Government of The Dutch Republic in Exile - Flight To Britain and Exile

Flight To Britain and Exile

With the coming of the French Revolution William V joined the First Coalition against Republican France in 1793. His troops fought in the Flanders Campaign, but in 1794 the military situation deteriorated and the Dutch Republic was threatened by invading armies. The year 1795 was a disastrous one for the ancien régime of the Netherlands. Supported by the French Army, the revolutionaries returned from Paris to fight in the Netherlands, and in 1795 William V fled to the safety of England. A few days later the Batavian Revolution in Amsterdam occurred, and the Dutch Republic was replaced with the Batavian Republic.

Directly after his arrival in England the Prince wrote a number of letters (known as the Kew Letters) from his new residence in Kew to the governors of the Dutch colonies, instructing them to hand over their colonies to the British "for safe-keeping." Though only a few complied this contributed to their confusion and demoralisation. Almost all Dutch colonies were in the course of time conquered by the British, who returned some, but not all, first at the Treaty of Amiens and later with the Convention of London 1814.

In 1799 the Hereditary Prince took an active part in the Anglo-Russian invasion of Holland, engineering the capture of a Batavian naval squadron in the Vlieter Incident.The surrender of the ships (that had been paid for by the taxpayers of the Batavian Republic) was formally accepted in the name of William V as stadtholder, who was later allowed to "sell" them to the Royal Navy for an appreciable amount. But that was his only success as the troops and civilians of the Batavian Republic proved quite unwilling to welcome the old regime back. The arrogance of the tone in his proclamation, demanding the restoration of the stadtholderate, may not have been helpful, according to Simon Schama.

After the Peace of Amiens in 1802, in which Great Britain recognised the Batavian Republic, an additional Franco-Prussian Convention of 23 May, 1802 declared that the House of Orange would be ceded in perpetuity the abbatial domains of Fulda and Corvey in lieu of its Dutch estates and revenues (this became the Principality of Nassau-Orange-Fulda). As far as Napoleon was concerned this cession was conditional on the liquidation of the stadtholderate and other hereditary offices of the Prince. William V, however, wanted more: his arrears in salary and other financial perquisites since 1795, or a lumpsum of 4 million guilders. The foreign minister of the Batavian Republic Maarten van der Goes was willing to secretly try and persuade the Staatsbewind of the Batavian Republic to grant this additional indemnity, but Napoleon put a stop to it, when he got wind of the affair.

The last of the Dutch stadtholders, William V died in exile at Brunswick, now in Germany. His body was moved to the Dutch Royal Family crypt in the Nieuwe Kerk in Delft on 29 April 1958.

In 1813, his son, King William I returned to the Netherlands and became the first Dutch monarch from the House of Orange.