all Flanders renounced its allegiance. The Archduchess Christina and her husband quitted Brussels about the middle of that month, and soon after, the Austrian troops were driven out, though Trautmannsdorf had, for a time, apparently re-established tranquillity by restoring the Joyeuse Entrée. A DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE was published in that capital, December 13th 1789, to which the other provinces, with the exception of Luxemburg, acceded. Before the end of the year the Austrians were entirely expelled. On January 11th 1790, deputies from most of the provinces of the Austrian Netherlands having assembled at Brussels, signed an ACT OF UNION OF THE BELGIAN UNITED PROVINCES. The government of the new Republic, which was of an aristocratic nature, was intrusted to a Congress; of which Cardinal Frankenberg was president, Van der Noot prime minister, and Van Eupen secretary.

Such was the state of affairs at the death of Joseph II., a monarch who appears to have sincerely desired the welfare of his subjects, but who undertook the impossible task of ruling them according to the philosophic ideas of his age, with the view of rendering them happy and enlightened in spite of their interests and prejudices, and, as it were, against their will. In Hungary he found it expedient to revoke all his innovations before his death, except the Edict of Toleration and the abolition of serfdom. He also sent back to that country the holy crown of St. Stephen, which was carried in triumph to Buda. In short, he summed up, not altogether inaccurately, his own political character in the epitaph which he proposed for himself a little before his death: “Here lies a sovereign who, with the best intentions, never carried a single project into execution." 46

Personally, however, Joseph had many excellent qualities. He was industrious in business, he mixed freely with his people, and permitted even the meanest of them to approach him. To a courtier, who proposed to reserve a portion of the Augarten for the higher classes, he replied: "If I wished to mix only with my equals, I must spend my life among the coffins of my ancestors in the imperial vault." He declined a proposal of the inhabitants of Buda to erect a statue to him, with some remarks which may serve to show his ideal of a state. He observed that he should deserve a statue when prejudices were extirpated, and genuine

46 Coxe, House of Austria, vol. ii. p. 661. In this epitaph, however, Joseph was a little too severe upon himself. His revocations related only to Hungary and

the Netherlands; while the regulations which he made for his other dominions continue still in force. See Menzel, B. vi. S. 252.

500

PROPOSITIONS OF PISTOIA.

[BOOK VI. patriotism and correct views of the public good established in their stead; when everybody should contribute his proportion to the necessities and security of the state; when the whole of his dominions should be enlightened by means of improved education, a simpler and better teaching of the clergy, and a union of religion and law; when a sounder administration of justice should be introduced, wealth increased by augmented population and improved agriculture, better relations established between the nobles and their dependants, and trade and manufacture put on a better footing. But the harshness with which he enforced minute and vexatious police regulations, deprived him of the popularity which his many good qualities were calculated to attract.

47

Joseph II. died at the age of forty-eight, and in the tenth year of his reign. Although he had been twice married,48 he left no living issue, and he was therefore succeeded as King of Hungary and Bohemia, and in the sovereignty of Austria, by his brother Leopold, Grand Duke of Tuscany. Leopold had ruled Tuscany twenty-five years, with the reputation of liberality and wisdom. Like his brother Joseph, he had sought to reform the Church, and had seconded the efforts of Scipio Ricci, Bishop of Pistoia, for that purpose. An assembly of all the Jansenist prelates and clergy of Tuscany, which Ricci had convoked in the metropolis of his see in 1787, drew up the projects of reform, celebrated as the Propositions of Pistoia. In these Propositions the papal power was questioned, the showy and merely external worship introduced by the Popes was condemned, and the strict morality of the Jansenists declared the essential principle of Christianity. Pius VI., who now filled the papal throne, threatened Ricci with excommunication. But the firm attitude of Leopold, who forbade all appeals to Rome, refused to recognise the spiritual powers of the Nuncio, and abolished the dependence of the religious orders on foreign superiors, deterred the Pope from proceeding to this extremity. Such reforms, however, were as distasteful to the mass of the Italians as they were to the Austrians. The populace regarded Ricci as a heretic, and on that score thought themselves justified in plundering his palace. The Propositions of Pistoia were condemned by a small assembly of prelates at Florence, dignified with the name of a general synod; and Pius had only to await with

47 Menzel, B. vi. p. 255.

48 First to Maria Isabella of Bourbon, daughter of Don Philip, Duke of Parma; by whom he had two daughters who died young. His second wife was Josepha of Bavaria, daughter of the Emperor Charles

VII.; by whom he had no issue. His second wife was distasteful to him, and he never married again; but he indulged in promiscuous amours, which sometimes endangered his health.

patience a reaction, which soon dissipated the reforms of the Tuscan bishops.49 Equal liberality had been observed in Leopold's civil administration in Tuscany. He mitigated the rigour of the penal laws, and abolished capital punishment even in cases of murder. Observing that this mildness was attended with beneficial effects, he introduced in 1786 his celebrated Code, by which the criminal law was entirely revised, and the prosecution and punishment of offenders reduced to a minimum of harshness and severity.

Leopold, who was forty-three years of age at the time of his brother's death, immediately left Florence for Vienna. The political atmosphere, as we have seen, was anything but clear. Leopold felt that the most pressing necessity was to accommodate matters with Prussia. Immediately after his arrival in Vienna, he addressed a letter to the King of Prussia, in which he expressed a desire for the friendship of that monarch, and candidly declared that, as an indemnity for the expenses of the war with Turkey, he should be content with the boundaries assigned to Austria by the Peace of Passarowitz in 1718; and he concluded with assurances of moderation with regard to his future policy.50 He had not, however, neglected the precautions necessitated by the attitude assumed by Prussia, and he had ordered an army of 150,000 men to assemble in Moravia and Bohemia; although this step compelled him to reduce his forces on the Danube. Frederick William replied in a conciliatory autograph letter, in which he intimated that he could not act without the concurrence of his allies (April 15th). At this juncture, England proposed an armistice to Prussia and the belligerents, in order to treat for a peace on the status quo ante bellum; but the proposal failed, chiefly through the obstinacy of Kaunitz, now an old man of eighty, whose senile caprices were treated with great deference by the Emperor, although opposed to his own convictions.51 After the rejection of the armistice, Prussia submitted the following project for a peace: that Austria and Russia should restore to the Porte all the territory they had conquered between the Danube and Dniestr; Austria, however, retaining those parts of Wallachia and Servia which had been assigned to her by the Peace of Passarowitz, but restoring Galicia to Poland, except the

49 See Mémoires sur Pie VI. et son Pontificat.

50 Hertzberg, Recueil de Déductions, t. iii. p. 61.

5 See Memoirs and Correspondence of Sir R. M. Keith (the British Minister at

district from the borders of

Vienna), Despatch to Duke of Leeds, May 11th 1790, vol. ii. p. 277 sqq. The Emperor, when he had any business to transact, was obliged to go to Kaunitz's house, as he never came to court. MS. Journal. Ibid. p. 290 note.

502

NEGOCIATIONS AT REICHENBACH.

[Book VI. Hungary and Transylvania to the rivers Dniestr and Stry. In order to restore the balance between Austria and Prussia, the latter country was to have Dantzic and Thorn. On these conditions, Frederick William II. agreed not to oppose Leopold in the Netherlands, and to vote for him as Emperor.52 The Prussian note accompanying these proposals was peremptory, almost challenging. Austria declined the terms offered, on the ground that the districts assigned to her were no equivalent for the sacrifices required of her, and that it was unreasonable to demand that peace should be made at her expense.

Both parties now prepared for war. Loudon resigned the command on the Danube, to place himself at the head of the Austrian army on the frontiers of Saxony. The main body of the Prussians, under the King, the Duke of Brunswick, and General Möllendorf, assembled in Silesia; another division was stationed in East Prussia, on the borders of Lithuania, and a third in West Prussia, towards the Vistula. It was in his camp at Schönwald that Frederick William ratified his treaty with the Porte, as already mentioned (June 20th). But in spite of these hostile demonstrations, both monarchs were secretly longing for peace. Leopold wished to compose the intestine disorders of his dominions; Frederick William apprehended that his proposals might be distasteful to Poland and the Porte; while both monarchs were filled with alarm at the rapid progress of the French Revolution. Fresh negociations were therefore opened at Reichenbach, a town in the principality of Schweidnitz. Russia refused to take part in them, having resolved to treat separately with the Porte. Hertzberg, bent on carrying his views against Austria, even at the risk of a war, endeavoured to exclude England from the conference, because that Power, as well as Holland, advocated the strict status quo ante bellum; and they had declared, that if Prussia should persist in her scheme of indemnification, and a war should be thereby kindled, they should not consider it a casus fœderis, and should forbear to take any part in it. Lucchesini, too, the Prussian minister at Warsaw, dissuaded the irresolute Frederick William from adopting Hertzberg's policy; which he and others represented as the offspring of a false ambition, and a blind and passionate hatred of Austria.53

Leopold's firmness had almost occasioned the breaking off the negociations, when they suddenly took a new turn. A party had

5 Hertzberg, t. iii. p. 74. 53 Sir R. M. Keith characterises them as "schemes of partition, exchange, and

depredation."

p. 361.

Memoirs, &c., vol. ii.

sprung up in Poland which opposed the cession of Dantzic and Thorn, its only ports, and preferred to renounce Galicia. As this party was supported by the Maritime Powers, Frederick William deemed it prudent to postpone his endeavours to obtain those places till a more convenient opportunity. In revenge, the Prussian Cabinet required that Austria should give up Turkish Wallachia, and signified that the non-acceptance of this condition within ten days would be considered a declaration of war. Leopold consented to accept the strict status quo ante bellum. As there had been no war between Austria and Prussia, those two Powers contented themselves with reciprocal declarations, which were combined in the CONVENTION OF REICHENBACH,54 signed August 5th 1790. the 21st of the same month an armistice was concluded at Giurgevo, between Austria and the Porte. Before its conclusion the Austrians had gained some advantages in the campaign of that year. Old Orsova had capitulated to them April 16th, and some successes had been achieved in Wallachia.

On

It was not till January 1791 that a congress for the establishment of peace between Austria and the Porte was opened, under the mediation of England, Holland and Prussia, at Sistovo, a town in Bulgaria. During its progress, the Austrians, raising a distinction between the status quo de jure and de facto, made some new demands, which they ultimately carried; not, however, in the treaty, but by a separate convention with the Porte, by which the latter ceded Old Orsova and a district on the Unna. The PEACE OF SISTOVO and the Convention were signed on the same day, August 4th 1791.55

The reconciliation with Prussia had many beneficial results for Leopold. Besides promoting the Peace of Sistovo, it enabled him to put down the disturbances in the Netherlands and Hungary, and helped him to the Imperial Crown. The three allied Powers did not wish to see Austria deprived of the Belgian provinces by a revolution, though they wanted her to make a new barrier treaty. After the Congress of Reichenbach had settled the affairs of Turkey, the Prussian minister delivered to those of Austria a declaration of the Maritime Powers, expressing their readiness to guarantee, in conjunction with Prussia, the constitution of the Netherlands, and to take the necessary steps to bring them again under the dominion of the House of Austria. On this intelligence the Brussels Congress sent deputies to London, Berlin, the Hague, and Paris, to make remonstrances and demand succours. Leopold,

Hertzberg, t. iii. p. 103 sqq.

5 Martens, t. v. p. 18.