The Batavian Republic was the successor state to the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands. It was proclaimed on 19 January 1795 after the Batavian Revolution 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. Both names refer to the Germanic tribe of the Batavi, representing both the Dutch ancestry and their ancient quest for liberty in their nationalist lore.
In early 1795, intervention by the French Republic led to the downfall of the old Dutch Republic. The new republic enjoyed widespread support from the Dutch populace and was the product of a genuine popular revolution. However, it was founded with the armed support of the French Revolutionary Army. The Batavian Republic became a client state, the first of the "sister republics", and later part of the French Empire of Napoleon. Its politics were deeply influenced by the French, who supported three different coups d'état to bring the different political factions to power that France favoured at different moments in its own political development. Nevertheless, the process of creating a written Dutch constitution was mainly driven by internal political factors and not by French influence until Napoleon forced the Dutch government to accept his brother, Louis Bonaparte, as monarch.
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 incorporated into the French Empire.
The French Revolution embraced many of the political ideas that the Patriots had espoused in their own revolt. The Patriots enthusiastically supported the Revolution, and when the French revolutionary armies started to spread the revolution, the Patriots joined in, hoping to liberate their own country from its authoritarian yoke. The Stadtholder joined the ill-fated First Coalition of countries in their attempt to subdue the suddenly anti-Austrian French First Republic. The Patriots sought French revolutionary aid in their struggle against the Stadtholder, but did not want to be considered territory conquered by France, but rather a "sister republic". There was open warfare, with the Patriots' cause dependent on its success on the battlefield. With the defeat of allies of the Stadtholder at Battle of Fleurus, Austria abandoned its interest in the southern Netherlands. French revolutionary forces were able to take advantage of the freezing of rivers in December 1794 and forced the Stadtholder into exile.
Creation of the Republic
The French Revolutionary War proceeded disastrously for the forces of the Stadtholder. In the severe winter of 1794/95 a French army under General Charles Pichegru, with a Dutch contingent under General Herman Willem Daendels, crossed the great frozen rivers that traditionally protected the Netherlands from invasion. Aided by the fact that a substantial proportion of the Dutch population looked favourably upon the French incursion, and often considered it a liberation, the French were quickly able to break the resistance of the forces of the Stadtholder and his Austrian and British allies. However, in many cities revolution broke out even before the French arrived and Revolutionary Committees took over the city governments, and (provisionally) the national government as well. William was forced to flee to England on a fishing boat on 18 January 1795.
Historical stages of the Republic
The French presented themselves as liberators. But there were acrimonious negotiations between the representatives of the new Batavian Republic and those of the French Republic, and a harsh Treaty of The Hague was concluded on 16 May 1795. In addition to imposing territorial concessions and a huge indemnity, the treaty obligated the Dutch to maintain a French army of occupation of 25,000 men. To fulfil its responsibilities, Dutch financier Pieter Stadnitski joined a committee at the end of July 1795. To beat hyperinflation it was announced that from 3 August French soldiers in the Batavian Republic would be paid in sound Dutch currency and going forward no one could be obliged to accept French assignats. This changed the Dutch republic from a client state of Great Britain and Prussia into a French one; henceforth it would conduct a foreign and military policy dictated by France, where its predecessor had followed British dictates since 1787 (an offensive and defensive alliance of the two republics was part of the treaty). With the treaty, economic policies would in effect also be made subservient to the interests of France, but this did not mean that it lost its independence in all respects. The program of reform that the Dutch revolutionaries attempted to put in place, constrained by the political realities of the French revolution, was mostly driven by Dutch needs and aspirations. The political events in the Netherlands were mainly derived from Dutch initiative, with some notable exceptions. The French were responsible for at least one of the coups d'état, and the French ambassador often acted as a proconsul.
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. 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. As a first step the representatives of Brabant were admitted to the States General.
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. This project at first met with sharp resistance from the conservatives. In some cases even force was used (as in Friesland and Groningen) to overcome this opposition. The new National Assembly convened in The Hague on 1 March 1796.
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. 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 manoeuvring. 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. 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.
The draft-Constitution was to be subjected to a referendum on 8 August 1797, after a very lively campaign in which the French ambassador Noël weighed in with a supportive appeal. This probably contributed to the resounding defeat of the proposal (108,761 votes to 27,995). The Assembly was back at square one. At this moment foreign events in the form of the 18 Fructidor coup of General Charles-Pierre Augereau intervened. This brought the more radical faction to power in France, which proved to be ultimately less patient with the vagaries of the Dutch political process, and more prone to intervene. Elections for a second National Assembly returned one in which the balance of power had shifted to the unitarists in the Fall of 1797. Nevertheless, the federalists managed to retain control of the new constitutional commission by a bare majority. This led to more dawdling and the unitarists in the Assembly now came with their own proposal in the form of the Declaration of 43 on 12 December 1797, containing a nine-point manifesto concerning the minimum conditions to which the new constitution should conform.
Now the course of events started to speed up. The new French ambassador Charles-François Delacroix took the side of the radicals. His behaviour 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. 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.
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. 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. 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.
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 1798 constitutional referendum had a 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.) The new regime therefore seemed well-grounded in the new doctrine of popular sovereignty.