...myself and other lads from Gelderland and Overijssel, who had learned the arts of war under the French, are ready to stand at the head, and you will see the courtly and beautifully bepowdered little Officers and soldiers run off from the Peasant Boys in the linen smocks.
[Proclamation by General Daendels, 1794]
States, Patriots and Batavians(1785-1804)
Around 1780 the Republic saw the rise of the political grouping known as the patriots. They were anti-Orangist. They also considered that citizens had the right to arm themselves. To this end they set up free corps. In 1787 things came to a head in an open confrontation with the pro-Orange army and Prussian troops, who had come to the aid of the stadhouder. The patriots had to flee, many of them escaping to France.
The French Revolution broke out. The French Republic declared war on among others the Republic of the Netherlands. Up till 1795 there was fighting between French armies with refugee patriots in their ranks on the one side and State Army troops with their allies (British and Austrian) on the other. In 1795 the French succeeded in crossing the frozen rivers and the stadhouder fled.
Patriots then set up the Batavian Republic, a state very dependent on France. The Batavian army was the means par excellence for modernising and centralising the state. The system whereby officers hired their own troops was abolished. From then on, all uniforms, weapons and wages were funded by central government.
