French Newspaper from The Netherlands

At the end of the seventeenth century, the French government strongly controlled the national press. Censorship was effective, and non-Catholics had a difficult time. Especially the Protestant journalists fled to the Netherlands, where the rules were less strict. The so-called Gazettes de Hollande, French language newspapers printed in the Netherlands, were smuggled into France and had a large audience. The most famous paper was the Gazette de Leyde. In the Gazette de la Haye of 1752, pictured above, the funeral of Stadholder Willem IV is described. The order of the people behind the hearse gets special attention, as it tells something about the division of power within the Dutch Republic.