9, 154, 157,16O,161,162-3;financingof, 4, 13, 82, 124, 129, 137-9, see also Amsterdam, financial mar­ket of; ideological, 142-3, 147, 164-7; see also 'Black Legend' and Sea Beggars; and inter­national law, 141-55, 159-67, 246; limitation of, 142, 144-5, 152, 153, 154, 163; maritime and land war, 148, 155-9, 163; and populatioR structure, 232-5; psychological effect of, 204, 207, 210-12,236-7,242,244-5,246-247; reconstructive effect of, 204, 216, 228, 231, 232, 240-4, 247-8; and rural population, 23-4,25-7, 32-4, 36-7; see also Neutralism, in English Civil War; and segmentation of Dutch society, 239-44, 247; and taxation, see Holland, prov­ince of; and technology, 4, 160-1, 164, 174, 191, 192; total war, 141, 142, 154-5, 156-7, 158, 162,204

see also Armed forces, Class, Conscription, Fortifications, Im­pressment, Mercenaries, Navy, New Model Army, Privateers, Sea Beggars

Warfare, 191, 192 aerial, 142, 151, 158, 161; sub­

marine,151, 160-1, 167; see also Armed forces, Blockade, Navy

War(s) Anglo-Dutch War, Fourth, 94;

American Civil, 149, 151, 158; American, ofIndependence, 138, 178; of Austrian Succession, 137; Cold War, 239, 246; Crimean, 174; Eighty Years' War, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27,28, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 39, 43,46,49, 50, 51, 143; see also

under individual Dutch towns and Sea Beggars; English Civil; see New Model Army; First World War, 147, 148, 150, 151, 152, 158, 160, 161, 162, 163, 165, 207, 226, 230, 235; Franco­Prussian, 148, 156, .158, 163, 191, 192, 193; of League of Augsburg, 82; of the French Revolution and Napoleonic per­iod, 128, 129, 131, 132, 138, 149, 151, 158, 159, 160, 190; Russo­Japanese, 151; Russo-Swedish, 138; Russo-Turkish, 124, 138, 139; Second World War, 149, 161,165,203,206,225,226,228, 229,230,235,236,240,246,247, 248; Seven Years' War, 126, 127, 137-9, 180; of the Spanish Succession, 80, 82, 87, 126

Warmbrunn, Werner, historian, 230, 231-2

Warwick, Earl of, see Ambrose Dudley

Weapons of Tudor army, 1,7 Weaver, John, politician, 61 Wellington, Fieldmarshal Arthur

WelIesley, first Duke of, 175 Westlake, John, jurist, 156, 157, 159,

163 Wilford, Sir James, soldier, 9 William I, King of the Netherlands,

98 William of Orange, 'the Silent', 18,

24, 27, 28, 30, 49 William III, King-Stadholder, 2, 170,

181 William IV, Prince of Orange, 124,

128 William V, Prince of Orange, 94, 97,

124 Williams, Roger, soldier, 9 Wilson, Charles Henry, historian,

79,85 Wilson, Thomas Woodrow, 28th

President of the U.S.A., 161, 164, 167

Windmuller, John P., historian, 238 Wingfield, Sir Robert, diplomat, 8 Wolsey, Thomas, Cardinal, states-

man, 12, 15 Wood, Sir Kingsley, civil servant, 209 Work-houses, 120-2 Wouter Jacobsz., monk and diarist,

23, 24, 27, 30 Wren, Sir Christopher, architect, 181 Wriothesley, Sir Thomas, statesman,

15 Wyatt, Sir Thomas, poet, 16 Wyndham, Sir Thomas, admiral,

16 Wyndham, Sir William, M.P., 184

Zuiderkwartier of Holland, popula­tion of, 87; see also Holland, south