32.3 Europe: a.d. 1701 to 1800  (Page 16/28)

William of Orange, also king of England, died in 1702 without children and that ended the direct line of the House of Orange. The office of stadtholder and commander-in chief was allowed to pass into obeyance and Marlborough of England was appointed Deputy Captain-General of Holland. In 1704, with Holland's consent, that Duke of Marlborough penetrated Germany clear to the Danube just north of Munich, with British paid soldiers. At that point he joined forces with armies of Eugene of Savoy and Austria. The purpose was to strike at Bavaria, which was then an ally of France, and then take Vienna. In the great battle of Blenheim, the French lost 40,000 men and the terror of the French armies was broken. At home the Dutch Republic finally succumbed under the financial burden of protecting itself during the coalition wars against Louis XIV. Bearing the lion's share of the Anglo-Dutch army between 1689 and 1713, it had to abandon naval superiority to the English. After the Peace of Utrecht (1713) England reaped the profits of the opening up of Spanish America and the Dutch sank to the level of a second rate power. Again in 1743, however, the Hollanders had to join England and Austria against Russia and France, because of direct threats by France in the Austrian Netherlands. Holland's small population and scant natural resources were inadequate to support the status of a great power for long. By 1784 there was a three-way struggle going on in Holland for control. The middle class and the patrician families, who controlled the Estates General, were trying to eliminate a great part of the traditional powers of the stadtholder. In 1787 Prussian troops intervened and restored the stadtholder to even greater powers than before. (Ref. 8 )

When the French revolutionists moved into Holland, however, Dutch independence was lost as the French took Amsterdam (1795) while the Dutch fleet was captured while it lay frozen in harbor ice.

The greatest intellectual achievement in Holland in this century was probably in medicine. The medical school at Leiden had two of the great teachers of the times in Hermann Boerhaave and the anatomist Bernhard Siegfried Albinus. Their students became the leaders in the profession all over Europe. (Ref. 125 )

The Treaty of Utrecht, which ended the War of the Spanish Succession in 1713 also ended a long series of Spanish-French wars over Belgium and that country then went under Austrian Habsburg rule as part of the Holy Roman Empire. Economic recovery followed so that by 1787 the people felt strong enough to revolt against Emperor Joseph II and the Republic of the United Belgian Provinces was formed in 1790. In the same year, however, the emperor re-conquered the country. After the French Revolution, Belgium was incorporated into France (1799) in spite of resistance of Hanoverian, Prussian, Austrian, and Hessian forces.

British isles

England and wales

The population of England and Wales grew to over 9 million by the end of this century. (Ref. 279 ) With the death of King William in 1702, Mary's sister Anne reigned until 1714 in a time known as the Augustan Age of England, because of the literature of Pope, Swift, Addison and others. This was also the time when the Duke of Marlborough defeated a French army in part of the War of the Spanish Succession, in which England gained Gibralter, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. Parliament became the supreme power in the state and on Anne's death, decided to pick a less competent monarch, choosing the Elector of Hanover, George I, who could speak no English and would not learn to do so. He spent most of his time in Hanover and there was no love shared between him and the English people. The Great Northern War was in progress and George I decided that Sweden must make peace with Denmark and the German states so that then they could drive Russia from the Baltic. After English money and the Royal Navy had induced a Swedish-Danish peace treaty on July 3, 1720, a large armada was sent into the Baltic, but never did actually engage in battle. The British involvement faded when the South Sea Company and its stock collapsed, as will be described in a later paragraph. It was at that time that Sir Robert Walpole, the Whig leader and the first prime minister and master politician, used adroit maneuvers to solve the financial crisis. (Ref. 131 ) The monarchy and the House of Commons both lost power at that time as the House of Lords ruled England.