ABSTRACT
In 1795 the armies of revolutionary France entered Dutch territory. Apart from providing the shock that brought to the Dutch the realisation of their true identity and all that this implied, the French invasion also brought to Holland another and very great gift, — the glorious and beneficent doctrine of the French Revolution with its ideal of freedom, of equality and of brotherhood, which has enriched the minds of men and left them changed for the better. Like the renaissance and the reformation, the French Revolution belongs to the common patrimony of western mankind. At the time of the outbreak of the French Revolution, absolutism was no longer the general rule in Europe. The French nation threw itself enthusiastically into electing its representatives to the states general. The French Revolution stood for the fulfilment of men’s craving for decency, for justice and for beauty.
