Harris arrived in Spain in December 1768 and became secretary to the British embassy at Madrid,and was left as chargéd'affaires at that court on the departure of Sir James Grey in August 1769 until the arrival of George Pitt,afterwards Lord Rivers. This interval gave him his opportunity;he discovered the intention of Spain to attack the Falkland Islands,and was instrumental in thwarting it by putting on a bold countenance. As a reward he was appointed minister ad interim at Madrid.
Envoy-extraordinary in Berlin (1772 –1776)
In January 1772 Harris was appointed envoy-extraordinary to Prussia in Berlin,arriving on 21 February. Within a month of his arrival he became the first diplomat to hear of Frederick the Great's partition of Poland with the cooperation of Russia.[2] His service in this office was undistinguished but he made an impression on Frederick,who requested that he be reappointed.[2]
Marriage (1777)
Harris married Harriet Maria Amyand (1761 –20 August 1830[1]),the youngest daughter of Sir George Amyand MP (1720 –1766) and Anna Maria Korteen,[1][2] and sister of Anna Maria Amyand,who married Sir Gilbert Elliot (later Lord Minto).[4]
Rev. Hon. Thomas Alfred Harris (24 March 1782 - 15 December 1823) m. Maria Markham,daughter of Very Rev. George Markham
Envoy-extraordinary in St Petersburg (1777 –1783)
In autumn of 1777,Harris travelled to Russia to be envoy-extraordinary to Russia,an office he held until September 1783. At St Petersburg he made his reputation,for he managed to get on with Catherine II,in spite of her predilections for France,and steered adroitly through the accumulated difficulties of the first Armed Neutrality. He was made a Knight of the Bath at the end of 1778;but in 1782 he returned home owing to ill-health,and was appointed by his friend,Charles James Fox,to be minister at The Hague,an appointment confirmed after some delay by William Pitt the Younger (1784).
The Hague (1784 –1788)
He did very great service in furthering Pitt's policy of maintaining England's influence on the Continent by the arms of her allies,and held the threads of the diplomacy which ended in the king of Prussia's overthrowing the Patriot republican party in the Dutch Republic,which was inclined to France,and re-establishing the stadtholderWilliam V,Prince of Orange in his dictatorial powers. As envoy,Harris immersed himself in Dutch politics from 1784 on and managed to become the de facto leader of the Orangist party. He and his French counterpart,Charles Olivier de Saint-Georges de Vérac,the French ambassador to the States General of the Netherlands,fought a secret war with the help of agents of influence,like the then-Grand Pensionary of the province of Zeeland,Laurens Pieter van de Spiegel,and the confidential agent Hendrik August van Kinckel,and spies like Pierre Auguste Brahain Ducange.[5] Harris returned to London in secret at the end of May 1787,where he managed to convince the Cabinet to endorse a policy of subversion in the Dutch Republic,to be funded by £70,000 from a slush fund,laundered through the king's Civil list. Harris agents used the money to bribe regiments of the Dutch States Army in the pay of the Patriot States of Holland,that had deposed the stadtholder as Captain-General of that Army,to defect. The counter-measures of the States of Holland precipitated a political crisis that prompted the States to ask for French mediation. The arrest of Princess Wilhelmina,the wife of the stadtholder,on 28 June 1782,gave Prussia and Great Britain an opening to muscle in on this diplomatic mediation,and eventually offered an excuse to intervene militarily.[6] In recognition of his services he was created Baron Malmesbury,of Malmesbury in the County of Wiltshire on 19 September 1788,[7] and permitted by the King of Prussia to bear the Prussian eagle on his arms,and by the Prince of Orange to use his motto "Je maintiendrai".
In 1786 he told Pitt that France was "an ambitious and restless rival power,on whose good faith we never can rely,whose friendship never can be deemed sincere,and of whose enmity we have the most to apprehend."[8] He also wrote to Robert Murray Keith:"...from everything I hear and observe,there is not the least doubt that France is working hard at the formation of a League,the object of which,is the Destruction of England."[9]
The historian Paul Langford has claimed that Harris "proved brilliantly effective as a focus for Orangist and anti-French feeling,and as the agent of Anglo-Prussian cooperation".[10]
Wilderness (1788 –1793)
He returned to England and took an anxious interest in politics,which ended in his seceding from the Whig party with the Duke of Portland in 1793.
French Revolutionary War (1793 –1797)
In that year he was sent by Pitt,but in vain,to try to keep Prussia true to the first coalition against France. In 1794,he was sent to Brunswick to solicit the hand of the unfortunate Princess Caroline of Brunswick for the Prince of Wales,to marry her as proxy,and conduct her to her husband in England. For once his diplomatic skills seem to have failed him:confronted with Caroline's bizarre manner and appearance,he sent no advance word to the Prince,who was so shocked by the sight of his future wife that he asked Malmesbury to bring him brandy.[11]
French peace missions
Glorious reception of the Ambassador of Peace,on his entry into Paris by James Gillray (1796).
Due to bad roads in France,Malmesbury reached Paris on 22 October 1796,a week after leaving London. This led the foremost opponent of peace with France,Edmund Burke,to quip that his journey was slow because "he went the whole way on his knees".[12]
Later life (1798 –1820)
Salisbury Cathedral,Monument to James Harris,1st Earl Malmesbury
After 1797,he became partially deaf,and quit diplomacy altogether;but for his long and eminent services he was on 29 December 1800 created Earl of Malmesbury and Viscount FitzHarris of Hurn Court in the County of Southampton.[13]
He now became a sort of political Nestor,consulted on foreign policy by successive foreign ministers,trusted by men of the most different ideas in political crises,and above all the confidant,and for a short time after Pitt's death almost the political director,of Canning. Younger men were also wont to go to him for advice,and Lord Palmerston particularly,who was his ward,was tenderly attached to him,and owed many of his ideas on foreign policy directly to his teaching. His later years were free from politics,and till his death on 21 November 1820 he lived very quietly and almost forgotten.
As a statesman,Malmesbury had an influence among his contemporaries which is scarcely to be understood from his writings,but which must have owed much to personal charm of manner and persuasiveness of tongue;as a diplomatist,he seems to have deserved his reputation,and shares with Macartney,Auckland and Whitworth the credit of raising diplomacy from a profession in which only great nobles won the prizes to a career opening the path of honour to ability. One historian called him "the greatest English diplomat of the eighteenth century."[15] Paul Langford has claimed that Malmesbury "was by any standards a brilliant diplomat as well as an experienced one. Though he was not disposed to undervalue himself,neither were others;Talleyrand considered him the ablest British diplomat of the age and certainly his achievement at the Hague was to sustain such a judgement".[16]
Malmesbury remarked that it was "a truth inculcated into John Bull with his mother's milk,viz. that France is our natural enemy".[17] He said on another occasion that "The history of the present century afforded repeated proofs,that the English fought and conquered less for themselves than for the sake of their allies,and to preserve that equilibrium of power,on which the fate of all Europe depends".[18]
Malmesbury did not publish anything himself,except an account of the Dutch revolution,and an edition of his father's works,but his important Diaries (1844) and Letters (1870) were edited by his grandson.
↑ Alfred Cobban, Ambassadors and Secret Agents: The Diplomacy of the First Earl of Malmesbury at The Hague (London, 1954), p. 89.
↑ Isabel de Madariaga, Britain, Russia and the armed neutrality of 1780: Sir James Harris's mission to St Petersburg during the American Revolution (Yale University Press, 1962), p. 204.
William V was a prince of Orange and the last stadtholder of the Dutch Republic. He went into exile to London in 1795. He was furthermore ruler of the Principality of Orange-Nassau until his death in 1806. In that capacity he was succeeded by his son William.
Gilbert Elliot-Murray-Kynynmound, 1st Earl of Minto,, known as Sir Gilbert Elliott, 4th Baronet until 1797, and The Lord Minto from 1797 to 1814, was a British diplomat and politician who sat in the House of Commons between 1776 and 1795. He was viceroy of the short-lived Anglo-Corsican Kingdom from 1793 to 1796 and went on to become Governor-General of India between July 1807 and 1813.
James Howard Harris, 3rd Earl of Malmesbury, GCB, PC, styled Viscount FitzHarris from 1820 to 1841, was a British statesman of the Victorian era.
Earl of Malmesbury is a title in the Peerage of Great Britain. It was created in 1800 for the diplomat James Harris, 1st Baron Malmesbury. The son of the grammarian and politician James Harris, he served as Ambassador to Spain, Prussia, Russia and France and also represented Christchurch in the House of Commons. Harris had been created Baron Malmesbury, of Malmesbury in the County of Wiltshire, in 1788. He was made Viscount FitzHarris, of Hurn Court in the County of Southampton, at the same time as he was given the earldom. The earldom and viscountcy were the last creations in the peerage of Great Britain, future titles being made in the peerage of the United Kingdom which took effect three days later.
The Patriottentijd was a period of political instability in the Dutch Republic between approximately 1780 and 1787. Its name derives from the Patriots faction who opposed the rule of the stadtholder, William V, Prince of Orange, and his supporters who were known as Orangists.
Alfred Bert Carter Cobban was an English historian and Professor of French History at University College, London, who along with prominent French historian François Furet advocated a classical liberal view of the French Revolution.
Princess Wilhelmina of Prussia was the consort of William V of Orange and the de facto leader of the dynastic party and counter-revolution in the Netherlands. She was the daughter of Prince Augustus William of Prussia and Duchess Luise of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. Wilhelmina was the longest-serving Princess consort of Orange.
Count and Burgrave Christopher Delphicus zu Dohna-Carwinden was a German-born soldier and diplomat.
James Edward Harris, 2nd Earl of Malmesbury was a British peer, styled Viscount FitzHarris from 1800 to 1820.
Sir George Cornewall, 2nd Baronet of Moccas Court, Herefordshire, was a British politician who sat in the House of Commons between 1774 and 1807.
Charles Amyand Harris (1813–1874) was a priest in the Church of England and Bishop of Gibraltar.
The Second Stadtholderless Period or Era is the designation in Dutch historiography of the period between the death of stadtholder William III on March 19, 1702, and the appointment of William IV as stadtholder and captain general in all provinces of the Dutch Republic on May 2, 1747. During this period the office of stadtholder was left vacant in the provinces of Holland, Zeeland, and Utrecht, though in other provinces that office was filled by members of the House of Nassau-Dietz during various periods. During the period the Republic lost its status as a great power and its primacy in world trade. Though its economy declined considerably, causing deindustralization and deurbanization in the maritime provinces, a rentier-class kept accumulating a large capital fund that formed the basis for the leading position the Republic achieved in the international capital market. A military crisis at the end of the period caused the fall of the States-Party regime and the restoration of the Stadtholderate in all provinces. However, though the new stadtholder acquired near-dictatorial powers, this did not improve the situation.
Friedrich Wilhelm von Thulemeyer or Frederick William von Thulemeier was born or baptized on November 9, 1735. He died July 6, 1811, also in Berlin. In 1763 he was sent by Frederick the Great as a diplomat in the Republic of the Seven United Provinces. In 1784/85 he was one of the architects of a trade relations between the US and Prussia. In 1788 he became justice minister under Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia. Of particular importance is - even today - his collection of music prints.
Sir Arthur Paget GCB, PC was a British diplomat and politician.
Sir George Amyand, 1st Baronet was a British Whig politician, physician and merchant.
Sir James Hudson GCB was a British diplomat. He is noted for his time as British ambassador to Turin between 1852 and 1863, as an italophile and strong supporter of Italian unification, and a collector of Italian art.
The Prussian invasion of Holland was a Prussian military campaign in September–October 1787 to restore the Orange stadtholderate in the Dutch Republic against the rise of the democratic Patriot movement.
Charles Olivier de Saint-Georges, 4th Marquis of Vérac was a French military officer and diplomat of the French Ancien Régime.
Hendrik August baron van Kinckel, born as Heinrich August Künckelin , though of German extraction, was a Dutch naval officer and reformer, diplomat, and British confidential agent.
Karl Wolfgang Schweizer is a historian specialising in eighteenth century European history.
References
Jeremy Black, Natural and Necessary Enemies. Anglo-French relations in the Eighteenth Century (Duckworth, 1986)
Alfred Cobban, Ambassadors and Secret Agents: The Diplomacy of the First Earl of Malmesbury at The Hague (Jonathan Cape, 1954).
John Ehrman, The Younger Pitt, 3 vols. (1969–96).
Paul Langford, The Eighteenth Century 1688-1815 (Adam and Charles Black, 1976).
Isabel de Madariaga, Britain, Russia and the armed neutrality of 1780: Sir James Harris's mission to St Petersburg during the American Revolution (Yale University Press, 1962).
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