Low Countries theatre of the War of the First Coalition in the context of "Battle of Jemappes"

The invasion of Java was a successful British amphibious operation against Java in the Dutch East Indies between August and September 1811 during the Napoleonic Wars. Originally established as a colony of the Dutch East India Company, Java remained in Dutch hands throughout the French Revolutionary Wars, during which the French invaded the Dutch Republic, transforming it into the Batavian Republic in 1795 and the Kingdom of Holland in 1806. The Kingdom of Holland was annexed to the First French Empire in 1810, and Java became a French colony, though it continued to be administered and garrisoned primarily with Dutch personnel.

After their capture of the French West Indies between 1809 and 1810, and a successful campaign against France's possessions in Mauritius from 1810 to 1811, British attention turned to the Dutch East Indies. An expedition was dispatched from British India in April 1811, while a small squadron of Royal Navy frigates was ordered to patrol off the island, raiding shipping and launching amphibious assaults against targets of opportunity. British troops landed on 4 August, and by 8 August the undefended city of Batavia capitulated. The defenders withdrew to a previously prepared fortified position, Fort Cornelis, which the British besieged, capturing it early in the morning of 26 August. The remaining defenders, a mixture of Dutch and French regulars and native militiamen, withdrew, pursued by the British. A series of amphibious and land assaults captured most of the remaining strongholds, and the city of Salatiga surrendered on 16 September, followed by the official capitulation of the island to the British on 18 September.

Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (né Wesley; 1 May 1769 – 14 September 1852) was an Anglo-Irish British Army officer and statesman who was one of the leading military and political figures in Britain during the early 19th century, twice serving as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He was one of the British commanders who ended the Anglo-Mysore wars by defeating Tipu Sultan in 1799, and among those who ended the Napoleonic Wars in a Coalition victory when the Seventh Coalition defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.

Wellesley was born into a Protestant Ascendancy family in Dublin, in the Kingdom of Ireland. He was commissioned as an ensign in the British Army in 1787, serving in Ireland as aide-de-camp to two successive lords lieutenant of Ireland. He was also elected as a member of Parliament in the Irish House of Commons. Rising to the rank of colonel by 1796, Wellesley served in the Flanders campaign before being sent to India, where he fought in the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War, ending the conflict with a victory at Seringapatam in 1799. He was appointed governor of Seringapatam and Mysore and, as a newly appointed major-general, won a decisive victory over the Maratha Confederacy at the Battle of Assaye in 1803.

William I (Willem Frederik; 24 August 1772 – 12 December 1843) was King of the Netherlands and Grand Duke of Luxembourg from 1815 until his abdication in 1840.

Born as the son of William V, Prince of Orange, the last stadtholder of the Dutch Republic, and Wilhelmina of Prussia, William experienced significant political upheavals early in life. He fought against the French invasion during the Flanders campaign, and after the Batavian Revolution in 1795, his family went into exile. He briefly ruled the Principality of Nassau-Orange-Fulda before Napoleon's French troops' occupation forced him out of power. Following the defeat of Napoleon in 1814, William was invited back to the Netherlands, where he proclaimed himself Sovereign Prince of the United Netherlands.

Baron Paul von Davidovich or Pavle Davidović (Serbian Cyrillic: Павле Давидовић) (1737, Buda – 18 February 1814, Komárom) became a general of the Austrian Empire and a Knight of the Military Order of Maria Theresa. He served in the Seven Years' War and the War of the Bavarian Succession, winning the Knight's Cross of the Military Order of Maria Theresa in the latter conflict. He fought in the Austro-Turkish War and the Brabant Revolution, attaining the rank of general officer. During the French Revolutionary Wars, he fought in the Flanders Campaign and the Rhine campaign of 1795 before being transferred to the Italian theater. He played a major role in the 1796 campaign, leading corps-sized commands in the fighting against the French army led by Napoleon Bonaparte. He led troops during the War of the Third Coalition and War of the Fifth Coalition. He was Proprietor (Inhaber) of an Austrian infantry regiment.

General Sir Charles Asgill, 2nd Baronet, GCH (6 April 1762 – 23 July 1823) was a career soldier in the British Army. At the end of the American Revolutionary War he became the principal of the so-called Asgill Affair of 1782, in which his retaliatory death sentence while a prisoner of war was commuted by the American forces who held him, due to the direct intervention of the government of France. Later in his career, he was involved in the Flanders campaign, the suppression of the Irish Rebellion of 1798, and was Commander of the Eastern Division of Ireland during the Irish rebellion of 1803.

The Batavian Navy (Dutch: Bataafsche marine) was the navy of the Batavian Republic which existed from 1795 to 1806. Founded in May 1795 after the Dutch Republic was overrun by France during the French Revolutionary Wars and transformed into the Batavian Republic, it assumed control over the ships and administrative infrastructure of the Dutch States Navy. The Batavian navy underwent a thorough reorganisation and embarked on several construction programmes in an attempt to match the strength of its main rival, the Royal Navy. Despite this, the British navy inflicted several crushing defeats on the Batavian Navy at the capitulation of Saldanha Bay, Battle of Camperdown and Vlieter incident.

The British also occupied much of the Dutch colonial empire during the French Revolutionary Wars, which the Batavian Navy was powerless to prevent. Despite losing much of its fleet by 1802, the Batavian navy's reorganisations proved to be durable, and it played a role in Napoleon's planned invasion of the United Kingdom and efforts to restore Batavian rule in the Dutch colonies returned by Britain under the Treaty of Amiens. However, the Batavian Navy was again unable to prevent Britain from occupying its colonies after the Napoleonic Wars began in 1803. The Batavian Republic became the Kingdom of Holland in June 1806, with the Batavian navy being transformed into the navy of the Kingdom of Holland.

Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany (Frederick Augustus; 16 August 1763 – 5 January 1827), was the second son of George III, King of the United Kingdom and Hanover, and his consort Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. A soldier by profession, from 1764 to 1803 he was Prince-Bishop of Osnabrück in the Holy Roman Empire. From the death of his father in 1820 until his own death in 1827, he was the heir presumptive to his elder brother, George IV, in both the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and the Kingdom of Hanover.

Frederick was thrust into the British Army at a very early age and was appointed to high command at the age of thirty, when he was given command of a notoriously ineffectual campaign during the War of the First Coalition, a continental war following the French Revolution. Later, as Commander-in-Chief during the Napoleonic Wars, he oversaw the reorganisation of the British Army, establishing vital structural, administrative and recruiting reforms for which he is credited with having done "more for the army than any one man has done for it in the whole of its history".