artistic clearinghouse as well as its commerical center. It was to defend their religious liberties as much as their commercial supremacy that the Dutch resisted so fiercely the aggrandizements of Louis XIV's Catholic France. Peter was intrigued by this atmosphere of religious toleration. He visited many Protestant churches in Holland and asked questions of the pastors.
One brilliant facet of Holland's seventeenth-century culture did not much interest him. This was the new and remarkable painting of the great masters of the Dutch School—Rembrandt, Vermeer, Frans Hals and their contemporaries and successors. Peter bought paintings and took them back to Russia, but they were not the Rembrandts and other masterpieces which later were collected by Catherine the Great. Instead, Peter collected pictures of ships and the sea.
THE PRINCE OF ORANGE
In a predatory world, Holland's wealth and power were neither gained nor maintained without a struggle. The republic had been born in the sixteenth-century struggle of the Protestant provinces of the northern Netherlands to break the grip of their Spanish master, Philip II. In 1559, they finally achieved independence. With skill and determination, the Dutchmen developed the sea power that defeated the Spanish admirals, inherited Spain's worldwide ocean trade routes and laid the foundation for Holland's overseas empire. But as the republic waxed in prosperity, it aroused the envy and greed of its two most powerful neighbors, England and France. Coveting the Dutch near-monopoly on European trade, the English under both Oliver Cromwell and Charles II assaulted Holland, and three Anglo-Dutch naval wars resulted. It was in the second of these wars that an English fleet commanded by the King's brother, the Duke of York (later to become King James II), seized the harbor of New Amsterdam and named the village at the tip of Manhattan Island 'New York' after himself. Later, the Dutch retaliated with a daring naval raid up the Thames estuary, thrusting into the main British naval base at Chatham, burning four ships-of-the-line at anchor and sailing away with the
Holland's wars against England were fought at sea and in the colonies. A far deadlier threat to the United Provinces was to come by land from Holland's mighty neighbor, the France of Louis XIV. To the men gathered around Louis at Versailles, the success of the tiny Protestant republic was an affront to France's greatness, a sin against her religion and, most important, a barrier and competitor to her commerce. The King, his finance minister Colbert and his war minister Louvois were united in their desire to crush the remarkable, upstart Dutchmen. In 1672, with the largest and finest army in the history of Western Europe and the Sun King in personal command, France swept across the Rhine to within sight of the steeples of Amsterdam. Holland was finished . . . or would have been if not for the emergence into history of one of the seventeenth century's most extraordinary figures, William of Orange.
William, Prince of Orange, simultaneously Stadholder of Holland and the United Netherlands and King William III of England, was perhap the most interesting political figure Peter was to meet in his lifetime. Two dramatic, almost miraculous events had set the direction of William's life. At twenty-one, at a moment when an apparently invincible French army had swallowed half the Dutch republic, William was handed supreme military and political power and asked to repel the aggressors. He succeeded. Fifteen years later, at thirty-six, without relinquishing his Dutch officers and titles, he conducted the only successful invasion of England since the days of William the Conqueror.
Physically, William of Orange was not blessed. Slender and unusually short, with a slight deformity of the spine which crooked his back, he had a thin, dark face, black eyes, a long, aquiline nose, full lips and black hair hanging in heavy curls which gave him an appearance more Spanish or Italian than Dutch. In fact, William possessed very little Dutch blood. He was born into a curious European family, a princely house whose history is integral to the struggle for independence of the Netherlands, and yet whose hereditary principality of Orange lies hundreds of miles to the south, in the Rhone Valley of France, a few miles north of Avignon. Since the days of William the Silent, who led the Dutch to freedom against Spain in the sixteenth century, the House of Orange had furnished the republic with elected leaders—stadholders—in times of danger. The family's blood was good enough for marriage into other royal families, and half of William's ancestors were Stuarts. His grandfather was King Charles I of England, his mother was an English princess, her brothers—his uncles—two Kings of England: Charles II and James II.
William became the head of the House of Orange at the moment of birth; his father had died of smallpox a week before. Brought up by his grandmother, he suffered severely from asthma, and through his childhood he was lonely, delicate and unhappy. In those years, the office of stadholder was vacant and Holland was ruled by an oligarchy led by two brothers, John and Cornelius De Witt, who believed that by careful conciliation they could placate Louis XIV. Then, in 1672, the year of Peter's birth, came the first crisis of William's life. In that spring, Louvois presented Louis with a magnificent new French army of 110,000 men massed at Charleroix on the northern frontier. Louis, arriving to assume personal command of the blow which was to destroy the Protestant republic, expected no difficulty. 'I now possess an escort which will allow me to take a quiet little journey into Holland,' he said contentedly.
Although the Sun King was in nominal command, the experienced Marshal Turenne and the Prince de Conde gave the actual orders. Louis' army easily forced the Rhine on new copper pontoon bridges, and Dutch cities and fortresses fell like ninepins. Seeing the French implacably advancing, the people of Holland panicked. There were riots against the De Witts, who were held personally responsible for the country's plight. In The Hague, a frenzied mob burst in upon the brothers and lynched them.
It was at this moment of crisis that the Dutch suddenly turned like terrified children to the House of Orange, which had provided salvation a century before. William was only twenty-one, but on July 8 he was appointed Stadholder of Holland and Captain General of the Army for life. His program was straightforward and bleak: 'We can die in the last ditch.' Immediately, he began to demonstrate the qualities for which he was to become famous. He took the field wearing the commander's garb which was to be his attire for many years: the azure uniform of the Dutch Blue Guards, light armor covering his back and chest, a full cravat of Brussels lace, an orange sash and scarf, high boots, fringed braided gloves and belt, a broad-brimmed hat with feathers. Remaining on horseback from dawn until nightfall, indifferent to fatigue, the slight young prince threw down the gauntlet before Louis and his veteran marshals.
Within a week of taking command, William was forced to make an appalling decision. Despite his efforts, his army could not hold the French, who thrust swiftly forward into the heart of the United Netherlands. Arnhem fell and Utrecht, only twenty-two miles from Amsterdam. Then, when the French were only a day's march away from the great Dutch port, the Dutch obeyed William's command and cut the dikes. The sea rolled in, flooding crops and meadows, engulfing rich country houses and gardens, drowning cattle and pigs, and undoing the labor of many generations. As soldiers opened the sluices and cut the dikes, desperate farmers, unwilling to see their farms disappear beneath the onrushing waters, fought to prevent them. Amsterdam, hitherto almost defenseless, now became an island. The French, lacking boats, could only stare at the great city from a distance.
To Louis' chagrin, although the Dutch army was beaten and half of Holland inundated, William refused to yield. The Dutch battalions, unable to defeat the more numerous French, nevertheless remained in the field, waiting. Conde settled into winter quarters in Utrecht, hoping that when winter came he could attack Amsterdam across the ice. But the winter was mild, and Louis, who never liked to have French armies operating far from France, became nervous. Meanwhile, William had been active diplomatically. To the Hapsburg Emperor, to Brandenburg, Hanover, Denmark and Spain, he pointed out that Louis' power and ambition were a threat not just to Holland but to other states as well. All were impressed by the argument, and even more by the continuing Dutch resistance. In the spring, the war widened.
William's small army began to attack the French lines of communication, and Louis became more nervous. At last, systematically destroying the towns they had occupied, the French withdrew. This partial victory—the survival of Holland—was almost solely the achievement of a twenty-one-year-old soldier and statesman who in those few months became the second most important national leader in Europe.
