Читать книгу Revolutionary Europe, 1789-1815 - H. Morse Stephens - Страница 4

Table of Contents

The Treaty of 1756 between France and Austria—The Triple Alliance between England, Prussia, and Holland, 1788—The Minor Powers of Europe—Austria: Joseph ii.—His Internal Policy—His Foreign Policy—Russia: Catherine—Poland—France: Louis xvi.—Spain: Charles iv.—Portugal: Maria i.—Italy—The Two Sicilies: Ferdinand iv.—Naples—Sicily—Rome: Pope Pius vi.—Tuscany: Grand Duke Leopold—Parma: Duke Ferdinand—Modena: Duke Hercules iii.—Lombardy—Sardinia: Victor Amadeus iii.—Lucca—Genoa—Venice—England: George iii.—The Policy of Pitt—Prussia: Frederick William ii.—Policy of Prussia—Holland—Denmark: Christian vii.—Sweden: Gustavus iii.—The Holy Roman Empire—The Diet—The Electors—College of Princes—College of Free Cities—The Imperial Tribunal—The Aulic Council—The Circles—The Princes of Germany—Bavaria—Baden—Würtemburg—Saxony—Saxe-Weimar—The Ecclesiastical Princes—Mayence—Trêves—Cologne—The Petty Princes and Knights of the Empire—Switzerland—Geneva—Conclusion.

The Treaty of 1756.

The states of Europe at the commencement of the year 1789 were ranked diplomatically in two important groups, the one dominated by the connection between France, Austria, Spain, and Russia; the other by the alliance between England, Prussia, and Holland. The great transformation which had been effected by the treaty between France and Austria in 1756 in the relationship between the powers of Europe was the crowning diplomatic event of the eighteenth century. The arrangements then entered into and the alliances tested in the Seven Years’ War still subsisted in 1789. But the spirit which lay at the root of the Austro-French alliance was sensibly modified. The Treaty of 1756 had never been really popular in either country. In France, Marie Antoinette, whose marriage with Louis XVI. had set the seal on the Austrian alliance, was detested as the living symbol of the hated treaty, as l’Autrichienne, the Austrian woman, and the most accredited political thinkers and writers were always dwelling on the traditional policy of France, and on the system of Henri IV., Richelieu, and Louis XIV., which held the House of Hapsburg to be the hereditary and the inevitable enemy of the House of Bourbon and of the French nation. The dislike of the alliance was felt with equal intensity in Austria by the wealthy and the educated classes. The Austrian generals resented the inefficacy of the French intervention during the Seven Years’ War, and the Austrian people attributed its reverses in that war to it with as much acrimony as if France had acted as an enemy instead of as an ally. The same sentiment actuated even the Imperial House. ‘Our natural enemies, travestied as allies, who do more harm than if they were open enemies;’[1] such is the language in which Leopold of Tuscany, brother of Marie Antoinette, characterised the French in a letter written in December 1784 to his brother, the Emperor Joseph II. The Emperor Joseph was himself of the same opinion. He preferred his Russian ally, the Empress Catherine, to his brother-in-law, Louis XVI., King of France, and the tendency of his foreign policy was to strengthen his friendship with Russia, even at the expense of sacrificing his alliance with France. Russia, whose expansion under the great Empress had been enormous since the conclusion of the Seven Years’ War, cared but little for either of the allies, and pursued independently its course of steady development. Catherine had, indeed, during most of the later years of Frederick the Great, remained in alliance with Prussia, and to some extent had been on friendly terms with England. But her natural tendency was to distrust England. In 1780 she had placed herself at the head of the ‘Armed Neutrality,’ which opposed the naval pretensions of England, and in 1788 she had formally proposed a close quadruple alliance between Russia, Austria, France, and Spain.

Prussia, England, and Holland.

If the relations between France, Russia, and Austria were unsettled, the Triple Alliance between Prussia, Holland, and England was hardly on a more stable footing in 1789. Prussia, since the death of Frederick the Great, had become really decrepit, while apparently remaining a first-rate military power. Though still preserving the prestige of its famous King, who died in 1786, and recognising its alliance with England, Prussia in 1789 exhibited a decaying internal administration, and a vacillating foreign policy. England had received a heavy blow by the success of the colonists in North America, and by the Treaty of Versailles, and the powers of the Continent, while envying her wealth, held her military power of but small account. This opinion prevailed even at Berlin, and the new King of Prussia gave many evidences that the alliance of England was rather distasteful to him than otherwise. The third member of the alliance, Holland, was in the weakest condition of all, and it was only by invoking the armed interference of Prussia that England had maintained the authority of the Prince of Orange, as Stadtholder, in 1787. Though this interference had led to the formation of the famous Triple Alliance of 1788, in reality the English and Prussian statesmen profoundly distrusted each other, while the forcing of the yoke of the Stadtholder upon them caused the Dutch democratic party in Holland to abhor the allies and to look for help to France.

The Minor Powers of Europe.

The rest of the European states were bound more or less firmly to the one or the other of the two coalitions. The smaller states of Germany, aggravated or intimidated by the measures of the Emperor Joseph II., had rallied to the side of Prussia. In the north, Denmark, whose reigning house was connected by family ties with the royal families of England and Prussia, was completely under Russian influence, while Sweden, under Gustavus III., was actually at war with Catherine II. Poland, torn by internal dissensions, and threatened with complete destruction by its neighbours, was awaiting its final partition. The southern states of Europe were almost entirely bound to the Franco-Austrian alliance. Spain had been united to France by the offensive and defensive treaty, known as the ‘Pacte de Famille,’ concluded by the French minister, Choiseul, in 1761, and tested in the war of American Independence. Portugal, though connected with England, commercially by the Methuen treaty, and politically by a long course of protection against Spanish pretensions, was striving by a series of royal marriages to become the ally of Spain. In Italy, Naples was ruled by a Spanish prince married to an Austrian princess; Sardinia was closely allied with France, and the remainder of the peninsula was mainly under Austrian influence. Turkey, now travelling towards decay, was looked upon by Russia and Austria as their legitimate prey, and met with encouragement in resistance, but not with active help, from England and France.

After thus roughly sketching the general attitude of the powers of Europe to each other in 1789, it will be well to examine each state separately before entering on the history of the exciting period which followed. Great and sweeping alterations were to be effected; many diplomatic variations were to take place. The most important result of the period of the French Revolution and of Napoleon was its influence upon the minds of men, as shown in the growth of certain political conceptions, which have moulded modern Europe. But great changes were also brought about in dynasties and in the geographical boundaries of states, which can only be understood by a knowledge of the condition of Europe in 1789.

Austria: Joseph II.

Joseph II.: Internal Policy.

The figure of most importance in the beginning of the year 1789 was that of the Emperor Joseph II., and his dominions were those in which an observer would have prophesied a great revolution. Joseph was at that date a man of forty-seven; he had been elected Emperor in the place of his father, Francis of Lorraine, in 1765, and succeeded to the hereditary dominions of the House of Austria on the death of his mother, Maria Theresa, in 1780. He was, perhaps, the best type of the class of benevolent despots. A singularly industrious, enlightened, and able ruler, his ideas were far in advance of those of his age,—so much in advance, indeed, that his efforts to impose them upon his subjects brought upon himself hatred instead of gratitude, and among the people turbulence and insurrection instead of peace and tranquillity. The history of the Emperor Joseph’s reforms, and of the disturbances which resulted from them, belongs to an earlier volume of this series. In 1789 the whole of the hereditary dominions of the House of Hapsburg were in a state of ferment. The Emperor’s scheme of welding them into an Austrian nation, by insisting on the use of the German language, by simplifying the state of the law and the administration, and assimilating the various religious and educational institutions, had roused the fire of local patriotism. In Hungary and in the Tyrol, in Bohemia, and, above all, in the Austrian Netherlands, or Belgium, there was declared rebellion, fanned by local prejudices, religious fanaticism, and the spirit of caste. The first and second of these causes were chiefly responsible in the Austrian Netherlands, the third in Hungary. The Belgians, and more especially the Brabançons, were in arms for their local rights and ancient constitutions, which had been infringed by the Emperor’s decrees. The Belgian clergy, who looked upon Joseph as worse than an infidel for his treatment of the Pope and his suppression of religious houses, were inflamed at the establishment of an Imperial Seminary in Brussels as a rival to the Roman Catholic University of Louvain. But in Hungary it was the magnates of the country who had fought so gallantly for Maria Theresa and saved her throne, who were in an attitude of open disaffection. This was partly due to Joseph’s infringement of their Constitution and his removal of the Iron Crown to Vienna, but still more to his abolition of serfdom. As has been already stated, serfdom in Europe was practically extinct in the western part of the Continent, that is, in France, in Belgium, and on the Rhine, while it increased in intensity steadily towards the east, and was as bad in Prussia Proper, Poland, and Hungary, as in Russia. ‘Most merciful Emperor,’ ran a petition from an Hungarian peasant to Joseph, ‘four days’ forced labour for the seigneur; the fifth day, fishing for him; the sixth day, hunting with him; and the seventh belongs to God. Consider, most merciful Emperor, how can I pay dues and taxes?’[2] The iniquity of serfdom, with its practice of forced labour, was accentuated in Hungary by the constitutional custom which exempted the nobility from all taxation. The Emperor Joseph abolished serfdom in Hungary on 22nd August 1785, and inaugurated a system of removing feudal burdens, and converting forced labour, by means of a gradually diminishing tax. The condition of the hereditary dominions of the House of Hapsburg was thus, in 1789, one of seething discontent where it was not open rebellion; Belgian burghers and Hungarian magnates were alike infuriated by the Emperor’s efforts at reform; and the poor serfs of Hungary and Bohemia and the working men of Belgium, whom he designed to benefit by direct legislation and financial measures, were too weak to render him any help. His hope of creating an Austrian state and an Austrian people out of his scattered dominions was fated to be thwarted; obstacles of distance, race, and language, cannot be overcome by legislation, however wise; and the Emperor’s well-intentioned endeavours nearly lost his House its ancient patrimony.

Joseph II. Foreign Policy.

The foreign policy of the Emperor Joseph II. was dictated by the same leading principle as his internal reforms—the desire to form his various territories into a compact state. His schemes to exchange the Austrian Netherlands for Bavaria in order to unite his possessions in Swabia with the nucleus of the Hapsburg territories were frustrated by the policy of Frederick the Great. His attempt to make his authority as Emperor more than nominal, and to create a real German empire based on a German patriotic feeling, proved an utter failure. Foiled in these two projects, the creation of an Austrian compact state, which he deemed practicable, and the resurrection of a mighty Germany under his headship, which he acknowledged to be but a dream, Joseph II. turned his thoughts towards Russia. The ideal of his early manhood had been his mother’s foe, Frederick the Great of Prussia; the ideal of his later years was the Empress Catherine of Russia. Both were specimens of the enlightened despots of the age; both had extended the realms they ruled; both endeavoured to form their states into compact entities; both had succeeded in administration and in war; and both were cynical disciples of the eighteenth-century philosophers. They were successively his models. It is characteristic of the Emperor Joseph II. that the only picture in his private cabinet in the Hofburg at Vienna was a portrait of Frederick; the only picture in his bedroom one of Catherine. After the death of Frederick the Great, the Emperor Joseph II., despising his successor, expressed more loudly his admiration for Catherine. In 1787 he accompanied her in her famous progress to the Crimea. Fascinated by her personality and dazzled by her projects, the Emperor was persuaded to ally himself with Russia against the Turks, and hoped to partition Turkey with her, as his mother, Frederick, and Catherine had accomplished the first partition of Poland. In 1788 he accordingly declared war against the Sublime Porte. But he found that the Turks, in spite of the corruption of their government, were still no contemptible foes. His own army was demoralised by the misconduct of the aristocratic officers; disease decimated his troops; and the Emperor Joseph returned from the campaign of 1788 with the seeds of mortal illness in his system, but with his determination to pursue the war unabated.

Russia: Catherine.

Poland.

Russia, the chosen ally of Joseph II., was in 1789 ruled by the Empress Catherine II. This great monarch, though by birth a princess of the petty German state of Anhalt-Zerbst, ranks with Peter the Great as a founder of the Russian Empire; more Russian than the Russians, she understood the importance of the development of her adopted country geographically towards the Baltic and the Black Sea, and the capacity of her people to support her in her enterprises. She was at this time sixty years of age, in full possession of her remarkable powers, and having ruled for twenty-seven years, she had fortified her authority by experience. Peter the Great had seen the absolute necessity that the Russian Empire should have access to the sea, and had built Saint Petersburg; Catherine had moved southward and extended her dominions to the Black Sea. She hoped to make the Baltic and the Black Sea Russian lakes, and on that account was the consistent and watchful enemy of Sweden and the Turks. Upon the western frontier of Russia lay Poland. The natural policy of Russia was to maintain and even to strengthen Poland as a buffer between Russia and the military powers of Austria and Prussia. But the extraordinary Constitution of Poland, which provided for the election of a powerless king, and recognised the right of civil war and the power of any nobleman to forbid any measure proposed at the Diet by the exercise of what was called the liberum veto, kept the unfortunate country in a state of anarchy, unable either to defend or to oppose. It might have been possible to reform the Constitution, and make the Poles an organised nation, but the neighbouring monarchs considered it easier to share the country amongst them, and had, under the guidance of Frederick the Great, carried out in 1772 the first partition, which excluded Poland from the sea, brought the borders of the three powers, Austria, Prussia, and Russia, nearer to each other, and caused Russia to become an European instead of essentially an Eastern monarchy. Catherine grasped the fact that in her present position Russia must intervene in European politics, owing to the condition of Poland, and decided to derive what benefit she could from this circumstance. In her internal government Catherine was one of the benevolent despots. The patroness of Diderot, she expressed her admiration for the new doctrines of the Rights of Man, and even summoned a convention to draw up a Russian constitution. But she knew that the new doctrines were not applicable to the Russian people, and would be absurdly inappropriate to the nomad Tartar tribes which wandered over the southern districts of the Russian Empire. She was fully aware that their village organisation protected the peasants from many of the evils which prevailed in seemingly more enlightened countries, and gave them a right and interest in the soil to which they were attached. Russia, in fact, had experienced no Reformation, no Renaissance, no awakening of the ideas of individual and political liberty, and therefore was eminently fitted for the rule of a benevolent despot.

France: Louis XVI.

Next to the Austro-Russian alliance, the Austro-French alliance, sealed by the Treaty of 1756, was of the greatest significance to the peace and welfare of Europe in 1789. As has been said, in neither country was the alliance popular; France and Austria were hereditary enemies; classical policy in both courts favoured a resumption of this enmity; the friendship was rather dynastic than national, the work of Kaunitz and Maria Theresa, the Abbé de Bernis, Madame de Pompadour, and Louis XV. France still appeared a very powerful nation. Its intervention in the American War of Independence had largely contributed to England’s loss of her American colonies, and the Treaty of Versailles in 1783 had involved a confession that England was beaten by her cession of the West India islands of St. Lucia and Tobago. But in spite of her seeming power, France was from political and economic causes really very weak. She had been unable in 1787 to effectually support the republican and French party in Holland, and had been forced to allow England and Prussia to reinstate the Stadtholder, the Prince of Orange. In spite of her alliance with Austria, she had been obliged in pursuance of a peace policy, made necessary by her financial condition, to draw near to England, and had made a commercial treaty with her in 1786. The weakness of France arose from internal circumstances. The State and the Court were financially identical. The Court was extravagant, and the result was a chronic national deficit. Efforts had been made to meet this deficit, but all expedients, even partial bankruptcy, had failed. It was evident that a systematic attempt must be made to rearrange the finances by introducing a regular scheme of taxation to take the place of the feudal arrangements for filling the royal treasury, which with some modifications still survived. But a regular scheme of taxation, which should abolish feudal privileges, and make the government responsible to the nation for its expenditure, could not be established without the consent of the people, and the educated classes, who were both numerous and prosperous, claimed a voice in its establishment. The feeling of political discontent went deeper. The French people had outgrown their system of government; the peasants and farmers resented the existence of the economic, social, and political privileges dating from the Middle Ages, which had survived the duties originally accompanying them; the bourgeois argued that they should have a share in regulating the affairs of the State; the educated classes sympathised with both. The day for benevolent despotism was over in France; Louis XVI. was benevolent in disposition, but too weak to reform the system under which he ruled; and it was the system, not the person of the monarch, which the French people disliked; it was the system as a whole which they had outgrown.

Spain: Charles IV.

Much of the strength of France rested on its intimate alliance with Spain. The two great Bourbon houses had been closely united by the ‘Pacte de Famille’ concluded in 1761, which bound them in an offensive and defensive alliance. Spain had loyally fulfilled her part of the bargain, and had suffered much in the War of American Independence against England. Spain had had the good fortune to be ruled by one of the most enlightened of the benevolent despots, Charles III., whose minister, Aranda, was one of the greatest statesmen of his century. Aranda is best known from his persecution of the Jesuits, who had spread their influence over the minds of the Spanish people so far as to be the dictators of education and opinion. Their expulsion contributed to the power of the Crown, which undertook the direction of every form of national energy. Aranda was a great administrator; he spent vast sums on the improvement of communications and on public works, and he built up a powerful Spanish navy. The two evils which had depressed the fame of Spain, the personal lethargy of the people, due to the stamping out of liberty of thought by the Inquisition, and the poverty, caused by the influx of gold from the Spanish colonies, which prevented any encouragement of national industry, were however too great for any administrator to subdue, without a national uprising and the development of a national love for liberty. Aranda was ably helped by Campomanes, who founded a national system of education to take the place of the Jesuits’ schools and colleges, by Jovellanos, a great jurist and political economist, by Cabarrus, a skilful financier, who founded the bank of St. Charles, and developed a system of national credit, and by Florida Blanca, who superintended the department of foreign affairs, and succeeded Aranda in supreme power in 1774. Charles III. died on 12th December 1788, and his successor, Charles IV., whose weakness of character was manifested throughout the period from 1789 to 1815, commenced his reign by maintaining Florida Blanca at the head of Spanish affairs, with Cabarrus and other experienced ministers.

Portugal: Maria I.

Portugal was the intimate ally of England as Spain was of France. The hereditary connection of Portugal and England dated back for many centuries, and had been strengthened by the Methuen Treaty in 1703, which had made Portugal largely dependent on England. The great Portuguese minister, Pombal, who had commenced the persecution of the Jesuits and had effected internal and administrative reforms, comparable to those of Aranda in Spain, had been disgraced in 1777, but the offices of State were filled by his pupils and managed on the principle, which he had initiated, of advancing the prosperity of the people. Pombal, while holding the strongest views on the importance of maintaining the royal absolutism, believed in the modern doctrines of reform; he had abolished slavery, encouraged education, and in the received ideas of political economy had encouraged by means of protection manufactures and agriculture. The essential weakness of Portugal rested, like that of Spain, on the exhaustion and consequent lethargy of its people; the Jesuits and the Inquisition had stamped out freedom of thought. Financially, also, its condition resembled that of Spain, for the sovereign derived such wealth from Brazil as to be independent of taxes, levied on the people. Politically the aim of the House of Braganza, during the latter part of the eighteenth century, had been to endeavour to free itself from dependence on England by uniting closely through inter-marriages with the reigning family in Spain. Queen Maria I., who had succeeded Joseph, the patron of Pombal, in 1777, was a fanatical lady of weak intellect, and in 1789 the royal power was in the hands of the heir-apparent, Prince John, who was recognised as Regent some years later, and eventually succeeded to the throne in 1816, as John VI.

Italy.

Naples: Ferdinand IV.

Sicily.

Rome: Pope Pius VI.

Tuscany: Grand Duke Leopold.

Parma: Duke Ferdinand.

Modena: Duke Hercules III.

Lombardy.

Sardinia: Victor Amadeus III.

Lucca: Republic.

Genoa: Republic.

Venice.

Italy, in the eighteenth century, was composed of a number of small states. The idea of Italian unity lived only in the minds of the great Italian writers and thinkers; it met with no support from the powers of Europe. Italy was still the home of music and the arts, which were fostered by the numerous small Courts; but politically, owing to its subdivision, it hardly counted as a power, and its diplomacy had little weight in the European State system. It was entirely under the influence of France and Austria, and showed the tendencies of the century in the good government of most of the petty rulers. The most important of the Italian states was the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, which comprised the southern part of the peninsula and the island of Sicily. The kingdom had been granted to Ferdinand IV., when his father, the celebrated Don Carlos, succeeded as Charles III. to the throne of Spain in 1759. It was in Naples that Charles III. had commenced his career as a reforming monarch, and the great Neapolitan minister, Tanucci, continued to administer the affairs of the kingdom in a most enlightened fashion during the early years of the new monarch’s reign. His policy was to check the feudal instincts of the Neapolitan barons, whom he deprived of the lucrative right of administering justice, and thus to strengthen the influence of the Crown; and he also opposed the pretensions of the Pope, and concurred in the suppression of the Jesuits. The power thus acquired for the Crown was wisely used; the financial system was revised, education was encouraged, and an attempt was made to procure a general reform of the laws. The young publicist, Filangieri, whose Science of Legislation contained the most enlightened views on political economy and government, and who ranks next to Montesquieu as a typical political thinker of the eighteenth century, was a Neapolitan, and his speculations largely influenced the current of Italian thought. Sicily, however, remained to a great extent untouched by the influence of the great Neapolitan minister owing to its insular jealousy and the maintenance of its mediæval parliament. Ferdinand IV., in 1768, married Maria Carolina, the ablest daughter of the Empress Maria Theresa, who at once assumed the most entire sway over her ill-educated and indolent husband. She secured the dismissal of Tanucci, whom she disliked on much the same grounds that her sister, Marie Antoinette, disliked the reforming French ministers, Turgot and Necker, in 1776, and after an interval replaced him by Acton, a native of France of Irish descent, who, owing to the temper of his patroness, was not able to continue efficiently the work of Tanucci. The States of the Church, including the Legations of Bologna and Ferrara and the principalities of Benevento and Ponte Corvo, were also governed in accordance with the enlightened ideas of the eighteenth century. The Papacy had much fallen in influence, and had been forced to comply with the demands of Pombal, Choiseul, Aranda, and Tanucci for the suppression of its spiritual mainstay, the order of the Jesuits; but it nevertheless maintained its temporal sovereignty in Italy. Giovanni Angelo Braschi, who had been elected Pope in 1775, and taken the title of Pius VI., was a man of singular ability and courtly manners. But he had to assent to vast reforms in Tuscany, which seriously affected the wealth of the Church in that part of the country, and had been unable, in spite of a personal visit to Vienna, to persuade Joseph II. to alter his policy towards the Papacy. His most notable internal measures in the Papal States were the draining of the Pontine marshes, and his reconstitution of the Clementine Museum at Rome, which he placed under the charge of the eminent antiquary, Ennius Quirinus Visconti. Tuscany flourished under the rule of the Grand Duke Leopold, brother and eventual successor of Joseph II., the ablest administrator of all the benevolent despots. His reforms extended in every direction; with the help of Scipio de Ricci, Bishop of Pistoia, he reduced the number of bishoprics and monasteries; he drained many of the marshes, and so benefited agriculture; he reorganised education and encouraged the Universities of Pisa and Siena. But his greatest reforms were legal and economic. Tuscany having originated from a number of mediæval republics, had been hitherto administered as a collection of semi-independent cities and districts, with their own laws and local finances. Leopold was one of the first monarchs to project a uniform code of laws for his state, which he intrusted to the great jurist, Lampredi, to compile, and he abolished all personal privileges before the law, torture, the right of asylum for malefactors, confiscation of the property of condemned malefactors, and secret denunciations. In economics he was the pupil of the French physiocrats, and the friend of the Marquis de Mirabeau, the ‘Ami des hommes,’ and in consonance with their doctrines he swept away all the internal customs duties and other restrictions on industry and commerce. Lastly, Leopold, seeing that his state was not strong enough to carry on a real war, abolished the Tuscan army, to the great advantage of his finances. Next to Tuscany, the best-governed state in Italy was Parma. Ferdinand, Duke of Parma and Piacenza, was the only son of Don Philip, the second son of Philip V. of Spain and Elizabeth Farnese, by Elizabeth of France, daughter of Louis XV. He was educated by the celebrated French philosopher, Condillac, and early in his reign showed the influence of the best eighteenth century ideas. He had succeeded his father in 1765, and continued his minister, a Frenchman, Du Tillot, Marquis of Felino, in office. Du Tillot, though working in a smaller sphere, was as great a reformer as Pombal and Tanucci. He brought about the suppression of the Inquisition in Parma, improved the internal administration, and encouraged education so greatly that the University of Parma, under the management of the learned scholar, Paciaudi, became one of the most famous in Europe. In 1769 Duke Ferdinand married Maria Amelia, daughter of the Empress Maria Theresa, who two years later secured the dismissal of Du Tillot from office. This dismissal was not, however, followed by a reaction, though it put a close to the progress of reform, and Parma, under the administration, first of a Spaniard, Llanos, and then of a Frenchman, Mauprat, retained its reputation as a well governed state. It was otherwise with Modena, where the last Duke of the House of Este, Hercules III., reigned. This prince had succeeded to the duchies of Modena, Reggio, and Mirandola in 1780, when already a man of fifty-three, and had added to them by marriage the principalities of Massa and Carrara. His only daughter and heiress, Maria Beatrice, was married to the Austrian Archduke Ferdinand, younger brother of the Emperor Joseph, and Governor-General of Lombardy. Duke Hercules was a superstitious and avaricious ruler, whose chief care was to amass money, and, politically, he followed out the wishes of Austria. While the House of Austria, by its scions or by marriages, ruled the greater part of Italy indirectly, it possessed the direct sovereignty of Lombardy, or, more accurately, of the Milanese and Mantua. This province profited by the salutary policy of Joseph II., and was administered, under the governor-generalship of the Archduke Ferdinand, by a great statesman, Count Firmian, who understood and carried out the most important reforms. His patronage of the arts and of education was especially remarkable; he laboured ardently to restore the efficiency of the Universities of Milan and Pavia, and appointed Beccaria, the celebrated philanthropist, Professor of Political Economy at the former, and Volta, the equally celebrated man of science, Professor of Physics at the latter. The only other monarchy of Italy, that of Sardinia, was more closely related to France than to Austria. Its king, Victor Amadeus III., had married a Spanish princess, and two of his daughters were married to the two brothers of Louis XVI. of France—Monsieur, the Comte de Provence, and the Comte d’Artois. His dominions comprised the island of Sardinia, Piedmont, Savoy, and Nice, and it was a great subject of complaint to his Piedmontese subjects that he unduly favoured his French-speaking province of Savoy. He, too, was influenced by the spirit of his century; he encouraged agriculture and commerce; he patronised literature and science; he built the Observatory at Turin, and founded academies of science and fine arts; and he undertook great public works, of which the most important was the improvement of the harbour of Nice. But in one matter he pursued an opposite policy to the Grand Duke Leopold of Tuscany, for he increased and reorganised his army, and constructed fortifications of the most modern description at Tortona and Alessandria. Lastly must be noticed three Italian republics, survivals of the Middle Ages. Of these the smallest was the Republic of Lucca, which was entirely surrounded by the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. Its trade suffered from the encouragement given by the Grand Duke Leopold to Leghorn; but, on the whole, it was well governed and prosperous. It was otherwise with the two great aristocratic republics, in which the long continuance of oligarchical government had stamped out all vestiges of political liberty. The Republic of Genoa, of which Raphael di Ferrari was Doge in 1789, was in utter decay. Its people were poverty-stricken; its trade had gone to Leghorn and Nice; and its laws and customs were unreformed. It was so weak that it had been unable to subdue the rebels in Corsica, who had risen under Paoli for the right of self-government, and it had ended by ceding the island to France in 1768. The Republic of Venice, of which the Doge in 1789 was Paul Renier, had not fallen so low in the eyes of Europe. Its possessions on the mainland, which extended from Verona to the Tyrol and along the east coast of the Adriatic Sea, and included the Ionian Islands, were administered for the benefit of the Venetian oligarchy, and supplied it with wealth. From Dalmatia was raised a considerable army, but the administration was wholly selfish, and did not keep pace in enlightenment with that of Lombardy, Parma, Tuscany, and Naples. On the whole, where monarchy existed in Italy, it tended in the eighteenth century to benevolent despotism; and such rule was far more beneficial to the people than that of the antiquated republics. Politically, the whole country might be reckoned as a factor in the Franco-Austrian alliance.

England: George III.

The Policy of Pitt.

The chief power of the Triple Alliance, which balanced the loosely-defined league of Russia, France, and Austria, was England. The severe blow which had been struck by the revolt of her American colonies had made Great Britain appear weaker than she really was to the powers of the Continent. The Treaty of Versailles, by which she had been obliged to make cessions to France, seemed to have set the seal on her humiliation. But in reality her finances were more affected than her fighting strength, and the English navy, which, from her insular position, must always constitute the principal element of her force, was as excellent as ever. The policy of the younger Pitt, who had come into office in 1783, was one of peace and retrenchment. The country had lasted well through the financial strain of the American War, and the chief aim of the minister was to allow its vast commercial and industrial resources to expand. As a pupil of Adam Smith, Pitt understood the great principles of political economy, and the most significant part of his foreign policy was his conclusion of the Commercial Treaty with France. A fiscal system, far in advance of that in any continental country, enabled the English Government to draw on the wealth of the nation more effectively than any other government, if the money was needed for patriotic purposes. In spite of his love of peace, Pitt was induced by his first Foreign Secretary, the Duke of Leeds, to take an active part in European politics, and was eventually led by the state of affairs in Holland to enter into the Triple Alliance. At home, England was unaffected by the intellectual movement which led to the French Revolution. She had in the previous century got rid of the relics of feudalism, which pressed so heavily on the continental farmer and peasant, and had won the boons of individual and commercial liberty, and of equality before the law; while politically, though her government was an oligarchy, supported by the class of wealthy merchants and traders, an opportunity was afforded through the existence of a free press and of the system of election, however hampered by antiquated franchises, for public opinion to make itself felt.

Prussia: Frederick William II.

Prussia, the other principal member of the Triple Alliance, contrasted in every way with England. Seemingly, owing to the prestige of Frederick the Great’s victories and that able monarch’s careful organisation of his army, Prussia was the first military state in Europe; in reality, her reputation was greater than her actual power. Prussia was weak where England was strong. Prussia had no financial system worthy of the name, no industrial wealth, and no national bank; her only resources for war were a certain quantity of specie stored up in Berlin. The Prussian Government was an absolutism, in which the monarch’s will was supreme; its administration was based on feudalism, of which England had entirely and France had practically got rid, with all its mediæval incidents of serfdom, privilege of the nobility, and social and commercial inequalities. The Prussian army was not national; the soldiers were treated as slaves, and the officers, who were all of noble birth, were tyrants in the maintenance of military discipline.

Policy of Prussia.

Frederick the Great was one of the finest types of the benevolent despot of the eighteenth century, but in him the belief in the importance of his despotic power outweighed his benevolence. While wishing for the prosperity of the people, he deliberately maintained the authority of the nobility, and discouraged any desire for change on the part of the agriculturists or citizens. The former were left at the disposal of their lords, the latter trammelled by antiquated civic constitutions. The weakness of Prussia was not only inherent in its government, but was also due to geographical causes. Its component parts were scattered; its Rhenish duchies and East Friesland were separated from its main territories by many German states; its central districts, the Marks of Brandenburg, were sparsely populated, and cut off from the sea; its largest provinces, Prussia Proper, Pomerania, Silesia, and Prussian Poland were, in spite of German and French Huguenot colonies, mainly Slavonic, and as backward in civilisation as other Slavonic races in the eighteenth century. In Russia, however, the Slavonic population in its barbarism yet retained sufficient local organisation to make its lot fairly endurable; in eastern Prussia, and especially in Prussian Poland, the people had been brought into contact with the mediæval and Latin civilisation, and were consequently treated as absolute serfs without the relief afforded by local institutions. The policy of Prussia, as laid down by Frederick the Great, had both Prussian and German aspirations, and in both was utterly selfish. The example set by the cynical monarch in the Silesian wars had left a deep impress on the minds of Prussian statesmen, and the maxims of justice and international law were subordinated by them to expediency. The Prussian policy of Frederick the Great culminated in the first partition of Poland, which he had suggested, by means of which Prussia united her eastern province of Prussia Proper to Brandenburg, and cut off Poland from the sea, and the aim of his successors was to pursue this path of aggrandisement, and, by further annexations, to connect Silesia directly with Prussia Proper. The German policy of Prussia was to assume the leadership of the Empire by pretending the greatest zeal for the rights of the Princes of the Empire, and posing as their protector, and it was on this ground that Frederick the Great formed the League of the Princes. The hereditary enemy of Prussia was Austria, which, though distinctly injured by the conquest of Silesia, still retained the chief influence over the Empire, and also showed a tendency to check the designs on Poland. It was Frederick the Great of Prussia who had thwarted the Emperor’s scheme of exchanging the Austrian Netherlands for Bavaria, and he intrigued against Austria at the Courts both of Russia and France. It was as a counterblow to the Franco-Austro-Russian alliance that Prussia intervened in Holland, at the request of England, and formed the Triple Alliance with England and Holland in 1788. King Frederick William II. of Prussia, who succeeded his famous uncle in 1786, was a man of feeble intellect and undecided nature, but he had thoroughly imbibed the classic ideas of Prussian policy, and regarded Austria as the inevitable foe of Prussia, to be duped and taken advantage of on every possible occasion. His chief minister, Hertzberg, was a consistent enemy of Austria, but owing to the curious character of the king, the real power of the State rested not with the minister but with the royal favourites, of whom the chief at the end of 1788 were Bischofswerder and Lucchesini.

Holland.

Holland was the link which bound England and Prussia together. Its military power was of no account, but the wealth of its inhabitants, derived from their vast commercial expansion in Asia and aptitude for banking, made the Republic of the United Provinces of the greatest importance. The Seven Provinces preserved the most complete autonomy; only the veriest semblance of federation held them together. Practically, the only bond of union was in the power of the Stadtholder, which had been restored in 1747. In the more wealthy provinces, such as Holland, the commercial aristocracy, which filled the ranks of the local governments, resented the position of the Stadtholder, who held the command-in-chief of the army and navy; but in the poorer and agricultural provinces, such as Friesland and Groningen, the landed aristocracy generally supported the Stadtholderate. In 1780 the United Provinces had joined in the Neutral League of the North, invented by Catherine of Russia to break the commercial supremacy of England, and in the war which followed they had suffered severe losses, and had been compelled to cede Negapatam in India to England in 1783 on the conclusion of peace. The Stadtholder, William V., Prince of Orange, in whose family the office had been declared hereditary, was vehemently accused of favouring England during this war, and when peace was declared a movement was set on foot, headed by the authorities of the Province of Holland, to oust him from his position, and to draw up a new constitution for the Dutch Netherlands on the same lines as that of the United States of America. This movement grew to its height in 1786; a French Legion, commanded by the Comte de Maillebois, was raised; the Stadtholder had to fly from the Hague, and the armed intervention of France was requested. But, as has been said, France, in spite of her seeming power, was too weak to intervene, and the Dutch patriots were abandoned to their fate. On the other side, that of the Stadtholder, England, through its able ambassador at the Hague, Sir James Harris, afterwards Lord Malmesbury, induced Prussia to act. England and Prussia had dynastic and political reasons for this conduct. The Stadtholder was, through his mother, a first cousin of George III., and had married a sister of Frederick William II., while politically, the acquisition of Holland to the Franco-Austrian alliance, through the expulsion of the Stadtholder, would bring nearly the whole of Europe into that system, and would practically enclose the Austrian Netherlands or Belgium. In September 1787, therefore, a Prussian army, under the Duke of Brunswick, had occupied Amsterdam, and placed the Stadtholder firmly in power; the Dutch patriots fled to France; the Legion of Maillebois was disbanded; and in 1788 the work was consummated by the signature of the Triple Alliance.