Foreigners who have visited the Netherlands throughout the ages have not always been very complimentary about it. There’s a lot of moaning about slow barges and fat and prosperous Dutch burghers but others were happy to find refuge there and study at the prestigious Leiden university. Here are some of their impressions.
Julius Caesar He was in the Netherlands, but we haven’t even a “veni vidi vici” to show for it. Julius Caesar was in Kessel in Brabant to be precise, where he smote two Germanic tribes in 55 AD. He mentioned “Batavians living between the Maas and the Waal” in his De Bello Gallico and then went on to order not only the men but the women and children to be slaughtered.
He didn’t say much else about it but then he was busy trying to conquer Gaul. Voltaire The writer and essayist (1694-1788) travelled to the Netherlands no fewer than four times , the first time because, at age 19, he was being a pain in the behind at home and his father wanted rid of him. Nine years later, and now a pain in the French authorities’ behind, he published Le Henriade in the tolerant Netherlands.
The third time, he returned to find refuge from persecution following his Lettres Anglaises . The fourth and final time, in 1740, he came to purloin, by hook or by crook, a manuscript written by his friend Frederik II containing indiscretions. On leaving with a flea in his ear and smarting from the deceit of his Dutch publisher Van Duren he said the far from complimentary: “A.