The absence of the Duke of Orleans being highly desirable, he was sent to London, ostensibly on a diplomatic mission, but really in order to get rid of him until affairs should have settled down.[895] The pretext was found in the troubles in the Austrian Netherlands. As we saw in the previous chapters, nothing could be more unlike the growingly democratic movement in France than the revolt of the Flemings and Brabanters against the anti-national reforms of Joseph II of Austria. Men so diverse as Burke and Dumouriez discerned that truth. The great Irishman in a letter to Rivarol termed the Belgian rising a resistance to innovation;[896] while to the French free-thinker it was une révolution théocratique. Nevertheless, as many Frenchmen cherished the hope of giving a prince to the Pays Bas, it was thought well to put forth a feeler London-wards; and Philippe Egalité in fancy saw himself enthroned at Brussels.
Such a solution would have been highly displeasing both at Westminster and at Windsor; and there is no proof that the Duke even mentioned it at Whitehall. In point of fact his mission was never taken seriously. George III, with characteristic acuteness in all matters relating to intrigue, had divined the secret motive of his journey and expressed it in the following hitherto unpublished letter to the Duke of Leeds:
Windsor, Oct. 19, 1789. 9.55 a.m.[897]
The language held by the Marquis de Luzerne to the Duke of Leeds on the proposed journey of the Duke of Orleans does not entirely coincide with the intelligence from Lord Robert Fitzgerald of the Duke’s message to the States General [sic] announcing his absence as the consequence of a negotiation with which he is to be employed at this Court. I confess I attribute it to his finding his views not likely to succeed or some personal uneasiness for his own safety....
The King argued correctly; and doubtless his suspicions ensured for the Duke a chilly reception at the Foreign Office. On 22nd or 23rd October Leeds saw him at his residence in London, but could get from him no more than polite professions of regard for England. Leeds thereupon urged Fitzgerald to find out whether the Duke’s “mission” was a plausible pretext for securing his absence from Paris; to which our envoy replied that everyone at Paris spoke of him with indifference or contempt, and that Lafayette had discovered proofs of his complicity in the outrages of 5th to 6th October, and therefore had him sent away. On 6th November Fitzgerald added that Louis XVI had given the Duke no instructions whatever. Leeds had already come to much the same conclusion. On 30th October he saw Orleans, who merely suggested a close understanding between England and France, especially if the Emperor should march an army into his Belgic provinces. Leeds coolly replied that the desire of Joseph II to crush the revolt was most natural, and that France would do well to restore order at home rather than look with apprehension on events beyond her borders. As he accompanied these remarks with expressions of sincere commiseration for Louis XVI, Orleans must have seen that the secret of his involuntary mission was divined. This seems to be the only notice of it in the British archives. His sinister reputation and his association with loose company in London soon deprived him of all consequence.
Pitt’s attitude towards the Belgian Question has been already described. He seems to have given more time and thought to it than to the French Revolution—a fact which is not strange if we remember that the future of the Belgic lands was of untold importance for Great Britain. To secure their independence from France she had many times poured out her blood and treasure; and Pitt was destined to spend his last energies in the greatest of those efforts. Moreover, as we have seen, the European polity was far more seriously menaced by the schemes of Catharine, Joseph, and Hertzberg than by French reformers; and no one expected that in a short time the shifting kaleidoscope of European States would be altogether shivered by blows dealt from Paris. We, who know the outcome of events, are apt to accuse Pitt of shortsightedness for not concentrating his attention on France; but the criticism rests on the cheapest of all kinds of wisdom—wisdom after the event. In Pitt’s mind the advent of militant democracy aroused neither ecstasy nor loathing. His royalism had nothing in common with the crusading zeal of Gustavus III, and therefore did not impel him to rescue the Bourbons from the troubles which resulted so largely from their participation in the American War. Here, as everywhere, Pitt allowed cold reason to rule; and reason suggested that the Bourbons might atone for that stupendous blunder as best they could. Besides, the experience of nations, as of families, forbade the interference of an outsider in domestic quarrels. Apart from its bearing on Belgian affairs, the French Revolution is scarcely named in Pitt’s correspondence of this time.
Still more curious is it that the letters of George III to his Minister contain not a single reference to the Revolution. This silence respecting events of untold import for all crowned heads is explicable if we remember that to most men they seemed but the natural outcome of mismanagement and deficient harvests, which statesmanship and mother Nature would ere long set right. The proneness of George to look at everything from his own limited point of view was also at this time emphasized by ill health and family troubles, which blotted out weightier topics. Thus, on 1st May 1789, he declared his annoyance at the sudden return of Prince William from the West Indies—a proof that his paternal commands would never be obeyed. The Prince, he says, must now have the same allowance as the Duke of York. “I have,” he adds, “but too much reason to expect no great comfort but an additional member to the opposite faction in my own family.” He concludes with the desire that some arrangement may be made for the Queen and the princesses in case of his death; for his whole nervous system has sustained a great shock in the late illness. On 9th June the King again expresses to Pitt his regret that Prince William declines to return to sea. His letters during the rest of that exciting year are devoid of interest if we except the effort to reconcile Pitt and Thurlow referred to in Chapter XX.
The King’s domestic dronings are varied on 14th January 1790 by an excited declaration that a frigate must be provided at once in order to convey Prince Edward, afterwards Duke of Kent, to Gibraltar, as it was of urgent importance that he should at once leave London.[898] On 3rd March he records his heartfelt joy at the failure of Fox’s attempt to procure the repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts; and on the 28th of that month occurs the first reference to the French Revolution which I have found in the King’s letters. He then expresses to Pitt regret that the papers forwarded by the Comte d’Artois (younger brother of Louis XVI) and his political agent, Calonne, contain so little real information about the affairs of France. He continues thus: “Mr. Pitt’s answer should be very civil, and may be very explicit as to no money or other means having been used to keep up the confusion in France; and M. de Calonne ought to convey those assurances wherever he thinks they may be of use.”[899] Readers who have an eye for the ironies of history may notice that the first of the myriad stories thrown off by the perfervid Gallic imagination, as to the ubiquitous potency of British money in creating famines, arming assassins, and trumping up Coalitions against France, originated with the royalist exiles, who saw in the French Revolution the first manifestation of the wonder-working power of “Pitt’s gold.”
That statesman’s opinion concerning the Revolution was first made known during the debates on the Army Estimates (5th and 9th February 1790). Having inserted in the King’s Speech a reference to the friendly assurances which he received from all the Powers, and a guarded statement that the internal troubles in certain states engaged the King’s “most serious attention,” he was twitted by champions of economy with a slight increase in the army. True, the total provided for was only 17,448 officers and men; and part of the increase was due to the drafting of 200 men to keep order in the infant colony of New South Wales. But even these figures, which
barely could defy