. ing the communication betwixt her forces in the Mediterranean and in the Black Sea, she considered that Turkey would lie helpless at her feet. To give the necessary ascendancy to her fleet, she had long been encouraging English naval officers to take commands in it. At the famous battle of Chesmé, it was the English admirals Elphinstone, Greig, and others who had made Potemkin victorious. Greig was now at the head of her fleet preparing at Cronstadt for this Mediterranean enterprise. Catherine had also invited the famous pirate, Paul Jones, to her service; but on his arrival all the English officers at once sent in their commissions. To avoid the loss of these most important men, Catherine sent Jones to the Black Sea, where he was at the siege of Oczakoff. The English officers then resumed their services, and Catherine sent out agents secretly to engage English seamen for this grand fleet. She had also engaged eighteen British ships of four hundred tons and upwards as transports of troops, artillery, and stores. If Pitt at this moment had possessed the far-seeing genius of his father Chatham, it was in his power, as the ally of Turkey, to have stepped in and given a blow to the ambitious designs of Russia which would have saved the country a far more arduous and costly effort for that purpose afterwards. Russia had spared no pains to insult England, especially since the unfortunate contest on account of America. It was certain that if she once obtained Turkey she would become a most troublesome power in the Mediterranean; and it now required only the dispatch of a tolerable fleet to the Baltic, and of another to the Black Sea, to annihilate in a few days every vestige of her maritime force. Such a check would have caused her to recoil from her eastern aggressions for the purpose of defending her very existence at home. Holland was bound to us by the re-establishment of the prince of Orange, our fast friend; we were at peace with Prussia; France was engrossed inextricably with her own affairs; Denmark was in terror of us; and Sweden longed for nothing so much as to take vengeance for Russian insults and invasions. Catherine's fleets destroyed, Sweden would have full opportunity to ravage her coasts, and to seek the recovery of her Finnish dominions. But Pitt contented himself with half measures. Instead of destroying the Russian fleet in the Baltic, or of attacking it in the Mediterranean, the moment it commenced its operations on the Turkish dependencies, and then clearing the Black Sea of their ships, he contented himself with issuing a proclamation in the London Gazette, forbidding English seamen to enter any foreign service, and commanding the owners of the vessels engaged by Russia to renounce their contracts. Thus the fleet before Oczakoff was left to operate against the Turks, and the fleet in the Baltic was detained there. This was, in fact, the preservation of the Russian power, and the establishment of it on such a footing as has proved most disastrous to modern Europe, and which still menaces it with a formidable future. But for this, it is probable that the eastward march of Russia would have been arrested for ever at this moment. To insure a powerful diversion, the sultan had engaged the military co-operation of Sweden. Sweden had been forcibly deprived of Finland by the Czar Peter the Great, and she longed to recover it. She had a brave army, but no money. The grand Turk, to enable her to commence the enterprise, had sent her a present of money, amounting to about four hundred thousand pounds sterling. Sweden put her fleet in preparation in all haste, and had Pitt merely allowed the Russian fleet to quit the Baltic, there was nothing to prevent the execution of the Swedish design on Finland, nor, indeed, of marching direct on Petersburg in the absence of the army. But the English measures detained the Russian fleet in the Baltic with Greig at its head, and Russia was saved from her due chastisement. The king of Sweden, indeed, landed an army of thirty-five thousand men in Finland; and his brother, the duke of Sudermania, appeared in the Baltic at the head of a strong fleet. Nothing could have prevented Gustavus from marching directly upon the Russian capital, and Petersburg was consequently thrown into the wildest alarm. But Gustavus was only bent on recovering the provinces which Russia had reft from Sweden. He advanced successfully for some time, the Russians everywhere flying before him; but Russian gold and Russian intrigue soon altered all this. Catherine ordered her fleet, which was in the gulf of Finland, with Greig at its head, to bear down on the Swedish fleet, and, at the same time, emissaries were sent amongst the officers of Gustavus's army with plenty of gold, and letters wer sent to the states of Sweden, calling on them to disavow the proceedings of the king. Before Gustavus had quitte Sweden with his army, her minister, passing over the king himself, had made similar communications to Gustavus proud and disaffected nobles, and Gustavus had ordered him out of the country. The Russian and Swedish fleets now came to an engagement in the straits of Kalkbaden. The battl was desperate; the Swedes fought with their accustomed valour; and the Russians, under the management of Greig and the English officers, showed that they were apt scholars. The two fleets separated, after doing each other great mischief, each claiming the victory. Catherine immediately rewarded Greig with a letter of thanks, written by her own hand, and with the more substantial present of a large sum of money, and a good estate in Livonia. But the partial success of Russia by sea had the effect of encouraging the corrupted officers of Gustavus to refuse to proceed further in Finland. He was about to commenc the siege of the important city of Fredericksham; but the officers laid down their arms, on the plea, put into the mouths by Russia, that the war was not undertaken by the consent of the states. Gustavus seized and sent the chief mutineers under arrest to Stockholm; but he found those who remained equally infected. In fact, the whole of the Swedish aristocracy hal long aimed at usurping the entire powers of the state, and ef dictating to the king. Whilst thus suddenly disabled, th. men themselves, in a great measure, assuming the langua of their officers, Gustavus found that Sweden itself w menaced with an invasion of the Danes from the side of Norway, at the instigation of Russia. It was necessary to hurry home, leaving the portion of the army in Finlatai, which remained subordinate, under the command of bu intimidate the king, nearly all the officers of the army, the campaign of 1788 against Turkey greatly chagrined, and fleet, and the civil department, threw up their commissions with fast-failing health. Had he been wise, he would have acand appointments, believing that they should thus completely cepted the overtures for peace made to him by the sultan, and paralyse his proceedings. But Gustavus remained undaunted. I have spent the few remaining days of his existence in tranHe filled up the vacancies, as well as he could, from the other orders of the state; he brought the nobles and officers to trial, and numbers of them were condemned to capital punishment, for treason and abandonment of their sworn duties. Had Gustavus been a bloody-minded sovereign, Stockholm would have been deluged with blood. Some few examples were made; the rest, after a short confinement, were liberated, and they hastened to their estates in the country. Not a noble or a noble lady would appear at court, and, if Sweden had depended on so-called noble blood for its management, it must have been lost. But it was found there, as everywhere else, that rank confers no monopoly of talent. The three other orders warmly supported Gustavus, and he remodelled the diet, excluding from it almost all the most powerful nobles, and giving greater preponderance to the other three orders. In return for this, these orders sanctioned an act called the Act of Safety, which conferred on the king the same power which is attached to the English crown, namely, that of making peace or war. They granted him liberal supplies, and he quickly raised an army of fifty thousand men. As he considered the reduction of the restless and lawless power of Russia was equally essential to England, Holland, and Prussia, as to Sweden, he called on those powers to second his efforts. Had this been done, the blood of thousands, the expenditure of millions sterling at Sebastopol would have been spared. But Pitt adhered to his blind half-measures. He would do nothing more than guarantee the neutrality of Denmark; and even this guarantee he permitted to become nugatory, by allowing the Danish fleet to give protection to the Russian fleet in the Baltic. A second Russian squadron, commanded by Dessein, a French admiral, descended from Archangel, entered the Baltic, menaced Gothenborg, and, by the aid of the Danish ships, was enabled to join the other Russian fleet at Cronstadt. The Swedes cursed the less than half assistance of their English allies, and Gustavus endeavoured to fight his way without them. He continued to win victory after victory on land; but Catherine soon brought down on his squadron of galleys, which attended his march along the coast to keep up his supplies, an overwhelming fleet of galleys of her own. A desperate battle ensued, but the Swedish galley-fleet was, at length, overcome. Gustavus was thus greatly embarrassed, and compelled to stand merely on the defensive, till time to go into winter quarters. Gustavus continued for twelve months to do stout battle with Russia, and, though with very insufficient forces, threatened the very capital of that country. A little support by England, Prussia, and Holland, would have enabled Sweden to regain its territories on the eastern shores of the Baltic, to curb the power of Russia, and to assume that station in the north which is essentially necessary to the peace of Europe. These countries, however, had not the statesmanship to see this, or the good feeling to effect it, and we must leave Gustavus to struggle on alone whilst we trace other events. The emperor Joseph of Austria had returned from the quillity. But his ambitious and persuasive ally, Catherine, prevailed upon him to make another effort. He mustered fresh troops. A hundred and fifty thousand men were marched against the Turkish frontier, early in the year of 1789, in different divisions. The chief command was confided to marshal Haddick, a very old man, with the witty prince de Ligne as second under him. The duke of Saxe Coburg, the prince of Hohenlohe, and marshal Laudohu, also now very old, took each their separate directions. It was a circumstance very much in their favour that the able sultan, Abdul Hamet, died suddenly in April, and was succeeded by his nephew, Selim, a young, rash, and unprinciple! man. The acts of Selim, in murdering and dismissing his father's best ministers and commanders, and the unruly cendition of the janissaries, rendered Turkey especially open t the attacks of its enemies. Marshal Laudohn, supporting his earlier fame, took the fortress of Gradiska, and stormel Belgrade. But this was not accomplished till the 8th of October, and an attempt was then made to reduce Orsova, but this failed. Coburg and Suvaroff having joined, won a great victory over the new vizier, Martinitzi, in Wallachia, on the 22nd of September, and the remains of the Turkish army retired to the pass of Shumla, on the Balkan mountains. Potemkin, on his part, had greatly increased his forces after the reduction of Oczakoff, and after a desperate resistance took Bender, famous for the abode of Charles XII. of Sweden, after the battle of Pultawa. Before winter, the Russians had made a decided progress in their inroads into the Turkish dominions on the Red Sea. They had gained possession of Bialogrod, or Ackermann, at the mouth of the Dniester; of Keglia Nova, on the northern banks of the Danube, and of other places on the Black Sea. They had also extended their frontier to the left bank of the Danube, and they had actually reduced every important place between the Bug and Dniester and that river. Had Catherine had a sufficient fleet in the Black Sea, Constantinople might have trembled for its safety. But Catherine's ally, Joseph, was fast sinking, and his mortal sun was going down amid storm clouds, all collected by his reckless disregard to the rights of his subjects, grea reformer as he desired to be. He had wantonly invadesi the ancient constitution of Hungary, just as his successors have done later; and on this the high-spirited and martial Hungarians had expressed their determination not to suba to it. They insisted that he should restore the regalia of their ancient kingdon, which he had carried off from Buis the old capital, and where the Austrian emperors, as king, i Hungary, were always expected to be crowned, and to tak.... the oath to observe the constitution. The Turks, already is possession of the Banat of Temeswar, invited their alliance, offering to assist them in driving out the Austrians, sni establishing their independence. Joseph, alarmed at this prospect, made haste to avert the danger by conceding the restoration of the Hungarian constitution, and of the regalia; and the generous Hungarians were at once appeas But far different was the issue of the troubles with A.D. 1789.] DISTURBED CONDITION OF THE NETHERLANDS. 413 These propagandists most gladly observed the state of affairs in the Netherlands, and spread themselves through its cities, preaching up equality of human rights, but keeping a pru which formed as essential a part of their philosophy. Flemish subjects, which, with an unaccountable folly and absence of good faith, he had again excited, though he had appeared to concede the question of the rights of the university of Louvaine, and the privileges of the Nether-dent silence about the principles of atheism and materialism, lands in general. He recalled count Murray as too lenient, and sent into the Netherlands count Trautmansdorff as governor, and general Dalton, a hot and brutal Irishman, as commander. He ordered the professors of theology at Louvaine to give way to the emperor's reforms, and, as they refused, Dalton turned them out by force, shut up the colleges, and Joseph sent back again the German professors, who had been before recalled, to appease the popular indignation. But the colleges remained empty; not a student would attend the classes of the Germans. As the volunteer corps had disbanded themselves, in reliance on the emperor's wish, Trautmansdorff calculated on an easy compulsion of the people, and he called on the grand council at Brussels to enforce the decrees of the emperor. The council paid no regard to the order. Joseph, in the face of these things, passed an edict sequestrating all the abbeys in Brabant. The states of Brabant therefore refused the voting of any subsidies, and Joseph, irritated to deeper blindness, determined to abolish the great charter entitled the Joyeuse Entrée, so called because granted on the entry of Philip the Good into Brussels, and on which nearly all their privileges rested. To compel them to vote a permanent subsidy, the military surrounded the states of Hainault, forcibly dissolved their sitting, and then calling an extraordinary meeting of the states of Brabant, Trautmansdorff ordered them to pass an act sanctioning such a subsidy. But the deputies remained firm, and thereupon the Joyeuse Entrée was annulled by proclamation, and the house of assembly dissolved. Joseph vowed that he would extinguish the rebellion in blood, and reduce the Netherlands to the same despotism which ruled all his other states, except Hungary and the Tyrol. Trautmansdorff declared that, if necessary, forty thousand troops should be marched into the country; but this was an empty boast, for Joseph had so completely engaged his army against Turkey, that he could only send a thousand men into the Netherlands. On the contrary, the French revolutionists offered the oppressed Netherlands speedy aid, and the duke d'Aremberg, the archbishop of Malines, and other nobles and dignitaries of the church, met at Breda, on the 14th of September, and proclaimed themselves the legitimate as remonstrances to the emperor, declaring that unless he immediately repealed his arbitrary edicts, and restored their great charter, they would assert their rights by the sword. In proof of these being no empty vaunts, the militia and volunteers again flew to arms. Scarcely a month had passed after the repeal of the Joyeuse Entrée before a number of collisions had taken place betwixt these citizen soldiers and the imperial troops. In Tirlemont, Louvaine, Antwerp, and Mons, blood was shed; at Diest, the patriots, led on by the monks, drove out the troops and the magistrates. Dalton and Trautmansdorff, instead of fulfilling their menace, appeared paralysed. The people having collected in great crowds in the neighbourhood of the council-house, Dalton ordered out a company of soldiers, under a young ensign, to patrol the streets, and overawe any attempts at demonstrations in support of the council. The young ensign, having a stone flung at him, without further ceremony ordered his men to fire into the crowd, and six persons were killed, and numbers of others wounded. No sooner did Joseph hear of this rash and cruel act, than he wrote highly approving of it, and promoting the ensign. The people, greatly enraged, rose in the different towns, and were attacked by the imperial troops, and blood was shed in various places. With his usual disregard to consequences, Joseph was at this moment endea-sembly of the states of Brabant. They sent the plainest vouring to raise a loan in the Netherlands, to enable him to carry on the war against Turkey. But this conduct completely quashed all hope of it; not a man of capital would advance a stiver. Trautmansdorff continued to threaten the people, and Dalton was ready to execute his most harsh orders. It was determined to break up the university of Antwerp as that of Louvaine had been broken up; and on the 4th of August, 1788, troops were drawn up, and cannon planted in the public square, to keep down the populace, whilst the professors were turned into the streets, and the college doors locked. Here there occurred an attack on the unarmed people, as wanton as that which took place at Brussels, and no less than thirty or forty persons were killed on the spot, and great numbers wounded. This massacre of Antwerp, as it was called, roused the indignation of the whole Netherlands, and was heard with horror by all Europe. The monks and professors who had been turned out became objects of sympathy, even to those who regarded with wonder and contempt their bigotry and superstition. But Joseph, engaged in his miserable and disgraceful war against the Turks, sent to Dalton his warmest approval of what he called these vigorous measures. He appeared as forgetful of the past history of these Netherlanders as he was unmindful of what was passing in France, where the masses were up in the wildest revolution, and scores of enthusiastic apostles of the new principles of liberty, fraternity, and equality, were flying about in all directions, and spreading a ferment that threatened destruction to all the ancient conditions of things. Numbers of persons fled from the different towns to the frontiers of Holland; trade became stagnant, manufactories stood empty; the whole country began to assume a melancholy and ruinous aspect. Many of the refugees formed into revolutionary clubs by French emissaries, were prepared not merely to oppose Joseph's despotism, but all monarchical government whatever. A powerful body of these placed themselves under the leadership of Vander Noot, a lawyer, who assumed the title of plenipotentiary agent of the people of Brabant; and of Vander Mersch, an officer who had served in the seven years' war, who was made their commander-in-chief. These two men were in league with the new assembly of Breda, and issued their proclamations. These Trautmansdorff caused to be burnt by the executioner. The patriots in Brussels who sympathised with those in arms were, many of them, arrested; the citizens |