and Admiral Yerhuell has received orders to depart within twenty-four hours.  I want no more phrases and protestations.  It is time I should know whether you intend to ruin Holland by your follies.  I do not choose that you should again send a Minister to Austria, or that you should dismiss the French who are in your service.  I have recalled my Ambassador as I intend only to have a charge d’affaires in Holland.  The Sieur Serrurier, who remains there in that capacity, will communicate my intentions.  My Ambassador shall no longer be exposed to your insults.  Write to me no more of those set phrases which you have been repeating for the last three years, and the falsehood of which is proved every day.

   This is the last letter I will ever write to you as long as I live.

(Signed) Napoleon.

Thus reduced to the cruel alternative of crushing Holland with his own hands, or leaving that task to the Emperor, Louis did not hesitate to lay down his sceptre.  Having formed this resolution, he addressed a message to the Legislative Body of the Kingdom of Holland explaining the motives of his abdication.  The French troops entered Holland under the command of the Duke of Reggio, and that marshal, who was more a king than the King himself, threatened to occupy Amsterdam.  Louis then descended from his throne, and four years after Napoleon was hurled from his.

In his act of abdication Louis declared that he had been driven to that step by the unhappy state of his Kingdom, which he attributed to his brother’s unfavourable feelings towards him.  He added that he had made every effort and sacrifice to put an end to that painful state of things, and that, finally, he regarded himself as the cause of the continual misunderstanding between the French Empire and Holland.  It is curious that Louis thought he could abdicate the crown of Holland in favour of his son, as Napoleon only four years after wished to abdicate his crown in favour of the King of Rome.

Louis bade farewell to the people of Holland in a proclamation, after the publication of which he repaired to the waters at Toeplitz.  There he was living in tranquil retirement when he learned that his brother had united Holland to the Empire.  He then published a protest, of which I obtained a copy, though its circulation was strictly prohibited by the police.  In this protest Louis said: 

The constitution of the state guaranteed by the Emperor, my brother, gave me the right of abdicating in favour of my children.  That abdication was made in the form and terms prescribed by the constitution.  The Emperor had no right to declare war against Holland, and he has not done so.

   There is no act, no dissent, no demand of the Dutch nation that can
   authorise the pretended union.

   My abdication does not leave the throne vacant.  I have abdicated
   only in favour of my children.