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Updated: July 19, 2025
He was a man of strong and somewhat narrow views, but during his reign of 41 years his sincere love for his country was never in doubt, nor did he lose popularity by his anti-liberal attitude on many occasions, for it was known to arise from honest conviction; and it was amidst general regret that the last male representative of the House of Orange-Nassau was laid in his grave.
The conditions under which the Belgian province of Luxemburg was created, by the Treaty of Vienna in 1815, a grand-duchy under the sovereignty of the head of the House of Orange-Nassau with succession in default of heirs-male by the family compact, known as the Nassauischer Erbverein, to the nearest male agnate of the elder branch of the Nassau family, have already been related.
This much of predestination he did know, that if the Advocate and his friends were to come to open conflict with the Prince of Orange-Nassau, the conqueror of Nieuwpoort, it was predestined to go hard with the Advocate and his friends. The theological quibble did not interest him much, and he was apt to blunder about it.
He then alluded to the publication with which the country was ringing, 'The Necessary and Living Discourse of a Spanish Counsellor', and which was attributed to his former confidential friend, now become his deadliest foe, ex-Ambassador Francis Aerssens, and warned the Prince that if he chose, which God forbid, to follow the advice of that seditious libel, nothing but ruin to the beloved Fatherland and its lovers, to the princely house of Orange-Nassau and to the Christian religion could be the issue.
He had repeatedly refused enormous offers if he would forsake the cause of the republic. The King of France was ever ready to tempt him with bribes, such as had proved most efficacious with men as highly born and as highly placed as a cadet of the house of Orange-Nassau.
Maurice was indignant that a Catholic, an outcast, and, as it was supposed, a bastard, should dare to mate with the daughter of William of Orange-Nassau; and there were many scenes of tenderness, reproaches, recriminations, and 'hysterica passio, in which not only the lovers, the stadholder and his family, but also the high and mighty States-General, were obliged to enact their parts.
The Republic was neither venerable by age nor impregnable in law. It was an improvised aristocracy of lawyers, manufacturers, bankers, and corporations which had done immense work and exhibited astonishing sagacity and courage, but which might never have achieved the independence of the Provinces unaided by the sword of Orange-Nassau and the magic spell which belonged to that name.
For the Belgians had no liking for the rule of the House of Orange-Nassau against which they had discontentedly struggled for some years more or less openly. But matters might have gone on thus indefinitely had not the French Revolution furnished ground for hope of support from a people akin in religion and language, as well as race.
With the death of William III the male line of the House of Orange-Nassau became extinct; and the succession passed to Adolphus, Duke of Nassau-Weilburg. By the treaty of April 19, 1839, the Walloon portion of Luxemburg became part of the kingdom of Belgium, but in exchange for this cession the grand-duke obtained the sovereignty of a strip of the Belgian province of Limburg.
It was at this period that Van der Capellen and others started a most violent press campaign not only against the stadholder, but against the hereditary stadholdership and all that the house of Orange-Nassau stood for in the history of the Dutch Republic. Brunswick was attacked with especial virulence.
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