Revolutionary Europe, 1789-1815

by H. Morse Stephens

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.

Denmark: Christian VII.

Sweden: Gustavus III.

The two northern kingdoms, Denmark and Sweden, had adhered to the Neutral League against England in 1780, but for generations a bitter animosity had existed between them. Denmark, which in 1789 included Norway, was in an extremely prosperous condition. The philanthropic ideas of the eighteenth century had made great way, and on 20th June 1788 a royal ordinance had destroyed the last vestige of serfdom. Efforts were made to improve the condition of the people by reorganising the state of the finances, law and education, and progress was made in every direction. These reforms were not the work of the King, Christian VII., who had fallen into a state of dotage, but of the Prince Royal, afterwards Frederick VI., and of his minister, Count Andrew Bernstorff, the nephew of the greatest Danish statesman of the eighteenth century. Sweden, which in 1789 included the greater part of Finland as well as Swedish Pomerania and the island of Rügen, was under the sway of one of the most enlightened rulers of the century, Gustavus III. That monarch had in 1772, by a coup d’état, overthrown the power of the Swedish Estates, with their division into the two parties of the Caps and the Hats, subsidised respectively by Russia and France. He had made use of his absolutism to carry out some of the benevolent ideas of the time. He had abolished torture, regulated taxation, encouraged commerce and industry, and diminished, where he did not destroy, the privileges of the nobility. Had he contented himself with these internal reforms he would have won the lasting gratitude of the Swedish people, but he insisted on playing a part in continental politics, which involved the maintenance of a large army and the consequent exhaustion of the people. Though he too had joined the League of the North in 1780, he afterwards assumed a strong anti-Russian attitude, and resolved to take advantage of the Russo-Turkish war in order to regain some of his lost provinces. Accordingly he invaded Russia in the summer of 1788, while his fleet threatened St. Petersburg.

The Empire.

The Diet.

College of Electors.

College of Princes.

College of Free Cities.