The Rest Is History - 680. The Netherlands: The Revolt that Made The Modern World (Part 4)

Episode Date: June 17, 2026

How is the Dutch national anthem, that has its origins during a 1568 siege of a French city, connected to the Dutch Revolt? What is the revolt’s role in the birth of modernity? And, why does it say ‘to the King of Spain I’ve granted a lifelong loyalty’? Join Tom and Dominic as they discuss the national anthem with the deepest history, the Wilhelmus. Join The Rest Is History Club: Unlock the full experience of the show – with exclusive bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to every series and live show tickets, a members-only newsletter, discounted books from the show, and access to our private Discord chatroom. Sign up directly at the⁠⁠restishistory.com⁠⁠. Father’s Day discounted gift memberships available here. Treat your dad to ad-free listening, early access to full series, bonus episodes, and much more. To read our new newsletter, sign up at: ⁠⁠therestishistory.com/newsletters⁠⁠ _______ Advertise with us: ⁠[e-mail]⁠ _______ Lloyds. 250 years on and still backing the nation's aspirations. _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Video Editors: Jack Meek, Harry Swan + Adam Thornton  Social Producer: Harry Balden Producers: Tabby Syrett & Aaliyah Akude  Senior Producer: Callum Hill   Executive Producer: Dom Johnson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Lloyd's business and commercial banking. One of the great things about finance is that it may result in you having to pay tax. And this was a constant grumble in Anglo-Saxon England, which was the most heavily taxed country in the whole of Christendom. And just when the Anglo-Saxons thought it couldn't get any worse, they got conquered by King Canute. And Canute imposed a tax rate that was effectively... 100%. Yeah, well, that was one very big change, Tom, but another tax change is upon us. And this is the advent of making tax digital for income tax. And if you're at all concerned about it, this is where Lloyd's come in, because they're here to help make that change much simpler

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a new fit that moves with you. It's everything you want denim to feel like for summer. Easy, breathable, and effortlessly cool. with a fit that creates natural movement and a wide leg that feels modern, not overwhelming. Plus, that signature, wait, for this price, moment. Old Navy's drapy denim wide leg. Hello, everybody. So that all-time banger was Het Wilhelmus, the national anthem of Holland,

or as it should be called, the Kingdom of the Netherlands. And if you enjoyed it, if you're a big fan of the Orange National Team, I have tremendous news for you because there are another 14 verses. Now, Tom, obviously this is an anthem close to your heart because of your nominative determinism. We've done three anthems so far. We've done the United States. We have done Great Britain. And we have done Germany.

Very well known, I think, all these three. If you're Dutch, this will be well known too. If you're not Dutch, probably much less well known. But there is a case, isn't there, that of all the world's now, national anthems, even though this was only adopted in 1932, this has the deepest, the longest, the richest history. Yeah, because it has actually been the great anthem of Dutch patriotism for four and a half centuries, so long, long before it became enshrined as the Dutch national anthem. And I will quote from the official website of the Royal House of the Netherlands, which has a very convenient English translation, the melland. the melody of the Wilhelmus originated during the siege of the French city of Chartre in 1568.

So listeners may be wondering why Chartre, who composed it. And we will be coming to this later in the episode. And the website then goes on to say the first known reference to the lyrics dates from 1572. And so there we have it, direct from the Dutch Raw family, the Wilhelmus originated sometime between 1568 and 1572. So that is, you know, compared, say, to God Save the King, that is very, very precise. And those dates, not coincidentally, constitute a key fulcrum point in one of history's absolutely top revolts, the Dutch Revolt. So why is the Dutch Revolt one of history's absolutely top revolts?

Well, I think for a number of reasons. Firstly, it is very seismic in terms of the geopolitics of Europe. It erupts in the 1560s, and it precipitates what will ultimately become an 80-year war between the Dutch rebels and the Spanish, who are the colonial power in the low countries. And this makes it one of the longest and most sustained independent struggles in the whole of European history. And it's an incredible kind of David and Goliath story, because it begins with a rag-bag assortment of pirates, taking on, the professional armies of the greatest empire on the face of the earth at the time. And the consequences of the success of those rebels are still with us today and imprinted on the map of Europe.

So the northern half of the low countries that were ruled by Spain in the 16th century, they won their independence from Spain. And today they constitute the kingdom of the Netherlands and to simplify massively, they're kind of the Protestant half. And the southern half, that remained under the rule of the Spanish royal dynasty, the Habsburgs, and today constitutes the kingdom of the Belgians. And again, to oversimplify, that's kind of vaguely the Catholic half. But the Dutch revolt is not just a European event, is it?

It's a world event, because the Dutch revolt is you can trace a lineage. And, you know, there are Dutch and indeed American historians who have done this. You can trace the lineage right through from the Dutch revolt of the, the 16th century, the English revolutions of the 17th century to the American Revolution that is celebrating its 250th anniversary this year. Yeah, and the founding fathers certainly believed that they look to the Dutch Revolt as a great source of inspiration. You can see why, because it's a revolt that ends up replacing an imperial monarchy with

a kind of federal republic. And this federal republic, it comes into existence in 1588, and it gives itself the name of the United Provinces of the Netherlands. So you can see why that story would have a resonance with Washington and Hamilton and Jefferson and so on. I don't think it is an exaggeration to see the state that emerges from these rebellious provinces. It becomes the Dutch Republic. And over the course of the 17th century, I think it constitutes one of the great incubators of modernity. So it's the birthplace of modern capitalism. You get, you know, it gives us stock exchanges and deposit banking and futures and options and

all these kind of various financial gizmos. I don't really know what they mean. I was going to say, we should actually explain about futures and options and how they work. Let's leave that for the rest is money. Okay, fair. I mean, certainly it helps the Dutch of the Republic to become incredibly rich. So considering how small they are relative to the other, you know, to China or India or whatever, I mean, it ends up controlling an insanely large percentage of the total.

total volume of global trade. And the Dutch Republic is per capita by far the richest state on the face of the planet in the 17th century. It's also very modern in the way that it kind of gives birth to kind of traditions of religious toleration that are underground. They're not official, but they're definitely there. And those traditions in turn give birth to kind of religious skepticism, which in turn kind of flourishes in the form of the Enlightenment. it's a very urbanized society. So 60% of the population in Holland live in cities. I mean, that's an enormous amount for the period.

And it's a culture, and again, this is appealing, I think, to the American revolutionaries. It's a culture that isn't aristocratic, but very bourgeois. And if you think of the great masterpieces of the Dutch Golden Age, say Vermeer, it's very interior, it's very domestic, it's very comfortable, it's very ordered. So this, the Dutch Republic, the Republic of Vermeer and Rembrandt and the beautiful canals of Amsterdam and all of that, this is the state that emerges from the Dutch revolt. And the man who is most associated with the Dutch revolt is George Washington, you might say, although this man, I think, has his own teeth and doesn't walk around with other people's teeth in his mouth. The sort of the independence hero, he is the man at the center of this song, isn't he? the song is the, I'm tempted to say the Darth Vader, but it's actually the Vada des

Fadalands, the father of the fatherland. So he is the founding, I mean, he is the founding father, no other way of putting it. And Tom, I know your Dutch is second to none. So would you like to translate that first verse for us? This is, I have to confess, taken from the Dutch royal family's website again. And the words that we heard at the start of this show translated our William of Nassau, skion of a Dutch and ancient line, I dedicate undying faith to this land of mine. A prince I am undaunted of orange ever free to the king of Spain I've granted a lifelong loyalty. And people listening to that if they're not familiar with the Wilhelmers. I mean, they may well have listened to those last two lines and kind of gone, what?

I know. That's absolutely mad. What is happening here? Because just to repeat them, it's to the king of Spain, I've granted a lifelong loyalty. And these must surely be the strangest lines to appear in any national anthem, I would think. Yeah, definitely. What makes it odder is that the guy who is supposedly speaking and who gives his name to the song, William of Nassau, he is the great hero of the Dutch Revolt. He's saying, this is the George Washington of Dutch independence.

and he is the man who is leading the fight against the King of Spain. So it's as though the Americans had a national anthem and featured in its first verse George Washington pledging allegiance to George the third. Some people might consider that an improvement, of course. Well, it's a lost opportunity, of course. So what is going on here? Why is William the great hero of the Dutch resistance pledging his loyalty to the King of Spain? And to answer that question, I think we need to look at two different

aspects of this story for the background. And the first is the state of the low countries in the mid-16th century when the revolt breaks out. And then secondly, the life and the character of the Prince of Orange, William of Nassau, this great hero of the Dutch Revolt. So let's start with the low countries. So you said before, the low countries cover what are now the Netherlands or Holland and Belgium. There's a little bit of northern. than France, isn't there? Just a little bit of Artouin and Piccaddy. And Luxembourg, I forgot Luxembourg. Oh, that's sad. So there are two main bits, aren't there, of the low countries to worry about. There's basically what becomes Belgium and then what becomes the sort of heartland of Holland. So talk us through these. Back in the mid-16th century, this territory constitutes 17 distinctive provinces and they're divided up, as you said, basically into two halves. And the southern heartland, um, is made up of a province that we've been talking about in the First World War, so Flanders. There's also Brabant to the north. That's where Antwerp is situated.

And in the 16th century, this is home to very rich and sophisticated cities. So Antwerp is the greatest. You've also got Ghent, you've got Bruges. These are beautiful cities now that you go to on kind of weekend breaks. you know, if you're looking for a place to have a stag do or something. But back then, they were the beating heart of kind of capitalism as it is starting to emerge. And then to the north you have a second heartland. And these are constituted of the largest province is Holland. You also have Zeeland, you have Utrecht.

And Holland especially is a province that has kind of been redeemed from the seas and the bogs and the lakes. and it is crisscrossed by rivers, by canals, by drainage channels, and all around it are dikes which keep the sea at bay. And an English writer in the 17th century described Holland as the great bog of Europe. Indeed, it is the buttock of the world, full of veins and blood, but no bones in it. and the province of Zealand is even more kind of surrounded by water because it's an archipelago, so a series of islands set in a great estuary that is meeting the North Sea. And on top of that, Holland and Zealand are cut off from the southern provinces by four great rivers,

one of which is the mass that we were talking about in our episode on Germany. And these four rivers all meet in the same delta, and they are surrounded by marshes. So in effect, they constitute a kind of massive moat. So essentially, they are more readily defensible, perhaps, than the southern provinces. And these provinces have their own individual identities, their own system. They have their own institutions, right? Yes, they have their own kind of legal frameworks, their own fiscal arrangements. They often have charters reaching back centuries of which they're inordinately proud.

And this is especially the case in Flanders and Brabant. the cities there tend to have their own kind of privileges which they guard very, very jealously. And in fact, across the whole of these 17 provinces that constitute the low countries, there are about 700 different legal codes in all. So it is very, very fragmented. Then you also have different languages. So you have French in the southern provinces. You have Dutch in the northern and central provinces. In Frisia, people are speaking Frisians, which is the language closest to English. Some people are speaking German as well. And then this is the mid-16th century, so it's the heyday of the Reformation. And so there are kind of religious tensions and differences

as well. And Protestantism has spread like wildfire across all the 17 provinces. And this unlike in England, where it's been very much imposed by the Tudor monarchy, Henry the 8th, and Edward the 6th and Elizabeth I. In the low countries, this is much more of a kind of top up. It doesn't have official sponsorship from the top. And the consequence of this is that there isn't anyone to impose any sense of control. So all these kind of various sects and factions is very, very wild west. Because although obviously they're happy to protest against Catholicism, there isn't any sense of coherence.

They all have kind of different views on what really matters. Now that said, by the middle of the 16th century, there is one particular brand of Protestantism, which is starting to emerge as the dominant. And this is what will become known as Calvinism, named after Jean Calvin, this great reformer. And he has kind of instituted this very disciplined, self-governing kind of church structure. And so Calvinism far more than the other sects can provide Protestants with, yeah, kind of, sense of coherence, really, a sense of structure that exists outside the structures of the organised state. So to quote Jonathan Israel, he's written the definitive book on the history of the Dutch Republic. Those this made by the profusion of reformations around them found the

antidote for which they thirsted in Calvin. And so the character of the revolt as it emerges will be largely Calvinist. You made the point about the fragmentation, the 700 different legal codes, different languages and so on. But there are definitely commonalities across the low countries, aren't there? I mean, more frankly, you see them today when you visit in architecturally or culturally or whatever. And that's the case even back in the 16th century. There's more, well, not more, but there are a lot of things that unite the people of these, what become Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg. And there are often kind of continuities with the low countries to this day. So they're famous for their beer, whether it's Amstall in the Netherlands or all those

trappist beers in Belgium. Love a Belgian beer. And the average daily consumption back then was seen as being enormous even by English visitors. So they were stunned that adults were drinking three pints of beer a day. And I don't think this was just the weak beer. I mean, this was kind of proper, proper alcoholic beer. And again, a bit like today, the women were famous for their kind of cleanliness. This is a theme that runs throughout the Dutch Republic and into the present day.

The Dutch are famously obsessed with cleanliness. but also they were notorious for wearing mini skirts. And in the 16th century, this meant skirts that came down to the ankles. So very shocking. Yeah, unbelievable. So simultaneously, cleanly, but of a little hint of licentious. Licentiousness. The men are seen as being astoundingly tall.

So many are over six foot. And again, you know, visitors find this astonishing. And it's just, you know, we said this is a very urbanized society. visitors cannot believe how densely populated it is. So it's kind of 90 people per square mile. And effectively, the population of the low countries isn't that much smaller than England, which has a much, much kind of larger surface area.

To the people who are really packed in, that's why they're so clean. They're so cleanliness, because they're living so densely in cities. Yeah. And on top of that, in 1548, a kind of constitutional unity had been imposed on these 17 provinces,

kind of overriding all the different charters and legal systems and things, and making them kind of a united Netherlands. And this had been the work of the great Hapsburg Emperor Charles V, who also ruled as Charles I of Spain. And as Charles I of Spain, he had become king of Mexico and of Peru, thanks to the efforts of Cortez and Pizarro. So he is, you know, he probably rules a larger emperor,

empire, certainly a more global empire than anyone has done in history. I mean, he's a very formidable figure. And the 17 provinces had previously been part of the Holy Roman Empire, which Charles rules as emperor. But they've been granted by this kind of act of 1548, a kind of legal and constitutional independence from the empire. So they now kind of effectively, they stand alone as a separate unity. and to quote another great historian of the Dutch revolt, Geoffrey Parker, he suggests that in normal circumstances, this might have formed the basis for a permanent political unit.

And Parker suggests as parallels the unions that became Switzerland in the Middle Ages, and Spain, which is emerging at exactly this period from, you know, the union of all the various kingdoms within Iberia. Of course, that's such an interesting point. Here's the question. So, well, Switzerland proves that you could do it with different languages, that it's not impossible, and different institutions in Spain as well, of course. Why doesn't it happen in the low countries?

I mean, this takes us to the story that lies behind the anthem, doesn't it? It does. And I think although the story is surprisingly very complicated and the reasons why the Dutte Revolt breaks out, there are many of them, I think you can frame it in much simpler terms as having been a showdown between the two men who were mentioned in that first verse,

of the Wilhelmus. And the first of these, of course, is William of Nassau, the prince who is supposedly narrating the action in the Wilhelmus. So who is he? So he was born in 1533, and he was the elder son of the Count of Nassau in Germany. So that's is why he's described as William of Nassau. And William's father is from the Rhineland. And the word that is translated as Dutch in that account on the Dutch royal family website can also mean German. So it's Deutsche. Deutschen. So there's a sense in which William of Nassau is actually more German than he is Dutch. He's also a Lutheran. So he's been raised as a Protestant, the young William. And he is, although he's of noble blood, his family is unbelievably skinned. They really have very few prospects,

either financial or kind of, very few prospects of making cutting a dash on the state. of Europe. But then in 1544 there's this absolute bombshell and it's like something out of a kind of Charles Dickens novel or something, suddenly William discovers that he has the most tremendous expectations because a very distant cousin of his, a guy who happens to be the Prince of Orange, which is a city in the distant southernmost reaches of France, dies childless in a siege in France, and he leaves all his titles and estates to the young William. He doesn't have any closer relation. So at a stroke, this young boy becomes fabulously rich and heir to estates and lands and all kinds of properties all over Europe.

And the key property is Orange, which is a princedom, it's sovereign, it's enclosed within France. but, you know, it owes loyalty only to William. So he is now William of Orange. Also, huge chunks of the low countries, including about a quarter of Brabant, which includes Antwerp, so, you know, incredibly wealthy area to have. And this becomes the effective heart of William's inheritance. And additionally, and I'll just read out the list of other properties that William is inherited, he has a claim to the vanished kingdom of Arles, again in France.

He has a dukedom in Apulia. he has three Italian principalities, so he's a prince four times over, in other words, 16 countships, two margravates, two Viscountancies, 50 baronies and some 300 smaller estates. He really has. But the price for this is that he has to give up his immortal soul. Is that right? He has to give up his Lutheranism. He wrestles with it for about three seconds, and then he says, fine, whatever.

I'll very happily become a Catholic. He took that seriously. And I think all his family kind of swing behind him and say, yeah, this is the right decision. Right. I mean, it's kind of like getting a massive scholarship to Hogwarts or something. Suddenly, you are being transplanted to a completely different order of society in which opportunities are open to up to you that you had never even imagined. Because William goes off to the court of Charles V in Brussels. So the place where Charles V is based when he's in the low countries.

And Charles V thinks this young boy is tremendous and grooms him to become one of the big players at the Habsburg Court. And by 1555, when William is 22, he has become the most glamorous figure in Charles's train. So he's charming, he's extravagant, he's being given experience in war, he's experienced in politics. I mean, he's the complete article. And that October of 1555, Charles V, famously starts abdicating his very powers. And he's in Brussels to abdicate his lordship of the low countries in favour of his son, Philip, who is going to go on to become Philip the second of Spain, the man who sends the Spanish Armada against England. But at this point, the elderly Charles V, he's very lame by this point.

He's got a stick. But with his other arm, he is leaning on the Prince of Orange as he goes up to the altar. to offer his formal abdication. And the symbolism of this, presumably, is that he is their man. He is their man on the spot, their local collaborator, because they've basically been training him as the Habsburg representative, I guess, in the low countries, haven't they? He's going to serve kind of as their deputy in the low countries.

And the reason why that is important is that Charles V's son, Philip, is becoming the new Lord of the Netherlands in the ceremony. But shortly afterwards, he is going to go to Spain and become Philip the second of Spain. And Spain is a much larger, much more powerful conglomeration of territories than the low countries. And of course, it also comes with all those brilliant possessions in the new world. So there's no question that Philip is essentially going to base himself there. And of course, he's going to build this famous palace, the Escorial, up in the mountains, and essentially kind of end up squirreled away there. So he needs people

in the low countries to administer it for him. And he does rely on William to serve him as his lieutenant there. And the key legal formalization of this comes in 1559 when Philip appoints William as the governor or stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland and Utrecht. So in other words, the core provinces in the north of the low countries. I mean, at this point, you would say, well, all is set fair. You know, they've got their placeman. There's absolutely no hint at this stage that William would ever want to step out of line. I mean, why would he? Things are good for him. Well, and he's very loyal to the Habsburgs. Charles V has been, you know, very good to him. So, of course, it would never cross his mind. It would go against all his codes, all his loyalties.

But there are, I think, kind of two niggling problems, which will over the course of the years become worse and worse. And the first of these is that there is a personality clash between Philip and William. Because Philip is very, I think, is an introvert. He's tongue-tied. He's very intellectual. he's very studious, he's very devout, very devout Catholic. And William is a massive extrovert. He's a lad. Everyone loves him. He loves a dance.

He loves a frolic. All of that. So they're very, very different. I think there are also growing political tensions because as the years go by and Philip, who is, you know, he is the lord of the low countries, but he's never there. And it becomes clear that fundamentally he is a, Spanish king. And so people in the low countries start to feel that they are subordinate to him in the manner of a colonial people subject to a distant master or overlord. And resentment of the

Spanish presence in the low country starts to grow and grow. So Philip has appointed Spanish ministers to the Council of State, which is supposed to administer these provinces. He's installed Spanish garrisons in the key cities. And he has licensed the Spanish Inquisition. to start sniffing out heresy. And although William, of course, has become a Catholic as a requirement for becoming the Prince of Orange, he's not a doctrinaire Catholic. He doesn't have the zeal of a convert.

No, he doesn't. And he is worried about what the actions of the Inquisition might mean for kind of civic harmony in the low countries. And his concerns are clarified for him by one episode in particular, which happens in the summer of 1559. And William has been sent as a temporary hostage to the court of France. There's kind of treating negotiations going on. And so for a few months, William has to stay there as the guest of Henry II, the king of France.

And he's looked after very well. He is, as we've said, a massive extrovert. People really like him. They think he's great fun. And so he becomes great mates with Henry II. And Henry takes him out hunting in the woods of Chanty. And while they're at hunting, Henry lets sleep. a shocking secret to William on the assumption evidently that William already knows about it.

And Henry reveals to William that he, the King of France, and Philip II, the King of Spain, have become so terrified by the growth of Protestantism in Christendom that they have agreed a full-scale policy of extermination against the Protestants, the heretics, as Henry and Philip see them. And their hope is that ultimately this policy of extermination will embrace the entire Christian world, as Henry puts it. But the plan is to begin with the low countries. And William, when he's told this, is absolutely appalled. But he doesn't let slip the fact that it's come as complete news to him.

You know, he keeps a poker face. And partly I think this is out of self-preservation. He doesn't want, you know, news to reach Philip that he disapproves. of this policy. And I think it's also because maybe William doesn't entirely trust what he's being told by Henry and he thinks it the best policy might be just to wait and see. Maybe it won't actually be an exterminatory policy. Maybe the French King's exaggerating. You know, he doesn't want to make a massive fuss if there isn't actually going to be a problem. And so he keeps stum about it. The French King is exaggerating a bit there, isn't he? I mean, he's, you know,

for the next few years, when, when you said, you know, William keeps quiet, he does keep quiet. there is no genocidal campaign against Protestants in the low countries. There are campaigns, but they're not as exterminatory as that conversation might suggest. The moment comes where there is a kind of mass cycle of executions, including the execution of leading members of the nobility. And I think that this is seen as a kind of crunch point for all kinds of people who've been anxious about Phillips policy, sees it as repressive, and really is the kind of the spark that lights the tinderbox of the Dutch revolt.

But the thing is that during this whole period, William remains what he's always been, kind of very charming, sociable, fluent, and so on. So very much not a taciturned man, you know, an extrovert, not an introvert, as we've said. But the time is coming and it will be triggered by this kind of great cycle of executions of Protestants and suspected rebels that Philip licenses. when he will have to decide what he's going to do. Is he going to stay loyal to Philip and to the Habsburgs? Or is he going to take the side of people whom he has come to identify with

and whom he is starting to see as directly oppressed? And when he makes his decision, which is to side with the rebels, he makes clear that his anxieties have been kind of germinating all this time. and he has been keeping quiet about it. He's been hiding them. He's been, you know, that is definitely not not something that he's been talking about. And so William of Orange will come to be remembered by the Dutch, not for his kind of incredible fluency, not for his master of the social arts, but for the opposite. And he will come to be known by the Dutch as Willem des Weyzeweig.

William the Silent and this is how he is known by history and it's kind of fantastic that it is in the voice of William the Silent that the Dutch team will be singing the national anthem when they meet Sweden this coming weekend. All right so we will take a break and then after the break we will find out what happens to William the Silent and indeed the Dutch Revolt

and how the anthem is born. This episode is brought to you by the Times and the Sunday Times. Tom has another summer of top international football returns. It's truly incredible, isn't it, to think about how much the world has changed between the various tournaments. Looking back to when England hosted back in 1966,

everyone in the crowd supporting England were waving Union jacks. So what fascinating trends does that illustrate? And I suppose the last time the United States hosted the tournament was in 1994. And the mood in America in the early 1990s, you know, the Cold War was over, Clinton was in the White House. I was there for that. I was in Boston. Really? I mean, that's an aspect of the story that's very rarely reported on your presence. So you know what this reminds me of, Tom? It reminds me that the future

is always uncertain. You never know what's coming. But the facts need not be uncertain. And when the world feels like it's moving too fast, the times and the Sunday times empower you to make smarter, more confident decisions. Click or tap the banner now to learn more or visit the times.com. Hi everybody. We have an absolutely thrilling announcement for you. That's right, Dominic. We are putting on another night for you at the South Bank on Friday the 4th of September. We will be bringing you the ultimate Victorian adventure. Yes, it really is the maddest expedition in history. You've got to create a

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And don't forget, tickets are on sale now. A shield and my reliance. Oh God, though ever, word, I'll trust until thy guidance, O leave me not ungirt, that I may stay a pious servant of thine for I, and drive the plagues that try us and tyranny

away. So that is the sixth verse, the sixth of, what was it, 324 verses? Yeah, 15. 15 in total. The sixth verse of the Wilhelmus, the Dutch National Anthem, and that is from the Royal House

of the Netherlands's own website, the English translation. So 15 verses. The first letters of these 15 verses form an acrostic, don't they? And they spell the name, Willem van Nassoff, William of Nassau, William of Orange, William the Silent. And interestingly, when they're singing the anthem before matches, the Dutch team, they sing the first verse and the sixth verse. So it's mad that they actually sing that verse where they pledge allegiance to the Spain. What happens when they, in 2010, at the World Cup final, when they played Spain and disgraced themselves? Yeah, well, the Spanish don't have any words at all.

No, they don't. They must have find it nice for people to sing about them. I mean, you know, the 2010 World Cup final one, the Dutch played the Spanish, and the Dutch actually disgraced themselves in that final. But it must have been nice for the Spanish to have a little mention there in the anthem singing. Yeah, if they're king. Yeah, exactly. So why did they pair those two? So strange.

sixth verse is full of biblical resonance, Dominic. So it's a kind of reminder that William had faced utter ruin, but had lived to tell the tale, because God is his shield and his reliance. And I think specifically, and this is made clear a couple of verses on from the sixth verse, he's been compared to King David, who's the biblical hero, who'd become the favorite of Saul, who was Israel's first king, by killing Goliath with his sling, as a shepherd boy and David grows up and then Saul becomes very jealous of David, hunts David and tries to kill him, but David had survived and ultimately prevailed. So I think William is being cast as David and Philip II has been cast as kind of Saul, his former royal master who's turned against him.

Because of course, Philip had appointed William as Stadtholder of Holland and Zealand, had assumed that he could be relied on as a loyal servant of the Habsburg House. But as we were saying in the first half, all this time, William had been tracking Philip the Second's potentially exterminatory policies against the Protestants with a kind of growing sense of horror. And the time comes where he can no longer keep silent. And William the silent, you know, speaks out against the exactions of the Spanish. And specifically, he chooses to speak out in 1567, which is the year when Philip sends an army of 10,000 battle-hardened soldiers to the low countries.

And its mandate is essentially to terrorize the heretics, the Protestants into submission and ultimately into oblivion. And as we said in the first half, thousands are executed. And among the people who were put to death are Williams close to its allies among the Dutch nobility. And had William remained in the low countries, he would have been put to death as well. But he has sensed the way the wind is blowing. He's starting to think, actually, all this stuff about exterminatory policy, it is actually true. And so he had retreated beyond Phillips' reach into his kind of German land. So he'd gone to the provinces beyond the frontier with the empire.

And while he's absent so effectively in exile, his properties in the low country are confiscated. So all those lands in Brabant, for instance. His eldest son is seized as a hostage and is taken to Spain and, you know, he won't come back to the low countries for decades and decades. And William himself is declared an outlaw. And the obvious choice at this point for William would have been to negotiate and to reach terms and to kind of essentially submit to Phillips' demands. But he is like David in the Bible. He refuses to give up. And so he mortgages all his properties, he takes out massive loans, and he funnels all the cash that he's raised into the cause of the resistance.

And he spends on two particular kind of modes of resistance. And the first of these are privateers. So essentially, pirates who are operating supposedly on behalf of whatever it is, this kind of rebellious proto-Dutch state. and there's a brilliant description of these pirates by C.V. Wedgwood. You know, you wrote that kind of wonderful trilogy on the English Civil War. So 1950s, I think she wrote this. It has that kind of 1950s feel. So she wrote, she described these pirates as weather-beaten ex-merchantman

with second-hand cannon nailed to splitting decks and patched sails, bellying in the wind, manned by ruffians and patriots, Dutchmen and French and English, the riff-raff of 20 ports, three nations, and fluttering at their mast heads. The orange trickler with the lion of Nassau. And they're the sea beggars, aren't they? And that's an insult from this. It's the classic example of someone insults you,

and then you co-opt it, you appropriate the insult as a badge of pride. The sea beggars and what they are are basically ultra-protestant pirates. Yeah, Calvinist pirates. But just on the Protestantism, William the Silence is still a Catholic, is he? Yeah. And the revolt isn't just Protestants. There are still at this point, lots of Catholics. But we don't want to go too far into that.

This is a national rising rather than a religious rising. It's definitely Protestant heavy, and it's taking place in the south as well as the north, because there are lots of, Antwerp, for instance, is definitely majority Calvinist at this point. And we are going to be looking at the intricacies of what some of this in a forthcoming series on the Tudor Cold War, about the kind of the way in which England and Spain fight, and the low countries will be one of the key battles. fields. But I mean, I think just to keep it kind of relatively clear at this point, I think it's easiest to think of the rebels as being Protestant. I mean, they're not exclusively, but largely. But as we say, the revolt spans the whole of the 17 provinces. And William, while these pirates

are busy kind of roaming the seas in Yoho Hoing, he's been raising an army of mercenaries in Germany, and then he crosses the border, he invades, and he moves into Brabant, which is his own, that's where all his lands are, where he's got his feudal holdings, and his aim is to challenge the Spanish to battle. But the problem is the Spanish are far too experienced, far too smart, far too militarily savvy to fall into doing what William wants them to do. And so rather than meet his challenge, the Spanish hold to their positions and just wait for William to run out of money because they know that he only has a kind of finite supply. And sure enough, you know, after a few weeks, the money does run out and all his mercenaries say, well, we're not hanging around and they

melt away. And William has no choice but to retreat. And from that point on, things just go from bad to worst for William because he keeps mortgaging more and more of his properties. He keep launching or sponsoring invasions and they keep being defeated. And also on the domestic front, things have gone very badly wrong for William because he's got a new wife. And this is the daughter of the elector of Saxony. So I think it's an attempt by William to try and build relations with the Lutheran princes to the east. And she's called Anna. And she spends her whole time kind of cheating on him, getting drunk, accusing him of trying to poison her. And C. F. V. Wedgwood, who is a woman, she has this tremendous description of Anna of Saxony,

her own worst enemy. She advertised her follies as a woman and her failure as a wife. everywhere. God, that's harsh. It is harsh, isn't it? Yeah. It's really harsh. And crucially, he's running. I mean, the one thing he needs more than anything is money, and he's running out, isn't he? Yeah, I don't think that helps with Anna. I mean, you mentioned this is the Spanish strategy. So by what, 1572, he's down to his very last coppers. The coffers are bare, basically. Yeah, and the Spanish have managed to take back all the kind of rebellious towns and cities

across the low countries. So in footballing terms, they're kind of 10-0 down. I guess with maybe three minutes to go. I mean, they really look down and out. The only sign of life, really, in the revolt, are the sea beggars who are still kind of yarr, up and down the North Sea and into the English Channel, where they have their bases, because their Protestants, Elizabeth I first by this point,

is on the throne in England. She's Protestant, and she's given them bases. But the problem is, in 1572, Elizabeth is being leaned on by the Spanish, and Elizabeth is imbetrantly cautious and she thinks, well, the revolt's probably over. You know, I don't want to burn my bridges with the Spanish.

You know, they're not doing any good. I'll chuck them out. And so she closes their English bases to the sea beggars. And they're now roaming the sea and they haven't really got anywhere to go. But then Dominic, from the depths of despair, a sudden, incredible comeback. It's like when Holland played Argentina in the last World Cup, although they actually then went out on penalties,

but that's by the bye. It's an incredible comeback. But this is even more incredible. This is a comeback that doesn't end in penalty tragedy. Because on the 1st of April, 1572, the sea beggars arrive off a port called Brill, which is a strategically crucial port on an island, kind of in the great estuary, which leads out from Antwerp, and it effectively controls the waterways of Holland and Zealand. So very strategically crucial. and they sail up towards this port, and to their astonishment, they find that it's empty because the entire garrison has gone off fishing.

They assume that, you know, the war is effectively over. And so for the sea beggars, this is a complete open goal. And they sail into the port, and they occupy it. And they sack all the Catholic churches. They give assurances to the inhabitants that all will be well treated except priests, monks, and papists. So that's a reassurance. And they set about turning it into a rebel stronghold. And with this base, because it is so strategic,

suddenly they're able to go on the offensive and they start banging in goals left, right and center. Great, footballing imagery now. Thank you. Thank you, Dominic. And the rest of the team, to pursue the metaphor, are roused from their torpor. Right. And suddenly you get Calvinists in towns across Holland and Zealand are rising up. they're expelling the Spanish garrisons and they are declaring for William of Orange.

And by July, representatives from these two provinces, so Holland and Zealand, are ready to acknowledge William basically as the guy in charge. And specifically, they confirm him in the office that Philip had originally bestowed on him. So that's the office of Stadtholder, of governor. And obviously, it is slightly awkward that William's office derives from the King of Spain. But the rebels in Holland and Zealand have a kind of way around this. And there wheezes to say that, yes, William is the loyal servant of the King of Spain. And he's proving his loyalty to the King of Spain by attacking the Spanish.

And that may sound a slight stretch to people. So how can this make sense? It's because the pretenses that Philip doesn't know what his generals and his soul and his administrators are doing in his name and would be appalled if he did. So it's the classic, you know, the king doesn't know what his servants are doing. I was about to say this is a classic medieval or early modern device, rhetorical device. It's the king is great. We love the king.

It's just these corrupt and evil advisors. Yeah. And so this is how William is able simultaneously to fight the Spanish and yet claim to be loyal to the king of Spain. And as you say, I think it reflects just how incredibly respectful of authority people in the 16th century are. And even William, who's been in open conflict with Philip and the Spanish for four years, still can't quite bring himself to acknowledge that he is a rebel. Because to be a rebel against an anointed king is the worst thing that you could possibly do. You know, that's a big difference between the age of the American Revolution or the French Revolution.

Yeah. I think in the 16th century, it's kind of almost in the border zones of inconceivable that you could do what William is effectively doing. And this is what makes him a kind of perfect figurehead for this revolt, which likewise isn't in, I mean, it is a revolt, but it's kind of, it's not a showy revolt. So Simon Sharma in his brilliant book on this, The Embarrassment of Riches, if the Dutch finally espoused independence, they did so with the lowest possible profile. So there is no equivalent of the Declaration of Independence that you get in the American Revolution. It's done in a slightly kind of crapped, well, I suppose, taciturn way. I mean, that's why William the Silent is a kind of perfect leader for it. Yeah, you can see how there's a spectrum that comes from this to the Innocular War of the 1640s,

where you have people moving from basically saying, well, I'm still very much a monarchist or just happened to be fighting on the side of parliament. And then they move towards Charles as the man of blood. And then at the other extreme, you have the American Revolution where they're ideologically leaning into the idea of rebellion and casting off kings. And then you have the French Revolution where they chop the king's head off. So, yeah, you can absolutely see the line of descent. But at the beginning, in the 16th century, with the Dutch Revolt, there's a reticence about it, almost a sense of embarrassment. And it's that, I think, which makes the Vilhelmus the perfect anthem for this revolt.

Because, of course, as we've said, it's a rebel song which proclaims loyalty in its opening verse. to the very king whom the rebels are fighting. So that's why you have William in that fur saying, oh, I'm very loyal to the king of Spain. If we go to the website of the Dutch Royal Family, which obviously one of your favourites, Tom, love it.

The website of the Dutch Royal Family says this song originated during the siege of the French city of Chartres in 1568. That's quite odd because that's further back and it's also in the wrong country. So how does it? Does this anthem written about siege in France before the high points of the Dutch Revolt

come to be the sort of the musical emblem of the Dutch Revolt? And what makes it even weirder is that it's about a Catholic garrison beating off a Protestant attack. So the song is originally anti-Protestant. And of course the rebels who compose the Wilhelmus are Protestant, are Calvinist. And I think there are two possible answers to this that perhaps are only seemingly contradictory. So the first is it's something that we've been talking about a lot in this series, that it's a gesture of appropriation. So it's a bit like the sea beggars sailing into Brill and appropriating all the Catholic churches and making them Calvinist, or the way in which the Hanoverians in 1745 appropriate the Jacobite melody that becomes God Save the King.

And those kind of elements of that in, with with the German national anthem as well, wasn't there? I mean, it's something that happens quite a lot. Tunes and indeed lyrics have multiple meanings, and you can seize them and turn them to your own ends. Yeah, and this is a kind of foreshadowing of what will happen in what emerges as the Dutch Republic, because in that, Calvinism will be enshrined as the public religion, the only one permitted to hold public services,

and by and large of these public services being held in churches and chapels that previously had been Catholic. And so in a sense, the Wilhelmus is replicating that, in the form of song. Oh, isn't that nice? However, there are multiple ways of interpreting this. So that would appeal to the Calvinists in Williams' ranks. But you could also see it as being a gesture of accommodation to those who are not hardcore

Calvinists, because it's a Protestant song with a Catholic melody. I mean, that's how you could frame it. It's maybe a kind of compromise. And certainly that tells you something important about William himself and about many of the people who are rallying to his banner, because most of them are actually not hardcore Calvinists. And you've been saying all along, well, remember that William is a Catholic. William only converts to Calvinism in 1573. So that is after the Wilhelmus has actually been written. And William's own ambition for this new Dutch state, which he's trying to create,

is that it should allow freedom of religion too, and I quote William here, reformed and Roman Catholic in public or in private, in church or in chapel. And ultimately, as we've said, this isn't how it works out. Calvinism does become kind of enshrined as the public religion in the Dutch revolt. But that commitment to freedom of religion, which William was so strongly identified with, I think for that reason it does remain a very important ideal for many people in the Dutch Republic, even so. And in the 17th century, there are all kinds of legal fictions that can be woven. They're all kinds of blind eyes that can be turned to Catholics, say, or Quakers or Jews or Muslims, practicing their own forms of religion.

And they, by and large, can do this without harassment. People are not kind of poking their noses in. It's not like Elizabethan England where, you know, priest hunters are out looking for Jesuits or anything like that. And in fact, Amsterdam will become one of the great centres of Jewish life in the 17th century. You know, it will become the home of Spinoza. who isn't only Jewish until he gets excommunicated by the synagogue in Amsterdam, but will become one of the great precursors of the radical enlightenment that comes to question the very value of religion itself.

And so maybe in the Wilhelmus, the fact that you have this fusion of the Catholic and the Protestant, it's looking ahead to the kind of post-Reformation state that will kind of, you know, is being incubated in the Dutch Republic, perhaps, I don't know. But this is not uniquely a Dutch thing, though, actually, this thing about anthems being compromises and expressing paradoxes and so on, because it's actually not, you know, remember how the Weimar Republic adopted the German anthem in 1922, is a kind of compromise between conservatives and social democrats,

and this is not dissimilar. There's something for everybody in the anthem, isn't that? Yeah, and that's people tend to see in anthems what they want to see, I think. And so the more flexibility that's built in. to an anthem, in a sense, the more useful it can be, particularly if it's an emergent state. And William himself, as we've been describing throughout this episode, kind of like this emergent state is himself a figure of paradox. And so that's why I think it's, you know, so appropriate that the Dutch national anthem today is named after him. Because in all kinds of

ways, he's a most improbable figure to be the Dutch, George Washington. So to go through the list of why he is not obviously a rebel. leader against the King of Spain. He is officially a servant of the King of Spain. He is a Stadtholder appointed by Philip. He is an aristocrat. He's the Prince of Orange. He's been born a German rather than Dutch. So it's improbable, I think, that he of all men would have emerged as the kind of founding father of what becomes a very Calvinist, very anti-Spanish, a very bourgeois republic in the 17th century. But I think William becomes loved by the Dutch. not kind of despite the long journey that he's made over the course of his life,

but because of it, they know what he's had to give up. They know the degree to which he's been on a journey, Dominion. Can I just ask one quick question before we move on? Why did he go on that journey? Because if it wasn't religious zeal that was powering him to give all these things up, to go through all these trials and tribulations, what is it that made him embrace the cause of revolt when he could have probably had a much nicer life,

if he bent the need to have her at the second and said, yeah, fine, crack on. I mean, it's a great question. And I think the answer is essentially that he, although he is not a committed Calvinist or indeed Catholic or maybe because of it, he has his own distinctive sense of what is right and wrong. And he feels that Philip is offending against that. And also, I think because even though he is of German origin, he has spent most of his childhood and youth and adulthood in the low countries.

and I think he has come to identify with the Dutch. I think he feels it's his kind of God-given duty. And ultimately, he ends up a martyr to that sense of duty because on the 10th of July 1584, he was assassinated in Delft, which is a very small provincial town. You know, the great Prince of Orange has been reduced to a kind of bourgeois house in Delft.

And he's cornered there by a Catholic assassin called Balthazar Gerard. and Gerard kills William of Orange because he sees him as a traitor both to the King of Spain and to Catholicism. And, you know, if there's no question that Gerard is right, I mean, William had become a traitor to both Philip and to Catholicism. So in 1577, the Spanish governor of the low country had warned Philip, Orange, so William, hates nothing more in this world than your majesty, and if he could drink your blood he would do it. So Philip is alarmed by this and so in 1580 he'd placed a bounty on William's

head and this is part of what inspires Gerard to assassinate William. It's kind of offer of financial goodies. And William responds to this in turn. It's kind of very like tennis, tit for tat. He responds by writing an apology in which he accuses Philip of tyranny, of subverting the traditional liberties of the Dutch and just for good measure of having poisoned both his wife and his wife and his son. And then the following July, the rebels, led by William, take the key step, the key ideological leap into the future that will lead us to the English Civil War and to the American Revolution and to the French Revolution, when they issue an act of abjuration, which repudiates Philip II personally and all his heirs in perpetuity. And from that point on,

Philip's head is removed from coins from official seals, his coat of arms, is. taken down from public buildings. It's scrubbed from documents. And the pattern there, I'm sure, will be very familiar to our American listeners, the process by which previously loyal British subjects end up turning against George III and branding him a tyrant. Yeah. And so even though William doesn't get to see the proclamation of the Dutch Republic, he goes

down in history as its founding father. Yeah. So in the Vilhelmus, he's described as David. there's also a massively strong suggestion that he is Moses. So Moses, you know, the great Israelite leader who had led his people from out of bondage in Egypt across the Red Sea, so across kind of bogs and marshes and waterways in which he had destroyed the armies of Pharaoh, aka Philip II. But then Moses dies before reaching the promised land, just as William dies before the proclamation of what will become the Dutch Republic in 58.

And I think this is why throughout the Dutch Republic, the Vilhelmus retains its popularity. It's deployed it as a marching song when going to war against the Spanish, which continues for decades into the 17th century, as a battle anthem in wars against the English and the Portuguese. And I think just as a kind of reminder to the Dutch of what their liberty and all their incredible prosperity had cost them, that they had really, really had to fight for it. And so they owed William the man who had made it possible. complicated thing about it is that it's an anthem celebrating the birth of a republic, but Holland is not a republic? The Netherlands is the kingdom of the Netherlands.

Today it is, yeah. Yeah, so what happens there? Is it just so protean that it can be reinterpreted as the Netherlands goes through these kind of constitutional evolutions? Well, Dominic, we're in the process at the moment of preparing a series of episodes on the founding fathers of America for the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. And one of those founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson, was haunted by the anxiety that the office of the president of the United States might mutate and become something hereditary, might ultimately evolve into something overtly monarchical. And one of the reasons he fears that is that he is aware what happened

in the Dutch Republic, where the heirs of William the Silent held his office of Stadtholder as a kind of hereditary office. So in Holland, Every Stadtholder without exception was a member of William's dynasty. And the most famous of these literally ends up a king. And this is the guy who, the Prince of Orange, who becomes William III of England, of Scotland, and of course of Ireland. Yeah, hence Orange Men, because he defeats James II at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690s, the Orange Men, the Orange Order in Northern Ireland. And eventually in the middle of the 18th century, the Dutch just say, well, let's drop the pretense.

Let's just turn the Stadtholder into a king, don't they? Yeah, a bit like the Romans saying, oh, well, you know, let's not pretend. Obviously, Caesar is now our lord and master. It's the same thing. And it's exactly the kind of the model that so alarms the founding fathers that something like this could happen. And the consequence of this is, you know, there are still Republicans in what had been the Dutch Republic. And these Republicans come to see the Vilhelmus as a kind of polarizing song rather than as it had previously been a unifying one. What had been a kind of independent Dutch state under the conquest of the French Revolutionary armies, it becomes a Batavian Republic.

And then it comes a kind of kingdom under one of Napoleon's brothers. And in that period, the Vilhelmus is officially banned. And I think even after Napoleon is overthrown and the Dutch get their independence back, the Wilhelmus kind of retains the quality of the taboo. It is kind of associated with a form of rule that they feel a bit embarrassed about. And this is despite the fact that actually the House of Orange Nassau, so the descendants of William the Silent, have by this point returned to the Netherlands from exile and have actually officially proclaimed themselves monarchs, which they had not previously done. So from 1815, the heirs of William the Silent rule as kings or as subsequently happens as queens. But because the scars of the revolution are so fresh, you know, they don't want to tempt fate by saying, well, we will have the Vilhelmus as our anthem. You know, they want to have something that is acceptable to all their subjects, including Republicans, including people who are resentful of their dynasty.

And so this is kind of maps on to what you were describing about the, the search in Germany for a suitable anthem, an anthem that, you know, can tick all the boxes. And so they hold a competition to find an anthem that is less factional than the Vilhelmus. And the winning entry is one that everyone feels is splendid and is exactly what they need. And I will read the opening lines. Whoever has Dutch blood flowing in their veins free of foreign blemishes, whose heart glows for king and country, rejoice in song as we do. So what could possibly go wrong with that?

Holy unexceptional. No one can complain about that. I don't mind that. Although, of course, the problem is that line whose heart glows for king and country because what happens if you end up with a queen? That's a massive problem. And they do end up with a queen,

Wilhelmina, who becomes the new monarch in 1890 and she's a very young girl when she succeeds to the throne. So she's only inaugurated in 1898. And they sing this anthem, and it's, massive problem with the metrics of it. The metre is all over the place. And what about now? A lot of people may have raised an eyebrow out of the words foreign blemishes.

So I would guess in the, if they still had that anthem, well, if they had that anthem after about 1950, there would be issues, wouldn't they? In a continent, you know, transformed by immigration. Well, I think even before that, it's seen as awkward. It's seen as kind of inappropriate to the age. And particularly in the early 1930s, when, of course, the Dutch are very aware of what is going on in

Germany, the discussion of kind of pure blood and foreign blemishes comes to seem a little bit Nazi and the Dutch definitely want to distinguish themselves from the Nazis. And so in the early 1930s, 1932, to be precise, say one year before the Nazis come to power, she decrees that Bill Helmess should for the first time be officially inscribed as the Dutch national anthem. And this is despite the fact that it, you know, it's still pretty unpopular with Dutch Republicans. You know, it's seen as two royalists, two sectarian. But actually, when the Nazis invade the Netherlands and occupy it, the Vilhelmus comes into its own. It provides the Dutch with a kind of great rallying point, because all that stuff that you get in verse six, you know, the talk of defying tyranny, William's refusal to submit to the enemy, this becomes very moving to people in the Dutch resistance.

And by the end of the war, even anti-monicists have taken it to their heart. I don't think there's any great debate now in the Netherlands that, you know, it should be removed. I mean, any Dutch listeners, if there is, let us know. But it seems pretty kind of bedded down. And so it's not the oldest national anthem, but it is the oldest song to have become a national anthem. Oh, and just one further footnote, the Japanese national anthem has as its lyrics, a poem from the 10th century. So that's the age of Lady Mirosaki and say, Shonigan. but the music is incredibly modern

and the idea of using it is very modern. So the Vilhelmus definitely has that status as the oldest coherent song to be a national anthem. And it perfectly captures this doesn't it, the complexities of Dutch history. So you've got this bloke who's the founding father than Moses of the Dutch Republic who's actually, you know, it's a song about

something that happened in France, who, you know, he's changed religion about six times, loyalty to the king of Spain, all that sort of stuff. I like that because it's kind of, I like an anthem that has a, a little bit of complexity, a little bit of ambiguity to it. And kind of perfectly channels, as you say, lots of the complexities that have characterised Dutch history

in the 16th century and through the centuries that have followed. Well, fascinating story. Thank you very much, Tom. If you're interested in national anthems, generally, you can, of course, read the Restis History newsletter, which is going to have loads about national anthems and their history. So you can go to the Restis History website. Give us your email, and we'll send you the newsletter, which is completely free.

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