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INTRODUCTION

PAGE

Elections of 1797 in France--Policy of the Clichians--Struggle between the Directors and the Clichians--Negotiations for Peace between England and the Directory--Changes in the French Ministry--Revolution of 18th Fructidor--Bonaparte in Italy--Occupation of Venice--The Ligurian and Cisalpine Republics formed--Annexation of the Ionian Islands by France--Treaty of Campo-Formio--Capture of Mayence--The Batavian Republic--Battle of Camperdown--Bonaparte's Expedition to the East--Capture of Malta--Conquest of Egypt--Battle of the Nile--Internal Policy of the Directory after 18th Fructidor--Foreign Policy--Attitude of England, Prussia, Austria, and Russia--The Helvetian Republic--Italian Affairs--The Roman and Parthenopean Republics formed--Occupation of Piedmont and Tuscany by France--The Law of Conscription--Outbreak of War between Austria and France--Murder of the French Plenipotentiaries at Rastadt--The Campaign of 1799--In Italy--Battles of Cassano, the Trebbia and Novi--Italy lost to France--In Switzerland--Battle of Zurich--In Holland--Battles of Bergen--Results of the Campaign of 1799--Policy and Character of the Emperor Paul of Russia--Bonaparte's Campaign of 1799 in Syria--Siege of Acre--Battle of Mount Tabor--Struggle between the Directors and the Legislature in France--Revolution of 22d Prairial--Changes in the Directory and Ministry--Bonaparte's return to France--Revolution of 18th Brumaire--End of the Government of the Directory in France, 187

Napoleon, Emperor of the French--His Coronation as Emperor and as King of Italy--The Imperial Court--The Grand Dignitaries, Marshals, and Imperial Household--Institutions of the Empire--Ministers and Government--The Camp at Boulogne--Pitt's last coalition--Campaign of 1805--Capitulation of Ulm--Battles of Austerlitz and Caldiero--Battle of Trafalgar--Treaty of Pressburg--Death of Pitt--Prussia declares War--Campaign of Jena--Campaign of Eylau--Campaign of Friedland--Interview and Peace of Tilsit--The Continental Blockade--Capture of the Danish Fleet by England--French Invasion and Conquest of Portugal--State of Sweden--The Rearrangement of Europe--Louis Bonaparte King of Holland--Italy--Joseph Bonaparte King of Naples--Battle of Maida--Rearrangement of Germany--Bavaria--W?rtemburg--Baden--Jerome Bonaparte King of Westphalia--Murat Grand Duke of Berg--Saxony--Smaller States of Germany--Mediatisation of Petty Princes--Confederation of the Rhine--Poland--The Grand Duchy of Warsaw--Conference of Erfurt, 237

Napoleon's two reverses between the Treaty of Tilsit and the Congress of Erfurt--England sends an army to Portugal--Campaign of Vimeiro and Convention of Cintra--The Revolution in Spain--Joseph Bonaparte King of Spain--Victory of Medina del Rio Seco and Capitulation of Baylen--Napoleon in Spain--Sir John Moore's advance--Battle of Corunna--The Resurrection of Austria--Ministry of Stadion--Campaign of Wagram--Treaty of Vienna--Campaign of 1809 in the Peninsula--Battle of Talavera--Expedition to Walcheren--Napoleon and the Pope--Annexation of Rome--Revolution in Sweden--Revolution in Turkey--Treaty of Bucharest--Greatest Extension of Napoleon's dominions--Internal Organisation of the Empire--The new Nobility--Internal reforms--Law--Finance--Education--Extension of these reforms through Europe--Disappearance of Serfdom--Religious Toleration--Reorganisation of Prussia--Reforms of Stein and Scharnhorst--Revival of German National feeling--Marriage of Napoleon to the Archduchess Marie Louise--Birth of the King of Rome--Steady opposition of England to Napoleon--Policies of Canning and Castlereagh--Campaigns of 1810 and 1811 in the Peninsula--Signs of the decline of Napoleon's power between 1808 and 1812, 263

APPENDICES

INDEX, 377

MAPS

INTRODUCTION

The period from 1789 to 1815--that is, the era of the French Revolution and of the domination of Napoleon--marks one of the most important transitions in the history of Europe. Great as is the difference between the material condition of the Europe of the nineteenth century, with its railways and its electric telegraphs, and the Europe of the eighteenth century, with its bad roads and uncertain posts, it is not greater than the contrast between the political, social, and economical ideas which prevailed then and which prevail now. Modern principles, that mark a new departure in human progress and in its evidence, Civilisation, took their rise during this epoch of transition, and their development underlies the history of the period, and gives the key to its meaning.

The conception that government exists for the promotion of the security and prosperity of the governed was fully grasped in the eighteenth century. But it was held alike by philosophers and rulers, alike in civilised England and in Russia emerging from barbarism that, whilst government existed for the good of the people, it must not be administered by the people. This fundamental principle is in the nineteenth century entirely denied. It is now believed that the government should be directed by the people through their representatives, and that it is better for a nation to make mistakes in the course of its self-government than to be ruled, be it ever so wisely, by an irresponsible monarch. This notion of the sovereignty of the people was energetically propounded during the great Revolution in France. It is not yet universally accepted in all the states of modern Europe. But it has profoundly affected the political development of the nineteenth century. It lies at the base of one group of modern political ideas; and, though in 1815 it seemed to have been propounded only to be condemned, one of the most striking features of the modern history of Europe since the Congress of Vienna, has been its gradual acceptance and steady growth in civilised countries.

The third modern notion which has transformed Europe is the recognition of the principle of personal and individual liberty. Feudalism left the impress of its graduation of rights and duties marked deeply on the constitutions of the European States. The sovereignty of the people implies political liberty of action; feudalism denied the propriety and advantages of social and economical freedom. Theoretically, freedom of individual thought and action was acknowledged to be a good thing by all wise philosophers and rulers. Practically, the poorer classes were kept in bondage either as agricultural serfs by their lords or as journeymen workmen by the trade-guilds. Where personal and individual liberty had been attained, political liberty became an object of ambition, and political liberty led to the idea of the sovereignty of the people. The last vestiges of feudalism were swept away during this era of transition. The doctrines of the French Revolution did more than the victories of Napoleon to destroy the political system of the eighteenth century. The Congress of Vienna in 1815 might return to the former notions of government and the State, but it did not attempt to restore the old restrictions on individual liberty. With personal freedom acknowledged, the reactionary tendency of the Congress of Vienna was left of no effect. Liberty of thought and action led to the resurrection of the conceptions of nationality and of the sovereignty of the people, which were but for the moment extinguished by the defeat of France in the person of Napoleon by the armies of united Europe.

The mass of the population of Central and Eastern Europe was purely agricultural, and in its poverty expected naught but the bare necessaries of existence. Trade, commerce, and manufactures were therefore practically non-existent. This meant that the cities, and consequently the middle classes, formed but an insignificant factor in the population. In the West of Europe, on the Rhine, and more especially in France, where the agricultural classes were more independent, more wealthy, and more civilised, existence demanded more comforts, and a well-to-do and intelligent commercial and manufacturing urban element quickly developed to supply the demand created. Commerce, trade, and the concentrated employment of labour produced a prosperous and enlightened middle class, accustomed for generations to education and the possession of personal freedom. With wealth always goes civilisation and education, and as there was a larger middle class in France and Western Germany than in Central and Eastern Europe, the peasants in those parts were better educated and more intelligent.

The condition of the upper classes followed the same geographical distribution. The highest aristocracy of all European countries was indeed, as it has always been, on much the same intellectual and social level. Paris was its centre, the capital of society, fashion, and luxury, where Russian, Austrian, Swedish, and English nobles met on an equality. But the bulk of the German and Eastern European aristocracy was in education and refinement inferior to the bulk of the French nobility. Yet they possessed an authority which the French nobility had lost. The Russian, Prussian, and Austrian nobleman and the Hungarian magnate was the owner of thousands of serfs, who cultivated his lands and rendered him implicit obedience. The French nobleman exacted only certain rents, either copyhold quit-rents or feudal services, from the tenants on his ancestral estates. His tenants were in no sense his serfs; they owed him no personal service, and resented the payment of the rent substituted for such service. The patriarchal feeling of loyalty to the lord had long disappeared, and the French peasant did not acknowledge any subjection to his landlord, while the Prussian and Russian serf recognised his bondage to his master.

Nor must the influence of intellectual ideas, as bearing on problems which the French Revolution was to force on the attention of the more backward and more oppressed nations of Europe, be underrated. The great French writers of the eighteenth century--Voltaire, Montesquieu, Diderot, and Rousseau--had been deeply impregnated with the ideas of Locke and the English political thinkers of his school. In their different lines they insisted that government existed for the good of the governed, and investigated the origins of government and the relations of man in the social state. It was their speculations which altered the character of absolute monarchy and based its retention on its benevolent purposes; they, too, insisted upon the rights of man to preserve his personal freedom, as long as it did not clash with the maintenance and security of civil society. The great French writers of the eighteenth century exercised by their works a smaller influence on the outbreak and actual course of the French Revolution than has been generally supposed. The causes of the movement were chiefly economical and political, not philosophical or social: its rapid development was due to historical circumstances, and mainly to the attitude of the rest of Europe. But the text-books of its leaders were the works of the French thinkers of the eighteenth century, and if their doctrines had little actual influence in bringing about the Revolution, they influenced its development and the extension of its principles throughout Europe. It is curious to contrast the opinions of the great French writers of the middle of the eighteenth century, whose arguments mainly affected the general conceptions of man living in society, that is, of government, with the views advocated by the great German writers of the end of the century, who concentrated their attention upon man in his individual capacity for culture and self-improvement. Schiller, Goethe, Kant, and Herder were, further, more cosmopolitan than German. The problems of man and his intellectual and artistic development proved more attractive to the great German thinkers than the difficulties presented by the economical, social, and political diversities of different classes of society. Goethe, for instance, understood the signification of the French Revolution, and was much interested in its effects on the human race, but he cared very little about its impression on Germany.

Such was the political, economical, intellectual and moral state of Europe in 1789, on the eve of the French Revolution. The whole continent was to pass through twenty-six years of almost unceasing war, at the end of which it was to emerge with new conceptions and new ideals of both political and social life. The new ideas seemed indeed to be checked, if not destroyed, in 1815, but once inspired into men's minds they could not be forgotten, and their subsequent development forms the history of modern Europe in the nineteenth century.

If the relations between France, Russia, and Austria were unsettled, the Triple Alliance between Prussia, Holland, and England was hardly on a more stable footing in 1789. Prussia, since the death of Frederick the Great, had become really decrepit, while apparently remaining a first-rate military power. Though still preserving the prestige of its famous King, who died in 1786, and recognising its alliance with England, Prussia in 1789 exhibited a decaying internal administration, and a vacillating foreign policy. England had received a heavy blow by the success of the colonists in North America, and by the Treaty of Versailles, and the powers of the Continent, while envying her wealth, held her military power of but small account. This opinion prevailed even at Berlin, and the new King of Prussia gave many evidences that the alliance of England was rather distasteful to him than otherwise. The third member of the alliance, Holland, was in the weakest condition of all, and it was only by invoking the armed interference of Prussia that England had maintained the authority of the Prince of Orange, as Stadtholder, in 1787. Though this interference had led to the formation of the famous Triple Alliance of 1788, in reality the English and Prussian statesmen profoundly distrusted each other, while the forcing of the yoke of the Stadtholder upon them caused the Dutch democratic party in Holland to abhor the allies and to look for help to France.

After thus roughly sketching the general attitude of the powers of Europe to each other in 1789, it will be well to examine each state separately before entering on the history of the exciting period which followed. Great and sweeping alterations were to be effected; many diplomatic variations were to take place. The most important result of the period of the French Revolution and of Napoleon was its influence upon the minds of men, as shown in the growth of certain political conceptions, which have moulded modern Europe. But great changes were also brought about in dynasties and in the geographical boundaries of states, which can only be understood by a knowledge of the condition of Europe in 1789.

The chief power of the Triple Alliance, which balanced the loosely-defined league of Russia, France, and Austria, was England. The severe blow which had been struck by the revolt of her American colonies had made Great Britain appear weaker than she really was to the powers of the Continent. The Treaty of Versailles, by which she had been obliged to make cessions to France, seemed to have set the seal on her humiliation. But in reality her finances were more affected than her fighting strength, and the English navy, which, from her insular position, must always constitute the principal element of her force, was as excellent as ever. The policy of the younger Pitt, who had come into office in 1783, was one of peace and retrenchment. The country had lasted well through the financial strain of the American War, and the chief aim of the minister was to allow its vast commercial and industrial resources to expand. As a pupil of Adam Smith, Pitt understood the great principles of political economy, and the most significant part of his foreign policy was his conclusion of the Commercial Treaty with France. A fiscal system, far in advance of that in any continental country, enabled the English Government to draw on the wealth of the nation more effectively than any other government, if the money was needed for patriotic purposes. In spite of his love of peace, Pitt was induced by his first Foreign Secretary, the Duke of Leeds, to take an active part in European politics, and was eventually led by the state of affairs in Holland to enter into the Triple Alliance. At home, England was unaffected by the intellectual movement which led to the French Revolution. She had in the previous century got rid of the relics of feudalism, which pressed so heavily on the continental farmer and peasant, and had won the boons of individual and commercial liberty, and of equality before the law; while politically, though her government was an oligarchy, supported by the class of wealthy merchants and traders, an opportunity was afforded through the existence of a free press and of the system of election, however hampered by antiquated franchises, for public opinion to make itself felt.

Prussia, the other principal member of the Triple Alliance, contrasted in every way with England. Seemingly, owing to the prestige of Frederick the Great's victories and that able monarch's careful organisation of his army, Prussia was the first military state in Europe; in reality, her reputation was greater than her actual power. Prussia was weak where England was strong. Prussia had no financial system worthy of the name, no industrial wealth, and no national bank; her only resources for war were a certain quantity of specie stored up in Berlin. The Prussian Government was an absolutism, in which the monarch's will was supreme; its administration was based on feudalism, of which England had entirely and France had practically got rid, with all its mediaeval incidents of serfdom, privilege of the nobility, and social and commercial inequalities. The Prussian army was not national; the soldiers were treated as slaves, and the officers, who were all of noble birth, were tyrants in the maintenance of military discipline.

The state of Europe in 1789 showed everywhere a sense of awakening to new ideas. The bonds of feudalism were ready to break asunder; the benevolent despots had recognised the rights of individual and commercial freedom; the French Revolution was able to sow in ripe ground the two new principles of the sovereignty of the people and the sentiment of nationality.

The campaign of 1788 had, upon the whole, terminated favourably for the Austrians and Russians in their war with the Turks. Loudon, who commanded the Austrian forces, had taken Dubitza, and penetrating into Bosnia had reduced Novi on 3d October. Francis Josias, of the House of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, commonly known as the Prince of Coburg, at the head of an Austrian army, had in conjunction with a Russian force under Prince Soltikov taken Choczim on 20th September. But, on the other hand, the Turks had overrun and laid waste the Banat of Temesvar and routed the Austrian army in that quarter, which was under the personal command of the Emperor. The Russians had also made some progress, and on 6th December Potemkin, with terrible loss of life, and owing mainly to the intrepidity of Suv?rov and Repnin stormed Oczakoff . These successes, despite his own failure, greatly inspirited Joseph, who, in a letter to Prince Charles of Nassau, made the following curious predictions in January 1789:--'If the Grand Vizier should come to meet me or the Russians near the Danube, he must offer a battle; and then, after having defeated him, I shall drive him back to take refuge under the cannon of Silistria. In October 1789 I shall call a congress, at which the Osmanlis will be obliged to beg for peace from the Giaours. The treaties of Carlowitz and Passarowitz will serve as the basis for my ambassadors on which to conclude peace; in it, however, I shall claim Choczim and part of Moldavia. Russia will keep the Crimea, Prince Charles of Sweden will be Duke of Courland, and the Grand Duke of Florence King of the Romans. Then there will be universal peace in Europe. Until then, France will have settled affairs with the notables of the nation; and the other gentlemen think too much about themselves and too little about Austria.'

In the bishopric of Li?ge, which, from its situation, always reflected and repeated any political troubles that took place in Belgium, the influence of the French Revolution was immediately felt. The inhabitants of the bishopric had long resented the rule of the prince-bishops, and felt the anomaly of being subject to an ecclesiastical sovereign. Many exiles from the democratic party in Belgium assembled in the bishopric, and on the news of the capture of the Bastille, the people of Li?ge needed little persuasion to renew their former insurrection. The revolution was carried out without the shedding of blood. On 16th and 17th August 1789 the people of the city of Li?ge rose in rebellion; on the 18th MM. Chestret and Fabry were chosen burgomasters by popular acclamation, the garrison was disarmed, and the citadel occupied by bourgeois national guards. On the same day the Prince-Bishop, Count Caesar Constantine Francis de Hoensbroeck, was brought into the city, and he signed a proclamation acknowledging the revolution and abrogating the despotic settlement of 1684. The other towns in the bishopric followed the example of the capital, and in each of them free municipalities were elected and national guards raised and armed. The Prince-Bishop, after accepting the loss of his political power, fled to Tr?ves, and considered himself fortunate to be allowed to escape.

But the deputies of the Tiers ?tat, under the guidance of Le Chapelier, a Breton lawyer from Rennes, and of Rabaut de Saint-?tienne, a Protestant pastor from N?mes, proceeded to take up a most skilful attitude. They resolved on a policy of masterly inactivity. They refused to form themselves into the assembly of the Order of the Tiers ?tat; they refused to open letters addressed to them under that title; they refused to elect a president or secretaries; and stated that they were a body of citizens, representatives of the French nation, waiting in that hall to be joined by the other deputies. This attitude received the unanimous approval of the people of Paris, and threw upon the Government the onus of declaring that the double representation of the Tiers ?tat was merely a sterile gift. The representatives of the two privileged orders treated the situation very differently. The nobility accepted the separation of the orders to distinct chambers, and resolved to constitute their chamber by 188 votes to 47, while the clergy only decided in the same sense by 133 votes to 114. Even this majority was not really significant. For, owing to a tendency which had developed during the course of the elections, the greater part of the deputies of the clergy were poor country cur?s, who sympathised with the Tiers ?tat, from which they sprung, and not with the prelates and dignitaries of the Church, who belonged to the nobility. This tendency of the true majority of the clergy was well known to the leaders of the Tiers ?tat and encouraged them in their passive attitude. In vain the King and Necker attempted to terminate the deadlock; the deputies of the Tiers ?tat persisted that they did not form an order, and they were reinforced by the representatives of Paris, where the elections were not concluded until the end of May. At last, on 10th June, on the proposition of the Abb? Siey?s, deputy for Paris, a final invitation was sent to the deputies of the nobility and the clergy to join the deputies of the Tiers ?tat, and it was resolved that whether the request was granted or refused the Tiers ?tat would constitute itself into a regular deliberative body. The invitation was rejected by the nobility, and only a few cur?s, including the Abb? Gr?goire, belonging to the Order of the Clergy, complied with it. The deputies then verified their powers, and elected Bailly, a famous astronomer and deputy for Paris, to be their president. But what sort of assembly were they? They denied that they were representatives of an Order, and they were certainly not the States-General of France. The question was hotly debated, and on 16th June they declared themselves the National Assembly. They then declared all the taxes, hitherto levied, to be illegal, and ordered that they should only be paid provisionally. This defiant conduct disconcerted the King and his ministers, and it was announced that a S?ance Royale, or Royal Session, would be held by the King in person to settle all disputed questions.

Hitherto the struggle had been between the Court and the deputies of the Tiers ?tat; the popular element was now to intervene; and the people of Paris was for the first time to make its influence felt. The news of Necker's dismissal was received in Paris with wrath and dismay. A young lawyer without practice, named Camille Desmoulins, announced the event to the crowd collected in the Palais Royal and incited his hearers to resistance. His words were eagerly applauded. The population of Paris, both bourgeois and proletariat, had watched the course of events at Versailles with unflagging interest, and the formation of a camp of soldiers in the neighbourhood with terror. The working classes, who lived near the margin of starvation, expected that the National Assembly would cause in some way a rise in wages and a decrease in the price of necessaries, and were exasperated at the prospect of the non-fulfilment of their hopes. They had already sacked the house of a manufacturer, named R?veillon, who was reported to have spoken scornful words of their poverty, on 28th April, and were ready for any mischief. From the Palais Royal, excited by the news and the words of Camille Desmoulins, started a tumultuous procession bearing busts of Necker and of the Duke of Orleans, a prince of the royal house, who had been exiled by the King for previous opposition to him, and who was regarded as a supporter of the popular claims. The procession was charged by a German cavalry regiment in the French service, commanded by the Prince de Lambesc, a near relative of the Queen, and the mob dispersed to riot and to pillage. The more patriotic rioters broke into the gunsmiths' shops to seize weapons, the rest pillaged the butchers' and bakers' shops, and burned the barriers where octroi duties were collected. This scene of riot brought about its own remedy. The bourgeois, terrified for the safety of their shops, took up arms, and on the following day formed themselves into companies of national guards for the preservation of the peace. The guidance of this movement was taken by the electors of Paris, who, after completing their work of electing deputies for Paris, continued to meet at the H?tel-de-Ville.

The immediate results of the capture of the Bastille were no less important in the provinces of France. In every city, even in small country towns, mayors and municipalities were elected and National Guards formed; in many the local citadels were seized by the people; in all the troops fraternised with the people; and in some there was bloodshed. This movement was essentially bourgeois; where blood was shed and pillage took place at the hands of the working classes, the new National Guards soon restored order. The general excitement was so great that it is surprising that there was not more bloodshed and that peace was so quickly and efficiently established. Among these outbreaks the most noteworthy took place in Paris itself, where on 21st July Foullon de Dou?, who had been nominated to succeed Necker on 12th July, and his son-in-law Berthier de Sauvigny were murdered almost before the eyes of Bailly, the new Mayor of Paris. But these occasional town riots were speedily quelled by the armed bourgeois. Far more widespread and important was the upheaval in the rural districts of France.

The peasants believed that the time had come, when they were to own their land free from copyhold rights or the relics of feudal servitudes. Even the better-educated farmers for their own interests favoured this idea. The result was a regular jacquerie in many parts of France. The ch?teaux of the lords were burnt, or in some instances only the charters stored in them, and the lords' dovecotes and rabbit-warrens were generally destroyed. In certain provinces the National Guards of the neighbouring towns put down these rural outbreaks, occasionally with great severity, but as a rule they ran their course unchecked.

But it was not possible to restore peace and prosperity to France by the abolition of the relics of feudalism. Destruction of former anomalies and of a crumbling system of government would inevitably lead to anarchy, unless accompanied by the construction of a new scheme of central and local administration. It was here that the Constituent Assembly failed. The deputies were quick to destroy but slow to construct. For two months they wasted time instead of hastening to draw up a new constitution for France. They first wrangled over the wording of a Declaration of the Rights of Man, which they resolved to compile in imitation of the founders of the American Republic. They then debated lengthily whether the future representative assembly of France should consist of one or two chambers, and whether the King should have power to veto its acts. The first question was decided in favour of a single chamber, more because the English Constitution sanctioned two chambers, and the deputies feared to be thought imitators, than for any logical reason. And the debate on the second question terminated in the grant to the King of a suspensive veto for six months, in spite of the eloquence of Mirabeau, who saw that a monarchical constitution, which gave the King no more power than the President of the United States of America, would prove unworkable, because it would divorce responsibility from real authority, leaving the former to the King and the latter to the Legislature.

This attitude towards the King had an important effect upon the constitution which the Constituent Assembly was engaged in framing during the year 1790. Only the main points in the growth of this Constitution, which occupied the greater part of the time of the Assembly from 1789 to 1791, can here be touched upon. But one striking feature must first be observed, that it was drawn up and applied piecemeal, not as an organic whole, like the later French constitutions of the revolutionary period. The first important principle was decreed upon 12th November 1789, when it was resolved that all the old local divisions of France, which perpetuated the memory of the gradual growth of the French provinces into France, should be abolished, and that the country should be divided into eighty departments of nearly equal size. It was naturally some months before the new division was effected, and still longer before the further division of each department into districts, and each district into cantons was finished. No wiser step for converting France from a congeries of provinces into a nation could have been devised. On the basis of the new divisions a new local government was established. Each department and district was to be administered by elected authorities, elaborately chosen by a system of double election. Next to the local government, the judicial system was reorganised. The Parlements were all abolished, and local courts, consisting of elected judges of departmental and district tribunals, and elected justices of the peace, were substituted. A uniform system of law was projected, and juries were sanctioned in criminal but not in civil cases. In these sweeping reforms one natural blemish is perceptible: from having no elected officials the other extreme was adopted of having all officials elected.

Though the main occupation of the Constituent Assembly was the building up of the Constitution of 1791, it interfered only too much in matters of current administration. It was soon obvious that its power exceeded that of the King, and it has been observed that Van der Noot announced the new Belgian Constitution alike to the King and the President of the Assembly, as to authorities of equal importance. The mischief produced by this constant interference was perceptible in every department of government. Mirabeau, who was a profound master of statecraft, saw through the fallacies of endeavouring to separate the legislative and executive powers in the State, and, what was implied in the preponderance of a legislature in which the ministers had no seat, to divorce authority from responsibility. He understood and approved of the English system, and as soon as the Constituent Assembly had removed to Paris in October 1789, after the establishment of the King at the Tuileries, and he had got the ear of the Court through his friend, La Marck, Mirabeau proposed the formation of a constitutional ministry, after the English fashion, from among the leading members of the Assembly. His scheme got noised abroad: the Assembly in its fear of the executive, which was afterwards consecrated in the Constitution of 1791, and stimulated by Lafayette, who dreaded the influence of a strong ministry, passed a motion on 7th November, that no member of the Assembly could take office as a minister while he remained a deputy, or for three years after his resignation.

Only one man seems to have understood the dangers to which France was drifting owing to the policy of the Constituent Assembly, and that man was Mirabeau. He had done more than any man to assure the victory of the Tiers ?tat in June 1789; he was the greatest orator and greatest statesman the revolutionary crisis had produced. Mirabeau, however, hated anarchy as much as he did despotism. He saw the absolute necessity of establishing a strong executive, if the crisis of 1789, the dissolution of the old authorities, the unpunished riots in towns, and the jacquerie in the rural districts were not to lead to anarchy. Foiled in his prudent scheme of selecting a strong ministry from the Constituent Assembly by the vote of 7th November 1789, Mirabeau saw that it was impossible to overcome the distrust of the Assembly for the executive. He therefore turned to the Court, and in May 1790 he became the secret adviser of the King through the mediation of his friend La Marck. In a series of memoirs or notes for the Court of surpassing political wisdom, Mirabeau analysed the situation of affairs and proposed remedies. The two main dangers were the state of the finances and the fear of foreign intervention. Mirabeau's horror of national bankruptcy was as great as his personal extravagance in expenditure. In September 1789 he advocated Necker's scheme of a general contribution, though it was accompanied by stipulations which were certain to make it almost entirely unproductive, and he personally disapproved of it; in December 1789 he grudgingly acquiesced in the first issue of 'assignats' or promises to pay, based on the value of the property of the Church, resumed or confiscated by the Assembly, and to be extinguished as this property was sold. In August 1790 he went yet further. Comprehending that men are mainly influenced by their pecuniary interests, he advocated a wide extension of the system of assignats, down to small sums, on the grounds that they would then be able to reach the hands of the poorer classes and give them an interest in their maintaining their value, and would also frustrate the machinations of speculators, who began to make money by depreciating the exchange of specie against the new paper currency. But he also wisely proposed and successfully carried severe regulations for the extinction of assignats as the national property was realised, regulations which, unfortunately, were not strictly observed. His decree was followed in September 1790 by the retirement of Necker from office, and it is a significant proof of the change in popular opinion that the final retirement of the minister, whose dismissal in July 1789 had brought about the capture of the Bastille, was received without excitement.

As reporter of the Diplomatic Committee, Mirabeau had three different problems to solve, in which the policy of the Assembly came in contact with foreign powers, the affairs of Avignon, the maintenance of the Pacte de Famille with Spain, and the interference caused by the legislation of the Assembly with the Princes of the Empire who owned fiefs of the Empire in Alsace.

The city of Avignon and the county of the Venaissin, though inhabited by Frenchmen and surrounded by French territory, were under the sovereignty of the Pope. As early as the 'orgie' of 4th August 1789 the Constituent Assembly had pronounced on the expediency of uniting both the city and the county with France. A French party was formed in Avignon; and a free municipal constitution after the model of those just established in France was framed and assented to by the Cardinal Vice-Legate in April 1790. The Pope, however, annulled his deputy's assent, with the result that fierce street fighting took place in the city, which was only stopped by the intervention of the National Guard of the neighbouring French city of Orange. The result of these events was that the city of Avignon, or at least the French party there, declared Avignon united to France on 12th June 1790. The inhabitants of the Venaissin, on the other hand, declared their attachment for the Pope, and their wish to remain subject to him. When these circumstances became known in Paris a strong party showed itself in the Assembly in favour of accepting the union of Avignon with or without the Pope's assent. Mirabeau skilfully averted the danger of a flagrant breach of international law by securing the appointment of an Avignon Committee, and when it became necessary to send regular troops to maintain order in the city, he secured their despatch thither without the assumption of any rights of sovereignty.

Leopold found the power of Austria seriously affected by dangers from within and dangers from without. He at once undid much of Joseph's work. He recognised the difference between consolidating and unifying a nation, which was essentially one, and a congeries of nations speaking different languages, belonging to different races, and geographically widely separated. In Tuscany he had accomplished a great work in abolishing the local franchises of the cities and building up a Tuscan state, but he understood that such a work was impossible in the divided hereditary dominions of the House of Hapsburg, and that the Emperor Joseph had been attempting a hopeless task. Leopold's first step was, therefore, to restore the former state of things in such parts of his dominions as were not in open insurrection. In Austria proper, in Bohemia, in the Milanese, and in the Tyrol, the concessions of Leopold were received with demonstrations of popular gratitude. He abolished the new system of taxation and the unpopular seminaries; he recognised the separate administrations of provinces which were essentially diverse; he gave up futile attempts at unification. But, at the same time, he maintained the edict of religious toleration, the most noble of Joseph's reforms, and introduced many slight but appreciable improvements in the local institutions which he restored. Having thus assured the fidelity of an important body of his subjects, he prepared to deal with the declared rebels in Belgium and the unconcealed opposition in Hungary. It was here that Leopold suffered most from the foreign policy of Maria Theresa and Joseph, for it was indisputable that the prevalent discontent and insurrection in Belgium and Hungary was fostered by the Triple Alliance, and especially by Prussia. He had a serious war with the Turks on his hands; his ally, Catherine of Russia, was too much occupied with her wars with the Swedes and Turks and with the affairs of Poland, to come to his help; France, excited by her internal dissensions, and with the Assembly indisposed to the maintenance of the Treaty of 1756, might almost be reckoned an enemy; the Empire had been roused to distrust by the policy of Joseph, and the Triple Alliance was openly hostile. Under these circumstances Prussia appeared at once the chief power on the Continent and the principal enemy of Austria, and it was with Prussia that Leopold first resolved to deal.

The first actual consequence of the Convention of Reichenbach was the conclusion of an armistice between Austria and the Turks. The war had never been looked on with favour by Leopold, who regarded Joseph's infatuation for the grandiose schemes of Catherine of Russia as absurd, and the dismemberment of Turkey as impracticable, and at the present time undesirable. He had not attempted to press matters against the Turks, and had withdrawn many of his best troops under Loudon from the seat of war to Bohemia to strengthen his position at Reichenbach. The Prince of Coburg, who succeeded Loudon, aided by an earthquake, took Orsova, and laid siege to Giurgevo, but he was defeated in his camp after a severe battle on 8th July 1790. This defeat was only partially compensated by a victory won by Clerfayt, and by the capture of Zettin by General de Vins on 20th July. Under these circumstances Leopold was not sorry to conclude an armistice for nine months at Giurgevo on 19th September. Shortly afterwards a congress of plenipotentiaries from Austria, Turkey, and the mediating powers met, as had been arranged at Reichenbach, at Sistova. The negotiations lasted for many months; Leopold insisted on the cession by Turkey of Old Orsova and a district in Croatia, which would make the Danube and the Unna the boundary between Austria and Turkey; Prussia at first strongly protested against any cession to Austria; the congress even for a time broke up; and it was not until Leopold adroitly got Lucchesini, the Prussian envoy, on his side, that the important Treaty of Sistova upon the terms desired by Leopold was concluded on 4th August 1791.

The conduct of the Constituent Assembly in disorganising every branch of the executive in France had its natural effect by the commencement of 1791. The army, in spite of the effort of General Bouill? to restore discipline by making an example of some Swiss mutineers at Nancy in 1790, was rendered inefficient by the disaffection of the soldiers and the exaggerated royalism of most of the officers; the navy was in a still worse condition; the Civil Constitution of the Clergy had caused a schism, which disturbed the minds of men in all parts of France, and created an army of opponents to the work of the Assembly, who had peculiar influence over the rural communities; the issue of assignats on the security of the confiscated domains of the Church had inflated the currency, and, while giving an appearance of fictitious prosperity, had really given a feeling of insecurity to all trade and commerce; the old internal administrations of the provinces had been replaced by the new administrations of the departments, which were filled by inexperienced men, utterly unable to cope with the difficulties of a time of unrest and revolution. The practical disorganisation of the executive was meanwhile being consecrated by the measures of the Constituent Assembly, which, in the Constitution it was drawing up, in its fear of the power of the monarchy, so hampered the authority of the executive as to destroy the necessary foundations of good government.

The leaders of the Cordeliers were proscribed. Danton and Marat fled to England, and the party of order seemed triumphant. A revision of the Constitution was undertaken, and various reactionary clauses, specially directed against the press, the popular clubs or societies, and the rights of assembly and of petition, were inserted. But this new attitude of the Constituent Assembly had but a slight effect upon France, for the king's flight had caused the people in general to believe that he was the enemy of their new-born liberties, and a traitor in league with foreign powers to overthrow them.

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 Bar?re, 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 Li?ge. 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 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.

The first months of 1793 found France at war with Europe. Though such minor states as Denmark and Sweden and Venice declared their neutrality, they manifested no desire to assist the French Republic, and their neutrality was but of slight service. It was otherwise with the neutrality of Switzerland. The Swiss cantons had nearly been drawn into the general war by the support given to the revolutionary party in the Republic of Geneva by the French ministry, which included among its members Clavi?re, a Genevese exile. The canton of Berne went so far as to occupy the city of Geneva, and it was only by the exercise of much diplomatic skill that open war was avoided. The neutrality of Switzerland made the land blockade of the French Republic of no avail. Through secret agents in Switzerland, arms, provisions, and necessaries were obtained from Southern Germany, and diplomatic relations were maintained with the democrats residing in the states of the belligerent powers. The declaration of war by the Holy Roman Empire completed the armed opposition of the greater countries of Europe against France. Of these countries Russia alone sent no army or fleet against the Republic, and Catherine satisfied herself with stating that she was engaged in conquering Jacobins in Poland.

The desertion of Dumouriez left the way clear for the Austrians and English to invade France. They advanced slowly and did not attempt, like the Duke of Brunswick in the previous year, to mask the frontier fortresses and move straight upon Paris. On 24th May the French camp at Famars was stormed; on 12th July Cond?, on 28th July Valenciennes, were taken after making an obstinate resistance, and the allies were thus firmly established in France. Then, fortunately for the Convention, the allied commanders-in-chief quarrelled. The Duke of York, acting under the orders of the English ministry, besieged Dunkirk, which port he desired to hold for the disembarkation of supplies. The Prince of Coburg, with the Austrians, refused to assist in the siege of Dunkirk, and invested Le Quesnoy. Further south the Prussians captured Mayence on the 22d of July, and a mixed army of Austrians and troops of the Empire under W?rmser forced their way into Alsace. At both ends of the Pyrenees Spanish armies invaded the French Republic. In the eastern Pyrenees nearly the whole of Roussillon was conquered, and in the western Pyrenees the passage of the Bidassoa was forced. These repeated reverses in so many quarters did not destroy the courage of the Convention or of the French people, but they proved that hastily raised undisciplined masses can never be a match for trained soldiers. The successes of Dumouriez and Custine had been as much the result of accident and of the hearty reception given to them by the natives of the districts they invaded as of talent and bravery, but the first defeats showed how thoroughly the policy of the Constituent Assembly had sapped the discipline of the French army.

The deputies of the Mountain met the unparalleled dangers of foreign and civil war with undaunted courage. Their first measure was to draw up with extreme rapidity a republican constitution, which is known as the Constitution of 1793. As it never came into effect, the details of this proposed system of government need not be described. But the fact that it was drawn up, promulgated, and sent before the primary assemblies of the people, deprived the Girondin insurgents of one of their chief weapons. They had asserted that the Mountain admired anarchy and wished to retain power for the Convention and themselves. To these allegations the issue of the Constitution of 1793 was an adequate reply. But it was quite impossible, according to the leaders of the Mountain, for the Convention to abandon the reins of power. A general election at such a time would but increase the difficulty of the situation. So, while declaring the existence of the new Constitution, it deferred putting it into effect, and strengthened the authority of its new executive, the Committee of Public Safety. The advantages to be derived from the concentration of authority in a few hands became quite clear to the Convention after the expulsion of the Girondins. It may be doubted whether the distinguished orators who directed Girondin opinion, from their constant apprehension of the dangers of a strong executive to individual liberty, would ever have perceived them. The existence of the Committee made it possible for representatives on mission and other agents of government to have a central authority on which to rely. It was the Committee which directed the short campaign in Normandy which overthrew the most promising movement of the escaped Girondin deputies; it was the prudence of a member of the Committee, Robert Lindet, which pacified Normandy, after the victory had been won, by ruthlessly tracking down the ringleaders and generously sparing those who had been led away; it was the Committee which first attempted to re-establish discipline in the armies and to supply them with provisions and munitions of war; and it was on the motion of the most important member of the first Committee, Danton, that the fatal decree of the 19th of November, which consecrated the revolutionary propaganda, and gave good reason for the continued opposition of foreign powers, was repealed. This good work in all directions showed the members of the Convention that they were acting in the right direction.

On 10th July 1793 the first Committee was dissolved on the motion of Camille Desmoulins, but a new Committee with similar powers was at once elected. This Committee, which may be called the Great Committee of Public Safety, remained in power for more than a year. Danton was not a member of it, partly because he believed he could do better work outside, partly because of his dislike of continued labour; Cambon also was not re-elected, preferring to confine himself to the charge of the finances of the Republic as the principal member of the Financial Committee. The nine members originally elected in July were Bar?re, who acted as reporter throughout its tenure of office, and was therefore in some respects the most important of them all; Jean Bon Saint-Andr?, who took charge of naval matters; Prieur of the Marne and Robert Lindet, whose main duties were to provide for the feeding of the armies; H?rault de S?chelles, the chief author of the Constitution of 1793, who busied himself with foreign affairs; Couthon, Saint-Just, Gasparin, and Thuriot. Robespierre entered the Committee in the place of Gasparin on the 27th of July; Carnot and Prieur of the C?te-d'Or were added on the 14th of August to superintend the military operations on the frontiers; Billaud-Varenne and Collot-d'Herbois were added on September the 6th to establish the Reign of Terror; and on the 20th of September Thuriot retired. The steps in the growth of the supremacy of this second Committee of Public Safety are significant. On the 1st of August 1793 Bar?re read his first report to the Convention. In it he proposed the most energetic, not to say sanguinary, measures. The war was to be carried on with the utmost energy; La Vend?e was to be destroyed; and Marie Antoinette was to be sent for trial before the Revolutionary Tribunal. On the same day Danton proposed that the Committee should be formally recognised as a provisional government, and that the ministers should be directed to act as its subordinates. This motion was not carried, but the entire control over the resources of France, and the lives of Frenchmen, which Danton contemplated, was secured without the passing of a formal decree. The Convention seems to have been very glad to rid itself of the work of government. It accepted without a murmur every measure proposed by the Committee of Public Safety; it re-elected the members month after month; it threw all responsibility upon them and registered all the decrees they proposed. As has been said, it definitely gave them the charge of the military operations by the election of Carnot and Prieur of the C?te-d'Or, and it established the unity of their internal administration by the election of Billaud-Varenne and Collot-d'Herbois.

The rule of the second or Great Committee of Public Safety is generally known as the Reign of Terror. The Committee itself divided the chief functions of government among its members. The special functions of all, except those of Robespierre, Couthon, and Saint-Just, have been already noticed. Robespierre was the only one amongst them who had any reputation outside, or indeed within, the walls of the Convention. His conduct during the session of the Constituent Assembly, his clear-sighted opposition to the war with Austria, his sagacious views on the subject of the treatment of the King, his war against the Girondin federalists, his oratorical talent, and above all his reputation for being absolutely incorruptible and sincerely patriotic, made him the man of mark among the Committee. He was well aware of the importance of his position. His colleagues on the Committee used him as their figure-head to represent them on great occasions, and he made it his business to lay down the general principles which underlay the system of revolutionary government--that is, of the Reign of Terror. But though to the Convention and to France at large Robespierre was the most conspicuous member of the Committee of Public Safety, he really exercised but very slight influence on the actual work of government. He had no department of the State given into his charge; he had not the necessary fluency or facility to take Bar?re's place as ordinary reporter; he was not on terms of friendship with the majority of his fellow-workers; he was made use of, but was neither trusted nor liked by the real governors of France. It was to their benefit that the system of the solidarity of the Committee was established, which gave to all their measures the sanction of Robespierre's great reputation for incorruptibility and patriotism. The majority of the Committee had no positive views on government; they tried to do the work which lay to their hands in the best way they could; Robespierre alone hoped to evolve out of the Reign of Terror a new system of republican government. His only real friends in the Committee were the two men least suited to give him effectual help, for Couthon was a cripple, and unable to attend with the necessary assiduity, and Saint-Just was but five-and-twenty, the youngest of the Committee, and was generally absent from Paris on special missions.

The system by which the Great Committee of Public Safety regulated the Reign of Terror was based upon two important institutions. The first of these was the Committee of General Security which sat in Paris, and was elected from the members of the Convention, and which exercised general police control over all France. On great occasions its members sat with the Committee of Public Safety as a Committee of Government, but its special functions were to deal with men, while the Committee of Public Safety dealt with measures. Danton, who was the principal creator of the supremacy of the Great Committee of Public Safety--though he himself refused to join it--saw the importance of subordinating in fact, if not in name, the Committee of General Security to the Committee of Public Safety. On 11th September 1793 a Committee of General Security had been elected, containing certain deputies of independent character, and Danton, fearing a rivalry would arise between the two Committees, at once obtained its dissolution, and secured, on September the 14th, the election of a Committee of General Security which would act in harmony with the great Committee. The members elected at this time were with but few exceptions re-elected every month.

The second instrument by which the Great Committee ruled were the deputies on mission. The practice of sending deputies on special missions originated in August 1792. It had grown in importance, and the deputies proved their value in their vigorous suppression of the Girondin movement in the provinces in the summer of 1793. The power of deputies on mission was more than once specifically declared to be unlimited. On grounds of public safety they were not only permitted, but were ordered, to alter the composition of local authorities, whether municipal or departmental. They had full powers to arrest and to make requisitions. They were consistently supported by the Committee of Public Safety sitting in Paris, and the greatest latitude was given to them in administering the local government. As long as they preserved the peace and sent up plenty of supplies of money, and, when demanded, of recruits to Paris, their methods of government were not minutely inquired into. Besides the deputies on mission employed in the internal administration, another important body of similar representatives were kept at the headquarters of the different armies. These deputies likewise had unlimited authority. They could arrest even generals-in-chief at their absolute will; they could degrade officers of any rank; they could interfere with military operations; and could overrule the orders of a general in the field. The Committee of General Security and the deputies on mission ruled by means of inspiring terror. This terror was based on the existence of the Revolutionary Tribunal in Paris, and of its imitations termed revolutionary or military commissions in the provinces, and the armies.

This system of terror was not suddenly evolved--it was the result of gradual growth. The two men mainly responsible for systematising it and carrying it into effect were Billaud-Varenne and Collot-d'Herbois, who were specially added to the Committee of Public Safety to superintend the internal administration of France. On 10th October 1793, on the motion of Saint-Just, the Constitution of 1793 was declared suspended, and revolutionary government, that is, the Reign of Terror, was ordered to continue until a general peace. On 10th December Billaud-Varenne read a report which defined the system, of which the most important clause was the substitution of national agents nominated by the government,--that is, by the deputies on mission,--to take the place of the elected procureurs-syndics of the districts. The Reign of Terror in the provinces varied greatly. Some proconsuls, such as Carrier at Nantes and Le Bon at Arras, carried out their government in the most bloodthirsty fashion, but the 'Noyades,' or drowning of prisoners wholesale at Nantes, must not be regarded as typical of the terror in the provinces. Many proconsuls, such as Andr? Dumont, contented themselves with threats, and while filling their prisons with suspects declined to empty them by means of the guillotine. Other proconsuls, such as Bernard of Saintes, preferred to send an occasional batch of prisoners to Paris to having a revolutionary tribunal of their own; but in every case except those of Carrier and Javogues, which were too atrocious to be passed over, the Committee of Public Safety gave its agents in the provinces a free hand to rule as they would so long as they maintained internal tranquillity and passive obedience to the decrees of the revolutionary government.

The Great Committee of Public Safety knew that its tenure of power rested on its successful conduct of the foreign war. Throughout the interior tranquillity prevailed except in La Vend?e, where the sanguinary measures adopted perpetuated a guerilla warfare. The French troops were, in 1794, in a very different condition from that in which they had been left at the commencement of 1793. The measures of terror which pacified France had been in the army the cause of the restoration of discipline. Constant fighting had converted the men into efficient soldiers. Excellent officers had come to the front during the campaign, and, owing to the rapidity of promotion, most of the generals were young and energetic men. All that was best in France had gone to the front. There, and there alone, men who might have fallen under the terrible Law of the Suspects at home, were not only safe themselves, but by their presence in the ranks of the Republic protected their relatives. All the resources of France were laid at the disposal of her armies. The country became one vast arsenal. The soldiers were well fed, clothed, and armed, and the ablest administrators were employed in rendering them efficient. The result of this concentration of France upon the foreign war was success in every quarter. In the spring of 1794 the various armies took the offensive, the Army of the North, under Pichegru, marched by the northern line into Belgium, while a new army, afterwards called the Army of the Sambre-and-Meuse, which was formed out of the Army of the Ardennes, and a wing of the Army of the Moselle penetrated Belgium from the south. Before these two armies the English and Austrians fell back. They were rapidly pursued, and on the 26th of June 1794 Jourdan won the battle of Fleurus. This victory, like the victory of Jemmappes the year before, laid Belgium open to the French armies. Brussels was reoccupied; the English and Dutch retired into Holland; the Austrians fell back behind the Meuse. Meanwhile, the Army of the Moselle, under Ren? Moreaux, stormed the Prussian position at Kaiserslautern, and with the Army of the Rhine drove the Austrians across that river. The Army of Italy, which had taken Toulon, also took the offensive, and defeated the Piedmontese at Saorgio. Dugommier, with the Army of the Eastern Pyrenees, turned the tables on the Spaniards, and crossing the mountains penetrated into Catalonia, while the Army of the Western Pyrenees invaded Spain in that quarter, and threatened San Sebastian.

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