XXIII. 1787. BOOK tain-general of Holland and West Friesland to have been secured to him by the unanimous vote of all the members of the state, he affirmed, that as the resolution by which the office had been con. ferred, passed nemine contradicente, it could not, supposing it to be revocable, be cancelled or even suspended without the like unanimity.” This sudden haughtiness of language may, with out hesitation, be attributed to an event of great moment, which had recently taken place in the death of Frederic the Great, king of Prussia (August 17, 1786), who was succeeded by his nephew Frederic William II. to whom the prince of Orange was nearly allied by marriage to his sister, the princess Wilhelmina of Prussia. The new monarch, feeling for the situation of his relatives, and eager to make a display of his power, entered with far more zeal into the interests of the prince than his illustrious predecessor, who during a reign of forty-six years had excited the admiration of Europe by the greatness of his talents and the splendor of his successes. He had raised Prussia from obscurity and insignificance to the rank of a first-rate power in Europe; and had left his successor in possession of a flourishing kingdom, an immense treasure, and an army of 200,000 men in the highest reputation for courage and discipline.* The annexation of the rich and extensive province of Silesia, wrested from the house of Austria, to the dominion of XXIII. 1787. In a memorial presented by the count de Goertz, BOOK his Prussian majesty's ambassador extraordinary to the States General (Sept. 18, 1786), he expresses without reserve "the warm part which he takes in the unhappy dissensions subsisting between some of the provinces and the stadtholder, and the very extraordinary oppressions which that prince is innocently obliged to suffer-and urging that a durable termination may be put to these differences, in order that his serene highness the prince stadtholder may return with honor and propriety to the Hague, and resume his high employmentsinsisting also upon the great interest he had, as the nearest neighbour of the United Provinces, that the government of the republic, conformably Brandenburg, of whose recent grandeur it may be regarded as the basis, was an event ever present to the mind of Frederic. It is said that this monarch being one day writing in his cabi net, and the prince royal, son of the reigning king, interrupt, ing him by playing battledore and shuttlecock, the king, after a slight reproof, in order to prevent the inconvenience, took the shuttlecock and put it in his pocket. The boy at first endeavoured to recover possession of it by soft and soothing language; but finding his blandishments of no avail, he raised his voice, and, stamping upon the ground, exclaimed with passionate emphasis, “SIRE, donnez-moi une réponse categorique— Voulez-vous me rendre, ou non, mon volant?"-The king, embracing him with astonishment and rapture, replied, “Ah, vrai rejetton du grand electeur, on ne t'arrachera jamais La SILESIE!" BOOK to the antient constitution, should not be changed any essential point." XXIII. 1787. in A short time previous to the delivery of this paper, a memorial had been presented to the States on the part of the king of England, containing, in language somewhat more guarded, the same sentiments; protesting indeed against the interference of any foreign power in the internal affairs of the republic, the management and direction of which it is declared to be the wish of his Britannic majesty to preserve uncontrolled in the hands of those to whom it has been committed by the CONSTITUTION. Notwithstanding this powerful interference in behalf of the prince of Orange, the states of Holand shewed themselves in the highest degree averse from every idea of accommodation. And the States General having at length come to a resolution, notwithstanding the opposition of that great and leading province, to invite the mediation of Great Britain and Prussia-the states of Holland, inflamed with so unauthorised a proceeding, declared themselves determined rather to strike out their names from the union of Utrecht, than to suffer such a measure to receive the sanction of the republic. The prince of Orange having now removed his court to Nimeguen, an ineffectual negotiation was carried on during the winter of 1786-7, through XXIII. 1787. the medium of the count de Goertz and M. de BOOK Rayneval the French envoy. The stadtholder became inflexible in his pretensions.* Every thing on the breaking up of these conferences wore the face of war. The prince encamped near the city of Utrecht, opposite to the cordon formed by the troops of Holland. The States General, whose constitutional powers were unhappily too limited and feeble to interpose with efficacy, could do nothing more to avert the calamities which menaced the nation than enforce by a resolution that article of the union which forbad the troops of the republic from marching into any province without the leave of the states of that province first obtained. From the commencement of the contest, the incapacity and intractability of the prince of Orange had been very apparent. Head of the house of Nassau, he displayed neither the talents nor virtues which had for ages been supposed attached to that illustrious name. The princess, his consort, Frederic William (says the count de Segur), staggered by the representations of the minister of France at Berlin, suddenly changed his plans and his language, sent more pacific instructions to his ambassador, and directed him to enter on a negociation, which might have re-established tranquillity in a solid manner, if the machiavelism of sir James Harris, the resentment of the princess of Orange, and the weakness of the court of France, had not united to overturn all the plans of reason, and destroy all the combinations of prudence. Memoirs of Frederic William II. vol. I. p. 81. XXIII. 1787. BOOK was said to possess a much larger share of spirit as well as understanding. In the month of June (1787), with a view, as was universally believed by the patriots, of exciting an insurrectionary movement, her royal highness, then resident at Nimeguen, adopted the bold and hazardous resolution of proceeding in person to the Hague, where the States General were at that time assembled, accompanied only by the baroness de Wassanaer and a few domestics. As might previously be expected, she was arrested in her progress at about a league beyond Schoonhoven, and forced back to Nimeguen. This incident brought matters to a crisis. On the 10th of July a memorial was addressed by the Prussian monarch to the states of Holland, in which he affected to consider the indignity offered to his sister as a personal insult to himself. To avenge this pretended insult, the duke of Brunswic, who commanded the Prussian forces in the contiguous duchy of Cleves, entered Holland at the head of an army consisting of about twenty thousand inen on the 13th of September, 1787. Notwithstanding the previous probability of this invasion, the consternation of the Dutch nation was extreme, and the country seemed every-where unprepared for resistance. Utrecht, beyond all other cities of the union distinguished for the violence of her democratic zeal, surrendered almost as soon as summoned. This important Prussian army enters |