[1][2] After the debacle of the Flanders Campaign of 1793–95 and the collapse of the Allied resistance against French revolutionary armies in early 1795, while the Batavian Republic overthrew the Dutch Republic and stadtholder William V fled to England, together with his family and his sons, the Hereditary Prince and Prince Frederick of Orange-Nassau, who had both commanded Dutch troops during the campaign, remnants of the States Army covered the retreat of the British and Hanoverian troops.

Meanwhile, Prince Frederick travelled to Osnabrück, where he attempted to form a force for an invasion of the Batavian Republic from Prussian territory.

This was the signal for the formation of more "Dutch"[3] units in preparation for the Anglo-Russian invasion of Holland, which took place in the late summer of 1799.

The invasion was ultimately unsuccessful, but the British netted an appreciable number of Batavian deserters, mutineers, and prisoners of war, who were taken along to Great Britain, during the retreat of the Allied troops after the Convention of Alkmaar.

At the same time, the troops that had been recruited for British account in Germany to be part of a new Dutch army, were transported also to Great Britain, such as W.P.

Among them were the Major-Generals Frederick Stamford (former tutor of the Hereditary Prince), Carel Bentinck, De Constant Villars, and H.W.

In the June, an order was placed for 1,012 rifles to be made by the Hessen-Cassel gun maker, Andreas Herman Thornbeck; all deliveries were duly completed by October 1800.

[9]: 259–260 [12] On 15 November 1800 the engineers were absorbed into the artillery when the gunners of the ‘battalion guns’ were detached from the infantry and formed into a separate corps of four companies.

[1] There was the possibility that the brigade would be sent to Portugal but on 9 December 1800, the infantry were put aboard transports and shipped to Cove in Ireland (the artillery remained in Lymington).

The other corps of the Dutch Brigade, namely, the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Regiments of Infantry and the two Flanker Battalions, which were stationed on the islands of Jersey and Guernsey, were shipped to Hellevoetsluis.

Most officers and men returned to the Batavian Republic, profiting from an amnesty which was agreed in the margin of the peace treaty.

The unit received uniforms, arms and equipment and sailed for Hellevoetsluis shortly afterwards on 7 February; it arrived there on 27 March 1814.

Its namesake, the Dutch Brigade, formed by the Kingdom of Holland to fight on the French side under general Chassé in the Peninsular War is actually better known.

Contemporary tempers clearly flared, as De Bas notes, when he writes that the Dutch daily newspaper Haagsche Courant called the troops of the Brigade lichtmissen (rakes), ploerten (cads), and "...all kinds of deserters, among whom many Germans, but also many Dutchmen ... who emptied many a keg of Porter beer," though he adds that the newspaper admitted that they looked fine in their uniforms.

[9]: 260  Indeed, the Brigade was viewed with some trepidation in the Batavian Republic, because it was suspected that it was primarily intended to serve in a future invasion of the Netherlands, as indeed it was.