 The draft @-@ Constitution was to be subjected to a referendum on August 8 , 1797 , after a very lively campaign in which the French ambassador Noël weighed in with a supportive appeal . This probably contributed to the resounding defeat of the proposal ( 108 @,@ 761 votes to 27 @,@ 995 ) . The Assembly was back at square one . At this moment in time foreign events in the form of the 18 Fructidor coup of general Pierre Augereau intervened . This brought the more radical faction to power in France , which proved to be ultimately less patient with the vagaries of the Dutch political process , and more prone to intervene . Elections for a second National Assembly returned one in which the balance of power had shifted to the unitarists in the Fall of 1797 . Nevertheless , the federalists managed to retain control of the new constitutional commission by a bare majority . This led to more dawdling and the unitarists in the Assembly now came with their own proposal in the form of the Declaration of 43 on December 12 , 1797 , containing a nine @-@ point manifesto concerning the minimum conditions to which the new constitution should conform . 
