to answer these questions except in the negative. Louis had
viewed his royal task as if he had been a dynastic king, which of
course he never was, though much beloved by many of his subjects. He
had moved the capital from The Hague to Amsterdam, had reformed the
Dutch jurisprudence by the introduction of the Code Napoleon, had
patronized learning and the arts. In all this he had not followed his
brother's leading, and the results were excellent. But the Dutch
merchants suffered exactly in proportion to the enforcement of the
continental blockade, riots of the unemployed became frequent, and the
King, forgetting the ladder by which he had climbed, became the friend
and the ally of his people. His fate was a natural consequence of his
conduct.

As a portion of the French empire, Holland was divided into eight
departments, her public debt was scaled down from eighty to twenty
millions, the French administration was put upon a basis of the most
rigid economy, and for the ensuing four years the Dutch found what
consolation they might for the loss of their independence and their
trade in a tolerable physical well-being, in the suppression of all
disorders, and in an enforced calm such as Louis, by reason of his
false position, had not been able to secure for them--a boon which,
it must be confessed, their placid dispositions did not undervalue.
When, however, opportunity was ripe, they bravely rose to assert once
more their nationality.

In this connection it is interesting to note the effect which the
conduct of the Emperor's family had finally produced in his mind.
Brothers and sisters alike had come to consider their changed fortunes
as having introduced them into the royal hierarchy of the old
absolutist Europe, which their narrowness and ignorance led them to
regard as still existent. Their behavior was distinctly that of the
old dynastic sovereigns, whose lives were their model. The Emperor at
last saw his mistake. "Relatives and cousins, male or female," he said
in September to Metternich, "are all worthless. I should not have left
a throne in existence, even for my brothers. But one grows wise only
with time. I should have appointed nothing but stadholders and
viceroys." This policy he thenceforward adopted. Carrying out the
threat made in response to Joseph's complaints, Spain as far as the
Ebro had been annexed to the Empire in March, 1810; in December the
whole North Sea coast as far as Luebeck was likewise inco