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By Root 1010 0

named the Semiramis of the North and the world would come to know as Catherine the Great. With a territorial appetite like that of Louis XIV, she wanted to expand her borders over Austria and Poland, from which she had already taken a piece and was to take two more in the three partitions of that country. Another of her aims was to overthrow the Ottoman regime in order to revive the Byzantine Empire under Russian patronage. Most of all she wanted a warm-water base in the Mediterranean. When Malmesbury was Ambassador in St. Petersburg before he came to The Hague, he actually succeeded in persuading his government to offer Catherine England’s precious Minorca if Russia would enter an offensive and defensive alliance and would succeed in mediating a just and honorable peace among Britain, France and Spain. Although it would have given her the prize she so long coveted, Catherine resisted the temptation because she suspected a trick in which too much would be asked of her in return, or, as she put it in a phrase that became a byword in diplomacy, “La mariée est trop belle. On veut me tromper.” (The bride is too beautiful. They want to deceive me.)

Holland was not alone in resentment of British interference with trade. “Every nation in Europe,” wrote Benjamin Franklin to the Committee of Secret Correspondence, “wishes to see Britain humbled, having all in their time been offended by her insolence.” Catherine wanted a league to voice this sentiment not only because joint force would obviously be stronger than single, but because she did not wish to stand out herself as too anti-British. She wanted to be accepted as mediator in what had swollen from a mere colonial to a general war: Catherine saw her mediation as enhancing her prestige, of which, like all Russian rulers, she was a little uncertain. Besides, like everyone else, she wanted a head start in American trade, which, also like everyone else, she expected to be a bountiful cascade as soon as the Americans were free of the British. She wanted, too, to increase exports to take advantage of the increased demand by the belligerents for Russian goods, mainly naval stores which were being shipped to France and Spain by the Dutch. Two fuses—armed neutrality and the still-hidden treaty of commerce—were creeping toward each other. When they met, as soon they would, their junction was to light the spark of war.

WHEN two Russian ships were seized by Spain off Gibraltar while penetrating a declared but not substantiated Spanish blockade, the Empress determined that she was the woman to bring order out of the maritime anarchy. She proclaimed her purpose on February 29, 1780, laying down five principles of neutrality which subscribers to the League would be expected to defend. Three of these specified that naval stores were to be exempted from contraband as before; that a declared blockade of a given port or ports would only be recognized if the blockading power assigned sufficient force to make it physically effective; that neutral vessels could navigate freely from port to port along the coast of belligerent nations. The remaining two principles concerned the property of belligerents in relation to contraband. Sweden and Denmark joined Russia as adherents of the League, announcing they would use their naval forces to protect their own ships under the declared terms. In the Netherlands, which had been invited to join, the League immediately became a divisive issue, setting Amsterdam against the Orangists and every faction at odds with every other. No agreement could be reached for eight months. The known unreadiness of the Dutch Navy to face British retaliation if the Netherlands opted for armed defense of neutrality was cause enough for hesitation. Amsterdam, determined to protect her commerce, was able to extract from the States of Holland a vote for adherence, but when at first the States General accepted it, the provinces of Zeeland, Gelderland and Utrecht protested. Under their pressure and the storms raised by Sir Joseph Yorke, who denounced the vote as a violation of the Treaty