 That indemnification was an important sideshow in the negotiations . The consequence of the Peace Treaty was that the Batavian Republic now received international recognition , even by the British government , and that the old Dutch Republic was now irreversibly dead . This put an end to all pretensions of the Stadtholder and his heirs , such as they were . It may be important to note that these pretensions were dubious to begin with . The Stadtholder was never the sovereign power in the Netherlands , despite understandable misconceptions by foreigners , who may have thought that a country needed a head of state , and the Stadtholder was it . Instead he was an officeholder , appointed by the provincial States , who also was captain @-@ general and admiral @-@ general of the Union ( there was originally no stadtholder on the confederal level ) . In the Orangist revolution of 1747 this office had been revamped to " Stadhouder @-@ generaal " and made hereditary , and after the Prussian intervention of 1787 the powers of the Stadtholder had become dictatorial . But formally the States @-@ General had been sovereign since 1588 , and the Stadtholder was merely their " first servant . " The British may have entertained certain fantasies about his formal status , when it suited their purposes . An example would be the Kew Letters he was persuaded to write to the governors of the Dutch colonies in his capacity of captain @-@ general on February 7 , 1795 , ordering them to immediately surrender those colonies to the British " for preservation . " Another example would be their acceptance of the surrender of the Batavian fleet in the name of the Stadtholder in 1799 , as though he was a sovereign prince . But this was all make @-@ believe , and it ended with this Peace ( though it was conveniently revived in 1813 ) . 
