William Pitt and the Great War by John Holland Rose (book club reads txt) 📕

56, 57.

 

[63] Pallain, 106, 107.

 

[64] "Wealth of Nations," bk. iv, ch. iii.

 

[65] "Gower's Despatches," 165, 171.

 

[66] Sorel, ii, 216.

 

[67] Fersen, "Diary" (Eng. edit.), 255.

 

[68] Clapham, "Causes of the War of 1792," 231.

 

[69] On the Tobago proposal see "Dropmore P.," ii, 260.

 

[70] Pallain, 215-9. The original is in Pitt MSS., 333.

 

[71] Fersen, "Diary" (Eng. edit.), 316, 319.

 

[72] "Dropmore P.," ii, 267. See, too, further details in "Dumouriez and

the Defence of England against Napoleon," by J. H. Rose and A. M.

Broadley.

 

[73] Pitt MSS., 333. Chauvelin to Dumouriez, 28th April.

 

[74] "Parl. Hist.," xxix, 1522.

 

[75] "Rights of Man," pt. ii, ch. v.

 

[76] "Dropmore P.," ii, 282; "Auckland Journals," ii, 410.

 

[77] "Ann. Reg." (1792), 178-82, 225-32; Sorel, ii, 445-54; Heidrich,

ii, ch. ii. I fully agree with Dr. Salomon ("Pitt," 537) as to the

sincerity of Pitt's desire for neutrality.

 

[78] Sybel, ii, 142.

 

[79] For the discussions between the three Powers on Poland see

Heidrich, 165-219; and Salomon, "Das Politische System des jüngeren Pitt

und die zweite Teilung Polens" (Berlin, 1895).

 

[80] "F. O.," Poland, 6. Hailes to Grenville, 16th and 27th June 1792.

 

[81] "Dropmore P.," ii, 142; see, too, ii, 279.

 

[82] "Mems. of Fox," iii, 18.

 

CHAPTER III (PEACE OR WAR?)

    It seems absolutely impossible to hesitate as to supporting our

    Ally [Holland] in case of necessity, and the explicit

    declaration of our sentiments is the most likely way to prevent

    the case occurring.--PITT TO LORD STAFFORD, _13th November

    1792_.

 

 

One of the first requisites for the study of a period whose outlines are

well known, is to bar out the insidious notion that the course of events

was inevitable. Nine persons out of ten have recourse to that easy but

fallacious way of explaining events. The whole war, they say, or think,

was inevitable. It was fated that the Duke of Brunswick should issue his

threatening manifesto to the Parisians if violence were offered to

Louis XVI; that they should resent the threat, rise in revolt, and

dethrone the King, and thereafter massacre royalists in the prisons. The

innate vigour of the democratic cause further required that the French

should stand their ground at Valmy and win a pitched battle at Jemappes,

that victory leading to an exaltation of soul in which the French

Republicans pushed on their claims in such a way as to bring England

into the field. History, when written in this way, is a symmetrical

mosaic; and the human mind loves patterns.

 

But events are not neatly chiselled; they do not fall into geometrical

groups, however much the memory, for its own ease, seeks to arrange them

thus. Their edges are jagged; and the slightest jar might have sent them

in different ways. To recur to the events in question: the Duke of

Brunswick objected to issuing the manifesto, and only owing to the

weariness or weakness of old age, yielded to the insistence of the

_émigrés_ at his headquarters: the insurrection at Paris came about

doubtfully and fitfully; the issue on 10th August hung mainly on the

personal bearing of the King; the massacres were the work of an

insignificant minority, which the vast mass regarded with sheer

stupefaction; and even the proclamation of the French Republic by the

National Convention on 21st September was not without many searchings of

heart.[83]

 

Meanwhile Pitt and Grenville had not the slightest inkling as to the

trend of events. The latter on 13th July 1792 wrote thus to Earl Gower

at Paris: "My speculations are that the first entrance of the foreign

troops [into France] will be followed by negotiations; but how they are

to end, or what possibility there is to establish any form of

government, or any order in France, is far beyond any conjectures I can

form."[84] This uncertainty is illuminating. It shows that Pitt and

Grenville were not farseeing schemers bent on undermining the liberties

of France and Britain by a war on which they had long resolved, but

fallible mortals, unable to see a handbreadth through the turmoil, but

cherishing the hope that somehow all would soon become clear. As to

British policy during the summer of 1792, it may be classed as masterly

inactivity or nervous passivity, according to the standpoint of the

critic. In one case alone did Pitt and Grenville take a step displeasing

to the French Government, namely, by recalling Gower from the embassy at

Paris; and this was due to the fall of the French monarchy on 10th

August, and to the danger attending the residence of a noble in Paris.

Only by a display of firmness did Gower and his secretary, Lindsay,

succeed in obtaining passports from the new Foreign Minister,

Lebrun.[85]

 

That follower of Dumouriez had as colleagues the former Girondin

Ministers, Clavière, Roland, and Servan. Besides them were Monge (the

physicist) for the Navy, and Danton for Justice, the latter a far from

reassuring choice, as he was known to be largely responsible for the

massacres in the prisons of Paris early in September. Little is known

about the publicist, Lebrun, on whom now rested the duty of negotiating

with England, Spain, Holland, etc. It is one of the astonishing facts of

this time that unknown men leaped to the front at Paris, directed

affairs to momentous issues, and then sank into obscurity or perished.

The Genevese Clavière started assignats and managed revolutionary

finance; Servan controlled the War Office for some months with much

ability, and then fell; Pétion, Santerre, the popular Paris brewer, and

an ex-hawker, Hanriot, were successively rulers of Paris for a brief

space.

 

But of all the puzzles of this time Lebrun is perhaps the chief. In his

thirtieth year he was Foreign Minister of France, when she broke with

England, Holland, Spain, and the Empire. He is believed by many (_e.g._,

by W. A. Miles, who knew him well) to be largely responsible for those

wars. Yet who was this Lebrun? Before the Revolution he had to leave

France for his advanced opinions, and took refuge at Liége, where Miles

found him toiling for a scanty pittance at journalistic hack-work.

Suffering much at the hands of the Austrians in 1790, he fled back to

Paris, joined the Girondins, wrote for them, made himself useful to

Dumouriez during his tenure of the Foreign Office, and, not long after

his resignation, stepped into his shoes and appropriated his policy. In

order to finish with him here, we may note that he voted for the death

of Louis XVI, and, as President of the Executive Council at that time,

signed the order for the execution. He and other Girondins were driven

from power on 2nd June 1793 (when Hanriot's brazen voice decided the

fate of the Girondins) and he was guillotined on 23rd December of that

year, for the alleged crime of conspiring to place Philippe Egalité on

the throne. Mme. Roland, who helped Lebrun to rise to power, limns his

portrait in these sharp outlines: "He passed for a wise man, because he

showed no kind of _élan_; and for a clever man, because he was a fairly

good clerk; but he possessed neither activity, intellect, nor force of

character." The want of _élan_ seems to be a term relative merely to the

characteristics of the Girondins, who, whatever they lacked, had that

Gallic quality in rich measure.

 

Chauvelin, the French ambassador in London, is another of these

revolutionary rockets. Only in fiction and the drama does he stand forth

at all clearly to the eye. History knows him not, except that he had

been a marquis, then took up with the Girondins, finally shot up among

the Jacobins and made much noise by his intrigues and despatches. With

all his showiness and vanity he had enough shrewdness to suit his

language at the French embassy in Portman Square to the Jacobin jargon

of the times. After the September massacres the only hope for an

aristocratic envoy was to figure as an irreproachable patriot.

Chauvelin's dealings with the English malcontents therefore became more

and more pronounced; for indeed they served both as a life insurance

and as a means of annoying Pitt and Grenville in return for their

refusal to recognize him as the ambassador of the new Republic.

Londoners in general sided with the Ministry and snubbed the French

envoys. Dumont describes their annoyance, during a visit to Ranelagh, at

being received everywhere with the audible whisper, "Here comes the

French embassy"; whereupon faces were turned away and a wide space was

left around them.[86]

 

Such, then, were the men on whom largely rested the future of Europe.

Lebrun mistook fussiness for activity. At a time when tact and dignity

prescribed a diminution of the staff at Portman Square, he sent two

almost untried men, Noël and, a little later, Benoît, to help Chauvelin

to mark time. Talleyrand also gained permission to return to London as

_adjoint_ to Chauvelin, which, it appears, was the only safe means of

escaping from Paris. Chauvelin speedily quarrelled with him. But the

doings of the French embassy concern us little for the present, as Pitt

and Grenville paid no attention to the offers, similar to those made in

April, which Lebrun charged his envoys to make for an Anglo-French

alliance. It is not surprising, after the September massacres, that

Ministers should hold sternly aloof from the French envoys; but we may

note that Miles considered their attitude most unwise. He further

remarked that the proud reserve of Grenville was almost offensive.[87]

We made the acquaintance of Miles as British agent at Paris in 1790 and

noted his consequential airs. In 1792 they were full blown.

 

The opinions of George III and Pitt on the events of that bloody

harvest-time in Paris are very little known. The King's letters from

Weymouth to Pitt in August-September are few and brief. On 16th

September, after the arrival of news of the massacres, he writes to say

that his decision respecting the Prince of Wales's debts is irrevocable.

After that there is a long silence. Pitt's reserve is equally

impenetrable. We know, however, from the letters of Burke that the

conduct of Ministers deeply disappointed him. Writing to Grenville on

19th September he says that the crisis exceeds in gravity any that is

recorded in history; and he adds these curious words: "I know it is the

opinion of His Majesty's Ministers that the new [French] principles may

be encouraged, and even triumph over every interior and exterior

resistance, and may even overturn other States as they have that of

France, without any sort of danger of their extending in their

consequences to this Kingdom."[88] Can we have a clearer testimony to

the calm but rigid resolve with which Pitt and his colleague clung to

neutrality? On the following day (the day of the Battle of Valmy) Pitt

frigidly declined the request of the Austrian and Neapolitan

ambassadors, that the British Government would exclude from its

territories all those who should be guilty of an attack on the French

royal family. On 21st September Grenville issued a guarded statement on

this subject to the _corps diplomatique_; but it was far from meeting

the desires of the royalists.[89]

 

Reticence is a virtue over-developed in an aristocracy--"that austere

domination," as Burke terms it. The virtue is slow in taking root among

democracies. The early Radical clubs of Great Britain regarded it as

their cherished privilege to state their opinions on foreign affairs

with Athenian loquacity; and the months of October and November 1792,

when we vainly seek to know the inner feelings of Pitt, are enlivened by

resolutions expressing joy at the downfall of tyrants, and fervent

beliefs in the advent of a fraternal millennium, the first fruits of

which were the election of Paine as deputy for Calais to the National

Convention.

 

In the dealings of nations, as of individuals, feelings often count for

more than interests. This was the case in the last four months of the

year 1792, when the subjects in dispute bulked small in comparison with

the passions and prejudices which magnified and distorted them. The

psychology of the time therefore demands no less attention than its

diplomacy. Its first weeks were darkened by news of the September

massacres. Even now the details of that cowardly crime arouse