252 Chapter XI
people all over Europe were going to obtain representative institutions, that the
role of the chief of state should everywhere be to hold the balance between le peu-
ple et les grands, and that the House of Orange, in the present troubles, “should in-
cline more to the democrats than to the aristocrats, since the former at least claim
to represent the good of the people.”^15
William V could take no such advice. Like Louis XVI a few years later, he could
not disown his privileged classes, though these privileged classes had long been the
main source of embarrassment to his family. He could not bring himself to seem to
abandon his church, or to ally with new men tossed up from what appeared to him
to be the depths of society. “No democracy” became his watchword—not even any
Orange democracy. He became the rallying point for all antidemocratic forces in
the country, in which Orange stalwarts were increasingly joined by rebellious re-
gents in flight from popular rule.
There were, of course, some of the regents who persisted in opposition to the
Prince and his policies, some from an inveterate anti- Orangism, others with a
more progressive idea that the time had come to broaden the terms of participa-
tion in public life. These formed the Assembly of Patriot Regents, and in 1786 they
even gained control in three of the provinces, Holland, Groningen, and Overyssel.
The Estates of Holland deposed the Prince from his offices of stadtholder and
captain- general. The embattled Patriot Regents had to give ear to the Free Corps,
and the demands of these excited groups of armed and uniformed burghers be-
came ever more clearly “democratic.” “Freedom is an inalienable right belonging to
all citizens (aan alle de burghers) of the Netherlands confederation,” declared the
Provincial Assembly of the Armed Corps of Holland, meeting at Leiden. “This
liberty would be a deceptive shadow if representatives were to be independent of
those whom they represent; and their appointment by the people, by a firmly set-
tled plan, is the most appropriate way to prevent this independence.”^16 In 1786 the
Utrecht burghers finally put an end to their old council and chose a new one by
general election—“a true revolution,” says Professor Geyl.
The National Assembly of Free Corps, again meeting in Utrecht, despatched
Van der Kemp to confer with the Assembly of Patriot Regents sitting at Amster-
dam. The two organizations published a joint declaration in the newspapers
(though many Patriot Regents hesitated to sign), which may stand as the most
advanced official statement of the abortive Dutch revolution. It declared for “the
true republican form of government in our commonwealth, namely a government
by representation of the people... with a stadtholdership subordinate thereto.”
And it repudiated “a government by one man, or any system of independent family
rule... that chokes off the reasonable and respectful voice of the people.”^17
To oppose one- man government and family- rule simultaneously, remarks Pro-
fessor Geyl, was hopeless. Henceforth the Prince and the oligarchs knew that they
stood or fell together. Even so, they had little strength. Disarrayed, frightened, at
odds with themselves, and with no program, they could not agree on which way to
15 G. K. van Hogendorp, Brieven en Gedenkschriften (The Hague, 1866–1903), I, 411, 437, 443; II,
55– 61.
16 Geyl, Patriottenbeweging, 124–25.
17 Ibid., 139–40.