520 Chapter XXI
ous was the revolt of certain Amsterdam cannoneers, a National Guard unit which,
on May 10, invaded and menaced the municipal authorities of that city.
The revolt of the Amsterdam cannoneers was simultaneous with the conspiracy
of Babeuf, who was arrested in Paris on the same day, and it came very soon after
the attempt of certain Italians, taking advantage of Bonaparte’s victories, to set up
a republic at Alba in the Kingdom of Sardinia. It is a question, therefore, whether
some kind of concerted international revolutionary action was underway. More
will be said later of the Babeuf affair. Contemporaries widely believed, though
without much evidence, that the uprising in Amsterdam was somehow connected
with the Babeuf plot.^27 It was known that Valckenaer, who as a former émigré had
a wide acquaintance among revolutionaries of various nationalities, had made a
trip from Leyden to Amsterdam with a French Jacobin, Ysabeau, a few days before
the Amsterdam revolt. When Noël, in agreement with the Batavian government,
called in French troops to preserve order in Amsterdam, Valckenaer was among
those who objected to such intervention. It was rumored that he had paid 7,000
guilders to the cannoneers to instigate insurrection. It was not known, but was
stated over thirty years later by Philip Buonarroti, in his history of the Babeuf
conspiracy, that the Babouvists had received a donation of 240 francs from the
envoy of an allied republic in Paris, who would seem to have been Jakob Blauw.
The Paris police, when they arrested the Babouvists, found various writings on
revolution in Belgium and the Rhineland in their possession.
On May 27 Valckenaer left Holland for Paris, presumably on his way to Spain,
to which he had been appointed as Batavian minister several weeks before. On
June 12 the French Directory decided to order Valckenaer out of Paris as an unde-
sirable, and to apply to the Batavian Republic for the recall of Blauw as minister to
France and of Valckenaer as minister to Spain. Valckenaer, however, did proceed to
Spain; the Batavians were not wholly subservient. Blauw was recalled, but was im-
mediately sent to Turin as Batavian minister to the North Italian states.
What do these facts add up to as evidence of an international revolutionary
conspiracy in the spring of 1796? Italian and French historians have puzzled over
the problem, in which the Dutch have taken less interest.^28 It seems likely enough
that among Dutch, Italian, and French revolutionaries, of the type feared as “ultra”
or “anarchist” by the Directory, there was a considerable mutual acquaintance, and
that they shared in many of the same ideas. All thought the Directory too timid,
too tepid, too inclined to put the interests of France first, and too likely to make
peace with England and Austria before their own aims were accomplished. It is
27 Bielfeld to Frederick William II, The Hague, May 19, 1796, in Colenbrander, II, 273; newslet-
ter of Bosset to the Court of Prussia, June 3, 1796, ibid., 275; van Lampsins to the Hereditary Prince,
June 1796, ibid., 927; Noël to Delacroix, May 19, 1796, ibid., 52–53. See also J. Godechot, “Unità
batava e unità italiana all’epoca del Direttorio” in Archivio storico italiano, Vol. 113 (1955), 347–48, and
A. Saitta, Filippo Buonarroti (Rome, 1950), I, 30–32, 11, 26–32, where additional letters of Noël to
Delacroix are printed.
28 Godechot and Saitta, while not affirming a connection between Babouvists and Dutch demo-
crats, think that it would have been characteristic of the Babeuf movement, and that it was probable
enough to alarm the French Government. P. Geyl, Geschiedenis van nederlandse stam (Amsterdam and
Antwerp, 1959), III, 395–99, believes the connection highly unlikely, but emphasizes the cannoneers’
revolt as a step in differentiating radicals and moderates among the Batavian revolutionaries.