But Holland speedily ceased to be a scene of warfare. The discontented portion of the citizens, now the majority, rejoiced to retaliate the revolution of 1787 by another, received the French as liberators. Reduced to extremity, yet still capable by the aid of his allies of making a long and desperate resistance, the stadtholder took the nobler resolution of saving his fellow-citizens from the horrors of prolonged warfare. He repaired to The Hague; presented himself in the assembly of the states-general; and solemnly deposited in their hands the exercise of the supreme power, which he found he could no longer wield but to entail misery and ruin on his conquered country. After this splendid instance of true patriotism and rare virtue, he quitted Holland and took refuge in England. The states-general dissolved a national assembly installed at The Hague; and, the stadtholderate abolished, the United Provinces now changed their form of government, their long-cherished institutions, and their very name, and were christened the Batavian Republic. Assurances of the most flattering nature were profusely showered on the new state, by the sister republic which had effected this new revolution. But the first measure of regeneration was the necessity of paying for the recovered independence, which was effected for the sum of one hundred million florins. The new constitution was almost entirely modelled on that of France, and the promised independence soon became a state of deplorable suffering and virtual slavery. Incalculable evils were the portion of Holland in the part which she was forced to take in the war between France and England. Her marine was nearly annihilated, and some of her most valuable possessions in the Indies ravished from her by the British arms. She was at the same time obliged to cede to her ally the whole of Dutch Flanders, Maestricht, Venloo, and their dependencies; and to render free and common to both nations the navigation of the Rhine, the Meuse, and the Scheldt. 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.