property, whether it was property in human beings or in houses and goods. 10. Rise of a Warlike Feeling in France. 1791-1792.In September, 1791, the National Assembly finished its work on the constitution, and the Legislative Assembly, which, according to the constitution, was to be the first of a series of Assemblies each lasting for two years, met on October 1. The most influential party in the new Assembly was that of the Girondists, of which the leaders were young and enthusiastic, but utterly without political experience. Many causes contributed to create a warlike feeling. Crowds of emigrants, French nobles who had left the country either in anger at the revolutionary laws, or in fear lest they should themselves be harshly treated, gathered at Coblentz and held out threats of invasion and vengeance. It was, moreover, believed in France that the Emperor Leopold II., the brother of the Queen, Marie Antoinette, had combined with the king of Prussia, Frederick William II., to collect troops with the intention of marching on Paris in support of the emigrants. The Girondists, not doubting that Louis XVI. desired the overthrow of the constitution even with foreign aid, fanned the warlike feeling in the Assembly, in the hope that when war had once been declared the king would lose the confidence of the nation and that the fall of his throne might be effected without a struggle. They also expected that the war would be short and easy, because they imagined that the subjects of the rulers opposed to them would gladly accept aid from the French armies to win for themselves the equality and popular sovereignty which had been established in France. 'Let us tell Europe,' said one of their orators, 'that if Cabinets engage kings in a war against peoples, we will engage peoples in a war against kings.' As a matter of fact, neither the Emperor nor the King of Prussia was at this time eager to enter on hostilities with France. Leopold II., however, died on March 1, and his son Francis, who succeeded him as King of Hungary and Archduke of Austria by hereditary right, and who, some months later, was chosen Emperor as Francis II., resenting the strong language used in Paris, threatened to interfere in France, and on April 20, 1792, the Assembly retaliated by declaring war against him and his allies, amongst whom the King of Prussia was included. II. The French Republic. 1792.—Burke would have gladly seen England allying itself to Austria and Prussia in the work of crushing French revolutionary principles. Pitt refused to depart 1792 1793 EXECUTION OF LOUIS XVI. 825 from his policy of peace. The allies invaded France, and, on August 10, the Paris mob rose in insurrection against the king, who could hardly help wishing well to the invaders who had come to liberate him from bondage. Louis thereupon took refuge with the Legislative Assembly, which suspended him from the exercise of all authority, but, declaring itself incompetent to give a final solution to the question of government, ordered the election of a National Convention to settle it. The Paris mob, hounded on by bloodthirsty and unscrupulous leaders, seized the opportunity when there was no real authority in France, to burst into the prisons and massacre the prisoners suspected of desiring to help the enemy. On September 20 the French army checked the invaders by the cannonade of Valmy, and on the 21st the Convention met and decreed the abolition of the monarchy, thus declaring France to be a republic. On November 6 the French won a victory over the Austrians at Jemmapes, and soon afterwards occupied the Austrian Netherlands, Savoy, and Nice, advanced into Germany, and took possession of Mainz. 12. Breakdown of Pitt's Policy of Peace. 1792-1793. — The September massacres made Pitt's policy of peace almost hopeless, by the shock which they gave to English public opinion. The subsequent proceedings of the French Revolutionists drove Pitt himself into a policy of war. On November 19, 1792, the Convention offered its assistance to all peoples desirous of obtaining their freedom, and, on December 15, ordered its generals wherever they were to proclaim the sovereignty of the people and the abolition of feudal rights and privileges. The war was a war not between one nation and another, but between social classes. France, enthusiastic for her new principles, did not neglect her interests. She supported her armies at the expense of the wealthy inhabitants of the countries they overran. She treated the territory of the Austrian Netherlands as if it were her own. In all this Pitt did not find a cause of war, as Austria was at war with France. He remonstrated when France threw open the Scheldt to commerce, which, ever since the 17th century, had been closed by European treaties to please the Dutch who occupied both banks of its estuary; but he took his stand in resisting a threatened French invasion of the Dutch Netherlands. Whilst the feelings on both sides were growing in hostility, the French Convention condemned Louis XVI. to death, and, on January 21, 1793, sent him to the scaffold. A thrill of horror ran through England, and on February 1, the Convention, knowing that III. 3 H peace could not be maintained, and being resolved to pursue its attack on the Dutch Republic, took the initiative in declaring war against England and the Dutch. 13. French Defeats and the Reign of Terror. 1793. When the campaign of 1793 opened, a combined army of Austrians and Prussians advancing in overwhelming numbers drove the French out of the Austrian Netherlands. A force of 10,000 British soldiers, under the king's second son, the Duke of York, joined the victorious allies. At Paris the leading Girondists were expelled from the Convention, and a party known as that of the Jacobins rose to power. The Girondists were so alarmed lest a strong government should develop a despotism that they resisted the establishment of that firm authority which could alone save France from disaster. The Jacobins had no such scruples. In July France was in desperate case. Mainz, Condé, and Valenciennes surrendered, and the Duke of York laid siege to Dunkirk. The Jacobins had to deal with insurrection at home as well as with invasion from abroad. Lyons and Toulon rose against them in the south, La Vendée in the west. They met foreign and domestic enemies on the one hand by calling to arms all the patriotic youth of the country, and on the other hand by a savage system of executions by the guillotine. A Committee of Public Safety directed the government. A revolutionary tribunal judged swiftly on imperfect evidence and with the most violent passion all who were even suspected to be guilty of showing favour to the invaders or to the dispossessed nobility. The Reign of Terror, as it is called, began with the execution of the queen, on October 16. Twenty-two Girondists were executed on October 22, and for months afterwards blood-for the most part innocent blood-was mercilessly shed on the scaffold. 14. French Successes. 1793.-It was not the Reign of Terror, but the devotion of her sons, which saved France. On September 8 a French victory at Hondschoote forced the Duke of York to raise the siege of Dunkirk. On October 7 Lyons surrendered. On the 16th, by the victory of Wattignies, the French overpowered the Austrians in the Netherlands, and before the end of the year they drove back both Austrians and Prussians in the country between the Moselle and the Rhine. The army of the Vendeans was destroyed at Le Mans on December 12, and Toulon, which had admitted an English fleet into its harbour, was captured by the skill of young General Bonaparte on the 19th. These successes were due as much to the divisions of the allies as to French valour and conduct. Austria and Prussia had long been rivals, and there 1792-1794 THE REIGN OF TERROR 827 was little real confidence between them even now. In 1772 these two powers, together with Russia, had stripped anarchical Poland of some of her provinces. In 1793 Russia and Prussia were proceeding to a second partition of her territory; whilst Austria was seeking compensation for being left without a share in this new partition of Poland by the acquisition of territory in France. Now that her armies had been driven back, her chance of getting such a compensation was at an end, and her rulers, throwing the blame on Prussia for her lukewarmness in the war with France, began to detest Prussia even more than they detested the French Republic. 15. Progress of the Reign of Terror. 1793–1794.-Pitt's mistake had been in thinking that he could take part in a great struggle of principles as though it were merely a struggle for the proper delimitation of States. The French had on their side enthusiasm, not only for their country, but for their own conception of the welfare of humanity. The Governments of Prussia and Austria had no enthusiasm for the old order of things which they professed to support. Even Pitt himself was an example of the impossibility of treating the danger from France as merely territorial. Seeing clearly the evil of the French aggression and the cruelty of the Reign of Terror, he grew to hate the French revolutionary spirit almost as strongly as Burke. It is hardly to be wondered at that it was so. The tyranny of the Reign of Terror became worse and worse. The Convention was dominated by a few bloodthirsty men who sent hundreds to the guillotine, not because they were even suspected of being traitors, but often merely because they did not sympathise with the revolution, or because their condemnation would be followed by the confiscation of their goods. The dominant parties turned upon one another. One party led by Hébert announced itself Atheist, and dressing up women to represent the Goddess of Reason, placed them on the altars of desecrated churches, and danced round them in honour of the principle which they represented. Another party, led by Robespierre, declared itself Deist, and early in 1794 Robespierre sent Hébert and his followers to the guillotine. 16. Reaction in England. 1792–1793.-In his growing detestation of these horrors, Pitt was supported by the great mass of Englishmen. In 1792 he refused to accept a proposal for Parliamentary reform, urged in the House of Commons by a young member, Mr. Grey, on the ground that it was not a fitting time to alter the Constitution. In 1793 he was frightened lest the French revolutionary spirit should find its way into England, because a certain number of persons, regretting their exclusion from all part in parliamentary elections, joined clubs which loudly expressed their sympathy with the French innovations. The danger from such clubs was excessively small, but Pitt and well nigh the whole of the propertied classes dreaded the establishment of a reign of violence in England. In the beginning of 1793, an Act was passed authorising the Government to remove suspected foreigners, and late in the year a Treasonable Correspondence Act was passed to throw obstacles in the way of persons seeking to give assistance to the French, with whom England was by that time at war. No exception can be taken to these measures. It was, however, unjustifiable that the Government, fully supported by judges and juries, should authorise not only the prosecution, but the harshest punishment of persons guilty merely of using strong language against the king or the institutions of the realm. Amongst the sufferers was a billsticker who was imprisoned for six months for posting up an address asking for Parliamentary reform, and a man named Hudson who was sentenced to a fine of 200l, and two years' imprisonment for proposing a toast to 'The French Republic.' In Scotland Thomas Muir was sent to transportation for fourteen years for exciting to sedition and joining an association for obtaining universal suffrage and annual parliaments. "The landed interest," said the judge who tried the case, "alone has a right to be represented; the rabble has nothing but personal property; and what hold has the nation on them?" 17. End of the Reign of Terror. 1794.—On July 28 the Reign of Terror in France came suddenly to an end by the execution of Robespierre. The course of the war in the spring of 1794 had been wholly in favour of France on land, and on June 26 a great French victory over the Austrians at Fleurus was followed by the complete evacuation of the Austrian Netherlands by the allies. It was little to counterbalance this that Lord Howe gained a victory, usually known as the Battle of the First of June, over a French fleet near the mouth of the Channel. France was no longer in danger, and France being safe, it was impossible for the Terrorists again to acquire control over the Government. 18. Coalition between Pitt and the majority of the Whigs. 1794-In England one effect of the Reign of Terror had been to sweep away the differences between Pitt and the majority of the Whigs. Following Burke, the latter had for some time been voting with Pitt, and in 1794 their leaders, the Duke of Portland, Lord Fitzwilliam, and Mr. Windham entered Pitt's Cabinet. Fox and Grey with a |