XIII. 1793. 12th July. 14th July. 30th Aug. CHAP. towns, and territories which belonged to them at the commencement of the war, and which the enemy may have taken during its continuance." A similar treaty was entered into with the court of the two Sicilies, and with Prussia, in which the clauses, prohibiting all exportation to France, and preventing the trade of neutrals With it, were the same as in the Russian treaty. Treaties of the same tenor were concluded in the course of the summer with the Emperor of Germany and the King of 26th Sept. Portugal. Thus was all Europe arrayed in a great league against Republican France, and thus did the regicides of that country, as the first fruits of their cruel triumph, find themselves excluded from the pale of civilised nations. It will appear in the sequel how many and what unheard-of disasters broke up this great confederacy how courageous some were in adhering to their engagements; how weak and dastardly others were in deserting them; and how firmly and nobly Great Martens, Britain alone persevered to the end, and never laid down her arms till she had accomplished all the objects of the xxx. 1032, war, and fulfilled to the very letter all the obligations 1034, 1048, she had contracted to any, even the humblest, of the Allied powers.1 v. 469, 473, 483, 519. Parl. Hist. 1058. 18. signs of Russia. But while all Europe thus resounded with the note of Secret de military preparation against France, Russia had other and more interested designs in view. Amidst the general consternation at the triumphs of the French Republicans, Catherine conceived that she would be permitted to pursue, without molestation, her ambitious designs against Poland. She constantly represented the disturbances in that kingdom as the fruit of revolutionary propagandism, which it was indispensable to crush in the first instance; and it was easy to see that it was for the banks of the Vistula, not the Seine, that her military preparations were, in the outset at least, intended. The ambitious views of Prussia were also, as will fully appear in the sequel, strongly turned in the same direction; CHAP. 1793. and thus, in the very commencement of a war which required the concentrated effort of all Europe, and might by such an effort have been speedily brought to a successful termination, were the principal powers already 1 Hard. ii. distracted by separate interests, and unjustifiable projects 198, 199. of individual aggrandisement.1 19. between the trians. Nor was it only the ambitious projects of Russia and Prussia against the independence of Poland, which Divisions already gave ground for gloomy augury as to the issue of Prussians the war. Its issue was more immediately affected by the and Ausjealousy between Austria and Prussia, which now broke out in the most undisguised manner, and occasioned such a division of the Allied forces as effectually prevented any cordial or effective co-operation continuing to exist between them. The Prussian cabinet, mortified at the lead which the Imperial generals took in the common operations, insisted upon the formation of two independent German armies, one composed of Prussians, the other of Austrians, to one or other of which the forces of all the minor states should be joined: those of Saxony Hanover, and Hesse, being grouped round the standards. of Prussia; those of Bavaria, Würtemberg, Suabia, the Palatinate, and Franconia, following the eagles of Austria. By this means, all unity of action between the two grand Allied armies was broken up, at the very time when it was most required to meet the desperate and concentrated energy of revolutionary fervour; while the zeal of all the subordinate nations was irretrievably cooled at finding themselves thus parcelled out between the two great military powers, whose preeminence already gave them so much disquietude; and compelled against their will to serve under the standards 2 Hard. ii. of empires from whom many of them apprehended greater 200, 202. danger than from the common enemy.2 But though such seeds of weakness existed among the Allied powers, the immediate danger was to all appearance much greater to France. Though their armies in Flanders XIII. 1793. 20. Wretched French armies at the com of the cam CHAP. were, in the commencement of the campaign, superior to those of the Allies, they were in the most deplorable state of insubordination, and miserably deficient in every species of equipment. The artillery horses had in great part state of the perished during the severity of the winter campaign; the clothing of the soldiers was worn out; their spirit had mencement disappeared during the license of Republican conquest. paign. The disorganisation was complete in every department; the artillery stores, the commissariat, the cavalry horses, were deficient; discipline was wanting among the soldiers, concord among the chiefs. France then experienced the weakness arising from revolutionary license, and which is common to all really democratic states. She regained her strength under the stern despotism of the Reign of Terror, when the Committee of Public Salvation wielded a power tenfold greater than Louis XIV. had ever iii. 49, 52. enjoyed, and enforced with a rigour unknown to Caligula or Nero.1 1 Toul. iii. 239. Jom. 21. Prince Co pointed ge of the Allies. Prince Cobourg was appointed generalissimo of the Allied armies from the Rhine to the German Ocean. bourg ap- The great abilities displayed by Clairfait in repairing the neralissimo disasters of the preceding campaign, pleaded in vain for his continuance in the command at a court not yet taught by disaster to disregard influence and promote only merit. His successor had served under the Imperial banners against the Turks, and shared in the glories of the campaigns of Suwarroff. But the Austrian commander was far from possessing the vigour or capacity of the conqueror of Ismael. Adhering with obstinate perseverance to the system of dividing his forces, and covering an immense tract of country with communications, he frittered away the vast army placed at his disposal, and permitted the fairest opportunity ever offered, of striking a decisive blow against the rising Republic, to pass away without any important event.2 He belonged to the old methodical school of Lacey; was destitute alike of decision and character; and, from the tardiness of his 2 Jom. iii. 62. Hard. ii. 204, 205. operations, was the general of all others least qualified CHAP. to combat the fire and energy of a revolution. XIII. 1793. 22. of France. To support the prodigious expense of a war on all their frontiers, and on so great a scale, would greatly have Vast efforts exceeded the ordinary and legitimate resources of the French government. But, contrary alike to precedent and anticipation, they derived from the miseries and convulsions of the Revolution new and unparalleled resources. The ordinary pacific expenditure of 1792, covered by taxes, the sale of ecclesiastical property, and patriotic gifts, amounted to 958,000,000 francs, or nearly £40,000,000 sterling. But so immensely had the charges of the war augmented the national expenditure, that the expense of the last period of the year was at the rate of 200,000,000 francs, or £8,000,000 a-month. On the day on which war was declared, assignats to the enormous amount of 1,000,000,000 francs (£40,000,000) were struck off at the public treasury. But the period had now arrived when all calculation in matters of finance was to cease. For all exigencies the inexhaustible mine of assignats, possessing a forced circulation, and issued on the credit of the national domains, proved sufficient. When any want was felt in the treasury, the demands were paid by a fresh issue of paper; and this fictitious currency, the source of boundless private ruin in France, singly sustained, during the first years of the revolutionary wars, the public credit. In the Finance Report for 1793, Cambon declared that the expenses of that year could admit of no exact calculation, but that the nation must rise superior to its financial, as it had already risen above its military difficulties; and therefore he proposed the immediate issue of 800,000,000 of francs, or upwards of £33,000,000, in assignats, on the security of the national domains, which was immediately agreed to. These domains he valued at eight milliards, or about £320,000,000 sterling; of which three milliards, or £120,000,000, had 137. been consumed or impledged by previous issues1—an Toul. iii. 248, 250. Hist. Parl. xxiv. 132, CHAP. extraordinary proof of the length to which the confiscaXIII. tion of private property had already been carried under the revolutionary government. 1793. 23. financial measures. To meet the exigencies of the year in the British Mr Pitt's parliament, Mr Pitt proposed a loan of £4,500,000, besides the ordinary supplies of the year, the interest of which was provided for by additional taxes; and from these resources the subsidy already mentioned was granted to the King of Sardinia, and others to several of the smaller German powers. At the same time an issue of £5,000,000 was voted to relieve the commercial embarrassment which had been very severely felt on the breaking out of the war; and such was the effect of this well-timed supply, that credit was speedily restored, and little, if any, of this large sum was ultimately lost to the state-a striking example of the beneficial effect of liberal xxx. 972. support by government, even in the darkest periods of public suffering.1 1 Parl. Hist. 24. In January 1793, Dumourier came to Paris, in order Designs of to endeavour to rouse the Girondist party to save the life Dumourier, of Louis. This movement, while it failed in its object of Allied gene- preserving the King, for ever alienated the Jacobins and of the rals. from the general. The consequences of this misunderstanding were important upon the fate of the campaign. Dumourier's plan, which he had been meditating during the whole winter, was to commence operations by an invasion of Holland; to revolutionise that country, unite it with the provinces of Flanders-as has since been done in 1814-raise an army of eighty thousand men, with this force move upon Paris, and, without the aid of any other power, dictate laws to the Convention, and restore tranquillity to France. It is one of the most extraordinary signs of those days of revolution and confusion, that so wild a project should have been seriously undertaken by a man of his acute understanding. On the other hand, the plan of the Allies was to drive the Republicans beyond the Meuse, and disengage the important fortress of |