for passengers from the last half of the 17th century and through the 18th century until the building of the first rail tracks along the routes of former passenger canal systems. As Haarlem slowly expanded southwards, so did the bulb fields, and even today rail travelers between Rotterdam and Amsterdam will see beautifully blooming bulb fields on the stretch between Leiden and Haarlem in Spring.
18th century
As the center of trade gravitated towards Amsterdam, Haarlem declined in the 18th century. The Golden age had created a large upper middle class of merchants and well-to-do small business owners. Taking advantage of the reliability of the trekschuit connection between Amsterdam and Haarlem, many people had a business address in Amsterdam and a weekend or summer home in Haarlem. Haarlem became more and more a bedroom community as the increasingly dense population of Amsterdam caused the canals to smell in the summer. Many well-to-do gentlemen moved their families to summer homes in the Spring and commuted between addresses. Popular places for summer homes were along the Spaarne in southern Haarlem. Pieter Teyler van der Hulst and Henry Hope built summer homes there, as well as many Amsterdam merchants and councilmen. Today, it is still possible to travel by boat along the Spaarne and this has turned into a popular form of tourism in the summer months.
In the 18th century Haarlem became the seat of a suffragan diocese of the Old Catholic Church of Utrecht.
French rule
At the end of the 18th century a number of anti-Orange commissions were founded.
On 18 January 1795 the "Staatse" army was defeated near Woerden. During the night preceding the 19th, the same night that stadtholder William V of Orange fled the country, the various commissions gathered and implemented a revolution. The commissions changed the city's administrators in a bloodless
