their name, said, "For a long time the principle established by the great Frederick, that the best way to take advantage of the courage of troops is to accumulate them in large masses on particular points has been an established maxim in war. Instead of doing this, you have divided them into separate detachments, and the generals in command have had to combat superior forces. The Committee of Public Safety, fully aware of the danger, had sent the most positive instructions to the generals to fight in large masses; you have disregarded their orders, and reverses have followed." He was brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal, condemned, and executed. The principle of the Committee of Public Safety became the rule of war, and the star of victory. General Jourdan was placed in command of the of Flanders. Twelve hundred thousand men were army ordered to be raised to defend the French territory. The Allies, much discouraged, but not yet hopeless, now laid siege to Maubeuge, with a view of opening a road to Paris. But the French, fully roused to their danger, were making superhuman efforts to meet this new invasion. On the 15th of October Jourdan attacked in three columns the key of the Austrian position. After a brave defence the Prince of Coburg, afraid of having his flank turned, retreated from Wattignies, with the loss of six thousand men. The siege of Mauberge was raised, and the campaign on this side was decided in favour of France.

On the Rhine the differences between the Austrians and Prussians, now openly declared, neutralized any real advantage which might have been obtained from the overwhelming force of the Allies. Victories, it is true, were gained; the lines of Wiessenburg were forced by the Allies with great slaughter. But a proclamation of General

Wurmser, calling upon the people of Alsace to re-unite themselves to the Empire, and thus undo the work of Louis XIV., augmented the jealousy of Prussia. The Duke of Brunswick received orders from Berlin to thwart the efforts of Austria, and he willingly complied with this order. Presently the French under Hoche, with augmented forces, rushed upon Wurmser, forced him to repass the Rhine, and regained Landau.

In La Vendée the royalists sustained two very bloody defeats at Mons and Juvenay. Lord Moira, who was sent to assist them, arrived too late, and left the coast.

The fate of Toulon was the most disastrous of all the events which checked the Grand Alliance. The middle classes of that town declared in favour of Louis XVII., with a constitution; and the British Government, with sundry reserves, undertook to protect them till the general peace. But a young officer of artillery, sent by the Committee of Public Safety, called Napoleon Bonaparte, defeated all the efforts of Lord Hood and the Spanish admiral by making himself master of a post from which the harbour was commanded. Lord Hood and his advisers decided to evacuate the place and burn so much of the French fleet as they could not remove. The Spanish admiral remonstrated against this destruction; he said it was as contrary to the interests of Spain as it was consonant to the particular policy of Great Britain. This remonstrance was unavailing ; but the remissness of the Spaniards saved seven sail of the line to the Republic. Eighteen sail of the line and nine frigates were destroyed or removed; of these, fifteen sail of the line were burnt and three added to the British navy. Fourteen thousand persons were carried away by the Allies. The vengeance of the Republicans was horrible. The

guillotine executed the principal adherents of monarchy and the richest of the inhabitants. Large numbers were drawn out in line and shot down by musketry. As even this process was found too slow, Froune, the Commissioner of the Republic, ordered the people of the town to assemble in the Champ de Mars. This order was generally obeyed; and even many country people joined the crowd, thinking a procession or some festive games were to be seen. When the crowd was assembled, grape shot was fired upon them; those who had fallen from terror or slight wounds were ordered to stand up, and when they did so, a second discharge of grape was the recompence of their obedience. Two thousand dead bodies were left on the field of carnage.

Thus ended the attempt to establish the monarchy of Louis XVII. at Toulon. The story of Lyons is still more dreadful, and is a reproach on the age in which such crimes could be perpetrated. The monsters who ordered the massacres exulted in the sight of these cold-blooded murders of their countrymen.

The end of the year beheld the indisputable triumph of the sanguinary monsters who ruled France. The hostility of Great Britain seemed only to have furnished an excuse for aggravated terrors in the interior, and a motive for unexampled efforts to repel the foreign enemy. Mr. Carlyle says truly:

"Whatsoever is cruel in the panic frenzy of twenty-five million men, whatsoever is great in the simultaneous deathdefiance of twenty-five million men, stand here in abrupt contrast, near by one another. As, indeed, is usual, much more when a nation of men is hurled suddenly beyond the limits."

*Carlyle: "French Revolution,” vol. iii. p. 4.

In the meantime the year 1793 came to a close. Its day dawned on the murder of a king, its sun set on the horrible spectacle of a great nation slaying rich and poor, the brilliant and the obscure, the widow and the orphan. The monarchs and the statesmen of Europe had found no better remedy for these crimes than a league to light up the flames of war and add the slaughter of the battle and the siege to that of the street and the scaffold.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

REMARKS ON THE CONDUCT OF THE WAR.

IN October, 1793, Mr. Burke, dissatisfied with the firstfruits of the war he had invoked, sat down to place on record his views of what ought to be done, and his reflections on what had been done. In these remarks there is, as usual, much that is striking, forcible, and true, mixed with much that is intemperate, extravagant, and false.

One passage is to the following effect: "If we consider the acting power in France, in any legal construction of public law, as the people, the question is decided in favour of the Republic, one and indivisible. But we have decided for monarchy. If so, we have a king and subjects; and that king and subjects have rights and privileges which ought to be supported at home; for I do not suppose that the government of that kingdom can, or ought to be regulated by the arbitrary mandate of a foreign confederacy."*

Nothing can be more unsound or contradictory than this paragraph. Who gave us the right to decide for monarchy in France? Why was it not as competent for the people of France, as for the people of Holland, of "Policy of the Allies."