(Private.) Vienna, Sept. 22nd, 1794.
MY DEAREST BROTHER,
The course of this last week has been employed--as you will have
seen from our despatch--in very long, but fruitless arguments on
our parts. The proposal which we send to you, has no other
recommendation than that of its having been strenuously resisted
by us, and steadily persisted in by them. If the fact really was,
as they are disposed to consider it, that England--at no risk and
no expense--could, in the shape of this guarantee, furnish means to
Austria, without which they must consider themselves as beat, and
act too under that impression, to their own certain ruin, and to
the great probable danger of Holland; if, I say, all this mischief
could be prevented without any real expense to England, the
question would seem to me very different from what it now is. But,
I confess, that I have not been able to make out of their
conversation on this subject any of that security on these points
which they must insist upon. They say, provision can be made by
which the interest of this money can be punctually secured, to be
paid strictly when due to the commissaries of the English army, or
any other persons appointed to receive it; yet what those
provisions are which provide for that security, I do not make out,
nor do they seem able to describe. I state to them that Mr. Pitt
must find ways and means for the payment of the interest of this
loan, which must increase the first shape of our annual expenses,
whether they are afterwards honestly repaid or not; but they
maintain that M. Desardroui can settle this somehow or other,
though how they have not by any means explained; perhaps M.
Desardroui has been more fortunate with Mr. Pitt.
One considerable difficulty in regard to this proposition seems to
be the influence which this loan might have upon their wish to
regain the Low Countries--a wish which we already think too weak in
their minds, and which would probably become weaker from the
reflection that the income of those revenues was already mortgaged
for a considerable sum. It was with a view to this that I dropped
to them the notion of their giving a larger security, and asking a
smaller loan, as well as complying with the requisitions of
augmented force and British command. The general security you see
they do consent to give; but, until I hear some more distinct
explanation, I shall still fear that they mean to throw the whole
security upon the Netherlands. They are still quarrelling more
every day with everything that is Prussian: they have stopped a
large magazine of blue cloth from Prussia to Switzerland, which
they say they know is destined to France; and the King of Prussia
threatens, in consequence, to stop some of their supplies in their
passage to their armies. Thugut said of the King of Prussia to-day,
with some truth and some humour, that all he wanted was to save the
whole of his army, to conquer Poland without the loss of a man, and
in reward to receive from us a pension of a million and a half per
annum. If half that sum would purchase from him thirty thousand
troops absolutely at our disposal, to make with British, Hessian
and Dutch an army under English orders of one hundred thousand men,
for the side of Holland; and that the other half--viz.:
L700,000--given in the way of subsidy to Austria, could give it
good heart to make a vigorous offensive campaign, I know not
whether my inclinations would not lead me to the experiment; but
their wants here are so great, and their resources, or at least
their spirit and exertions, so reduced, that the prospect is
certainly very discouraging. They seem full of new fears about the
Turks, and express much expectation that our Minister at
Constantinople will make great efforts to keep all quiet there.
I believe I told you there were apprehensions of the Poles, under
Kosciusko, breaking with the Austrians. A small affair had taken
place, but it is said to be amicably settled, and to be, for the
present, safe on that side. We are anxiously expecting our
permission to return; and I depend now upon seeing you so soon,
that I will not unnecessarily protract this letter.
I know not who you are sending here; but we have taken great pains
to keep alive in them here the most favourable dispositions that we
could; and as far as appearances can be depended on--if the
pecuniary demands were out of the question--nothing can be more
promising than their general language and professions are, of
earnestly desiring to establish the most intimate union between the
two Courts.
God bless you, my dearest brother.