CHAP. XVI. 1794. 110. Immense issues of great ex penses. 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 enorassignats to mous paper circulation was based, embracing all the conuphold these fiscated 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 immense national domains, and therefore the security, for all practical purposes, was merely nominal. The consequence was, that the assignat fell to one-twelfth of its real value; in other words, an assignat for twenty-four francs was worth only two francs; that is, a note for a pound was worth only 1s. 8d. As all the payments, both to and by government, were made in this depreciated currency, and as it constituted the chief, and in many places the sole circulation of the country, the losses. to creditors or receivers of money of every description became enormous; and, in fact, the public expenses were defrayed out of the chasm made in private fortunes. It was evident that such a state of things could not continue permanently; and accordingly the national exhaustion appeared in the campaign of 1795, and the Republic would have sunk under the failure of its financial resources in a few years, had not the genius of Napoleon discovered a new mode of maintaining the armies, and, by making war maintain war, converted a suffering defensive into an irresistible aggressive power.1 1 Th. vii. 239. At the commencement of the campaign, the Allies were an overmatch for the French at every point, and the 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. XVI. 1794. 111. increase of forces dur ing the cam superiority of their discipline was more especially evident CHAP. 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 Progressive which directed their movements; and that, by adhering the French to the ruinous system of extending their forces, and a war for the camof positions, they threw away all the advantages which paign. 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 330,338. the campaign ?1 1 Jom. vi. of success past. But it may be doubted whether, by any exertions, the 112. Allied cause could have been finally made triumphant in The period France at this period. The time for energetic measures for the was past; the revolutionary fever was burning with full Allies was fury, and fifteen hundred thousand men were in arms to defend the Republic. By bringing up column after column to the attack; by throwing away with merciless prodigality the lives of the conscripts; by sparing neither blood nor treasure to accomplish their objects; by drawing without scruple upon the wealth of one-half of France by confiscation, and of the other by assignats, the Committee of Public Salvation had produced 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 wrested 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 VOL. III. 2 H XVI. 1794. CHAP. 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. 113. General reflections on the cam paign. 114. It deserves notice, too, what signal benefit accrued to France in this campaign from its central position, and the formidable barrier of fortified towns with which it was surrounded. By possessing an interior, while the Allies were compelled to act on an exterior line, the French government was enabled to succour the weak parts of their frontier, and could bring their troops to bear in overwhelming 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 army of Savoy to the Rhine; of Jourdan's corps to the Sambre ; and of the garrison of Mayence to Nantes, the immediate causes of the successes in Catalonia, the Palatinate, Flanders, and la Vendée-successively took place, without any corresponding movement having been made in the troops opposed to them, to reinforce the threatened quarters. Each division of the Allied forces, delighted at being relieved from the pressure under which it had previously suffered, relapsed into a state of inactivity, without ever recollecting that, with an active and enterprising enemy, a serious defeat at one point was a disaster at all. The Archduke Charles has said, that the great supeGreat mili- riority of France, in a military point of view, arises from the French the chain of fortresses with which it is surrounded, fortresses. whereby it is enabled, with equal facility, to throw delays tary effect of in the way of an invasion of its own, and to find a solid base for an irruption into its neighbours' terri XVI. 1794. p. 274. tories; and that the want of such a barrier on the right CHAP. bank of the Rhine is the principal defect in the system of German defence.1 The campaign of 1794 affords a 1 Archduke striking confirmation of this observation. After having Charles, i. 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 impeded by the siege of the fortresses which lay in their road, that they were compelled to halt in their career of success; and France had time to complete the vast armaments which afterwards proved so fatal to Europe. When the Republic, on the other hand, became the invading power in 1794, the want of any fortified towns to resist their progress enabled them to overrun Flanders, 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 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.2 Arnold's Rome, iii. 176, 256. aspect of this period There are few spectacles in nature so sublime as that 115. of a people bravely combating for their liberties against a Sublime powerful and vindictive enemy. That spectacle was France at exhibited in the most striking manner by the French in external nation during this campaign. The same impartial justice affairs. which condemns with unmeasured severity the bloody internal, must admire the dignified and resolute external conduct of the Convention. With unbending firmness, XVI. 1794. CHAP. though often with atrocious cruelty, they coerced alike internal revolt and foreign violence; and, selecting out of the innumerable ranks of their defenders the 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. |