25. Their subsequent fate at Cayenne, 26. Renewed efforts of the Jacobins, 36. Reaction against the violent measures of the Reign of Terror, 33. Trial and condemnation of Romme and the Jacobin remnant, 34. Condemnation of Féraud's murderer. Disarming of the Faubourg-St- Antoine, and termination of the reign of the multitude, 35. Measures of the Convention after the fall of Robespierre, 40. Enormous depreciation in the value of the assignats, and public despair in 41. Changes in the laws, 42. Unsuccessful measures of the government to arrest the evil, 43. Further progress of humane measures, and abolition of the Revolutionary 44. Formation of a new constitution, ib. 45. General abandonment of democratic principles from the force of expe- 46. Generous conduct of the Duke of Orleans' younger sons, and indulgence 52. Great agitation in Paris, and throughout France, at these changes, HISTORY OF EUROPE. CHAPTER XIII. CAMPAIGN XIII. 1. between England. A CONTEST between France and England has, in every CHAP. age, been the greatest source of excitement to the people in both countries; but, at, no former period were their 1793. passions so strongly roused as at the commencement of the Vehemence Revolutionary war. Not only was national rivalry, the of all wars growth of centuries, revived, but. new and fiercer passions France and arose from the civil interests, which were brought into collision. The dominant party in England regarded the war with France, not merely as a contest with a rival power, in which glory or conquest was to be won, but as a struggle for existence, in which their lives, their fortunes, and their country, were at stake. The French Republicans looked upon the accession of England to the league of their enemies as the signal of deadly combat with the principles of freedom; and anticipated from defeat not only national humiliation, but individual ruin. The English nobility beheld in the conquests of the Republicans the dissemination of the principles of revolution and anarchy, the spread of infidelity, the reign of the guillotine; the French Jacobins saw in the victories of the Allies the near approach of moral retribution, the revenge of injury, the empire of the sword. VOL. III. A CHAP. 1793. 2. sion of opi French Re volution in Great Bri tain. No words can convey an adequate idea of the bitterness of party feeling which divided this country upon the breaking out of the war in 1793. "War to the palace, and peace Great divi- to the cottage," was the principle of the French Revolution. nion on the Its proclamation necessarily set the two classes of society throughout Europe at variance with each other; and instead of the ancient rivalry of kings, introduced the fiercer strife of the people. Like the Peloponnesian war, the contest thenceforth raged not only between nation and nation, but between interest and interest; a strife of opinion superseded that for glory; and in every province and in every city; numbers were to be found who watched the contending parties with opposite feelings, and hoped in the victory of foreign enenties for the downfall of domestic foes. England, as well as France,. had talent impatient of obscurity; ardour which demanded employment; ambition which sought distinction; passion which required excitation. To such men, the whole body of the aristocracy became an object of uncontrollable jealousy; and nothing short of the equality proclaimed by the French rulers seemed the fit destiny of society. Hence the division of the country into Aristocrats and Democrats; the introduction of political-hatred into the bosom of families, and the dissolution of many friendships which all the misfortunes of life could never have severed. Time heals almost all other sorrows, absence softens the worst causes of irritation; but experience has proved, that the political divisions of 1793 never were forgotten by those who were of an age to feel their influence.1 1 Scott's Napoleon, i. 280. 3. against the Whigs. The breaking out of the war formed a new subject of Arguments discord between the contending parties. On the part of war by the the Opposition, it was argued, that to plunge into a desperate conflict, for so inconsiderable an object as the opening of the Scheldt, was to incur a certain and heavy loss on account of a most trifling cause of complaint: that the whole trade with the United Provinces was not worth one year's expense of the contest; and that, while it was easy to see what England had to lose, it was difficult to conceive what she could possibly gain from the strife she had so unnecessarily provoked: that if the spread of revolutionary opinions was the evil which, in reality, was dreaded, nothing could be imagined so likely to increase the danger as engaging in a war, because it is during its perils that the interchange of opinions is most rapid, and prejudice most certainly yields to the force of necessity : that thoughts are not to be confined by walls, nor freedom fenced in by bayonets that the moral agents requisite for carrying the designs of tyranny into execution become the instruments for its own destruction.; and that the despots who now sought to extinguish freedom in France would find, like the Eastern Sultaun, that the forces they had brought up to avert the plague were the means of spreading its contagion through all the provinces of the empire. CHAP. XIII. 1793. the Tories. On the other hand, the Tories maintained that the war. was both just and expedient-just, because fire. Dutch, the And for it by ancient allies of Britain, were threatened with invasion, and the destruction of rights on which the existence of their Republic depended; expedient, because experience had proved that such an aggression could not be permitted without ruin to the vital interests of Britain: that such a violation of neutral rights came with a peculiarly bad grace from France, that power having, only ten years before, successfully interfered on the footing of ancient treaties, to prevent that very act in regard to the Scheldt navigation on the part of Austria, which was now threatened by her own forces that if Great Britain was to sit by and tamely behold the rights of her allies, and of all neutral powers, sacrificed by her ancient rival, there would soon be an end, not only to her foreign influence, but to her internal security that it was evident that the Republicans, who had now acquired the government of France, were impelled by the thirst for universal dominion, and would never rest till, by the aid of revolution in the |