they abstained from private pillige, they had successfully practised public extortion, and still devoured, in expectation, the vast requisitions they kept, as it were, in reserve for future emergencies. The seven provinces were, in short, stored with so many objects for plunder and speculation, that it was not in the least surprising that every pretext should be formed, and every op portunity seized, of making the

most of so rich a harvest.

In the mean time, the conse quences of the great changes, operated in January, began to appear. As those from whom they had proceeded, though not sanguinary in their proceedings, were determined to exclude from office and power all who did not strictly and implicit ly profess their principles; and, as they carried this determination into rigorous practice, they soon created numerous enemies, and these resolved to exert all their interest and activity to oust them, as they had done their opponents.

The party that had seized the overeign power, and exercised it in this partial and arbitrary manner, was the counterpart of the jacobin faction in France, which it resembled in every particular, cruelty excepted. It expelled from their places a number of meritorious characters, and substituted others of ill or doubtful fame, and whose only title to preferment was similitude of opinions, or devotion to their views. Men that had been sentenced to banishment, for criminal practices, were allowed to return, if of their party, without calling them to account; while an official scrutiny was established that made the most perplexing and vexatious inquiries into the conduct of

all those who were obnoxious to them. The reign of terrorism, that had filled France with so much calamity, was renewed in Holland, andspread alarm and anxiety through that part of the public which disap proved of their oppressive proceed ings: proceedings which, unhappily, were patronized by a majority of the legislative body, and of the executive directory. Several members that had been expelled from the legislature, by those who now engrossed it, were, by a solemn decree, declared to have forfeited the confidence of their fellow-citizens, though well known as the constant, zealous, and long-tried, friends to the popular cause, for no other reason than having refused to concur with the ruling party, in its assumption of legislative power, without consulting their constituents. Under pretence of securing the public tranquillity,peaceable andianoxious citizens were molested; the privacy of families was invaded; and the freedom of conversation obstructed, by the sinister interpretation of words and behaviour in those who did not espouse with violence the cause of the ruling party.

Apprehensive that it was insecure of the public favour, this party carefully excluded from the primary assemblies numbers of spirited citizens, whom their illegal proceedings had exasperated. This they did by means of the oppressive scrutiny, that deprived of the right of vo.ing every man whom it thought proper to pronounce disaffected and dan

decree, on the fourth of May, by which it declared itself the legislative body of the Batavian republic: thus depriving the people of the election of their legislators, without which there can be no republican government. This was so manifest a violation of popular rights, that it was loudly reprobated by the generality, as a measure which no reason of state, nor any pretence, could justify. It did more prejudice to the ruling party, and raised them more enemies, than any preceding or subsequent act of their admini

stration.

This conduct, though neither popular nor secure, was countenanced by the French ambassador, Delacroix, hitherto esteemed a prudent and cautious man. But it was no less positively reprobated by general Daendels, a man of a bold and resolute disposition, and who explicit ly signified his determination to oppose the measures of the ruling party, as contrary to the very nature of a commonwealth, of which he professed himself a decided partizan. He engaged in constant altercations with them, on account of their virulent publications against all who differed from their opinions, and of the feuds and divisions among the people, to which these and other parts of their conduct had given rise. He quarrelled with Delacroix for abetting their proceedings, which he represented as disorderly and unconstitutional, as tending to detach the Batavian people from the republican constitution they had accepted, and from their connection with France, as having occasioned all the confusions, under which they now laboured.

General Daendels was a man of importance, both by his personal

character and the post he held in the Batavian republic; which was that of commander-in-chief of the French troops in its service, or, to speak with more propriety, stationed in the seven provinces to keep them in subjection to France. In this light,he thought himself entitled to rebuke the French ambassador, for alienating them, by his conduct, from France; their attachment to which, could only be secured by providing for their internal tranquillity, and procuring the speedy settlement of a free and equitable constitution.

Delacroix, who considered him. self in a superior station to that of Daendels, paid no regard to his representations, which he treated as unfounded: and threatened, at the same time, to denounce him to the French directory, as interfering with matters out of his province. But Daendels was too firm and steady in his purpose to be intimi dated: he went to Paris, and laid his information before the directory with so much force and address, that he obtained their intire approbation of his conduct. The French government, however eccentric and irregularitself, did not think it safe to permit the like deviations in others, from the line of conduct marked out for their observance. Though willing to grant them independence to a certain extent, this was not to exceed the strictest subordination to the interest and influence of France. It was, therefore, with the utmost dissatisfactionit beheld this assumption of power in the different parties that had alternately ruled in the seven provinces, the inhabitants of which it wished to conciliate, by giving them a constitution that should seem the work of their own

hands,

hands, sanctioned by their acceptance, and confirmed by a due settlement. Good policy required, therefore, that they should not remain in a state of fluctuation, between the projects of the parties that were contending for their particular systems of government, but that these parties should be restrained to a conformity with the directions they received from France.

Armed with this determination of the directory, general Daendels returned to Holland, fully resolved to carry it into execution: but he found that advantage had been taken of his absence, to bring a charge against him of desertion from his post, with an intent to punish him with the utmost severity. He felt the temerity of the Dutch in pretending to treat in this manner an officer no ways dependent upon them, and who was, in fact, commissioned to watch over their own conduct, and keep them in awe. Stung with resentment and indignation, he did not hesitate a moment how to act. He assembled the principal of the discontented

party, and having concerted measures with them, he proceeded, at the head of two companies of grenadiers, to the palace of the Dutch directory. Two of them, being informed of his intentions, made their escape, one was seized, and the other two resigned their situations, as total strangers to the designs of the other three. Delacroix was also arrested, and sent to France, where his conduct was wholly disapproved, and himself disgraced, and dismissed from employment.

Delivered from his antagonists, general Daendels, and his associates, assumed the government into their own hands, declaring their power provisional, and to last no longer than till a national representation could be assembled, to which the intire authority of the state should immediately devolve, and the regu lation of all affairs be wholly submitted. A proclamation was then issued to explain and justify the present transaction, and to apprize the public of the intentions above spe cified.

France, to accept of a peace dictated by the victors, and was now become, in fact, a province of the French republic, profoundly subservient to its designs, and not daring to adopt any councils of its own formation. The seventeen provin ces of the low countries, once the most flourishing and important part of Europe, were annexed to France partly by incorporation, and partly by an alliance, which, under the name of an independent republic had established the absolute dominion of France. Switzerland, a country long reputed invincible, through the strength of its natural means of defence, and the courage of its inhabitants, had been subdued by artifice and deception. Italy, styled by the natives, the burying-ground of the French armies, had been the scene of their most astonishing victories, and of the most unexpected revolutions. Torn from the house of Austria, the spacious and fertile provinces of Lombardy had been erected into a nominal republic, under the protection, or, in more proper words, under the controul, of France. The long subsisting aristocracies of Venice and Genoa had been completely annihilated: the former of these was become the mutilated victim of French and Austrian ra pacity, which had divided it in nearly equal shares: the latter, together with a democratical govern ment, had assumed the title of the commonwealth of Liguria, though, by its proximity and incessant relations with France, it was in reality its outpost in Italy; and, through its incapacity to resist this powerful neighbour, was now the main channel of its operations in that country. The acquisition of the papal domi

nions, under the splendid pretence of reviving the ancient republic of Rome, had increased the power of France to a degree that made it irresistible to the remaining potentates in Italy. Two of these, the king of Sardinia, and the duke of Tuscany, hardly retained the semblance of sovereigns; and the king of Naples stood on the most uncertain and precarious ground.

Such was the truly formidable and alarming position of France, in the middle of 1798. It had, in the fore part of the year, added Rome and Switzerland to its conquests, and was at present busily occupied in organizing them on a plan that should secure their future dependence, and render them useful to its farther designs.

What these were, was no matter of doubt in the political world.The unparalleled success of their arms had equally elated the French, and broken the spirit of most of their enemies. The partisans of the French republic alleged its victories as an irrefragable proof of the superiority of a republican government to all others; and this allegation, supported by their success, had made a profound impres sion upon the European nations. However desirous of peace, and willing to submit to the forms of government established among them, numbers began to think, with the French, that the enthusiasm inspired by a persuasion of being free, added a vigour and clevation to the mind which a state of passive subjection could never reach. This persua sion, whether well or ill founded, was obviously the principal cause that rendered the French soldiers so intrepid and daring, and gave them so many advantages over the [G4]

troops