CHAPTER XXI
THE BATAVIAN REPUBLIC
Is the seven- headed monster of the Union of Utrecht not a mere combination of
special interests?
It is more than time to put an end to this ruinous situation, so that a political
system can be built upon new ground in the Netherlands, securing the unity and
indivisibility of all the various pieces of territory in the Republic. A National As-
sembly, a legal code founded on natural right, guaranteeing to each inhabitant his
place as a citizen and member of society, are the only means of saving the Nether-
lands.
Without the National Convention our country will never be confirmed in its
right to be One and Indivisible.
—DECLARATION OF THE CENTRAL CONFERENCE OF
PATRIOTIC SOCIETIES MEETING AT
THE HAGUE, SEPTEMBER, 1795
At the very moment when the Old Order entrenched itself in Eastern Europe it
began to crumble in the West. As the “Jacobins” of Poland, Hungary, and Vienna
were put down, the friends of revolution from Italy to Ireland took hope from the
victories of the French armies. The end of the Terror, following the death of
Robespierre, persuaded most friends of France in other countries that the Revolu-
tion would succeed.
By the summer of 1794 the French were everywhere on the offensive, crossing
the Pyrenees into Catalonia, occupying Oneglia on the Italian Riviera, overrun-
ning the German Rhineland and Belgium, and penetrating the Dutch territory
south of the Rhine delta, which they crossed in January 1795. The French govern-
ment took a reserved attitude toward revolutionary sympathizers in these coun-
tries. They had done nothing to assist the French Republic when it seemed to be
losing, and the Committee of Public Safety, with the tide now turned, viewed