teen hundred thousand men had at one | mense national domains, and therefore time been enrolled by sea and land the security, for all practical purposes, under its banners; and at its close, a was merely nominal. The consequence million were still numbered in the rolls was, that the assignat fell to one-twelfth of the army. But of this great force of its real value; in other words, an only six hundred thousand were actu- assignat for twenty-four francs was ally under arms; the remainder en- worth only two francs; that is, a note cumbered the hospitals, or were scat- for a pound was worth only 1s. 8d. As tered in a sickly or dying state in the all the payments, both to and by govvillages on the line of the army's march. ernment, were made in this depreciThe disorder in the commissariat, and ated currency, and as it constituted the departments intrusted with the cloth- chief, and in many places the sole ciring and equipment of the troops, had culation of the country, the losses to risen to the highest pitch: hardly any creditors or receivers of money of every exertions could have provided for the description became enormous; and, in wants of such a multitude of armed fact, the public expenses were defrayed men, and the cupidity or selfishness of out of the chasm made in private forthe Revolutionary agents had diverted tunes. It was evident that such a state great part of the funds destined for of things could not continue permathese objects to the augmentation of nently; and accordingly the national their private fortunes. It increases our exhaustion appeared in the campaign admiration for the soldiers of the Re- of 1795, and the Republic would have public, when we recollect that their sunk under the failure of its financial triumphs were generally achieved with- resources in a few years, had not the out magazines, tents, or equipments of genius of Napoleon discovered a new any kind; that the armies, destitute of mode of maintaining the armies, and, everything, bivouacked in the most rigor- by making war maintain war, converted ous season equally with the mildest, and a suffering defensive into an irresistible that the innumerable multitudes who aggressive power. issued from its frontiers almost always provided for their daily wants from the country through which they passed. 110. Nothing could have enabled the French government to make head against such expenses, but the system of assignats, which in effect, for the time, gave them the disposal of all the wealth of France.* The funds on which this enormous paper circulation was based, embracing all the confiscated property in the kingdom, in lands, houses, and movables, were estimated at fifteen milliards of francs, or above £600,000,000 sterling; but in the distracted state of the country, few purchasers could be found for such im * The monthly expenses of the war had risen to 200,000,000 francs, or £8,000,000, while the income was only 60,000,000, or £2,400,000; an enormous deficit, amounting to £67,200,000 in the year, which was supplied only by the incessant issue of paper money, bearing, by law, a forced circulation. There were 7,500,000,000 of francs, or £300,000,000 in circulation; the sum in the treasury was still 500,000,000, or £20,000,000; so that the amount issued by government was eight milliards, or £320,000,000 sterling.-TOUL. v. 194; TH. vii. 239. 111. At the commencement of the campaign the Allies were an overmatch for the French at every point, and the superiority of their discipline was more especially evident in the movements and attacks of large masses. That their enterprises were not conducted with skill; that they suffered under the jealousies and divisions of the cabinets which directed their movements; and that, by adhering to the ruinous system of extending their forces, and a war of positions, they threw away all the advantages which might have arisen from the number and experience of their forces, must appear evident to the most careless observer. The fate of the campaign in Flanders was decided by the detachment of Jourdan, with forty thousand men from the Meuse, to reinforce the army of the Sambre; what, then, might have been expected, if Cobourg had early concentrated his forces for a vigorous attack in Flanders, or the immense masses which lay inactive on the Rhine been brought to bear on the general fortune of the campaign? 112. But it may be doubted whether, | army of Savoy to the Rhine; of Jourby any exertions, the allied cause could dan's corps to the Sambre; and of the have been finally made triumphant in garrison of Mayence to Nantes-the France at this period. The time for immediate causes of the successes in energetic measures was past; the re- Catalonia, the Palatinate, Flanders, and volutionary fever was burning with full La Vendée-successively took place, fury, and fifteen hundred thousand men without any corresponding movement were in arms to defend the Republic. By having been made in the troops opposed bringing up column after column to the to them, to reinforce the threatened attack; by throwing away with merci- quarters. Each division of the allied less prodigality the lives of the con- forces, delighted at being relieved from scripts; by sparing neither blood nor the pressure under which it had pretreasure to accomplish their objects; viously suffered, relapsed into a state by drawing without scruple upon the of inactivity, without ever recollecting wealth of one-half of France by confis- that, with an active and enterprising cation, and of the other by assignats, the enemy, a serious defeat at one point Committee of Public Salvation had pro- was a disaster at all. duced a force which was for the time unconquerable. By a more energetic and combined system of warfare, the Allies might have broken through the frontier on more than one point, and wrest-rounded, whereby it is enabled, with ed from the Republic her frontier fortresses; but they would probably have found, in the heart of the country, a resistance which would in the end have proved their ruin. What might have been easily done by vigorous measures in 1792 or 1793, could not have been accomplished by any exertions in 1794, after the great levies of the Convention had come into the field, and the energy of revolution was turned into military confidence by the successes which had concluded the preceding campaign. 114. The Archduke Charles has said, that the great superiority of France, in a military point of view, arises from the chain of fortresses with which it is sur equal facility, to throw delays in the way of an invasion of its own, and to find a solid base for an irruption into its neighbours' territories; and that the want of such a barrier on the right bank of the Rhine is the principal defect in the system of German defence. The campaign of 1794 affords a striking confirmation of this observation. After having driven the French forces, during the campaign of 1793, from the field, and compelled them to seek shelter in intrenched camps or fortified towns, the Allies were so much 113. It deserves notice, too, what impeded by the siege of the fortresses signal benefit accrued to France in this which lay in their road, that they were campaign from its central position, and compelled to halt in their career of sucthe formidable barrier of fortified towns cess; and France had time to complete with which it was surrounded. By pos- the vast armaments which afterwards sessing an interior, while the Allies were proved so fatal to Europe. When the compelled to act on an exterior line, the Republic, on the other hand, became French government was enabled to suc- the invading power in 1794, the want cour the weak parts of their frontier, and of any fortified towns to resist their could bring their troops to bear in over-progress enabled them to overrun Flanwhelming masses on one point; while their opponents, moving round a larger circumference, charged with the protection of different kingdoms, and regulated by distant and often discordant cabinets, were unable to make corresponding movements to resist them. Thus, the transference of the troops which conquered at Toulon to the Eastern Pyrenees; of the divisions of the ders, and drive the Allies in a few weeks beyond the Rhine. This consideration is of vital importance, both in the estimate of the relative power of France and the neighbouring states, and in all measures intended to restrain its ambitious projects. It was the same in ancient times. The Roman armies, unable to withstand the cavalry of Hannibal in the field, found a respite from their disasters, after the slaughter of numerable ranks of their defenders the Cannæ, in the numerous fortified towns with which Italy was studded. From the moment that the war from one of battles became one of sieges, the fortune of the Carthaginian conqueror began to waver; and the mighty torrent which had rolled with impetuous fury from the Ebro to the Tiber, was lost in surmounting the inconsiderable fortresses of Campania and Apulia. 115. There are few spectacles in nature so sublime as that of a people bravely combating for their liberties against a powerful and vindictive enemy. That spectacle was exhibited in the most striking manner by the French nation during this campaign. The same impartial justice which condemns with unmeasured severity the bloody internal, must admire the dignified and resolute external conduct of the Convention. With unbending firmness, though often with atrocious cruelty, they coerced alike internal revolt and foreign violence; and, selecting out of the in most worthy, laid the foundation of that illustrious school of military chiefs who afterwards sustained the fortunes of the empire. It is melancholy to be obliged to admit, that it was their cruelty which was one cause of their triumphs; and that the fortunes of the Republic might have sunk under its difficulties, but for the inflexible severity with which its government overawed the discontented. The iron rule of Terror undoubtedly drew out of the agonies of the state the means of its ultimate deliverance. The impartial justice of Providence apparently made that terrific period the means of punishing the national sins of both the contending parties; and while the sufferings of the empire were the worthy retribution of its cruelty, and the necessary consequences of its injustice, the triumphs to which they led brought deserved chastisement on those powers who had sought, in that suffering, the means of unjust aggrandisement. CHAPTER XVII. WAR IN POLAND. 1. PROVIDENCE has so interwoven | its ancient provinces. The kingdom of human affairs, that, when we wish to Poland formerly extended from the retrace the revolutions of a people, and Borysthenes to the Danube, and from to investigate the causes of their gran- the Euxine to the Baltic. The Sardeur or misfortunes, we are insensibly matia of the ancients, it embraced withconducted, step by step, to their cradle. in its bosom the original seat of those The slightest consideration of the his- nations which subverted the Roman tory of Poland must be sufficient to empire: Prussia, Moravia, Bohemia, prove that that great nation, always Hungary, the Ukraine, Courland, Livcombating, often victorious, but never onia, are all fragments of its mighty securing its conquests, never obtaining dominion. The Goths, who appeared the blessings of a stable government, as suppliants on the Danube, and were has from the earliest times been on the ferried across by Roman hands, never decline. It emerged from the shock to recede; the Huns, who under Attila which overthrew the Roman empire, spread desolation through the empire; valiant, powerful, and extensive; from the Sclavonians, who overran the greater that hour it has invariably drooped, part of Europe-emerged from its vast until at length it became the victim of and uncultivated plains. But its sub sequent progress has but ill correspond- | surface, the summit-level of the couned to such a commencement. While, try is very distinctly marked, from the in all other states, liberty, riches, power, and glory, have advanced with equal steps, and the victories of one age have contributed to the advancement of that which succeeded it, in Poland alone the greatest triumphs have been immediately succeeded by the greatest reverses; the establishment of internal freedom has led to nothing but external disaster, and the deliverer of Europe in one age was in the next swept from the book of nations. one side of which the waters flow to the Euxine, from the other to the Baltic Sea. This summit-level itself, however, is not in general a ridge, or range of hills, but a swampy expanse, in the marshes of which the principal streams of the country take their rise; and, as with the rivers Amazons and Orinoco in the pampas of South America, the surface between their sources is so flat that in floods they communicate with each other. This is particularly the case with the Pripecz, a tributary of the Dnieper, which in spring is con nected with the feeders of the Bug and the Niemen. The principal rivers which descend from the southern declivity of this marshy plateau are the Dniester and the Dnieper, with the great tributary of the latter, the Bug; to the north flows the Vistula, which, taking its rise in the Carpathian mountains, after being swelled by fifty tributary streams, such as the San, the Pilica, and the Narew, rolls its ample waves to the Baltic. One of these, the San, rises under the shade of a huge oak, which overhangs on the other side the fountains of the Theisse and of the Stry, which are among the principal sources of the Dniester. The Vartha and the Niemen traverse also the northern plains of Poland; and their waters, flowing in a bed but little depressed below the general surface of the adjacent country, frequently overflow, and convert the whole plain, to a considerable distance on either side, into a great lake. On the other hand, the Dniester and the Dnieper, and the other rivers which descend towards the Euxine, meander in deep beds, having steep banks of rock or gravel, which restrain their ample currents even in the greatest floods, and render the general sur face of the adjacent country comparatively dry and salubrious. 2. The name of Poland, derived from the word signifying a plain (pole), expresses its real geographical character. It consists almost entirely of an immense level surface, which extends with the exception only of a range of low hills that, to the south of Volhynia, branch out from the Carpathian mountains-from the shores of the Baltic to those of the Euxine. Part of this vast expanse is composed of rich alluvial soil, but the greater part of it is a sandy plain, of a dark red colour on the shores of the sea, but white in the interior of the country. Pomerania, part of Denmark, and nearly the whole of Prussia, formerly provinces of Poland, consist of the same sandy flat. The waves of the ocean, or of floods which, in former revolutions of the globe, have rolled over this wide extent of level ground, have strewed its surface with huge blocks of granite and other rocks foreign to the Polish territory, which have evidently been brought from a great distance; and in many places vast collections of bones of the elephant, the rhinorceros, and other tropical animals, as well as the mammoth, the mastodon, and other monsters, the race of which is now extinct upon the earth, are found, and attract the wonder alike of the illiterate peasant and learned observer of nature. This immense plain nowhere rises more than a few hundred feet above the level of the sea, and the as- 4. Poland has few minerals in its cent to the most elevated part is so bosom, a peculiarity which frees it gradual as to be imperceptible, save equally from the wealth consequent on from the direction of the rivers, which the working of mines, and the social are very numerous, and form a remark- depravity which such operations selable feature in the country. dom fail, in the end, to induce in their 3. Notwithstanding this general flat | train. For this defect, however, it has received more than a compensation | riches of agricultural produce. Already in the broad expanse of its level sur- it is considered as the granary of Euface, and the general fertility of its soil. rope; the banks of the Vistula are to The plains of the Ukraine, or of Poland the British empire, in seasons of dosouth of the ridge which divides the mestic scarcity, what those of the Nile flowing of its waters, have long been were to the ancient Romans. Wretched, celebrated for their extraordinary and however, is the cultivation, deplorable surpassing fertility, and like the Delta the condition of the serfs, by whose laof Egypt, or the plain of Mesopotamia, bours these noble crops are reared. yield the richest crops with very little Ploughs and harrows of the rudest concare from the husbandman. Podolia, struction turn up the soil; scarcely any also, on the southern declivity of Poland, manure enriches the fields; frequent hardly less rich, exhibits more varied and long-continued fallows alone reand agreeable features. Pleasant hills, store the exhausted fertility of nature. often crowned by beautiful groves, fill Raising the finest crops of red wheat, the whole province, which extends from the indigent husbandman lives only on the Dniester to the Boh, and is bound- black rye bread; water is his sole drink, ed on the north by the plains of Vol- though his hands reap extensive crops hynia, on the south-east by the steppes of barley; and the luxuries of animal of the Ukraine. These hills, which al- food and comfortable dwellings are unmost become mountains in the neigh- known to the peasantry inhabiting a bourhood of Medryz Zee, exhibit alter- country where the hand of nature has nately fertile valleys and healthful covered the earth with rich and boundpastures. The soil, where it is arable, less pastures, and a profusion of fine yields noble crops with hardly any cul- forests has furnished the most ample tivation; and so far back as the middle materials for the construction of houses. of the fifteenth century, Greece and the 6. To the general flat and uniform islands of the Archipelago were sup- character of Polish scenery, an exception plied by Podolian wheat, transported must be made in regard to that part to their shores in Venetian vessels. of the country where the Vistula takes The climate of this favoured province its rise. Numerous rocky eminences, is less severe than that of the other interspersed with limpid streams, there parts of Poland. While they are still ascend with a uniform slope towards the clothed with the garb of winter, the ver- Carpathian mountains, and their sumdure of spring has already appeared on mits are often crowned with venerable its sunny slopes. Melons, mulberries, castles and monasteries, which throw and other southern fruits, ripen with- an air of antiquity and grandeur over out care in the open air; and as sum- the scenery. It is there that Wawell, mer is free from the malaria which in- the once magnificent castle of the royal fests the plains of the Ukraine, so win- race of the Jagellons, looks down on ter is from its icy cold. the ancient capital of the mighty Polish empire, where its kings, so long taken from their race, were crowned; it is there that, adorned with numerous steeples, and splendid churches, and ancient edifices, Cracow lies stretched at the foot of the mountains in the val 5. To the north of the summit-level, in the plains watered by the Vistula and its tributary streams, the soil is less rich, and stands more in need of the artificial aid of draining and manure. But a very slight application of these advantages is sufficient to make it pro-ley of the Vistula. Everything in that duce the finest crops of wheat, barley, romantic region bespeaks the former oats, and rye; and if cultivated in a su- grandeur and present decay of Poland. perior manner, and opened up by canals, Beyond it, on a high mountain, stands railroads, and common roads, for which the monastery of Tyniec, one of the the level surface offers the greatest pos- richest and most ancient abbeys of the sible advantages, it is capable of being Benedictines in the country. On one made to rival the plain of Lombardy side is seen the picturesque mount of or the fields of Flanders in variety and | Kosciusko; to the south, the distant |