THE PRINCE ARRIVES AT SCHEVENINGEN
C. 1813-1815, Willem Hendrik Hoogkamer, Paper, Collection Huis Van Gijn, Atlas Van Gijn
As a real liberator, Prince William Frederick of Orange-Nassau landed on the beach by Scheveningen on 30 November 1813. Eighteen years earlier, his father, Stadtholder William V, had to flee the Republic because of the advancing French armies. William and his son lived in exile in England. After the collapse of the French regime, prominent Dutchmen asked his son to return to the Netherlands as the ‘sovereign king’. The people were cheering as the French had finally been chased away. In 1815, he was inaugurated King William I.