How French invasion produced the Batavian Republic

The First Coalition expected revolutionary France to be vulnerable, but French forces and their allies organized well enough to carry the war into the Netherlands. Dutch radical opponents of the Orange regime formed their own force and advanced alongside the French army. Geography mattered because the country's flat terrain offered few barriers once its field defence failed. William V, the stadtholder, escaped aboard a fishing boat despite attempts by British and loyal Dutch troops to preserve the old order. The stadtholder held a hereditary office but was not a monarch, so organized domestic opposition already existed before the invasion created the Batavian Republic.