Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 128.djvu/270

260 come, it was thought in the United Provinces, when the Dutch flag should once more sweep the seas of those intrusive islanders, and strike terror far inland from the coast where it flaunted. And in the conduct of the operations that followed the declaration of war it came to he thought, whether with truth or not, that the Stadtholder, himself of British blood by his mother's side, was not hearty in the national cause. The anti-Orange party, which before the American war had dwindled into a mere faction, grew rapidly in importance. Its leaders in the various provinces skilfully used the opportunity of the hour; and the Prince of Orange, on his part, did so little to counteract the popular cry against his sluggishness, that when peace came in 1783, it failed to bring back with it his former constitutional powers, dependent as these were on a friendly majority in the legislature. The patriotic party, the name assumed by those who advocated war à outrance against England, had grown to be a formidable body in the States and in their General Assembly. Each exercise of the hereditary prerogatives of the house of Orange was closely watched, criticised, and contested. The rising tide of revolutionary feeling in France naturally gave strength to popular sentiment against a prince in a land so near. And despite the rigid efforts to adhere to the constitutional forms, which he did his best to maintain much later even when the opposition was put forcibly down by Prussian bayonets, the Prince of Orange found his task of administration becoming yearly more and more difficult. In truth the strange union of personal sovereignty with republican freedom which hard circumstances had made possible for several generations, was now becoming weakened in the absence of the external pressure which was probably necessary to its continued maintenance. It would be interesting to speculate on what the internal history of Holland might have been, had not the general convulsions of the revolutionary and Napoleonic eras that succeeded, settled the question decisively by superior forces. But we are here concerned chiefly to trace the actual facts that led to the special intervention of Prussian arms in her neighbour's territory. For this was an event of some historical importance in itself, and not without its bearing on the military questions of our own day; yet one which the din and clash of the greater wars that speedily followed that of 1787 have caused to be almost forgotten save by a few students of military problems.

The Stadtholder's difficulties were much increased by the conduct of Austria in 1785 in contesting the right of the Dutch to occupy the strong places on their own frontier in the Netherlands, and to close the navigation of the Scheldt; the doing of which was, according to the limited commercial notions of the day, the most pressing point for Amsterdam policy to carry out. The emperor Joseph II., reversing the whole policy of his house in foreign as well as in internal matters, had at this time patched up a temporary friendship with France, and let it be known to the Dutch that he could only be moved on the points in dispute by her mediation. This led the patriotic party to insist once more on the value of what they declared to be the purposely neglected alliance with France; and their attacks brought further unpopularity on the Prince of Orange, who from hereditary training, as well as by his marriage, was strongly opposed to French predominance in European politics. The continued differences on important points of policy between the Stadtholder and those who now had the majority in several of the provinces, and especially in Holland whose voice in the federation was nearly as powerful as that of the other six united, led to determined opposition to his administration on minor questions. The prince had so far lost sight of the wise advice given him by Frederick the Great, never to forget his true position of chief servant rather than ruler of the States, as to introduce certain semi-royal observances on which the patriots fastened offence, and so used them to diminish his influence with the masses. Thus it was observed that the officers of his guard now bore the arms of Orange on their caps, instead of those of the United Netherlands as their predecessors had done. Then the main gate of the 