Doggerbank battle was but, at the most, an indecisive engagement on a very small scale, and it brought no relaxation in the English blockade.  No Dutch admiral throughout all the rest of the war ventured to face the English squadrons in the North Sea and in the Channel; and the Dutch mercantile marine disappeared from the ocean.  England was strong enough to defy the Armed Neutrality, which indeed proved, as its authoress Catherine II is reported to have said, “an armed nullity.”  There was deep dissatisfaction throughout the country, and mutual recriminations between the various responsible authorities, but there was some justice in making the stadholder the chief scapegoat, for, whatever may have been the faults of others, a vigorous initiative in the earlier years of his stadholdership might have effected much, and would have certainly gained for him increased influence and respect.

The war lasted for two years, if war that could be called in which there was practically no fighting.  There were changes of government in England during that time, and the party of which Fox was the leader had no desire to press hardly upon the Dutch.  Several efforts were made to induce them to negotiate in London a separate peace on favourable terms, but the partisans of France in Amsterdam and elsewhere rendered these tentative negotiations fruitless.  Being weak, the Republic suffered accordingly by having to accept finally whatever terms its mightier neighbour thought fit to dictate.  On November 30, 1782, the preliminary treaty by which Great Britain conceded to the United States of America their independence was concluded.  A truce between Great Britain and France followed in January, 1783, in which the United Provinces, as a satellite of France, were included.  No further hostilities took place, but the negotiations for a definitive peace dragged on, the protests of the Dutch plenipotentiaries at Paris against the terms arranged between England and France being of no avail.  Finally the French government concluded a separate peace on September 3; but it was not till May 20, 1784, that the Dutch could be induced to surrender Negapatam and to grant to the English the right of free entry into the Moluccas.  Nor was this the only humiliation the Republic had at this time to suffer, for during the course of the English war serious troubles with the Emperor Joseph II had arisen.

Joseph had in 1780 paid a visit to his Belgian provinces, and he had seen with his own eyes the ruinous condition of the barrier fortresses.  On the pretext that the fortresses were now useless, since France and the Republic were allies, Joseph informed the States-General of his intention to dismantle them all with the exception of Antwerp and Luxemburg.  This meant of course the withdrawal of the Dutch garrisons.  The States-General, being unable to resist, deemed it the wiser course to submit.  The troops accordingly left the barrier towns in January, 1782.  Such submission, as was to be expected, inevitably led to further demands.