Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/641

 2 93. THE REPUBLIC.] FRANCE G05 po- . II (if and. tilt I might become masters of the whole left bank of the Rhine from Basel to the sea. Custine and Kellennann should master the middle Rhine at Coblentz, and Dumouriez should invade Belgium. He set out at once, and on November G, 1792, by winning the battle of Jeuimapes, roused the amazement of all Europe. It is true that the French were two to one, yet so low had their reputation for fighting- power fallen, that the courage they showed on the field took men by surprise. The Austrians fell back, and Dumouriez occupied all Belgium down to the Meuse. The Scheldt, which had been closed since 1G48, thanks to the jealousy of England and Holland, was reopened ; Antwerp and all Belgium regarded the French as their deliverers, and a Belgian republic, in which the clergy took the lead, was formed at once. Dumouriez, poorly seconded by the other armies, and ill-provided from France, could push the Austrians no further than Aix-la-Chapelle ; Custiue, who had occupied Frankfort, and thereby forced the German diet to declare war on France, was driven out of that place, and could scarcely hold his own on the Rhine. While France was laying her hand on monarchy at home, she challenged at the same moment the hostility of Europe, by this con quest of Belgium, and by the declaration of a crusade by the army against all its ancient institutions. The army began henceforth to regard itself as a great republican pro paganda ; it was by using this belief that Napoleon event ually worked his will on France. This development of a warlike tendency in the republic, coupled with the fall of the king, decided the policy of England, which hitherto had shown some sympathy with France. The ferment of opinion in England, roused by the revolutionary movement and republican ideas, was much stilled by the news of the death of Louis XVI.; and Pitt with great ability both used the feeling in favour of the Tory Government at home and tempted the French mini sters to declare war against England (1st February 1793). Pitt at once proclaimed it, by a happy phrase, to be &quot; the war of armed opinions,&quot; and drew tighter his friendly rela tions with the European courts. All ancient lines of policy were entirely obliterated by the new phenomenon. Spain and Portugal agreed ; Austria ceased to be jealous of Prussia ; Russia and Prussia found the moment good for a farther partition of Poland ; the only neutral powers re maining in Europe were Sweden and Denmark, Switzerland. Venice, and Turkey. The Mountain did not quail before so great a display of force. &quot; France shall be an armed camp,&quot; and every Frenchman a soldier ; &quot; conquer or die,&quot; the watchword of an united people ; the u principles of the Revolution&quot; a new religion for which men of good will should devote themselves. The enthusiasm was great ; a levy of 300,000 men was voted at once ; the revolutionary propaganda filled Belgium, and alienated the friendly feel ing there by its violence. They had also ruined Dumouriez s plans, and he, with an ill-equipped army, and feeling that hostility was rising against him at Paris, set himself to recover ground by a bold attempt to conquer Holland. He was caught by tho prince of Coburg at Neerwinden, and defeated after a vehement battle (18th March 1793). Then, as a last step, Dumouriez came secretly to terms with the Austrians, agreed to evacuate Belgium, and carrying with him the young duke of Chartres, who had shown great gallantry and ability in the face of the enemy, marched for the French frontier, intending to restore the constitution of 1791, to secure the Girondists, overthrow the Jacobins, and proclaim the duke as constitutional king of France. In Paris, the struggle between the parties in the spring of 1793 was acute and close. The news of the disaster of Neerwiu- den and the march of Dumouriez for Paris aroused all the fury of the Jacobins ; the Girondists, with horror, saw themselves innocently implicated in a counter-revolutionary scheme, carried out lightly and suddenly by a general 1793. whom they did not trust. The Jacobins at once took the The ascendant, proposed the creation of the terrible Committee Commit- of Public Safety, summoned Dumouriez to tho bar of the^ ,?* Convention, and sent off four deputies and the minister of safety. war to him. When they came he seized them, sent them over the frontier to the Austriaus, and openly proclaimed his objects. His regular troops might have supported him ; the volunteers, full of Jacobin ideas, rose on him, and com pelled him to take refuge, with the Orleans princes and a handful of soldiers, within the Austrian lines. It was clear enough that the Jacobins would assume that he and tho princes had had throughout an understanding with tho Gironde. The Convention in alarm decreed that its own members should not be inviolable, but might be arrested on suspicion of treason ; that the Orleans family should bo sent to Marseilles ; that three representatives should be sent to look after each army. The Committee of Public Safety was now formed of nine members re-elected monthly, as a secret spring to push the whole machine forwards without being seen. It was an ominous fact that not one of the nine representatives who formed it was a Girondist. They had still a majority in the Convention ; it was all they had. Matters moved on fast ; Paris, the commune, the ministers, the army, were all against them ; in the country they had no adherents in the east and north-east of France ; for the nearer Germany the stronger the Jacobin feeling. In the south-east royalist sentiments were still powerful, though for a time concealed. Their headquarters were at Lyons, Insurrco- and violent and bloody disturbances had already occurred tion ln there ; in the west, in Brittany, Poitou, and Anjou, the, J * e u royalist feeling was stronger still, and broke out, on the 10th March 1793, in the terrible Veudean insurrection on behalf of the white flag and the refractory priesthood. Tho Girondists had their strength in the south-west, with Bor deaux for their headquarters ; the Normans and Picards, on the whole, supported the constitution of 1791, and thus could go with the Girondists. At the beginning the Vendeans carried all before them, and in fanatical enthusiasm sullied each advantage they gained by horrible massacres, by shooting their prisoners in cold blood, pillaging towns, burning villages, maltreating the defenceless. The civil war from the beginning took a fierce colour a colour given it by the royalists. The Girondists also in the south threatened to march on Paris to put down the Jacobins. The allied powers, however, instead of closing in resolutely on France at her weakest, saved her by their long discussions as to what each of them was to take rather than what each was to undertake. At last they moved forwards in the north ; Austrians, Dutch men, and English, under Coburg and the duke of York, slowly drove back the army of the north, which unfortun ately lost its commander Dampierre, who was skilfully re viving its confidence, and besieged Valenciennes. The king of Prussia blockaded Mainz ; in the other scenes of war the French were too weak to do anything, and suffered losses and defeats. The struggle of Girondists and Montagnards went on all the same ; it was the gloomiest moment of tho history of the Revolution. In May a Committee of Twelve was appointed by the moderate party of the Convention, at the suggestion of Barrere, a moderate who had the confi dence of more extreme men. It was composed of Girondists. Over against this move the sections of Paris established their Central Revolutionary Committee. On the 31st of Fall of May, guided by Danton, Paris rose against the Convention, and compelled it to suppress the Committee of Twelve. Marat at the head of his sans-culottes, supported by the minority of the representatives, the Mountain, on the 2d of June overthrew the Girondists, arresting two of the ministers and thirty-one deputies. More than half the departments