Page:Georgii Valentinovich Plekhanov - The Bourgeois Revolution- Its Attainments and Its Limitations - tr. Henry Kuhn (1926).pdf/19

 France and the other European States.

The condition of France, at the time the Mountain party seized power, was most desperate, aye, it was hopeless, Janet says: "Enemy troops invaded French territory from four sides: from the north, the English and Austrians; in Alsatia, the Prussians; in the Dauphine, proceeding as far as the city of Lyon, the Piedmontese; and in Roussillon, the Spaniards. And all this at a time when civil war raged on four sides: in Normandy, in the Vendee, in Lyon and in Toulon." Aside from these open foes must be considered the secret adherents of the old regime scattered all over France, who were ready surreptitiously to aid the enemy.

The government, which had taken up the struggle against these innumerable inner and outer foes, had neither money nor sufficient troops—it could dispose of nothing but a boundless energy, the active support on the part of the revolutionary elements of the country, and the colossal courage to shrink from no measure, however arbitrary, illegal, ruth-