The state of Europe inclined men’s minds to reciprocal concessions; a disquieting good understanding appeared to be growing up between Russia and Austria.  The Emperor Joseph II. had just paid a visit to the Crimea with the czarina.  “I fancy I am still dreaming,” wrote the Prince of Ligne, who had the honor of being in the trip, “when in a carriage with six places, which is a real triumphal car adorned with ciphers in precious stones, I find myself seated between two persons on whose shoulders the heat often sets me dozing, and I hear, as I wake up, one of my comrades say to the other ‘I have thirty’ millions of subjects, they say, counting males only.’  ‘And I twenty-two,’ replies the other, ’all included.’  ‘I require,’ adds the former, ’an army of at least six hundred thousand men between Kamtchatka and Riga.’  ‘With half that,’ replies the other, ‘I have just what I require.’  God knows how we settle all the states and great personages.  ’Rather than sign the separation of thirteen provinces, like my brother George,’ says Catherine II. sweetly, ‘I would have put a bullet through my head.’  ’And rather than give in my resignation like my brother and brother-in-law, by convoking and assembling the nation to talk over abuses, I don’t know what I wouldn’t have done,’ says Joseph II.”  Before the two allies could carry out their designs against Turkey, that ancient power, enfeebled as it was, had taken the offensive at the instigation of England; the King of Sweden, on his side, invaded Russia; war burst out in all directions.  The traditional influence of France remained powerless in the East to maintain peace; the long weakness of the government was everywhere bearing fruit.

Nowhere was this grievous impotence more painfully striking than in Holland.  Supported by England, whose slavish instrument he had been for so long, the stadtholder William V. was struggling, with the help of the mob, against the patriotic, independent, and proud patricians.  For the last sixty years the position of Holland had been constantly declining in Europe.  “She is afraid of everything,” said Count de Broglie in 1773; “she puts up with everything, grumbles at everything, and secures herself against nothing.”  “Holland might pay all the armies of Europe,” people said in 1787, “she couldn’t manage to hold her own against any one of them.”  The civil war imminent in her midst and fomented by England had aroused the solicitude of M. de Calonne; he had prepared the resources necessary for forming a camp near Givet; his successor diverted the funds to another object.  When the Prussians entered Dutch territory, being summoned to the stadtholder’s aid by his wife, sister of the young King Frederick William II., the French government afforded no assistance to its ally; it confined itself to offering an asylum to the Dutch patriots, long encouraged by its diplomatists, and now vanquished in their own country, which was henceforth under the yoke of England.  “France has fallen, I doubt whether she will get up again,” said the Emperor Joseph II.  “We have been caught napping,” wrote M. de La Fayette to Washington; “the King of Prussia has been ill advised, the Dutch are ruined, and England finds herself the only power which has gained in the bargain.”