Mark Hay
The House of Nassau between France and Independence: Great Power Politics, Armed Forces, and Dynastic Networking
This paper deals with the Dutch military legacy of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. The transitional process from war to peace in the Netherlands differed greatly from the transitional process in other European states. Where other states were concerned with demobilization of the armed forces, the Netherlands was concerned with the reorganization of the armed forces, and in this they were hampered by shortages of manpower. To resolve the shortages of manpower, the newly established Dutch government had to walk a thin line. On the one hand, the Revolutionary and Napoleonic period had taught that, in order to safeguard the national independence of the Netherlands and the safety of its inhabitants, a reasonably large and well-organized military was required. With the integration of the newly acquired southern Low Countries, this need had become, if anything, even more pressing. On the other hand, the Dutch government had to take into account the outspoken public opposition to conscription. After all, resistance to conscription was a driving force behind the resistance to—and overthrow of—the Napoleonic regime. In the ensuing debate the Dutch authorities had to find a compromise between winning popular support for the new regime, ideas on and attitudes towards national conscription and mercenaries, and the national character of the armed forces. This compromise was finally found by reverting to methods of the Old Regime: by concluding recruitment contracts with various smaller German states, whose dynastic rulers were connected to the House of Orange, most notably the houses of Nassau—Nassau-Weilburg, Nassau-Usingen and Nassau-Oranien—but also the former Duchy of Frankfort, which had incorporated the region of Fulda, which, at one point in the early nineteenth century had been a crown domain of the House of Orange.
Mark Edward Hay received a bachelor’s degree in Dutch history from the Free University of Amsterdam, and a combined master’s degree in European history and civilization from the University of Leiden, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne, and the University of Oxford. After a short spell at the Huygens Institute for Dutch History, in The Hague, Hay started his doctoral research at King’s. The topic of his research is Dutch strategies of conflict resolution in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic period. His publications include: “The Légion Hollandaise d’Orange. Dynastic Networks, Coalition Warfare and the Formation of the Modern Netherlands, 1813–14,” which is currently under review with the Journal of Military History; “The Dutch Experience and Memory of the Campaign of 1812” in The Napoleonic Scholarship Journal; and a chapter in a Dutch edited volume dealing with the Netherlands and the War of the Sixth Coalition.
