| abstract
| - The Dutch Republic had been a member of the First Coalition that opposed the revolutionary French Republic after 1792. In 1795, at the end of their Flanders Campaign, the forces of Stadtholder William V, and his British and Austrian allies were defeated by the invading French army under General Charles Pichegru, augmented with a contingent of Dutch Patriot revolutionaries under General Herman Willem Daendels. The Dutch Republic was overthrown; the stadtholder fled the country to London; and the Batavian Republic was proclaimed. Despite the conquest of the old Republic in 1795 the war had not ended; the Netherlands had just changed sides and now fully participated in the continuing conflagration. However, its role had changed. France did not need its army so much as its naval resources, in which France itself was deficient. In 1796, under the new alliance, the Dutch started a programme of naval construction. However, manning the new ships was a problem, because the officer corps of the old navy was staunchly Orangist. People like the "Hero of Doggerbank" Jan Hendrik van Kinsbergen honorably withheld their services. The new navy was therefore officered by people like Jan Willem de Winter, who were of the correct political hue, but had only limited experience. This directly led to the debacles of the surrender at Saldanha Bay in 1796, and of the Battle of Camperdown in 1797. In the latter battle the Batavian navy behaved creditably, but this did not lessen the material losses, and the Republic had to start its naval construction program all over again. This program soon brought the Batavian navy up to sufficient strength that Great Britain had to worry about its potential contribution to a threatened French invasion of England or Ireland. The First Coalition broke up in 1797, but Britain soon found a new ally in the Russia of Emperor Paul I of Russia. The new Allies scored some successes in the land war against France, especially in the puppet Cisalpine Republic and Helvetic Republic where the armies of the Second Coalition succeeded in pushing back the French on a broad front in early 1799. The British, especially the Prime Minister, William Pitt the Younger, were eager to maintain this momentum by attacking at other extremes of the French "empire". The Batavian Republic seemed an opportune target for such an attack, with the Prince of Orange lobbying hard for just such a full military effort to reinstate him, and with Orangist agents leading the British to believe that France's hold over the Batavian Republic was weak and that a determined strike by the British towards Amsterdam would lead to a massive uprising against the French. An added incentive was that a combined campaign against the Dutch had been a condition of the agreement with the Russians of December 28, 1798. In that agreement, Emperor Paul I had placed 45,000 Russian troops at the disposal of the Coalition in return for British subsidies. This convention was further detailed in an agreement of June 22, 1799, whereby Paul promised to furnish a force of seventeen battalions of infantry, two companies of artillery, one company of pioneers, and one squadron of hussars for the expedition to Holland; 17,593 men in total. In return, Britain promised to pay a subsidy of ₤88,000, and another ₤44,000 a month when the troops were in the field. Great Britain would itself furnish 13,000 troops and supply most of the transport and naval-escort vessels.
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