On one occasion five towns voted in the states of Holland for withholding the quota of their province.

Great Britain, in July 1779, demanded of the states-general the succor stipulated in the treaties of 1678 and the separate article of 1716; but they denied that any case under the treaties had arisen, and insisted that England might not at will disregard one treaty and claim the benefit of others.

While the British were complaining that nine or ten American merchant vessels had entered the port of Amsterdam, a new cause of irritation arose. Near the end of July, Paul Jones, a Scot by birth, in the service of the United States, sailed from l'Orient as commander of a squadron, consisting of the Poor Richard of forty guns, many of them unserviceable; the Alliance of thirty-six guns, both American ships-ofwar; the Pallas, a French frigate of thirty-two; and the Vengeance, a French brig of twelve guns. They ranged the western coast of Ireland, turned Scotland, and, cruising off Flamborough Head, descried the British merchant fleet from the Baltic, under the convoy of the Serapis of forty-four guns and the Countess of Scarborough of twenty guns.

An hour after sunset, on the twenty-third of September, the Serapis, having a great superiority in strength, engaged the Poor Richard. Paul Jones, after suffering exceedingly in a contest of an hour and a half within musket-shot, bore down upon his adversary, whose anchor he hooked to his own quarter. The muzzles of their guns touched each other's sides. Jones could use only three nine-pounders beside muskets from the round-tops, but combustible matters were thrown into every part of the Serapis, which was on fire no less than ten or twelve times. There were moments when both ships were on fire. After a two-hours' conflict in the first watch of the night, the Serapis struck its flag. Jones raised his pendant on the captured frigate, and the next day had but time to transfer to it his wounded men and his crew before the Poor Richard went down. The French frigate engaged and captured the Countess of Scarborough. The Alliance, which from a distance had raked the Serapis during the action, not without injuring the Poor Richard, had not a man injured. On the fourth of October the squadron entered the Texel with its prizes.

The British ambassador, of himself and again under instructions, reclaimed the captured British ships and their crews, "who had been taken by the pirate Paul Jones of Scotland, a rebel and a traitor." "They," he insisted, "are to be treated as pirates whose letters of marque have not emanated from a sovereign power." The grand pensionary would not apply the name of pirate to officers bearing the commissions of congress. In spite of the stadholder, the squadron enjoyed the protection of a neutral port. Under an antedated commission from the French king, the flag of France was raised over the two prizes and every ship but the Alliance; and, four days before the end of the year, Paul Jones with his English captures left the Texel.

An American frigate, near the end of September, entered the port of Bergen with two rich prizes. Yielding to the British envoy at Copenhagen, Bernstorff, the Danish minister, seized the occasion to publish an ordinance forbidding the sale of prizes until they should have been condemned in a court of admiralty of the nation of the privateer; and he slipped into the ordinance the declaration that, as the king of Denmark had recognised neither the independence nor the flag of America, its vessels could not be suffered to bring their prizes into Danish harbors. The two which had been brought into Bergen were set free; but, to avoid continual reclamations, two others, which in December were taken to Christiansand, were only forced to leave the harbor.

Wrapt up in the belief that he had "brought the empress to the verge of standing forth as the professed friend of Great Britain," Harris thought he had only to meet her objection of his having acted without instructions; and, at his instance, George III., in November, by an autograph letter, entreated her armed mediation against the house of Bourbon. "I admire," so he addressed her, "the grandeur of your talents, the nobleness of your sentiments, and the extent of your intelligence." "The mere show of naval force could break up the league formed against me, and maintain the balance of power which this league seeks to destroy." A writing from Harris, in which he was lavish of flattery, accompanied the letter; and he offered, unconditionally, an alliance with Great

Britain, including even a guarantee against the Ottoman Porte.

The answer was prepared by Panin without delay. The empress loves peace, and therefore refuses an armed intervention, which could only prolong the war. She holds the time ill chosen for a defensive alliance, since England is engaged in a war not appertaining to possessions in Europe; but, if the court of London will offer terms which can serve as a basis of reconciliation between the belligerent powers, she will eagerly employ her mediation.

In very bad humor, Harris rushed to Potemkin for consolation. "What can have operated so singular a revolution?" demanded he, with eagerness and anxiety. Potemkin, cajoling him, replied: "Count Panin times his councils with address; my influence is at an end."

The Russian envoy at London, and the envoys of Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Prussia, delivered memorials to the British government. To detach Russia from the other complainants, Harris, in January 1780, gave a written promise "that the navigation of the subjects of the empress should never be interrupted by vessels of Great Britain."

The spirit of moderation prevailed in the councils of the Netherlands. Even the province of Holland had unreservedly withdrawn its obnoxious demands. On the evening before the twenty-seventh of December 1779, seventeen Dutch merchant vessels, laden with hemp, iron, pitch, and tar, left the Texel under the escort of five ships-of-war, commanded by the Count de Bylandt. In the English channel, on the morning of the thirtieth, they descried a British fleet, by which they were surrounded just before sunset. The Dutch admiral refusing to permit his convoy to be visited, Fielding, the British commander, replied that it would then be done by force. During the parley, night came on; and twelve of the seventeen ships, taking advantage of the darkness and a fair wind, escaped through the British lines to French ports. The English shallop, which the next morning at nine would have visited the remaining five ships, was fired upon. At this, the British flag-ship and two others fired on the Dutch flag-ship. The ship was hit, but no one was killed or wounded. "Let us go

down," said the Dutch crews to one another, "rather than fall into a shameful captivity;" but their admiral, considering that the British force was more than three times greater than his own, after returning the broadside, struck his flag. Fielding carried the five merchant ships as prizes into Portsmouth.

This outrage on the Netherlands tended to rouse and unite all parties and all provinces. But another power beside England had disturbed neutral rights. Fearing that supplies might be carried to Gibraltar, Spain had given an order to bring into Cadiz all neutral ships bound with provisions for the Mediterranean, and to sell their cargoes to the highest bidder. In the last part of the year 1779 the order had been applied to the Concordia, a Russian vessel carrying wheat to Barcelona. Harris, who received the news in advance, hurried to Potemkin with a paper, in which he proved from this example what terrible things might be expected from the house of Bourbon if they should acquire maritime superiority. On reading this paragraph, Potemkin cried out: "You have the empress now. She abhors the inquisition, and will never suffer its precepts to be exercised on the high seas." A strong memorial was drawn up under the inspection of the empress herself; and a reference to the just reproaches of the courts of Madrid and Versailles against Great Britain for troubling the liberty of commerce was added by her own express order.

Hardly had the Spanish representative at Petersburg forwarded the memorial by a courier to his government when letters from the Russian consul at Cadiz announced that the St. Nicholas, bearing the Russian flag and bound with corn to Malaga, had been brought into Cadiz, its cargo disposed of by auction, and its crew treated with inhumanity. The empress felt this second aggression as a deliberate outrage on her flag; and, following the impulses of her own mind, she seized the opportunity to adopt, seemingly on the urgency of Great Britain, a general measure for the protection of the commerce of Russia as a neutral power against all the belligerents and on every sea. She preceded the measure by signing an order for arming fifteen ships of the line and five frigates for service early in the spring.

She further signed letters, prepared by her private secre

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tary, to her envoys in Sweden, Denmark, and the Hague, before she informed her minister for foreign affairs of what had been done. A Russian courier was expedited to Stockholm, and thence to Copenhagen, the Hague, Paris, and Madrid. On the twenty-second of February 1780, Potemkin announced the measure to Harris, by the special command of the empress. "The ships," said the prince, "will be supposed to protect the Russian trade against every power, but they are meant to chastise the Spaniards, whose insolence the empress cannot brook." Harris "told him that it was no more than the system of giving protection to trade, suggested last year by the three northern courts, now carried into execution." Potemkin, professing to be "almost out of humor with his backwardness to admit the great advantage England would derive from the step," rejoined: "I am just come from the empress; it is her particular order that I tell it to you. She commanded me to lose no time in finding you out. She said she knew it would give you pleasure; and, beside myself, you are at this moment the only person acquainted with her design." He ended by urging Harris to despatch his messenger immediately with the news; and accordingly the measure was reported to the British government by its own envoy as a friendly act performed at its own request.

Before the dispatches of Harris were on the road, the conduct of the affair was intrusted to Panin, who was suffering from a disease which was bringing him to the grave. The last deed of the dying statesman was his best.

To Frederic, Goertz made his report: "Everything will depend on the reply of the court of Spain; at so important a moment, your majesty has the right to speak to it with frankness." "There will result from the intrigue a matter the execution of which no power has thus far been able to permit itself to think of. All have believed it necessary to establish and to fix a public law for neutral powers in a maritime war; the moment has come for attaining that end."

These letters reached Frederic by express; and on the fourteenth of March, by the swiftest messenger, he instructed his minister at Paris as follows: "Immediately on receiving the present order you will demand a particular audience of