How it all started

The Royal Marechaussee Historical Museum opened in Apeldoorn in 1936. After the war, the museum moved first to The Hague and then to Rotterdam. The Marechaussee Museum has been located in Buren since 1972. Read more about the history of the Marechaussee.

History of Marechaussee

Early in the nineteenth century, the Netherlands had police forces in the cities and patrolmen outside the cities. A centrally controlled police force was needed, one with a military structure. This new police organisation would have to maintain order, ensure compliance with the law and ensure that the borders and major roads were safe.

As the sovereign monarch at the time, King William I signed the decree for its foundation and the Corps de Maréchaussée thereby came into existence on 26 October 1814.

In 1908, Queen Wilhelmina delegated the protection of the Royal Palaces to the Royal Marechaussee.

From 1919 onwards, what was now called the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee was part of the police force, together with the municipal police, the Police Corps and the State Patrol Corps. The State Patrol Corps and the Royal Marechaussee served as national police forces. This situation would last until 1940.

On 5 July 1940, the Marechaussee lost its ‘Royal’ predicate. By order of the German occupiers, the Marechaussee merged with the civilian police, thereby also losing its military status. The State Patrol Corps and Municipal Patrol Corps were disbanded and placed under the Marechaussee. This created a single State Police Corps outside the cities under the Marechaussee name.

Outside of the Netherlands, the name Royal Marechaussee did continue to exist. During the occupation, around 200 Marechaussee officers guarded the Dutch royal family in England. They also did police work as the Princess Irene Brigade.

After the liberation in 1945, the Marechaussee got its ‘Royal’ status back. It also reacquired the status of a military police corps, with both military and civilian tasks. In addition, the government retained a single police corps for the rural areas, called the State Police Force. This corps remained, replacing the former State Patrol Corps and Municipal Patrol Corps.

The Royal Marechaussee’s police tasks were defined in the Police Act in 1988.

The State Police Force was disbanded in 1994. It was replaced by the regional police and the National Police Service Corps (the current National Police). The National Police then handed over police and security duties at civilian airfields to the Royal Marechaussee.

On 3 July 1956, Princess Beatrix became patroness of the Royal Marechaussee. She opened a new Marechaussee staff building in 1998, the Queen Beatrix Barracks in The Hague.

In 1998, the Royal Marechaussee became an independent branch of the armed forces.
A change in the Police Act in 2007 was aimed at clarifying how the Marechaussee is allowed to deal with civilians. The Marechaussee was given full investigative authority but continued to focus on its own Marechaussee duties.

The Marechaussee also regularly joins foreign missions. One of the larger missions was the police training mission in Afghanistan. From 2011 to 2013, the Netherlands trained around 700 police officers in the province of Kunduz. In July and August 2014, the Ministry of Defence deployed the Marechaussee during a repatriation mission in Ukraine.

King Willem-Alexander presented a new official banner or ‘standard’ to the Marechaussee in October 2014. The text on the previous one from 1931 said “Coat of arms of the Royal Marechaussee”. A ‘weapon’ is the same word as a ‘coat of arms’ in Dutch – but since 1998, the Marechaussee has no longer been a ‘weapon’ to be wielded by the army, but instead an independent branch of the armed forces. In addition to “Royal Marechaussee”, the banner also states the year of foundation (1814) and includes the WA monogram of King Willem-Alexander. It was the first such ‘standard’ the king issued to any branch of the armed forces.

The Royal Marechaussee celebrated its 200th anniversary in 2014 in the presence of its patroness, Princess Beatrix. On Arms Day, a historical book by the Netherlands Institute of Military History was published about the 200-year history of the Marechaussee, “A powerful tool: the Royal Marechaussee, 1814-2014”.