ABSTRACT
The Illuminate had vague ideas of world renewal by infiltration of the existing authorities. For the Dutch exiles, eager to return in triumph to their own country, the problem was more difficult, since the United Provinces did not enter the war until 1793, and the Jacobins of 1792, for all the talk of world revolution, hesitated to add to their enemies. Then the movement subsided, partly because the Gordon Riots aroused fears of the populace, partly because the more conservative reformers led by Burke, to prevent any real reallocation of political power, deflected attention by a reform of jobs, pensions, and sinecures. Though officially explained as having no application to neutral countries, the decree aroused the fears of conservatives everywhere and was seized upon as a promise of support by revolutionary sympathizers of all nationalities. The Rhineland was simultaneously aroused. In these hundred-odd tiny German states, as in Belgium, there was as yet no defined sense of political nationality.
