Editing Batavian Republic (section)

===''Uitvoerend Bewind''===
{{main|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 [[Jacobin Club|Jacobins]] they moved against the popular political clubs that formed their political base, thereby alienating their most enthusiastic supporters. On the other hand, at the behest of Delacroix they also moved against "counter-revolutionaries" by having purging commissions removing these men from the electoral rolls, further undermining the legitimacy of the regime, as moderate Patriots were also disenfranchised. The final blow was that the new regime reneged on its promise to elect an entirely new Representative Assembly.<ref>Schama, pp. 325–338.</ref>

====''Coup d'état'' of the moderates====
[[File:Posthumous Portrait of Herman Willem Daendels, Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies - Rd Saleh.jpg|thumb|[[Herman Willem Daendels]] (1762–1818)]]

Meanwhile, the ''[[French Directory#1798|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.{{Efn|He also travelled secretly to Paris to obtain permission for the coming coup.<ref>Schama, p. 346.</ref>}} His French colleague General [[Barthélemy Catherine Joubert]] was displeased with the radicals because of conflicts about the co-dominion of [[Vlissingen|Flushing]]. Finally, the newly appointed ''Agenten'' were disturbed about the inefficiency of the ''Uitvoerend Bewind''.<ref>Schama, pp. 337–348.</ref> All these disaffections came together with the coup on 12 June 1798, of that [[Recidivism|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.<ref>Schama, pp. 350–352.</ref>{{Efn|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.}}

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.<ref>Schama, p. 355.</ref> 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.<ref>Schama, p. 358.</ref>

[[File:1798bataafscherepubliek.svg|left|thumb|Departments of the Batavian Republic]]

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.<ref>Schama, pp. 359–361.</ref>

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.<ref>Schama, pp. 362–365.</ref>

====Public finance reform====
{{History of the Low Countries}}
{{main|Financial history of the Dutch Republic}}
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 [[Dutch Golden Age|Golden Age]],{{Efn|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]].<ref>Israel, pp. 845–851.</ref>}} enabling it to throw far beyond its weight in world politics up to the [[Treaty of Utrecht|Peace of Utrecht]] in 1713, had become a millstone around its neck. By 1713 the [[Government debt|public debt]] of the [[County of Holland]] had reached 310 million guilders; the debt of the [[Generality (Netherlands)#History|Generality]] was 68 million; and the debts of the smaller provinces, and of the cities came on top of this. The debt service of Holland alone in that year required 14 million guilders, which exceeded its regular tax revenue.<ref>De Vries and Van der Woude, p. 119.</ref> Most of this humongous public debt was held by Dutch private citizens, so in a sense it merely engendered an internal money circuit in the Dutch economy. However, it was mostly concentrated in the hands of the ''[[Rentier capitalism|rentier]]'' class, while the debt was serviced by mainly [[regressive tax]]es that weighed on the working population. Most importantly, these were taxes levied by the individual provinces, who serviced their own debt, and paid into the Generality coffers according to a [[Quota share|repartition]] schedule last changed in 1616. Attempts to reform this structure during the 18th century were mainly fruitless.

To ameliorate the situation the old Republic maintained a policy of severe [[austerity]] during the century, especially economizing on its defense outlays (which in large part explains why its military and political role declined so much). Up to the [[Fourth Anglo-Dutch War]] this policy succeeded in bringing down the level of debt, but this war brought a large uptick in the public debt: between 1780 and 1794 the province of Holland alone issued 120 million guilders of new bonds. In 1795, its total debt stood at 455 million guilders. To this should be added the debts of the [[Dutch East India Company|United East India Company]] and its sister, the [[Dutch West India Company|WIC]], and the [[Admiralty of Amsterdam|five Dutch Admiralties]] for a total of about 150 million guilders. The other provinces owed 155 million guilders. The grand total in 1795, at the beginning of the Batavian Republic, came to 760 million guilders;{{Efn|To provide some perspective to this: in 1791 [[Alexander Hamilton]] estimated the total U.S. public debt at $76 million. About $10 million of this was foreign debt, which he proceeded to refinance with a Dutch loan of approximately 20 million guilders.<ref>[[Willard Sterne Randall]], ''Alexander Hamilton: A Life'', Harper Collins 2003, {{ISBN|0-06-095466-3}}, pp. 374–375.</ref>}} this imposed a debt service of 25 million guilders annually.<ref name="De Vries and Van der Woude, p. 126"/> The indemnity of the Treaty of The Hague immediately added 100 million guilders to this total, and the maintenance of the French army of occupation added about 12 million annually<ref>Schama, p. 389.</ref> (while the other funding requirements of the republic added another 20 million annually). To fulfill its engagements to the French Republic, [[Pieter Stadnitski]] joined a committee at the end of July 1795.<ref name="Riley"/> On August 3 it was announced that from that date French soldiers would be paid in sound Dutch currency and no one could be obliged to accept French [[assignats]] anymore.<ref name="papiergeld"/> In 1814 the public debt stood at 1.7 billion guilders.<ref>De Vries and Van der Woude, p. 128.</ref>

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.<ref>Schama, p. 384.</ref> 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.<ref>Schama, pp. 385–388.</ref>

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 [[Dairy cattle|milk cow]], both collectively (in its demands for loans at very low interest rates<ref>Schama, p. 405.</ref>) and individually (in the demands of French officials for bribes and other extortions).<ref>Schama, p. 406.</ref>

====Anglo-Russian invasion====
{{Main|Anglo-Russian invasion of Holland}}
[[File:Slag bij Castricum, objectnr SA 4 (cropped).tif|thumb|right|The [[Battle of Castricum]], in which a Franco-Batavian army defeated the Anglo-Russian forces and ended the 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.<ref>Schama, p. 390.</ref>

Though the expedition ended in failure the members of the ''Uitvoerend Bewind'' became very nervous in the days before the [[Battle of Bergen (1799)|Battle of Bergen]]. The Agent for Foreign Affairs, [[Maarten van der Goes van Dirxland|Van der Goes]] who had been in favor of distancing the Republic from the French, chose this inopportune moment to secretly approach the King of Prussia as a mediator, with a scheme in which the Hereditary Prince was to become a kind of constitutional monarch in a constitution on the model of the American Constitution. The Republic would revert to its traditional neutrality, while Britain would occupy North Holland, and France [[Zeeland]]. The overture was rejected, and it caused a lot of embarrassment in the relations with the French Directory.<ref>The French demanded the expulsion from office of the "culprits"; Schama, p. 399.</ref> At this time [[Napoleon Bonaparte]] performed his coup of [[18 Brumaire]], establishing the [[French Consulate]]. The Franco-Batavian relations now entered a whole new era.