Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 21, 2025
Less than three weeks afterwards the States-General issued a decree formally disbanding the Waartgelders; an almost superfluous edict, as they had almost ceased to exist, and there were none to resist the measure. Grotius recommended complete acquiescence. Barneveld's soul could no longer animate with courage a whole people.
Impartial persons, he thought, considered it a superfluous proceeding now that the Synod had been voted and the Waartgelders disbanded. While he was writing his despatch, the Stadholder came to call upon him, attended by his cousin Count Lewis William.
"I send you the last declaration of My Lords of Holland," he said to Caron, "in regard to the National Synod, with the counter-declaration of Dordtrecht and the other five cities. Yesterday was begun the debate about cashiering the enrolled soldiers called Waartgelders. To-day the late M. van Kereburg was buried." Nothing could be calmer than his tone.
"As for the Waartgelders," he continued, "they are worse than Spanish fortresses. They must away." After a little further conversation in this vein the Prince grew more excited. "Everything is the fault of the Advocate," he cried. "If Barneveld were dead," replied Grotius, "all the rest of us would still deem ourselves bound to maintain the laws.
He stated in strong language the regret felt by Holland that a majority of the States of Utrecht had determined to disband the Waartgelders which had been constitutionally enlisted according to the right of each province under the 1st Article of the Union of Utrecht to protect itself and its laws.
Impartial persons, he thought, considered it a superfluous proceeding now that the Synod had been voted and the Waartgelders disbanded. While he was writing his despatch, the Stadholder came to call upon him, attended by his cousin Count Lewis William.
The enrolling of the Waartgelders was an armed protest, a symbol of legal conviction rather than a serious effort to resist the general government. And this is the chief justification of his course from a political point of view.
Charter-books, parchments, 13th Articles, Barneveld's teeth, Arminian forts, flowery orations of Grotius, tavern talk of van Ostrum, city immunities, States' rights, provincial laws, Waartgelders and all the martial Stadholder, with the orange plume in his hat and the sword of Nieuwpoort on his thigh, strode through them as easily as through the whirligigs and mountebanks, the wades and fritters, encumbering the streets of Utrecht on the night of his arrival.
After the Waartgelders had been disbanded, Utrecht revolutionized by main force, the National Synod decided upon, and the process of changing the municipal magistracies everywhere in the interest of Contra-Remonstrants begun, he continued to urge moderation and respect for law. Even now, although discouraged, he was not despondent, and was disposed to make the best even of the Synod.
The Prince sternly replied in very few words that the National Synod was a settled matter, that he would never draw back from his position, and could not do so without singular disservice to the country and to his own disreputation. He expressed his displeasure at the particular oath exacted from the Waartgelders.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking