#to be fair the relief of the siege is still celebrated today even tho it happened like 400 years ago so it is kind of a big deal but yea

[saviourkingslut]

for the 🔥 game @garlandgerard sent me this:

BULLSEYE, this guy's one of my favourite historical blorbos bc i have a huge soft spot for him

for those unfamiliar with this man, he was a younger brother of napoleon bonaparte, and the very first king of the netherlands! to briefly give some context, the netherlands had been the dutch republic for ages, and then after a 1794 revolution (aided by france) it briefly became the 'batavian republic'. however, that very revolution meant that though the republic was technically still independent, french troops were posted all over the country, and the republic had to send more and more money and troops to france and started feeling french repression more and more, because napoleon was busy conquering all of europe and imposing his will everywhere he went. and then in 1806 he decided that actually, enough was enough, and made his younger brother louis napoleon king of the 'kingdom of holland', thereby instating a monarchy in a country that hadn't seen a king since the late sixteenth century or so.

now why would this first king of the netherlands (let's not forget, a FRENCHMAN) be one of my favourite guys of all time, you ask? because louis napoléon bonaparte developed a soft spot for the country and the people he came to rule and took his task seriously. he took lessons under two dutch lawyer-poets to learn the language and soon had himself be called 'lodewijk', the dutch version of 'louis'. he travelled the country not just to arouse sympathy (because he was a foreign king who'd been forced on the people) but also because he genuinely cared. when many people in one particular province caught the 'sweating sickness', he visited patients, had a doctor come over from another province and had the proper medicine be delivered. he assisted during a cholera epidemic that broke out in another village. he tried to solve problems by talking about them and searching for compromise.

the definitive moment that the dutch people really started to accept lodewijk was in 1807, when a transport ship loaded with gunpowder exploded in the middle of the city of leiden, wiping hundreds of houses clean off the face of the earth. the king immediately came to visit the city that very same day, deployed the royal guard to help with cleaning the rubble, had his own court surgeon come over and had the one of his palaces in the hague transformed in a temporary hospital for the victims. he forbade the transport of gunpowder through cities to prevent anything like this from happening in the future and set up a fund for disasters like these to which he donated 30.000 guilders - and this isn't even everything he did to help out with the disaster. you can imagine the dutch populace welcomed him with open arms after that. and then in 1809, when parts of a province flooded to the extent that entire villages just disappeared, the king allegedly helped stack sacks of sand himself. obviously he used the things he did to create some real good propaganda to ingratiate himself with the people, but i think at that point he'd earned it.

now historians thought for a long while that lodewijk was just an extension of napoleon and wasn't really a king in his own right, but lately we've come to have a more nuanced view of him that shows that he did not always follow his elder brother's orders to the letter. the longer he was there, the more lodewijk tried to rule the kingdom of holland his own way, to the displeasure of napoleon, who got mad at him bc he thought lodewijk was prioritising dutch needs over french needs. when lodewijk had to impose the french code civil, he created a new version partly based on existing dutch law. he didn't want to send his brother the number of soldiers he demanded. he didn't want to impose the continental system, which forbade trade with the british, and only acted mildly against smugglers. in the end napoleon basically deposed him in 1810 and made the netherlands a province of france (not so good few years)

obviously lodewijk wasn't perfect - for one he spent a lot of money on himself and lived extravagantly #thefrench - but i think he's a fascinating man who overall had a good heart and good intentions. it's kind of a shame that he's one of the most ignored people in the history of the netherlands because he was 1) french and we don't like to think that our first king was french and 2) his rule was super short and 3) he was imposed and not a member of the current royal family who have been the royals since 1814. i think there's one monument to him in the whole ass country. we celebrated 200 years of monarchy in 2014 because we don't count his reign. that's partly because after 1810 the netherlands became a literal part of france (so napoleon was like. our emperor ig) so you can't really include it and claim continuous monarchy bc of that interruption but it also means that we just ignore lodewijk. i think he deserves better.