About the middle of the month of June 1787, the Princess of Orange framed a plan for leaving her city of refuge, Nymeguen, and proceeding to The Hague with the aim of inspiring her crestfallen partisans. Hitherto the Orange party had shown the torpor which is the outcome of poor leadership. Of the Prince of Orange it might have been said, as it was said of Louis XVI, that he cooled his friends and heated his foes; but his consort had the fire and energy which he lacked. Harris once confessed that her frank, blue eyes could be “dangerous”; and in many ways her presence promised to breathe new life into her party.
As the journey to The Hague would involve some risk of insult from the Free Corps which formed a cordon on the frontier of the Province of Holland, she proceeded first to Amersfoort, where her consort was holding together his partisans in the Province of Utrecht, in order to gain his consent to this daring step. Thereafter she warned Harris and her chief friends at The Hague of her resolve, and asked their sanction, adding that the magnitude of the object at stake impelled her to run some measure of personal risk in order to compass it. Harris saw objections to the plan, but yielded to the representations of the Dutchmen. He, however, stated to Carmarthen his doubts whether she could make her way through the bodies of armed burghers, and asked his chief for instructions as to his course of action in case any violence were offered to Her Royal Highness.[535]
His apprehensions were in part to be realized. The princess set out from Nymeguen on 28th June with the ordinary retinue. While seeking to enter the Province of Holland near Schoonhoven, she was stopped by a lieutenant commanding a body of Free Corps, who refused to allow her to proceed; his action was endorsed by the authorities; and she was obliged, though without much personal indignity, to put up at the nearest house where the lieutenant kept her and her ladies-in-waiting under close and embarrassing surveillance, until she consented that the question of her journey should be decided by the Estates of Holland. Then she was allowed to return to Schoonhoven, where she indited letters to the Grand Pensionary and others, declaring that her sole aim was to promote a reconciliation. The Estates of Holland refused to allow her to proceed, and she had finally to return to Nymeguen. This insult to royalty sent a thrill of indignation through every Court but that of Versailles.
Before describing the political results of the incident, we may pause to ask whether the plan of the Princess’s journey was the outcome of the fertile brain of Harris. That was the insinuation of the French Foreign Minister, Montmorin, and it has often been repeated.[536] The charge has never been proven; and the following reasons may be urged against it. Harris certainly hoped to profit by her presence at The Hague, but obviously he doubted the possibility of her entering the province. Further, on 29th June, when he heard of her detention, he wrote to Carmarthen: “The event which has happened oversets our whole plan. Check to the queen, and in a move or two checkmate is, I fear, the state of our game.” Not yet did he see that the check might be worth a Prussian army to the Orange party. All he saw was the present discouragement of that party, and the timidity of the States-General of the United Provinces, who now refused to censure the outrage. Carmarthen saw more clearly. “Don’t be so disheartened by a check to the queen,” he replied. “Cover her by the knight and all’s safe.... If the King, her brother, is not the dirtiest and shabbiest of Kings, he must resent it.”[537]
But had the Princess throughout laid her plans with a view to such an event? In this connection it is significant that Frederick William of Prussia had latterly shown great irritation against the Court of Versailles owing to its summary rejection of his offer of a joint mediation in the Dutch troubles. Montmorin curtly declined every one of the preliminary terms which Hertzberg had succeeded in appending to that proposal. He also blamed the Stadholder for all the ferment, and stated that, if the Prussian monarch intervened in favour of the Orange party, he would “only compromise himself to his entire loss.”[538] This nagging reply to a friendly overture cut the sensitive monarch to the quick; he sent a spirited remonstrance, declaimed against the bad faith of the French Government, and stated that he meant now to complete his own plans in Holland, that he hoped to have the support of England, and might draw the sword sooner than was expected.[539] Ewart expected little result from all this; but he was mistaken. Frederick William was a man of sentiment; and the appeal which now came from Holland was one that stirred his being to its depths.
The Princess, on hearing of his resentment against France, seems to have devised a course of action which would be likely to make this mood lasting. Harris reported on 22nd June that on the day before, “in consequence of a courier from Berlin, the Princess of Orange, a few hours after he arrived, left Nymeguen and set out for Amersfoort. She had time to write to nobody, and the cause of this sudden departure is not to be guessed at.”[540] The short journey to Amersfoort was for the purpose described above. That the Princess was acting in close concert with her brother, and that Harris knew nothing as to the motives of her conduct further appear in statements which (strange to say) are omitted from his despatch of 25th June, printed in the “Diaries.” He informed Carmarthen that she was sending a courier to Berlin, and that the present plan “completely does away all the ideas which have been very prevalent here for these three or four days, that His Prussian Majesty was so irritated at the late answer from France as to be decided to assist the Prince of Orange with men and money.” Obviously the guile of Sir James Harris was of the diplomatic, not of the feminine, kind. Further, the fact that the Princess travelled with a retinue made it almost certain that she would be stopped by the cordon of Free Corps on the frontier of Holland. If her chief aim had been to arrive at The Hague, she would have gone in disguise; for only so could she hope to pass through the troops. Her chief aim surely was to be stopped; and the more contumeliously, the better for her purpose.
Her letters written after the incident show that she desired to reap the full advantage from it. On 6th July Harris reported her expectation that, if England proposed to Prussia a plan for rescuing the Republic from France, it would be well received at Berlin; and that she grounded her confidence in the reports of those who knew the King of Prussia well. Ewart also on 10th July stated that she had written to Berlin in terms implying that the honour of the King was at stake fully as much as her own.[541] With these proofs of the discouragement of Harris, and of the keen insight of the Princess before us, may we not infer that she deliberately chose to submit herself to an insult from the Patriots in order to clinch a resolve which she knew to be forming in her brother’s mind? His anger against France might then be fanned to a flame of resentment fed by injured family pride.
Fortunately for her purpose, the Estates of Holland waived aside the demand of the King of Prussia for immediate and complete satisfaction for the insult; and Frederick William vowed that he would exact vengeance at the sword’s point. Hertzberg now saw within his reach the great aims which Ewart and he had so long pursued, an Anglo-Prussian compact which might ripen into alliance. But it was a task of much difficulty to stiffen that monarch’s wavering impulses. Hertzberg rightly saw that English influence should not at first be pushed;[542] and only when the King’s resentment at the insult began to cool, were the wider questions of the future discreetly opened to his gaze. Here again the situation was complicated; for Finckenstein worked on his fears of an attack from Austria, if he intervened in Holland; and Thulemeyer, the Prussian envoy at The Hague, darkened the royal counsels by sending an official warning that Prussia must expect no help from England, even if France struck at the Prussian expeditionary corps. Ewart, however, was able to show that this report closely resembled an earlier one from the same source. The only result, then, was to discredit Thulemeyer and pave the way for his disgrace. When further friendly assurances came from the Pitt Ministry, Frederick William gave orders for the mustering of 25,000 troops at his fortress of Wesel on the lower Rhine. Even now he was afflicted by the irresolution which for so many years was to paralyze the power of his kingdom; and it is doubtful whether he would have acted at all but for the initiative now taken by the Prime Minister of England.[543]
Pitt’s change of attitude at this time is the decisive event of the situation. At once, on hearing the news of the insult to the Princess of Orange, he saw that the time for action had come. In a personal interview with Count Lusi, Prussian ambassador at London, he pointed out that this was a matter which solely concerned the Prussian monarch, and in which France had no right to interfere.[544] George III spoke in the same terms to Lusi at a levée. Further, on the receipt of Ewart’s despatch of 7th July, reporting that Pitt had declared against any intervention whatever by Great Britain, Carmarthen sent a sharp denial, and stated that diplomatic support would have been offered earlier to Prussia in Dutch affairs, but for the strange conduct of Thulemeyer at The Hague. If that conduct did not represent the wishes of the Prussian Government, His Majesty “will be extremely ready to enter into a most confidential communication with His Prussian Majesty” on the means of preserving the independence of the Dutch Republic and the rights of the Stadholder. Carmarthen added the important information that Montmorin had declared that France would not thwart the Prussian monarch’s resolve to gain reparation for the insult. That question he declared to be totally distinct from an interference in the domestic affairs of the Republic, which might be settled amicably by a joint mediation of the Powers most concerned in them, namely, the Emperor, Great Britain, Prussia, and France. The draft of this important despatch closed with this sentence, in Pitt’s handwriting: “Could such a good understanding be agreed on, there can be little doubt that the affairs of Holland would be settled in an amicable way, to the satisfaction of all those who are interested in the welfare of the Republic.”[545]
It is clear, then, that Pitt meant to encourage Prussia to energetic action, in case the Estates of Holland did not grant full reparation for the insult; but he looked on that step merely as preliminary to the others which would solve the whole question by a peaceful mediation of the four Powers above named. On learning that the Emperor had expressed his friendly interest in the Prince of Orange and his approval of Prussia’s conduct, the Foreign Office sent off a despatch to Keith, British Ambassador at Vienna, bidding him to urge his active co-operation “and to make it, if possible, the means of establishing a cordial and confidential correspondence with that Court in future.”[546] Joseph II did not respond to this friendly proposal, probably because of troubles lowering in the East. But the incident proves the reluctance of our Foreign Office to act with Prussia alone, and also its hopes of a peaceful mediation in Dutch affairs. According to news received from Paris, France did not seem likely to oppose Prussia’s action, and even favoured the scheme of a joint mediation of the three Powers, which were then on cordial terms.[547]