 Against this background the negotiations for the Treaty of Amiens started in October 1801 . The minor participants in the negotiations between Great Britain and France ( the Batavian Republic and Spain ) were immediately presented with faits accomplis : the preliminary agreement ceded Ceylon , and guaranteed free English shipping to the Cape of Good Hope , without the Dutch even being consulted . The Dutch ambassador in France , Schimmelpenninck , who acted as the Dutch plenipotentiary , vainly protested that the Treaty of The Hague had guaranteed the Dutch colonies , and that France had promised not to make a separate peace . After this separate peace had been concluded , the British were left to negotiate with the minor French allies separately . This did not mean that the Dutch were completely left to their own devices : whenever French interests seemed to be in danger , France decisively intervened on its own behalf , as in the attempt to deduct the value of the Dutch fleet , surrendered in 1799 , that the British had purchased from the Stadtholder , from the indemnification of the Prince of Orange . 
