Curiously enough (but the contemporary of course could not know this) the Provisional government worked more and to a better effect than the permanent form of government by which it was followed. It had one great advantage: there was such an insistent demand for immediate action that there was a correspondingly small chance for idle talking. The professional orators, the silver-tongued rhetoricians, had their innings at a later date. For the moment only men of deeds were wanted, and the best elements of the Patriotic party cheerfully stepped forward to do their duty. Pieter Paulus, by right of his ability, was the official and unofficial head. He remained at The Hague and ran the national Provisional government, while Citizen Schimmelpenninck stayed in Amsterdam and kept that important dynamo of democratic power running smoothly. Both leaders had their troubles, but not from foreign enemies. It is true that the young Prince of Orange was contemplating a wild filibustering scheme and had called for volunteers to compose an army of invasion. The half-pay officers of the former régime had hastened to his colours. But very few soldiers were willing to risk their lives for such an unpopular cause, and with an army composed of two soldiers for each officer no great military operations were possible. Wherefore the plan fell through in a most lamentable way, and the Prince of Orange as a claimant to the Dutch Government disappeared from further view until many years later. The great bugaboo of the Provisional government and its moderate members was the radical brethren of the very same Patriotic party. These good people had starved abroad for many years. At the first opportunity they had hastened back to the ancestral hearth-stone. And now they presented enormous claims for damages for the losses which eight years before they had suffered at the hands of the Orangeists. But instead of receiving the hoped-for bounties these faithful democrats were snubbed on all sides. The climax was reached when the Batavian Government offered to pay them twenty-five guilders each (the price of a ticket from Paris to Amsterdam) and let it go at that. The professional exiles roared indignation, repaired to the nearest coffee-house, and instantly formed a number of clubs which were to see that no further deviations from the genuine path of revolutionary virtue be permitted. And very broadly they hinted that a short session of Madame Guillotine might do no end of good in this complacent and ungrateful Dutch community. Let it be said to the everlasting honour of the Provisionals that no such thing occurred. Nobody was decapitated, no palaces and country houses were delivered to the tender mercies of the Jacobin Patriots.