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The Belgian Revolution. Oct. 1789-Jan. 1790.

The tidings of the events of 5th and 6th October showed both the French émigrés and the continental monarchs that they were wrong in their estimate of the Revolution. That the French royal family should be triumphantly brought to Paris and be practically imprisoned in the Tuileries under the eyes of the Parisian populace was a startling proof of the power of the people. It proportionately encouraged the supporters of all the popular movements on the French borders. Of these, the most important was that which had already made so much progress two years before in Belgium. The first result of the removal of the King of France to Paris was the Belgian Revolution of 1789, which filled almost as large a place in the eyes of contemporaries as the French Revolution itself. Encouraged by the Triple Alliance, and more especially by Frederick William II. of Prussia, the Belgian exiles of both wings, the supporters of Van der Noot, the advocate of the ancient Constitution, and of Vonck, the radical, had formed a patriotic army at Breda. The news of the events of 5th and 6th October determined them to act. On 23d October the army under Van der Mersch crossed the border, and on 24th October Van der Noot issued a manifesto declaring the Emperor Joseph deprived of his sovereignty over the Duchy of Brabant for having violated its fundamental charter.

Formation of the Belgian Republic, 10th Jan. 1790.

The march of the patriotic army was both rapid and successful. Bruges and Ostend opened their gates to the exiles; the fort of St. Pierre at Ghent was stormed; and the Estates of Flanders at once assembled, published a declaration of independence, and called on the other provinces to join in the movement. In Brabant the excitement was at its height. Trautmannsdorf in vain promised to restore the ‘Joyeuse Entrée,’ to abolish the Imperial Seminary at Brussels, and to declare a general amnesty. The patriots would not trust him, and Van der Mersch advanced into the Duchy and occupied Tirlemont. The people of Brussels then rose in insurrection. From 7th to 12th December was a period of long-continued riot and street fighting. Many of the Austrian soldiers deserted to the popular side, and those who remained true to their colours were shot at from windows and refused to charge. The advance of Van der Mersch set the seal upon d’Alton’s discomfiture. He made a capitulation on 12th December, and marched out of Brussels, leaving his guns, military stores, and military chest containing 3,000,000 florins behind. He retreated to Luxembourg, the only province which remained faithful to the House of Austria, and his example was followed by the imperial garrisons of Malines, Antwerp, and Louvain, which were abandoned to the patriots. D’Alton himself died at Trèves, it is said by taking poison, on being summoned to Vienna to be tried by a court-martial, and was succeeded in command of the Austrian troops in Luxembourg by General Bender. On 18th December the patriot committee entered Brussels, headed by Van der Noot, who was hailed by the people as the Belgian Franklin. On 7th January 1790 representatives from all the provinces of the former Austrian Netherlands met at Brussels under the presidency of Cardinal Frankenberg, Archbishop of Malines, and on 10th January they passed a federal constitution for the ‘United Belgian States,’ resembling that of Holland, under which each province was to preserve its internal independence, and only foreign affairs and national defence were left to the central government. Van der Noot was chosen Minister of State, and he at once asked for the official recognition of the new Belgian Constitution by the Triple Alliance, whose ministers at the Hague, Lord Auckland, Count Keller, and Van der Spiegel had, he asserted, promised to guarantee the independence of the new United States of Belgium. Frederick William II. of Prussia endeavoured to carry out this promise. He authorised one of his officers, General Schönfeld, to organise the Belgian army, and ordered General Schlieffen at Liége to enter into communication with the new government. But England and Holland, though approving the insurrection of Belgium as affording a powerful counterpoise to the Emperor’s policy in the East, were in no hurry to guarantee the new Republic, and Van der Noot then determined, under the influence of the radicals or Vonckists, to solicit the help of France, and announced the new Belgian Constitution in a significant manner both to Louis XVI. and to the President of the National Assembly.

Death of the Emperor Joseph. 20th Feb. 1790.

The news of the declaration of the independence of the Belgian provinces, and of the revolution which had led to it, proved to be the death-blow of the Emperor Joseph. To the Prince de Ligne, a native of Belgium, he said, just before his death, ‘Your country has killed me; the taking of Ghent is my agony; the evacuation of Brussels is my death. What a disgrace this is for me! I die; I must be made of wood, if I did not. Go to the Netherlands; make them return to their allegiance. If you do not succeed in the attempt, remain there. Do not sacrifice your fortune for me; you have children.’ The dying Emperor in his despair made concessions in every direction. He humbled his pride to entreat the Pope to use his influence with the Belgian clergy. He gave in to the Hungarian magnates, who demanded the repeal of his great reforms with threats of insurrection; and on 28th January 1790 he issued his ‘Revocatio Ordinationum quæ sensu communi legibus adversari videbantur,’ by which he revoked all his reforms in Hungary, except the edict of toleration and the decrees against serfdom; and on 18th February he ordered the Crown of St. Stephen to be sent back to Pesth. He assented to the suspension of his reforming edicts in Bohemia, and even in the Tyrol, where an insurrection was on the point of breaking out. Then, feeling his life a failure, he prepared for death. He confessed and received the ordinances of the Church; the last words he was heard to say were: ‘I believe I have done my duty as a man and a prince,’ and on the morning of 20th February he died. The words he wished to be written on his grave were: ‘Here rests a prince, whose intentions were pure; but who had the misfortune to see all his plans miscarry;’ but the people of Vienna, with a deeper sense of the merits of the great ruler who had lived in their midst, placed on his statue the inscription, ‘Josepho secundo, arduis nato, magnis perfuncto, majoribus præcepto, qui saluti publicæ vixit non diu, sed totus.’ The failure of the career of Joseph, the noblest sovereign of the eighteenth century,—one of the noblest sovereigns of any century,—was a proof of the fallacy of the eighteenth century conception of benevolent despotism. He had tried to accomplish in his dominions the very measures of reform which the Constituent Assembly had undertaken in France. The abolition of the relics of feudalism, the creation of a spirit of nationality, based upon the existence of uniform laws, the nationalisation of the Church and of education, the removal of all caste privileges, whether in the payment of taxes or in eligibility for public employment, and the maintenance of good internal administration, the primary aims and the great achievements of the Revolution in France, were also the objects of Joseph’s reforms. But everything was to be done for the people, nothing by the people, and it is doubtful whether, if Joseph had been in the place of Louis XVI., the French people would have relished the advantages he might have conferred. The spirit of locality was perhaps not so strong in France as in the hereditary dominions of the House of Austria. Dauphiné and Burgundy did not differ from Brittany and Normandy as much as Bohemia and Hungary, Belgium and the Milanese differed from each other. Yet the abolition of local distinctions might have been resented in France, as it was in the dominions of Joseph, if it had been accomplished by the monarch, instead of being the work of elected representatives. It is indeed remarkable that, allowing for the want of exactness in the parallel, owing to the difference of local conditions, the very reforms, which rallied all France to the side of the Revolution, should have led to the disastrous termination of the Emperor Joseph’s reign, and it is difficult to avoid coming to the conclusion that the whole subject illustrates the grand distinction between the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries, the distinction between alterations in the political, social, or economical conditions of a state made by a monarch for his people, and by a people for itself.

Louis XVI., indeed, showed himself a very different type of monarch from Joseph. He wished for the good of his people as ardently as his brother-in-law, but he had during the early years of his reign been satisfied with wishing for reforms, instead of energetically initiating them. When the success of the Revolution was assured by the policy of the deputies of the Tiers État, by the capture of the Bastille and by his own establishment at Paris, he never thought of setting himself at the head of the party of reform. He did not openly ally himself with the Tiers État, to vanquish the opposition of the nobles, as Gustavus III. of Sweden had done; he did not dream of outbidding the National Assembly for popularity by lavish promises, as other monarchs before and since have done; and he did not even try to share the credit of the representatives of the people by exhibiting an ardent zeal for reform. The horror he felt for civil war was not recognised; his partial yielding to the Court party of reaction in July and October, though at so late a date and so half-heartedly as to nullify any chance of its success, was imputed to him as a crime; and the difficulty presented by the fact that his dearest relatives, his Queen, Marie Antoinette, and his sister, Madame Elizabeth, were against all reform, was never fully appreciated. In consequence, the King’s real wishes to please his people and avoid bloodshed were looked on as simulated by the members of the National Assembly, and not only Louis himself, but the very principle of the French monarchy, were regarded as hostile to representative institutions. Louis XVI. was as weak as Joseph II. was energetic, but he was equally well-intentioned; and it was a distinct misfortune, both for himself and for France, that the value of the passive inertness, which he generally opposed to the reactionary schemes of his family and of the partisans of the ancien régime, was not adequately recognised.

The New French Constitution. 1789–1791.

This attitude towards the King had an important effect upon the constitution which the Constituent Assembly was engaged in framing during the year 1790. Only the main points in the growth of this Constitution, which occupied the greater part of the time of the Assembly from 1789 to 1791, can here be touched upon. But one striking feature must first be observed, that it was drawn up and applied piecemeal, not as an organic whole, like the later French constitutions of the revolutionary period. The first important principle was decreed upon 12th November 1789, when it was resolved that all the old local divisions of France, which perpetuated the memory of the gradual growth of the French provinces into France, should be abolished, and that the country should be divided into eighty departments of nearly equal size. It was naturally some months before the new division was effected, and still longer before the further division of each department into districts, and each district into cantons was finished. No wiser step for converting France from a congeries of provinces into a nation could have been devised. On the basis of the new divisions a new local government was established. Each department and district was to be administered by elected authorities, elaborately chosen by a system of double election. Next to the local government, the judicial system was reorganised. The Parlements were all abolished, and local courts, consisting of elected judges of departmental and district tribunals, and elected justices of the peace, were substituted. A uniform system of law was projected, and juries were sanctioned in criminal but not in civil cases. In these sweeping reforms one natural blemish is perceptible: from having no elected officials the other extreme was adopted of having all officials elected.

The Civil Constitution of the Clergy.

The mania for election affected the reform of the ecclesiastical arrangements of France, and directly brought about the schism, which so largely contributed to the misfortunes of France during the revolutionary period. On 2d November 1789 it had been resolved, in the face of the financial distress, that the property of the Church in France should be confiscated or resumed, as it was represented by opposite parties, while acknowledging the duty of providing and paying curés and bishops. This implied the formation of a State Church, a measure which needed the most delicate handling. On 13th February 1790 all monasteries and religious houses were suppressed; but as there had already been a partial suppression a few years previously, this would not by itself have caused a schism. It was otherwise with regard to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. It was resolved to reduce the number of bishoprics to one for each department, and that all the beneficed clergy, from curés to bishops, should be elected. This violation of a fundamental principle of the Catholic Church could not be allowed to pass unchallenged, and when the Constituent Assembly found that opposition was raised, it drove matters to a crisis by ordering that every beneficed ecclesiastic should take an oath to observe the new Civil Constitution of the Clergy. This oath was generally refused by the bishops and dignitaries, and largely by the parochial clergy, and it was resolved by the Assembly, on 27th November 1790, that all who refused the oath within one week should be held to be dismissed from their offices. The King sanctioned this decree on 26th December 1790, and the great schism in France began. It was doubtful at first whether apostolical succession could be preserved in the new Church of France. Only four beneficed bishops, including Loménie de Brienne, Cardinal Archbishop of Sens, and Talleyrand, Bishop of Autun, out of one hundred and thirty-five, and three coadjutor bishops, or bishops in partibus, including Gobel, Bishop of Lydda, consented to take the oath, but by them the first of the elected bishops of departmental sees were consecrated.

The measures of the Constituent Assembly in abolishing the old provincial divisions and law courts, and substituting new and more modern arrangements for administration, were in the nature of great reforms, though marred by the mania for election; the attempt to establish a Gallican Church, though obviously opposed to the discipline of the Catholic Church, and seriously discounted by the same mania, was patriotic, if not very wise; but the arrangements for the central administration were utterly absurd. In their dislike of the system of the ancien régime, and their fear of a strong executive, the Constituent Assembly thought it could not do enough to hamper the authority of the throne and of the central administration. The King, under the new Constitution, was left powerless. He was to be the first functionary of the State, nothing more. His veto on the measures of the Legislature was to have effect for only six months; his guards were suppressed, and his position made untenable for a strong monarch, and unbearable for a weak one. The ministers were invested with supreme executive authority, but more regulations were made to ensure their responsibility and limit their actual power, than to define their functions. They were to be answerable to the Legislature, in which they were not allowed to sit; and their measures were to be criticised by an irresponsible representative assembly. Under such regulations the King and his ministers, that is, the executive, were put in a position of inferiority, which no vigorous man could be expected to accept, to the inevitable derangement of the whole administrative machine. In addition to the Constitution, the Constituent Assembly carried several measures of the greatest importance to a free state. All citizens, of whatever religion or class, were declared eligible for employment by the State; and on 13th April 1790 a noble decree, declaring the most absolute and entire toleration of every form of religion, was carried. The Constitution of 1791 was, on the whole, a praiseworthy effort of untried legislators to give their country a representative constitution. It was marred only by the fatal jealousy of giving due authority to the executive, and the mania for election. But it was in no way democratic. For the election to all offices was to be by at least two degrees, and no man was to have a vote unless he was an ‘active citizen.’ To be an active citizen, a man had to contribute to the direct taxation of the country an amount equivalent in value to three days’ wages in his locality. Further, to be eligible for office, a candidate had to pay taxes of the value of a ‘silver mark,’ which inevitably restricted all offices to the bourgeois, or very prosperous working men.

Other acts of the Constituent Assembly.

Though the main occupation of the Constituent Assembly was the building up of the Constitution of 1791, it interfered only too much in matters of current administration. It was soon obvious that its power exceeded that of the King, and it has been observed that Van der Noot announced the new Belgian Constitution alike to the King and the President of the Assembly, as to authorities of equal importance. The mischief produced by this constant interference was perceptible in every department of government. Mirabeau, who was a profound master of statecraft, saw through the fallacies of endeavouring to separate the legislative and executive powers in the State, and, what was implied in the preponderance of a legislature in which the ministers had no seat, to divorce authority from responsibility. He understood and approved of the English system, and as soon as the Constituent Assembly had removed to Paris in October 1789, after the establishment of the King at the Tuileries, and he had got the ear of the Court through his friend, La Marck, Mirabeau proposed the formation of a constitutional ministry, after the English fashion, from among the leading members of the Assembly. His scheme got noised abroad: the Assembly in its fear of the executive, which was afterwards consecrated in the Constitution of 1791, and stimulated by Lafayette, who dreaded the influence of a strong ministry, passed a motion on 7th November, that no member of the Assembly could take office as a minister while he remained a deputy, or for three years after his resignation.

The spirit, which lay at the root of this decree, showed itself in other ways. The fear of the influence of the Crown extended itself to the army and navy, as the natural instruments of the Crown for re-establishing its former authority. The army, already disorganised by the emigration of many of its officers, was practically destroyed in its efficiency as a fighting machine by the relaxation of discipline among the soldiers, caused not only by the actual decrees of the Assembly, but by the impunity allowed to desertion and mutiny. The Marquis de Bouillé, the general commanding at Metz, did indeed put down a military mutiny at Nancy on 31st August 1790, but his action, though applauded by the Assembly, which could not openly encourage mutiny, was isolated and not imitated. In the navy matters were even more desperate, for a larger proportion of officers deserted, resigned, or emigrated than in the army, and loss of discipline is even more disastrous in a naval than in a military force. The weakness of the army was intended to be compensated by the enrolment of national guards. But these citizen soldiers could not be treated with the strictness of regular troops. They were chiefly of the bourgeois class, and had the prejudices of that class, caring more for the protection of their property than for military efficiency. In Paris they were of the most importance, owing to their numbers, and their commander-in-chief, Lafayette, probably the most powerful man in France in 1790. The framing of the Constitution, and the disorganisation of the central authority and its instruments were the chief results of the labours of the Constituent Assembly in 1790; but among its minor acts should be noted the abolition of titles of nobility, liveries and other relics of social pre-eminence on 13th July 1790, as an evidence of its desire to extirpate even the outward signs of the ancien régime.

Mirabeau.

Only one man seems to have understood the dangers to which France was drifting owing to the policy of the Constituent Assembly, and that man was Mirabeau. He had done more than any man to assure the victory of the Tiers État in June 1789; he was the greatest orator and greatest statesman the revolutionary crisis had produced. Mirabeau, however, hated anarchy as much as he did despotism. He saw the absolute necessity of establishing a strong executive, if the crisis of 1789, the dissolution of the old authorities, the unpunished riots in towns, and the jacquerie in the rural districts were not to lead to anarchy. Foiled in his prudent scheme of selecting a strong ministry from the Constituent Assembly[6] by the vote of 7th November 1789, Mirabeau saw that it was impossible to overcome the distrust of the Assembly for the executive. He therefore turned to the Court, and in May 1790 he became the secret adviser of the King through the mediation of his friend La Marck. In a series of memoirs or notes for the Court of surpassing political wisdom, Mirabeau analysed the situation of affairs and proposed remedies. The two main dangers were the state of the finances and the fear of foreign intervention. Mirabeau’s horror of national bankruptcy was as great as his personal extravagance in expenditure. In September 1789 he advocated Necker’s scheme of a general contribution, though it was accompanied by stipulations which were certain to make it almost entirely unproductive, and he personally disapproved of it; in December 1789 he grudgingly acquiesced in the first issue of ‘assignats’ or promises to pay, based on the value of the property of the Church, resumed or confiscated by the Assembly, and to be extinguished as this property was sold. In August 1790 he went yet further. Comprehending that men are mainly influenced by their pecuniary interests, he advocated a wide extension of the system of assignats, down to small sums, on the grounds that they would then be able to reach the hands of the poorer classes and give them an interest in their maintaining their value, and would also frustrate the machinations of speculators, who began to make money by depreciating the exchange of specie against the new paper currency. But he also wisely proposed and successfully carried severe regulations for the extinction of assignats as the national property was realised, regulations which, unfortunately, were not strictly observed. His decree was followed in September 1790 by the retirement of Necker from office, and it is a significant proof of the change in popular opinion that the final retirement of the minister, whose dismissal in July 1789 had brought about the capture of the Bastille, was received without excitement.

The other great danger which France incurred, by the disorganising policy of the Constituent Assembly, was the possibility of the armed intervention of foreign powers. Mirabeau thought that if national bankruptcy and the interference of foreigners could be avoided, the anarchy, which was making itself felt, might soon be quelled. He did not fear civil war; indeed, he argued that it might be a positive advantage, and that as long as the King did not retract his concession of a representative constitution, a large portion of his subjects would support him in winning back the legitimate authority of the executive. But foreign war was to him an evil to be feared as much as national bankruptcy. He knew the spirit of his countrymen well, and that they would in case of national disaster submit to any despotism rather than submit to the dictation or the interference of a foreign power in their internal affairs. Success in a foreign war owing to the state of the army was not to be expected, but if it did come, it would with almost equal certainty lead to the despotism of the conquering government, whether it were the reigning monarch, his successor, or a victorious general. To avoid a foreign war it was necessary as far as possible to leave the conduct of foreign affairs in the hands of the King. This was Mirabeau’s intention in the great debate on the right of declaring peace and war in May 1790, and he succeeded in getting the Assembly to sanction the initiation of peace or war as part of the duties of the King. But at this period Louis XVI. was too weak or too unwilling to understand the paramount necessity of maintaining peace. Mirabeau, therefore, got himself elected to a special Diplomatic Committee of the Constituent Assembly, and as its reporter endeavoured throughout the year 1790 to keep France clear of international complications.

Mirabeau and the Court.

Unfortunately neither Louis XVI. nor his ministers, and still less Marie Antoinette, grasped the truth of Mirabeau’s memoirs for the Court. On the contrary, the one idea of the Queen was to get her brother, the Emperor Leopold, to interfere, and, if necessary, by force of arms to restore the power of the French monarch. The King, too, was startled at Mirabeau’s ideas; he felt no horror at the notion of a foreign war, but would suffer anything rather than engage in a civil war. The wise advice of the great statesman went unheeded; both King and Queen regarded their connection with him as the clever muzzling of a dangerous revolutionary leader. They could not comprehend his desire to establish a strong executive for the sake of France, and looked on it as a bit of personal ambition. The King was not sufficiently far-seeing, nor the Queen sufficiently patriotic to understand his views. If the Constituent Assembly distrusted the Court, the King and Queen no less strongly distrusted Mirabeau.

As reporter of the Diplomatic Committee, Mirabeau had three different problems to solve, in which the policy of the Assembly came in contact with foreign powers, the affairs of Avignon, the maintenance of the Pacte de Famille with Spain, and the interference caused by the legislation of the Assembly with the Princes of the Empire who owned fiefs of the Empire in Alsace.

Avignon and the Venaissin.

The city of Avignon and the county of the Venaissin, though inhabited by Frenchmen and surrounded by French territory, were under the sovereignty of the Pope. As early as the ‘orgie’ of 4th August 1789 the Constituent Assembly had pronounced on the expediency of uniting both the city and the county with France. A French party was formed in Avignon; and a free municipal constitution after the model of those just established in France was framed and assented to by the Cardinal Vice-Legate in April 1790. The Pope, however, annulled his deputy’s assent, with the result that fierce street fighting took place in the city, which was only stopped by the intervention of the National Guard of the neighbouring French city of Orange. The result of these events was that the city of Avignon, or at least the French party there, declared Avignon united to France on 12th June 1790. The inhabitants of the Venaissin, on the other hand, declared their attachment for the Pope, and their wish to remain subject to him. When these circumstances became known in Paris a strong party showed itself in the Assembly in favour of accepting the union of Avignon with or without the Pope’s assent. Mirabeau skilfully averted the danger of a flagrant breach of international law by securing the appointment of an Avignon Committee, and when it became necessary to send regular troops to maintain order in the city, he secured their despatch thither without the assumption of any rights of sovereignty.

The Affair of Nootka Sound. May 1790.

Far more serious was the question which arose in May 1790, and which gave rise to the debate in the Constituent Assembly on the right of declaring peace and war, for it brought into prominence a doubt whether the Assembly should recognise the treaties made by the French monarchy. Of these treaties, the most popular in France, and the first to be brought into evidence, was the Pacte de Famille, which had been concluded in 1761 by Choiseul between France and Spain. Charles IV. had succeeded his able and accomplished father, Charles III., on 12th December 1788. The new monarch was completely under the influence of his wife, Marie Louise, a princess of Parma, who in her turn was governed by a young guardsman, her lover, Godoy. Charles IV. made a friend of Godoy, a fact which of itself shows the essential weakness of his character. He, as well as his Queen, was, outwardly at least, deeply religious, and it was pretty certain that before long a reaction would take place at the Spanish Court against the liberal régime, which, in the previous reign, under the administration of Aranda and Florida Blanca, Campomanes and Jovellanos, had done so much for Spain. But for the first three years of his reign, Charles IV. maintained his father’s experienced ministers, with the assent of the Queen, who did not dare at once to introduce her lover into the ministry, or invest him openly with power. Florida Blanca, the Spanish minister, with Spanish pride, refused to recognise the actual weakness of Spain, and was particularly active in maintaining her supremacy in America. When, therefore, Vancouver Island was demonstrated to be an island and not a peninsula, he claimed its possession for Spain, and also alleged pre-colonisation. But he went further. Spanish officers had seized an English ship in Nootka Sound, now St. George’s Sound, in Vancouver Island, had destroyed an English settlement there, and had even insulted an English naval captain. When Pitt demanded reparation, Florida Blanca replied haughtily, and claimed the possession of the island on the grounds stated. Pitt at once sent one of the ablest English diplomatists, Alleyne Fitzherbert, afterwards Lord St. Helens, to threaten to declare war, and prepared a great fleet, known in English naval history as the Spanish Armament.

Both Pitt and Florida Blanca knew that a war between England and Spain would only be seriously undertaken if France decided to intervene. Florida Blanca claimed the assistance of France under the terms of the Pacte de Famille, and Pitt, who understood that power had passed from Louis XVI. to the Constituent Assembly, sent two secret emissaries to Paris to see if the Assembly was inclined to maintain the policy of the ancien régime. One of these emissaries was Hugh Elliot, brother of Sir Gilbert Elliot, afterwards Lord Minto, an old schoolfellow of Mirabeau, who was expected to influence the orator, and the other, William Augustus Miles, who was to ally himself with the leading democratic deputies. The question came before the Constituent Assembly on a letter from the Comte de Montmorin, Minister for Foreign Affairs. The enthusiasm in the Assembly for the maintenance of the Spanish Alliance was extreme, defiance was hurled at England, Spain’s faithful adherence to the Pacte de Famille in the Seven Years’ War and the War of American Independence was remembered, and a fleet for active service was ordered to be got ready at Brest, and sixteen new ships of war built. But the first burst of enthusiasm soon cooled. Some deputies feared war would strengthen the monarchy, others did not like to be bound by the treaties, especially the dynastic treaties of the ancien régime, and others again, headed by Robespierre and Pétion, inveighed against the idea of any offensive war. The whole question was referred to the Diplomatic Committee. Mirabeau, who knew perfectly well that Spain would not fight without the aid of France, read an able report, recommending that the Pacte de Famille should be changed to a simple defensive treaty, which was adopted. The Court of Spain, seeing that no help was to be got from France under these circumstances, resigned its pretensions to Vancouver Island, and consented to pay the compensation demanded by England. This diplomatic victory of England exasperated the Spaniards; Charles IV. was surprised and disgusted at the concessions made by Louis XVI., and declared them a breach of the Pacte de Famille; and by her conduct France lost the friendship of her closest ally of the eighteenth century.

The Rights of the Princes of the Empire in Alsace.

The third question in which the new state of things in France touched the diplomatic system of old Europe and threatened to cause international complications, which might lead to a foreign war, was concerned with the fiefs of the Empire in Alsace. By the Treaty of Westphalia that province had been ceded to France in full and entire sovereignty, but reserving the rights of the Empire. The complications caused by this ambiguous arrangement had raised perpetual difficulties throughout the reigns of Louis XIV. and Louis XV., and many separate treaties had been concluded with individual princes, by which they recognised the sovereignty of France in Alsace, in return for the acknowledgment of all their ancient rights. A further problem was added by the fact that the more important princely landowners in Alsace were also ruling and independent sovereigns across the French border. They were thus supreme, save for the loose over-lordship of the Emperor in Germany, and subject to the French monarchy for their domains in Alsace. Among the principal of these rulers were the three ecclesiastical electors, the Archbishops of Mayence, Trèves, and Cologne, the Bishops of Strasbourg, Spires, Worms, and Basle, the Abbot of Murbach, the Dukes of Würtemburg and of Deux-Ponts or Zweibrücken, the Elector Palatine, the Margrave of Baden, the Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt, and the Princes of Nassau, Leiningen, Salm-Salm, and Hohenlohe-Bartenstein. These princes were naturally profoundly affected by the abolition of feudalism decreed by the Constituent Assembly, which further complicated their position. They felt as German princes, and appealed against the measures of the Assembly as contrary to international law, and violating the Treaty of Westphalia and the many separate treaties. The protests of certain of these princes were laid before the Assembly on 11th February 1790, and referred by it to the Feudal Committee on 28th April. The reporter of the Committee on this matter was Merlin of Douai, one of the greatest French jurists and statesmen of the whole revolutionary period. On 28th October he read his report, in which he insisted on the new principle of the sovereignty of the people. He asserted that the unity of Alsace with France rested not on ancient treaties, but on the unanimous resolution of the Alsatian people to be Frenchmen. But at the same time he argued that in practice old rights ought to be maintained. Mirabeau, with his usual sagacity, saw that international complications might, on this ground, be adjourned, if not altogether avoided; and it was on his motion that the Constituent Assembly resolved to uphold the sovereignty of France in Alsace, and the application of all its decrees to that province, but at the same time requested the King to arrange the amount of indemnity to be paid to the Princes of the Empire as compensation for the rights of which they were thus deprived. These princes, however, with but very few exceptions, refused absolutely to accept any monetary compensation, and appealed to the Diet of the Empire. It was on this question, therefore, that foreign intervention most seriously threatened France at the end of 1790, in spite of the diplomatic knowledge and skill of two of her leading statesmen, Mirabeau and Merlin of Douai.

While Mirabeau was doing his best to keep France from the disturbance, and even disasters, which a foreign war would cause in the midst of her new development, the Queen cast all her hopes for the restoration of the power of the French monarchy on the armed help of foreign states. Louis XVI. in a half-hearted fashion was opposed to foreign interference, but his younger brother, the Comte d’Artois, and the French émigrés, who had established themselves on the borders of France, declared that the King was not in his right senses, and that he was forced to yield to the measures of the Constituent Assembly against his will. They felt no patriotic misgivings, and loudly invoked the assistance of all monarchs in the cause of monarchy and the feudal system. The ruler on whom the Queen chiefly relied, and to whom she appealed most fervently, the monarch to whom the émigrés looked with most confidence, was Leopold, the brother and successor of Joseph II. He held the key of the position; he was the sovereign especially feared by the leaders of the Constituent Assembly, and as Emperor and as brother of Marie Antoinette he was expected by the royalists to intervene in the affairs of France.