From 1795 to 1806, the Batavian Republic (Bataafse Republiek in Dutch) designated the Netherlands as a republic modelled after the French Republic. The Batavian Republic was proclaimed on January 19, 1795, a day after stadtholder William V of Orange fled to England, and a liberty tree was planted in front of the City Hall in Amsterdam on 4 March. The invading French revolutionary army found sufficient allies in Holland. Eight years before, the Orange faction had won the upper hand in a small yet significant civil war only thanks to the military intervention of the King of Prussia, brother-in-law of the stadtholder. Many of the revolutionaries had fled to France and now returned eager to realize their ideals.
In contrast to events in France, revolutionary changes in the Netherlands occurred comparatively peacefully, the guillotine was not used, the new Republic did not experience a reign of terror or become a dictatorship. The country had been a republic for two centuries and had a limited nobility. The old Republic had been based on feudal institutions. Decision-making had proceeded very slowly and individual provinces had possessed power to block legislation. The Batavian Republic was a more centralised unitary state, not a loose confederation of (at least nominally) independent provinces. Many of its innovations were retained in later times, such as the first official spelling standard of the Dutch language by Matthias Siegenbeek (1804). Jews, Lutherans and Roman Catholics were given equal rights. A Bill of Rights was drafted.
The new Republic took its name from the Batavians, a Germanic tribe who had lived in the area of the Netherlands in Roman times and who were then romantically regarded as the ancestors of the Dutch nation.
While political instability was marked by three coups d'états, these were not accompanied by the kind of bloodshed evident in the French political upsets. The first coup was in 1798, when the unitarian democrats were annoyed by the slow pace of democratic reforms. A few months later, a second coup put an end to the dictatorship of the unitarians. The National Assembly, which had been convened in 1796, was divided by a struggle among the factions. The third coup occurred in 1801, when a French commander, backed by Napoleon, staged a conservative coup reversing the changes made after the 1798 coup.
More changes were imposed from outside after Napoleon Bonaparte's rise to power. In 1805 Napoleon installed the shrewd politician Schimmelpenninck as raadspensionaris ("Grand Pensionary", i.e. president of the republic) to strengthen the executive branch. In 1806 Napoleon forced Schimmelpenninck to resign and declared his brother Louis Bonaparte king of the new Kingdom of Holland.
The Batavian government was more popular among the Dutch population than was the prince of Orange. This was apparent during the British-Russian invasion of 1799.
As a French vassal state, the Batavian Republic was an ally of France in its wars against Great Britain. This led to the loss of most of the Dutch colonial empire and a defeat of the Dutch fleet in the Battle of Camperdown (Camperduin) in 1797. The collapse of Dutch trade caused a series of economic crises. Only in the second half of the 19th century would Dutch wealth be restored to its previous level.
