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1788

though with vast loss, in a battle with a Turkish army sent to oppose him. -Being, after long expectation, joined by a strong body of Russians under Soltikof, they invested that fortress. The serasquier of Moldavia, who commanded the garrison, when summoned to surrender, bravely sent a defiance. But, after a siege of ten weeks, finding the place absolutely untenable, he capitulated, on condition of having the honours of war.†

Such were the events, and such the result, of a campaign from which the emperor had formed the most sanguine hopes of acquiring fame and extending his dominions. At the close of it he returned to Vienna, overwhelmed with the misery which his restless ambition had brought upon him. Chagrin and vexation at seeing the well-disciplined armies with which he had so proudly taken the field wasted away without a single action from which he could claim the least merit, and, what was worse, without a possibility of repairing them, at seeing one of his most beautiful provinces desolated, at hearing of the discontent that prevailed among his subjects, and reflecting that, when he expected to have rivalled the illustrious Frederic, his great architype, in his achievements, he had afforded the aged vizier an opportunity of acquiring glory at his expence, united to make him miserable.

Nor were the disastrous events of the campaign and their fatal consequences the only causes of his disquiet.-Any passion, when carried to excess, is so far akin to madness as it impels those who are under its influence to abandon the guidance of reason, the grand characteristic of human nature. And never was this more strikingly exemplified than in the present conduct of this monarch.

He had given testimonies of understanding as well as goodness of heart. He had recommended himself to respect as a sovereign as well as a statesman. But where his ruling passion, the love of power, and a desire to display his political talents in simplifying government in order to facilitate the administration of it, took place, every other consideration, his most valuable interests, his own peace of mind, and that regard to good faith which is the basis of a princely character, all gave way to its overruling influence. We have seen him, at the close of the late year, yielding to the resistance which his Flemish subjects made to his new regulations; and notifying

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notifying their restoration to their civil and ecclesiastical rights; under which general denomination it was supposed that those of the universities and bishops were included.-After he had thus pledged his honour as a security to his subjects for the enjoyment of their rights, such of them as retained an opinion of his good faith reposed themselves with confidence under it. They could not suppose that a monarch whose actions were held up to the observation of mankind would notoriously depart from the spirit. of his declaration. They could not suppose that a prince who had so recently experienced such humiliation in an effort to deprive his people of their ancient immunities, and had seen their invincible attachment to them, would again attempt to infringe them; still less could they suppose that he would do it at an instant when he had wantonly involved himself in a foreign war, which called for the full exertion of his strength; and when his chief dependence for money to carry it on was on his wealthy Flemish subjects. This, however, was really the case. Actuated by his passion for power, under all these circumstances that recommended perfect harmony between him and his people, he chose this time for renewing his attempt; and, what enhanced the absurdity of his conduct, the matter in dispute did not relate to civil authority, but to the privileges of his universities.

The reader would sicken at a minute detail of military operations carried on against the civil authority, who maintained the cause of the academicians as a part of the ancient constitution, supported by the populace as their auxiliaries. Yet these affairs assume a considerable degree of importance, and an outline of the transactions relative to them deserves his regard, when considered as one of the causes to which the dissatisfaction of the Flemings and the subsequent easy conquest of the low countries by the arms of France must be ascribed.

That the emperor, who was incensed against the Flemings on account of their refractory behaviour and their refusal to assist him in raising supplies for his present war, might be provided with a proper instrument to chastise them, count de Murray, a man of a liberal disposition, was superseded in the command of the troops here by general Dalton, a soldier of fortune; who recommended himself to the emperor's good graces by the promptitude with which he co-operated with count Trautmansdorff, the imperial minister, in the execution of his instructions.

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This business the minister entered upon by sending peremptory orders to the heads and doctors of the universities of Louvain, immediately to enregister in their archives, and submit to, that system of reform prescribed by the sovereign; a system which was in itself a subversion of their whole academical constitution.-To sanction the measure in the eyes of the nation, an attempt was made to prevail on the council of Brabant to concur in it. But that respectable body, disdaining to become agents in betraying the rights of their countrymen, in whatever shape, bade defiance to the military force with which Dalton surrounded their council-chamber to enforce obedience. A skirmish ensued between the troops and the populace, in which several of the latter were killed. But the affair only afforded the council an opportunity of shewing their firmness, and the emperor, of dishonouring himself by promising promotion to an officer who distinguished himself on this occasion. Similar events took place at Louvain and Antwerp; differing in little else than the number of victims to the brutal violence of the general whom Joseph had made the executioner of his will.-We cannot, without indignation, hear of a military force employed to expel the rector and students of the university of Louvain, and those of the college of Antwerp, with the point of the bayonet and our astonishment at the emperor's former conduct is heightened when we read an extract of a letter written by him at Semlin, after his disgraceful retreat from the Bannat, "approving the vigorous manner "in which the troops repelled insolence at Louvain, and yet more at Antwerp;" and commanding them "to persevere in the same conduct, "to compel respect."-The result was such as might have been expected. -The students not approving the emperor's mixture of military and academical discipline, his professors were deserted; and the muses fled to happier countries, where genius can display its powers without restraint under the genial influence of liberty.-The emperor, in the mean-time, was punished with his own scourge.-A depression of spirits, occasioned by disappointment in his schemes of ambition and his plan of domestic despotism, concurred with fatigue and anxiety to bring on him a lingering illness from which he never was restored.

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PRUSSIA, POLAND, AND RUSSIA.

Ar no period had the Prussian monarch and nation enjoyed a greater share of prosperity than the present.-Whilst Frederic William devoted himself to those indolent habits and sensual pleasures to which he was addicted, he reaped the fruits of his great predecessor's policy and his minister baron de Hertsberg's labours.—Although Great Britain was chiefly benefited by his restoration of the stadtholder, yet the success of the enterprise by which it had been achieved not only afforded him a sort of triumph in his own breast, but gave him repute in the eyes of the world.— He wisely kept aloof from the war in the east; deeming it on all accounts advisable to retain the dignified and advantageous character of mediator; whilst the three great empires were wasting their strength and rendering themselves less formidable to the neighbouring powers. It was, indeed, the grand object of his policy to prevent the aggrandizement of Russia.— With that view he united with Great Britain in using compulsive measures to deprive the empress of her Danish ally. From the same motives he had intrigued against her at the Turkish court, and assisted to involve her in the present war.-And from the same he supported a party in Poland, which had long borne with silent indignation the arbitrary power which her ascendency in the permanent council enabled her to exercise in that republic. He, at this time, opposed with success her proposal of a stricter alliance with the Poles as a mean of carrying on her present war with greater advantage, and preventing the interference of other powers in their affairs: and he cultivated a good understanding with that nation, and assured them of his friendship; flattering himself that, should the empress be eventually unsuccessful against the Turks, the republic might be induced by policy to purchase his protection by the cession of Thorn and Dantzic."

The empress in the mean-time, was not prevented by the war in which she was engaged, nor the various transactions relating to it, from attending

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to the affairs of Poland. The maintenance of her power in this country, and keeping the government of it in a state of dependence on her, appear indeed, to have been the favourite objects of her policy.-Potemkin, who preferred the alliance of Great Britain and Prussia to that of Austria, after his sovereign had effected her purpose of reducing Oczakow and he had gratified his ambition by the honour which it had gained him, would gladly have allied her with these powers, and thus have freed her from the molestation that she had already experienced, and the greater which she might reasonably expect, from the Anglo-Prussian allies. But Catharine was averse to these counsels, and brought upon herself the enmity of his Prussian majesty by her firm attachment to the emperor.-When she perceived the expedients which Frederic William was employing to distress her partisans in Poland, and to undermine her influence in that country, she dispatched the prince of Nassau to the courts of Vienna, Versailles, and Madrid, to apprize them of his intrigues; and proposed an alliance with them to guarantee the integrity of the territories of Poland. But Lewis the Sixteenth was too much embarrassed by the troubles in his own kingdom to admit of his interposition in these affairs, and the catholic king did not choose to embroil himself in them.-Disappointed in this measure, she then proposed an alliance with the king of Poland, under the fair pretence of defending the republic against the designs of Prussia.

-In these

transactions, and the concomitant intrigues of the Prussian and Russian ministers, originated the subsequent troubles of the Polish republic; and the policy of Frederic William, more dishonest because less ingenuous than that of his predecessor, though, not so profound, was destined to be the cause of its final dissolution.

Although Catharine had an ascendency at the court of Warsaw, there was still a powerful party in the state who abhorred her tyranny: and the antipathy which the Poles bore to the Russians on account of the frequent wars between them was now exasperated by the indignation which this highspirited people felt towards a nation which had been the instrument of their disgrace. They were ever ready, therefore, to grasp at any means of relieving themselves from this reproachful dependency.

Such were held out by the Prussian monarch.-When the merits of the

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