Part 4 (1/2)
[Ill.u.s.tration: CAPETOWN CAPTURED BY THE ENGLISH]
After half a year Admiral de Winter (former second lieutenant of the navy and French general of infantry) was ready to leave Texel with the first Batavian fleet. He sailed from Texel with a couple of s.h.i.+ps, and after having been beaten by an English squadron off the coast of Norway, he returned to Texel with a few s.h.i.+ps less. Two special squadrons were then equipped and ordered to proceed to the West and East Indian Colonies; but before they left the republic news was received of the conquest of these colonies by the British, and the auxiliary squadrons were given up as useless.
Now all these puzzling questions facing untrained politicians took so much of their time that nothing was apparently done toward the great goal of this entire revolution--the establishment of a national a.s.sembly to draw up a const.i.tution and put the country upon a definite legitimate basis.
The country began to show a certain restlessness. The old Orangeists smiled. ”They knew what all this desultory business meant. Provisional, indeed? Provisional for all times.” The more extreme Patriots, who knew how sedition of this sort was preached all over the land, showed signs of irritation. ”It was not good that the opposition could say such things. Something must be done and be done at once. Would the Provisional kindly hurry?”
But when the Provisional did not hurry, and when nothing was done toward a materialization of the much-heralded const.i.tution, the Jacobins bethought themselves of what they had learned in their Parisian boarding school and decided to start a lobby--a revolutionary lobby, if you please; not a peaceful one which works in the dark and follows the evil paths of free cigars and free meals and free theatre tickets. No, a lobby with a recognized standing, a clubhouse visible to all, and rules and by-laws and a well-trained army of retainers to be drawn upon whenever noise and threats could influence the pa.s.sing of a particular bill.
On the 26th of August, 1795, there a.s.sembled in The Hague more than sixty representatives from different provincial patriotic clubs. The purpose of the meeting was ”to obtain a national a.s.sembly for the formation of a const.i.tution based upon the immovable rights of men--Liberty and Equality--and having as its direct purpose the absolute unity of this good land.” Here at last was a program which sounded like something definite--”the absolute unity of this land.”
All the revolutionary doings of the last six months, the patriotic turbulences of the past generation, were not as extreme, as anti-nationalistic in their outspoken tendencies, as was this one sentence: ”The absolute unity of this land.” It meant ”Finis” to all the exaggerated provincialism of the old republic. It meant an end to all that for many centuries had been held most sacred by the average Hollander. It meant that little potentates would no longer be little potentates, but insignificant members of a large central government. It meant that the little petty rights and honours for which whole families had worked during centuries would pale before the l.u.s.tre of the central government in the capital. It meant that all High and Mightinesses would be thrown into one general melting-pot to be changed into fellow citizens of one undivided country. It meant the disappearance of that most delightful of all vices, the small-town prejudice. And all those who had anything to lose, from the highest regent down to the lowest village lamplighter, made ready to offer silent but stubborn resistance.
To give up your money and your possessions was one thing, but to be deprived of all your little prerogatives was positively unbearable. And not a single problem with which the Provisional, or afterward the national a.s.sembly, had to deal, caused as many difficulties as the unyielding opposition of all respectable citizens to the essentially outlandish plan of a single and undivided country.
As a matter of fact, the unity was finally forced upon the country by a very small minority. The Dutch Jacobins were noisy, they were ill-mannered, and on the whole they were not very sympathetic. (Jacobins rarely are except on the stage.) But one thing they did, and they did it well. By hook and by crook, by bullying, and upon several occasions by direct threats of violence, they cut the Gordian knot of provincialism and established a single nation and a union where formerly disorganization and political chaos had existed. For when their first proposal of the 26th of August was not at once welcomed by the Provisional, the revolutionary lobbyists declared themselves to be a permanent Supervisory Committee, and as the ”Central a.s.sembly” (of the representatives from among the democratic clubs of the Batavian Republic) they remained in The Hague agitating for their ideas until at last something of positive value had been accomplished.
The Estates General could refuse to receive communications from this self-appointed advisory body, the Estates of a number of provinces could threaten its members with arrest, but here they were and here they stayed (in an excellent hotel, by the way, which still exists and is now known as the Vieux Doelen), sitting as an unofficial little parliament, and fighting with all legitimate and illegitimate means for the fulfilment of their self-imposed task. And one year and one month after the glorious revolution which we have tried to describe in our previous chapters, the provisional a.s.sembly, under the influence of these ardent Patriots and their gallery crowd, decided to call together a ”national a.s.sembly to draw up a const.i.tution and to take the first steps toward changing the fatherland into a united country.”
And this is the way they went about it: The national a.s.sembly should be elected by all Hollanders who were twenty years of age. They must be neither paupers nor heretics upon the point of the people's sovereignty.
For the purpose of the first election, the provinces were to be divided into districts of 15,000 men each, subdivided into sub-districts of 500. The sub-districts, voting secretly and by majority of votes, were to elect one elector and one subst.i.tute elector. The elector must be twenty-five years of age, not a pauper, and a citizen of four years'
standing. Thirty electors then were to elect one representative and two subst.i.tute representatives. These must be thirty years of age and were to represent the people in the national a.s.sembly. Their pay was to be four dollars a day and mileage. The national convention was to be an executive and legislative body after the fas.h.i.+on of the Estates General during those old days when no Stadholder had been appointed. Within two weeks after its first meeting the national a.s.sembly must appoint a suitable commission of twenty-one members (seven from Holland, one from Drenthe, and two from each of the other provinces). Said commission, within six months of date, must draw up a const.i.tution. This const.i.tution then must at once be submitted to the convention for its approval, and within a year it must be brought before the people for their final referendum.
The elections actually took place in the last part of February of the year 1796. They took place in perfect order and with great dignity. The system was not exactly simple, but it was something new, and it was rather fun to study out the complicated details and then walk to the polls and exercise your first rights as a full-fledged citizen.
On the 1st of March more than half of the representatives, duly elected, a.s.sembled in The Hague, ready to go to work.
A year had now gone by since the provisional government had been started--a year which had little to show for itself except an ever-increasing number of debts and an ever-decreasing amount of revenue. The time had come for the direct representatives of the sovereign people to indicate the new course which inevitably must bring to the country the definite benefits of its glorious but expensive revolution.
Exit the provisional a.s.sembly and enter the national a.s.sembly.
V
SOLEMN OPENING OF THE NATIONAL a.s.sEMBLY
THE OPENING CEREMONIES
On the morning of the 1st of March, 1796, the ever-curious people of The Hague had a legitimate reason for taking an extra holiday. For two weeks carpenters, plumbers, and whitewashers, followed by paperhangers and upholsterers, had been at work in the former palace of the Stadholder.
They had hammered and papered until the former ballroom of Prince William V had been changed into a meeting room for the new national a.s.sembly. It was an oblong room eighty by thirty-two feet, and extremely high. The members were to sit on benches behind tables covered with the obligatory green baize. Their benches were built in long rows, four deep, constructed along three sides of the hall and facing the windows which gave on the courtyard. The centre part of the fourth wall, between the big windows, was taken up by a sort of revolutionary throne, which was to be occupied by the Speaker and his secretaries. The chair of the Speaker was a ponderous affair, embellished with wooden statues representing Liberty and Fraternity. The gallery for the people, one of the most important parts of a modern a.s.sembly hall, gave room for three hundred citizens. The principle of equality, however, had not been carried to such an extreme as in the French a.s.semblies. There was a separate gallery for the use of the diplomats and the better cla.s.s of citizens. Unfortunately there were but few diplomats left to avail themselves of this opportunity to listen to Batavian rhetoric.
Practically all of the foreign ministers had left The Hague soon after the Prince had departed.
The members of the a.s.sembly, after the French fas.h.i.+on, were not to speak from their seats, but when they wished to address their colleagues and the nation they mounted a special little pulpit standing on the right of the Speaker's throne and resembling (or trying to resemble) a cla.s.sical rostrum.
Now let us tell what the good people of The Hague were to see on this memorable 1st of March. All in all there were ninety-six representatives in town, and they came from seven provinces.