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of his rights in my respect. Once independent of his brother, meanwhile, he need no longer have any fear for his own position.’20 Desperate to gain acceptance by his new subjects and weighed down by personal misfortune - in addition to his unhappy marriage, he also suffered from syphilis and acute rheumatoid arthritis - he also had more of a conscience than most of the Bonaparte clan. And finally, had not the Batavian Republic’s representatives in Paris begged for him to be made king? As far as he was concerned, then, he was a Dutch ruler who should genuinely try to do the best for his people. Quick to learn Dutch, he filled his court with prominent local notables, created two new orders of nobility and took the constitution seriously. The Dutch national assembly met regularly and was allowed a considerable degree of independence, and Louis showed great zeal in informing himself of the state of the kingdom. Not surprisingly, he was soon attempting to shield Holland from Napoleon’s insatiable demands for men, money and the imposition of the Civil Code. If Holland was to be kept in line, he reasoned, a real effort must be made to respect its traditions and sense of identity.

If anything gives the lie to the image of a Napoleon concerned for the welfare of the peoples of Europe, it is his response to Louis Bonaparte. If Louis needed money, for example, it was Holland that should provide it, though Napoleon’s only positive suggestion here - other than to increase taxation - was that Louis take the politically impossible step of repudiating the ever-rising national debt. As for the Dutch, they should be treated with exactly the same iron fist as everyone else. By 1807 Napoleon was demanding the imposition of conscription even though Holland was guaranteed exemption from this burden by the treaty that had brought Louis to power. As the emperor told Louis, ‘You attach too high a price to popularity in Holland. Before being kind you must be master.’21 Similar thinking applied to the Civil Code. What mattered here was absolute uniformity: ‘If you amend the Code Napoléon, it will no longer be the Code Napoléon.’22 The harder Napoleon pressed on these issues, the more Louis dragged his feet. Conscription was never imposed and the national debt left unrepudiated, while it was not until the spring of 1809 that the Civil Code was introduced, and even then it appeared in a form that was much amended. Had trouble been restricted to matters of this sort, Louis would probably have survived on the throne: Napoleon still had sufficient trust in him to make him his first choice as king of Spain. But Holland was not performing efficiently as an ally: the navy remained moribund; the army distinguished itself neither in 1806 nor 1809; and finally, Holland was one of the weakest links in the Continental Blockade. As Napoleon made very clear, this was completely unacceptable to him:

All my hopes have been deceived. The moment Your Majesty ascended the throne of Holland, you forgot that you were a Frenchman; ever since, you have . . . stretched your reason to breaking point in the endeavour to persuade yourself that you are a Dutchman . . . You have broken all the treaties you made with me. You have disarmed your fleets, dismissed your sailors, and disorganized your armies, so that Holland finds herself without armed forces on land or sea . . . Your Majesty will find in me a brother, if I find in you a Frenchman. But, if you forget the feelings that attach us both to our fatherland, you must not take it ill of me if I also forget those by which nature has attached us to one another.23

Confronted with Napoleon’s anger, Louis had no alternative but to take action, but there were limits to what he could do, and by the end of the 1809 emperor was determined to take matters into his own hands. Thus, Walcheren and a number of neighbouring islands were annexed to France, and the French troops sent to Holland to help repel the British were reinforced and ordered to occupy a number of towns in the south of the country. As for Louis, he was told