512 Chapter XXI
them, because they were willing to rely, and could rely, on the French army both to
overthrow the Orange regime and to prevent insurrectionary violence.
The country fell into dissolution as the French advanced. The government could
get nothing done. Sporadic attempts at a mass rising failed. Nothing was offered to
arouse popular loyalty. “His Highness,” wrote the pensionary van de Spiegel, must
“keep the republic what it now is, and yield as little to aristocracy as to democracy.”
He talked a little like Robespierre, but did nothing. Force must be used, he said, “to
impose on the evil and sustain the good.” When wealthy people refused taxes and
loans to the expiring state, or shifted their investments to England, he remarked
that stringent measures should be taken, “in order to leave the Hopes and other
overgrown capitalists of this country no other chance of saving their property than
in giving, or at least lending, part of it to supply the wants of the government.” But
nothing happened. The country could not exert itself. Perhaps van de Spiegel was
right in observing that the Dutch enjoyed too high a standard of living to meet
such an emergency.^10
The British army, feebly commanded by the duke of York, behaved very badly
on its retreat through the Netherlands, whereas the incoming French, under firm
discipline, made a good impression. Such is the unanimous testimony of Orangist
and hence Anglophile sources and of the Prussian representative at The Hague.^11
Peasants, if armed, preferred to fight the British; the city of Delft refused to receive
British wounded. One Orangist complained that French intrigues had done less
than British pillaging to alienate the Dutch people. All agreed that the duke of
York was incompetent. All the old fear and dislike of the British was awakened.
Even Orangists, who had owed their position since 1787 to British support, were
troubled and divided. Some believed, as did the Patriots, that Britain was danger-
ous as either friend or foe.
The revolutionary clubs speeded up their preparations in proportion to the ap-
proach of Daendels, the émigrés and the French. Committees made ready to move
in and replace existing officials in the various town halls. Soldiers in the garrisons
were won over. Plans were laid to assemble insurrectionary crowds. At Utrecht, a
city of some fifteen thousand, two thousand persons were in the “secret” for yield-
ing the place to the French, and the garrison of twenty- eight hundred expressed its
disinclination to resist.^12
By keeping their troops under discipline, and holding their official demands to
a minimum, stipulating only that the Prince of Orange must go, and the Dutch
enter the war against England, the French reassured the numerous moderate ele-
ment, who were relieved to learn that la guillotine, réquisition, assignats, égalité, etc.
need not be expected.^13 The French thus built on the broadest possible basis of
pro- French feeling. Moderates agreed with radicals; burgomasters sat down with
incendiaries. Riots in Amsterdam and elsewhere unseated the authorities. Revolu-
tionary committees installed local provisional governments. The French cavalry
10 Ibid., I, 401, 476.
11 Ibid., I, 473, 503, 505, 525–26, 562, 565, 572.
12 Ibid., 412.
13 Ibid., 583. An Orangist testimony, van Citters to van Nagel, Jan. 29, 1795.