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.