The sequel to the Manifesto of Padua was a conference at Pilnitz between the Emperor Leopold and King Frederick William II. of Prussia, accompanied by their ministers, in August 1791. At this conference the King’s brothers, Monsieur, the Comte de Provence, afterwards Louis XVIII., who had escaped from France at the time of the flight to Varennes, and the Comte d’Artois, afterwards Charles X., who had fled in July 1789, at the epoch of the capture of the Bastille, were present. They had their own aims to serve. They were disgusted at the weak conduct, as they termed it, of Louis XVI. in yielding so far as he had done to the popular wishes; they desired to undo the whole effect of the Revolution and to restore the Bourbon monarchy in its ancient authority by the arms of the monarchs of Europe. But Leopold did not care about the French princes or the Bourbon monarchy. He cared rather for the safety of his sister, Marie Antoinette, and the maintenance through her of the Franco-Austrian alliance. In the Declaration of Pilnitz, which was signed by the Emperor and the King of Prussia on 27th August 1791, the two sovereigns declared that the situation of the King of France was an object of interest common to all European monarchs, and that they hoped other monarchs would use with them the most efficacious means to put the King of France in a position to lay in perfect liberty the bases of a monarchical government, suited alike to the rights of sovereigns and the happiness of the French nation. Provided that other powers would co-operate with them they were willing to act promptly, and had therefore placed their armies on foot. These threats exasperated but did not terrify the French people. Leopold had no intention of entering upon hostilities, and found a loophole by which to escape from declaring war in the acceptance by Louis XVI. of the completed Constitution on 21st September 1791. He then solemnly withdrew his pretensions to interfere in the internal affairs of France.

While the first Constitution of France, sanctioning the representative principle and the rights of the people, was being slowly built up in the midst of troubles and intrigues in Paris, a not less remarkable constitution was promulgated in Poland, manifesting the same ideas. The partition of Poland in 1773 had proved to all patriotic Poles that their independence as a nation was in the utmost peril. A serious effort was therefore made to organise the country, and to place the government on a settled and logical basis. The army was made national instead of feudal; an attempt was made to establish a national system of finance, and a scheme of national education was propounded and partly carried into effect. But these measures were but steps in the work of making Poland a nation, instead of a loose confederation of nobles; the final decision was taken in 1788, when the Polish Diet elected a Committee to draw up a new Constitution, raised the national army to 60,000 men, and decreed regular taxes in order to replenish the national treasury. This consciousness of nationality enabled Stanislas Poniatowski, King of Poland, to negotiate as an independent and powerful sovereign with Prussia in 1789, and to send his envoys to Reichenbach in 1790 to act with the envoys of the other powers. The leading member of the Polish Constitutional Committee was Kollontai, a most remarkable man, and a Catholic priest, who had done good service as Rector of the University of Cracow, which he reorganised, and who had been made Vice-Grand-Chancellor of the kingdom. He was the principal author of the Polish Constitution, which was accepted by the Diet of Warsaw on 3d May 1791. This Constitution was noteworthy in what it abolished and what it created. It abolished the elective monarchy, the source of so many evils and intrigues, and declared the throne of Poland hereditary in the House of Saxony in succession to Stanislas Poniatowski, and it also abolished the liberum veto, which had enabled one member of the Diet to thwart the wishes of the majority. It created a regular government, conferring the legislative power on the King, the Senate, and an elected Chamber, and the executive power on the King, aided by six ministers responsible to the Legislature. The cities were permitted to elect their judges and deputies to the Diet; but the plague-spot of serfdom was too delicate to touch, and the Diet only declared its willingness to sanction all arrangements made between a lord and his serfs for the benefit of the latter. In some respects this Constitution compares favourably with that of France drawn up at the same time; if it does not proclaim so firmly the liberty of man, it at any rate is free from the lamentable fear of the power of the executive, which vitiated the work of the French reformers. France feared its executive after a long course of despotic monarchy; Poland felt the need of a strong executive after a long history of anarchy. Both countries, trying to be free, were affected in different ways, and with very different results, by the intervention of foreign powers.

The acceptance of the completed French Constitution was the signal for the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly. It was at once succeeded by the Legislative Assembly, elected under the provisions of the new Constitution. The new Assembly consisted, owing to a self-denying ordinance passed in May 1791, on the proposition of Robespierre, forbidding the election of deputies sitting in the Constituent Assembly to its successor, of none but untried men, who had no experience of politics. They were mostly young men who had learned to talk in their local popular societies, and who at once joined the mother of such societies, the Jacobin Club at Paris. They were forbidden by a clause in the Constitution of 1791 to interfere with constitutional questions, which could only be touched by a Convention summoned for the purpose, and so could only interfere in current politics and matters of administration. In such interference they were justified by the position of powerlessness into which the executive authority, the King and his ministers, were reduced by the Constitution. The two burning questions which first came before them were, the treatment of the clergy who had not taken the oath to observe the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, and of the émigrés. Both questions gave plenty of opportunity for the display of fervid revolutionary and patriotic eloquence, for the priests, who had not taken the oath, were undisguisedly stirring up opposition to the Revolution in the provinces, and the émigrés were forming an army on the French frontier. And the Legislative Assembly was in a greater degree than either its predecessor, the Constituent, or its successor, the Convention, liable to be swayed by oratory. The deputies liked to listen to glowing words and patriotic sentiments, and were largely influenced by the speeches of three great orators, Vergniaud, Gensonné, and Guadet, who all came from Bordeaux, the capital of the department of the Gironde, and to whose supporters posterity has given the name of Girondins. But these orators were in their turn influenced by a Norman deputy, Brissot. This veteran pamphleteer was a sincere republican; he also, having long been a journalist, believed himself a master of foreign politics. He desired to bring about a war between France and Austria. He believed that such a war would either cause the King to throw in his lot heartily with the Revolution, or, what was more likely, would make him declare himself openly against it, and would thus enable the advanced democratic party to call him a traitor, and by rousing all France against him, pave the way for his overthrow and the establishment of a republic. The first step was taken to make Louis XVI. appear the opponent of the Revolution by passing a decree against the priests, who had not taken the oath, which his conscience would not permit him to sign; the second by passing a decree against the émigrés, who were led by his own brothers, and an instruction that he should ask the Emperor and the German princes on the Rhine to prevent the émigrés from forming an army, and to expel them if they did so.

The question of the expediency of war with Austria was soon taken up in France, and not only the Legislative Assembly but the popular clubs busied themselves in discussing it. The Declaration of Pilnitz exasperated the whole nation, which resented dictation or interference in the internal affairs of France, and the warlike and menacing attitude of the army of émigrés, which had been formed by the Prince de Condé on the French frontier at Worms, increased the universal wrath. Louis XVI., whose ministers had been but feeble figure-heads during the Constituent Assembly, at this juncture appointed the Comte de Narbonne, a young man of distinguished ability, to be Minister for War. Narbonne grasped the situation. He saw the people wished for war, and he therefore declared that the King was as patriotic as his subjects, and was also ready for war if satisfaction were not given to France. Three large armies were formed and placed upon the frontiers under the command of Generals Rochambeau, Lückner, and Lafayette, of whom the two former were created Marshals of France. By this policy Narbonne took the wind out of the sails of Brissot and the Girondins; he hoped that if the Austrian war was successful the King would be sufficiently strengthened in popularity to regain his authority as head of the executive; while, if it failed, the nation in its extremity would turn to its legitimate sovereign and invest him with dictatorial power. The leaders of the democratic party in Paris, which had been scattered by Lafayette in July 1791, saw this equally clearly with Narbonne, and therefore opposed the war with all their might. The Jacobin Club had become their headquarters; most of the deputies who came up from the provinces joined the mother society in Paris, and it soon became more powerful than ever in creating public opinion. The effect of the secession and consequent formation of the Club of 1789 only made the Jacobins more frankly democratic, while the presence of many of its members in the Legislative Assembly strengthened the influence of the Jacobin Club. It was in the Jacobin Club during the debates on the war that the difference between what were to be the Girondin and the Mountain parties in the Convention first appeared. Brissot and the Girondin orators argued in favour of war; while Marat, Danton, and still more Robespierre, whose career in the Constituent Assembly had made him exceedingly popular, opposed it. The last-mentioned orator was indeed the chief opponent of the war; he saw through Narbonne’s schemes, and hinted that the projected war was merely a court intrigue to promote the power of the King. The political strife became personal, and Robespierre, Marat, and Danton became the sworn foes of Brissot and the Girondins.

The main causes of the war were the questions of the rights of the Princes of the Empire in Alsace and of the émigrés. The defence of the former rights as rights of the Empire had been pressed upon Leopold at the time of his election as Emperor, and on 26th April 1791 the Prince of Thurn and Taxis, as Imperial Commissary, summoned the Diet to meet. It assembled, and after a long discussion a conclusum was arrived at, that the Empire maintained the Treaties of Westphalia and of the eighteenth century now violated by France, and requested the Emperor to take severe measures against the revolutionary propaganda. The Emperor Leopold, as sovereign of Austria, had withdrawn from the position he had taken up at Pilnitz, but as Emperor he was obliged to submit this conclusum of the Diet to the King of France, which he did in a strongly-worded despatch drawn up by the Chancellor Kaunitz, which was laid before the Legislative Assembly on 3d December 1791. It was as Emperor also that Leopold defended the conduct of the border princes of the Empire, notably the Elector-Archbishops of Trèves, Cologne, and Mayence, and the Bishops of Spires and Worms, in sheltering French émigrés. On 29th November 1791 the Assembly had desired the King to write to the Emperor and to these border princes protesting against the enlistment of troops by the émigrés, and the Emperor’s answer defending the conduct of the princes concerned was read to the Assembly on 14th December. The replies of Leopold were referred to the Diplomatic Committee, and on its report, the Assembly resolved on 25th January 1792 that the Emperor should be requested to explain his attitude towards France and to promise to undertake nothing against her independence in forming her own constitution and settling her own mode of government before 1st March 1792, and that an evasive or unsatisfactory reply should be considered as annulling the Treaty of 1756 and as an act of hostility. The answer to this demand, which was drafted by Kaunitz, was read to the Assembly on 1st March; it censured the course which was being taken by France, stigmatised the Revolution and accused the Jacobins of fomenting anarchy, and its first results were the dismissal of Narbonne, the impeachment of De Lessart, the Foreign Minister, and the formation of a Girondin ministry.

In the position he had taken up the Emperor Leopold was generally supported. The Princes of the Empire, as was represented in their conclusum passed at the Diet, not only resented the interference of France with historic rights in Alsace and her dictation as to whom they should shelter, but were beginning to fear the contagion of the revolutionary conceptions of the rights of man and political liberty. Throughout the Rhine provinces the peasants had risen in partial rebellion against their lords; in all the great cities of western Germany the more enlightened bourgeois protested against their exclusion from political influence. This contagion, however, did not spread far in these early days. The Empress Catherine, the King of Prussia, and the King of Sweden, who chiefly urged Leopold to make a brave stand against the Legislative Assembly, were urged by other motives. Catherine wished to see Austria and Prussia embroiled with France so as to have her hands free to deal with the Poles, who seemed likely with their new Constitution to ward off destruction. Frederick William II. was disgusted by the disrespect shown to the principle of monarchy by the Parisians’ treatment of Louis XVI. Gustavus III. had imbibed a knightly admiration for Marie Antoinette, and felt a personal desire to relieve her from her position of humiliation. Each monarch showed his inclination characteristically. Catherine received some French émigrés, who found their way to her distant court, with kindness, and dismissed the French ambassador; Gustavus hurried to Spa to consult with the French émigrés, and proposed an immediate expedition to carry off the French court; Frederick William signed an offensive and defensive alliance with the Emperor on 2d February 1792, which saved him the trouble of personal decision, and left to the Emperor the harassing business of arranging the details of the war and of so carrying out the necessary diplomatic negotiations which preceded an open rupture, that the interference of the powers should seem justified. In the midst of his preparations the Emperor Leopold died suddenly on 1st March 1792, the very day on which his last manifesto was read to the Legislative Assembly. His death was an irreparable blow for Austria, for Germany, for France, and for Europe. In his short reign he had shown himself to be a monarch of extraordinary ability, possessing alike singular tact and great force of character. He was succeeded in the hereditary dominions of the House of Hapsburg by his eldest son Francis II., an inexperienced youth, quite unfitted to continue Leopold’s policy in the troublous times approaching.

Europe had hardly recovered from the shock of the Emperor’s sudden death, when it was startled by the news of the murder of Gustavus III. of Sweden, who was shot on his way from a masked ball at Stockholm by an officer named Ankarström, on 16th March 1792. He lingered till 29th March, when he died, and was succeeded on the throne of Sweden by his infant son, Gustavus IV. Duke Charles of Sudermania was appointed Regent. He at once reversed the policy of the late king; he felt none of the sympathy so warmly expressed by Gustavus III. for Marie Antoinette, and he distrusted the close alliance which had been entered into with Russia after the Treaty of Verela. His first measure was to place Sweden in a position of absolute neutrality, from which she never swerved during his tenure of power.

Of the ministers who came into office in France in March 1792 through the influence of the Girondins in the Legislative Assembly, the most notable were Roland and Dumouriez. The former was a sincere republican, who was induced by his wife to take up an offensive attitude to the King, the latter an experienced soldier and diplomatist, who was well fitted for the ministry of foreign affairs. Dumouriez at once accepted war with Austria as inevitable, and directed all his efforts to isolate her. He was a sworn enemy of the Austrian alliance, entered into by the Treaty of 1756, and cemented by the marriage of Marie Antoinette, and his first step was to endeavour to detach Prussia. He was sanguine enough to believe in the possibility of doing this, but he did not understand the character of Frederick William II. It was difficult to induce that monarch to make up his mind, but when he did make it up he was obstinate. The French party at his Court, headed by his uncle Prince Henry, and in his ministry, represented by Haugwitz, was very strong; but, on the other hand, he had been convinced by Leopold that the cause of Louis XVI. was the cause of monarchy, and the German party at Berlin hinted that if he allowed Austria to pose as the defender of the rights of the Empire by herself, the policy of Frederick the Great to make Prussia the leader of Germany would be undone. Frederick William II., therefore, listened coldly to the overtures of Dumouriez, and made preparations to support his ally in the field. On 20th April 1792 the Legislative Assembly assented almost unanimously to the King’s proposition, as read by Dumouriez, to declare war against the King of Hungary and Bohemia, as Francis II. was at this time styled, and the great war, which was to rage with but slight intermissions for twenty-three years, began.

The commencement of the first campaign of 1792 proved how thoroughly the French army had been disorganised and demoralised by the policy of the Constituent Assembly and the general course of the Revolution. An attempt was made to invade the Austrian Netherlands or Belgium on four lines; but one column was seized with panic and rushed back to Lille, murdering its general, Theobald Dillon. The other commanders found their soldiers filled with a spirit of distrust for their officers and hardly amenable to discipline, and it soon became obvious that France would have to stand on the defensive. This news profoundly moved the people of France and especially of Paris. The word treachery was freely used in connection with the Court, and it was asserted that the plan of campaign had been revealed to the Austrians by the Queen. This was true; Marie Antoinette had always looked to Austrian help to rescue her from her position, and Louis XVI. had now entirely come round to her view. At this juncture he dismissed his Girondin ministers on their insisting upon his signing a decree, which had been passed by the Assembly ordering the deportation of priests who had not taken the oath, and even accepted the resignation of the ablest of them, Dumouriez, who had offered to form a new ministry. The populace of Paris was intensely excited by the failure of the attack on Belgium, the concentration of the Prussian army on the frontier, and the dismissal of the popular ministers, and a body of petitioners, after filing through the hall of the Assembly, burst into the Tuileries and for some hours filled the palace, insulting the King and Queen and forcing the former to put on a red cap of liberty. The invasion of the Tuileries marked the final breach between the King and the people. Louis XVI. longed more ardently than ever for the arrival of the allied monarchs; and the Jacobin leaders, who perceived the impossibility that France should be successful in war with an unwilling king at her head, began to plot for his overthrow. His last chance was lost, when he rejected the proffered assistance of Lafayette, who returned from his army without leave and offered to bring the National Guard of Paris to his help.

The news of the invasion of the Tuileries by the mob on the 20th June further decided the allied monarchs to take immediate action. Francis II., who was crowned Emperor at Frankfort on 14th July 1792, was eager to come to his aunt’s help. The position of the allies was now reversed. Instead of Austria in the person of the experienced Emperor Leopold guiding Prussia, it was now Frederick William II. of Prussia who directed the policy of the young Emperor Francis. It was arranged that the Prussians should invade Champagne, supported by a corps of Austrians and émigrés on their left, and joined midway by a corps of Austrians from their right, while an Austrian army under Duke Albert of Saxe-Teschen was to march from the Netherlands and invest Lille. The central Prussian army was placed under the command of the Duke of Brunswick, who issued a proclamation, drafted by an émigré, M. de Limon, and filled with violent language by Count Fersen, threatening to hold Paris liable for the safety of the King, and vowing vengeance on the French people as rebels.

Brunswick’s proclamation was the very thing to complete the exasperation of the French people. National patriotism rose to its height; the country had been declared in danger, and thousands of volunteers were arming and preparing to go to the front; the threats of the Prussians only increased the national spirit of resistance; and the universal feeling was one of defiance. But there was obviously no chance of success while the executive remained in its present hands. The King’s power of interfering with the preparations for resistance had to be stopped. This was clearly understood by the democratic leaders, who, ever since 20th June 1792, had been organising an armed rising. They waited till some volunteers from Marseilles entered the capital, singing the song that bears their name, and then they struck. The royal plans for the defence of the Tuileries were thwarted; a number of the most energetic democrats ousted the Council-General of the Commune of Paris, and formed an Insurrectionary Commune; and the men of the poorer districts of Paris, the Faubourgs Saint-Antoine and Saint-Marceau, headed by the Marseillais, advanced to attack the royal palace. Before the assault commenced, Louis XVI., accompanied by his family and his ministers, took refuge in the hall of the Legislative Assembly. The attack was gallantly resisted by the Swiss Guards, who garrisoned the palace, but the people were eventually successful and the Tuileries was taken. The Legislative Assembly at once declared the King suspended from his office, and ordered him to be confined with his family in the Temple. It then elected a new ministry, consisting of three of the former Girondin ministers, Roland, Clavière, and Servan for the Interior, Finance, and War, and three new men, Danton, Monge, and Lebrun for Justice, the Marine, and Foreign Affairs. This ministry, with the help of an extraordinary Commission of Twenty-one, elected by the Legislative, and of the Commune of Paris, displayed the greatest energy. By means of domiciliary visits, those suspected of opposition to the insurrection of 10th August were seized and imprisoned; a camp was formed for the defence of Paris; men were everywhere raised and equipped and sent to the front; and commissioners were sent throughout France, and especially to the armies, to tell the tale of the insurrection and to secure the adhesion of the people. Danton was the heart and soul of the defence movement and of the ministry, and inspired confidence and patriotism into those who hesitated; the Commission of Twenty-one, whose mouthpiece was the great orator Vergniaud, aided him to the best of their power; the Legislative directed the convocation of the primary assemblies, without distinction of active and passive citizens, for the election of a National Convention; and the Commune of Paris took measures to prevent any attempt at a counter-revolution.

But no amount of energy and patriotism could in a moment make trained armies and enable France to repulse the most famous troops in Europe. Fortunately for France, in this crisis, her untrained soldiers behaved admirably. Lafayette, on the news of the insurrection of 10th August, arrested the commissioners sent to him by the Legislative Assembly, and endeavoured to induce his army to march to the aid of the King. But his men refused; the former commander of the National Guard of Paris deserted, and Dumouriez took command of his army. Lille made a gallant resistance to the Austrians, who had formed the siege, but the Prussians met with no such obstinate opposition. Longwy surrendered to them on 27th August, and Verdun on 2nd September, and they continued their march directly on Paris. Dumouriez fell back with his main army to defend the uplands,—they can hardly be called the mountains,—of the Argonne. He summoned to him the corps d’armée on the Belgian frontier under Arther Dillon, and a detachment from the Army of the Rhine under Kellermann, while he was also reinforced by some thousands of undisciplined, and therefore useless, volunteers, and by a fine division of old soldiers collected from the garrisons in the interior. In Paris the news of the Prussian advance caused a panic; it seemed impossible that Dumouriez’ hastily concentrated army could oppose an effective resistance; and even Danton and Vergniaud could hardly keep up the enthusiasm they had at first aroused. At this juncture the Parisian volunteers were half afraid to go to the front for fear that the numerous prisoners, arrested during the domiciliary visits, would break out and revenge themselves on the families of the volunteers. This feeling induced the horrible series of murders, known as the Massacres of September, in the prisons. The massacres began fortuitously, and there were not more than 200 murderers at work; but the crowd, including national guards, stood by and saw them committed without raising a hand to help the victims. All Paris was responsible for the murders; they could have been easily stopped; but no one wanted to check them: the feeling which allowed them was the popular feeling; neither Danton, nor Roland, nor the Commune of Paris, nor the Legislative Assembly cared to interfere; the massacres were the answer to the Prussian advance and the capture of Longwy, as the insurrection of 10th August was the reply to Brunswick’s manifesto.

On 20th September 1792 the main Prussian army, which had reached the Argonne, attacked the position occupied by Kellermann at Valmy, and was repulsed. The victory was not a great one; the battle was not very hotly contested; the losses on both sides were insignificant; but its results both military and political were immense. The King of Prussia, who complained that the Austrians had not fulfilled their engagements, and that the whole burden was thrown on him, was easily persuaded by the Duke of Brunswick to order a retreat. The Duke of Brunswick was induced to give that advice from military considerations, in that his army was wasted by disease and harassed by the inclement weather, and from policy, because, like many Prussian officers, he considered it unnatural for Prussians and Austrians to fight side by side. The retiring army was not hotly pressed; Dumouriez still hoped to induce Prussia to quit the coalition against France, and pursued with more courtesy than vigour until the army of Brunswick was beyond the limits of French territory.

On the day of the battle, or as it is with more correctness termed the cannonade, of Valmy, the National Convention met in Paris and assumed the direction of affairs. It contained all the most distinguished men who had sat in the two former assemblies on the Left, or democratic side, and its first act was to declare France a Republic. After this had been unanimously carried, dissensions at once arose, and a fundamental difference between two groups of deputies appeared, which threatened to end in the proscription of the one or the other. On the one side were the distinguished orators of the Gironde, who have given their name to the whole party, reinforced by the presence of several old members of the Constituent Assembly and of a few young and inexperienced men. This group was roughly divided into Buzotins and Brissotins, or followers of Buzot, a leading ex-Constituant, and of Brissot, the author of the war; but some of the greatest of them, like Vergniaud, refused to ally themselves with either leader. The chief meeting-place of the Buzotins, who included most of the younger men, was Madame Roland’s salon. On the other side, taking their name from the high benches on which they sat, were the deputies of the Mountain, including almost the whole of the representatives of Paris, and all the energetic republicans, who had brought about the insurrection of 10th August. This group comprised Robespierre, Danton and Marat, Collot-d’Herbois and Billaud-Varenne, all deputies for Paris, and none of whom, except Robespierre, had ever sat in either of the former assemblies, with some leaders of the extreme party in the Legislative, Merlin of Thionville, Chabot and Basire. It was not long before open quarrels arose between the two groups. The Girondins accused the leaders of the Mountain of having in the Insurrectionary Commune fomented the massacres of September in the prisons, and abused them as sanguinary and ambitious anarchists. This accusation was formally indeed brought against Robespierre by Louvet, a Rolandist Girondin, in an elaborate attack delivered on 29th October; while at the same time the Mountain accused the Girondins of being federalists and desiring to destroy the essential unity of the Republic, an accusation which was used with deadly effect at a later date. Both groups,—they cannot be called parties, for they had no party ties and recognised no party obligations,—appealed to the great majority of the Convention, the deputies of the Centre, who sat in the Plain or Marsh. The representative of this vast majority was Barère, an ex-Constituant, who trimmed judiciously between the two opposing groups.

The Convention, which had been elected in days of deepest dejection, if not despair, when the Prussians were moving on Paris and the Austrians were besieging Lille, was soon raised by a succession of conquests to a state of patriotic exaltation, bordering on delirium. In the month of September, just after the battle of Valmy, General Montesquiou occupied Savoy, and General Anselme the county and city of Nice, territories belonging to the King of Sardinia, without striking a blow. This was followed by a more important series of successes. Though not as a body engaged in war with France, many princes of the Empire had sent contingents to the aid of the Prussians and Austrians. In reply, still without declaring war on the Empire, the French attacked the Rhenish princes. On 1st October General Custine, commanding a corps of the Army of the Rhine, took Spires, on October 4 Worms, and on October 21 Mayence, one of the bulwarks of the Empire and the capital of the Elector-Archbishop. From Mayence Custine detached divisions in other directions, and held the wealthy city of Frankfort-on-the-Main to ransom. Not less startlingly rapid were the conquests of Dumouriez on the north-east frontier. After the retreat of the Prussians he turned north against the Austrians; he raised the siege of Lille, which had been heroically defended, and on 6th November he defeated the Austrians in a pitched battle at Jemmappes, near Mons. This victory laid Belgium open to him. He occupied the whole country, entered Brussels as a conqueror, and established his headquarters at Liége. The conquest of Belgium intoxicated the Convention; they believed their armies to be invincible; they regarded themselves as having a mission to carry the doctrines of the French Revolution as embodied in the Rights of Man and the Sovereignty of the People into all countries; they declared themselves on 19th November ready to wage war for all peoples upon all kings; and in disregard of all international obligations, they declared the Scheldt, which by treaty had been closed to commerce for years, a free river, because it had its source in a free country.

The intoxication which followed this series of unparalleled successes blinded the Convention to the need of improving and disciplining their troops. The French republicans did not comprehend that the chief cause of the facile conquests of their armies was that they met with the sympathy of the conquered. Belgium, the Rhine provinces, Savoy, and Nice were all filled with revolutionary enthusiasm, and welcomed the French as liberators; they requested to be united to France, when primary assemblies were summoned by the French commissioners, and on 9th November Savoy and Nice, and on 13th December the Austrian Netherlands or Belgium, were declared a part of France. In spite of these military successes, the republican army could not be organised in a day; the seeds of anarchy sown by the Constituent had gone too deep to enable discipline to be restored except by sharp measures; the administration of the army, that is, the commissariat, the war office, etc., was in a state of chaos; the soldiers, both officers and men, of all the armies, kept their eyes too closely fixed on the course of politics in Paris to do their duty efficiently at the front.

The burning question which divided the Convention at the end of 1792 was the treatment to be meted out to Louis XVI. Robespierre urged that, as a political measure, he should be put to death; but the Girondins, filled with an idea of imitating the English republicans of the seventeenth century, decided on a royal trial. When the trial, which was but a defence of Louis XVI. by his counsel, was over, the Girondins, in their desire to avoid responsibility, or perhaps from a genuine belief that it might save the King’s life, proposed that the sentence on him should be submitted to the primary assemblies of the people. The deputies of the Mountain feared no responsibility, and taunted the Girondins with being concealed royalists. The motion for an appeal to the people was rejected; the King was sentenced to death by a small majority; and on 21st January 1793 Louis XVI. was guillotined at Paris.

The result of the execution of Louis XVI. was to give a pretext to the countries of Europe which had not yet declared war against the French Republic to do so. Charles IV. of Spain, in the hope of saving the chief of the Bourbon family, maintained his minister at Paris until the last possible moment, and it was with reluctance that he placed his army in the field on the news of the King’s execution. The French Republic accepted the challenge, and early in March declared war against Spain. The war with Holland stood on a different basis. Dumouriez, after his conquest of Belgium, looked on Holland as an easy and particularly wealthy prey. He believed that by conquering Holland, France would have in her hands a means of forcing England to keep the peace. His views were supported by Danton, who was sent on mission to Dumouriez’ headquarters. The contrary was the result. Pitt sincerely wished for peace, and was essentially a peace minister, but he had no idea of allowing the faithful ally of England, Holland, to be overrun and held to ransom by the French. The opening of the Scheldt had crowned the long series of French breaches of international law, and Pitt resented the assumption of the Convention that the law of nature, as interpreted by themselves, was to take the place of the law of nations. Pitt’s hand was also forced in two directions; the philippics of Burke had roused the fears of English property-holders against the spread of French principles; and George III. was as anxious as any Continental monarch to preserve the dignity of kings. Pitt and his foreign minister, Grenville, gradually became convinced that the French meant to fight England, and that war was inevitable, and Chauvelin, the French ambassador, was ordered to leave London. The French leaders were under a misconception with regard to the spread of their ideas in England; they knew that a large body of educated men sympathised with them, and expected a national democratic rising which should overthrow not only Pitt, but the English monarchy. They did not understand that an English parliamentary opposition, in spite of its words, is as staunchly loyal as the ministry, and that it would never foment or encourage insurrection. Under these circumstances and deluded by these misconceptions France declared war against England and Holland on 1st February 1793. Many smaller nations entered on the fray. Sweden under the prudent government of the Regent Duke of Sudermania, Denmark under Christian VII. and Bernstorff, and Switzerland declared their neutrality. But Portugal, where the heir-apparent, afterwards King John VI., had become regent for his mother, Maria Francisca, who was insane; Tuscany, whose Grand Duke, Ferdinand, was a brother of the Emperor; Naples, or rather the Two Sicilies, whose king was a Bourbon, and whose queen was a sister of Marie Antoinette, all declared war on the French Republic. Catherine of Russia wore mourning for Louis XVI. inveighed against the wickedness of the French republicans, and proceeded to take advantage of the occupation of the rest of Europe in the affairs of France to prosecute her schemes on Poland. Last of all, the Holy Roman Empire, which had decreed the armament of the contingents of the circles, on 23d November 1792, after the news of the capture of Mayence, solemnly, and with all the circumlocution inseparable from the movement of the unwieldy machine, declared war against France on 22d March 1793.

While regenerated France was at bay with nearly the whole of Europe, regenerated Poland was being conquered by a single power. While Europe pretended to fight France on behalf of the principle of monarchy, Catherine invaded Poland, because by the Constitution of 3d May 1791 it had strengthened its monarchy. France was attacked because it was asserted to be in a state of anarchy, Poland because it had by wise reforms tried to put an end to an historic system of constitutional anarchy. As soon as Catherine had made peace with the Turks at Jassy, and Austria and Prussia were engaged in war with France, she intervened to overthrow the new Polish Constitution. It was not difficult to find Polish nobles who resented the abrogation of the old system, and, under Catherine’s encouragement, Branicki, Felix Potocki, and some others formed the Confederation of Targovitsa, and protested against the abolition of the liberum veto and the reforms of 3d May 1791. They then asked Catherine to send a Russian army to their assistance. She willingly complied, and on 18th May 1792 published a manifesto, stating that she was the guarantor of the ancient Polish Constitution, and stigmatising the reformers of 1791 as Jacobins. Suvórov at once entered Poland at the head of 80,000 Russians and 20,000 Cossacks, and by force of numbers defeated the Polish army under Joseph Poniatowski at Zielencé on 18th June 1792, and under Kosciuszko at Dubienka on 17th July. These defeats caused the reformers of 1791, including Kollontai and Kosciuszko, to go into exile; their place at the Diet was taken by the leaders of the Confederation of Targovitsa, and the Constitution of 3d May 1791 was abrogated. The conquest of the Polish patriots by Russia greatly excited the King of Prussia and the Emperor, and was one of the causes which induced Frederick William to order Brunswick to retreat after his trifling check at Valmy. The Polish patriots appealed to Prussia for help under the terms of the alliance of 1790, but the King only answered that he had not recognised the Constitution of 3d May 1791, and that the Polish leaders were Jacobins and imitators and allies of the French revolutionary leaders. A Prussian army, therefore, entered Poland to co-operate with the Russians and to share the spoil. A treaty of partition was signed by Catherine and Frederick William on 4th January 1793, by which Russia was to annex eastern Poland, including the whole of Minsk, Podolia, Volhynia, and Little Russia, and Prussia was to have Posen, Gnezen, Kalisch, and the cities of Dantzic and Thorn. Austria was too hotly engaged in the war with France to be able to claim a share, but the conduct of Prussia at this time in excluding her from the partition of Poland was never forgotten nor forgiven, and increased the hereditary feeling of distrust between the two powers. The Emperor Francis regarded himself as duped, and Prussia by acting alone broke the solemn engagements entered into with Leopold, and commenced the policy which was to end in the conclusion of the Treaty of Basle with the French Republic. Though the second partition of Poland was agreed upon in 1792, it was not consummated until the following year. A Diet was called at Grodno, and there, in the presence of the Russian soldiers, Stanislas Poniatowski and the Diet consented in silence, on 24th September 1793, to the arrangements made between Russia and Prussia. On 16th October Catherine signed a treaty, guaranteeing the liberty of Poland, that is, the abuses of the old Constitution, which were certain to give Russia the opportunity of finishing the work of blotting out the Poles as an independent nationality from the map of Europe.

The close of the year 1792 thus witnessed at the same time the overthrow of Poland and France in arms against foreign aggression. Each country was to make a violent effort for independence. The French were to be successful, because under the influence of personal and political freedom every Frenchman felt it his duty to resist foreign interference; Poland was to fail, because it was not the Polish people, but only the enlightened Polish nobles and bourgeois, who appreciated the situation.