Page:British campaigns in Flanders, 1690-1794; being extracts from "A history of the British army," (IA britishcampaigns00fort).pdf/278

 *thing until strengthened by Pichegru, when he made a general attack upon the Prussians under the Duke of Brunswick at Kaiserslautern, and was beaten back with

heavy loss. Thanks to Carnot's influence, however, his failure was forgiven to him; and his new project, that he should reinforce Pichegru with two-thirds of his troops and fall upon the Austrians under General Wurmser at Hagenau, was approved. Wurmser perceived the gathering storm, and appealed to Brunswick for help; but King Frederick William had expressly forbidden the Duke to engage himself in any important operations, and the Prussians did not move until too

late. On the 23rd of December Hoche opened his attack with great skill and success, and would have annihilated Wurmser, had not Brunswick interfered

at the last moment to check the pursuit of the French. The Austrian commander, furious because Brunswick had not supported him from the first, then returned to the eastern bank of the Rhine, thus uncovering the Prussian left, and obliging them likewise to abandon the greater part of the Palatinate, and to content themselves with protecting the neighbourhood of Mainz. Landau, therefore, was recaptured by the French; the eastern frontier of France was purged of the enemy; and, above all, the ill-feeling between Austria and Prussia was more than ever embittered. Broadly speaking, the French by the close of the year had contended successfully alike with the Coalition and with internal foes, having lost ground only in the Eastern Pyrenees to Spain, the enemy from which it could be most easily recovered.

Nevertheless the authority of the Committee of Public Safety was by no means yet fully assured. The Commune of Paris, representing the most infamous of the population, had been jealous of it from the first;