A Brill Calendar: February 25

A Napoleonic Malaise

Few cities in Holland were laid so low during the Napoleonic Era than Leyden.

Not only had Bonaparte’s continental system and an insatiable craving of Imperial Armies for men and resources like woven fabrics, life-stock and food taken their toll year after year; but also the unparalleled gunpowder disaster - annihilating a large part of Leyden’s urban heart in 1807 and an eclipse of scholarly and economic activity, (associated directly and indirectly with the municipal University) - was added to misery and apathy.

When in October 1813 ‘The Battle of the Nations’ near Leipzig convinced Europe that there would be life without and after the stupendous Corsican, and a new Prince of Orange arrived in the country promptly that November, it was obvious that a myriad of practical measures and political decisions had to be taken. In 1814 – the year before Napoleon made an obscure village south of Brussels, (Waterloo), proverbial - Willem, acting as a Sovereign, appointed a Cabinet Commission for restoring higher education.

This act demonstrated the high ideals and great expectations entertained by His Majesty with regard to the task of a national Academia. An analysis of the situation in Leyden was given, some ninety years later, in 1925 by the historian Johan Huizinga (1872 – 1945), who had already published his widely read and internationally acclaimed chef-d’oeuvre, ‘The Waning of the Middle Ages’. Occasioned by the 350th anniversary of the University where he had been Professor since 1915, he authored for the ‘Festschrift’ - the contributed volume ‘Pallas Leidensis MCMXXV’ (Leiden, S. C. van Doesburgh) - an essay on Leyden’s academic buildings (pp 19 – 36).

It is seldom that a seemingly domestic subject is discussed with a birds-eye view ranging so widely. Huizinga’s observation, almost in passing, that the Royal Decree of February 25, 1817 proved the far-sightedness of King Willem I to do away with the ‘spirit of 1807’ – for instance – remains astute.