oor, not
a fisherman, not an artisan, in the crowds which lined the road from
Honslaerdyk to the Hague, whose heart did not swell with pride at the
thought that the first minister of Holland had become a great King,
had freed the English, and had conquered the Irish. It would have been
madness in William to travel from Hampton Court to Westminster without
a guard; but in his own land he needed no swords or carbines to defend
him. "Do not keep the people off;" he cried: "let them come close to
me; they are all my good friends." He soon learned that sumptuous
preparations were making for his entrance into the Hague. At first he
murmured and objected. He detested, he said, noise and display. The
necessary cost of the war was quite heavy enough. He hoped that his kind
fellow townsmen would consider him as a neighbour, born and bred
among them, and would not pay him so bad a compliment as to treat him
ceremoniously. But all his expostulations were vain. The Hollanders,
simple and parsimonious as their ordinary habits were, had set their
hearts on giving their illustrious countryman a reception suited to his
dignity and to his merit; and he found it necessary to yield. On the day
of his triumph the concourse was immense. All the wheeled carriages
and horses of the province were too few for the multitude of those who
flocked to the show. Many thousands came sliding or skating along the
frozen canals from Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Leyden, Haarlem, Delft. At ten
in the morning of the twenty-sixth of January, the great bell of the
Town House gave the signal. Sixteen hundred substantial burghers, well
armed, and clad in the finest dresses which were to be found in
the recesses of their wardrobes, kept order in the crowded streets.
Balconies and scaffolds, embowered in evergreens and hung with tapestry,
hid the windows. The royal coach, escorted by an army of halberdiers
and running footmen, and followed by a long train of splendid equipages,
passed under numerous arches rich with carving and painting, amidst
incessant shouts of "Long live the King our Stadtholder." The front of
the Town House and the whole circuit of the marketplace were in a blaze
with brilliant colours. Civic crowns, trophies, emblems of arts, of
sciences, of commerce and of agriculture, appeared every where. In one
place William saw portrayed the glorious actions of his ancestors. There
was the silent prince, the founder of the Batavian commonwealth, passing
the Meu