Revolutionary Europe, 1789-1815

by H. Morse Stephens

The states of Europe at the commencement of the year 1789 were ranked diplomatically in two important groups, the one dominated by the connection between France, Austria, Spain, and Russia; the other by the alliance between England, Prussia, and Holland. The great transformation which had been effected by the treaty between France and Austria in 1756 in the relationship between the powers of Europe was the crowning diplomatic event of the eighteenth century. The arrangements then entered into and the alliances tested in the Seven Years’ War still subsisted in 1789. But the spirit which lay at the root of the Austro-French alliance was sensibly modified. The Treaty of 1756 had never been really popular in either country. In France, Marie Antoinette, whose marriage with Louis XVI. had set the seal on the Austrian alliance, was detested as the living symbol of the hated treaty, as l’Autrichienne, the Austrian woman, and the most accredited political thinkers and writers were always dwelling on the traditional policy of France, and on the system of Henri IV., Richelieu, and Louis XIV., which held the House of Hapsburg to be the hereditary and the inevitable enemy of the House of Bourbon and of the French nation. The dislike of the alliance was felt with equal intensity in Austria by the wealthy and the educated classes. The Austrian generals resented the inefficacy of the French intervention during the Seven Years’ War, and the Austrian people attributed its reverses in that war to it with as much acrimony as if France had acted as an enemy instead of as an ally. The same sentiment actuated even the Imperial House. ‘Our natural enemies, travestied as allies, who do more harm than if they were open enemies;’[1] such is the language in which Leopold of Tuscany, brother of Marie Antoinette, characterised the French in a letter written in December 1784 to his brother, the Emperor Joseph II. The Emperor Joseph was himself of the same opinion. He preferred his Russian ally, the Empress Catherine, to his brother-in-law, Louis XVI., King of France, and the tendency of his foreign policy was to strengthen his friendship with Russia, even at the expense of sacrificing his alliance with France. Russia, whose expansion under the great Empress had been enormous since the conclusion of the Seven Years’ War, cared but little for either of the allies, and pursued independently its course of steady development. Catherine had, indeed, during most of the later years of Frederick the Great, remained in alliance with Prussia, and to some extent had been on friendly terms with England. But her natural tendency was to distrust England. In 1780 she had placed herself at the head of the ‘Armed Neutrality,’ which opposed the naval pretensions of England, and in 1788 she had formally proposed a close quadruple alliance between Russia, Austria, France, and Spain.

Prussia, England, and Holland.

If the relations between France, Russia, and Austria were unsettled, the Triple Alliance between Prussia, Holland, and England was hardly on a more stable footing in 1789. Prussia, since the death of Frederick the Great, had become really decrepit, while apparently remaining a first-rate military power. Though still preserving the prestige of its famous King, who died in 1786, and recognising its alliance with England, Prussia in 1789 exhibited a decaying internal administration, and a vacillating foreign policy. England had received a heavy blow by the success of the colonists in North America, and by the Treaty of Versailles, and the powers of the Continent, while envying her wealth, held her military power of but small account. This opinion prevailed even at Berlin, and the new King of Prussia gave many evidences that the alliance of England was rather distasteful to him than otherwise. The third member of the alliance, Holland, was in the weakest condition of all, and it was only by invoking the armed interference of Prussia that England had maintained the authority of the Prince of Orange, as Stadtholder, in 1787. Though this interference had led to the formation of the famous Triple Alliance of 1788, in reality the English and Prussian statesmen profoundly distrusted each other, while the forcing of the yoke of the Stadtholder upon them caused the Dutch democratic party in Holland to abhor the allies and to look for help to France.

The Minor Powers of Europe.

The rest of the European states were bound more or less firmly to the one or the other of the two coalitions. The smaller states of Germany, aggravated or intimidated by the measures of the Emperor Joseph II., had rallied to the side of Prussia. In the north, Denmark, whose reigning house was connected by family ties with the royal families of England and Prussia, was completely under Russian influence, while Sweden, under Gustavus III., was actually at war with Catherine II. Poland, torn by internal dissensions, and threatened with complete destruction by its neighbours, was awaiting its final partition. The southern states of Europe were almost entirely bound to the Franco-Austrian alliance. Spain had been united to France by the offensive and defensive treaty, known as the ‘Pacte de Famille,’ concluded by the French minister, Choiseul, in 1761, and tested in the war of American Independence. Portugal, though connected with England, commercially by the Methuen treaty, and politically by a long course of protection against Spanish pretensions, was striving by a series of royal marriages to become the ally of Spain. In Italy, Naples was ruled by a Spanish prince married to an Austrian princess; Sardinia was closely allied with France, and the remainder of the peninsula was mainly under Austrian influence. Turkey, now travelling towards decay, was looked upon by Russia and Austria as their legitimate prey, and met with encouragement in resistance, but not with active help, from England and France.

After thus roughly sketching the general attitude of the powers of Europe to each other in 1789, it will be well to examine each state separately before entering on the history of the exciting period which followed. Great and sweeping alterations were to be effected; many diplomatic variations were to take place. The most important result of the period of the French Revolution and of Napoleon was its influence upon the minds of men, as shown in the growth of certain political conceptions, which have moulded modern Europe. But great changes were also brought about in dynasties and in the geographical boundaries of states, which can only be understood by a knowledge of the condition of Europe in 1789.

Austria: Joseph II.

Joseph II.: Internal Policy.

The figure of most importance in the beginning of the year 1789 was that of the Emperor Joseph II., and his dominions were those in which an observer would have prophesied a great revolution. Joseph was at that date a man of forty-seven; he had been elected Emperor in the place of his father, Francis of Lorraine, in 1765, and succeeded to the hereditary dominions of the House of Austria on the death of his mother, Maria Theresa, in 1780. He was, perhaps, the best type of the class of benevolent despots. A singularly industrious, enlightened, and able ruler, his ideas were far in advance of those of his age,—so much in advance, indeed, that his efforts to impose them upon his subjects brought upon himself hatred instead of gratitude, and among the people turbulence and insurrection instead of peace and tranquillity. The history of the Emperor Joseph’s reforms, and of the disturbances which resulted from them, belongs to an earlier volume of this series. In 1789 the whole of the hereditary dominions of the House of Hapsburg were in a state of ferment. The Emperor’s scheme of welding them into an Austrian nation, by insisting on the use of the German language, by simplifying the state of the law and the administration, and assimilating the various religious and educational institutions, had roused the fire of local patriotism. In Hungary and in the Tyrol, in Bohemia, and, above all, in the Austrian Netherlands, or Belgium, there was declared rebellion, fanned by local prejudices, religious fanaticism, and the spirit of caste. The first and second of these causes were chiefly responsible in the Austrian Netherlands, the third in Hungary. The Belgians, and more especially the Brabançons, were in arms for their local rights and ancient constitutions, which had been infringed by the Emperor’s decrees. The Belgian clergy, who looked upon Joseph as worse than an infidel for his treatment of the Pope and his suppression of religious houses, were inflamed at the establishment of an Imperial Seminary in Brussels as a rival to the Roman Catholic University of Louvain. But in Hungary it was the magnates of the country who had fought so gallantly for Maria Theresa and saved her throne, who were in an attitude of open disaffection. This was partly due to Joseph’s infringement of their Constitution and his removal of the Iron Crown to Vienna, but still more to his abolition of serfdom. As has been already stated, serfdom in Europe was practically extinct in the western part of the Continent, that is, in France, in Belgium, and on the Rhine, while it increased in intensity steadily towards the east, and was as bad in Prussia Proper, Poland, and Hungary, as in Russia. ‘Most merciful Emperor,’ ran a petition from an Hungarian peasant to Joseph, ‘four days’ forced labour for the seigneur; the fifth day, fishing for him; the sixth day, hunting with him; and the seventh belongs to God. Consider, most merciful Emperor, how can I pay dues and taxes?’[2] The iniquity of serfdom, with its practice of forced labour, was accentuated in Hungary by the constitutional custom which exempted the nobility from all taxation. The Emperor Joseph abolished serfdom in Hungary on 22nd August 1785, and inaugurated a system of removing feudal burdens, and converting forced labour, by means of a gradually diminishing tax. The condition of the hereditary dominions of the House of Hapsburg was thus, in 1789, one of seething discontent where it was not open rebellion; Belgian burghers and Hungarian magnates were alike infuriated by the Emperor’s efforts at reform; and the poor serfs of Hungary and Bohemia and the working men of Belgium, whom he designed to benefit by direct legislation and financial measures, were too weak to render him any help. His hope of creating an Austrian state and an Austrian people out of his scattered dominions was fated to be thwarted; obstacles of distance, race, and language, cannot be overcome by legislation, however wise; and the Emperor’s well-intentioned endeavours nearly lost his House its ancient patrimony.

Joseph II. Foreign Policy.