"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.