"A division under your command has been assigned against the northern part of Holland..." The allied Anglo-Russian expedition to Holland: goals, objectives and planning of the operation

The Anglo-Russian expedition to Holland in 1799 is one of the least studied pages in Russian military history. This expedition is considered in modern historical literature as an operation that had no significance for Russia, it was not favourable to it. At the same time, the study of the reasons for the Russian Empire's participation in the Second Anti-French Coalition and in the Dutch expedition allows us to conclude that both foreign policy steps were a response to the situation in Europe at that time, and the participation of the Russian army in the Holland campaign was in the sense of Russia's participation in the studied armed conflict – the struggle of Russia and allies with revolutionary France. The author investigates the issue of preparation of Russia and England for the upcoming operation, as well as, on the basis of archival documents, memoirs of participants of the operation, works of domestic and foreign researchers, analyses the process of drawing up plans for the invasion and their military and political features. The study concluded that the organisers of the military campaign – the British top political and military leadership – used the process of drawing up and discussing invasion plans with their Russian allies, on the one hand, to mask the narrow state interests they pursued with the desire to solve coalition-wide problems. In addition, such joint activities should have fuelled the interest of Emperor Paul I in the operation, as Russian troops were needed for its implementation, who had absolutely no information about the number and actions of the English troops allied to them. In fact, the British not only did not take into account and did not consider Russian proposals, but also did not have a clear plan of warfare even at the time when the first allied troops landed in Holland.