Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen (or Jean-Maurice of Nassau-Siegen ), born the June 17th with 1604 with Dillenburg and dead the December 20th 1679 with Bergendaal, was general governor of the Dutch colonies with the Brésil. Was called it “the Brazilian one” to distinguish it from Maurice de Nassau, the Silent one, his cousin (wire of Guillaume, prince d' Orange, its great-uncle, to him also called the Silent one, founder of the independence of the Netherlands).

Family origin

The count Jean Maurice of German Nassau-Siegen (Johann Moritz von Nassau-Siegen; in Dutch Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen) was born with Dillenburg close to Frankfurt and Siegen (today in Germany, in the Land of Hesse), on June 17th, 1604. It is an error to think that it was Dutch, because its family was German, originating in the area of the Rhine. It is also an error to call it prince, because the title was granted to him only in 1653 by the Emperor Ferdinand III. He was the son of Jan VII of Nassau-Dietz (he even wire of Jean VI of Nassau-Dillenbourg) and of Margaretha de Sonderburg-Holstein. The stadhouder Maurits was its godfather. When it was three years old, his/her father inherited the county of Siegen. Johan Maurits grows there before studying with Basle and Geneva, then with the Ritterschule of Kassel. It entered at sixteen years to the service of the Republic and, after having been rather briefly suction of navy, it took part successfully in some military campaigns. Then it entered to the service of the company of the Western Indies.

Governor-general of Dutch Brazil, it constituted a team of scientists and artists charged to describe the country and his richnesses. Among them, Georg Markgraf (1611 - 1644), which dealt mainly of Géographie but also with Natural history, and Willem Piso (1611 - 1678), its personal doctor, who directed this team. Two artists, Frans Post (1612 - 1680) and Albert Eckhout (1610 - 1665), accompanied them.

Johan Maurits is known especially to have been the enlightened administrator of the north-eastern part of Brazil. One can speak about it lengthily - what besides was extremely well made, especially by his contemporaries, because Johan Maurits had a very subtle direction of the public relations. After its stay so badly successful in Brazil, it charged its familiar Constantijn Huygens with making write its biography by Caspar Barlaeus which did not finish any admiring the prowesses of “Brazilian”. With the use of the general public the poet Franciscus Plante composed a poem with his glory, “Mauritas”, where he sings in a emphatic way his Brazilian adventures. The university of Leyde paid homage to the count for his imposing actions and its intelligence.

There entered again to the service of the State-Generals and remained the remainder of its life there. After its adventures in Brazil it also entered to the service of the Prince-Voter of Brandebourg, large admiror of the Republic of the Netherlands. In the middle of the seventeenth century, this one had the reputation to be the most modern State of the world and the Prince, with the frame of mind progressist, took the young republic under many aspects like a modern model of administration. And Johan Maurits played under this report/ratio the part of postilion of love.

Brazil

It was 33 years old when it unloaded in Pernambouc as governor of Brazil and the Portuguese drove out some easily. The company of the Western Indies hardly considered to draw money of its possession, but the governor had vaster intentions. The stadhouder Frederik Hendrik, the conqueror, who was the uncle de Johan Maurits, thought itself of creating his own kingdom in South America and perhaps in it was thus. Its administration shows its love for Brazil. It founded Mauritsstad, builds a superb palate, joins together a kind of Parliament, stimulated the production of sugar and protected the country against the invaders. In 1641 he concludes with the Portuguese a treaty which did not last.

At that time, the European conquerors distinguished between Christian people and pagan people. The pagan ones were to be converted, with the need by the sword. Part of the population of the Indians of Brazil passed to the Calvinism. These people regarded Johan Maurits as a truth Brésilien and they paid to him homage for the humanity of its administration, because he saw in them men. Those which refused to convert did not have business with the troops of Johan Maurits, it sent to them even its painters Frans Post and Albert Eckhout in order to paint them.

Its relations with Frederic Guillaume Ier of Prussia

Johan Maurits and the Prussian prince Frederic Guillaume, the young person wire of the Voter of Brandebourg, made knowledge thanks to the fact that of 1634 to 1638 the prince resided at the court of $the Hague. Before the Brazilian adventure started, they learned both with better knowing at the time of the seat of Schenkenschans, a fortress on the Rhine close to Millingen and considered impregnable. Johan Maurits managed to take it again to the Spaniards. Frederic Guillaume was the heir to the crown at one time when Brandebourg had not begun its rise and had not become yet the powerful Prussian State which it would be later. Quite to the contrary, Brandebourg was to be devastated almost entirely during the Thirty Year old War (1618-1648).

When they met in Millingen, none of both was in a good financial position, which brought them closer. Johan Maurits did not have so to speak the penny. He liked to collect, which often left him little money. Worse still: he was involved in debt near the bank of loan of Amsterdam as he owed the being later at the financial Jews Abraham Cohein in Amsterdam and Elias Gomperts in Clèves.

Frederic Guillaume had a weak and apprehensive father who had to see Brandebourg initially plundered by the Swedes then by the troops of the emperor of Germany and finally by his own army remained too a long time without touching his pay. When Frederic Guillaume succeeded to him at the 20 years age in 1640, it had to rebuild its country thanks to Prussia which, located at the east, had remained with the variation of the conflict.

The Thirty Year old War finished eight years after it was assembled on the throne, and the Peace of Münster was favorable besides for him because its final situation was not bad. The five territories Hohenzollern had were not less separate geographically from/to each other: he was margrave of Brandebourg, duke of Prussia de Poméranie, Magdeburg and Clèves, count of Marck and prince de Minden and of Halberstadt.

When the Prince-Voter wanted to move of one of his possessions with another, it was necessary for him to pass by the territory of another sovereign. In all these States it obtained to act according to its own rules. Everywhere the local nobility tried to defend its freedom and to if possible increase it at the expense of the prince. It is in these circumstances that Johan Maurits, count Nassau-Siegen, his old friend since the head office of Schenkenschans, appeared on the Prussian scene.

Like his predecessor, and with an enormous zeal for his country, the prince-voter put himself at work but at the beginning with little success. The other European princely houses tended to look top and of an eye mocker this reformed with the too hard-working and too wise character. It is thus understood that it made a point of having near him a man who knew the world and had already founded a State in South America.

The prince named it in 1647 like his stadhouder in his possessions of Clèves and Mark. In both cases this nomination was accepted in 1649 by the States of the two territories (nobility and cities), but it was not without protests. That the prince had named somebody who was not originating in Clèves or Mark, one could still be done there, but one had a long time evil to admit that the prince had prohibited to him to oblige by oath to respect the old rights of his subjects. Just like in Brazil, Johan Maurits sought initially, and successfully, to make accept its authority by its managed.

During previous centuries, Hohenzollerns had known to benefit as well from the chance as of well arranged marriages, heritages, conquests and skilful diplomatic operations, so that what was at the origin of modest principalities in the center of Germany and the north of Poland had become in Europe a State of average importance. Its political weight could be compared with that of Saxony, but not with that of Poland or France, nor with that of the United Provinces.

Its relationships to Antiquity

Johan Maurits was not only one great man of war but also an expert of Antiquity. It was dependant with the famous philosopher Juste Lipse, appreciated Dutch intellectuals for his knowledge of the Latin great writers. In 1605 he worked with a translation of Sénèque.

The argument about Clèves

Because of their friendship the prince voter charged Johan Maurits with intervening as a mediator between the nobility of Clèves and him. He succeeds there rather well, but it proved to be difficult to make mean the parts and it emerges sometimes from the tensions between the prince and his stadhouder.

The most critical point was reached in 1655, when Frederic Guillaume sent to Clèves his mother-in-law Amalia van Solms, widow of Frederic Henri, the taker of cities, to negotiate with the States de Clèves and of Mark. This affront definitively scrambled the relationship between Amalia and Johan Maurits, whereas formerly there existed between them two of the cordial relations, and whose gossip of time judged sometimes that they went too far.

Johan Maurits gave well prone to these scandalmongerings, because it remained a long time without marrying what was enough striking at noble having dynastic aspirations. These aspirations, it had left them free course in Brazil and thereafter, during the remainder of its life, it tried to concretize them in Clèves.

Its policy

It applied a policy of religious tolerance. Itself was calvinist, but the catholics could continue to live Clèves and even the Jews were allowed there. In addition it was immediately put to transform the appearance of the city and made come for that in Clèves its old knowledge Jacob van Campen. In its palate of Freudenberg and with other places around the city, in the already existing forests, Johan Maurits made create superb traditional parks with channels, fountains and avenues crossing out of stars.

The stadhouder protected the culture, science and arts. Since the last world war, the majority of its constructions, its administrative buildings and as of its own residences are not any more as one to remember, but the superb park with the foot of Sternberg remained in all its glory. There still remains an avenue bordered of limes, famous Nassauerallee. Shortly after its installation Johan Maurits had ordered in the Netherlands 600 limes and had made them plant throughout a rectilinear avenue. The prince was impressed so much by it that he wanted to have the identical one to Berlin, and it was Unter den Linden . The Tiergarten , him also, was inspired by the parks of Clèves.

The marriage of Frederic-Guillaume

It goes without saying the palatine princess Louise Henriette de Nassau played it there also a big role. Louise Henriette was a girl of Frederic-Henri of Orange-Nassau and it had made knowledge with Frederic-Guillaume at the time when he was at the court of $the Hague, but at this time she was yet only one little girl. After one had refused to him the hand of the girl of the king of Sweden, Frederic-Guillaume married his young love, Louise Henriette, with the palate of Noordeinde. The first years the couple lived Clèves where Johan Maurits was but thereafter, it passed most of time to Berlin. The Dutch princess made build by her own architects the castle of Oranienburg and thus imported the Dutch classicism in Brandebourg. Johan Maurits advised the prince when it was necessary to choose architects, masons, painters, sculptors and workmen for the court of Potsdam.

Modernization

Johan Maurits inserted Prussia to forced march in modernity. In 1671 Frederic-Guillaume opened his doors in Huguenots which, before even the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, started to flee France. It was its personal interest besides make come at his place from the intellectuals and the workmen from Western Europe. The same applied to the Jews which could be established in Prussia with the help of the payment of an amount of money. The prince acts thus according to the example of the mode of tolerance of Johan Maurits in Brazil. Huguenots and Jews especially went to live in Berlin where the foreigners ended up constituting the quarter of the population.

The colonial interlude

Frederic-Guillaume understood that it was necessary a fleet for Prussia because, located on the Baltic, she was regularly threatened by Sweden; it also went there from the glory of the country. It went even if far in its desire to imitate the others which it founded a colony in Africa. Johan Maurits was extremely well occupied in Brazil. But Prussia was not a maritime nation, even if Frederic-Guillaume ordered tens of ships in the United Provinces. The Prussian company of Africa was to never pay and, finally, Groß-Friedrichsburg on the coast of Guinea was sold to the Dutchmen.

At the request of the prince, Johan Maurits was high in 1652 with the dignity of “prince” of empire and the same year he became large-Master of the protesting order of Johannites in the bailliage of Brandebourg. The function was honorary, but the task did not fill with enthusiasm “the Brazilian one less” and it immediately started to build a new general headquarter with Sonnenberg, in current Poland. Moreover, it continued to maintain the relationships to the United Provinces where it had preserved military functions.

In spring 1657, a large procession started from Clèves. It was prince Johan Maurits which went to Frankfurt accompanied by hundreds the noble ones, soldiers, servants and civils servant of his continuation in tens of fit with body glowing of gold and of money and painted of orange and green Johan Maurits had been chosen by the prince for representing there and to vote on its behalf in order to appoint the new emperor of Germany and on August 5th, 1658 it attended the crowning of this emperor, Léopold 1st.

In the years 1650, its relationships to the United Provinces cooled with the first time when there was not any more a stadhouderat (1650 - 1672). Later however one called upon the strategist that it was.

The war in the Netherlands

In 1665, it led the troops of the prince against “Bernard the Bombs”, the bishop of Munster. On this occasion, with some other riders, it fell since a bridge in Franeker. It was by one icy January, but it was left there alive. Immediately a worship of thanksgiving was celebrated in the reformed church of Franeker. Johan Maurits spent months all the same to be gone back some; he had seen the death of near.

In 1668, he was again field-marshal whereas the war against France was imminent and in 1672, the terrible year, he was the main thing adviser of Guillaume III. The close relationships which Johan Maurits at the same time with the Dutch prince and stadhouder had formed of him the natural link between the United Provinces and Prussia. There were well sometimes tensions, but never one did not approach a war. Frederic-Guillaume and Johan Maurits were experienced and courageous soldiers, but they precisely knew what was the war and they made of their to better avoid it. Prussia was a State, it was not a country, it was made up of several parts located between the United Provinces and Lithuania. Therefore it needed a professional army, and not a bunch of mercenaries as it was the practice; the geographical location did not allow it. Frederic-Guillaume constituted an army which ends up reaching 24.000 men, which intimidated the majority of the enemies.

An army of such a size was possible for a small State only thanks to one well organized taxation. The Junkers, the nobility of the country, ended up giving their agreement. But those which perceived the taxes had to be incorruptible. It was whereas was born the Prussian civil servant. There also, Johan Maurits gave its councils. In Clèves him also always insisted on the honesty of the civils servant and, where one missed there, its anger was terrible.

Death

The “Brazilian one” died in December 1679, with Berg in Dal all beside Clèves. He had never married. At this time the city was occupied by the French troops which had treated Johan Maurits with respect besides. It was initially buried in the park, then thereafter in its own county of Siegen. When his/her friend Frederic-Guillaume died, nine years later, after a reign of almost fifty years, one called it “the large prince” in whole Europe and Prussia counted a million inhabitants well.

See too

Internal bond

• Mauritshuis, the old residence of van Nassau-Siegen transformed into museum.

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