It is doubtful indeed whether the emperor, whose restless brain was always full of new schemes, really meant to carry his threats into execution.  In the autumn of 1784 a plan for exchanging the distant Belgian Netherlands for the contiguous Electorate of Bavaria was beginning to exercise his thoughts and diplomacy.  He showed himself therefore ready to make concessions; and by the firmness of the attitude of France both the disputants were after lengthy negotiations brought to terms, which were embodied in a treaty signed at Fontainebleau on November 8,1785.  The Dutch retained the right to close the Scheldt, but had to dismantle some of the forts; the frontier of Dutch Flanders was to be that of 1664; and Joseph gave up all claim to Maestricht in consideration of a payment of 9,500,000 florins.  A few days later an alliance between France and the Republic, known as “the Defensive Confederacy” of Fontainebleau, was concluded, the French government advancing 4,500,000 florins towards the ransom of Maestricht.  The return of peace, however, far from allaying the spirit of faction in the Republic, was to lead to civil strife.

The situation with which William V now had to deal was in some ways more difficult and dangerous than in the days of his greater predecessors.  It was no longer a mere struggle for supremacy between the Orange-Stadholder party (prins-gezinderi) and the patrician-regents of the town corporations (staats-gezinderi); a third party had come into existence, the democratic or “patriot” party, which had imbibed the revolutionary ideas of Rousseau and others about the Rights of Man and the Social Contract.  These new ideas, spread about with fiery zeal by the two nobles, Van der Capellen tot de Pol and his cousin Van der Capellen van den Marsch, had found a fertile soil in the northern Netherlands, and among all classes, including other nobles and many leading burgomasters.  Their aim was to abolish all privileges whether in Church or State, and to establish the principle of the sovereignty of the people.  These were the days, be it remembered, which immediately succeeded the American Revolution and preceded the summoning of the States-General in France with its fateful consequences.  The atmosphere was full of revolution; and the men of the new ideas had no more sympathy with the pretensions of an aristocratic caste of burgher-regents to exclude their fellow-citizens from a voice in the management of their own affairs, than they had with the quasi-sovereign position of an hereditary stadholder.  Among the Orange party were few men of mark.  The council-pensionary Bleiswijk was without character, ready to change sides with the shifting wind; and Count Bentinck van Rhoon had little ability.  They were, however, to discover in burgomaster Van de Spiegel of Goes a statesman destined soon to play a great part in the history of the country.  During this period of acute party strife Patriot and Orangeman were not merely divided