When Orange Was Banned

On the sixteenth of June 1784 the States of Holland banned the colour orange. It went further than clothing. Orange cockades, bows, ribbons and papers were forbidden, as was singing orange songs or shouting oranje boven, on pain of death in the most serious cases.

The Patriots had taken power here and wanted to cut stadtholder William the Fifth down to size. For their own sign they chose a black ribbon on the hat, folded into a V for vrijheid, freedom.

The ban was enforced in earnest. In the autumn of 1785 the prosecution demanded that Kaat Mossel, a Rotterdam fishwife, be publicly flogged, jailed for ten years and then banished for life, for little more than insults and shouting oranje boven. Her defence counsel was the young Bilderdijk.

Anyone who still wanted to show their colours got creative. In Boskoop, Orangists planted marigolds in their front gardens, and Patriot neighbours pulled them out again.

The end came abruptly. When Prussian troops crossed into the country in September 1787, The Hague lifted the ban by simply ignoring it. People put on orange in the street, and the States withdrew the decision that same afternoon.

The next stop is just outside the Binnenhof on the east side, standing with its feet in the Hofvijver: the Mauritshuis.