But though Rubens had painted and the firm of Plantin had printed and grown rich, the Scheldt was all the time rolling down to the sea with scarcely one sail upon it; and the shipping trade of Antwerp was still at the mercy of the Dutch when the eighteenth century came in. The Treaty of Utrecht gave the Catholic Netherlands to Austria, but did not free the Scheldt. On the contrary, the stipulations of the Treaty of Münster were confirmed; and when in 1785, a century since Parma took Antwerp, Joseph II. demanded the opening of the great river, this same Treaty of Münster was unrolled as a reply. Thus, when the French Revolution came, and the army of the Republic took possession of the Austrian Netherlands, the Scheldt had been blocked and the shipping trade of Antwerp ruined for more than 200 years. In November, 1792, the Convention declared the Scheldt a free river, and ordered its Generals to carry out this declaration by force of arms against the Dutch. Mr. Pitt was ready to remain neutral in the war between France and Austria; but to this infringement of the Treaties of Münster and Utrecht, which had given the exclusive navigation of the Scheldt to the Dutch, he would not agree. Apart from the question of treaty rights, that the coast-line from the Scheldt westwards, with Antwerp at one end and Dunkirk at the other, and from the Scheldt northwards to the Texel, should be in the hands of France suggested a constant danger of invasion; to say nothing of possible injury to the commerce of England from the restrictions which an unfriendly Power might place on English trade with Antwerp, if Antwerp, as was certain, became once more a great seaport when the Scheldt was free. England was about to recognize the Republic when this question of Holland and the Scheldt made war inevitable. Thus once more Antwerp was the hinge on which the peace of Europe turned.