Batavian Revolution in Amsterdam
After the Prussian invasion of Holland in 1787 and the subsequent Orangist repression, the city reverted to control by the ancien regime of the stadtholder.
The Dutch Republic became an Anglo-Prussian client state whose foreign policy was determined in London and Berlin, while the exiled Patriots in Pas de Calais and Paris plotted its overthrow.
However, despite an incursion into North Brabant (then part of the non-self-governing Generality Lands), the attack on the Dutch Republic was unsuccessful after the French defeat at Neerwinden.
Ringleaders were Alexander Gogel, Nicolaas van Staphorst and Cornelis Rudolphus Theodorus Krayenhoff, the latter acting as Military Officer of the Amsterdam Revolutionary Committee.
The Patriots presented a petition to the city regents, protesting the billeting of British troops in Amsterdam, and this was supposed to be the signal for the revolt.
The petition had inadvertently provided the political police with the names and addresses of the would-be revolutionaries and these were rounded up following 17 October.
Posters and handbills appeared on every street corner and rumors started to fly that the revolutionaries would seize power the next day.
[7] That next day, Sunday 18 January, the Revolutionary Committee met secretly in their haunt, a tavern by the name of Het Wapen van Embden ("the Emden Arms") on the Nieuwendijk street, near city hall.
His mind was made up when that same evening Krayenhoff arrived in a French lieutenant's uniform, bearing a commission from the central Revolutionary Committee in Utrecht to remove the "illegal" Orangist city government.
The latter tried to stall, but the crowd became threatening, and fearing for his personal safety Straalman transferred command of the garrison to Krayenhoff at midnight.
This provisional government had as its first order of business the welcome of the French (who had delayed their advance from Utrecht in happy expectation of the outcome).
The British armies made no effort to retake Amsterdam, instead, they continued retreating towards Bremen – from which they were eventually evacuated in March 1795.
Revolutionary committees sprang up left and right, demanding surrender of the ruling city councils to new provisional administrations and the disarmament of the Orangist civic militias and their replacement with "Free Corps" companies from the days of the 1785–1787 Patriot Revolt.
