680. The Netherlands: The Revolt that Made The Modern World (Part 4)

Fourteen verses. Now, Tom, obviously this is an anthem close to your heart because of your nominative determinism. We've done three anthems so far. We've done the United States, we have done Great Britain, and we have done Germany. Very well known, I think, all these three. If you're Dutch This will be well known too if you're not Dutch, probably much less well known, but there is a case, isn't there, that of all the world's national anthems, even though this was only adopted in nineteen ninety.

Two, this has the deepest. the longest, the richest history.

Uh and we will be coming to this later in the episode. And the website then goes on to say the first known reference to the lyrics dates from fifteen seventy two. Um and so there we have it, direct from the Dutch royal family. The Wilhelmus originated sometime between 1568 and 1572. So that is uh you know, compared say to God Save the King, that is very, very precise. And those dates, not coincidentally, constitute a key fulcrum point in one of history's absolutely top revolts, the Dutch revolt.

So, um why is the Dutch Revolt one of history's absolutely top revolts? Well for I think for a number of reasons. Firstly, it is very seismic uh in terms of the geopolitics of Europe. It erupts in the fifteen sixties. And it precipitates what will ultimately become an eighty year war between the Dutch rebels um and the Spanish, who are the colonial power in the low countries.

Um, and this makes it one of the longest and most sustained independent struggles in the whole of European history. And it's an incredible kind of David and Goliath story because it begins with a ragbag assortment of pirates. taking on the professional armies of the greatest empire on the face of the earth at the time. And the consequences of um the success of those rebels are still with us today and imprinted on the map of Europe.

So the northern half of the low countries that were ruled by Spain in the sixteenth century, they won their independence from Spain. and today they constitute the kingdom of the Netherlands and to simplify massively, they're kind of the Protestant half. And the southern half, um, that remained under the rule of the Spanish Royal Dynasty, the Habsburgs, and today constitutes the kingdom of the Belgians. And again, to oversimplify, that's kind of vaguely the uh the Catholic half.

Uh and it gives itself the name of the United Provinces of the Netherlands. So you can see why that story would have a resonance with Washington and um Hamilton and Jefferson and so on. I don't think it is an exaggeration. to see the state that emerges from this these rebellious provinces. It becomes the Dutch Republic.

And over the course of the seventeenth century, I I think it constitutes one of the great incubators of modernity. So it it's the birthplace of modern capitalism. You get you know, it it gives us stock exchanges and deposit banking and futures and options and all these kind of various financial gizmos. I don't really know what they mean.

Um, it's a very urbanized society. So sixty percent of the population in Holland live in cities. I mean, that's an enormous amount for the for the period. And it's a culture, um, and again, this is appealing, I think, to the American revolutionaries. It's a culture that isn't aristocratic but very bourgeois. And if you think of the great masterpieces of the Dutch Golden Age, say Vermia, um, it's very interior, it's very domestic, it's very comfortable, it's very ordered.

So this the Dutch Republic, the the the Republic of Vermeer and Rembrandt and the beautiful canals of Amsterdam and all of that, this is the state that emerges from the Dutch revolt.

Uh, the father of the fatherland. So he is the the fo I mean he is the founding father, no other way of putting it. And Tom, I I know your Dutch is second to none, so would you like to translate th that first verse for us?

And to answer that question, I think we need to look at two different aspects of this story for the background. And the first is the state of the Low Countries in the the mid sixteenth century when the revolt breaks out. And then secondly, the um the life and the character of the Prince of Orange, William of Nassau, um, this great hero of the of the Dutch Revolt.

In the sixteenth century this is home to very rich and sophisticated cities. So Antwerp is the greatest, you've also got Ghent, you've got Bruges. These are beautiful cities now that you go to on kind of weekend breaks. looking for a place to have a stagdo or something. But back then they were the beating heart of kind of capitalism as it is starting to emerge. And then to the north you have a a second heartland.

Um and these are constituted of the largest province is Holland. Uh you also have Zeeland, you have Utrecht. Um and Holland especially is a province that has kind of been redeemed from the seas and the bogs and the lakes. and it is crisscrossed by by rivers, by canals, by drainage channels, and all around it are dikes which keep the the sea at bay.

And an English writer in the seventeenth century described Holland as the great bog of Europe indeed it is the buttock of the world, full of veins and blood, but no bones in it. Um and the province of Zealand is even more kind of surrounded by water because it's an archipelago, so a series of islands set in a great estuary that is meeting the North Sea.

And on top of that, Holland and Zealand are cut off from the southern provinces by four great rivers, one of which is the Maas that we were talking about um in our episode on Germany. Um and these four rivers all meet in the same delta and they are surrounded by marshes. So in effect they constitute a kind of massive moat. So essentially they are more readily defensible perhaps than the than the southern provinces.

There are um about seven hundred different legal codes in all. So it is very, very fragmented. Then you also have different languages. So you have French in the southern provinces. You have Dutch in the northern and central provinces. In Frisia, people are speaking Frisians, which is the language closest to English.

Um, some people are speaking German as well. And then this is the mid sixteenth century, so it's the heyday of the Reformation, and so there are kind of religious tensions and differences as well. And Protestantism has spread like wildfire across all the seventeen provinces, and this unlike in England, where it's been um very much imposed by the Tudor monarchy, Henry the Eighth and Edward the Sixth and Elizabeth the First.

In the low countries, this is much more of a kind of top up. This is it's not it doesn't have official um sponsorship from the top. And the consequence of this is that there isn't anyone to impose any sense of control. So all these kind of various sects and factions is very, very wild west. Because although obviously they're happy to protest against Catholicism,

There isn't any sense of coherence. They all have kind of different views on what really matters. Now that said, by the middle of the sixteenth century, there is one particular brand of Protestantism which is starting to emerge as the dominant. Um, and this is what will become known as Calvinism, named after Jean Calvin. Um, John Calvin, um, this great reformer, and he has

kind of instituted this very disciplined, self governing kind of church structure. And so Calvinism, far more than the other sects, can provide Protestants with Yeah, a kind of sense of coherence really. A a a sense of structure that exists outside the structures of the organized state. So to quote Jonathan Israel, he's written the the definitive book on the history of of the Dutch Republic.

Those dismayed by the profusion of Reformations around them found the antidote for which they thirsted in Calvin, and so the character of the revolt as it emerges will be largely Calvinist.

And that's the case even back in the sixteenth century. There there's more well, not more, but there are there are a lot of things that unite the people of these what become Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg.

proper alcoholic beer. And again, a bit like today, the women were famous for their kind of cleanliness. This is a theme that runs throughout the Dutch Republic and into the the present day. The Dutch are famously obsessed with cleanliness. Um, but also they were notorious for wearing mini skirts. Um, and in the sixteenth century this meant skirts that came down to the ankles. So very shocking.

And of Peru, thanks to the efforts of Cortez and Pizarro. So he is You know, he probably rules a larger empire, certainly a more global empire than anyone has done in history. I mean, he's um a a a very formidable figure. And the seventeen provinces had previously been part of the Holy Roman Empire, which Charles rules as emperor.

But they've been r granted by this kind of act of fifteen forty eight a kind of legal and constitutional independence from the empire. So they now kind of th effectively they stand alone as a separate unity. And to quote another great historian of the Dutch Revolt, Geoffrey Parker, um, he suggests that in normal circumstances this might have formed the basis for a permanent political unit.

And Parker suggests as parallels the unions that became Switzerland in the Middle Ages and Spain, which is emerging at exactly this period from, you know, the union of all the various um kingdoms within um Iberia.

So he was born in fifteen thirty three, and he was the eldest son of the Count of Nassau in Germany, so that's why he's described as William of Nassau. And William's father is from the Rhineland, and the word that is translated as Dutch in that um account on the uh the the Dutch Royal Family website can also mean German. So it's Deutschen. Deutschen.

But then in fifteen forty four there's this absolute bombshell and it's like something out of a kind of Charles Dickens novel or something. Suddenly William discovers that he has the most tremendous expectations because a very distant cousin of his, a guy who happens to be the Prince of Orange, which is um a a a a city in the distant um southernmost reaches of France.

dies childless in um a siege in France, and he leaves all his titles and estates to the young William. He doesn't have any closer relation. So at a stroke this young boy becomes fabulously rich and heir to estates and lands and all kinds of properties all over Europe. And the the key um uh property is um Orange, which is a princedom, it's sovereign, it's enclosed within France, but you know, it owes loyalty only to William.

So he is now William of Orange. Also huge chunks of the Low Countries, including about a quarter of Brabant, which includes Antwerp, so you know, incredibly wealthy area to have, and this becomes the effective heart of William's inheritance. And additionally, and I'll just read out the list of other properties that William has inherited, he has a claim to the vanished kingdom of Arles, again in France. Um, he has a dukedom in Apulia.

He has three Italian Principalities, so he's a prince four times over, in other words, sixteen countships, two margravates, two Viscountancies, fifty baronies, and some three hundred smaller estates.

is that he has to give up his immortal soul. Is that right?

So the the the the place where Charles V is based when he's in the Low Countries. And Charles V thinks this young boy is tremendous. and grooms him to become one of the big players at the Habsburg Court. And by fifteen fifty five, when William is twenty two, he has become the most glamorous figure um in Charles's train. So he's charming, he's extravagant, he's been given um experience in war, he's experienced in politics. I mean he's the complete article. And that October of fifteen fifty five.

Charles V famously starts abdicating his very powers. and he's in Brussels to abdicate his lordship of the Low Countries in favour of his son Philip, who is going to go on to become Philip the Second of Spain, the man who sends the Spanish Armada against England. But at this point the elderly Charles the Fifth He's very lame by this point. He's got a stick, but with his other arm he le he he is leaning on the Prince of Orange as he goes up to the altar to offer his formal abdicate.

So there's no question that Philip is essentially going to base himself there, and of course he's going to build this famous palace, the Escorial, up in the mountains. And

essentially kind of end up squirrelled away there. So he needs people in the Low Countries to administer it for him. And he does rely on William to serve him as his lieutenant there. And the key legal formalisation of this comes in fifteen fifty nine when Philip appoints William as the governor or Stadholder of Holland, Zealand and Utrecht, so in other words, the core provinces in the north of the Low Countries.

But there are I think kind of two niggling problems which will over the course of the years become worse and worse. And the first of these is that there is a personality clash between Philip and William because Philip Philip is very I think he's an introvert, he's tongue tied, he's very intellectual, he's very studious, he's very devout, very devout Catholic.

And William is a massive extrovert. He's a lad. Everyone loves him. He loves the dance. He loves the frolic. All of that. So they're very, very different. I think there are also growing political tensions because as the years go by and Philip, who is, you know, he is the lord of the Low Countries, but he's never there.

it becomes clear that uh fundamentally he is a Spanish king. And so people in the low countries start to feel that they are subordinate to him in the manner of a colonial people, subject to a distant master or overlord.

And resentment of the Spanish presence in the low countries starts to grow and grow. So Philip has appointed Spanish ministers to the Council of State, which is supposed to administer these provinces. Uh he's installed Spanish garrisons in the key cities. And he has licensed the Spanish Inquisition to start sniffing out heresy. And although William, of course, has become a Catholic by vo you know, uh as a requirement for becoming the the Prince of Orange, He's not a doctrinaire.

And William has been sent as a temporary hostage to the court of France. There's a kind of treaty negotiations going on, and so for a few months William has to stay there as the guest of Henry the Second, the King of France. And he's looked after very well. He is, as we've said, a massive extrovert. People really like him. They think he's great fun. And so he becomes great mates with Henry the Second. And Henry takes him out hunting in the woods of Chantilly. And while they're out hunting,

Henry lets slip a shocking secret to William on on the assumption, evidently, that William already knows about it. And Henry reveals to William that he, the King of France, and Philip II, the King of Spain. have become so terrified by the growth of Protestantism in Christendom that they have agreed a full scale policy of extermination against the Protestants, the heretics, as as Henry and Philip see them.

And their hope is that ultimately this policy of extermination will embrace um the entire Christian world, as Henry puts it. But the plan is to begin with the low countries. And William, when he's told this, is absolutely appalled. But he doesn't let slip the fact that it's come as complete news to him. You know, he he he keeps a poker face. And partly I think this is out of self preservation. He doesn't want

you know, news to reach Philip that uh that that that he disapproves of this policy. And I think it's also because Maybe William doesn't entirely trust what he's being told by Henry and he thinks it the best policy might be just to wait and see. Maybe it won't actually be an exterminatory policy. Maybe the French king's exaggerating. Um, you know, he doesn't want to to make a massive fuss if there isn't actually going to be a problem. And so he he keeps stumm about it.

So very much not a taciturn man, you know, an extrovert, not an introvert, as we've said. But the time is coming and it will be triggered by this kind of great cycle of executions of Protestants um and suspected rebels that Philip licenses. when he will have to decide what he's going to do. Is he going to stay loyal to Philip and to the Habsburgs? Or is he going to take the side of people whom he has come to identify with and whom he is starting to see as directly oppressed?

And when he makes his decision, which is to side with the rebels, He makes clear that that his anxieties have been kind of germinating all this time and he has been keeping quiet about it. He's been hiding them. He's been you know, that is definitely not not something that he's been talking about. And so William of Orange will come to be remembered by the Dutch.

not for his kind of incredible fluency, not for his his master of the social arts, but for the opposite. And he will come to be known by the Dutch as Willem de Zweiger. William the silent And this is how he is known by history. And it's kind of fantastic that it is in the voice of William the Silent that the Dutch team will be singing the national anthem when they um meet Sweden this coming weekend.

The first letters of these 15 verses form an acrostic, don't they? And they spell the name Willem van Nassov, William of Nassau, William of Orange, William the Silent. And interestingly, when they're singing the anthem before matches, the Dutch team, they sing the first verse and the sixth verse. So it's mad that they actually sing that verse where they pledge allegiance to the

as a shepherd boy, and David grows up and then Saul becomes very jealous of David, hunts David and tries to kill him, but David had survived and ultimately prevailed. So I think William is being cast as David, and Philip II is being cast as kind of Saul, his former royal master, who's turned against him. Because, of course. Philip had appointed William as Stadholder of Holland and Zeeland, had assumed that he could be relied on as a loyal servant of the Habsburg House.

Uh but as we were saying in the first half, all this time, William had been tracking Philip the Second's potentially exterminatory policies against the Protestants with a kind of growing sense of horror.

And the time comes where he can no longer keep silent and will in the silent, you know, speaks out against uh against the exactions of the of the Spanish. And specifically he chooses to speak out in fifteen sixty seven, which is the year when Philip sends an army of ten thousand battle hardened soldiers to the low countries. And its mandate is essentially to terrorise the heretics, the Protestants.

into submission and ultimately into oblivion. And as we said in the first half, thousands are executed and among the the people who are put to death are William's closest allies among the Dutch nobility. And had William remained in the Low Countries, he would have been put to death as well. But he has sensed the wit the way the wind is blowing.

He's starting to think, actually all this stuff about exterminatory policy, it is actually true. And so he had retreated beyond Philip's re reach into his kind of German land. So he'd gone to the provinces beyond the frontier with with the empire. And while he's absent so effectively in exile.

His properties in the Low Country are confiscated. So all those lands in Brabant, for instance. His eldest son is seized as a hostage and is taken to Spain and you know, he won't won't come back to the Low Countries for decades and decades. And William himself is declared an outlaw. And the obvious choice at this point for William would have been to negotiate and to reach terms and to kind of essentially submit to Philip's demands. But

He is like David in the Bible. He refuses to give up. And so he mortgages all his properties. He takes out massive loans and he funnels all the cash that he's raised into the cause of the resistance. And he spends on two particular kind of modes of resistance. And the first of these are privateers. So essentially pirates who are operating supposedly on behalf of whatever it is, this kind of rebellious proto Dutch state.

Um and there's a brilliant description of these pirates by C. V. Wedgewood. You know, you wrote that kind of wonderful trilogy on the English Civil War. So nineteen fifties I think she wrote this. It has that kind of nineteen fifties feel. So she wrote she described these pirates as weather beaten ex merchantmen with second hand cannon nailed to splitting decks, and patched sails bellying in the wind, manned by ruffians and patriots,

Dutchman and French and English, the riff raff of twenty ports and three nations, and fluttering at their mastheads the orange trickler with the lion of Nassau.

But I mean just I think just to keep it kind of relatively clear at this point, I think it's easiest to think of the rebels as being Protestant. I mean they're not exclusively, but largely. But as we say, the the revolt spans the whole of the seventeen provinces.

And William, while these pirates are busy kind of roaming the seas in Yoho Hoing, he's been raising an army of mercenaries um in Germany and then he crosses the border, he invades And he moves into Brabant, which is his own, you know, the hi that's where all his lands are, where he's got his feudal holdings.

And his aim is to challenge the Spanish to battle. But the problem is the Spanish are far too experienced, far too smart, far too militarily savvy to uh fall into doing what William wants them to do. And so rather than meet his challenge, the Spanish hold to their positions and just wait for William to run out of money because they know that he only has a kind of finite supply.

And sure enough, you know, after a few weeks the money does run out and all his mercenaries say, Well, we're not hanging around and they melt away and William has no choice but to retreat. And from that point on, things just go from from bad to worst for William because He keeps mortgaging more and more of his properties, he keeps launching or sponsoring invasions, and they keep being defeated.

And also on the domestic front, things have gone very badly wrong for William'cause he's got a new wife uh and this is um the daughter of the Elector of Saxony. So I think it's an attempt by William to try and build relations with the Lutheran princes to the east. Um and she's called Anna.

The problem is in fifteen seventy two, Elizabeth is being leaned on by the Spanish, and Elizabeth is inveterately cautious, and she thinks, Well, the revolt's probably over. You know, I don't want to burn my bridges with with the Spanish, you know, they're not doing any good. I'll chuck them out. And so she closes their their English bases to the the sea beggars. And they're now roaming the sea and they haven't really got anywhere to go. But then Dominic

From the depths of despair a sudden incredible comeback.

kind of in the the Great Estuary which leads out from Antwerp and it effectively controls the waterways of Holland and Zealand. So very strategically crucial. And they They sail up to towards this port, and to their astonishment, they find that it's empty because the entire garrison has gone off fishing.

They assume that, you know, the the war is effectively over. And so for the sea beggars, this is a complete open goal. And they sail into the port and they occupy it. And they sack all the Catholic churches.

They give assurances to the inhabitants that all will be well treated except priests, monks, and papists. So that's a reassurance. Um, and they set about turning it into a rebel stronghold. And with this base, because it is so strategic, suddenly they're able to go on the offensive and they start banging in goals left, right and centre.

And specifically they confirm him in the office that Philip had originally bestowed on him. So that's the office of Stadtholder of Governor. And obviously it is slightly awkward that William's office derives from the King of Spain. But the the rebels in uh in Holland and Zealand have a kind of way round this, and their wheeze is to say that yes. William is the loyal servant of the King of Spain, and he's proving his loyalty to the King of Spain by attacking the Spanish.

And that may sound a slight stretch to people. So, how can this make sense? It's because. The pretense is that Philip doesn't know what his generals and his soldiers and his administrators are doing in his name and would be appalled if he did. So it's the classic um You know, the king doesn't know what his servants do.

still can't quite bring himself to acknowledge that he is a rebel. Because to be a rebel is the w you know, against an anointed king is the worst thing that you could possibly do. Um, you know, that's a big difference between the age of the American Revolution or the French Revolution. Yeah. I I think in the sixteenth century it's kind of

almost on the border zones of of inconceivable that you could do what William is effectively doing. And this is what makes him a kind of perfect figurehead for this revolt, which likewise isn't enti I mean it is a revolt. But it's kind of It's not a showy revolt. Sir Simon Sharmer in his brilliant book on this, The Embarrassment of Riches, if the Dutch finally espoused independence, they did so with the lowest possible profile.

So there is no equivalent of the Declaration of Independence that you get in the American Revolution. It's done in a slightly kind of crabbed well, I I suppose taciturn way. I mean that's why William the Silent is a kind of perfect leader for it. Yeah.

the Vilhelmus, the perfect anthem for this revolt. Because of course, as we've said, it's a rebel song which proclaims loyalty in its opening verse to the very king whom the rebels are fighting. That's why you have

So the first is it's something that we've been talking about a lot in this series that it's uh it's it's a gesture of appropriation. So it's a bit like the sea beggars sailing into Brill and appropriating all the Catholic churches and making them Calvinists. or the um the way in which the um the Hanoverians uh in seventeen forty five appropriate the Jacobite melody that becomes God save the king.

Uh and certainly that tells you something important about William himself and about many of the people who are rallying to his banner, because most of them are actually not hardcore Calvinists. And you've been saying all along, well remember that that William is a Catholic. William only converts to Calvinism in fifteen seventy three, so that is after the Wilhelmus has actually been written.

And William's own ambition for this new Dutch state, which he's trying to create, is that it should allow freedom of religion too, and I quote William here, Reformed and Roman Catholic in public or in private, in church or in chapel. And ultimately, as we've said, this isn't how it works out. Calvinism does become kind of enshrined as the public religion in the Dutch Revolt.

But that commitment to freedom of religion, which William was so strongly identified with, I think for that reason it does remain a very important ideal for many people in the Dutch Republic, even so. And in the seventeenth century, There are all kinds of legal fictions that can be woven. There are all kinds of blind eyes that can be turned to Catholics, say, or Quakers, or Jews, or Muslims.

practising their their own forms of religion. And they by and large can do this without harassment. People are not kind of poking their noses in. It's not like Elizabethan England where, you know, priest hunters are out looking for Jesuits or anything like that. And in fact, Amsterdam will become one of the great centres of Jewish life in the seventeenth century. You know, it will become the home of Spinoza, who isn't only

Jewish until he gets excommunicated by the uh the synagogue in Amsterdam, but will become, you know, one of the great precursors of the radical Enlightenment that comes to question the very value of religion itself. And so maybe in the Vilhelmus, the fact that you have this fusion of the Catholic and the Protestant, it's looking ahead to the kind of post Reformation state that will kind of you know is being incubated in in the Dutch Republic? Perhaps. I don't know.

kind of like this emergent state is himself a figure of paradox. And so that's why I think it's in you know so appropriate that the Dutch national anthem today is named after him. Because in all kinds of ways He's the most improbable figure to be the du the Dutch, George Washington. So to go through the list of of of of why he is not obviously a rebel leader against the King of Spain, he is.

officially a servant of the King of Spain. He is a Stadtholder appointed by Philip. He is an aristocrat. He's the Prince of Orange. He's been born a German rather than Dutch. So it's improbable, I think, that he of all men would have emerged as the kind of founding father of what becomes a very Calvinist, very anti Spanish, a very bourgeois republic in the seventeenth century.

But I think William becomes loved by the Dutch, not kind of despite the long journey that he's made over the course of his life, but because of it. They know what he's had to give up. They know the degree to which he's been on a journey.

I think he feels it it's his kind of God given duty. And ultimately he ends up a martyr to that sense of duty because on the tenth of july fifteen eighty four He was assassinated in Delft, which is a very small provincial town. You know, the great Prince of Orange has been reduced to a kind of bourgeois house in Delft. and he's cornered there by a Catholic assassin called Balthasar Gerard, and Gerard um kills uh William o of Orange because he sees him as a traitor both to the King of Spain

and to Catholicism. And, you know, there's no question that um Gerard is right. I mean, um, William had become a traitor to both Philip and to Catholicism. Um so in fifteen seventy seven the Spanish governor of the Low Country had warned Philip, Orange, so William, hates nothing more in this world than your majesty, and if he could drink your blood, he would do it. So Philip is alarmed by this and so in fifteen eighty he'd placed a bounty on William's head and

This is part of what inspires Gerard to assassinate William, you know, it's kind of offer of financial goodies. And William responds to this in turn is kind of very it's like tennis, tit for tit for tat. He responds by writing an apology in which he accuses Philip of tyranny, of subverting the traditional liberties of the Dutch, um, and just for good measure of having poisoned both his wife and his son.

And then the following July, the rebels, led by William, take the key step, the key ideological leap into the future that will lead us to the English Civil War and to the American Revolution and to the French Revolution. when they issue an act of abjuration which repudiates Philip the Second personally and all his heirs in perpetuity, and from that point on Philip's head is removed from coins, from official seals, his coat of arms is taken down from public buildings.

It's scrubbed from documents. And the pattern there, I'm sure, will be very familiar to our American listeners, the process by which previously loyal British subjects end up turning against George the Third and branding him a tyrant. Yeah.

But then Moses dies before reaching the promised land, just as William dies before the the proclamation of what will become the Dutch Republic in fifteen eighty eight. And I think this is why throughout the Dutch Republic The Vilhelmus retains its popularity. It's deployed as a marching song when going to war against the Spanish, but you know, which continues for for for decades into the seventeenth century, as a battle anthem in wars against the English and the Portuguese.

And I think just as a kind of reminder to the Dutch of what their liberty and all their incredible prosperity had cost them. That it they had really, really had to fight for it. And so they owed William the man who had made it possible.

might mutate and become something hereditary, might ultimately evolve into something overtly monarchical. And one of the reasons he fears that is that he is aware what happened in the Dutch Republic. where the heirs of William the Silent

held his office of stadtholder as a kind of hereditary office. So in in Holland, every stadtholder without exception was a member of William's dynasty. And the most famous of these um literally ends up a king and this is the guy who the the the Prince of Orange who becomes William the Third of England, of Scotland, and of course of Ireland.

And then it comes a kind of kingdom under one of Napoleon's brothers. And in that period the Vilhelmus is officially banned. And I think even after Napoleon is overthrown and the Dutch get their independence back, The Vilhelmus kind of retains the quality of the taboo. It is kind of associated with a a form of rule that they feel a bit embarrassed about. And this is despite the fact that actually the House of Orange Nassau, so the d the descendants of William the Silent.

have by this point returned to the Netherlands from exile, um, and have actually officially proclaimed themselves monarchs, which they had not previously done. So from eighteen fifteen the heirs of William the Silent rule as kings, or, as subsequently happens, as queens. But because the scars of the Revolution are so fresh,

You know, they don't want to tempt fate by saying, Well, we will have the Vilhelmus as our anthem. You know, they want to have something that is acceptable to all their subjects, including a Republicans, including people who are resentful of their dynasty. And so this is uh kind of maps onto what you were describing about the um

the search in Germany for a suitable anthem, an anthem that um, you know, can tick all the boxes. And so they hold a competition to find an anthem that is less factional than the Wilhelmus. And the winning entry um is one that everyone feels is is splendid and and uh is exactly what they need, and I will read the opening lines.

Whoever has Dutch blood flowing in their veins, free of foreign blemishes, whose heart glows for king and country, rejoice in song as we do. So what could possibly go wrong with that? Holy unexceptional. No one can complain about that.

definitely want to distinguish themselves from the nazis and so in the early 1930s 1932 to be precise so one year before the nazis come to power She decrees that Bill Helmus should for the first time be officially inscribed as the Dutch. national anthem. And this is despite the fact that it you know, it's still pretty unpopular with Dutch Republicans. Um, you know, it's seen as too royalist, too sectarian.

But actually when the Nazis invade um the Netherlands and occupy it, the Vilhelmus comes into its own. It provides the Dutch with a kind of great rallying point. Because all that stuff that you get in verse six, you know, the talk of defying tyranny, William's refusal to submit to uh to the enemy, this this becomes very moving to to people in the Dutch resistance.

And by the end of the war, even anti monarchists have taken it to their heart. And I don't think there's any great debate now in the Netherlands that Yeah, it should be removed. I mean, any Dutch listeners, if there is, let us know. But it it seems pretty kind of it's bedded down. And so it's not the oldest national anthem. But it is the oldest song to have become a national anthem. Oh, and just one further footnote. The Japanese national anthem has as its lyrics

um a poem from the tenth century. So that's the age of Lady Murasaki and say Shonigan. But the the the music is incredibly modern and the idea of using it is very modern. So the Vilhelmus definitely has that status as the oldest coherent song to be a national anthem.

about Brazil and South Africa. Uh, you can hear them right now if you're a member of the Restus History Club and if you're not a member of the club and you want to have all the amazing supplementary benefits. then head to the rest is history dot com to sign up. I'll see you next time for Brazil and South Africa and we will of course leave you with the Dutch national anthem. Bye bye. Bye bye.