CONTINENTAL AFFAIRS.
At this time the attention of government was particularly called to the troubled state of Holland. The dissensions which had long subsisted between the stadtholder and the states had arisen to an alarming height, and demanded the interposition of foreign powers. The French were favourable to the States of Holland; but, on the other hand, the cause of the stadtholder was warmly espoused by the King of Prussia in conjunction with Great Britain. Frequent skirmishes took place between the Orangists and the democrats ef Utrecht; and in the midst of these contests, the Princess of Orange, who had more courage than her husband, the stadtholder, set eff from Nimeguen for the Hague, accompanied by only a few domestics, with a view of negociating with the States-general. It is thought that the King of Prussia recommended this journey, with a view of drawing from it some plausible ground of interfering in behalf of the House of Orange, and if he did, it fully answered his purpose. The princess, who was of the royal house of Prussia, advanced as far as Schoonhoven where she was surrounded by a party of armed burghers, who conducted her to a small town, there to await the further will of those who governed the democrats. Commissioners soon arrived from head-quarters; and they not only refused her permission to proceed to the Hague, but conducted her back to Schoonhoven as a prisoner. She remained there two nights and a day, when, after experiencing insolent treatment from the soldiers who had her in custody, she was directed to return to Nimeguen. While a prisoner the princess had written letters to her brother, the King of Prussia; and on hearing of the insult offered to her, his rage knew no bounds. He insisted that immediate satisfaction should be made, and exemplary punishment inflicted on those who had committed the outrage; declaring at the same time, in some public manifestoes, that this cause was in itself sufficient to justify an armed intervention. The States of Holland, however, cherishing a hope that the French, who had led them on, would not abandon their cause, passed a resolution, justifying and approving the conduct of their commissioners in the arrest of the Princess of Orange; and plainly told Frederic William, in their reply to his demand, that the object of the princess in going to the Hague was to create a civil war, and that there had not been any real insult or injury. At the same time the States-general acknowledged the justice of the King of Prussia’s complaint, and stated that they had made repeated applications to the States of Holland upon the subject, but which had been disregarded. Still determined upon obtaining satisfaction, Fredric William, by his ambassador at the Hague, now demanded that the States of Holland should write a letter of apology to the princess; should punish, at her requisition, those who had been guilty of the offences offered to her august person; should declare that their suspicions about her object in going to the Hague were unfounded; should revoke the resolutions which they had voted; and should accompany this revocation of the resolutions with an invitation of her royal highness to come to the Hague, for the purpose of entering into negociations in the name of the stadtholder, her husband, for the adjustment of all differences. The States of Holland were not in a condition to withstand a Prussian army, but still hoping for aid from the court of Versailles, they refused to accede to these humiliating terms, and issued their orders for laying the country under water, so soon as any Prussian troops should make their appearance on the frontiers. Thus braved, the king of Prussia issued his mandate for war with the refractory states. And in this he was countenanced by the English government. Although nothing at this time could have been less agreeable to Pitt than the prospect of a war, his heart being set on economical reforms and financial arrangements, yet the reduction of the United Provinces to a state of dependence on France, as was menaced by the French court, was not to be endured, and he therefore entered cordially into the policy of the Prussian monarch. As the friends of the house of Orange were in want of money, Pitt supplied them with a loan, without the authority of parliament; and he offered to the States-general, through our ambassador at the Hague, the mediation of the British government, for the restoration of their legitimate government under the authority of the stadtholder. But Pitt’s offers of mediation were rejected, and the oligarchical party applied for assistance to France. The court of Versailles made a regular notification to that of St. James’s of its intention to aid the States-general, and the British minister replied that in such a case England would take an active part in favour of the stadtholder. Pitt, indeed, engaged the Landgrave of Hesse Cassel to furnish 12,000 troops, if they should be required, and at the same time sent dispatches, both by sea and land, to Bengal and Madras, directing the governors of those provinces, in case of war, to attack the French possessions in India and to seize the Dutch settlements in the name of the stadtholder. His prompt measures had the effect of overawing the court of Versailles, and being likewise distracted by its own financial embarrassments, it was under the mortifying necessity of abandoning those designs on the United Provinces, which had long been among its most cherished projects. In the meantime, on the 13th of September, the Duke of Brunswick, who commanded the Prussian forces in the contiguous duchy of Cleves, entered Holland at the head of 20,000 troops. The Dutch had boldly defied the King of Prussia, but their consternation at this event was extreme, and the country seemed everywhere unprepared for resistance. Utrecht surrendered to the Duke almost as soon as summoned; Gorcum, Dordt, Schoonhoven, and other towns in his route, tamely submitted to him; and Amsterdam, which alone made any show of resistance, after a fortnight’s siege, was captured. So rapid were his successes, that the proud republic of Holland, which had maintained a contest of eighty years against the power of Spain, and which repulsed the attacks of Louis XIV., when in the zenith of his glory, was in the course of one month overrun by the troops of the conqueror. The result was, that the stadtholder was not only reinstated in his former privileges, but gratified with new, and that the ancient forms of government were re-established. Tranquillity being restored, the Duke of Brunswick withdrew the main body of his forces from Holland, leaving 4,000 only for the security of peace, and the protection of the stadtholder. About the same time an amicable arrangement was effected between the courts of England and France, by which it was agreed to discontinue warlike preparations on both sides, and to place the navy of each kingdom on the peace establishment. War, therefore, was averted; Pitt was left to pursue his measures of reform undisturbed, and the court of Versailles to consider its financial embarrassments. But in Holland this triumph of the Orangists did not put an end to the disaffection that prevailed throughout the country; on the contrary, it facilitated the conquest of the United Provinces by the revolutionary army of France.