Batavian Republic
1795–1806 | |||||||||
Motto: Gelykheid, Vryheid, Broederschap States-General | |||||||||
• 1796–1798 | National Assembly | ||||||||
• 1798–1801 | Executive Authority | ||||||||
• 1801–1805 | State Council | ||||||||
• 1805–1806 | Rutger Jan Schimmelpenninck | ||||||||
Historical era | French Revolutionary Wars | ||||||||
19 January 1795 | |||||||||
16 May 1795 | |||||||||
5 June 1806 | |||||||||
Population | |||||||||
• 1795 | 1,883,009[2] | ||||||||
• 1806 | 2,178,000[3] | ||||||||
Currency | Guilder | ||||||||
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Today part of | Netherlands Belgium Germany |
The Batavian Republic (Dutch: Bataafse Republiek; French: République Batave) was the successor state to the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands. It was proclaimed on 19 January 1795 and ended on 5 June 1806, with the accession of Louis Bonaparte to the Dutch throne. From October 1801 onward, it was known as the Batavian Commonwealth (Dutch: Bataafs Gemenebest). Both names refer to the Germanic tribe of the Batavi, representing both the Dutch ancestry and their ancient quest for liberty in their nationalistic lore.
In early 1795, intervention by the
The political, economic, and social reforms that were brought about during the relatively short duration of the Batavian Republic have had a lasting impact. The confederal structure of the old Dutch Republic was permanently replaced by a unitary state. For the first time in Dutch history, the constitution that was adopted in 1798 had a genuinely democratic character. For a time, the Republic was governed democratically, although a coup d'état in 1801 put an authoritarian regime in power after another change to the constitution. The influence of this period helped smooth the transition to a more democratic government in 1848 (the constitutional revision by Johan Rudolph Thorbecke, limiting the power of the king). A type of ministerial government was introduced for the first time in Dutch history and many of the current government departments date their history back to this period.
Though the Batavian Republic was a client state of France, its successive governments tried to maintain a degree of independence and to serve Dutch interests even where they clashed with the interests of the French. This clash of interests led to the eventual demise of the Republic when the short-lived experiment with the regime of "Grand Pensionary" Rutger Jan Schimmelpenninck proved unsatisfactory to Napoleon. The subsequent king Louis Bonaparte also refused to follow French dictates, which ultimately led in turn to his downfall in 1810 when the territory was annexed into the French Empire.
Background
Due to the disastrous
The
Creation of the Republic
The
Historical stages of the Republic
The French presented themselves as liberators.
Revolutionary States-General
At first, the revolutionaries used the constitutional machinery of the old confederal republic. They resumed where they had left off after the purge in 1787 of Patriot regents, taking over the offices of the Orangist regents that were now purged in their turn. (For instance, the States of Holland and West Friesland were replaced by having the 18 cities that formally were represented in those States send representatives to a constituent assembly that formally abolished the States and founded a new body, the Provisional Representatives of the People of Holland, that took over the functions of the States of Holland as long as the States General continued to exist[19]). Though the political make-up of the States General changed appreciably because of this change in personnel, it retained a number of defenders of the old particularist interests. The first order of business of the revolutionaries therefore was to strive for the reform of the confederal state, with its discrimination of the Generality Lands, and of particular minorities (Catholics, Jews), in the direction of a unitary state, in which the minorities would be emancipated, and the old entrenched interests superseded by a more democratic political order.[20] As a first step the representatives of Brabant were admitted to the States General.[21]
However, a grass-roots democratic movement began to form in the Summer of 1795, consisting of popular societies (clubs) and wijkvergaderingen (precinct meetings), demanding popular influence on the government. A kind of parallel government in the form of "general assemblies" sprang up next to the city governments and the provincial States that repeatedly came into conflict with the established order. In the Fall of 1795 the States General started to work on a procedure to peacefully replace itself, "by constitutional means", with a National Assembly that would possess full executive, legislative and constituent powers.[22] This project at first met with sharp resistance from the conservatives. In some cases even force was used (as in Friesland and Groningen)[23] to overcome this opposition. The new National Assembly convened in The Hague on 1 March 1796.[24]
Struggle for a constitution
Like the old revolutionary States-General, the new National Assembly contained radically opposed parties: the unitary democrats, led by Pieter Vreede, Johan Valckenaer and Pieter Paulus, and the federalists, such as Jacob Abraham de Mist and Gerard Willem van Marle.[25] But there was a broad continuum of opinion between these poles. In this force-field the federalists held the upper hand after the sudden demise of Paulus (who might otherwise have acted as a unifier). The conservative federalists were more adept at parliamentary manoeuvering. Rutger Jan Schimmelpenninck proved himself especially adept at this. The frustration this engendered among the democrats led them to appeal to popular opinion and to extra-parliamentary action. Meanwhile, the Assembly installed a constitutional commission that in November 1796 presented a report that amounted to a continuation of the old federal arrangements. As this was totally unacceptable to the unitarists, this draft was subsequently amended into its opposite, by a compromise that finally formed a basis for a new Constitution.[26] The Assembly now began discussing other important matters, such as the separation between church and state, and the emancipation of minorities. The organs of the state were to be a bicameral Legislative Corps, to be elected in indirect elections, and a Directory-like Executive of five members. The end result looked much like the French Constitution of 1795. This was approved by the Assembly on 10 May 1797.[27]
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The draft-Constitution was to be subjected to
Now the course of events started to speed up. The new French ambassador Charles-François Delacroix took the side of the radicals. His behavior sufficiently intimidated the opponents of the radical proposals to actually fall in line. The coup that was to follow was therefore in reality superfluous. Nevertheless, the radicals, led by Wybo Fijnje and Willem Ockerse, in collaboration with Pierre Auguste Brahain Ducange, the secretary of the French ambassador, now started to plot the coup d'état of 21–22 January 1798, which, with the assistance of General Herman Willem Daendels, put the radicals in power.[30] A rump assembly of about fifty radicals declared itself a Constituante, which in one fell swoop enacted the entire radical program, while the other members of the Assembly were forcibly detained. All provincial sovereignties were repealed; the dissident members of the Assembly expelled; an "interim Executive Directory" empowered; and the constitutional commission reduced to seven radical members.[31]
Though the resulting constitution has sometimes been depicted as a French project, it was actually a result of the constitutional commission's discussions between October 1797 and January 1798. Except for the purge of the electoral rolls of "crypto-Orangists" and other reactionaries, it might therefore have been acceptable for the moderates, obviating the need for the January coup.[32] In any case, the "suggestions" of Delacroix were rejected and the constitutional commission insisted on the following three essential points: universal manhood suffrage, without fiscal qualifications.[33] the right of revision of the constitution at quinquennial intervals by the voters; and finally the rejection of the principle of a bicameral legislature, in which each House would have a separate electoral base.[34]
Though the coup of 22 January 1798 did not bode well for a genuinely democratic approval process for the new constitution (and the French would have preferred going the "safe" way of approval by the rump assembly) the plebiscite that started on 17 March (in the usual form of elections in "primary" assemblies of about 100–500 voters) had a reasonably democratic quality. On 23 April 1798, the Staatsregeling voor het Bataafsche Volk was approved with 153,913 votes against 11,587 (i.e., just 641 more people voted for approval in 1798 than had voted for rejection of the previous draft in 1797; about 50% of the electorate had voted.)[35] The new regime therefore seemed well-grounded in the new doctrine of popular sovereignty.[36]
The new constitution addressed many of the reformist concerns of the Patriots since 1785, including no hereditary offices; no sinecures; and accountability of officials. It also came down on the side of economic liberalism, as opposed to mercantilism, in the economic debate then raging in republican circles, and therefore promised to do away with guilds and internal impediments to trade. The old provincial-repartition system of public finance was to be replaced by a system of national taxation. There was to be a five-man Uitvoerend Bewind as a collective Executive, with eight national Agenten (government ministers) doing the actual Administration, directing Foreign Affairs, Police and Interior, Justice, Finance, War, Navy, National Education, and National Economy.[37] Most importantly, as historian Simon Schama states: "[i]ts central aim was to change the nature of the Dutch state and to bind its new institutions into the framework of an electoral democracy." As such it had an importance that outlasted the Batavian Republic and set up an ideal to emulate for its successor states.[38]
Uitvoerend Bewind
Giddy with their success, the radicals now pushed further. Their legitimacy was already tenuous, because of the way they had seized power. Now they also lost support in the rump-Assembly because of their partisanship. Not wishing to repeat the mistakes of the French
Coup d'état of the moderates
Meanwhile, the 22 Floréal coup in France undermined Delacroix, because it inspired more sympathy by French foreign minister Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord for the Dutch opposition members who demanded the ambassador's recall. At the same time, Daendels became disaffected with the regime he had helped put into power because of the depredations of the purging commissions.[40] His French colleague General Barthélemy Catherine Joubert was displeased with the radicals because of conflicts about the co-dominion of Flushing. Finally, the newly appointed Agenten were disturbed about the inefficiency of the Uitvoerend Bewind.[41] All these disaffections came together with the coup on 12 June 1798, of that recidivist, General Daendels, in which he disturbed a dinner party of Delacroix and three members of the Uitvoerend Bewind, violating the diplomatic immunity of the ambassador by putting pistols to his chest. The members of the Representative Assembly were arrested in session.[42]
The fall of the Vreede-Fijnje Bewind opened the way for the actual implementation of the new constitution. The "Interim Directory" that now came to power (consisting of a few of the dissenting Agenten) made haste with organizing elections for the Representative Assembly that convened on 31 July. By the middle of August a new Uitvoerend Bewind had been appointed and the Agenten who had been behind the coup, resumed their original positions.[43] This new regime now started to implement the policies that their radical predecessors had written into the constitution. The coup of June therefore was not a reactionary revolution, but only brought about a change in personnel. Soon most of the people that were arrested at both the January and June coups were released in the spirit of reconciliation that the new regime advocated. The make-up of the Representative Assembly closely resembled that of the second National Assembly of 1797.[44]
The new regime was soon to discover that changes do not easily come about by legislative fiat. The part of the constitution that worked adequately was the experiment with indirect democracy. During the period in which the constitution was in force, the system of primary assemblies that elected delegates who voted for the respective organs of government worked efficiently, and kept the voters engaged. However, exactly because the Republic was a genuine democracy, other goals of the regime were less easy to attain. The elections often put people into office that were very much opposed to the unitary state that was now enshrined in the constitution, and to other innovations that it entailed, or in any case were of a conservative inclination.[45]
This already applied at the top: the constitution contained an age-requirement for the members of the Uitvoerend Bewind, which favored the election of staid Patriot regents, and discriminated against the more talented appointed Agents, like Jacobus Spoors, Gerrit Jan Pijman and Alexander Gogel. The tenor of the Bewind became more conservative in the ensuing years. The agents went to work energetically, however, and started with an onslaught on the old administrative organization of the country, in a deliberate attempt to liquidate the very identity of the old federal structure. The once mighty province of Holland was carved into three pieces: Amstel (Amsterdam and immediate vicinity), Texel (the northern peninsula) and Delf (the southern part); and the other provinces were often merged in larger entities, like Overijssel and Drente into Ouden Yssel, and Frisia and Groningen into the Eems department. The aim was to organize the country into units with equal numbers of primary assemblies (hence the small Amstel department with its large population). The first elections for the administrative organs of these new entities were held in March 1799. But, of course, such a reorganization did not suddenly change the old allegiances of the people living in these areas. In any case, the new local and departmental administrations, though elected, were supposed to execute the policies as centrally laid down by the national government. As the elections often put people in power who represented the old order (like Joan Arend de Vos van Steenwijk in Ouden Yssel) this was exceedingly unlikely. To put it differently, the political effort to attain "national unity" through reconciliation of the diverse Patriot factions of all stripes, got in the way of the effort to create an efficient national unitary state, as envisioned by Gogel.[46]
Public finance reform
The unitary state was not an end in itself, but a means to higher ends. The republic had been in dire financial straits even before the revolution of 1795. The system of public finance that had been the envy of the world in its
To ameliorate the situation the old Republic maintained a policy of severe
The average ordinary revenue of the republic at this time amounted to between 28 and 35 million guilders. However, since the outbreak of the war in 1793 the expenditure had been running at between 40 and 55 millions. For the year 1800 the republic had to find 78 million guilders for its expenditures.[54] In other words, the new Agent of Finance, Gogel, was faced with a financial emergency. He needed to generate about 50 million guilders annually in ordinary revenue on a permanent basis urgently. Besides, as the Dutch tax system was heavily skewed toward highly regressive indirect taxes, which inordinately burdened the impoverished population, he wanted to change this to a system that depended more on direct (income and wealth) taxes. Finally, he wanted to do away with the provincial differentiation in the taxation, and construct a nationally standardized system. When he put these reform proposals to the Representative Assembly on 30 September 1799, they met with massive resistance. This led to so much delay in its acceptance that by the time it was to be implemented (in 1801) the re-federalisation of the state by the new Staatsbewind regime was already underway. Eventually, Gogel's reforms were only implemented under the successor state of the Kingdom of Holland.[55]
These are (important) examples of instances in which the good intentions of the Uitvoerend Bewind and its Agenten met with the political and economic realities of the times. Other necessary reforms (the abolition of the guilds, the reform of the system of poor relief to mention but a few examples) equally came to nothing. These defeats progressively led to disenchantment of the population with the regime, that already was in an awkward position because it was also brushed with the tar of the depredations of the French "sister republic" that mainly viewed the Batavian Republic as a milk cow, both collectively (in its demands for loans at very low interest rates[56]) and individually (in the demands of French officials for bribes and other extortions).[57]
Anglo-Russian invasion
The sagging popularity of the Republic did not escape the attention of the British intelligence services. However, because this intelligence was filtered through the eyes of Orangist agents in the Republic and émigrés in England, it was erroneously interpreted as possible support for an Orangist restoration. This caused the miscalculation that led to the ill-fated Anglo-Russian invasion of Holland in the peninsula of North Holland in 1799.[58]
Though the expedition ended in failure the members of the Uitvoerend Bewind became very nervous in the days before the
Staatsbewind and the Peace of Amiens
Pressure for constitutional reform
Though Napoleon had a warlike reputation, his policies in his first years as
A similar "solution" seemed appropriate for the Batavian Republic. The Batavian government, and its constitution, were particularly disliked by the Consul (no friend of democracy in any case), because of the snub that Amsterdam bankers gave in 1800 to his request for a big loan at the usual generous rate of interest the French expected as a matter of right.
Meanwhile, even the minds of reformers like Gogel had become receptive to the need for change. The frustrations of the stalemate between unitarist reformers and democratically elected federalist obstructionists had caused a certain disillusionment with democratic politics in the former (the latter were already convinced). An alliance was therefore forming between the would-be reformers, who would like to finally push their reforms through, by "Bonapartist" means, if necessary, and the people who wished to restore the old federal order, in the hands of the old regent class. Director Besier in particular was amenable to a project that would extend executive power (and curtail that of the Assembly), and revert the constitution to federal devolution. With the help of Sémonville he now started to push a project of constitutional reform that followed the French Constitution of the Year VIII in important respects: a bicameral legislature would be appointed by a "National College" (akin to the French Sénat conservateur) from a list of names produced by a convoluted system of national elections. This met with little enthusiasm by two of the other Directors François Ermerins and Jean Henri van Swinden, and by the Representative Assembly, that rejected the project on 11 June 1801, by fifty votes to twelve.[63]
Augereau-coup
The majority in the Uitvoerend Bewind (Gerrit Pijman in particular) therefore amended the project in a sense that gave re-federalization even more emphasis. They unilaterally convened the primary assemblies by a proclamation on 14 September 1801, have a
Unlike the coup of June 1798, the Augereau coup did present a sharp break with the recent past. The new constitution reduced the role of the legislative branch (which now did not have the right of initiative), and expanded the powers of the Executive, which now became known as the Staatsbewind (Regency of State). The elective principle was reduced to a formality: the Staatsbewind, originally consisting of the three directors taking part in the coup, expanded its membership by co-optation to twelve. This executive then appointed the first 35 members of the legislature. As vacancies arose, these were filled, as far as possible, on a provincial rota and according to national quotas of representatives of each province (much like the old States-General). Except for Holland, the old provinces were reconstituted. The local and provincial administrative organs continued to be elected – no longer by universal manhood suffrage, but by a system of census suffrage.[65]
Most important was the change in personnel of these organs, mostly as a consequence of this electoral change. The "democrats" were mostly replaced by Patriot regents, who had no patience with democracy, and by the old Orangist regents, who did not even have to disguise their allegiance as in early 1801 a convenient amnesty was proclaimed. One surprising example is Egbert Sjuck Gerrold Juckema van Burmania Rengers, the Orangist burgomaster of Leeuwarden before 1795, a notorious reactionary.[66]
The coup represented a counter-revolution. This became clear in the way the iconography of the 1795 revolution disappeared: the epigraph Vrijheid, Gelijkheid, Broederschap (Liberty, Equality, Fraternity) which had adorned all official publications, was henceforth removed, and the last Liberty Trees were removed from the town squares. Soon the old ways were restored. For example, though the abolition of the guilds formally remained, in practice regulation of crafts and trades was reimposed by local ordinances.[67]
Peace negotiations
Against this background the negotiations for the Treaty of Amiens started in October 1801. The minor participants in the negotiations between Great Britain and France (the Batavian Republic and Spain) were immediately presented with faits accomplis: the preliminary agreement ceded Ceylon, and guaranteed free British shipping to the Cape of Good Hope, without the Dutch even being consulted. The Dutch ambassador in France, Rutger Jan Schimmelpenninck, who acted as the Dutch plenipotentiary, vainly protested that the Treaty of The Hague had guaranteed the Dutch colonies, and that France had promised not to make a separate peace. After this separate peace had been concluded, the British were left to negotiate with the minor French allies separately. This did not mean that the Dutch were completely left to their own devices: whenever French interests seemed to be in danger, France decisively intervened on its own behalf, as in the attempt to deduct the value of the Dutch fleet, surrendered in 1799, that the British had purchased from the Stadtholder, from the indemnification of the Prince of Orange.[68]
That indemnification was an important sideshow in the negotiations. The consequence of the peace treaty was that the Batavian Republic now received international recognition, even by the British, and that the old Dutch Republic was now irreversibly dead. This put an end to all pretensions of the Stadtholder and his heirs, such as they were. It may be important to note that these pretensions were dubious to begin with. The Stadtholder was never the sovereign power in the Netherlands, despite understandable misconceptions by foreigners, who may have thought that a country needed a head of state, and the Stadtholder was it. Instead he was an officeholder, appointed by the provincial States, who also was captain-general and admiral-general of the Union (there was originally no stadtholder on the confederal level).
In the Orangist revolution of 1747 this office had been revamped to "Stadhouder-generaal" and made hereditary, and after the Prussian intervention of 1787 the powers of the Stadtholder had become dictatorial. But formally the States General had been sovereign since 1588, and the Stadtholder was merely their "first servant". The British may have entertained certain fantasies about his formal status, but never seriously considered it.[69] An example of this would the British acceptance of the surrender of the Batavian fleet in the name of the Stadtholder in 1799, as though he was a sovereign prince. But this was all make-believe, and it ended with the peace of 1802 (though it was revived in 1813).[70]
The Prince had reason to feel aggrieved by this. He did have large patrimonial estates in the Netherlands that now were forfeit. Besides, the loss of his hereditary offices entailed a loss of income. According to his own calculations the arrears in all these incomes since 1795 amounted to 4 million guilders. The Staatsbewind refused to pay this, or any sum, point blank, and the peace treaty specifically exempted the Dutch from paying anything. Instead, an arrangement between the French, British and Prussians (the former stadtholder's champions
Short interlude of peace
The Treaty restored most of the colonies that had been captured by the British since 1795, except
Another potentially important consequence of the peace might have been that a number of provisions of the Treaty of The Hague, that had been conditional on a peace, like the reduction of the French army of occupation, would now have become operational. However, the First Consul proved reluctant to reduce the numbers of French troops, or return the port of Flushing, for the good of the Dutch as he pointed out, as they needed many of their own troops in their restored colonies, so the "protection" of the French troops was considered necessary. On the other hand, the departure of the French troops was an indispensable point for the British as they could not allow the Netherlands to be dominated by a hostile power, and the Batavian Republic was incapable of defending its own neutrality. This was to be an insoluble dilemma in the coming years.[75]
Real advantages of the peace came in the economic field.
Invasion preparations and economic warfare
The peace turned out to be of short duration. On 18 May 1803, slightly more than a year after the peace, war resumed. Napoleon was now intent on the destruction of Great Britain by culminating in an ambitious planned invasion. The French expected the Batavian Republic to play a major supporting role in this. As the Franco-Batavian alliance's embodiment, the Staatsbewind was forced to assent to a Convention bringing the total of French and Batavian forces in the Netherlands to 35,000. In addition, 9,000 Batavian troops were slated for the proposed overseas expedition. Even more importantly, the Dutch were to supply five ships-of-the-line, five frigates, 100 gunboats, and 250 flat-bottomed transport craft, capable of holding 60–80 men by December 1803. In total the Dutch were meant to provide transport for 25,000 men and 2,500 horses, the major part of Napoleon's invasion armada, and all at Dutch expense. Napoleon's imposed real burdens on the finances of the Republic and on its economy.[78]
Another real burden was the economic warfare that Napoleon launched against the British, which was answered by a British counter-boycott. This foreshadowed the Continental System which was written into law in 1806. However already in 1803 it started to choke off Dutch trade. Ostensibly, the Staatsbewind did its part by prohibiting the import of all goods from the enemy on 5 July 1803. Later it banned cheese exports and butter. These measures were of little practical effect, since in 1804 the volume of general exports to Britain was nearly equal to that in the last year of peace in 1802. British goods reached Dutch destinations via neutral German ports or disguised as "American cargo". The republic was therefore an important "keyhole into Europe" that undermined the French economic sanctions against Britain. Since the members of the Staatsbewind, and their friends, often profited from this clandestine trade directly, the patience of the French was wearing thin.[79] Matters came to a head when the French commander in the Republic, Auguste de Marmont, ordered in November 1804 that French naval patrols and customs officials were to take over the responsibility for the surveillance of cargoes in Dutch ports, with powers of confiscation without reference to Dutch authorities. TheStaatsbewind forbade any Batavian official to take orders from the French on 23 November 1804.[80]
Last Grand Pensionary and end of the Republic
This act of defiance sealed the fate of yet another of the Batavian regimes. Napoleon had long been dissatisfied with what he viewed as the foot-dragging and inefficiency of the Dutch. As a matter of fact, since the Spring of 1804 informal talks, mediated by Talleyrand, had been under way with the Batavian envoy in Paris, Rutger Jan Schimmelpenninck, who had a good personal rapport with Napoleon (by now emperor). Schimmelpenninck was a power in the Batavian Republic by himself. He had played an important role as the leader of the federalist opposition in the "revolutionary" States-General of 1795, and the first Assembly. Though an opponent of the radicals, he had politically survived the coups of 1798, and served as ambassador to France, and as plenipotentiary to the Amiens negotiations. Now Napoleon saw him as the person to clean the Augean stables of the Dutch client state.
Schimmelpenninck saw himself in the same light. He had long had a woolly vision of a "national conciliation" in the Netherlands, that made him amenable to a rapprochement with conservative and Orangist circles. These were to become his power base. Though Schimmelpenninck was a convinced federalist, he was a pliable character also. When Napoleon indicated that he preferred a centralized organization of the Dutch state (as the re-federalized model of the Staatsbewind had clearly not worked out), he did not hesitate to implement this in his project of a new constitution, that he constructed in the Summer of 1804 in consultation with the Staatsbewind. As a matter of fact, a delegation of the Staatsbewind, consisting of Schimmelpenninck, and members of the Regency Van der Goes (the former agent) and Van Haersolte (a former director), presented the case for this draft to Napoleon in November 1804. When the clash about the French customs men therefore took place later in the month, Napoleon came to a speedy decision and soon thereafter the Batavian Republic had a new constitution and government.[81]
On 10 May 1805, Schimmelpenninck was therefore inaugurated as Raadpensionaris (Grand Pensionary) of the Batavian Republic. This venerable title (clearly chosen for sentimental reasons) had little connection with the former office of the
Despite such unpromisingly reactionary trappings the Schimmelpenninck regime actually accomplished more in its short existence than the previous regimes had accomplished in the ten years since 1795. This was, of course, mainly due to the diligent preparatory work that Agents like the ubiquitous Gogel;
The French reaction to this flurry of reforms was mixed, however. The very zeal of the program might betoken a renascent nationalism that could work against French interests. The planned invasion of England was cancelled due to a lack of naval superiority, which was only reinforced by the debacle of the Battle of Trafalgar. The Dutch now began to clamor for economies in the form of the return of the Boulogne flotilla, which annoyed Napoleon, because he still had a use for it. The man who had led that flotilla to Boulogne, after repelling a superior British fleet, Carel Hendrik Ver Huell, was now Secretary for the Navy. He had also become a confidant of the emperor, and now engaged in a secret correspondence with Talleyrand and Napoleon. The latter had just concluded the Peace of Pressburg and was busy dividing up Europe in client-kingdoms apportioned to his relatives. He saw a good candidate for such a position in the Netherlands in his brother Louis Bonaparte.
Ver Huell started scheming with his French patrons behind the back of Schimmelpenninck and feeding negative information about the Pensionary that found its way into the French press. Schimmelpenninck's position was weakened by the fact that he was slowly going blind. The Dutch Secretaries of State and the Staatsraad did not have much choice: their only options were a complete extinguishing of the national identity in the form of annexation to the Empire, or the lesser evil of a new kingdom under one of Napoleon's relatives. A Groot Besogne (Grand Commission) was formed to conduct the unequal negotiations with the Emperor. The latter, however, refused to speak with the Commission, and only communicated to them through the intermediary of Ver Huell. Talleyrand had meanwhile drafted a "Treaty" which contained the conditions under which the crown of "Holland" was to be offered to Louis: no union of the crowns; no conscription; a possible commercial treaty with France; and the basic freedoms of the Netherlands (linguistic, religious, judicial) were to be maintained; while the civil list was fixed at the "modest sum" of 1.5 million guilders. The constitution of the Pensionary was actually to be maintained with a few minor alterations (the title of raadpensionaris changed to that of King; and the size of the Staatsraad and the legislative corps nearly doubled).[85]
The Commission was not allowed to refer back to The Hague. Schimmelpenninck made a last-ditch attempt to have the treaty referred to a plebiscite, but he was ignored. He resigned on 4 June 1806. The next day at the Château de Saint-Cloud, after Napoleon had kept them waiting while he received the Turkish ambassador, the hapless commissioners presented their "petition" to Louis to accept the crown of "Holland", which he graciously did, while Napoleon looked on approvingly.[86]
Aftermath
The
This reunion did not outlast the effects of the disastrous French invasion of Russia and subsequent defeat in the Battle of Leipzig. The Empire melted away, and the independent Netherlands took shape again with every city that the retreating French army of occupation evacuated in the course of 1813. In the ensuing political vacuum a triumvirate of former Orangist regents, led by Gijsbert Karel van Hogendorp, invited the former Hereditary Prince (the old Stadtholder had died in 1806) to assume power as "Sovereign Prince". William VI of Orange landed in Scheveningen on 30 November 1813. He duly established control in the Netherlands and was offered the crown of the combined area of the former 17 provinces of the Netherlands (modern Belgium and the Netherlands) by the Allies in the secret London Protocol (also known as the Eight Articles of London) of 21 June 1814, which he accepted exactly one month later. On 16 March 1815, the United Kingdom of the Netherlands was proclaimed.
Historiographical note
According to the British historian
Still, by that time the Batavians had already had a bad press in Dutch history writing. This may be explained by the fact that the old ideological struggle between the monarchically-oriented Orangist party and its successive opponents of a more "republican" bent (going back to at least the conflict between Johan van Oldenbarnevelt and Prince Maurice), of which the Patriots were only the latest incarnation, was being refought in the standard works of 19th-century Dutch historians like Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer, who saw plenty to despise in the "popular-sovereignty" philosophy of the Patriot radicals. In his turn Groen was very influential on the way John Lothrop Motley depicted the old Dutch Republic for an American audience.[91]
Motley did not get to deal explicitly with the Batavian Republic, but the way his collaborator William Elliot Griffis dismissed the Patriots speaks for itself: "…whether under the name of the 'Batavian Republic', the Kingdom of Holland, or the provinces of the French empire, the French occupation was virtually a French conquest that had little permanent influence on Dutch history or character."[92]
However most, if not all, characteristics of the current centralized state of the Kingdom of the Netherlands were foreshadowed by the accomplishments of the Batavian Republic, not least the liberal 1848 Constitution. That constitution restored the central tenets of the democratic Staatsregeling of 1798, under the guise of a Constitutional monarchy, as its author Johan Rudolph Thorbecke acknowledged.[93]
See also
Notes
References
- ^ Rutjes, M. (2012). Door gelijkheid gegrepen: democratie, burgerschap en staat in Nederland 1795-1801 (PDF) (in Dutch). p. 21. Retrieved 27 September 2023.
- ^ "Volkstelling in de Nederlandsche Republiek, uitgegeven op last der commissie tot het ontwerpen van een plan van constitutie voor het volk van Nederland". Archived from the original on 11 September 2016. Retrieved 1 June 2014.
- ^ The Netherlands: country population Archived 26 December 2011 at the Wayback Machine, Jan Lahmeyer. Retrieved on 28 September 2013.
- ^ Schama, pp. 245–270.
- ^ a b De Vries & Van der Woude, p. 126.
- ^ Schama, pp. 77, 131.
- ^ Kennedy, James C. A Concise History of The Netherlands. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2017, p. 261
- ^ Schama, ch. 3, 4.
- ^ Kennedy, A Concise History of The Netherlands, pp. 261–262
- ^ Schama, p. 187; Israel, p. 1120.
- ^ Schama, pp. 188–190.
- ^ Schama, p. 191.
- ^ Schama, p. 195.
- ^ Schama, p. 207
- ) p. 103.
- ^ HET HAAGSE PAPIERGELD VAN 1795 door N.L.M. Arkesteijn, p. 127
- ^ The qualification of the Batavian Republic as a French client state is usually uncontroversial. That its predecessor was an Anglo-Prussian client state is less so. However, the qualification seems justified in view of the Triple Alliance (1788) between the Dutch Republic, Great Britain and Prussia, which guaranteed the stadtholderate and more or less formally subjected Dutch foreign policy to British direction; see e.g. Acton, J.E.E.D.A., Ward, A.W., Prothero, G.W., Leathes, S.M., Benians, E.A. (1907) The Cambridge modern history. Vol. 8, p. 288.
- ^ Schama, pp. 195–210.
- ^ Schama, pp. 190–191, 212.
- ^ The revolutionary States-General had already proclaimed its own version of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in March 1795; Schama, p. 262.
- ^ Schama, pp. 215–221.
- ^ Schama, p. 237.
- ^ Schama, p. 243.
- ^ Schama, p. 245.
- ^ Schama, p. 249.
- ^ Schama, pp. 258–259.
- ^ Schama, pp. 264–266.
- ^ Schama, p. 269.
- ^ Schama, pp. 295–296.
- ^ Vreede, who is also credited with being a coup leader, was actually sick in bed at the time, though he had put his approval to the project beforehand; Schama, p. 308.
- ^ Schama, pp. 306–309.
- ^ Schama, p. 314.
- passive suffrage. But these requirements did not amount to census suffrage for the franchise as such; Schama, p. 246. Though the republic had adopted a Declaration of Rights which in principle extended to women also, this was not yet driven so far that the franchise was extended to women. The fact that the early Dutch feminist Etta Palm d'Aelders was under arrest as a suspected spy at the time, probably did not advance the cause of women's suffrage.
- ^ The constitution provided for a legislature, divided into two chambers, but those were elected as a whole and then divided by lot; this was actually a concession to spare French sensibilities;Schama, pp. 316–317.
- ^ Schama, p. 321.
- ^ Schama, p. 318.
- ^ Schama, pp. 318–319.
- ^ Schama, p. 320.
- ^ Schama, pp. 325–338.
- ^ He also travelled secretly to Paris to obtain permission for the coming coup; Schama, p. 346.
- ^ Schama, pp. 337–348.
- ^ Schama, pp. 350–352; Vreede and Fijnje temporarily evaded arrest by jumping from a window, but their colleague Stefanus Jacobus van Langen was badly roughed up by the putschists.
- ^ Schama, p. 355.
- ^ Schama, p. 358.
- ^ Schama, pp. 359–361.
- ^ Schama, pp. 362–365.
- ^ For instance, it took only three days for a consortium of Amsterdam bankers in 1688 to bring together the loan that financed the invasion of England by the Republic's forces, that later became known as the Glorious Revolution; Israel, pp. 845–851.
- ^ De Vries and Van der Woude, p. 119.
- ISBN 0-06-095466-3, pp. 374–375.
- ^ Schama, p. 389.
- ^ Riley, James C. (1971). Pieter Stadnitski And Dutch Investment Banking, 1770-1815, p. 103
- ^ HET HAAGSE PAPIERGELD VAN 1795 door N.L.M. Arkesteijn, p. 127
- ^ De Vries and Van der Woude, p. 128.
- ^ Schama, p. 384.
- ^ Schama, pp. 385–388.
- ^ Schama, p. 405.
- ^ Schama, p. 406.
- ^ Schama, p. 390.
- ^ The French demanded the expulsion from office of the "culprits"; Schama, p. 399.
- ^ Schama, pp. 410–412.
- ^ Schama, pp. 406–409, 412
- ^ Schama, p. 407.
- ^ Schama, pp. 415–416.
- ^ Schama, p. 418.
- ^ Schama, pp. 419–420; the qualification for standing for office was 200 guilders in annual city taxes or 300 guilders in house rent; 10,000 guilders of real estate or 20,000 guilders worth of securities; Schama, p. 425.
- ^ Schama writes about him: "His activities both in 1787 and 1794 had earned Burmania Rengers an unsavoury reputation as one of the more enthusiastic bloodhounds of the old regime in Friesland, ..."; Schama, p. 420.
- ^ Schama, pp. 423–428.
- ^ Schama, pp. 437–438.
- ^ Israel, p. 1127.
- ^ Schama, p. 438.
- ^ The Prussian king was the stadtholder's brother-in-law and his sister continually pleaded with her brother on her husband's behalf; Schama, p. 452.
- ^ Schama, pp. 452–453.
- ^ Raad van Aziatische Bezittingen en Etablissementen (Council of Asian Possessions and Establishments).
- ^ Schama, pp. 449–450.
- ^ Schama, p. 439.
- ^ See for a discussion of the economic developments in the Republic Economic history of the Netherlands (1500–1815).
- ^ Schama, p. 436.
- ^ Schama, p. 442.
- ^ In the old Republic trading with the enemy had been looked upon as a necessary evil. The Admiralties had been partially financed with so-called licenten, license fees for allowing such trade
- ^ Schama, pp.463–464.
- ^ Schama, pp. 460–464.
- ^ Schama, pp. 468, 474
- ^ Schama, p. 467; There was one recorded no-vote in Groningen; Schama, ch. 11, fn. 3.
- ^ Schama, pp. 474–477.
- ^ Schama, pp. 482–485.
- ^ Schama, pp. 485–486
- ^ By the Rambouillet decree of 9 July 1810; Robert Walsh, The American Review of History and Politics, And General Repository of Literature and State Papers, Farrand and Nicholas, 1811, pp. 83–84
- ^ Schama, pp. 15–23
- ^ Schama, p. 16.
- ^ Schama, p. 16 and fn. 40.
- ^ Schama, pp. 17–18
- ^ Griffis, W.E. (1908). Motley's Dutch Nation: Being the Rise of the Dutch Republic (1555–1584). p. 898.
- ^ Schama, p. 22.
Sources
- ISBN 0-19-820734-4paperback
- ISBN 0-679-72949-6.
- Vries, J. de, and Woude, A. van der (1997), The First Modern Economy. Success, Failure, and Perseverance of the Dutch Economy, 1500–1815, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-57825-7
Further reading
- Hake, Barry J. (1994) "The making of Batavian citizens: social organization of constitutional enlightenment in The Netherlands, 1795–98." History of Education 23.4, 335–353.
- Leeb, I. Leonard. (1973) The ideological origins of the Batavian revolution: History and politics in the Dutch republic 1747–1800. Springer Science & Business Media. [ISBN missing]
- S2CID 144853029.
- Rutjes, Mart. (2015) "Useful citizens. Citizenship and democracy in the Batavian Republic, 1795–1801." The Political Culture of the Sister Republics, 1794–1806. Amsterdam University, 73–84.
- Van der Burg, Martijn. "Transforming the Dutch Republic into the Kingdom of Holland: The Netherlands between republicanism and monarchy (1795–1815)." European Review of History – Revue européenne d'histoire 17.2 (2010): 151–170.
- Velema, Wyger RE. (2019) "Reform, Revolution, and the Republican Tradition: The Case of the Batavian Republic." Languages of Reform in the Eighteenth Century. Routledge, 363–383. [ISBN missing]
External links
- Staatsregeling voor het Bataafsche Volk (in Dutch)