ty. Count Styrum, Messieurs Repelaer
d'Jonge, Van Hogendorp, Vander Duyn van Maasdam, and Changuion,
were the chiefs of the intrepid junta which planned and executed
the bold measures of enfranchisement, and drew up the outlines
of the constitution which was afterward enlarged and ratified.
Their first movements at The Hague were totally unsupported by
foreign aid. Their early checks from the exasperated French and
their overcautious countrymen would have deterred most men embarked
in so perilous a venture; but they never swerved nor shrank back.
At the head of a force, which courtesy and policy called an army,
of three hundred national guards badly armed, fifty citizens
carrying fowling-pieces, fifty soldiers of the old Dutch guard,
four hundred auxiliary citizens armed with pikes, and a cavalry
force of twenty young men, the confederates oddly proclaimed
the Prince of Orange, on the 17th of November, 1813, in their
open village of The Hague, and in the teeth of a French force of
full ten thousand men, occupying every fortress in the country.

While a few gentlemen thus boldly came forward, at their own
risk, with no funds but their private fortunes, and only aided by
an unarmed populace, to declare war against the French emperor,
they did not even know the residence of the exiled prince in
whose cause they were now so completely compromised. The other
towns of Holland were in a state of the greatest incertitude:
Rotterdam had not moved; and the intentions of Admiral Kickert,
who commanded there, were (mistakenly) supposed to be decidedly
hostile to the national cause. Amsterdam had, on the preceding
day, been the scene of a popular commotion, which, however, bore
no decided character; the rioters having been fired on by the
national guard, no leader coming forward, and the proclamation
of the magistrates cautiously abstaining from any allusion to
the Prince of Orange. A brave officer, Captain Falck, had made
use of many strong but inefficient arguments to prevail on the
timid corporation to declare for the prince; the presence of
a French garrison of sixty men seeming sufficient to preserve
their patriotism from any violent excess.

The subsequent events at The Hague furnish an inspiring lesson for
all people who would learn that to be free they must be resolute
and daring. The only hope of the confederates was from the British
government, and the combined armies then acting in the north of
Europe. But many days w