XVI. the names of the young men who had distinguished them- CHAP. selves in any grade. The central government, guided by that able statesman, had discovered the real secret of 1794. military operations, and, by accumulating an overwhelming force upon one part of the enemy's line, soon acquired a decided superiority over the Austrians, who adhered with blind obstinacy to the system of extending their forces. In the prosecution of this mode of action, the French had peculiar advantages from the unity of their government, the central situation of their forces, the interior line on which they acted, the fortified towns which guarded their frontier, and the unbounded means of repairing losses which they possessed. On the other hand, the Allies, acting on an exterior circle, paralysed by divisions among their sovereigns, and at a distance from their resources, were unable either to combine for any vigorous offensive operations, or render each other any assistance when pressed by the enemy. Incredible efforts were made at the same time to organise and equip this prodigious body of soldiers. "A revolution," said Barère, "must rapidly supply all our wants. It is to the human mind what the sun of Africa is to vegetation. Monarchies require peace, but a republic can exist only in warlike energy. Slaves have need of repose, but freemen of the fermentation of freedom; regular governments of rest, but the French Republic of revolutionary activity." The Ecole Militaire at Paris was speedily re-established, and the youth of the better classes marched on foot from all parts of France, to be there instructed in the rudiments of the military art; one horse out of twenty-five was every where levied from those persons possessing them, and the proprietor received only nine hundred francs in paper, hardly equivalent, from its depreciation, to a louis in gold. By these means, albeit ruinous to individuals, the cavalry and artillery were furnished with horses, and a considerable body of educated young men was rapidly provided for the army. The manufactories of arms at Paris and in the provinces were Th. vi. 247, 32. Carnot, 272. Jom. v. 32. Hard. . 457. XVI. CHAP. kept in incessant activity; artificial means were universally adopted for the production of saltpetre, and gunpowder in immense quantities was daily forwarded to the armies. 1794. 27. Mr Pitt's efforts to hold toge ther the alliance. Indefatigable were the exertions made by Mr Pitt to provide a force on the part of the Allies capable of combating this gigantic foe; and never were the efforts of his master-spirit more required to heal the divisions and extinguish the jealousies which had arisen in the coalition. Poland was the apple of discord which had called forth these separate interests and awakened these jealousies; and, in the plans of aggrandisement, which all the great Continental states were pursuing in regard to that unhappy country, is to be found the true secret of their neglect of the great task of combating the French Revolution, and of its rapid and early success. Prussia, intent on territorial acquisition on the shores of the Vistula, and desirous above every thing of securing Dantzic, the key to that stream, and the great emporium of the grain commerce in the north of Europe, had already assembled forty thousand men under the King in person, for the siege of Warsaw; and the cabinet of Berlin, unable to bear at the same time the expense of a costly war on the eastern and western frontiers of the monarchy, had in consequence greatly diminished their forces on the Rhine, and openly announced their intention of reducing them to the contingent which they were bound to furnish as a member of the empire, which was only twenty thousand men. Orders March 11. had even been dispatched to Marshal Moellendorf, who commanded their army on the Rhine, to retreat by divisions towards the Elbe; while at the same time, with preposterous inconsistency, Frederick William addressed a letter to the Arch-Chancellor of the Empire, in which he bewailed in piteous terms the public danger, and urged the immediate convocation of the Anterior circles, to deliberate on the most effectual means of withstanding the revolutionary torrent with which they were menaced.*1 Jan. 31. 1 Hard. ii. 488,490. * "As it is impossible for me," said the King in that letter, "any longer to XVI. 28. of Vienna to secession of The cabinet of Vienna was greatly alarmed at this CHAP. official declaration of the intention of the Prussian government to withdraw from the coalition; and their chagrin. 1794. was not diminished by the clear perception which they Efforts of had, that this untimely and discreditable defection was the cabinet mainly prompted by a desire to secure a share in the prevent the partition of Poland, of which they saw little prospect of Prussia. themselves being allowed to participate. They used the most pressing instances, therefore, to induce the cabinet of Berlin to change their resolution, offered to take a large portion of the Prussian troops into their own pay, provided the other states of Germany would take upon themselves the charges of the remainder, and even urged the formation of a levée en masse in all the circles of the empire, immediately threatened with invasion, in order to combat the redoubtable forces which France was pouring forth from all ranks of her population. Austria, however, though so desirous to stimulate others to these last and convulsive efforts, made no attempt to rouse their emulation by setting the example of similar exertions herself. Not a regiment was added to the Imperial armies; and the Prussian cabinet, little solicitous to behold the whole population of the empire combating under the banners of the Cæsars, strenuously resisted the proposal as useless, 481, 488. dangerous, and utterly inconsistent with the principles of Th. vi. 269. the contest in which they were engaged.1 It soon appeared how ruinous to the common cause this unexpected secession of Prussia would be. The I 1 Hard. ii. Jom. 5. 29. continue at my own charges a war so remote from the frontiers of my domi- 2 Hard. ii. 1794. 29. Prussia gins to with draw. March 14. CHAP. Republican forces in Flanders were nearly a hundred and XVI. sixty thousand strong; and Mack, who was intrusted with the chief direction of the campaign by the Allied powers, finding that the whole forces which the Allies openly be could assemble in that quarter would not exceed a hundred and fifty thousand, had strongly urged the necessity of obtaining the co-operation of fifty thousand Prussians, in order to cover the Meuse, in conjunction with the Austrian divisions in the neighbourhood of Luxembourg. The Prussians under Moellendorf were cantoned on the two banks of the Seltz, between Oppenheim and Mayence; but when he received the letter from Prince Cobourg requesting his co-operation, he replied in cold and ambiguous terms, "That he was not acquainted with the share which his government may have taken in the formation of the proposed plan of operations; that the views on which it was founded appeared unexceptionable, but that, in the existing state of affairs, it was attended with inconveniences, and that he could not consent to the march to Treves, lest he should expose Mayence." These declarations of the intentions of Prussia excited the greater sensation in Europe, that, ever since the war began, it had been supposed that the cabinets of Berlin and Vienna were united in the closest bonds of alliance, and the Convention of Pilnitz was universally regarded as the true basis of the anti-revolutionary coalition. The confederacy appeared to be on the verge of dissolution. Stimulated by the pressing dangers of his situation, the Elector of Mayence, who of all the Germanic powers was exposed to the first attack of the Revolutionists, was indefatigable in his efforts to prevent the withdrawal of the Prussian troops, and, by his exertions, a proposition was favourably Hard. ii. received by the diet of the empire for taking them into the pay of the lesser powers. Marshal Moellendorf soon after received orders to suspend his retreat.1 March 20. 480, 481, This change in the Prussian plans arose from the vast exertions which Mr Pitt at this period made to hold XVI. 1794. 30. tained in the treaty with Great Bri tain. together the bands of the confederacy. Alone of all the CHAP. statesmen of his day, the British minister perceived the full extent of the danger which menaced Europe, from the spreading of the revolutionary torrent over the adjoining But is at states, and the immense peril of this speedily coming to length repass, from the divisions which were breaking out among alliance by a the Allied powers, caused by the distraction of interests. No sooner, therefore, was he informed of the intended defection of Prussia, than he exerted all his influence to bring back the cabinet of Berlin to more rational sentiments, and liberally advanced the treasures of Britain to retain the Prussian troops in a contest so vital to none as to Prussia herself. By his exertions a treaty was signed at April 19. the Hague between Prussia, Holland, and Great Britain; by which it was stipulated that Prussia should retain an army of sixty-two thousand veterans in the field; while the two latter should furnish a subsidy of £50,000 a-month, besides £400,000 for putting the army into a fit condition to undertake a campaign, and £1, 12s. a-month to each man, as an equivalent for the expenses of his maintenance while engaged in active service. By a separate article, it was provided, "that all conquests made by 1 Parl. Hist. this army, shall be made in the names of the two maritime xxxi. 433, powers, and shall remain at their disposal during the ii. 504, 505. course of the war, and at the peace shall be made such 610. use of as they shall deem proper."1 435. Hard. Martens, v. this excited However meritorious were the exertions of Mr Pitt, in 31. thus again bringing Prussia into the field, after its govern- Discontent ment had formally announced the intention of withdraw in the Prusing from the confederacy, it was in part foreseen-what sian army. the event soon demonstrated that the succours stipulated from that power would prove of the most inefficient description, and that nothing was to be expected from the troops of a leading state engaged as hirelings contrary to the national feelings, and the secret inclinations of the government, in what they deemed a foreign cause.* The * It was asked in the House of Peers, with a too prophetic spirit, by the |