acticable, it was
suggested that the Belgic Provinces should go to the Prince of Orange
when restored to his rights at The Hague. In the desperate crisis of
1805, as we shall see, Pitt sought to allure Prussia by offering Belgium
to her; but that was a passing thought soon given up. The other solution
of the Netherlands Question finally prevailed, thanks to the efforts of
Pitt's pupil, Castlereagh, in 1814. The Foreign Office did not as yet
aim at the retention of the Cape of Good Hope and Ceylon as a set off to
British efforts for the Dutch and their acquisition of Belgium; but this
thought was already taking shape. The barrier against French aggressions
in the south-east was to be found in the reconstituted Kingdom of
Sardinia, the House of Savoy rendering in that quarter services similar
to the House of Orange in Flanders and Brabant. In other respects the
British Cabinet favoured Austria's plans of aggrandisement in Italy as
enhancing her power in a sphere which could not arouse the jealousy of
Prussia. The aims of Berlin not being known, except that the restoration
of the House of Orange was desired, Pitt and Grenville remained silent
on that topic.[509]

The question whether the peoples concerned would submit to this
under-girding of the European fabric did not trouble them. They saw only
the statics of territories; they had no conception of the dynamics of
nations. A future in which Nationality, triumphant in Italy and Germany,
would bring about a Balance of Power far more solid than any which their
flying buttresses could assure, was of course entirely hidden from them.
But they failed to read the signs of the times. The last despairing
efforts of the Poles, and the _levee en masse_ of the French people, now
systematized in the Conscription Law of 5th September 1798, did not open
their eyes to the future. For they were essentially men of the
Eighteenth Century; and herein lay the chief cause of their failure
against Revolutionary France. They dealt with lands as with blocks. She
infused new energy into peoples.

* * * * *

Meanwhile the return of Nelson to the Neapolitan coast intoxicated that
Court with joy. Queen Maria Carolina, ever the moving spirit at Naples,
now laid her plans for the expulsion of the French from Italy. Trusting
to her influence over her son-in-law, Francis II, and to a defensive
compact which the Courts of Vienna and Naples had framed on 20th Ma