ffensive at the instigation of England; the King of Sweden,
on his side, invaded Russia; war burst out in all directions. The
traditional influence of France remained powerless in the East to
maintain peace; the long weakness of the government was everywhere
bearing fruit.

Nowhere was this grievous impotence more painfully striking than in
Holland. Supported by England, whose slavish instrument he had been for
so long, the stadtholder William V. was struggling, with the help of the
mob, against the patriotic, independent, and proud patricians. For the
last sixty years the position of Holland had been constantly declining in
Europe. "She is afraid of everything," said Count de Broglie in 1773;
"she puts up with everything, grumbles at everything, and secures herself
against nothing." "Holland might pay all the armies of Europe," people
said in 1787, "she couldn't manage to hold her own against any one of
them." The civil war imminent in her midst and fomented by England had
aroused the solicitude of M. de Calonne; he had prepared the resources
necessary for forming a camp near Givet; his successor diverted the funds
to another object. When the Prussians entered Dutch territory, being
summoned to the stadtholder's aid by his wife, sister of the young King
Frederick William II., the French government afforded no assistance to
its ally; it confined itself to offering an asylum to the Dutch patriots,
long encouraged by its diplomatists, and now vanquished in their own
country, which was henceforth under the yoke of England. "France has
fallen, I doubt whether she will get up again," said the Emperor Joseph
II. "We have been caught napping," wrote M. de La Fayette to Washington;
"the King of Prussia has been ill advised, the Dutch are ruined, and
England finds herself the only power which has gained in the bargain."

The echo of humiliations abroad came to swell the dull murmur of public
discontent. Disturbance was arising everywhere. "From stagnant chaos
France has passed to tumultuous chaos," wrote Mirabeau, already an
influential publicist, despite the irregularity of his morals and the
small esteem excited by his life; "there may, there should come a
creation out of it." The Parliament had soon resumed its defiant
attitude; like M. de La Fayette at the Assembly of notables, it demanded
the convocation of the States-general at a fixed epoch, in 1792; it was
the date fixed by M. de Brienne in a vast financial s