Aan het Volk van Nederland
It was not until 1891, over a century after the pamphlet appeared, that it could be proven without doubt that the author had been prominent Patriot leader Joan Derk van der Capellen tot den Pol (1741–1784).
Orangists blamed the always obstructive city of Amsterdam, but Patriot pamphleteers opined stadtholder William V of Orange and his accomplices were the real perpetrators.
In Aan het Volk van Nederland, he mentions the injustice he faced personally in Overijssel when trying to end the drostendiensten, a form of socage (institutionalised feudal forced labour), but it is just one of many issues he addresses.
Although the sale and even possession of the pamphlet was immediately strictly forbidden soon after it was first spread, four reprints would be published in 1781 and 1782, not counting the English, French and German translations.
In 1788, Aan het Volk van Nederland again played a major role, because Honoré Gabriel Riqueti reflected on it in his Lettres aux Bataves sur le Stadhoudérat ("Letters to the Batavians Concerning the Stadtholderate").
The Dutch had rebelled against Philip II, but the princes of Orange, who did save the Northern Netherlands from Spanish tyranny, were actually also seeking to enlarge their own power, the pamphlet claimed.
According to historians Jan Romein (1893–1962) and Annie Romein-Verschoor (1895–1978), Van der Capellen's assertion that ever since the marriage of William II and Mary Stuart, dynastic interests started to outweigh national interests, and that the Orange clan had made efforts to establish a monarchy ever since Frederick Henry, lies quite close to the conclusions of modern-day scholarship (referring to Pieter Geyl's Oranje en Stuart (1939)).
[1] But the country's history from Capellian perspective was just setting the stage for what Aan het Volk van Nederland was really about: criticism of the ills the Republic was suffering from in 1781.
His translations of Andrew Fletcher and Richard Price, his opposition to the reinforcement of the army, his protest against lending out the Scottish Brigade and the military jurisdiction he called a hideous monstrosity, his plea for a more strict maintenance of the regeringsreglement, and of course his struggle against the drostendiensten are mentioned as the resistance he encountered.
Van der Capellen claimed Prince William was personally responsible for the huge financial losses Dutch merchants and military setbacks American rebels had suffered as a result.
The French ambassador in the Republic, Duke De la Vauguyon, called the pamphlet in his letter to his government in Versailles a "livre très condamnable" (a "very condemnable booklet").
A great reward was offered in Holland for the discovery of the author of the Dutch original; a fact which proves that it must be an interesting object to the political world.
