The internal situation of the unfortunate republic was deplorable.  Under the weight of an enormous and daily increasing debt, all the resources of trade and industry were paralyzed.  Universal misery took place of opulence, and not even the consolation of a free constitution remained to the people.  They vainly sought that blessing from each new government of the country whose destinies they followed, but whose advantages they did not share.  They saw themselves successively governed by the states-general, a national assembly, and the directory.  But these ephemeral authorities had not sufficient weight to give the nation domestic happiness, nor consideration among the other powers.

On the 11th of October, 1797, the English admiral, Sir Adam Duncan, with a superior force, encountered the Dutch fleet under De Winter off Camperdown; and in spite of the bravery of the latter he was taken prisoner, with nine ships of the line and a frigate.  An expedition on an extensive scale was soon after fitted out in England, to co-operate with a Russian force for the establishment of the House of Orange.  The Helder was the destination of this armament, which was commanded by Sir Ralph Abercrombie.  The Duke of York soon arrived in the Texel with a considerable reinforcement.  A series of severe, and well-contested actions near Bergen ended in the defeat of the allies and the abandonment of the enterprise; the only success of which was the capture of the remains of the Dutch fleet, which was safely conveyed to England.

From this period the weight of French oppression became every day more intolerable in Holland.  Ministers, generals, and every other species of functionary, with swarms of minor tyrants, while treating the country as a conquered province, deprived it of all share in the brilliant though checkered glories gained by that to which it was subservient.  The Dutch were robbed of national independence and personal freedom.  While the words “liberty” and “equality” were everywhere emblazoned, the French ambassador assumed an almost Oriental despotism.  The language and forms of a free government were used only to sanction a foreign tyranny; and the Batavian republic, reduced to the most hopeless and degraded state, was in fact but a forced appendage chained to the triumphal car of France.

Napoleon Bonaparte, creating by the force of his prodigious talents the circumstances of which inferior minds are but the creatures, now rapidly rose to the topmost height of power.  He not only towered above the mass of prejudices which long custom had legalized, but spurned the multitude by whom these prejudices had been overthrown.  Yet he was not of the first order of great minds; for he wanted that grand principle of self-control which is the supreme attribute of greatness.  Potent, and almost irresistible in every conflict with others, and only to be vanquished by his own acts, he possessed many of the higher qualities of genius.  He was rapid, resolute, and daring,