you do not want to reign for any length of time.

States are governed by reason and policy, and not by acrimony and weakness." Twenty thousand French troops were approaching Amsterdam to bring him to reason, when the young ruler decided to be rid of this royal mummery.

On the night of July 1st he fled from Haarlem, and travelled swiftly and secretly eastwards until he reached Teplitz, in Bohemia.

The ignominy of this flight rested on the brother who had made kingship a mockery.

The refugee left behind him the reputation of a man who, lovable by nature but soured by domestic discords, sought to shield his subjects from the ruin into which the rigid application of the Continental System was certain to plunge them.