House Of Orange Research Articles

The House of Orange. By Marion E. Grew. (Methuen; 16s.)

The House of Orange. By Marion E. Grew. (Methuen; 16s.)

Monarchy in Modern Europe

Seventy years ago a traveller, making an overland journey from Lisbon to Peking, would have traversed throughout the whole of his route the territories of states whose constitutions, however much they might differ, were all monarchical in form: Portugal, Spain, France, the German states, Russia and China. To-day all these countries are republics, as is Poland, the one additional state whose territory would now be crossed on such a journey.Has the revolt against monarchy such characters as would point to its effecting a permanent change or will the fallen thrones be re-erected? In Asia republicanism is an exotic growth, but in Europe the system under which Athens and Rome grew to maturity is not so. On the eve of the American Revolution, but an insignificant fraction of mankind was living under republican institutions. These survived only in the old maritime Republics of Venice and Genoa, the Swiss cantons and the little republic of Ragusa in Eastern Europe. To these we may add the autonomous Hanse towns. The Netherlands were technically a republic, though in practice a constitutional monarchy, since the Stadtholdership was hereditary in the House of Orange, which intermarried with the reigning families of Europe. Sixteen years after the American Declaration of Independence the French monarchy fell. Animated by the crusading zeal which characterized the Soviets in the first years of their existence, the French republicans desired to impose their system of government on Europe. At one time it looked as though they might do so. Within a few years French arms had created the satellite Batavian, Helvetian, Cisalpine, Roman and Parthenopean Republics. But after a life of twelve years the First French Republic was destroyed by its Chief Magistrate and monarchy under a new dynasty was restored in France.

The Question of the Netherlands in 1829–1830

In the year 1829 the disputes between the Northern and the Southern Netherlands were rapidly coming to a head.It will be remembered that shortly before the Congress of Chatillon was dissolved in March, 1814, the Allies having found it impossible to make peace with Napoleon, a secret article in the Treaty of Chaumont provided that Holland was to receive an increase of territory, and be erected into a kingdom for the Prince of Orange. After the abdication of Napoleon the Definitive Treaty of Peace with France, signed at Paris on May 30, 1814, carried the settlement of the Netherlands a step further by a secret article defining the increase of territory which Holland was to receive. Flanders and the other Belgian provinces, which had been taken from Austria by the armies of the French Revolution, were now, together with the Principality of Liege, to be joined to Holland, and the united countries were to constitute a Kingdom of the Netherlands under the sovereignty of the House of Orange.