The Batavian Republic 521
now widely thought that the famous “communism” of Babeuf was limited to a
small circle within his movement, and that all kinds of persons discontented with
the Directory on other grounds—popular democrats and international revolution-
aries—gave his group such strength as it had. The involvement of Dutch and Ital-
ians with Babeuf would offer no evidence whatsoever that they were more than
advanced political democrats, as we know Blauw and Valckenaer to have been.
It is certain that the Babeuf group, through Buonarroti, was engaged in con-
certed action to bring about revolution in Italy. That they would have liked to drive
forward the revolution in Holland is equally beyond doubt. But the evidence seems
to be against any equally concerted action by the Dutch. Valckenaer, it would
seem, if knowingly involved with the Babouvists, would hardly have chosen a mo-
ment two weeks after their arrest to stop in Paris on his way to Spain. Valckenaer
also, at the time, denied the reports that he had paid money to the Amsterdam
cannoneers; and while the denial proves nothing, the tone of the private letters in
which Vreede, Schimmelpenninck, and Valckenaer discussed the rumor suggests
that it was really a false charge, or at least that the radical democrat, Vreede, had no
knowledge of any such fact. As for Blauw, recalled from Paris, he went to Turin.
But at Turin, during the remainder of 1796 and 1797, while he continued to dis-
like the French Directory, he did not befriend the Italian revolutionaries nor favor
the establishment of the Cisalpine Republic. He preferred to leave North Italy
under Austrian influence, the better to persuade the Austrians to recognize the
Batavian Republic and give up their claims in Belgium, where the Batavians did
not want them.^29 Blauw, in short, proved to be less an international revolutionary
than a Dutch one.
The disturbances of May 1796 at Amsterdam and in other cities soon subsided,
thanks in part to the French army. Though the French were apprehensive about
anarchists, the foreign minister, Charles Delacroix, instructed Noël to continue to
work for a centralized and unitary government in the Batavian Republic. Only a
strong central government, he remarked, could both keep “anarchists” under con-
trol and subdue the British and Orange sympathizers.^30 The French were impa-
tient of Dutch delay, but still refrained from imposing a form of government, be-
lieving that a government agreed upon by the Dutch, if only the strict Orangists
were excluded, would be the most likely to employ the Dutch wealth and fleet to
mutual advantage.
After much backing and filling, amending and patching, the Dutch Convention
submitted an admittedly compromise constitution to the voters in August 1797.
29 For the correspondence of Valckenaer, Vreede, and Schimmelpenninck, see Colenbrander, II,
502–6. For Blauw’s mission to Italy and opinions there see G. W. Vreede, Nederlandsche diplomatie
(Utrecht, 1863), IV, 248–50, 264–75, where Blauw’s reports of 1796–1797 to the Batavian committee
on foreign affairs are excerpted. Neither Godechot nor Saitta, in noting the possibility of connection
between Dutch democrats and Babouvists, has dealt with these aspects of the evidence. It seems sig-
nificant also that Le Batave, the radical democratic paper published in Paris by persons with Dutch
connections, having suspended publication on March 11, 1796, resumed it on May 11, the day after
the arrest of Babeuf. Resumption on May 11 would be highly unlikely if the editors of Le Batave had
any conscious connection with the Babouvists.
30 Delacroix to Noël, May 24, 1796, Colenbrander, II, 54.