The general idea here is, that the person who has most weight with him is an aide-de-camp named Kochentz, of whose honesty there is no suspicion, but whose talents and capacity are of a very inferior description, and who is therefore open to the artifices of bad and designing men, who work powerfully through him upon the King.
Haugwiz is believed to be sincere in his apprehensions of the general danger of French republicanism, and is considered as struggling against the more immediate followers of the King, who surround him daily, and haunt him with the dreadful consequences of war to Prussia, and the old jealousies and distrusts of Austria.
If the Court of Vienna should at last act, as I am almost disposed to think they will rather than send back the Russian troops at the requisition of France, the beginning of hostilities from that Court cannot fail of producing a good effect here; the great danger is, that while each is waiting for the other to begin, the time for useful and effective exertion will pass by.
I have seen Sièyes at Court with his scarf and cockade. What Lavater would say of his features I know not, but I have seldom seen a countenance of so bad impression. His manners, conduct and appearance here have produced nothing but disgust in all that are not of the lower ranks of life, but it is to those that his mission is considered as being chiefly addressed, and he is said to have both means and agents enough to work through upon the lower classes of men here.
I have heard nothing from England or Ireland since I left Yarmouth, nothing of Union, and nothing of you; but how can I till the summer, if the last ten days of soft weather will not unlock the inhospitable ice of the Elbe at Cuxhaven? We are all well. God send that you and yours are so. Love to Lord B. and George and Mary. The Major is, I trust, soon expecting you in England.
God bless you, dearest brother. You will be glad to hear great part of my baggage is saved.
The negotiations which the French had been carrying on at Rastadt relative to the German boundaries, were broken off in consequence of the Emperor having permitted the Russian troops to enter his dominions; and on the 1st of March, the Directory having declared war against him, Jourdan, at the head of forty thousand men, crossed the Rhine at Kehl and Basle. Austria was now fairly committed to the war, and, strengthened by the Russians, who entered into it with enthusiasm, achieved a succession of important movements. On the 5th of March, the Arch-Duke Charles crossed the Leck; and on the 25th, defeated Jourdan at the battle of Stockach, and, leaving ten thousand men dead or expiring on the field, compelled the French to retire towards the Rhine. This triumph was followed up vigorously by the battle of Magnan, on the 5th of April, in which the Austrians, under Kray, joined by the vanguard of the Russians, effected so signal a victory, that Scherer, beaten for the third time in the course of the campaign, fled in precipitation across the Nincio. The effect of these encouraging successes was utterly lost on the Court of Prussia, where the policy, or no-policy, of doing nothing still prevailed over the counsels of friends, and the menaces of enemies. The picture Mr. Grenville gives of the weakness and incapacity of the Government suggests the only intelligible explanation of the conduct they pursued at this juncture.
MR. T. GRENVILLE TO THE MARQUIS OF BUCKINGHAM.
Berlin, April 17th, 1799.
If I am behind-hand, my dearest brother, in thanking you for your two letters of the 11th and 24th of March, I am less so than those dates would lead you to imagine, for the messengers did not bring me the first of them till a week ago, and the last arrived here only the day before yesterday. The amities of the 'Proserpine' are out of date with me, and would long ago have been forgotten, if they were not daily recalled to me by new and continued proofs of the affectionate interest which has been taken in them. To know what you would feel in a state of anxiety and suspense which I could not relieve, was a distress greater to me than the fatigue and danger which accompanied my escape. It has ended well, and I trust it will not be long before we shall laugh over it together.