HEINSIUS, ANTONY, grand pensionary of Holland by successive quinquennial re-elections, from the year 1689 until his death on the 3d of August 1720, at the age of seventy-nine, was one of the statesmen who, during this memorable period, exercised the greatest influence on the affairs of Europe. Marlborough, Prince Eugene, and Heinsius, formed the famous triumvirate so resolutely determined to humiliate France, and which steeped in bitterness the declining years of Louis XIV. He saw his country avenged for the misfortunes which that monarch had inflicted on it in 1672; and he also saw himself avenged; for, after the peace of Nimeguen, having been sent to the court of France on affairs connected with the principality of Orange, he had experienced the ill nature of the haughty and insolent Louvois, who did all but threaten to have him shut up in the Bastille. Heinsius commenced his public career as councillor-pensionary of the town of Delft; and, faithful to his commission, he sometimes, in this capacity, pursued a line of conduct not calculated to make him be considered as a person devoted to the interests of the state.
Heinsius holder. But at a subsequent period the Prince of Orange honoured him with the most unlimited confidence; and Heinsius, in return, rendered him the most important services. He continued to enjoy the same favour when that prince became king of England, and even after he had been succeeded by Queen Anne. After the death of King William, however, his political conduct in regard to France appears to have experienced some modification, though not to such an extent as to enable the French court to flatter themselves with any decided change in his views. Voltaire, in his Siècle de Louis XIV., represents Heinsius as a Spartan, proud of having humbled the king of Persia, when, in 1709, Louis sent his minister De Torcy to the Hague to sue for peace. De Torcy himself, in his Mémoires (tom. li. p. 3), describes the grand pensionary "as a man of consummate ability in the management of affairs, cold in his manners, polished in his conversation, having nothing repulsive in his demeanour, and rarely warmed, far less excited, by debate. His exterior," adds the same authority, "was simple, and his house plain; an establishment composed of a secretary, a coachman, a laquais, and a female servant, by no means indicated the credit of a prime minister." De Torcy further informs us that "he was never accused, either of seeking to prolong the war on account of the consideration which its continuance necessarily gave him, or from any views of private interest or personal ambition." This is the testimony of an enemy, and cannot, therefore, be suspected of partiality. M. de Haren, in a note to his poem of the Gueux, renders the same justice to the calmness and sobriety of Heinsius; but supposes that his seclusion from society prevented him acquiring that knowledge of the human heart which a statesman ought to possess, and thus led him to disregard intelligence, of which one better acquainted with mankind would at once have discerned the importance. "Hence, when the refugee pastor Basnage, in 1707, apprised him of a certain secret convention entered into between the courts of Vienna and Versailles to defeat the projected enterprise against Toulon, Heinsius neglected this information, not imagining it possible that a minister of the gospel could be better initiated in the secrets of cabinets than a grand pensionary." But Fagel did not share this security, nor was it justified by the event. M. de Haren also mentions a singular anecdote of Heinsius. Soon after the peace of Utrecht he was attacked by the pestilence in the midst of the Hague, and cured without the appalling fact being suffered to transpire. On this occasion he displayed admirable prudence and self-possession. The secret was confined to himself, his physician, and Count de Wassenaer-Starrenburg, and was kept with inviolable fidelity until after his death. Heinsius was the last of the magistrates and ministers of the states of Holland who wore the costume of the gown and band. (A.)