Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/363

 FRENCH REVOLUTION AND FRENCH REPUBLIC 351 their masters and under French protection. Finally it brought the unfortunate Louis xvi. to trial, and condemned him to death. His head fell under the guillotine, and France was immediately at war with all the kings of Europe. Now Prussia and Austria were both quite as much taken up with the last partition of Poland which Catharine of Russia had just arranged as with the French war It was true 3. The that the French generals, Dumouriez and others, Terror, had been remarkably successful ; but it was not to be imagined that a country in the throes of a revolution, emptied of the families which had led it for generations, with no France one of experience to guide it, and in a state of against the financial chaos, could possibly offer a prolonged Monarcnies - resistance to the arms of united Europe ; so united Europe only gave half its attention to France. England took the seas, but her army had not won distinction in America, and her troops were now placed under the command of the king's second son the Duke of York, who was an entirely inefficient general. The republic, on the other hand, possessed in Carnot a man endowed with a genius for military organisation and an infallible skill in the selection of officers, while he was entirely unhampered by respect for tradition in the one case and for rank or family in the other. Ability was the one condition without which no one could hope to obtain a command, success the one condition of retaining it. Failure was as likely as not to lead the way to the guillotine — failure, or the suspicion of aristocratic proclivities. And the men were consumed with a fervour of patriotism which had the same effect on their courage as the religious fanaticism of the Moslem. The French waged war as if they had been a united people under a stable government, partly at least because on the question of the war they really were united; and Carnot's military administration was not interfered with. In the months immediately following the death of King Louis, nothing seemed so likely as that the different groups would devour each other. In the rivalry between The the Girondins, who had now become the party of Mountain, moderation, and the Jacobins, the latter were victorious, drove the Girondins out of office, and sent many of them to the