historical and political thought in the seventeenth - RePub - Erasmus ...

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Chapter 5. Times of trouble. Taking a stand
tives. Yet his triumph had not been complete, and both the stadholder and his
opponents in the States of Holland were waiting in dear anticipation of what
the other party would do next. 162 William’s sudden death on November 6,
however, changed everything.
Clearly, Boxhorn had not foreseen all these events when he first drafted
the Commentariolus in the early 1640s, nor did anyone thought about them in
1649 when the Commentariolus was first published. In the Commentariolus the
Dutch Republic is first and foremost depicted as an alliance between seven
independent provinces, which, out of necessity, agreed that they would do
certain matters in common for their mutual common good. To accomplish
these matters, they somehow needed to find a way to reconcile their internal
differences and work together. The Union of Utrecht had laid down the
principles that this process of reconciliation should follow and what to do in
case an agreement was not forthcoming. The Commentariolus does not seem
to call the principle of provincial sovereignty into question; Boxhorn makes it
perfectly clear that the supreme power to command is ‘with the States of each
province’ and that within the Union they have ‘the same power of authority’.
Furthermore, although the offices and the purposes of stadholder and
captain-general are not called into question, they are servants who owe obedience
to their surperiors, respectively the provincial States and the States
General. The problem, of course, is that here also there are conflicts between
the demands of the Union and the rights of the provinces, and these conflicts
the Commentariolus leaves unchallenged.
Yet, in the case that a choice has to be made between the common good of
the individual provinces and the common good of the Union, it seems that in
the Commentariolus the advance tilts towards the overriding common good of
the Union. If a majority in the States General could indeed dictate the right
interpretation of the Union, then that ambiguous and in practice loose confederate
structure that gave the Dutch Republic so much of its vigour could be
tightened and clarified in a way that would benefit the majority at the expense
of provincial autonomy. 163 Furthermore, in the specific case of the command
of the army, the Commentariolus is clear who held the highest power: ‘The
162 On August 18 the States General adopted a resolution concerning the reduction of the army; the
figure was set for the military forces William wanted, but those units that would be dismissed would
be foreign units, a compromise William had to accept. Eight days later, on August 26, ‘the Delegated
Councilors of Holland decided to oppose William’s endeavor to force Dutch mediation upon Spain as
well as France’, since they feared that it would force Spain to refute this mediation, which William could
then use as a pretext for war. Rowen, The Princes of Orange, pp. 91-92, with quote on p. 91.
163 Price, Holland and the Dutch Republic, p. 3, and Prak, The Dutch Republic in the Seventeenth Century,
p. 272.