Without Cloaks or Daggers
Ambassadors and Secret Agents. By Alfred Cobban. (Cape. 21s.) IT is a pity that Mr. Cobban has embellished with so blood-and- thunder a title what is in fact tt- most patient and scholarly piece of historical investigation. His book is an examination of diplomatic methods: the secret agent and the conspirator bulk larger here than in the normal passages of history, but their activities are never more than supplementary to the main current of events.
In 1784 when Sir James Harris, later Lord Malmesbury, arrived as Minister at the Hague, the Dutch Republic had sunk from Great Power to buffer state. Strategically and economically it was still of the first importance, internally it was weakened by dissensions, an uncertain factor in continental calculations. The Great Powers dared not sit by and perhaps allow a hostile government to be estab- lished in thc Hague. On the other hand they feared to commit themselves too far in support of any particular party in case they should find themselves manoeuvred into war to protect their protégés.
The United Provinces were split in loyalties between the House of Orange, led by the Stadtholder, and the 'Patriots,' the party of the middle-class democrats. These latter were uneasily allied with the aristocrats who were temporarily at variance with the royal house. By family tics and personal inclination the I louse of Orange was the symbol of the English connection; it was therefore inevitable that the French, the Great Power most intimately concerned with the future of the Dutch Republic, should support the opposition. In temperament royalist, France might seem to have little in common with the ardently republican Patriots; by policy however the French were compelled to take thzir part.
When Harris arrived at the Hague French influence was pre- dominant and the English cause seemed as good as lost. The disasters of the American war, a war in which the United Provinces had been cajoled by France into the alliance against us, had left our prestige much deflated. The pro-English party was weakened and defeatist:
'England has, certainly, still a Party here,' wrote Harris, 'but it is composed of a set of men dejected, oppressed and divided .... We have nothing to expect from this country, passive, tame and void of every public virtue, they will submit to anything.'
Unfortunately, while English interests languished under the leader- ship of the Stadtholder—'Irresolution, anger, despair and timidity,' wrote Harris, 'rule him by turns'—the conduct of the Patriots was by no means so passive and tame as England would have wished. They had wealth, they had energy, they Wive backed by the incal- culable resources of France, they knew exactly what they wanted; the complete elimination of all royal influence in the United Pro- vinces. It was small wonder that Harris, aware that his government would not back his policy to the point of war, all but despaired of achieving anythins.
This book recounts Harris's fight against the odds, a tight which in the end was entirely successful.
'The struggle that Great Britain and France were waging in the United Provinces,' writes Mr. Cobban, 'was licold war for influence. Neither side wished to see it turned into ad armed conflict in which the principals would be involved as well as the parties they were backing.'
Within these limits Harris used, and used skilfully, every weapon at his disposal. Patiently he reconstructed the English party, strength- ening it by lavish entertainment and a judicious distribution of Monies granted from the Secret Vote. He worked upon the army so that when the show-down came there would be no doubt which Way its loyalties would lie; he cautiously -played on the patricians, Weaning them away from their unnatural alliithce with the bourgeois republicans. Harris realised that the English cause could not Prosper without a continental ally. First he tried to revive the Austrian connection, the% when this failed, turned his attention to Prussia. Working mainly through Ewart, the English Minister in Berlin, but also using every other method available to him, he sought to overcome the Francophile sentiments of the Prussian Court and make them realise not only that their interests in the United Provinces were the same as ours but also that armed intervention might be necessary to protect them. France, Harris felt sure, would bluff to th1/4; last minute, but would never fight for the Patriots—if Prussia could Only be induced to call the bluff the game would be ours without tt blow struck. thus effectively assuring that Austria's eyes were turned,towards the East. But it was a result of years of patient diplomatic effort that the most was made of these chances, that the Provinces rallied to the House of Orange, that Frederick William was prepared to avenge the insult to his sister, if necessary in blood. It was a triumph for Harris's diplomacy, for the supreme political virtue of knowing exactly what one wants and using with dexterity anything or anyone which will help one secure it. 'The means I employ are honourable, and avowed . . . the objects I am aiming at cannot be misunderstood.' With skill and scholarship Mr. Cobban has demonstrated that the former probably, the latter certainly, was true.
PHILIP SANbEMAN
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