Editing Batavian Republic (section)

====Peace negotiations====
[[File:Gillray - The First Kiss.jpg|thumb|left|In ''The first Kiss this Ten Years! —or—the meeting of Britannia & Citizen François'' (1803), [[James Gillray]] caricatured the peace between France and Britain.]]

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 [[Dutch Ceylon|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 [[Batavian Navy|Dutch fleet]], surrendered in 1799, that the British had purchased from the Stadtholder, from the [[Indemnity|indemnification]] of the Prince of Orange.<ref>Schama, pp. 437–438.</ref>

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.<ref>Israel, p. 1127.</ref> 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).<ref>Schama, p. 438.</ref>

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{{Efn|The Prussian king was the stadtholder's brother-in-law and his sister continually pleaded with her brother on her husband's behalf.<ref>Schama, p. 452.</ref>}}) in the matter was reached that in return for dropping any and all claims William was to be compensated with the abbatial domains of [[Princely Abbey of Fulda|Fulda]] and [[Corvey Abbey]] (see also [[Principality of Nassau-Orange-Fulda]]).<ref>Schama, pp. 452–453.</ref>