Early in 1792 war between France and Austria and Prussia seemed at hand. The French ministers hoped to obtain an alliance with England, or at the least an assurance of neutrality in case of an invasion of the Netherlands, and to arrange a loan. They were prepared to offer Tobago and even Mauritius to boot. Talleyrand, the ex-Bishop of Autun, came over in an unofficial capacity to see how matters stood and to intrigue with the opposition. At court the king treated him coldly and the queen turned her back on him. He had interviews with Pitt and Grenville, and got nothing out of them; he received much attention from the opposition and returned to France in March. Meanwhile, on February 7, Leopold, unable to disregard the call of the diet and uneasy about the Netherlands, agreed with Frederick William to restore order in France, both allies intending to be indemnified. Yet war did not come at once, and on March 1 Leopold died. His son and successor, Francis II., was less distrustful of Prussia, and was eager for war. Under the influence of a party, somewhat later known as the Girondists, the French assembly was brought to desire war with Austria. On the accession of this party to power Dumouriez became minister of foreign affairs. He designed to detach Prussia from the Austrian alliance, isolate Austria, invade the Austrian Netherlands, where the people seemed ready for revolt, and establish them as an independent republic, and prosecute further plans for the extension of France to its "natural barriers". Gustavus was assassinated, and Sweden adopted a neutral policy; Russia, though violently hostile, was engaged in Poland, England decided the policy of Spain and would be followed by Holland. Would England oppose an invasion of the Netherlands on the understanding that France would not conquer them for herself; could the government be persuaded to an alliance by offers of Tobago, a mutual guarantee of possessions, and a treaty of commerce; and could a loan be arranged? Negotiation on these points was entrusted to Talleyrand who was to accompany Chauvelin, the accredited ambassador, to England.[232] On April 20 France declared war on the "King of Hungary and Bohemia," as Francis was entitled before his election.
SEDITIOUS PUBLICATIONS.
While England's official relations with France remained friendly, dislike of the revolution was growing stronger, and the more moderate whigs were changing their opinions with regard to it. This change was largely due to the active propagation of revolutionary ideas among the lower classes, which was carried on by various societies. The Friends of the People, a respectable association of the more extreme whigs, excluding Fox, who would not join it, was formed in the spring of 1792 to promote parliamentary reform; some of its proceedings were discreditable, but it kept clear of connexion with the French revolutionists. Not so the Revolution Society, the Society for Constitutional Information, and the London Correspondence Society, which were in correspondence with the jacobins of Paris. The last, the most formidable of them, was directed by a secret council, and had branches in various large towns, the Sheffield branch alone numbering 2,400 members. Meetings were held in which the most violent revolutionary sentiments were loudly applauded, and seditious handbills and pamphlets, chief among them the second part of Paine's Rights of Man, were distributed by tens of thousands. Though the number of persons who adopted revolutionary ideas was as yet comparatively small, the propaganda was carried on noisily, and was certainly gaining ground. The government saw that it was time to interfere, and, on May 21, issued a royal proclamation against seditious writings. The address to the crown in answer to the proclamation was opposed in the commons by Grey. Fox supported him, and declared that the proclamation was merely a move taken by the government to divide the "whig interest," which, he said, nothing could divide. Nevertheless Windham and others of Fox's party supported the government, and the address was carried without a division. Proceedings were taken against Paine by the attorney-general; he fled to France and became a member of the convention. For a time the propaganda was checked.
The feeling which it excited strengthened the government. Acting in connexion with the Society of the Friends of the People, Grey gave notice of a motion for a reform of parliament. Pitt said that it was "not a time to make hazardous experiments"; and though Fox, Erskine, and Sheridan spoke on the other side, he was supported by the larger number of the party. Pitt was delighted at this split, and hoped to obtain a pledge of co-operation against the propaganda from "the most respectable members of opposition".[233] Matters were not ripe for this. An attempt of Fox to procure the relief of the unitarians from penal laws was defeated by a large majority, owing to the active part which they were taking in spreading principles subversive, so Pitt said, "of every established religion and every established government". Chauvelin and Talleyrand found themselves avoided by society generally. They held constant communication with Fox, Sheridan, Lord Lansdowne, and other enemies of the government; and Chauvelin had the impertinence to send a remonstrance to Grenville against the proclamation of May 21, for which he was duly rebuked. All that they could obtain from Grenville was an assurance that England desired to remain at peace with France, and hoped that France would respect the rights of the king and his allies; if, in other words, the French wished England to remain neutral, they must keep their hands off Holland. No better success attended the effort to detach Prussia from the Austrian alliance, and the Prussian king declared himself at war with France.
An attempt of the French to snatch the Austrian Netherlands ended miserably; their soldiers fled before the emperor's army of occupation on April 29, mutinied, and murdered one of their generals. The allied armies under the Duke of Brunswick were gathering, and Paris was in a ferment. Neither of the two national assemblies, not the first, called the constituent, nor its successor, the legislative assembly, could govern. The Paris mob, bestial and sanguinary, was supreme, and was moved from time to time to violent action by individuals or groups which played upon and pandered to its passions. On June 20 a carefully engineered insurrection exposed the king and queen to cruel insults and imminent danger. The long agony of the monarchy was drawing to a close. After protracted delays the allies began to move, and, on July 25, Brunswick published an ill-judged manifesto which excited the French to fury. The British ambassador, Lord Gower, wrote that the lives of the king and queen were threatened, and asked if he might represent the sentiments of his court. Determined not to give any cause of offence, the government refused to allow him to speak officially. On August 10 another prearranged insurrection was raised in Paris; the king and queen sought refuge with the assembly, and the king's Swiss guards and officers were massacred. He and the queen were imprisoned, and royalty was "suspended". Gower was at once recalled. This was not a hostile act; the king to whom he was accredited no longer reigned, and to have accredited him to the provisional government, which had deposed the king, would have been indecent and a just cause of offence to the allied powers. Before leaving he was instructed to express his master's determination to remain neutral, and his earnest hope that the king and queen would be safe from any violence, "which could not fail to produce one universal sentiment of indignation throughout every country of Europe". Talleyrand left England; Chauvelin remained, though the king's deposition deprived him of his character as ambassador.
FRENCH CONQUESTS.
The allied armies entered France; Longwy surrendered on the 26th and Verdun on the 31st. A few days later England was horrified by the news of the massacres of September; the indignation was general, and Fox spoke of the massacres with genuine disgust. The success of the allies was short-lived; Dumouriez defeated the Prussians at Valmy on September 20, and before the end of October the invaders were forced to evacuate France. A French army seized Savoy and Nice, which were annexed to France, and another overran the principalities on the left bank of the Rhine, receiving the surrenders of Speyer, Worms, and Mainz, crossed the river and took Frankfort. Meanwhile Dumouriez entered the Austrian Netherlands; he defeated the Austrians at Jemappes, and the Netherlands were lost to the emperor. Everywhere the French posed as liberators and set up republican institutions. While France was allured by the Girondist idea of universal emancipation, it carried on the traditions of the old monarchy in its aggressions; it was so in the Rhineland and the Netherlands, and it was so with regard to the Dutch republic. French republicanism was industriously propagated in the provinces, and the "patriot" party, which was defeated in 1787, was again encouraged to revolt. Determined not to be drawn into war, the British government, in July, warned the states-general not to be persuaded to join the allies, and the Dutch remained neutral. In November, a victorious French army was on their border, and a strong party among them was ready to co-operate with it by overthrowing the stadholder as soon as it entered their territory. England was bound alike by honour and her own interest to defend the stadholder, and the French knew that, if they desired that England should remain neutral, they must not molest Holland. On the 13th the states-general applied to England for an assurance of help if need arose. It was, Pitt felt, "absolutely impossible to hesitate," and Grenville assured the states-general that England would faithfully fulfil the stipulations of the treaty of 1788.
FRENCH PROVOCATIONS.
Holland was in imminent danger, and in the hope that some combined action might lead to a general pacification, the English government sought to open confidential communications with Austria and Prussia. The replies of the two powers were delayed; they were arranging for their respective indemnifications; for their plans were upset by the failure of their invasion of France. Catherine had invaded Poland in the spring, and Frederick William, who had more than once guaranteed the integrity of the kingdom, betrayed the Poles, and agreed with the empress to make a second partition of Poland between themselves. That was to be his indemnity; the emperor was to be gratified by being allowed to exchange the Netherlands for Bavaria. Great Britain protested, but in vain. The second partition of Poland was carried out in 1793. Scarcely had Grenville assured the Dutch that England would stand by them, when, on the 16th, the French executive declared the Scheldt open, and soon afterwards sent ships of war by it to Antwerp. This decree violated the rights of the Dutch, which had been confirmed by the treaty of Fontainebleau in 1785, and which England was bound to defend by the treaty of 1788. It showed that France assumed the right of subverting the political system of Europe by setting treaties at nought, and it was a direct defiance of England.
Nor was this the only provocation which England received. The downfall of the French monarchy excited the revolutionary societies to fresh activity, and the propaganda was carried on with amazing insolence. Deputations from these societies appeared before the national convention with congratulatory addresses and were received with effusion. The constitutional society, for example, hoped that Frenchmen would soon have to congratulate an English national convention, and the president in reply expressed his belief that France would soon hail England as a sister-republic. Emissaries from the French ministry promoted sedition both in England and in Ireland, and their reports led their employers to believe that England, Scotland, and Ireland were ripe for revolt.[234] It was an absurd mistake. Yet though the number of revolutionists was still comparatively small, the propaganda caused much uneasiness. Thousands of French refugees were landing in England, mostly priests and members of the aristocracy, many of them completely destitute. Subscriptions were raised for their relief, and Burke and others exerted themselves nobly in their behalf. This large immigration made it easy for French spies and revolutionary agents to carry on their work undetected. Its progress was helped forward by discontent among the lower class. The harvest was bad and the price of wheat rose, trade was depressed, and there was much distress, specially in the manufacturing districts. Riots broke out at Carlisle, Leeds, Yarmouth, Shields, Leith, Perth, and Dundee, and in some cases were connected with revolutionary sentiments. At Dundee cries were raised of "No excise, no king," and a tree of liberty was planted. On November 19 the convention openly asserted its right to overthrow the government of other countries by decreeing that France would help, and would instruct her generals to help, all peoples that desired freedom; and an order was given that translations of this decree should be distributed in all countries. The decree was an invitation to the subjects of every state in Europe to revolt, and the propaganda which it authorised was a gross insult to the British government and nation.