For the next three years the Hollanders went to the French school. The teachers were severe masters, but the pupils learned a lot. The Batavian Republic, and even the kingdom of Louis Napoleon, had been but continuations of the old partisan struggles of the former republics. The new state of affairs wiped the slate clean. The government came into the hands of French superiors who trained the lower Dutch officials in the new methods of governmental administration, who insisted upon running the state as they would a business firm, and to whom the petty considerations of former partisanship meant absolutely nothing. Uniform laws for the entire country, which the different assemblies had not been able to institute, were drawn up and were enforced upon all Hollanders with equal severity. The old system of jurisprudence, different for every little province, town, or village, was replaced by one single system. The Code Napoleon became the law for all. The old trouble with the armed forces which had put the republic under the obligation of hiring mercenaries was now done away with. The new conscription took in all able-bodied citizens, put them all in the same uniform, and gave them all the same chance to serve their country and be killed for its glory. [Illustration: 1811. HOLLAND ANNEXED BY FRANCE.] [Illustration: Reproduced from Author's Sketch.] But, best of all, that old atmosphere in which a man from one village had looked upon his nearest neighbour from another village as his worst enemy was at last cleared away. A man might have been an Orangeist or a federalist or a Jacobin, he might have believed in the supreme right of the state or the divine right of his own family--before the new ruler this made no difference. Napoleon asked no questions about the past. He insisted upon duties toward the future. Before that capital N all men became equal, because they all were inferiors. Promotion could be won only by ability and through faithful service. Family influence no longer counted. Humble names were suddenly elevated if their possessors showed themselves worthy of the Emperor's confidence. The whole country was thrown into one gigantic melting-pot of foreign make and stirred by a foreign master without any respect for the separate ingredients out of which he was trying to brew his one and indivisible French Empire. The new French province was arbitrarily divided into departments. The old provincial names and frontiers were discontinued. Each little department was called after some river or brook which happened to flow through it. At its head came a prefect, invariably a Frenchman. A French governor-general resided in The Hague to exercise the supreme command.