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, 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).